this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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Maybe it's because I'm obsessive about words and enjoy overthinking things, but I do this a lot with common words and phrases that we use. The one that horrified me today was the phrase "cost of living". It's right in front of our faces that it literally costs money to remain alive. Did we know this already? Of course! But the fact that it's so deeply woven into every aspect of our lives and people don't even pay attention to what's coming out of their mouths is wild to me. Wild, and wildly upsetting.

I hope this wasn't a weird post or a post that doesn't belong! I will delete or accept a removal of the post if it doesn't fit. Thanks for reading all of this.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Probably not a very creative one, but "landlord" shocked the hell out of me when I first moved to the anglo-sphere. Not sure why it never really registered with me before, but when my then flatmate handed me my tenants-agreement and told me about our landlord something just clicked. Still remember looking at him, thinking "my land...what the fuck". No idea how this isn't more inflamatory to anglos.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Human Resources" need I say anything more

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The company I work for must be aware of the connotation of that phrase because they call that department "People Experience" instead.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I guess Poland got slightly lucky, most of workplaces still call the department "cadres".

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't see how that's better. It just doesn't make sense

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's supposed to sound like "User Experience".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Well it sounds silly instead

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

"People Operations" was one variation on that I was surprised by

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The one that horrified me today was the phrase “cost of living”. It’s right in front of our faces that it literally costs money to remain alive.

Yeah that one gets me all the time too. Liberals are all the time about "Human life don't have a price" and then they not only slap pricetag on everything human needs to remain alive, but they even price, by the hour, week, month, the worker's time, their life itself.

And then they freak out at the term "wage slavery".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have to quantify the cost of living in order to demand a universal basic income to meet the people's needs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's very, very, very specific justification for complete commodification of our lives. Also didn't happened anywhere and i don't see how it can success in current political climate where "austerity" is the word of the century.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't care what economic system you're in, you still need to know how much bread to make to feed a village to know how much wheat you need to plant.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

You seem to not understand what commodification means?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To preface: you are not overthinking. Quite the opposite. There are many terms and phrases that get thrown around, whose definition is just kind of "generally understood". Freedom. Democracy. Justice. Try asking a liberal for a definition. They will most likely glare at you, glass eyed, for a second, because to them such terms don't require a definition - they are instinctively accepted.

That is one of the great things Marx and Engels had done - they started digging into such generally accepted terminology from a scientific standpoint. To not be empty worded - in "Critique of the Gotha program", Marx takes apart, one by one, specific points of the social democratic party's program and shows why they make zero sense. "All workers must receive just pay" - and what does "just" mean? Who decides what is "just"? Etc.

And back topic of the thread, comrades have covered some examples that get me already, but there's one specific (I think) to corporate speak. Back when I worked for a yankee corporation, we had these annual "training sessions" - a series of 40-minute-or-so-long courses with a test attached. The topics were "Sanctions" (aka why you must follow the US policies against sanctioned countries), "Workplace harassment", "Slavery" (aka what to do if you think there's slavery afoot), etc. The latter two sound reasonable, right?

But here's the kicker. The courses had a general name of Compliance. Perhaps even "Compliance course" or "Compliance training", my memory is a bit fuzzy. Such a scummy term. Like being threatened with a shotgun, but it's pink and made with eco friendly materials. Compliance. Comply, wage slave. Bow down. Kiss the ring. Or else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They must receive pay and nothing else, obviously.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

spooky warning👻"pro-life"👻, which is true (not really) up until the second the baby is born

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Humane" is the one I always come back to. It's usually used as an adjective when doing horrible things.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

LOL. Like when slaughtering animals but in a humane way.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Not even just slaughtering them, but even when using their bodies excessively to extract their secretions (eggs, milk, honey, etc)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

“Illegals, illegal immigrant, border hopper, etc.” About as dehumanizing and awful as you can get regarding living breathing human beings who are trying to escape hellholes that the intelligence services and armies that your country created.

“Labour Market”, people can be bought and sold like cattle then disposed of when their use is up. Completely disregarding the devastating effects this has on human life.

