Ask Lemmy

Influencer. Plain and simple. I hate when i hear it on tv, when someone calls themselve like that ugh.

Refering to women as "females" is always a massive red flag for me, it really gets under my skin.

“Customer” in a healthcare setting.

When someone describes themselves as an 'entrepeneur', particularly when they say that in their dating profile, I immediately assume they're just a grade A wanker.

Two words but... human resources.

We ran out of humans to burn, can you check the freezer if we have any left from last winter? Otherwise I have to drive to the farm and get some fresh ones.

"Try Hard."

It's the dumbest of all insults. You seriously are gonna talk shit about someone who is doing well at the game because they are actively trying to achieve victory? And that's the best you can come up with? Get the fuck outta here with that.

NPC when referring to other people. It does nothing but dehumanize them.

'Female', when it's used in a non-clinical or technical context to describe a human woman. Everyone has a slip here or there, right, so, broad stroke take incoming, but, generally speaking, I've never met or talked with anyone who reliably refers to women as 'females' who actually respects them. It's a word you'd use to refer to a complete person only if you see them first and foremost as some kind of specimen, and it reaks to me of poor socialization, unhealthy relationship with that sex, or simply low class.

Calling customers, "guests". A customer is someone with a business relationship with someone/something else. They're exchanging money for goods and services and have a right to expect certain value for their money.

A guest is something else entirely. A guest has no implicit right to expect a certain any particular level or quality of services. They are dependent on the magnamity of the "host".

Calling a customer a "guest" robs them of status.

"woke" when meaning everything that doesn't align with ones fascist beliefs.

I hate the word "home" in a real estate context. You do not buy a home. You buy a house and make it a home by living there with your family.

Similarly, "houselessness" is a dumb euphemism because what homeless people lack is literally a home, not just a house.

"Stupid" or "smart" or "IQ". Take your pick.

Intellectual capacity is a social darwinist fantasy.

That includes insults that go along the lines of, "Trump supporters can't read."

[Aside: I dislike Trump supporters, mind you. But if they couldn't read (especially reading Breitbart, or the Epoch Times, or the text part to Russia-funded propaganda memes) that would actually be an improvement right now. Lower cognition would be an improvement if it were real.]

Anyways my reasons are as follows: I've tutored quite a few people, and never found one actually incapable of learning a particular concept.

I have, on the other hand, found a large number who were underconfident about their ability, citing their "low" intelligence specifically. And unlike their intellectual capacity, this belief in IQ was actually limiting. And harmful.

I have also encountered people (outside of my tutoring) who thought their "intelligence" was a source of superiority over the masses.

They were not superior people. Their vocabulary -- which people often use as a misguided proxy for intelligence -- was offputting because they often used words they had clearly never heard used in context. Indicating these words were added to their lexicon unorganically, pulled from a dictionary or thesaurus rather than an adventure novel, highlighting a strange set of priorities that always made these people suspicious to me.

Every time someone calls me smart, I tend to suspect they're trying to scam me.

Every time someone calls me stupid, I shrug because they clearly haven't met all of the people who call me smart.

But in all cases, they are invoking the idea that some people are just capable of more, and others are just capable of less. It's social darwinism, like I said.

And I find it disgusting.

If you want my respect, never appeal to social darwinism in my presence.

"human resources", it dehumanizes the people it manages, comparing them to goods and things, rather than thinking of them as actual people with needs and their own desrires. But nope, they're just a resource for you to exploit

"Gamer", despite being a basic description of someone who plays video games often, has always felt wrong to use or be called.

Doesn't help that it's only really ever used ironically or to mock someone, and if it's not that, it's used to advertise overpriced and mid-tier PC peripherals that could be used as makeshift flashlights.

“Junkies”

These are people with addiction. they are people who have a problem. A common problem. And some starting with injuries. And they are vulnerable and taken advantage of the most by the very people making money off of them. People with addiction take the most blame and treated with utmost contempt for the very issue that is caused by the people who create the issue in the first place : Doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.

"Engagement" in a social media context. Most of the time, I'm not engaging with anything, really. You wouldn't say you're engaging with your newspaper when you're reading it, or engaging with your TV by changing the channel. It's ridiculous

A customer is an equal who participates in business transactions.

A consumer is a being who's sole purpose is to acquire and use products.

I hate the word “taxpayer” to disparage anything government funded or that implies the government is cheating the average person. For example, I found this headline after 2 seconds of searching:

“The Taxpayer-Funded Electric Bus Company Pump and Dump Scheme that Benefitted Biden Donors”

They use “taxpayer” to make it sound like instead of citizens, we are customers who buy into government services, and should feel personally victimized by people who use government services as they are taking money from our pockets. And don’t even get me started on the “small business owner”…

EDIT: wow, unsurprisingly the word has always been used for political oppression (from ITPI):

“As the Brookings Institution’s Vanessa Williamson has documented, wealthy southern whites ​“focused their critique of Reconstruction on rising government debt and excessive spending, painting government by Black people and poor whites as intrinsically corrupt.” They called themselves “taxpayers,” allowing them to convince small white farmers to join their side while avoiding explicit opposition to Black male suffrage. Ultimately, they were successful.”

I don't like the casual use of the word "hate"

Maybe it's just me but hate is quite an extreme emotion. It basically means you want something killed/destroyed. I know people don't often really hate the thing they claim to hate but I'm far enough on the spectrum to not take words literally.

Ride share. It's supposed to mean "Hey, I'm going this way and if you are too, you can ride with me." It is currently used to mean ride hailing. You hail or call the ride with the apps and then pay for the ride. The driver and app developer isn't sharing anything.

Junkie

"Slut". Especially when used in porn. I just find it so cringey how it's used to describe any woman with an active sexual appetite. "Whore" is another one.

Bimbo. In German, it's the N-Word.

'Feed' like Facebook feed or twitter feed or whatever social media feed. I guess mostly for the same reason as OP's. It makes people sound like brainless zombies just grazing on whatever is 'fed' to us by advertisers/whatever the platform has been paid to push .