I really tried to ignore it and let it go as just another passing trend. It’s not my language, not my culture and not my battleground, but it’s hard. It hurt me seeing it slowly spreading and getting bigger. What made me decide to vent was reading someone talk about their struggles and seeing a familiar sentence that might be familiar to all: “I was a weird child”.

Being weird is not usually a problem, the issue usually is people being incapable to accept what they consider weird. Different is not wrong, queer is not wrong, expressing yourself and living the only way you know when it’s not hurting anyone around you is definitely not wrong, even if it doesn’t conform with society.

All these horrible people hate being called weird because it’s what they having been calling us the whole time, but in more specific ways. I feel using it as a slur now just reinforces the negative connotations and validate their view.

Update: semantic satiation to the rescue. Weird became a meme and a trend everyone wanted to take part and use regardless of it making sense.

  • amio@kbin.run
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    4 months ago

    Not a slur. Not even close.

    What it is is an omnipresent, versatile, variable, nuanced word, that someone apparently started using “politically” like fifteen fucking minutes ago - I don’t see that as a compelling reason to hustle to change my lexicon, and wouldn’t advise anyone else to do it either. It is literally playing into their dogshit tactics: “validating their view” is, respectfully, not a good argument if we’re talking about the American right which I’m going out on a limb and assuming we are. This is because their “view” (like many of their imitators) is “I will bitch about everything I can possibly pretend to take offense at, or else make something up”. Therefore, allowing them to dictate your vocabulary (extremely and intentionally hypocritically, between the incessant bitching about “political correctness”) seems like a losing or at least pointlessly annoying proposition. You are playing chess with a pigeon, it will shit on the board and strut around like it’s won.

    If they didn’t want to be called “weird”:

    1. Maybe they shouldn’t have been weird

    2. Maybe they shouldn’t be whinging about it from the #1 spot on the podium of irrelevant namecalling and shit-flinging kindergarten/zoo tactics.

    3. Tough shit lol

    4. GOTO 3

    • ninjaphysics@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      I love everything you said, but badmouthing pigeons by comparing them to the far right loonies makes me sad lol. Pigeons are lovely, smart(ish), and sweet creatures!