Stuff like “stupid, idiot, moron, dumb,” you know the ones. If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.
Just saw a thread on here where a user was stubbornly refusing to adjust their language when another user politely pointed out that it was harmful to our comrades as well, and the person refusing was massively upvoted and the comrade trying to explain why it was harmful was downvoted. Thought we were better than that
I’m not calling anyone out, just wanted to make a post explaining my feelings on it and that when stuff like that happens (not the intelligence based insults, I know its hard to switch, but getting insulted for asking people to avoid them) it hurts and makes me feel less welcome here </3
Using words like “You’re being ignorant” or “That’s a cruel belief” is actually more effective than just going “lmao idiot”.
If those are the words you actually mean to convey I’d say use them instead :)
Edit: if the reception this post got isn’t a good proof that this is something this community needs to grapple with, I don’t know what is.
It’s no big deal, man. You can’t control your chemistry. What’s your take on calling actions stupid or dumb instead of targetting the person. I haven’t thought on it too much but my gut instinct is it’s better.
I’d say it’s probably better than the alternative, but I think focusing on why the actions themselves were bad or flawed is more useful, especially when it comes to yourself. Makes it easier to find the root of the problem and come up with solutions to improve :)
Yeah I meant in a critical fashion. “What you did was dumb because of X, I know you can do better” yadda yadda