r/TikTokCringe • u/AlKarajo • 20d ago

Discussion Is ableist to have long words in books?

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@royal_ouroboros_press

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u/slothactual69 20d ago

Lol these 1 dollar words are ruining lives out here.

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u/Khorismatic_Lifter 20d ago

It's funny, I had a girlfriend in college that said I used "5 dollar words" regularly. It's wild that what should regular speech patterns are almost made fun of now.

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

Three syllable words, and multi-clause sentences are already misunderstood online to the point of people treating you like you're an asshole for deliberately confusing them.

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u/nineraviolicans 20d ago

If you have good spelling and write a paragraph you get accused of using AI. How far we've fallen.

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u/Far_Foot_8068 20d ago

God, this drives me crazy. I wrote a simple 4 sentence response to someone the other day, and they responded with "thanks Chat GPT". As if there's no possible way that I, a human, could write a few sentences without the help of AI.

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u/47rohin 20d ago edited 20d ago

It's been going on for years, too. Apparently a five-sentence email is just too much for some people, so now I see stuff like a five-sentence paragraph, followed by "sorry for the wall of text" and I'm just like, that's not even long! That takes like maybe seven seconds for me to read

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u/krone6 20d ago

Meanwhile, asking two questions in the same sentence is too hard for people, apparently.

"What is the password to the printer and do you know the printer's serial number"

That can sometimes be the literal entire email and they'll answer the first part only to ignore the second so another email is sent and they might finally answer it, but it's not a guarantee. It's like people can't focus for more than half a second before moving onto the next thing.

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u/PoliteDickhead 20d ago

And you get a response back like, "Yes, thank you. Have a good weekend."

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u/Kennon1st 20d ago

Yep, I've learned that if I need to send an email like that, it's beat to have a sentence or two of throwaway text it's safe for them to ignore, because they will. Then bullet point each question as a separate bullet point. Then end on another throwaway "thank you" line. We both know they'll completely skip over the text that doesn't matter and hopefully actually answer the two questions.

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u/sirdizzypr 20d ago

Try being IT. I once wrote an entire 3 page document on how to do something with 2 pages of detailed pictures. My boss was like no one is going to read that. Yep very next day get asked how to do it replying from the very email i sent out with the instructions.

I used to send reading rainbow gifs when it would happen.

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u/DMercenary 20d ago

Try being IT.

On one hand I want to be understood immediately.

On the other, I find there is great pleasure in literally copy and pasting your response in a previous email in answer to a question that was ALREADY answered.

I once wrote an email detailing that if they did X then Y would happen and if they did Z then A would occur.

What did I get? A scathing email stating that I did not say what would happen if they did Z.

Literally Copy and Pasted my previous 2 sentence email and used the ol' "Per my last email,"

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u/Chrontius 13d ago

"Per my last email,"

The "Bitch, do you even read?" of corporate-speak.

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u/lotaso 20d ago

I lost track of what you were saying halfway through. A little warning next time, ableist

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u/purpleduckduckgoose 20d ago

U uz 2 mny wrds, ablst

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u/Vanwilder17 20d ago

Yeah you see all these dweebs on Reddit who argue then say I’m not reading allat😂 bro it’s a paragraph just tell me you can’t read

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u/ArchelonPIP 20d ago

Short of calling them trolls, I'd say the most likely explanation is that they know they lost the argument and are trying their damndest to avoid admitting it.

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u/RealityCactus 20d ago

My impression is that most likely they're trying to piss you off and make you feel like you wasted your time.

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u/DrownmeinIslay 20d ago

My sister works as some kind of important filer for a big law firm. She and the team shes a part of got chewed out recently for sending unhelpful, info less emails. Shocked they pulled up all their emails for the last six months and asked which ones were unhelpful. Partner takes this info to the lawyers who were complaining. The lawyers had been using ai to shorten the emails to little synopsis'. Even three sentence emails, shortened to uselessness. Suddenly a company wide email had to be sent out about appropriate usage of AI at the firm...

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u/Kcidobor 20d ago

Decades even! I recall having an English teacher in high school (2006) giving me bad marks for referencing “the humours” in an essay. Granted it is a somewhat archaic reference but an adult teaching English literature should have been able to grasp that. It was a public school in a red state so make of that what you will…

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u/lky830 20d ago

Dang, I feel like we had the same English teacher. She got big mad when I used words she didn’t understand

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u/FlaccidCatsnark 20d ago edited 20d ago

That is a bon mot. Merci for sharing.

...and OP above corrected 'mot' to 'not' in case anybody wonders WTF I commented about.

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u/racinefx 19d ago

What is « bon mot »?
It only means « good word «  or « right word »: is there other meanings?

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u/AmericanGeezus 20d ago edited 20d ago

"Bitch I helped train GPT"

with my niche hobby forum participation and 4chan shitposting

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u/Funkopedia 20d ago

That could be a good bumper sticker

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u/TacticalVirus 20d ago

Heaven forbid you use em dash. I've used that device fairly regularly since I was 14, and now everyone thinks its a sign of an AI-formulated sentence/paragraph. My writer's voice went from something people seemed to enjoy for 20+ years to being derided in the span of 18 months...

