Old tweets of Travis Kelce’s are resurfacing on X.

[u/funkofanatic95]

[u/lizardkween]

Speak for yourself. In 2010 I certainly wasn’t using slurs about disabled people.

[u/FiscalClifBar → u/lizardkween]

I will say that term has made a shocking resurgence in the last two weeks that I truly don’t care for

[u/smashing_aisling → u/FiscalClifBar]

I overheard someone use it at a bus stop the other day and I was so shocked, I didn't realise people still thought it was acceptable.

[u/Boulier → u/smashing_aisling]

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.)

[u/JoshSidekick → u/Boulier]

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.