The irony is Orwell himself wrote a suggested style guide for writers that included telling writers to “never use” foreign phrases or technical jargon. Hasn’t he read 1984?!!!!

You also can’t say “fuck” while working in a church without being fired. No accusations of Orwell there though. People seem to understand that different places have different standards of acceptable speech when it comes to protecting their own traditions, yet when it comes to the new standards inevitably rising up as society values inclusion more, they balk. Recent generations are more offended by racial slurs than words like “fuck,” and I think that’s a positive thing. They find dehumanization of marginalized people more offensive than slang for sex. I agree with them.

I’m not saying every rewording is helpful or has to be adhered to or you go to social jail, but I understand the (sometimes clumsy) attempts to make people think about the impact of their speech and how to speak about difficult subjects with respect and professionalism. Will there be missteps, especially in media and corporations, as they consider these issues? Sure. But I appreciate the thoughtfulness of working towards rethinking language that reinforces harmful biases for marginalized groups.

I disagree. I've seen plenty of posts on other social media which use "unalive" in a completely serious and unironic way, just because they have become so used to changing their speech for TikTok's algorithm.

Whether or not it was "specifically prescribed," using a "tongue-in-cheek" jokey word to legitimately discuss the topic of death is by nature sugarcoating it and downplaying it.

It's why I get similarly annoyed when people say things like "sending nudes to minors is uncomfy" or "don't lewd the lolis". Using cutesy and euphemistic language to describe serious topics makes light of those topics.

If what you claim about publishers want to sell is true, Its profiteering. It's not like they are sitting on the huge inventory that they can't do away with and it's costing them to hold on to that inventory (even if they did, old inventory without changes means nothing to them).

They have rights, they could always print and sell with a positive preface saying, look which ideas were normal when the book was first published in the year xyz and see how far we have come etc. With the controversial content, arguably, the books would sell more.

If anyone changes a book content without the explicit permission of author (if he or she is dead, then no permission by default) then they should not sell that stuff in author's name. It should be that simple. They can repackge it and call it a sanitized version of xyz by abc and then see how many people want to read that. (There could still be a pull for this, I am thinking Stephen Fry telling us about Mythos, that's essentially retelling, publishers need to have guts to do that rather than tampering already existing works of other authors)

I think this is a totally different situation. “Unalive” isn’t specifically prescribed as a word to sugar-coat death. It was used on tiktok in a tongue-in-cheek manner to talk about killings or suicides without those words triggering your account to be banned for discussing violence. Everyone knew how silly it sounded, so now they use it ironically in real life. It’s just jokey slang, like “kicked the bucket.”

it is just me, or this is the dumbest issue,

Publishers want to sell books that they fear have not aged well. so they proactively "edit" them. causing controversy. Publishers have to sell books, so sitting on the rights of a half a century old books does nothing for them.

Real solution, dont have a copyright system that last longer than a lifetime.

Those books should be in the public domain already. available for free to everyone, want a modernized version? sure, someone would have edited it, but why?

I think at best it is an annoying BS, like in the chocolate factory, they removed the word "fat" but he is still getting punished for gluttony and being fat, so, it did nothing.
and at worst it sugar coats the past.

All the extremely misogynistic attitudes of James Bond will be washed away, rather than accepting that in the recent past, those attitudes are not only normal, but expected and respected.

It’s America I’ll say whatever I want

Please don’t suggest that women, LGBT, or disabled people form distinct monolithic groups with shared and internally consistent views on what language is acceptable and not acceptable - that is a dehumanising concept that denies their individuality.

Yep you can test this in action by saying "Horse!!!" angrily as if you were cursing.

Like banning guns stops gun deaths and murder. Like banning theft stops theft. Like trying to control anything results in control of that thing.

read with scathing sarcasm

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I’m just following you’re logic after I asked a question that was not related to Reddit, and you brought up Reddit. You even brought up the N word shrugs

>You are complaining that subreddits that have moderation ban certain words

I am not complaining. It's easier to win arguments when you make up what the other person's point of view is, right?

distant, unknown, and unaccountable figures? You mean, women, queer people, disabled people, who ask you to not use a word like the R word or hysterical to describe a woman? Which then got picked up by style guides to inform writing and reporting?

This sounds like you believe in the fallacy of cancel culture

yeah, and given that we then proceeded to destabilize an entire region, blow trillions of dollars, kill untold thousands of people, and accomplish jack shit, maybe it's for the best that the United States isn't particularly unified.

Eh it was aimed at Stalinism more than fascism.

Read some Farrell and your head will explode

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Merely asking people to use specific language created by distant, unknown, and unaccountable figures is not fascism, but I am not sure what compelling them to use it by threats of social or economic punishment is.

The consequences are key.

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I think he’s arguing against the idea that if you are not fully on board with constant and mutually-conflicting revisions of words and phrases in everyday use, decided behind closed doors by unknown and unaccountable figures and handed down with no debate or dissent permitted, you must be an asshole, bigot, or some other type of Bad Person.

I think you sort of proved his point.

Right. My problem is that there are words I think shouldn't be used in polite company, like the n-word (except by black people). So I'm inconsistent in this. It's a knot I haven't figured out how to untangle.

If anything it's more Fahrenheit 451.

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Lol ok the point was about fascism, surveillance, and oppression. Asking people to use language that respects others is neither of those things