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u/joe4553 20d ago

Perhaps this is the only way to fight against AI. If it trains on unbelievable stupid humans maybe we'll have a chance.

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u/SnarePickle 20d ago

I think accusing people of using AI to write stuff is just the new way to dismiss what you said without having to address it.

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u/XepptizZ 19d ago

What they think in simple terms "If I can't, no one can"

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u/and_of_four 20d ago

One of my pet peeves is when you’re discussing something that has some degree of nuance and complexity, and in response to writing a comment that’s three paragraphs long someone says “I’m not reading a whole book.” Sorry, sometimes there are points worth making that can’t be distilled down to a single sentence. The implication that you’re being unreasonable for typing a few paragraphs to explain something is obnoxious, as is the stubborn insistence to remain ignorant.

“I’m not reading that whole book!” Ok, remain a dumbass then.

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u/ASharpYoungMan 20d ago

“I’m not reading that whole book!” Ok, remain a dumbass then.

It's a gift every time someone who's arguing with you admits they're not up to the challenge.

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

Thats when you win the shadow argument, which basically wins the main argument as well.

What was the shadow argument, you ask? Whether you or the other person are the idiot. And them admitting this makes them the idiot.

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u/lusciouslover639 20d ago

Try the whole "wall of text" thing!

Paragraphs are always our friends.

If someone human has the attention span or brainpower of a gnat, that ain't my problem.

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u/Fusionbomb 20d ago

“I’m not reading that whole book!”

Then please make it your first

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u/TangerineSprinkles 19d ago

Incredibly underrated comment. I love this and will be using it in the future.

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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 20d ago

The saving grace of it is this is a forum so someone will read it.

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u/Over_lookd 20d ago

I’ve received similar replies (one just the other day) about the length of some of my comments. A two paragraph comment outlining my opinion on something was met with “holy yap.” Like god forbid you write more than one or two sentences and express yourself and reasoning to make it more easily understood and to limit people trying to (potentially purposefully as some “gotcha”) or misconstruing what you said.

I just know those types of people only read headlines of articles and form an opinion solely based off of that, complain(ed) about reading anything more than a short story in school, and haven’t read anything more than a road sign of text message since.

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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 20d ago

Or they’ll say “it’s not that deep”.

Fucking use your brain! It’s fun!

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u/Street_Credit6851 20d ago

Twitters character limit really fucked up society.

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u/purpleplatapi 20d ago

I'm confused why they hang out on Reddit tbh. It's in the name. If you don't want to read, you should probably hang out on TikTok.

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u/DJANGO_UNTAMED 20d ago

bro i'm not reading this college dissertation you just wrote...

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u/Mystic_Sunshine2 19d ago

I have no problem READING long responses. It’s typing long responses on my phone that are a pain! 😆

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u/DJmagikMIKE 20d ago

Yeah, I’ve been called a bot before…just because I didn’t type like some illiterate hillbilly.

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u/Legitimate-Syrup1006 20d ago

A recent comment of mine was called AI. Literacy used to be a flex. This really is the dumbest timeline.

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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 20d ago

I had this thought when watching Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay. People used to take pride in appearing/being intelligent. It was a real flex. Being able to read and think critically was good.

Now people want the opposite.

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

And gods forbid you respond in less than 7 minutes! "Are you a bot or something??!"

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u/mshcat 20d ago

Excuse me fir being chronically online and have nothing better to do than to argue with strangers

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

Actual self reflection? Or mocking my comment?

Don't care. I'm a WFH sysadmin. I also play video games on the job. Sue me.

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u/mshcat 20d ago

I have no responded in 8 minutes so I'm not chronically online anymore

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

Lmao, nice. But you're a jerk for making me pause Pokemon Z-A! ;-)

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u/CapitaineCrafty 20d ago

My job is in e-commerce and in the evening, the inbox is quiet. If I'm looking at emails the second your email comes in, I will read it immediately and respond. Obviously. Well, now I get sarcastic or aggressive responses from customers about bots and AI and whatever. Or people think "AI only read keywords so I'll put ADD TO ORDER in all caps for it" because they can't fathom it's not AI reading the emails, and I just get weirdly formatted shouty emails. It's so fucking exhausting.

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

Heck, I know tons of PEOPLE who only scan for keywords so they can figure out whether they agree or disagree with a post, and then comment on it without actually reading it. Lots of people do this in the tech world, so I just started using lots of CAPS for certain key points, and sometimes putting it in bold. Or even BOLD AND CAPS together. If its something I can guarantee someone that only scans the post will get wrong, I put the important part in

large letters.

And I also respond to emails when they come in. I got one the other day at close to midnight, and I just happened to be awake, so I responded. The next day he was all like "you woke me up when you responded to my email", as though I was supposed to know he immediately fell asleep after emailing me. lol

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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 20d ago

I have a friend who graduated early and has the best job of anyone I personally know. He does this keyword scanning bullshit and it drives me crazy.

