Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.

  • @Screwthehole@lemmy.world
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    As a millennial, we grew up with the phrases “that’s gay” and “that’s retarded” (which meant the same thing) and obviously we had to learn to phase those out.

    While I never once meant “that’s disabled” or “that’s homosexual”… We obviously don’t say that stuff anymore.

    • @SmellyHamWallet@lemmy.world
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      1301 year ago

      I witnessed something at work a few weeks ago, that caught me off guard. One of the managers was asking for a favour off one of the lads in work, it’s a blue collar job so it’s never been PC, “Carl, need a favour, can you do such and such” “Can’t sorry Steve” “Go on lad don’t be gay” “Steve, I’ve been taking cock for the last 25 years and you asking me to stop for an extra hours work won’t stop me”

      Everyone around just creased up laughing.

    • I learned these real quick in the workplace as a young adult, around a coworker with a mentally disabled child, and with a coworker who was gay. The abstraction is what made using such crude language easy. As soon as I knew someone affected by the words, I snapped out of it.

      Abstraction, come to think of it, is what permits a lot of bad behavior.

    • 🧋 Teh C Peng Siu DaiB
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      Once upon a brighter time, gay was only colloquially used to convey happiness, unrelated to the sexual connotations there is today.

      Such a sad time we live in where everything becomes a sensitive topic that can insult and hurt.

      To clarify before I get cancelled to oblivion 😂 - you want your diversity, fine with me, good for you, but please there is no need to be a touchy one and reserve a swathe of labels to get insulted by when it can clearly be decided upon context if it was meant to be insulting or not.

      • @orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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        19 months ago

        I think you’re applying very limited and anecdotal definitions that most people don’t/didn’t strictly adhere to.

  • @Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    1121 year ago

    Oh god I’ve got so many.

    My latest one is remembering that you can’t really fight fire with fire, unless you’re being extraordinarily strategic about it. Attacking bigotry for instance, simply makes it stronger, as it feeds off strife and fear themselves. Remembering why Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high. Not out of any great preference, but out of a lack of viable alternatives in her situation.

    You can’t actually “fight” it. You can exclude it. You can corral it. You can trick it into running itself off a cliff. But you can’t actually destroy it by combating it directly, because it feeds off the combat, just like Trump does. You have to outmaneuver it.

    • Rev
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      661 year ago

      Like the black musician who befriended all those kkk members and got them to retire their hoods and leave the kkk. It wasn’t by been mean and condescending he was very nice to them.

    • @PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      131 year ago

      I routinely attack bigots on social media. I enjoy writing and their shitty views are basically writing prompts for me.

      At no point have I ever expected to change the bigots mind. They’re not going to read a social media comment and wake up a new person – they’d lose their bigot friends and bigot family.

      But I have changed the minds of spectators, and thats important. Which is why assholes should never be left unchallenged when they’re being assholes, especially on the safety of the internet.

      • @Candelestine@lemmy.world
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        61 year ago

        I don’t think there’s that many spectators wandering around in true states of neutrality wondering whether their various conspiracies are true. Most people lean already, they’ve been already influenced. Thus, if not approached very strategically, you’re actually recruiting for both sides.

        Remember, they’ve attacked rationality and logic themselves. The people who still put faith in rationality and logic, and thus can be convinced with it, were not particularly vulnerable in the first place.

        • @PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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          31 year ago

          “Conventional wisdom” is a thing. There are people who have adopted propaganda and misinformation as opinions simply because it never crossed their mind to challenge it.

    • starlinguk
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      51 year ago

      Pride started as a riot. Women’s Lib started as a riot. Peaceful demonstrations achieve nothing.

  • himbocat
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    1 year ago

    I was totally headed down the alt right pipeline. Throughout highschool I was depressed and lonely. I lost my faith which sent me to the online atheist community which ran out of content, so they started attacking feminists/sjws. I also just distrusted women because I got molested as a child by one and no one took it seriously. This had primed me to just eat up all the content from the MRA/antifeminist crowd. The youtube algorithm, which at the time was absolutely unhinged, pushed me to racist content which I just parroted because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand why things were the way things were, but I was taught who to blame.

