Fair, but it has also lost its connotations with being an insult over the decades.
Being a geek and/or nerd became economically useful when we moved into the information age, and thus is now considered in high regard. The average Joe is now envious of geeks and nerds. Most people would love to be able to trade places with Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
Geek and nerd had negative connotations when geeks and nerds were commonly poor, but then things shifted and, notably with the rise of the Information Age, being a geek and/or nerd turned into being useful in becoming wealthy. Now it is a compliment.
True of all insults, really. Same reason, for example, words with associations to slavery are considered insults. Or those related to the sale of sexual favours. The implication is that one is poor. Any words you can throw at someone who is rich will be something most people will want to wear as a badge of honour.
Is it the biting a chicken’s head off thing? I’m not really sure how that translates to an insult, though. Maybe you are ashamed of biting chicken heads? But if that’s the case, stop biting chicken heads?
I’m not sure I see the logic in that. Of what value would there be in convincing you that it is right? I have no agency over your brain. It means nothing to me. I wouldn’t try to convince a stone that I am right and the only difference between you and a stone is that you can speak back, hopefully offering knowledge when you do.
It’s okay for people to believe what they say.
It’s okay, but what’s the value proposition? It takes work to say things. The brain expects payment for the work it does. Knowledge can be sufficient payment, but if you have a belief no more knowledge can be acquired. It is final. I’m not receiving cash, a hug, anything. So, what is it that I have overlooked?
Well, no, I’m not settled on it. It is an idea, but it has not made it to belief status. I’m talking about it, after all. If it were a belief, what value proposition would there be in such an exchange?
It is unlikely that anyone believes what they say, as why would you waste time talking about something you believe in? You already believe it. Your mind has been made. There is absolutely nothing more that can be said. Discussion is only interesting when you can learn something new, which means exploring the things you don’t (yet) believe in.
There is good reason why every comment isn’t: “Hay guys, did you know that 1+1=2!?!?” – something you no doubt believe in. What are you going to learn by bringing it up again and again? Not much. There is no value in exploring what you believe.
When someone says something, they are seeking more information to validate an idea they have. With sufficient validation the idea brought forward may transform into a belief, but that transition requires exploration. Talk is how we explore ideas.
If you watch people, the pattern becomes quite apparent: Once something becomes a belief, interest is lost, and the talk about that subject will fade. They move on to something new that they want to find validation in. Sometimes people will get stuck on an idea that isn’t believable. This is where you find conspiracy theorists and the like, where people build up a whole persona around an idea that they keep failing to validate.
You come to write comments on an Internet forum when you could be doing literally anything else with your life and you only just now realized you were wasting your time?
This verbal rape is poorly considered. There is no reason not to use rape as a metaphor when it works. This is like saying I wouldn’t butter my toast with a knife because some people have been unwelcomely stabbed. Except I would, because there is no connection between someone being stabbed and me buttering my toast. Words are just a tool. Ascribing emotions to a tool may be something people do, but it does not make sense to.
No doubt there are stabbing victims who are affected by someone buttering toast with a knife, but at some point it has to be their problem to sort out. Society would stop functioning if we had to consider everyone’s irrational idiosyncrasies. But we have chosen to live in a functioning society, so that means only problems shared by the collective as a whole are to be considered by the whole. Individual concerns are on the individual to figure out. Like it or not, that is what living in a society entails.
The dictionary defines refugee as : “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” While those could lead to mortal danger, they may only lead to undue suffering. Fleeing one’s home to avoid said undue suffering still qualifies as refugeeism, as refugee is defined by the dictionary.
Of course, the dictionary is only a record of observation around how people have commonly use words in the past, not some kind of rule of law. Language is merely a tool, and one that is available to be used by the user as they see fit. Refugee is whatever we want it to be, and from context we understand that refugee here means someone who left Reddit to use Lemmy. How refugee is used in other contexts is irrelevant.
Fair, but it has also lost its connotations with being an insult over the decades.
Being a geek and/or nerd became economically useful when we moved into the information age, and thus is now considered in high regard. The average Joe is now envious of geeks and nerds. Most people would love to be able to trade places with Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way.