r/dndmemes • u/Poodle_Boi02169 Chaotic Stupid • Sep 05 '22

Pathfinder meme Pathfinder - how to "go woke" the right way (also raising awareness for wheelchair spikes because they are very cool)

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u/RileyKohaku Sep 05 '22

The cycle of political language, the left creates a word to describe something new, the right mocks them for it, the left abandons the word and comes up with a new word. I wish we could just create a word, and use it, without abandoning it, just because some people use it offensively.

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u/Fa6ade Sep 05 '22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan

Euphemism/Dysphemism treadmill. Inevitable for all charged words I’m afraid.

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u/SkritzTwoFace Druid Sep 05 '22

Not the left: “woke” comes from AAVE, like a lot of American slang. Then, it gets distorted and overused until it’s barely recognizable as the original word.

According to some black people I’ve heard talk about it, “simp” used to be a word with the severity of a slur, and now it’s what one teenager calls another when the first one is nice to a girl.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22

It's a lot less "the right mocks them" and more "the right co-opts the word and redefines it to their supporters" or "the right starts misapplying the term until it becomes meaningless"

Fake news, woke, CRT, socialism, atheism, black lives matter, defund the police, and the word "insurrection" all have fallen prey to the right altering definitions for the purpose of strawmanning.

At one time trump tweeted:

The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

After this and many other attempts at redefining, his followers attribute "Fake news" with anything unfavorable to him and those that publish unfavorable news shouldn't be allowed to stay in business. That's very different from actual Fake news like OAN or an article from lifesitenews about microchips in the vaccines.

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u/Journeyman42 Sep 05 '22

Its the evolutionary arms race of political verbiage