    What saved me was getting friends. These friends shattered my preconceptions, which sent me to the library, which got me talking to more people, which got me reading more. By the time I finished high school I just became utterly incompatible with the person I used to be. I couldn’t take back the things I said to people, but I could join their protests and speak up for them when I heard some heinous shit being said.

  • fiat_lux
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    871 year ago

    I no longer describe anything as ‘lame’ or ‘retarded’ or ‘spaz’ or their variants. It makes me sad ableism is so ingrained in even the most inclusive spaces even though the same argument has removed the use of ‘gay’ for the same reasons.

    I also avoid dark or dry humour unless I’m confident the people I am talking to know it’s absurdist and not a serious opinion. I don’t always succeed at this.

    • Dr. Moose
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      I honestly don’t think it’s ableism. Languages evolve and retarded doesn’t mean a mental condition it literally means “dumb”. Most people don’t even know “lame” is related to a movement conditions and if you did a statistical analysis 99% of use cases are not related to the “original meaning”. People are just ignorant of how language works, especially since English is a global language.

      • fiat_lux
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        Yeah, people made the same arguments about ‘gay’ and ‘fag’.

        Retarded was the word of choice medically in the 60’s - 80’s for people with developmental disabilities. It derives from the Latin word Tardus which means slow or late.

        Languages evolve, but the euphemistic treadmill is ongoing. The word ‘cretin’ derived from the word ‘Christian’, the person who coined it intended it to mean that people with cognitive impairments were still people worthy of respect. And now it’s just a straight up insult. Similar with ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’.

        And these days you can look at wojaks which use physical differences like drooling or missing half a head or being physically unattractive in unconventional ways to indicate ignorance or stupidity.

        Every word that people use to try to describe people with disabilities respectfully becomes a slur. That’s because of ableism. It’s just not talked about much.

        More on this topic for anyone interested in the euphemism treadmill: https://humanparts.medium.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-mentally-retarded-e3b9eea23018

        • DarraignTheSane
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          Would you then advocate that no one should ever use the words “idiot”, “moron”, or “cretin” ever again? What about “dumb”, or “stupid”?

          (edit) - People are fun. They actually believe that no human should ever want to throw insults at another human ever again. Fascinating.

          • fiat_lux
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            101 year ago

            I think they have more historical distance from their original intent, but I still try not to use them. I favour more targetted and creative insults, or at least more accurate descriptions of the problem.

            What others do is not up to me. But I do encourage thinking about the context of the words we use and how our world view is shaped by the development of language. There are a lot of cultural eccentricities buried in etymology, and many of them are no complimentary.

          • @Thecornershop@lemmy.world
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            21 year ago

            I try not to use any of those words, but it is hard as they are so prevalent in society, even in my progressive and inclusive circle.

            I decided a while ago to substitute all those with the word “Turnip” - as in the vegetable. I doubt anyone could be genuinely offended by that and it sounds good when said - Don’t be a Turnip! try it out, its a fun word to use and people seem to be tickled by it.

          • @0xDEADBEEF@lemmy.world
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            11 year ago

            I mean it really comes down to context and just not being a dick to those around you, seems like a pretty easy ask to just be decent to people as best as you can idk

    • @JDubbleu@lemmy.world
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      161 year ago

      Is lame ableist? I knew about the other 2, and I think anyone else growing up in the 2000s used them at some point (myself included, don’t anymore though), but I’ve never heard of lame as being a slur.

      • @Zron@lemmy.world
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        171 year ago

        Lame is kind of an old word for someone or something with a bad leg or legs.

        Like how a horse is lame if its leg is broken.

        • @JDubbleu@lemmy.world
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          Huh TIL. Tbh lame seems more disconnected than the other two. Looking at the etymology on Google it seems it was last used in that way commonly in the late 1800s, so maybe that is why.

