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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   27672 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Is the name just a meme, or is there some non-ironic use there?
The Chinese confuse me with this. I've seen fanfiction authors argue by going "I think it is you who fail to understand the fundamental tenets of marxism-leninism" in apparent perfect seriousness.

I would guess that the name is in earnest. My own interpretation is that it essentially is implying that the app is like a vade mecum. Just as everyone used to carry around the Little Red Book that carried all sorts of wonderful wisdom, so too will everyone now carry around our app.

I get what you’re saying, though. I had a similar moment when I was watching some Chinese YouTuber who was doing a travel video about a museum founded at the site of the border between the Chu and the Han. When he was discussing why the Qin fell, he was sure to explain that it was due to the “contradictions within Qin society”. I didn’t know if he intentionally put it in there as a signaling mechanism or if concepts like this have just become standard tools of thought for Chinese people. It makes you wonder how non-Westerners react when they see how positively peppered our own discussions are with words like “marginalization” and “normalization”.

My own guess is that you have some number of small true believers who are very much intentionally lacing their speech with these words, and a much larger proportion who just get a vague good feeling when they use these words, something like “look, I’m saying something smart/morally correct/timely”.

It makes you wonder how non-Westerners react when they see how positively peppered our own discussions are with words like “marginalization” and “normalization”.

Your newspeak dialect makes my skin crawl.

Yeah, that makes two of us. But I find it repulsive because I’m enmeshed within the culture wars surrounding its use. But what does, say, some random Chilean think if he sees some Anglophone Twitter user memeing like

Normalize wearing sweatpants all day, because I’m too lazy to dress nice

or something? (Note: I am clearly incompetent at writing Twitter memes, but certainly you’re familiar with the genre that I’m pointing at.) Would the Chilean think “huh, isn’t it weird how this person is using that word?”

If you haven't noticed from my use of pronouns (heh), I am a non-Westerner. It passed beyond thinking “weird” in comparison to the English I was taught, it's to the stage of some interstellar invasion uncanny valley. “Black bodies” is perhaps the top contender, but the whole dialect leaves me very, very uneasy.

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