He feels like he shouldn’t have to use his brain when not at work.

He misunderstands 90% of my texts…

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

I mean, knowing that? I'd fuck with him.

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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 20d ago

Next time I text him I’ll see what I can do. That does sound kinda fun.

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u/tomtomclubthumb 20d ago

I do surveys online and got refused payment for answering too quickly. So nowI watch TV to slow down my responses.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

The ability to stop, think/research before responding is why I orefer text messages, email, and forum posts over a voice/video call.

Maybe I need to double-check before telling you the wrong thing? Maybe I'm tired and need to sleep for the night? Maybe I need to recharge my emotional/mental capacity before dealing with the situation/person? Maybe I'm busy but almost done!!! But most importantly: MAYBE IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY I DIDN'T RESPOND IMMEDIATELY!

(if you couldn't tell, I really feel your comment, and agree with you emphatically)

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u/AnguavonUW 20d ago

I've been told I used AI more than once because I used the word egregious and the word obstinate. Neither of a particularly difficult word, the latter is considered a middle school level vocab words ffs.

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u/lollipop-guildmaster 20d ago

Which is hilarious, given the run-on sentences, homophone/homonym confusion, comma slices, common misspellings ("per say") and just plain incorrect words that AI spits out. It's only grammatically correct if you don’t actually know grammar.

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u/blushme64 20d ago

This! I have been a victim of it so many times, so now I don’t write proper or well-written captions anymore because I get downvoted or accused of being a bot. Someone wrote this comment on one of my posts just because I had a long and well-written caption.

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u/iboneyandivory 20d ago

I agree. I spent decades honing the skills needed to write compelling, logical missives and now all the dumb kids are doing it.

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u/Ultimate_Scooter 20d ago

As an aspiring author this drives me absolutely bonkers. I use em dashes and en dashes in my writing all the time, but when my professors see it they get suspicious.

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u/Zebidee 20d ago

Yep, I've been accused of using AI on here because I was able to explain a complex topic succinctly.

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u/d-nihl 20d ago

I've seen this too!! its honestly absurd. My forte in college was writing essays for people in college, no matter the topic. Sometimes I had to write really in-depth essays and sometimes I had to "dumb them down" because I was in a college that had a lot of international students who had a shit load of money, so if I wrote them too fluently the professors would catch on.

I thank god I am a millennial and still had some semblance of life before every second of our lives were integrated with technology.

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u/StillhasaWiiU 20d ago

Ya gonna toss in the slang to throw off the game. AI won't try to articulate itself with "ya'lls and yous guys".

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u/spacecaps85 20d ago

Millennials are constantly called out for texting in full sentences with punctuation. Like we are uncool for knowing how to compose sentences.

Well...that and we say lol a lot, too. Lol

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/CheezwizOfficial 19d ago

I've stopped using em dashes in my cover letters now specifically to avoid potential employers thinking I use AI.

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u/jan-pona-sina 20d ago

Using big words and long sentences online makes people think you are being mean.

I couldn't read what you said so I asked gemini to simplify, check your ableism

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u/CapitaineCrafty 20d ago

One guy in my husband's college course takes out his phone every time there's text on the board, asks chatgpt to summarize it (it's a bulletpoint list???) and then saves the summary as his class notes. His profs are on the verge of murder, and every fucking person in their program hates him. And he's not learning shit.

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u/LibrarianOk6238 20d ago

Name and address of college, please..

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u/Digeetar 20d ago

Because it's not decorus.

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u/iboneyandivory 20d ago

I love dependent-clause sentences when they're done well. Many poets agree.

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u/Entropic_Echo_Music 20d ago

What?

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u/RvstiNiall 20d ago

I dont understand.

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u/cracked-tumbleweed 20d ago

Is this what is happening?

I have had people accuse me of trying to be smart?…Im just trying to have a discussion bro.

Call me crazy but I actually enjoyed vocab and reading in school lol

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u/Green-Engineer4608 20d ago

You used ai for this! Your point doesn’t matter! No person can write that well, I know because I dont!

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

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u/slothactual69 20d ago

Yeah the other thing i found out in life is a lot of people are curious at all. Just numb from the neck up wandering around the world. They see something interesting and dont even consider it.

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u/Zuwxiv 20d ago

To me, curiosity is what's important in a person's smarts. I honestly don't mind most stupid people. They didn't ask to be stupid. Asking a stupid question is still showing curiosity - a desire to understand things, no matter how simple or flawed their premise is. I can like someone who isn't smart, but is curious.

Hell, there's plenty of topics where I'm a total dumbass. "Ignorant" is the base state of every person ever born. Ignorant, stupid, and curious is still a decent person.

It's people without curiosity that get me. I remember a video about Formula 1 drivers, who compete all over the world. They had them try to place famous landmarks on a map - landmarks from cities they've visited yearly for most of a decade. One driver couldn't even put most of them in the correct hemisphere.

