Stuff like "stupid, idiot, moron, dumb," you know the ones. If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.

Just saw a thread on here where a user was stubbornly refusing to adjust their language when another user politely pointed out that it was harmful to our comrades as well, and the person refusing was massively upvoted and the comrade trying to explain why it was harmful was downvoted. Thought we were better than that

I'm not calling anyone out, just wanted to make a post explaining my feelings on it and that when stuff like that happens (not the intelligence based insults, I know its hard to switch, but getting insulted for asking people to avoid them) it hurts and makes me feel less welcome here </3

Using words like “You’re being ignorant” or “That’s a cruel belief” is actually more effective than just going “lmao idiot”.

If those are the words you actually mean to convey I'd say use them instead :)

Edit: if the reception this post got isn't a good proof that this is something this community needs to grapple with, I don't know what is.

  • asaharyev [he/him]
    4·
    4 years ago

    This is a battle we will have for a long time.

    Many people don't see those insults as crossing a barrier into hateful or ableist.

    I have been trying to be better, but I know that I care a lot less than I probably should, to be honest. Especially because it seems, from my perspective, that much or most of the fight against using these words comes off as white knightery.

    But yeah, there's also the barrier of having to come up with a different, more apt turn off phrase. Especially when some sort of insult is warranted.

    • QuillQuote [they/them]
      7·
      4 years ago

      Yeah for sure, and I understand that it can be hard change to make, but also like I said, If you're insulting someone and the only thing you can think to say is to insult their intelligence (instead of whatever evil shit they're up to) is just lazy and bad