> it's also important to acknowledge the occasional usefulness of language that you might be personally offended by.

I appreciate the emphasis on usefulness rather than right or wrong. I certainly didn’t interpret “inexplicably, self-destructively foolish” when I read the comment and apparently that extends to others too, which also speaks to usefulness or lack thereof.

On the internet, writing anonymously to a large anonymous group is very very much communication on hard mode. Things like Poe’s law reign supreme. If your goal is to get idea X into as many of the comment readers’ heads as possible, then it’s useful to use language that means the same thing to as many of those readers as possible. I think that’s what people mean when they talk about “inclusive” language?

The HN style generally seems to be choosing the clear inclusive phrasing over the stylistic(?) phrasing, choosing “inexplicably, self-destructively foolish” over “literally retarded.”

(Not trying to be language police. Just a language nerd who likes to talk about language.)