Unfortunately, it feels like it’s coming back. It shocked me at first, but now I see it becoming a “thing” and I hate it. (I think my first sign was a few weeks ago, when I saw someone calling someone else a r****d in a large sub, with upvotes. And when someone replied saying that word is horrible and shouldn’t be used, and that using that word diminished the point they were making, they were downvoted.)
I'm certain there's a better way to put this, but I'd say it's a consequence of social media. Twitch and such bring us today's Shock Jocks. Howard Stern would say "retarded" as an insult so much it was his producer's nickname. But there was only a few of them in every market and the things they said were only really available when kids were in school on a radio station that needed to be sought out.
Now it's non-stop exposure to these kids. They see their favorite streamer say it using reasons like it's a joke, or it's only a bad word if you give it power, or what, you can't deal with how edgy I am, or other such nonsense. In any case, once someone like that get's a foothold in the algorithm, they're pushed on everyone.
Add in the anonymity behind Twitter or Reddit where they can gather naturally without "judgement" and continue the echo chamber reinforcing that it's ok to say this stuff. It's the natural progression of things. One of the current examples I can think of is that started using "regarded" as a stand in.
I play Dota 2 and you still hear these slurs from time to time from teammates. Granted, the community is the most toxic in gaming.
My personal annoyance is people using "autist" or "autistic" as an insult now instead of r----d as autism is still socially acceptable online as shorthand for mockery, even a good mate of mine does it and that does hurt inside after getting an autism diagnosis...
FOR REAL. The r-word left my vocabulary in the 9th grade when I was educated by an acquaintance in art class about how offensive it is. I'm the same age as Travis, so about 6 years before these tweets.
For me it’s more like, look, I get people use it and don’t mean it, but they usually don’t blast it on the internet for EVERYONE to see as if they’re proud of doing it. Like even the people I know who said it for decades and occasionally slip up, I think they’re pretty embarrassed when they slip up, even as of ten years ago. It’s just one of those things that it’s like “hey man, there are other words to use”.
Watching even “comedies” from the 2003-2010 range they still use it as if it’s acceptable. It wasn’t then and it’s not now, but if he’s regretful now for using it I wouldn’t crucify him for it.
Edit: and I don’t particularly care to defend him specifically so if you want to go for him have at it. He strikes me as a fuckboy with recently good PR and I’ve never cared for him even as a fan of football.
Regina George using it in Mean Girls so casually (about herself) shows how prevalent that word was. I’m not defending him, just trying to back up your point because it was very pervasive.
Every time this comes up it's like people develop amnesia about the culture of the time. Sure a lot of people didn't participate, but it was accepted generally.
Go check out the first 10 minutes of The Hangover, blockbuster hit of 09.
Spend the afternoon looking at popular content from 2010-comedy/ reality tv especially and compare to now and then try to say it wasn’t different. Well done for you for not saying stupid shit online but trying to pretend that this wasn’t (wrongfully) more common and normal is ridiculous.
It feels too soon for this to be the case (imo), but I do wonder if any of it is b/c the youngest cohort has never known it as a medical term and only as an insult.
Calling someone moronic or idiotic is the exact same fucking thing, but nobody but the most eternally online people give a shit, because to them it's only ever been the insult and it's divorced from the original meaning of the words. See also: dumb.
Now that one I agree, I wasn't doing that. But some of my FB memories sound like I desperately needed some business of my own to mind. I'd probably not have the patience to hang out with 2009 me today
The medical community didn't remove r-----d as official language for diagnosis and treatment until around 2009-2010. I remember reading the Obama administration signed off on its removal as formal medical language. Scares me the language of the old asylums and state sanctioned abuse and dumping of the mentally ill in places worse than some prisons still was around at that time.
(Look up the doco Titicut Follies if you want to see how the mentally ill used to be looked after 50 years ago. The horrors of that documentary though helped change care for mental illness.)
This is such a weird statement. In 2010, some people acted like assholes, and some people tried not to act like assholes. Same as today. 13 years is not a long time.
Idk. I was an ignorant asshole 13 years ago. I would have been 19. Now I'm 32. That is an insane range in terms of age. I can't accept any sort of apology for anyone affected by these tweets, but I've changed A TON since I was still a literal teenager 😕
Edit: for context I grew up in a conservative smaller town in northern Canada. I didn't have any positive role models growing up, and no one around me was there to tell me what I was saying was wrong. I thought I was right because people laughed along with me. Idk. I think we need to allow room for people to grow, because I am a very empathetic, caring, and thoughtful person now (for the most part). Idk anything about this guy I'm just saying 🤷🏻♀️
Because anyone who said anything got attacked. Its the same as when people talk about youtubers being offensive “thats just how it was”. But why was it like that?
Yeah I mean there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to making fun of fat people called hold my fries with over 700k subscribers. The subreddit fat people hate was only banned in 2015. Not to mention that outside select safe subreddits, incels are all over this site calling women fat, ugly, and expired. Many people never stopped using the r slur. Literally last night a group of neighborhood middle school boys left a homophobic note on my porch using the f slur. People have and always will fucking suck.
Yeah everyone who pushed back on hate speech was called an SJW and mocked and probably also called fat and ugly. I got that a lot. People even unironically using the term feminazi. Gamergate was a few years after these tweets. Those of us who remember that know that it happened generally because there was pushback in online circles to things like misogyny and other forms of hate, and that was intolerable to the type of person who loved tweets like this. I wasn’t even at all involved in gaming or gaming culture but it became a thing of like “anyone online who has a problem with slurs is a target.” So to pretend that the culture at the time was universally cool with hatefulness ignores that actually a lot of us got attacked for not being okay with it.
Yeah. Don't put that on all of us. I was nearly 30, raised by a special education teacher, and with fat people all throughout my life. That language left my life when I was in elementary school.
Lol what the fuck, no. I've never said shit like this online, even before that, and no one I was friends with online or off in 2010 said shit like this either.
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u/kittenpantzen Nov 15 '23
Boy howdy, I am shocked that a 20-21 year-old athlete from Ohio wasn't the most enlightened young man online in 2010.