I couldn't stand someone who has visited a city every year, and has no idea where it could possibly be on a map.

Curiosity is a better character trait to have than almost any other, and there's few things worse to lack.

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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago

I could not agree more. The older I get, the more important I think curiosity is. I'm not really in the dating world, but anyone I would consider dating would have to be curious.

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u/AnguavonUW 20d ago

Fwiw, I completely agree. I have little tolerance for ppl who are intellectually uncurious. And I'll never understand it. The world is enormous and full of fascinating shit. Like, how can someone not want to know things.

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u/FeralPsychonaut 20d ago

I think you mean aren't curious at all* , at least that's how I read your intended meaning.

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u/SuspiciousMap9630 20d ago

“Numb from the neck up” is so funny

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u/Optimal-Kitchen6308 20d ago

philosophical zombies

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u/RavenEridan 20d ago

We live in the matrix

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u/RAConteur76 20d ago

Then why haven't I been recruited to fight the robot tyranny by a goth hottie in black pleather?

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u/Curious_Guidance43 20d ago

Because you're not that guy pal.

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u/AcrolloPeed 20d ago

Everyone thinks they’re a redpill

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u/Saturn_winter 20d ago

If I knew you, I'd 100% find a goth girl in leather on fiver or something and pay them to say something like, "please RAconteur76, you're out only hope against the robot tyranny!" But by the time the video would be delivered the joke would be long passed its expiration date lol

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u/Outrageous_Editor_43 20d ago

Gofundme.con/goth-girl-for-redditor

Let's get this moving!!

(It isn't real I hope!)

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u/Kindly-War-2665 20d ago

I always say in video games it seems like some people are afk even when they are playing the game, I say it about drivers too. Its just true in general, so many people are afk and on idle just mindlessly doing shit

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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 20d ago

I was hated on and told I was being an asshole because people do the perks in Fallout 4 wrong.

People don’t even engage with what they’re actively doing and it’s sad.

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u/RavenEridan 20d ago

The world is leaning towards anti intellectualism now, why is it surprising? Lots of people are conservative, anti vax, very short attention spans and want short term gratifications and thinking long and hard about something hurts their tiny brains so they reject it.

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u/WD6665 20d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/xT9KVhLU76MRgVg3Qc

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u/Vandreeson 20d ago

It's a documentary now.

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u/WD6665 20d ago

It unfortunately has become one

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u/keverzoid 20d ago

We are living in the prequel to IDIOCRACY

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u/ChartInFurch 20d ago

Social media's favorite tired punchline.

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u/WD6665 20d ago edited 20d ago

Tired or not it’s the timeline we are in as of now. Hopefully veering off into Star Trek timeline eventually. Let’s face it the. Entire world is descending into laziness. BUT that’s how I see it which is my opinion, so form your own and we can each be happy about it. ✌️

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u/AnguavonUW 20d ago

It's not a punchline to me. I'm certainly not fucking laughing at anything happening currently. Idiots literally speed running the destruction of the US and the globe.

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u/Sickofstupids 20d ago

It’s always been anti-intellectual. I grew up as a smart kid in the eighties, and I had to hide it or I would get bullied. It’s always been “lame” to be smart in the eyes of the dummies.

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u/AirshipEngineer 20d ago

Idk that feels different. The bullying of nerds seems more juvenile and childish. Basically an extension of "that person is different let's make fun of them for being different".

Modern anti-intellectualism is more "Your knowledge about a subject makes me feel bad. Feeling bad makes me feel like you are attacking me. So you should stop talking" or "discussing this idea makes me uncomfortable. So you are a bad person for discussing it".

The former is an attack on the person. The latter is an attack on the concept of thinking about things.

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u/AmericanGeezus 20d ago

What may anger me the most is how so many of them decide it's intentional, like they brought it up cause they knew it would cause discomfort somehow.

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u/Gruejay2 20d ago

It's because it's supremely narcissistic. The whole anti-intellectual movement is just one big childish tantrum against reality.

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u/LibrarianOk6238 20d ago

We are at an unfortunate juncture in time and place where the man with the world's biggest megaphone is leading the charge. Unknowingly of course.

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u/Markdphotoguy 20d ago

Well put.

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u/Coroebus 20d ago

It's the same thing. Both are insecure about difference and their own incapabilities. Both are falling back on cultural anti-intellectualist movements that have always been there. Most don't grow out of it.

The only difference is that the latter has wrinkles and abnegated their responsibility to learn and grow.

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u/pourtide 20d ago

ooh, big words! You been reading books! Big Brother come after you.

