[novakboskov]

Nah, we can't. We can't redefine words to make us feel better.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, nepotism is "the act of using your power or influence to get good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family." As soon as you favored your kid, it's nepotism, and it's bad. It undermines meritocracy and contributes to an unjust society. It's pretty straightforward to understand.

[chongli]

Right, but that definition is so incredibly broad as to include any and all ways you might provide for your children. If you're wealthy and you use your money to buy more expensive, healthier food for your kids then that could be argued to be "using your power or influence to get an unfair advantage for members of your own family" since many other families can't afford that better food.

More broadly, the issue of "unfair advantages" and the demonization of those who have them is explored rather poignantly in the short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut [1]. The story takes place in a dystopian future where beautiful people are forced to wear masks to make their faces look ugly, those with beautiful voices have to use devices to make their voices sound awful, and anyone with above-average intelligence has to wear a radio headset which constantly plays annoying and distracting noises to prevent them from thinking too deeply. The title character is forced to endure multiple of these "handicaps", including heavy weights to slow him down and tire him out so that he cannot make use of his athletic gifts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

[cynicalsecurity]

Define unfair.

[octopoc]

If there is someone better suited that could have had the position, then it’s unfair.

[chongli]

Doesn't that just reward the children of families who can pay for private tutoring and other resources that give them an advantage over the competition?

[devilbunny]

As someone who has been a private tutor, the only advantage most kids got was that they passed the class badly instead of failing it. They were not standouts. The kids who are standouts - and I was one of them, which is why I was so recommended - need guidance sometimes, but largely get it on their own (and especially when they have to teach their fellow students - if you can't explain it, you don't really know it). I tutored a few smart students who were just weak in one area and needed to reinforce their basic understanding, but most of them just didn't care about wasting time and money, because it was my time and parents' money. I needed the cash, though. I never lied to parents about potential and I really tried to help. But there's only so much you can do when an ADHD kid won't attend to the lessons, or has some issues with their parents.

One of the things that modern life has messed up is the idea that you should always be happy. No, sometimes you just have to accept that what you are doing sucks, that you will have to power through it, and that's life.

[sharkjacobs]

If you just keep reading, a couple sentences later they say "It undermines meritocracy" which makes it pretty clear what "unfair" means in the context of that comment.

[johnnyanmac]

We do it all the time. Let's see what was added to cambridge this past month:

- fridgescaping

- Fanum tax

- Quit-Tok

- runglasses

- boomerocracy

- appification

And that does include adding definitions to existing words. "Literally" can also be defined by its antonym.