the ceo of dengism

  • 30 Posts
  • 105 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 12th, 2021

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  • by “online spaces” i was referring to forums, message boards, subreddits

    type of language was slurs. reclaimed slurs specifically - slurs no one uses for themselves were banned outright.

    Never “I am an internet troll and I am leaving lemmy because of these words are banned”

    someone literally made a fork of lemmy without the filter so this has absolutely happened.

    “I am hurt by people using those words and want them banned”

    i am confident this would occur if the filter did not exist.

    I don’t think it’s the most effective way to change people’s behaviour or anything.

    it’s not the most effective way to change bigots. it is, however, an effective way of changing people with predjudices of which they are unaware. for example, if someone used a certain slur as normal speech and was forced to replace it in practice (while writing) they are being forced to think about alternatives and if confronted multiple times may eliminate the slur from their vocabulary entirely.

    for those who would refuse to just find alternate vocabulary… well, let’s just say this site is better for everyone when those people go elsewhere.





  • never in the form of somebody saying

    this is not true. i’ve moderated online spaces and plenty of people send messages asking for certain language to be disallowed. and even if it were the case that no one spoke up, a lot of times people just straight up leave online spaces when they are uncomfortable. im sure i could find hundreds of instances on reddit alone








  • that’s a good question. i think if you are under the care of a clinician, it can be a great exercise to push yourself. if you aren’t, i would just be very careful to not go overboard. be realistic about what you can and cannot do at the moment because pushing yourself too hard can make the challenge backfire and worsen your mental state.

    so i would say yes, it can be good but if you’re doing it on your own make the “challenges” very small so that they are achievable without being overly stressful. like you mention social anxiety, so a challenge might be to make small talk with someone or to call someone on the phone. and then once you’re able to do whatever challenge with less anxiety, you can move to something slightly more challenging (and so on)




  • this is not the hill to die on. it is not that hard to use other words. and even if there were zero other reasons, keeping fascists away is enough.

    as a marginalised person you should know that a slur you reclaim may be extremely offensive to someone else in the same grouping. take your example: a lot of people have reclaimed it but there are others still who have been hurt by that slur and are very sensitive to hearing it. this is true for many slurs.

    if someone you were close to irl was like “hey, that word makes me uncomfortable” you would stop using it around them. because it would be disrespectful and hurtful for you to continue to do so. sure, people on the internet are strangers, but does that mean you potentially subject marginalized people to harm just because you don’t know them?