"A Sticky Situation" - November 7, 2021

[Cinny]

Solved, but not my favorite meta. I was googling everything except what I needed. I've heard of the show, but knew nothing about it.

[rjy]

Solved, nice to get one this week!

[C=64]

The dialoguing around 56D has died down, but I wanted to reiterate that it's not just young'uns using 56D; it's people who are aware of the changing social climate with respect to diversity, equity, inclusion, white privilege, etc. Just as terms like "gaslighting", "gatekeeping", or "white knighting" can hopefully help me recognize a behavior, the term "[56D]ing" helps me remember to quickly look at how I'm behaving through an equity lens. The phrase "check your privilege" always grated on me, but the concept of [56D]ing resonates with me and helps me hone in on the assumption that my way is the right way.

[56D]ing doesn't have to be strictly about race; it can be about anything that centers my experience and marginalizes yours. My mother taught me to make fun of people for their grammar and spelling errors, their mediocre singing voice, any mistake they unwittingly made. We were subconsciously bonding by putting those people on a lower level than us; we were [56D]ing them.

At some point in my life, let's say age 45, I decided that I could break free and use the word "hopefully" to mean "ideally" or "if all goes according to plan" without worrying what my mummy would say. I deliberately sprinkled some jarring words and phrases in this post; as you read it, were you keeping a mental tally of the errors I made? If so, for what purpose? Does the possible redundancy of "reiterate" or wrong word choice in "hone in" mean that my thoughts aren't worth considering? We have good-natured [IMHO] arguments about the Oxford comma, but at some point the grammar one-upmanship becomes a class & power struggle.

[Bird Lives]

The problem with "we are dialoging" is twofold. One) we have a perfectly good and simply verb: talking and 2) the reason people say "dialoging" is "dialog" sounds like a technical jargon word as so the people saying it are attempting to sound more official and we find that irritatingly pretentious; these are people who *are* fully aware talking and discussing exist.

I too dislike pretentious usage, especially when it is, by recent standards, incorrect, e.g. fortuitous when what is meant is fortunate. I tend towards conservatism. I still use spellings with "logue," not "log," in all those words -- dia, cata, mono, etc. -- because it suggests language rather than lumber. But maybe there's a difference between dialoguing and talking just as there's a difference between having a dialogue and having a talk. "You need to have a ____ with your daughter" has different meaning depending on which word you put in the blank.

[Bird Lives]

Actually last night I heard a "young-uns-ism" that made my skin crawl. A restaurant owner in an attempt to be hip, young, and casual said "So we collab with the neighborhood to make a community". "Collab"??? You aren't typing or texting. You are speaking. You are making sounds through your vocal chords by exhaling breath. There is no need and nothing to gain by abbreviating. So you just say "we collaborate with the neighborhood".

What if he had said that he was taking a lab course and was nervous about the exam the next day because he wasn't so good at math?

As I say, a lot of these changes grate on my ears -- like when people refer to that restaurant owner as something that sounds like "rester on tour." The added "n" makes perfect sense, of course -- English is not French -- but it still rankles.