Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
view the rest of the comments
Look we can't call each other retards because other people will get triggered for us...
Besides every sane person knows that in common speech this is just means "extremely stupid" with no derogatory intent.
I think you should look up the definition of derogatory. Calling someone stupid is derogatory.
The derogatory intent is directed at the insult target, not an uninvolved group of people, is what they meant.
How else would you refer to people with below average critical thinking skills who perform actions without understanding or considering the consequences.
Please keep your answer non-derogatory.
I never said it's wrong to call people stupid.
I meant derogatory towards disabled people.
Riiiiight, in the same way people used to pair it with motions mimicking cerebral palsy? Do you also believe that didn't have derogatory intent towards people with disabilities and only meant "extremely stupid"? 🙄
I've no idea what that even is. Sounds like some pseudo science
You don't remember when people used to imitate spasticity by curling their hands and whacking their chests while changing their voice? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spastic_cerebral_palsy It was extremely common to do when calling people that word.
I don't. Never even heard about that disease.
BTW: People over internet don't know who you are, what race you are, and what disabilities you have. If you get called a brain dead retard, it because some dumb shit you wrote. Nothing less, nothing more
I'm 33 years old and grew up in the southeast US. Maybe it's a generational or regional thing or maybe I just grew up around some genuinely hateful people, but calling people that word was very commonly paired with other things you can't just explain away. Terms like "sped" (short for special education which was the term for the special courses people with disabilities went through in school), "short bus" (referring to the school buses that were shorter and used for children with special needs), and others were used. Actions like mimicking the voice impairments or movement impairments of people with disabilities was common. All of these things were, just like the one word this thread is about, just like people are saying it's used today, "just" meant to insult people for being stupid.
I live in Poland. None of that shit is relevant to me
Well I'm glad to hear that Poland is entirely free of any sort of ableist slurs or activities.
You should look up context clues
It doesn't take much literary analysis to understand that using that word to mean "extremely stupid" is ableist.