Sorry but did you just say one of the reasons you left google was the memegen moderation team? I can't imagine that being a legitimate worry that would impact my employment decisions.
It seems there's a group of people who are too far in the other direction too. When I heard that it's preferred to say "allowlist" instead of "whitelist", do you know what my reaction was?
"Sure, whatever."
And I moved on with my life. It has zero impact on my day to day. The pushback reminds me of people who deadname others on purpose. Like, who cares? Bob wants to be called Sally now? Sure, whatever.
You're right. I use the new terms and move on. It's really not that bad.
However it tends to become a password game. There's a new password every few months. If you know the new password, you get to feel above those who don't. It's as we invent new crimes to charge people with.
If no one calls it out (because sure, whatever), it keeps ratcheting up. Then banal conversations turn into minefields. What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong password.
Yeah, I’m the same way - also a googler, I used the term “grandfathered” in a meeting with a bunch of people and someone on Meet chat corrected me to “legacy” or something, and I said, “oh, okay, no problem” and corrected myself and moved on.
So - I used a word that someone didn’t like, they corrected me, I adjusted without deep apology and moved on, and everything was fine. Who cares? Why is this such a huge issue, language evolves all the time.
My suspicion is - of people who run into problems with language at tech companies, half of the problem is due to their reaction to being corrected.
I mean - it feels like you’re creating a combative situation where one does not exist. “And just who are you?” - what is the point of that? To what end and whose benefit?
As the person who experienced this particular moment, I can assure you there was nothing combative about it. It was a one off comment, a one off response, everyone moved on.
Is every disagreement you experience combative? Every correction? I tell you, I had a catch-up yesterday with a former team member that turned to the subject of web3, and that friendly debate was approximately 50x more combative as the moment I described.
That isn't language evolving, that's you being arbitrarily 'punished' for no better reason than to reinforce the false idea that the other person is better than you. The right response is to refuse because that treadmill is endless and its potential speed is unlimited.
You were being "corrected" by someone else, weren't you? They knew the "right" language and you didn't. What do you think would have happened if you'd disagreed with this particular correction?
Like if I had said, “thanks for the feedback but I’m going to continue using this other word”? I think we probably would have just moved on and the individual would have been offended, but - why would I do that? To whose benefit? Mine?
Because, look, I’m a successful, senior, valued individual who is respected and liked by my team. In the grand scheme of my life, if someone wants me to use one word vs another, why do I care? I have thousands of things that are more important to worry about than that.
It’s the same way that I work with someone who likes to be addressed in emails by their full name - okay, no problem, remind me once and I’ll just move on. Or a coworker I had who was from Africa and did not want to be referred to as “African American” - sure, fine.
Doing so diminishes me not at all, because I don’t define my worth based on whether I use the correct (or incorrect) word or not.
It seems like a lot of the objections that I see in this thread have to do with people having issues being “corrected” or “policed” or “silenced”, all of which have to do with how they interpret how those moments have wronged THEM. Another option would be to let it go. Yet another would be to see themselves as making the faintest possible effort to make sure people feel welcome.
I think we probably would have just moved on and the individual would have been offended
That's the gap between you and others in this thread. What we've experienced is not that one individual is genuinely offended and everyone just moves on, it's that they immediately run the HR/management with crocodile tears in their eyes, and then demand you be fired. They conclude that the only reason to refuse their request is because you're an ideological enemy and don't care about anything else.
And that's why it's bad. It's not about genuinely taking offence, and never was. It is about establishing dominance over powerful institutions so they can turn them all into Twitter - weapons in a never-ending dystopian culture war that can never be won because the victory conditions change every day.
Starting when I was a kid, I used the expression “gypped” without concern or awareness, and then at some point someone maybe in high school or college took me aside and explained that it was based on a stereotype. I was nonplussed for a minute, and then I moved on. And I just don’t say that anymore. I don’t feel bad about having said it in the past, I don’t have any deep guilt, I just…got on with my life.
So I guess the password is “don’t use a colloquialism based on an ethnic stereotype “, and that seems pretty straightforward and reasonable.
Similar thing happened to me- I used the term "biner" to refer to a carabiner, but was told that it was an insult used to refer to hispanics who collected beans in the central valley of california. At the time, I was in Connecicut. I've also had people tell me I can't call a particular card suite a "spade".
> What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong password.
This entire discourse is so full of straw men it's hard to believe you have actually had real conversations with these people.
There is so much effort during these conversations toward "calling in" vs "calling out" that I am very confused how a conversation could ever get to the point you describe. You'd have to be really callous, and completely unwilling to meet your conversation partner on an even field, to elicit such reactions.
And no, Twitter pile-ons don't count as evidence for your argument -- Twitter is very, very far from an accurate cross-section of "real life".
The terms 'guestlist' and 'shitlist' would perhaps be more accurate in terms of what those two forms of security access control are really about. Using a guestlist to control access is more secure (as you can background check everyone on the guestlist), but limits traffic; conversely allowing anyone in except those known troublemakers on the shitlist gets more traffic but means undesirables might slip in and become nuisances.
On the other hand, all that nonsense about 'master' was ridiculous. Master's degrees, the master boot record, come on let that one go.
I find this a very reasonable approach. I also find it natural that language evolves and sometimes it can even be marginally beneficial to artificially guide the evolution. All in all, in practice it just doesn't matter in my life.
It seems there's a group of people who are too far in the other direction too. When I heard that it's preferred to say "allowlist" instead of "whitelist", do you know what my reaction was?
"Sure, whatever."
And I moved on with my life. It has zero impact on my day to day. The pushback reminds me of people who deadname others on purpose. Like, who cares? Bob wants to be called Sally now? Sure, whatever.