this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I suspect if you are trying to build an inclusive community but don't have a lot of diversity already, the only thing you can really do to change the culture is to remind people to be considerate in the way they speak. And if most people who would be offended aren't actually part of the community (but you would like them to feel welcome to join), then you might want some bot rather than a person to be the “narc” and remind people to be on their best behavior. So I guess if the mods are the only ones who want to be nice, then yes, it is a bit ridiculous because it will never work. Even if people change their language, they won't be nice. But if most people want things to change, it could be a helpful way to both remind you to be inclusive and get the few people who would rather talk about how having to say bartender is censorship (without actually defending why they want to make a point of saying “barmen”) to realize that they either have to change the way they talk in that particular community or find a better fit.
The problem with forcing uniform speechis it stifles debate and discussion. It makes everything Disney-esque.
It's also very Amero-centric. "Fag" and "faggot" in British English have different meanings (cigarette and food type) to US English (gay). The equivalent of "retard" is proably "spastic". The word "nigger" doesn't have as big a taboo in the UK as it does in the US. An equivalent here would probably be "Paki". Yet Reddit will delete and ban you for using th US english words but not the Brit-English ones.
It's why you end up with idiots claiming you should say "Latinx" instead of "Latino" because it's gendered.
You also end up with idiotic self-censoring by people saying "unalive" instead of suicide. It becomes comical that you're basically translating all this bullshit flowery language in your head to normal speech.
George Carlin as so often is the case makes the point better than I do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY
"I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality".
I'm Therevadan Buddhist but have studied quite a bit of Zen and there's an idea within Zen to break down the abstraction layer that language places on the world to get to REALITY. Doing this helps you see reality for what it is.
What I see Reddit's language sanitisation as is placing further abstraction on top oof what's already abstract.