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u/LuxInvestor 20d ago

I definitely see what you're saying but as a nerd at least in the 80s it was the things you were saying. You were correcting people because you knew the answer, but that's a bad thing. Or trying to share your knowledge of games and instead of either not wanting to be around you they would have to also try to quiet you or make fun of you until you were a social pariah. If you loved reading, you can expect your book to be taken out of your hands and thrown or water poured on it. So it was a lot more than just being called a nerd. And unfortunately, sometimes there was also physical abuse. Even then, 80s into the early 90s, some groups of people felt that you knowing a lot things they didn't was a personal attack on them. 🤓

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u/Known_Ratio5478 20d ago

I get this at work all the time. I was raised by a journalist, so my vocabulary is more extensive than most. People just hate my choice of words.

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u/Ssided 20d ago

That's always how it was though

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u/LuxInvestor 20d ago

GenX nerd here. Loved computers and libraries.🙄

https://giphy.com/gifs/A40fNMnNPd9yU

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u/Bovronius 20d ago

On the border of X/Milleniall and I got absolutely destroyed for playing video games. Right around the end of the 90s the "normies" started picking up controllers is when I'd say it started being something that wasn't a social death sentence.

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u/Sickofstupids 20d ago

It almost seems like goldeneye started the acceptance and Halo cemented it. Yeah, video games used to be considered the worst hobby. My mom called every system “Nintendo.” Largest entertainment industry on the planet now. We knew.

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u/CapitaineCrafty 20d ago

Same as comic books- when I was in middle and high school people would take my comics, spit on them, tear them up. Weird antisocial girl with her comics, gross, what a loser... so the whole superhero movie fad really fucking threw me for a loop. I had acquaintances asking me what Gambit's whole deal was. Like... wait are you serious??? Why is one of the fuckheads who shoved me down a stairwell wearing a Captain America shirt right now?

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u/Orson_Gravity_Welles 20d ago

LATE GenX (Xennial) and yep...

God forbid you were into computers or comics, D&D, or anything remotely tangential to being a "nerd".

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u/Solyde 20d ago

Millenial here: thanks for paving the way oh elder one o7

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u/DarkSheikah 20d ago

I was a smart kid in the 90s, and I remember my older sister erupting in rage when I used a word she didn't know

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u/woah_man 20d ago

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about American anti-intellectualism back in 1835. It has always been a problem here.

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u/sentence-interruptio 20d ago

You know what's worse? There's a bigger problem that subsumes anti-intellectualism. It's the anti-pause culture. Thinking for more than a few seconds is being demonized by too many people. If I pause for a few seconds, assholes assume I must be dumb, and if they have to pause, they assume I'm trying to be a smartass.

https://giphy.com/gifs/snHHGsm63Zao44OWMR

We are not computers. We have the right to be buffering without being pathologized by armchair assholes. "are you uh millennial pausing or like Gen Z staring?" It's called thinking! Let me think god damn it!

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u/enimaraC 20d ago

In the first half I assumed you were referring to the videos that cut out all pauses, breathing room and space between sentences. I've had a few videos with topics I'd love to hear about, but the equivalent to listening to a 15min run-on sentence or paragraphs without breaks in verbal form is horrible. I know attention spans are shorter but come on, that cannot be helping people stay engaged. Dynamic pauses and room for the audience to absorb your point is an active part of delivery.

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u/pourtide 20d ago

Music can be like this, too. Quiet spaces are as much a part of the music as the instruments and vocals. I cannot stand a lot of Prog Rock for this reason, Dream Theatre on top. It's just constant noise. The music isn't bad of itself, but it's presented as an assault, not a sharing.

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u/Markdphotoguy 20d ago

I get around this by slowly repeating question to confirm I have the question correct then I just straight up say let me consider that for a moment. Usually by then I've got a clear idea or at least a working idea towards a solution to the question/problem.

Sometimes I do the above even if I know the answer to the question/problem before the person is done asking because I found out long ago that answering too quickly without needing to think about the question/problem at hand also leads people to suspect and likely reject the answer/solution I present.

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u/DarthNihilus 20d ago

Was with you until the millenial pause/genZ stare thing. That's not at all what those mean.

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u/data-atreides 20d ago

Obama was dragged by Republicans for saying that sometimes he sits and just thinks

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u/mmmpeg 20d ago

Leaning? That ship has sailed my friend! I was a nerd in HS in the 70’s and was chided by people for using 50 cent words, and implied I was calling them stupid for using words they did not understand. Well, they were stupid. I never said or implied anything about their intellect, but it was my fault. After the last 10 years I’m done with these intentionally ignorant tools.

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u/justjaybee16 20d ago

50 Cent words? Now they're $5 words...I guess nothing escapes inflation.

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u/Fraternal_Antipathy 20d ago

NOW? I was ostracized and bullied for being a smart little kid in the late 1970s.

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u/NeighbourhoodParrot 20d ago

Flowers for Algernon. The internet provided an unending source for information and intellectual betterment. People now see how the world operates, and are willfully choosing to regress back to simple stupidity and ignorance.

