• Gen Z's nostalgia for the early 2000s is sparking a revival of landline phones, seen as a retro-chic escape from the digital age.
• Influenced by '90s and 2000s TV shows, young adults like Nicole Randone and Sam Casper embrace landlines for their vintage appeal.
• Urban Outfitters capitalizes on Gen Z's love for nostalgia by selling retro items like landline phones alongside fashion trends from the '90s and 2000s.
Why idiot, imbecille and moron are okay but retard is off-limits? All of these words have been used in a psychological classification system in the past yet retard seems to be the only one people take issue with.
Idiots. —Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years.
Imbeciles. —Those whose development is higher than that of an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of about seven years.
Morons. —Those whose mental development is above that of an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.
Edmund Burke Huey, Backward and Feeble-Minded Children, 1912
It's more recent. Just the euphemism treadmill in action.
Basically, some people are clinically unintelligent out of no fault of their own, and we'd rather they not get caught in the crossfire when insults are being hurtled. The approach to that has been to try and avoid unintelligence-based insults, but it hasn't worked, because it actually is just better to be smarter.
Stop arguing about what slurs are okay to use. The only rule around here is to be nice. If someone asks you to not use a word because it hurts them, the nice thing to do is to listen.
You're free to go thru my post history and try to find examples of me calling people hurtful names. You just wont find any because that's not how I behave and that's not what my question is about.
My question is pretty simple; why this specific term? It feels so arbitrary. There doesn't seem to be any logic behind it. I wont get mobbed if I call someone an idiot but for some reason retard is off limits. Why?
I feel like you're completely ignoring my original question. Seeing that despite being controversial it has 12 upvotes and zero downvotes then maybe that's an indication that it's a valid question and I'm not the only one wondering the same thing.
I haven't made any moral statements about right and wrong. It's a simple question about why something is the way it is. Simple question you refuse to engage with so no point in going any further with this.
Because language is fluid and changes with societal use. We don't all defer to linguistic norms from hundreds or even thousands of years ago when literally everything about life would be alien to us now.
I'm sure you didn't intend to post such a nice comment (based on the historical definition of the word)...
I 100% agree, but is there any way we could kind of keep working to phase out retarded from common vocabulary. It's just such a charged and unnecessary word to use as a pejorative.
I would argue words change meaning and if you dont like that word you also shouldn't use "stupid" or "dumb". I've never heard anyone disparage a person with intellectual disabilities using that term so in my mind it just means... How should I phrase this for someone so sensitive... "Very much not smart". Idiot should be fine since it comes from a word meaning "common person". I don't use the word anymore because i don't want to push even sensitive people away, but I do think the whole thing is pretty silly.
Look dude it doesn't matter what word you use, there will always be a word or phrase to convey the essence of what the r-word represents. Its all just a treadmil of expressions, you can cancel the r-word and then in 20 years we can have this exact conversation about "stupid" and "dumb".
That word hasnt changed meaning and people still alive now have been ridiculed with it. You dont get to reclaim slurs that you arent part of the community its aimed at. Stop using the word.
The article doesn't offer a single statistic suggesting there is a resurgence of landlines, much less that Gen Z folks are responsible for it. It's basically just a fiction piece.
You would think that by now it would all be that, but when I moved in my city and wanted to take my phonenumber with me they said it was impossible because many areas still had the old style switch relays and they could Not move new numbera to it