While I said I don’t want it to be a struggle session, cool headed good faith discussion is also appreciated. This just came up with some comrades of mine and I couldn’t find the last post about it so if anyone has the link that would be great too.
The real answer that only like 2 people figured out in this 150+ comment thread is to call them a Redditor. Seriously. If you call someone a Redditor, everybody understands everything. Being called a Redditor is so bad even calling someone a Redditor is an insult on Reddit.
“Stupid” is not ableist in etymology. “Stupid” was never a medical terminology like ableist terms, the r-slur as example was a medical terminology. “Stupid” comes from latin, “stupidus”, which means to be struck senseless with astonishment. “Stupid” is the base word of “stupefied”, which means a temporary state of mental numbness from shock.
To say that “stupid” is ableist is overcorrective. “Stupid” does not describe a disability. Anyone can be “stupid”. “Stupid” describes a person who is in a state of confusion from being surprised.
Also I get everybody being like “just call them a shit head instead” but their willful ignorance and insistence on not making basic connections is a specific and pretty widespread trait.
Lots of people are shitheads, it’s a very specific kind of shithead who thinks “it was cold last week so global warming doesn’t exist” is a great point and pointing out that argument is fucking stupid is a lot more effective then calling the person who made it a shit gibbon twat waffle like some kind of mid 2010s memelord.
Whatever you do don’t fall into the trap of inventing your own ones in the fly like “fuckscribble”, makes you seem like a certified dandycorn.
Many such examples in this thread.
I get being cautious about not being ableist but if you call somebody a fuckwit unironically everybody within ear shot is going to laugh at you and dismiss what you’re saying.
fuckwit is perfectly normal and pretty common where i live
Do you live on reddit because if you said that to anybody around here they’d just call you the f slur.
i’m not a yank
[Pulls up a stump] Let me tell you folks about a person called Melissa McEwan.
Or worse, a r*dditor.
Why use some ableist or made-up word when you can just call them a R*dditor?
Whatever you do don’t fall into the trap of inventing your own ones in the fly like “fuckscribble”, makes you seem like a certified dandycorn.
Why go to all the trouble of locating and opening the Ark of the Covenant when you can just open up twitter dot com.
I’ve taken to using “redditor” tbh. Even among normies being a dedicated reddit poster has become deeply uncool and makes a person seem like an uneducated dweeb
Don’t know if it was said already, but I feel this way about maligning dogs and rats, and I suppose snakes although that’s a further reach… can make an exception for
and
I’ll do some self-crit on my ableism; I am among that group myself.
I wanna bring up that people are still trying to find words for someone who is not intelligent. Intelligence being a single thing that can only increase or decrease is an inherently ableist concept. It’s pseudoscientific and has been used to justify mass murder and sterilization among other things. The fact that it’s such a widespread idea that almost everyone believes is irrelevant to the fact that it’s ableist and incorrect.
What about all the anti intellectuals that literally make being unintelligent a part of their personality and reject arguments from other people explicitly because thenother people know what they’re talking about.
There’s a massive gap between “I have a hard time retaining information and struggle with that issue” and “capitalism is the best system because America is number 1 and if you try to tell me otherwise you’re a commie and ill fight you”
Anti-intellectual seems just fine for that. Intellectualism is a lot more complex and social than someone’s capacity with a correlated set of skills. So is anti-intellectualism.
Pretty sure we’ve already done this, and the outcome was that we’re still using both those words, which I’m personally fine with tbh. You have to draw a line somewhere.
That said, if you’re not comfortable with using them “clown/clownish” is a good substitute as no one was ever born a clown.
no one was ever born a clown
counterpoint: jordan peterson was born a clown
Fuck I have been owned.
You have been clowned
Retire this emote
We’ll see who cancels who
Yes we did and this is not about drawing a line, this is about comrades that may want to just voluntarily curb the usage of those terms and also for coming up with more creative insults and such.
Oh yeah, you’ll get no argument from me there. Like I said I’m fond of clown
I love your new pfp btw lol
Listen here you little shit, I am a decorated veteran of the posting wars, I have thousands of confirmed dunks. I will ban you from 1000 miles away and not lose sleep over it.
That said, if you’re not comfortable with using them “clown/clownish” is a good substitute as no one was ever born a clown.