“Less then lethal weapons” regarding chemical weapons that are banned in international warfare, acoustic weapons that can permanently deafen or kill, tasers that will still kill a person, blinding pepper spray, and batons that can beat a person to within an inch of their life.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Less then lethal weapons”

Didn't they originally use "non-lethal", but then switched to this, because people were dying to the supposedly "non-lethal" shit, like rubber bullets and tasers?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Exactly, they had to maneuver their language because it was to easy to see through.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

CONTENT WARNING: STATE ABUSE RESULTING IN DEATH

I've been in a labor protest in South Korea where they blasted us with water cannons filled with pepper spray. There were a few people that died that day because it...

(WARNING: KINDA GRAPHIC WRITTEN CONTENT!!!)

spoilerknocked people down on the concrete, busting their heads open and the stuff got in their brain.
(WARNING: KINDA GRAPHIC WRITTEN CONTENT!!!)

So I was lucky to just get off with my body feeling like it was on fire for a few hours.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I sometimes think about euphemisms for things that operate to negate their true nature and make them palatable for populaces that need their consentanufactured.

"Defense" used to describe all military expenditures and structures, particularly for the United States, which has spent nearly all of its "defense" efforts on aggression and territorial domination thousands of miles from its borders. It is conspicuous in how diligently it is used by certain groups, particularly large corporate media orgs, think tanks, and bourgeois politicians. There is, at minimum, an unconscious recognition that (the "good guys'") war must always be framed in the language of defense. For them to describe, for example, the wars on Iraq or Afghanistan as wars of aggresson, which they absolutely were even by liberal definitions, is almost unthinkable. No, the "bunker busters" used exclusively on foreign countries must be "defense".

"Heritage" to describe a white supremacist pining for chattel slavery in the South. Goes hand in hand with, "the peculiar institution" and "states' rights".

The (very deep, usually unconscious nowadays) allusions to vast "natural" spaces that were actually occupied by indigenous people for millennia. Indigenous people that faced a genocide by the same institutions that designate the spaces as official wilderness for its own members. Spinning a deep fiction around the meaning and history of these spaces.

A lot of language is like this. Whitewashed to avoid the horror of what they really mean.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Department of War being renamed the Department of Defense is a perfect example

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

“Defense” used to describe all military expenditures and structures, particularly for the United States, which has spent nearly all of its “defense” efforts on aggression and territorial domination thousands of miles from its borders

Oh, don't worry! They've come up with an even worse term for this exact case!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Medical debt" or "alien" when referring to humans

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

"Schizophrenic" diagnoses exploded in popularity during the Civil Rights movement era as a medically-sanctioned way to otherize Black people and dismiss their concerns as just being "nuts".

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Tax burden" gets me. Sure is a burden to have public services that improve the world you live in, right?!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Not when everything is so infested with neoliberal ideology that nothing can be understood outside of atomized so called rational actors existing in a market.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Just look at the way western media uses the word "violence." Broken windows? Violence. Peaceful protest outside the homes of unreachable un-elected judges? Violence. Homelessness? Lack of healthcare? Redlining? Oh well, that's just the way things are.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Defensive" architecture. Like people are military combatants fighting you over the sidewalk. If you rely on miniature spikes to deter homeless people, you aren't "defending" the pavement, you are just being hostile.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Defensive architecture sounds like someone is building a castle or a fort

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Great insight, I never thought about that before. “ Clashes” is always a dogwhistle for “Poor Israel, the invaders are being attacked”

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Clashes imply an equality of responsibility that does not exist.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In that vein, "'Israel' has a right to defend itself" as a euphemism for "We will support them in killing as many Palestinians as they want."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

And when applied to Ukraine, it means “anything goes, nazism is acceptable, civilian casualties are fine”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I too suffer from tendon issues. I would recommend lower impact exercises if possible, such as swimming, elliptical, or biking/stationary bike. Count your calories to lose weight, and as you lose weight, body weight exercises will become more feasible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I hadn’t thought about it that way before. Yikes.

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