Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but doublespeak seems to be prevalent even in casual conversation

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It’s not the only way, you could just say the program is 15 years old, or the politician appeals to a much larger fraction of voters than whatever specific naive measure would suggest they should.

    That requires us* to focus on the objective matters. We can’t do that. We need to wallow in all that precious, oh so precious, subjectivity. But we can’t show it, because then we can’t claim “it’s facts”, and we’re opening room for disagreement.

    In other words this kind of doublespeak is backed by another type of doublespeak: disguising the subjective as objective. You see the same underlying phenomenon behind the usage of the word “toxic”.

    *by “we” I mean “people in general”, not necessarily you and me.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I suspect a lot of people make the mistake of seeking out analysis, but not stopping to consider if they actually understand more after reading it, as well. They figure because they spent half an hour reading they must now be smarter, when that’s not necessarily the case, and from a writer’s perspective that gives an opportunity to make money by producing giant quantities of boilerplate text. Or at least did, before GPT and friends showed up.

      In other words this kind of doublespeak is backed by another type of doublespeak: disguising the subjective as objective. You see the same underlying phenomenon behind the usage of the word “toxic”.

      Can you give an example? The first thing that comes to mind is “toxic masculinity”, which is more of a “set expression”, and then “toxicity” in online spaces which in context refers to an abundance of hostility or negative emotional content.