[miend]

How is it so ruinous? It's a fairly bog standard way to say "naïve", "ill-advised", and so on. Hopefully you wouldn't let the rest of the content be overshadowed or dismissed by a particular pejorative. OP still makes points worthy of discussion.

[mikeyouse]

Many words were once bog-standard that are now frowned upon. I agree though, it's pretty gay that you're gypped out of calling a spade a spade by these uppity, autistic commenters..

[xtian]

But "retarded" is in fact a different word than the alternatives you posted. Different words have different implicit and explicit connotations. So word choice and style of communication are entirely valid factors when evaluating whether an opinion is worth one's time given that we now live in a vast sea of opinions.

I suspect that people who think that how they communicate is distinct from what they communicate have not thought very carefully about the problem of communication.

What the word "retarded" communicates about the person who uses it is something I think you can work out on your own. It's one of many similar words that I often use accidentally when I mean something more precise.

[sanderjd]

It was definitely bog-standard at my middle school in the 90s, but it is definitely not in my adult world of people who have learned to empathize with people and avoid pointlessly insulting them. There are plenty of better words to use for this.