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Re:In Praise of the Philly Stoop by Declanomous on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:42AM (#14461245)
Anti-social can also mean someone who just doesn't want to interact with other people.

I'm deliberately invoking both meanings of the word, because I think taking the desire to avoid interaction to the extreme harms society.

Re:In Praise of the Philly Stoop by nf05papsjfVbc on Thursday June 01, 2017 @12:22PM (#14461653)
Either I've been introduced to a new meaning of the term of you are mistaken about the meaning. I'm going to look it up. Perhaps I could persuade you to do the same.

Also, by wording it as "extreme", it becomes a bit difficult to have a debate. Doing "too much" of anything is by definition more than what is harmless.

In the case from the context above, one interpretation is just people's desire for privacy. I'd also say that by giving it a name with a negative connotation we are pressuring the people who have preferences that can be described as asocial to be more like the others and that I believe is unfair.

Re:In Praise of the Philly Stoop by throwanem on Thursday June 01, 2017 @12:58PM (#14462062)
You have been introduced to a new meaning of the term.

I don't think it's especially unfair to argue that engineering to prevent chance interactions should be discouraged, and invoking privacy in this context is a bugaboo - access to privacy really isn't the same thing as making sure that you never have to greet or talk to anyone in a way that isn't planned.

I know a lot of people who don't really have that sort of unplanned interaction with anyone, and they tend to be the same people who think I must be uncommonly brave to use my city's public transit system, which they erroneously fancy to be peopled primarily by dangerous characters. By preserving their ignorance of their fellow people, they free their imaginations to assume the worst, and in a democratic society where such imaginings can quite easily translate into wrongheaded and harmful public policy, I don't think it is at all hard to argue that such ignorance, and such fancy, grows questionable - even dangerous - to the same extent to which it is indulged.

Re:In Praise of the Philly Stoop by mmmpop on Thursday June 01, 2017 @01:26PM (#14462413)
> You have been introduced to a new meaning of the term.

Says who? It's one thing to invent a brand new word, but it's another to modify a word with already established meaning to a slightly different meaning just because some people started using it the wrong way and it stuck. See the word "poignant" for another great example of the active bastardization of English.

Re:In Praise of the Philly Stoop by throwanem on Thursday June 01, 2017 @01:29PM (#14462430)
I really don't want to get into a pointless debate over prescriptivism, and there is no other kind of debate over prescriptivism. But, here, have some authorities:

Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/antisocial

Merriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antisocial

Oxford Dictionaries, English - as close as you get to OED without paying, and my library card's at home: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/antisocial

How many more would you like me to cite? And what's your problem with "poignant"?

Re:In Praise of the Philly Stoop by khedoros1 on Thursday June 01, 2017 @03:49PM (#14463857)
What do you call a word that everyone uses in the same wrong way? "Correct".