          • fiat_lux
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            We still use it in English for the original purpose. If I told a native UK/AU/NZ English speaker the horse was shot after a race because it was lame, people wouldn’t assume it was because the horse was uncool.

            • @Ser_Ocelot@lemmy.world
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              101 year ago

              I think lame might get more of a pass because it’s very rarely used to describe people any more, so there is a bigger disconnect.

              • fiat_lux
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                31 year ago

                You’re right that I have more frequently been described as crippled rather than lame, but I have still experienced some ‘fun’ double entendre with lame.

                • @Ser_Ocelot@lemmy.world
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                  21 year ago

                  That sucks, I’m sorry. Not sure why I’m surprised that people would use the more archaic definition just for cruelty’s sake

      • @AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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        31 year ago

        Technically yes but I’m disabled and it’s literally never seemed ableist to me. I’ve never heard anyone use it as anything other than “that’s a bummer” or “you’re ruining the vibe”

        I think that specific word has been reformed

      • fiat_lux
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        101 year ago

        You can do as you wish, but I prefer not to join. I don’t think it’s fair to people with spasticity symptoms, an often very painful condition, to be associated with someone who is just a greedy selfish arrogant waste of skin. They suffer enough without being insulted too.

    • @BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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      61 year ago

      Yep, an ADHD diagnosis made me realize how ableist society is, stuff that looks easy for some is insurmountable for others.

    • @camr_on@lemmy.world
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      51 year ago

      The dry absurdist humour being taken seriously is real. Too many times lately I’ve been getting strange looks to what I thought were obviously absurd jokes/opinions. I’ve probably been spending too much time online

      • fiat_lux
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        41 year ago

        I think it’s partly a symptom of our world being super-connected. There are some loud people out there with some really poorly founded ideas, and opinions which most people would consider absurd. Previously that might be only one or two people in a community, but the internet has changed that for good.

        I also try not to do it anymore to help people with disabilities which prevent them from readily picking up on sarcasm like autism. I don’t need to accidentally influence someone who has taken me at face value. It’s so hard not to revert back to old habits though.

    • @IronDonkey@lemmy.world
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      41 year ago

      Crap, it never occurred to me that “lame” was even related to disability. I mean, obviously it is - though in my mind that aspect of the word was almost exclusively related to animals. Is lame rude now too?

    • @Wanderer@lemm.ee
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      11 year ago

      Gay is one of the most useful words. There isn’t and never was a replacement for that word. It just fits a certain description of a certain something that no other word quite fits.

      Gay used to mean happy, then it meant homosexual, then it meant some annoying, uncomfortable, awkward thing. We have words for the first two definitions but we don’t have an alternative to the third. It just made sense in some many different contexts nothing could replace it.

      Gay (the three letter word) for the third definition was a thing of beauty and I wish it would come back. Let’s just go back to calls gays homosexuals and we can use gay for a better untapped market.

      • @varjen@lemmy.world
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        31 year ago

        Cringe seem to have become popular to describe all kinds of annoying, uncomfortable, or awkward things lately. Maybe use that instead since the other two uses of gay were pretty well established when people started using it as the third definition.

  • @MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world
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    661 year ago

    Gay people. When I was much much younger I remember telling a friend that while I didn’t have a problem with people doing their own thing, I still didn’t like gay people. My friend said I hope when you have kids they’re gay. Guess what happened and how I feel about it now. I was such a dumb ass. When my kid came out to me I wept for joy at their bravery. I don’t take hard stances on my opinions now and try to remember that my perspective isn’t ultimate or necessarily right. There’s always a chance that I’m wrong.

    • @HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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      171 year ago

      There weren’t many gay people when I was growing up. At least not openly. I was first introduced to some gays at a gay bar. They basically made me feel like a juicy steak in a meat market (not in a good way). Several comments about my dick within 10 seconds of meeting them.

      Today I have many gay friends that I enjoy their company but that was a huge setback for me.

