Faegbeard

The need to change what the word means to others to change the pejorative connotation for oneself. The nerd/geek example does not hold up in my experience, unfortunately. If someone called me a nerd today, I could take it as a pejorative or compliment depending on context and tone.

I disagree, expression via non-forceful means can never be immoral, no matter the subject matter.

I'm not sure what this means in the context of my post. If you mean the homosexual community, I don't think the connotation of the word "gay" had anything to do with it. I think it had more to do with the connotation of being homosexual. I am not trying to make counter-arguments, I am not intending to engage in debate. I am trying to understand on a fundamental level, what people think the value of reclamation is, and more importantly, why they think that. Were the answer as simple as reading a Wikipedia article this discussion would have ended 2 pages ago.

My lack of understanding is due to the idea that an individual needs to change the connotation of the word in the greater society to change how they themselves understand the word.

I was using it as an example. Generally people are only "triggered" by extremely horrific incidents, which will also always have negative connotations. I would argue that "faggot" is a negative word about a neutral thing, but I'm splitting hairs at that point. So, I'm to understand that the value in "reclaiming a word", that is, the value of changing the connotation of a word in society at large, is that it allows an individual person to change what a meaning of a word means to that specific individual? I'm afraid I don't follow. Such as?

Imagining an immoral act does not have morality attached to it, no. Just as shooting fictional men in a video game all day is an amoral (Not immoral, it's an important distinction) act, so is imagining child killing followed by necrophila. If you were imagining such things all day then that might be cause for concern for your mental well being, but the children in your head are not real, and neither are any of the acts the you in your head commits.

How so? Do you think your friend would not have had a different response if the word you used had a mildly different connotation, even when the noun, verb or adjective describes is the same? If rape had a positive connotation, would it make getting raped any less traumatic? It is, language is entirely subjective by it's very nature, I'm not arguing that. My core conceit is that language is used to express ideas, ideals, emotions, expressions and so on, and that changing the language will not change the ideas.

The word itself is not what does harm, it is the understanding of what that word means to a person that can do harm. Words, devoid of subjectivity, are completely harmless.

If you wanted to be pedantic then yes, you could make the argument that they exist inside the imagination. The point stands regardless as anything that happens in your imagination cannot be moral or immoral.

The thing is, words do not have the ability to harm in and of themselves. What causes harm is your understanding of what the person is communicating to you. If you recognize the venom in a persons words they can hurt your feelings regardless of the specifics words used; Even words that can otherwise be considered polite can carry a huge amount of hate in them. The most harrowing insult I have ever received did not contain a single racial epithet, slur, swear word or anything of the sort. The only thing that could affect a persons "power" when it comes to verbal communication would be for verbal communication on the whole to be significantly less meaningful. I put it to you that any idea that does not deal with language itself could exist without language. The expression of that idea would certainly prove difficult however. I think you are doing nothing but proving my original point with this. Gay has been mostly removed from pejorative use, but faggot now exists in it's sted. If faggot becomes a bit less of a pejorative people will say fucking faggot, to really hammer the point home of what they are trying to convey. The word is different, but it has no less power and there is no less venom in it. I don't think it's for good, even if the intention behind it is good. Maybe I am alone in this, but I think losing negative words and the ability to express negative thoughts, no matter how vile and depraved, would be a terrible thing indeed. It's 2am here so I might be derailing a bit. I don't think the words "geek" and "nerd" ever got redefined, they are simply descriptive terms. Just because they were the catalyst used to communicate the feelings of the less academically inclined towards me means nothing. I can't speak for the "community" though. Whatever they wish to describe themselves as, of course. But I don't think the dislike in society at large of sexual promiscuity among women has anything to do with any perceived connotations to the word "slut". I think the dislike of sexual promiscuity among women as everything to do with the connotations of sexual promiscuity among women.

I don't see how something that is entirely fictitious can be exploitative, at least in the way that comic uses the word. Insensitive? Sure, but I don't understand how you can claim that something that does not exist is immoral somehow.

When words themselves have the intrinsic ability to inflict physical harm, I might understand your analogy. My point was that changing the meaning of a word does not disarm anyone nor does it change anyone's intent. Additionally, words and weapons are not comparable in any sense, but that is a different discussion entirely. Some good for the person feeling discriminated against you mean? If a slight change in understanding of the connotation of a word can stop casual discrimination, I would argue that said discrimination was so casual as to be non-existent. I may have misunderstood what you meant, but that seems like reclaiming a word in that context is simply comfort food for the person who feels slighted, while changing nothing of any underlying problem.

Ideas, including prejudice, exist independent of language. A person who hates homosexuals will do so regardless of his ability to express it. I fail to see how it would be at all possible to "give it a shove" by changing language in any meaningful way outside of outright restricting speech, which would be terrible.

I could be a stupid person, but what is the value of intentionally "reclaiming" a word or attempting to do so? Language's primary function is communication. People will find ways to express ideas, both ones you agree or disagree with, no matter how language changes. When I was a kid, people would use gay to say something was homosexual with a pejorative implication. At this point, gay can easily be used as a non-pejorative way to inform someone of homosexuality, or at the very least it isn't a strong enough pejorative, so they say faggot. If faggot or slut somehow lose their negative connotations, people will use a different word instead, but one that has the exact same meaning and communicates the exact same hated or distaste. All this seems to accomplish is the homogenization of an otherwise diverse set of words.

A+

The fact that you are still talking about it means that has not occurred. Video games.

You may not be dead to language, but you are dead to me. >:c

A 2 hour episode is great; It gives me a reason to do nothing productive for an even greater amount of time. I think both "problematic" and "Thanks Obama" are dead to language after this episode. I also enjoyed the irony of lambasting of referential humor and using pop culture language, followed by the many thanks for Obama.

I would like to point out that myriad is both a noun and a adjective. "A myriad of reasons" and "myriad reasons" are both valid uses of the word. Video games.

This game is good in that it made me replay the first two Thief games. I can't speak for the quality of Thi4f itself, however, as I haven't played it.

So I logged into the server. The first thing my character thought after "I'm getting hungry", was, "Watch out for Vanaman." what

This episode had the unintended effect of showing that the amount of time between the occurrence a major national disaster and Chris and Jake being willing to make a joke about said disaster publicly is, at most, 108,936 hours. Good.

Well, this is where everyone is asking for whitelists, so I guess I will too. My username is Myselfe

It seems to be strongly encouraged due to the amount of people having strokes and heart attacks from sitting for too long.

The free-to-play comment is not entirely correct. Maple Story suggests you take a break after 3 hours. Eventually it starts pleading for you to take a break.