“Clown” always throws up a red flag because I’ve seen so many fascists using it. I don’t know why but I assume it came from 4chan using it euphemistically as a slur and other fascists not in the loop picking up the habit of using it as a generic word for something bad.
anything can be a slur if you use it as one
I think “stupid” and “dumb” fall into a category where they’re ableist in etymology but in use they are just a common way to say bad or without sense. A lot of derogatory words have that effect, but they create a problem by associating a group of people with being bad (I’m thinking of the homophobic use of the term “gay” in particular). In this case, I think that’s rarely the case, I think they’ve basically shed their associations.
I do sometimes try to avoid them. I’ll try to remember what I say instead:
- [X] doesn’t make sense
- Silly
- [X] is a bad idea
- I’m not a fan of [X]
- Absurd
- Ridiculous
- [A more specific criticism]
- [X] sucks
- Liberal
I think “stupid” and “dumb” fall into a category where they’re ableist in etymology but in use they are just a common way to say bad or without sense.
Exactly. It does kind of bother me the way those words are treated here, because nobody actually thinks you’re being ableist when you say “x behavior is stupid” but if one of the mods who reads it happens to be a proponent of x behavior you can bet your ass your comment’s getting removed for ableism
Silly gang unite!
- pig poop balls
Personally I really love ‘muppet’ as an insult. Only good thing to come out of It England
Cone, spade, shovel, itch mite, cod, cock anchovy, arse banana.
Related, in Welsh there’s an insult - twmffat twp, it directly translates into English as idiot spout/funnel. Basically someone who is constantly chatting shit. Sometimes people’ll shorten it to twmffat.
Is there an English equivalent I’m missing? Would directly calling someone a funnel have any emotional effect on 'em?
I like it. How do I pronounce it?
The w would be pronounced sorta like the oo in good.
Not good with IPA, but I think it’d be expressed something like: tʊmfat tʊp.
Would directly calling someone a funnel have any emotional effect on 'em?
confusion probably
Perfect, while they’re stunned by the funnel accusations, I can move in for the kill.
Cromulent fucktastic or something
I’ve been trying to slip “fucko” into conversation but no luck so far. I feel like “jabroni” should make a comeback too.
Do we have a word for “deliberately ignorant”? Is “rube” a slur?
See this is the kind of discussion I was hoping for, I wanted to crowd source some specific insults that are silly but serious and have a deliberate connotation to them that is baggage free and better articulates the aspect of the recipient being criticized.
Crafting punchy insults is hard.
I vaguely remember there was a popular thing on reddit where people wanted to find an insult that went over their target’s head. Top of the bell curve. I feel like you generally want your target to know your contempt.
Ass, I feel like describes someone being belligerently stubbornly ignorant, but it’s evolved to focus primarily on the belligerence so I feel like doesn’t convey the meaning where we’d want favour the choice to be ignorant.
Rube describes a sort of naivety and innocence that is only “bad” because you’re surrounded by predators and scam artists. That said, the default approach to nationalist narratives if you grew up in The West is to be a Rube naively trusting your national interests etc.
You also never want an insult that partly implies your target is living in your head rent free. I know you’re an anarchist, but the first example I can think of is the response insults to tankie (e.g. dronie, et al). It’s piss weak and belies a lack of confidence in both yourself and your position. That lack of confidence may be real, but we’re workshopping here.
I think you don’t want it to be too smart. If you have to explain your insult, you’re playing a losing game. It should be punchy and short. (Aside: in a recent conversation I thought of a term "Suburban Nietzsche ", which I think would describe a sort of person that definitely exists, but implies I read too much. I might use it in an essay somewhere, but it’s absolutely something that would work as a sneering insult)
I think some names work if there’s enough cultural force behind them. Lots of little missteps can be made, but if it works it works
Liberal
I thought you were calling me one
Eh. I kinda feel like rube is a bit of a slur towards country folk if you really want to analyze it. Obtuse, maybe?
I’d do my homework for sure.
My immediate association was someone being scammed on the streets in new York, I didn’t think about the rural connection which definitely exists.
Mark, punter, know-nothing (am American politcal party from back in the day)
Calling someone a child, consuming news like fruit loops
Evil or unwise, depending on what you mean exactly.
When people call something dumb, they mean “not thought through”. When applied to politics, you arrive immediately into bumbling american empire station and “never ascribe to malice blah blah”.
When drunk friend does something weird, that’s “not thought through or unwise” part
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