[beepbooptheory]

If those people are saying it is, then you gotta take their word for it.

But it is beside the point! Whether or not any given effort is actually meaningful or not will be always hard to measure. But the world around prompts us to at least try, and making light of people trying to do something good, however wrongheaded it might turn out to be, is always a jerk move.

This tendency to try and call out things like this is always so illogical. Those who protest, always seem to protest a little to much, and I can never understand how they don't see that and how bad it makes them look!

[cubefox]

So according to you, there is no limit at which one is allowed to say "this is absurd, stop"? Note there is no upper bound for potential absurdity. Below someone suggested "field" and was downvoted, presumably because that would be too absurd. But a few years ago censoring "blacklist" was equally absurd. You offer a finger, and over time, they demand your hand.

[beepbooptheory]

I don't know, saying something is absurd sounds more like the conclusion of some argument, and something possibly constructive if there is in fact an argument behind that. But just using these issues to make fun of people different than you feels distinct from that, no?

For the other things, I am not sure what you mean. Who is the "they" here who is demanding your hand? What makes you feel you are on some certain side against a monolithic force? Does that seem like a rational thing to feel, considering the broad and abstract concepts we are dealing with here?

This point that there is something at stake with changing the terms we use, the idea that fingers are being offered, is pretty weird to me, no offense. For me, it doesn't really make a difference if use one term or the other, as long as I am understood. I don't feel bad if I learn that a term I use turns out to be possibly offensive, I just adjust in the future so that I don't possibly offend.

Like beyond that, who cares? What even is there to care about that much?

Again, whatever you want to say to argue about this, just know that it looks really bad to most people who are not in your circle. This is especially true when you choose to make such a fuss about such small thing as what (arbitrary) signifier we use to designate one thing or another. It cannot ever come across as some righteous fight for justice/common-sense or whatever side you feel like you are on, because its simply not a fight anyone with a lucid mind would think is worthwhile.