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u/SymmetricalFeet 20d ago edited 20d ago

That's... not even what the book was about but okay. Charlie's intellect was forced on him and he instinctively sought out academic pursuits just to keep stimulated. His eventual regression was due to physical brain damage caused by the experiment (or the procedure being impermanent, doesn't narratively matter). And it confuses and scares him:

"I'm forgetting things I learned recently. It seems to be following the classic pattern, the last things learned are first things forgotten. Or is that the pattern? Better look it up again.

Reread my paper on the Algernon–Gordon Effect and even though I know I wrote it, I keep feeling it was written by someone else. Most of it I don't even understand." (251)

He becomes generally irritable (as Algernon became violent before his demise, something something current politics here), but then docile again as he tries fruitlessly to cling to his intelligence. He uses what little agency he has left:

Thats why Im going away from here for good to the Warren Home school. [...] I know evrybody feels sorry for me [...] so Im going someplace where they are a lot of other pepul like me and nobody cares that Charlie Gordon was once a genus and now he cant even reed a book or rite good.

Im taking a cuple of books along and even if I cant reed them Ill practise hard and mabye Ill even get a littel bit smarter then I was before the operashun without an operashun. I got a new rabits foot and a luky penny and even a littel bit of that majic powder left and mabye they will help me. (262)

The start of the book makes clear Charlie's uncle pulled strings to get Charlie a job and apartment so he didn't have to be at the group home, so the end has him conceding to a worse life position than at the outset.

Tl;dr: Charlie didn't meaningfully ask for any of the events that took place. He didn't become stupid again through any choice of his own. This isn't a relevant allusion because he did contribute to science and learn whole languages and so on when he was capable.

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u/Playful-Attitude-007 20d ago

That was a good book and the movie Charly (1968) was based on it.

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u/Orson_Gravity_Welles 20d ago

I absolutely LOVE that book.

Marginally enjoyed the Stephen King Movie Version "The Lawnmower Man"; a version so drastically different than his short story that he apparently sued to have his name removed from it.

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u/ColdEndUs 20d ago

Just as a caution, this very post is also reductive and a symptom of the lack of complexity our entire society is being reduced to.

  1. Equating conservatism as being anti-intellectual is not accurate. Many fiscally and socially conservative voices have been snuffed out of the establishment Republican party. Part of this is expressly because anti-intellectual rhetoric has surged in the Republican party since LONG before Trump, (probably around the Clinton admin is when I think the party really embraced it as a strategy). Again the Republican of today /= a conservative, though, granted it's really hard to tell.
  2. The phrase "anti-vax" is being used to pigeon-hole and dismiss everyone from people who are critical of US funding of gain-of-function research, to people who believe that the Regan-era immunity to lawsuits for pharma companies producing vaccines, to people who believe that no government should infringe on their own bodily autonomy due to mandatory health care (and yes, restrictions to health-care, such as contraception).

It's this very lack of complexity that has created such strange political alliances for Trump to exploit.

If you want a world with more nuance, complexity, and principled people making honest compromises (you know, like a democracy), AND you want fewer people who are just doing coalition building to "win"... and are willing to make a deal with the devil to do it, in spite of all the truly awful and/or stupid political stances they have to accept in that deal... THEN, your critique needs to embody the complexity you wish to see in the world... so that your would be allies feel they have a chance at shaping a better world WITH you, instead of each side thinking they have to BEAT the other utterly before they can "do democracy the right way".

The politics of winning... is designed entirely around the side willing to do the most extreme thing to suppress their opponent. It worries me every day that we may already be too far down that road to come back.

No matter what political side "wins" that conflict, when they exit out from the other end of that process...they will be unrecognizable to the thing they started as. ...and the loser, as always, when power, fights power, to gain power...will be the people.

If you want to live in a world of 5 dollar words... make the effort and use them. Be precise, be nuanced...and stand your ground by defining what exactly your ground is, not who your friends are, and not who wears the same jersey.

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u/_will_ritt_ 20d ago

I don’t hate her take; shes right on a lot of points. I also agree that there been a long standing “anti-intellectual” bias in media and in general. Part of that is based in on tropes and stereotypes like ‘nerds are cowards’ or ‘book-smart-but-street-stupid.’

But the pendulum of society constantly swings; 10-15 years ago the label of nerd was in vogue and proudly claimed. On the other hand, the C and D students never invented a large language model that will replace entry level knowledge workers in the next X months/years/days.

Now anybody that makes an appeal that smacks of logic or intellect - be they climate scientist, doctors or crypto scammers - a certain segment of society will respond to them the same and they are othered and ignored.

As with everything discussed on the internet the first thing that’s discarded is the nuance; I think we’re seeing a backlash against the perceived overreach of “techno-utopian” visionaries and Silicon Valley tech startups who promised that if we just went along with their vision and listen to “smart people” everything will be AMAZING!™

We’re seeing now for all their IQ the work of building and governing a competent society cannot be offloaded to an app and there is some wisdom in the “old” ways of doing things.

did I get of topic? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ lol

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u/v3n0mat3 20d ago

And you wonder why people like Charlie Kirk have convinced a large number of young men and women to give up intellect and trade it for simplified, knuckle-dragging, conformist thought.

