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by lolinder
1293 days ago
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The problem is that in the age of the internet, it's very difficult to find anything that someone, somewhere won't be offended by. Every time an organization or project gives in and alters its innocently-chosen name because a tiny minority takes offense, they further normalize outrageous outrage. It's definitely a fine line to walk. There are names that originated in an offensive context, and it's easier for me to see the objection to those. But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century, so I don't think it's fair to stoke outrage towards a project that started in the 2020s and chose it for extremely innocent reasons. |
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Sure, but there's a big difference to the marketability of a product between whether 30% get a funny feeling that it's not a great name and won't promote via word of mouth, vs 0.0001% who are known for taking issue with a lot of stuff shouting about it in their echochamber.
> But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century
I think it was reasonable to refer to "lunatic asylums" or even "looney bins" until quite recently. The offensiveness may be less, and less targeted at individuals than it was 100 years ago, but it's still there.