Words like "dehumanizing" and "trauma" have lost their meaning. I was listening to an NPR program a few weeks ago discussing the Uvalde massacre where the speakers described the Uvalde families as being "traumatized" while also describing themselves (the speakers) as being "traumatized" by the online political debates over gun rights. They very briefly caught themselves, and at one point of them briefly, self-consciously excused themselves (something like, "not [traumatized] like the Ulvalde families"). Yet they continued (I lost count how many times) using and relishing in the word as a descriptor for their experience of the debates.

It's absurd and surreal, and yet here we are. People think they're being empathetic by applying these words more widely but it's really reflective of how disconnected people are from reality, and how much narcissistic license they've given themselves. Social media gives people an illusion that they're connected to others, but the effect has mostly been to turn the vast majority of people and issues into caricatures. One might even say it's "dehumanizing", but what's the point.

A decade or two ago the word for criticizing the TikTok video would have been "objectifying". That word got overused, too, but it still had academic connotations (from the feministic movement) that better contextualized the point someone was making. Sadly the political left PC movement has created such an arms race in linguistic virtue signaling that more precise, descriptive language is considered lacking in empathy and therefore, well, "dehumanizing".