      • Rhynoplaz
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        191 year ago

        Did you tell them your name? Because I think that might have led them to make some assumptions.

      • It took one of those meat market experiences to make me self-reflect about how I treated women as a straight man.

        Thankfully I was relatively young when it happened, but I’ll always regret how I treated women before then.

        • @HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          111 year ago

          You know what, I never treated women that way but I certainly gained a lot of empathy for them after that.

      • @samus12345@lemmy.world
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        91 year ago

        It’s crazy to me now that there wasn’t a single (open) trans or gay person in my high school in the 90s. I sometimes wonder who actually was, but wasn’t able to be themselves.

        • @kazerniel@lemmy.world
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          91 year ago

          My high school class was in mid-'00s, and there was one girl who very much had that butch/tomboy vibe going on. I drifted away from the class, so only heard rumours after graduation, but I think she never actually came out as anything. On the other hand three others of us (two of whom, including myself, I never would have guessed back in high school) eventually came out as various shades of queer :D

        • @HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          61 year ago

          There were a couple of people who were “different” that, in hindsight, it was very obvious they were “confused”. Some of them came out later but were much less obvious.

        • Tacomama
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          21 year ago

          I was in high school in the late 70s and early 80s. Nobody was out. But people kind of knew. One time I was on a train into the city (San Francisco), and I saw two students along with one of our teachers headed there. I thought that was kind of cool, but seemed also a bit dangerous and ill-advised at the time. I am fairly certain that our very popular senior class president was gay. Very sadly, he took his own life.

  • @j4k3@lemmy.world
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    621 year ago

    I was raised in a fundamental christian extremest environment and stuck with it for 30 years. I’m now a card carrying atheist.

    • @orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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      29 months ago

      I was raised Baptist, with all the shitty bells and whistles. I’m now an agnostic theist. Part of me is still fond of Christianity, but definitely not the more eyebrow-raising stuff nor the church.

      I am proud of my new theistic beliefs now, as they remain rational and embrace how little we really can know. And now I validate atheism as rational and normal too. At least in principle— some atheists can be as cultish and angry as some Christians or some vegans or any other community that focuses on world-scale beliefs and issues. But I digress.

      Congrats on getting away from extremists and forming your own beliefs, fam.

      • TouchTheFuckingFrog
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        61 year ago

        I always call those people anti-theists, as opposed to atheists. The ones who almost have their lack of religion as a religion in itself and criticise (and let’s be honest, demean) anyone with a faith.

        By all means, criticise the church, and the structures, which harm people. Criticise the willfully misinterpreted doctrine. The religions themselves, people’s beliefs? Leave them alone.

        • @hanekam@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Criticise the willfully misinterpreted doctrine

          Do you think there is something inherently good or harmless in religion and that harmful practice is always the result of misinterpretation?

          • TouchTheFuckingFrog
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            Most of the time yes. A really simple example is the Bible line “thou shall not lie with men as women”, the original text says boys not men. The Jewish peoples saw the Greeks fucking kids and said “hey, uh no, let’s make that a law, that you shouldn’t do that”. Boy became men, and that’s been used to claim the Bible forbids homosexuality.

            I don’t think there’s anything ultimately wrong with religion as such. People always try to find meaning and purpose in life. If religion gives them a way of doing that, then excellent; if religion plays no part, then also excellent. The goal is to be a good person, regardless of why you do it. Is a Christian who follows the tenent “love thy neighbour” worse than someone who loves their neighbour? A Jew who helps Muslims despite the tensions between their faiths, and they help because YHWH says to? Are they worse than an atheist who chooses to not help? Religion isn’t the problem. People are, people are always the problem.

        • @CountZero@lemmy.world
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          51 year ago

          FYI, people’s beliefs can be wrong. If someone’s religion says the Earth is 6000 years old, then that religion is harmful and we should not tolerate that belief.

