[getoj]

>We are looking for folks that are interested in pushing beyond the status quo to change the way folks interact and use search.

I must have missed the memo on this, but when did “people” become an unacceptable word in corporate communications?

[andirk]

"We tortured some folks" [0] sounds better than "your tax dollars went to extrajudicial torture of human beings".

[0] The quote is either Bush, Jr. or Obama.

[cmrdporcupine]

I actually like seeing "folks" come back in regular use. Folks is the indigenous Anglo-Saxon word (cognate German "volk") vs the Romance language "people" and "person". It sounds less snooty or intellectual. It's simple and clean.

Oh... And I can't for the life of me imagine how it could be interpreted as more "woke". In fact here in Canada it's kind of a phrase used more by the "right" than the "left"; (it's actually a source of much humour how much this word is overused by Ontario's right wing hockey enforcer barely high school educated 'populist' premier)

https://www.torontostandard.com/the-sprawl/doug-ford-gets/

[kube-system]

238 job postings at Yahoo use the word "people"

3 use the word "folks"

[kevin_thibedeau]

Ever since the finding of uncleftish beholding.

[Y_Y]

It's discriminatory against unpersons

[TedDoesntTalk]

And me. I self-identify as a crustacean.

[doctor_eval]

When Human Resources became a thing.

[LastTrain]

Folks is a synonym for people. You’re welcome.

[kilroy123]

I think it's so we don't offend some of the lizard "folks" who work in tech with us.

[poszlem]

This makes sense when you understand that "the woke" use language to separate the in-group from the out-group. "Folks" is not a new word, but an old one that has been reclaimed by social justice, queer and academic communities. Many other words that have been redefined or repurposed now form a sub-language of English used to distinguish "the woke" from "the non-woke".

This distinction is often unconscious and absorbed through immersion in social justice circles, similar to how luxury beliefs (such as "defund the police," "trans women are women," etc https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...) are absorbed.

You have to use that kind of language to signal your belonging to the "elites", and the HR departments that usually write job ads or staff Twitter accounts are full of those type of people. From that it's just propagated everywhere else.

Edit: Congratulation HN on your brilliant policy that prevents me from responding to any of the comments under my post (looks like I got throttled, so editing the post is the only thing I can now do).

[_gabe_]

> "Folks" is not a new word, but an old one that has been reclaimed by social justice, queer and academic communities.

I'm from the south, in the US. Folks is just another way to say people. End of story. The people I've heard use the term "folks" are kind older people with a thick southern drawl. I also hear corporate managers use the term to refer to a group of people. I also hear young adults use it to refer to a group of people...

On second thought, I don't think someone using the term "folks" has ever been used to signal anything more than them referring to a group of people. (Also, I feel like I should mention I'm conservative, and it has never crossed my mind to think somebody using the word folks is "woke" or "antiwoke")

[poszlem]

It is absolutely correct that the word is still alive and well in the south of the US. But the issue we are discussing is about it being re-appropriated by the HR departments and the social justice "folks" and that is a process that absolutely happens.

https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-folks/

or my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34589768

[_gabe_]

I think you need to really begin to critically question your sources. Every single link on that source you posted links to other articles on the same website. Talk about circular logic. At the end of the article, they finally show the actual quotes using the term "folks", and there's absolutely nothing nefarious or any sort of hidden meaning in the usage. This whole argument is grasping at non-existent straws.

Once again, that website has nothing of substance. It pulled a couple random quotes from "woke" literature that used the word folks and then made a grand conspiracy about how there's some sort of secret meaning behind the term. The term "folks" is still alive and well everywhere and has no double meaning associated with it whatsoever. What you're doing here is equivalent to what the "woke" did by trying to convince people the OK symbol really means you're a white supremacist[0]. Both of these are delusions, in every sense of the word.

One last thing, if anyone ever tries to convince you there's a grand conspiracy at the top echelons of society, where the elites are actively doing this one thing to control the masses, they're probably deluded. Hanlon's razor typically applies in these cases: never apply to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[0]: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764728163/the-ok-hand-gesture...

[userbinator]

That's what I associate the word with too, as well as the phrase "howdy folks" --- it's very typical of southern US English and has basically no political connotation.

[rhaway84773]

Except as a sibling poster points out, for every 1 job posting using the word folk, there are about 80 using the word people.

So really it’s the anti-“woke” crowd are unable to look at anything without feeling oppressed by the “woke”.

[deepsquirrelnet]

So let me get this straight. You want to cancel the word “folks” from modern usage?

[barbazoo]

What is a "luxury belief" exactly?

[oprah]

There is a link in the comment that explains just that to be honest. But here is a better source: https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-...

[barbazoo]

Thanks. So yeah what parent wrote about "trans women being women" being a luxury belief is nonsense. How would it "inflict costs on the lower class"?

[guopoly]

This belief, when realized upon women's prisons, which house mostly working-class women, ends up with males being incarcerated in such prisons, with predictable results: sexual assault, rape, impregnation - and a pervasive fear of all these being inflicted. A terrible cost for imprisoned women to bear, in the name of inclusivity.

[barbazoo]

> This belief, when realized upon women's prisons, which house mostly working-class women, ends up with males being incarcerated in such prisons, with predictable results: sexual assault, rape, impregnation - and a pervasive fear of all these being inflicted. A terrible cost for imprisoned women to bear, in the name of inclusivity.

> ends up with males being incarcerated in such prisons

Well, no, those are women. The myth that men use inclusivity to get access to women is just that, a myth, unless you can provide evidence that this is really a common occurence. Obviously violence in prisons needs to be avoided but that's a different topic.

[throwawayacc6]

Takes away from athletic scholarships, academic scholarships, etc. that are designed for biological women.

[ninethirty]

"Luxury belief" is a thing you can believe because you are rich enough to avoid being presented with counter-evidence.

[giantrobot]

What in the fuck is this word salad?

[poszlem]

I am sorry, I am not a native English speaker, do you have a hard time understanding any particular part of what I wrote? I am happy to expand.

Edit: Congratulation HN on your brilliant policy that prevents me from responding to any of the comments under my post (looks like I got throttled, so editing the post is the only thing I can now do).

"So what often happens in political discussions on HN is 1) a person, such as yourself, posts dissenting views in response to several messages, 2) those messages are heavily downvoted by a brigade of users, 3) the person's account is rate-limited or shadowbanned, 4) the brigade freely posts comments against the dissenter because, being many users, each only posting one or two messages, and being of the censorious brigade (the dissenters usually oppose censorship and don't downvote for disagreement--see how even one GitHub user couldn't resist drive-by down-thumbing your comment), their comments don't get downvoted, so they don't get rate-limited.

The end result is, very predictably, a form of mob censorship. And since HN approves of downvoting for disagreement, nothing is done to stop it." https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues...

[astrange]

Sometimes people like to say "this is nonsense" to mean they don't like something.

Though for wokeness, you also run into supporters who say it "doesn't exist", by which they mean it's good (in a "it's just common sense" way).

[rhaway84773]

Define “wokeness”.

[astrange]

I don't need to; that's not how language works. But for foreign readers let's say "the name of a US political tendency".

Also, my post wasn't a criticism of it and I don't even disagree with it (fcvo "it").

[htqw]

Whether you agree with it or not, it isn't word salad. In fact, it is quite well written.