[_bin_]

Because there are insane people who will try to ruin your job and life over it, even if you use it in a factual, rather than personal, context.

Yesterday on twitter someone posted reddit screenshots of a ukrainian dude in a thread. He said he was voting for trump and his account was semi-public, and some absolute sociopath started sending screenshots of it to every university and internship program he could think of.

[mmooss]

> even if you use it in a factual, rather than personal, context.

We all know that the 'factual context' is often used as cover by trolls. Whatever the excuse, people are not idiots.

Also, I'm not sure 'factual context' is a good idea - why say things that are upsetting to people? If my friend's mother just died, I don't talk about death 'in a factual, rather than personal, context'. In general, I don't describe, e.g., torture 'in a factual context'; it's not nice.

[_bin_]

Sure, I’m not saying trolls don’t try to cover it up. I don’t see any particular issue calling them out for it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t also bad-faith nutcases who can and will cause problems. The internet is a big place and there’s no test of basic sanity to log on, and few jobs or schools would want the reputational risk of defending even someone who was using a word in a factual discussion.

I don’t think there’s any virtue in using it when it upsets people. I also don’t think there’s virtue in refusing to use a word, even in discussions about that word. There’s a line of reasonability: using it to express hate can and should be frowned on. But substituting a euphemism in all contexts is excessive.

The person that comment referenced doesn't seem to be a troll and obviously wasn't writing in a hateful context. Ironically, the fact that he used a euphemism pretty much proves that.

[haccount]

The only requirement for shaping language and informal thought policing is a sufficiently malignant army of trolls then?

I'd rather have a wild jungle internet full of anonymous people saying nigger in every second sentence than one of voluntary gestapo thought police combing through post histories to dox and hound common people because they don't fulfill the "linguistic standards" imposed by a small group of ideological/political activists.