          Obviously there is nuance here. It’s not ok to be prejudiced against religious people, but we shouldn’t let people get away with nonsense by calling it religion.

          • TouchTheFuckingFrog
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            41 year ago

            Oh absolutely, criticise the beliefs that don’t make sense, and are tolerated. But pretty much everyone of most major faiths believe in science. There’s the fundamentalists, who are extremely loud in their ignorance, but the majority of people aren’t that.

        • @HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          Those people’s beliefs destroy society. It’s the #1 citation for abortion legislation. Literal wars have been fought over “beliefs” about who is the best magic sky fairy. Ever heard of Sharia law? Believe it or not, based on these “beliefs”.

          So no. Fuck no. I will not leave them alone.

          • TouchTheFuckingFrog
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            01 year ago

            And the 99% of people who don’t loudly practice extreme beliefs which have been coopted for nefarious purposes?

            In 2016, nearly 80% of Ireland identified as Catholic, and that was a low point for the country. Yet in 2015, we voted for same sex marriage; in 2018, we voted to legalise abortion; in 1995, we voted to legalise divorce; in 2018, we voted to stop treating blasphemy as an offence; in 1973, we voted to recognise other religions and stop putting Catholicism on a pedestal.

            There’s plenty to criticise mass religion, and especially institutions for, but don’t conflate the powerful, and the extremists, who choose bigotry and hate over love and compassion, with the everyday person who just wants something to provide them with peace.

  • Mammal
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    Used to use the word ‘retarded’ to describe people doing dumb things. Then I realized that not only was it hurtful to people with Down Syndrome - it was inaccurate … as a person with Down Syndrome would not do the things I was attributing to the phrase.

  • @PseudoSpock@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    561 year ago

    I take my coffee black, like my men. A line from the movie Airplane. My wife made me quit saying it, that servers today don’t know the movie, and so it’s just creepy instead of funny now. :(

  • @thorbot@lemmy.world
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    531 year ago

    Growing up in the 90s, we would always say things were ‘gay’ even though we had nothing against homosexuals. It was just the thing to say. Yeah, definitely should not have been saying that.

  • @SimplyATable@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    491 year ago

    I used to be a full on incel, it’s an easy hole to fall into if you hate yourself. I had to take a good look at myself and realize that I was the problem, and now I’m a far happier person

  • @ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world
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    451 year ago

    I don’t have any regrets about making dead baby jokes when I was much younger, but definitely won’t be making them now with an 8 month old daughter.

    • @Mistymtn421@lemmy.world
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      101 year ago

      My 17yo thought I was bullshitting him when we were talking about these jokes. He googled it and was speechless. I was kinda young when they were popular but remember vividly my uncle’s telling them often.

  • @popemichael@lemmy.world
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    431 year ago

    I’ve done ny best to shake out ableist, racist, and other harmful speech.

    We may be able to speak freely but we are all held accountable for the words we say

    • @Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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      231 year ago

      Yeah, I hit my teens at the turn of the millennium. Saying “gay,” and all it’s synonyms, was just an everyday thing. I watched the movie Waiting the other day and was surprised at how they dropped the word faggot almost immediately and repeatedly, until I remembered that’s how people talked 20 years ago. It definitely made me think about how if you dial the clock back 60, 70 years, the N word was probably just as commonplace, and society has done a great job of getting rid of that. So I suppose I have hope that we can continue to wipe out hateful speech, we just need a minute.

      • @Kungfusnorlax@lemmy.world
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        11 year ago

        I feel this is one of the big concerns around cancel culture. I said all types of stuff growing up as a millennial that was fine then, but probably wildly offensive in the future and not great now.

  • @kicksystem@lemmy.world
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    401 year ago

    I practice meditation quite seriously, but I stopped telling people I’m spiritual. I really am not interested in ghost stories, gods and angels at all.

  • jerry
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    401 year ago

    I used to use “gay “ or “ retarded “ as negative adjectives, I no longer do because using someone’s being in a negative light is really mean, and I try not to be mean.