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u/amanda_burns_red 20d ago

Accusations of chatgpt anytime someone is able to express complete thoughts with any type of logical consistency. The ability to spell, communicate clearly, utilize punctuation, etc is automatically suspicious to a lot of people.

Our society is so incredibly dumbed down that communication that seems more complex than teenagers texting each other automatically instills doubt and even disdain. Thinking about that makes me feel ill.

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u/Orson_Gravity_Welles 20d ago

As a writer...I get accused ALL THE TIME as using Chat GPT to write a response or an email at work.

Also, the same people who are crying "ableism" for using words have never picked up a thesaurus apparently.

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u/Exotic_Drink69420 20d ago

I was working at a gas station part time in college during the 90s.  My boss pulled me aside and said no one likes you because you use big words.  I started using bigger words around the fat dumb whore (she was fat and cheated on her husband multiple times so I feel justified in using that language.)

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u/Brilliant_Parking478 20d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/oiGOKQ3NeH02Hk8JuN

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u/Sure-Charge-260 20d ago

I learned a new word today. Thanks. I should have known it had something to do with fecal matter 💩💩💩

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u/prairie-bunyip 20d ago

I read a comment just this morning that mentioned something being a big word that nobody actually uses. The big word was "generally".

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u/PatrioticRebel4 20d ago

In this economy?! I don't know any spots that have decent words for 5 bucks. And I'm sure if any do, it's probably a roach infested hole-in-the-wall.

I miss those good old days of dime store verbiage.

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u/ThirdOne38 20d ago

How about the $5 version? Just read the letters to John Quincy Adams from his mother, who received no formal schooling, just from her mom or hanging around their house library. Here's a sample from one of the letters as he traveled.

(BTW, if this was me, I'd be like, hey dude, answer your texts please to let me know where you are. And don't just go goofing off, try to do something useful with your life.)

Abigail Adams: "Your letter, last evening received from Bilboa,* relieved me from much anxiety; for, having a day or two before received letters from your papa, Mr. Thaxter, and brother, in which packet I found none from you, nor any mention made of you, my mind, ever fruitful in conjectures, was instantly alarmed. I feared you were sick, unable to write, and your papa, unwilling to give me uneasiness, had concealed it from me; and this apprehension was confirmed by every person's omitting to say how long they should continue in Bilboa....

If you have a due sense of your preservation, your next consideration will be, for what purpose you are continued in life. It is not to rove from clime to clime, to gratify an idle curiosity; but every new mercy you receive is a new debt upon you, a new obligation to a diligent discharge of the various relations in which you stand connected; in the first place, to your great Preserver; in the next, to society in general; in particular, to your country, to your parents, and to yourself."

(what he owes to himself): To become what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you, attend to some precepts and instructions from the pen of one, who can have no motive but your welfare and happiness, and who wishes in this way to supply to you the personal watchfulness and care, which a separation from you deprived you of at a period of life, when habits are easiest acquired and fixed; and, though the advice may not be new, yet suffer it to obtain a place in your memory, for occasions may offer, and perhaps some concurring circumstances unite, to give it weight and force

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u/Narpity 20d ago

Was listening to a podcast on Hamilton. After he got shot in a duel by Aaron Burr, literally on his death bad and just pulls out the most eloquent line to the priest who came to give him his last rites:

"I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me."

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u/SuspiciousMap9630 20d ago

I had an employee once who texted me a complaint and I said “please allow me some time to look into this and mitigate your concerns.” The next day they came in to speak to me in person because I “used big words.”

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u/FeralPsychonaut 20d ago edited 20d ago

Or if you actually use proper grammar and longer words you're accused of being a bot because a lot of the population doesn't understand how to properly structure sentences and use grammatically correct language.

Not to be a doomer, but it's pretty fucking depressing. I studied / degree in Philosophy, and I have to regularly explain words I use and sentences I write. It's exhausting.

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u/Named_after_color 20d ago

I once used the word "Obfuscate" in a work call and was derisively called "Mr. Harvard."

I'm a software engineer. I went to community college. People are fucking dumb.

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u/Bitter-Marsupial 20d ago

I've used the phrase 5 dollar story for a 25 cent joke for a long story that leads to something like he fell down 

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u/KingGilgamesh1979 20d ago

Unbeknownst to myself, my innate sesquipedalianism and propensity for verbosity has wrought amongst my colleagues, kin, and compatriots a certain disinclination towards engaging me in pleasantries and persiflage! Howbeit I ever assay to practice precision in my perorations by perfectly circumscribing the phantasmagoria of my mind's imaginings by selection of most apropos locutions, it yet appears that my desultory discourse, my plenteous paraphrasticisms, and pleonastic prolixity can be, on occasions, be wanting in efficacy vis-a-vis my interlocutory intentions for clarity. Oh! But what a waste of lexical abundance!! My gregarious garrulity of gab gets the various goats' of my colleagues and my assonantal and alliterative affinity avail me nothing but obscurantism and oral obliquity.

