Fun fact: the longest known distance between two points on Earth is the distance between Google product managers and ordinary people.
To be less flippant, boy could I not give a shit less about the problem this feature is trying to solve. As I look outside, I try to imagine the idea of any of these people in my neighborhood, playing with their dogs, mowing their lawns, driving garbage trucks, potentially losing sleep over someone using “policeman” as opposed to “police officer.” It’s absurd.
To be clear, I do feel genuine empathy for someone if they experience abject pain from minor transgressions. However, I am skeptical that almost anyone actually has that issue. And if they do, this is not how I believe you solve the problem. At all.
And if someone did use the term “police officer” instead of “policeman”, it would be no skin off my nose. That’s totally fine, both are natural and reasonable. Whatever. But I don’t need my fucking word processor telling me to self-police my language harder. That’s not a feature I want. In fact, I don’t even like the idea of this feature.
This all feels like cargo culting. If we pretend we’re in a society further removed from a racist, sexist past, does that make us further removed? I don’t think it does. Before the issues with blacklist/whitelist or slave/master were brought to the forefront, I really, really doubt almost anyone had racist or problematic visualizations in their mind. I think they had completely abstract concepts in their mind. Plenty of words probably have a deeply racist origin, but if that’s not what people actually think about when they hear the word, does that history even matter? Aren’t we just creating more problems?
Even if you disagree with all of my viewpoints, I hope you’ll agree that this is going to serve to make people much more radical over time as they perceive these features to either serve as an attack on themselves or their way of lives, or as evidence that people who don’t self-correct incessantly are secretly neo-nazis. To me, it just seems like a lose-lose, because it feels like no matter what I do, people are going to view my rejection of these ideals and pigeonhole me into either of these camps. Or is using the word “camp” also a bad idea due to World War II?
I’m sure some people will read this some day and think I’ve lost my mind. I don't care. For the love of fuck, Go Outside once in a while.
To be less flippant, boy could I not give a shit less about the problem this feature is trying to solve. As I look outside, I try to imagine the idea of any of these people in my neighborhood, playing with their dogs, mowing their lawns, driving garbage trucks, potentially losing sleep over someone using “policeman” as opposed to “police officer.” It’s absurd.
To be clear, I do feel genuine empathy for someone if they experience abject pain from minor transgressions. However, I am skeptical that almost anyone actually has that issue. And if they do, this is not how I believe you solve the problem. At all.
And if someone did use the term “police officer” instead of “policeman”, it would be no skin off my nose. That’s totally fine, both are natural and reasonable. Whatever. But I don’t need my fucking word processor telling me to self-police my language harder. That’s not a feature I want. In fact, I don’t even like the idea of this feature.
This all feels like cargo culting. If we pretend we’re in a society further removed from a racist, sexist past, does that make us further removed? I don’t think it does. Before the issues with blacklist/whitelist or slave/master were brought to the forefront, I really, really doubt almost anyone had racist or problematic visualizations in their mind. I think they had completely abstract concepts in their mind. Plenty of words probably have a deeply racist origin, but if that’s not what people actually think about when they hear the word, does that history even matter? Aren’t we just creating more problems?
Even if you disagree with all of my viewpoints, I hope you’ll agree that this is going to serve to make people much more radical over time as they perceive these features to either serve as an attack on themselves or their way of lives, or as evidence that people who don’t self-correct incessantly are secretly neo-nazis. To me, it just seems like a lose-lose, because it feels like no matter what I do, people are going to view my rejection of these ideals and pigeonhole me into either of these camps. Or is using the word “camp” also a bad idea due to World War II?
I’m sure some people will read this some day and think I’ve lost my mind. I don't care. For the love of fuck, Go Outside once in a while.