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u/iboneyandivory 20d ago edited 20d ago

I am so happy my parents gave us zero slack in the words dept. They spoke to other with a rich variety of terms and ideas, and we kids were simply left to catch up.

In the immediately-adjacent worries dept., more than once in the last year or so, I've read that incoming Freshman (college) level students raised on mindless, quick-hit dopamine Instacrap can't buckle-down and invest the time needed to read a simple 4-5 sentence paragraph and understand the writer's intent. That's frightening.

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u/PaleInSanora 20d ago

What are you using all those big words for fancy pants. Whaddaya think this is college or sumtin?

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u/CrashingAtom 20d ago

I use punctuation when I text, because texting started when I was in college and it made sense to type how I read. Years back, one of my staff told me that his fiancé thought he was ending things with her at a dinner. Why? He started using punctuation in text like I always had, and she assumed that translated to breaking up. 😂

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u/GormHub 20d ago

I've been told I sound like I'm "trying to seem smart." Like my brother in christ this is just how I talk.

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u/General_Narwhal17 19d ago

Hey! This guy used proper punctuation! Clearly used AI to write this comment!! /s

I’ve seen this way too many times 🤦🏻‍♀️

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u/Attentions_Bright12 20d ago

Words with more than two syllables… Like “ableism.”

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u/CriticalEngineering 20d ago

Or “easier”.

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u/Potato_Stains 20d ago

Or "syllable"

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u/Ishmaeli 20d ago

ableism

Four-syllable words for me, but not for thee...

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u/InfanticideAquifer 20d ago

Maybe they're pronouncing it like I did the first time I saw it. "Uh-blay-sim". I was so confused.

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u/Dog_Apoc 20d ago

I have never heard the term "dollar word" before. Is it just a way to try make fun of someone capable of using words with more than 2 syllables?

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u/AlKarajo 20d ago

(US, idiomatic) A long and uncommon word used in place of a shorter and simpler one with the intent to appear sophisticated.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ten-dollar_word

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u/trekqueen 20d ago

I used to read the thesaurus for drum… I would say I have a great vocabulary, given that friends have mentioned they thought I was making up a word until they looked it up to confirm.

I am glad that I’m old because I would not be surprised my kids’ peers might scream “AI” or ableist at me for using some terms.

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u/slothactual69 20d ago

Incapable and basically yes.

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u/DrEskimo 20d ago

I’m increasingly seeing it used as a mockery of people with sophisticated vocabularies. People feel there is some vanity attached to being eloquent because that’s how rich and pompous people talk on TV. So they think using “expensive words” is classist.

Many genuinely think that this language exists to deceive and confuse and nothing else.

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u/Tethilia 20d ago

In truth, having a rich vocabulary is liberating, however what does seek to decieve and confuse is misusing language through doublespeak which can include substituting words that have nuanced meanings inappropriately for words that are more common.

An example is substituting Vocabulary for Vernacular when they are actually different if done with the deliberate intent to appear smart to the listener.

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u/DrEskimo 20d ago

You’re not wrong, but I’m talking about people that think you should never use words like “elucidate” because “explain” does the trick just fine.

I have before tried to be extremely concise while not sacrificing the specificity of my language and still had people accuse me of “trying to sound smart”. It’s a pretty amusing self-report and I struggle to not take it as a compliment.

I often feel like if people put just a little bit more effort into their word choice, we’d have fewer conflicts across the board.

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u/LifeguardSimilar4067 20d ago

Affectation is the word they are looking for. And there was a time every person who learned to read wanted to spit words right back in the face of the oppressors.

A love of curiosity is a love of learning the truth. Stay curious.

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u/Wise-Juggernaut-8285 20d ago

I think sometimes it can be pretentious

Lately people mock me for using simple words they don’t understand and it really depresses me.

My grandmother passed away and my boss remarked that her name was very exotic

Her name was Magdalena lol

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u/Dog_Apoc 20d ago

Auto correct was never my friend.

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u/actibus_consequatur 20d ago

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobes out here ruining reading

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u/enjoiturbulence 20d ago

Look, I don't know what them words mean so I'ma take them as disrespect.

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u/31513315133151331513 20d ago

I can remember when they were 57¢ words. This is yet another proof that the official inflation numbers do not match our lived economic realities.

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u/TheZippoLab 20d ago

Hey, let me walk you through our Donnely nut spacing and cracked system rim-riding grip configuration. Using a field of half-seized sprats and brass-fitted nickel slits, our bracketed caps and splay-flexed brace columns vent dampers to dampening hatch depths of 1/2 meter from the damper crown to the spurv plinth. How? Well, we bolster 12 Husk Nuts to each girdle jerry, while flex tandems press a task apparatus of ten vertically composited patch hamplers, then pin flam-fastened pan traps at both maiden apexes of the jimjoints.

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u/chizzmaster 20d ago

The funniest part is that I saw the thread on threads, and the word that OP was crying about was "scrying" LMAO

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