People will have their opinions, they might be wrong, and things evolve over time.
No one is trying to work against you and sabotage your projects. It's up to you to use your expertise to figure out what's actually the best way to do something, even if it's not the popular opinion.
And, this might be a bit of a cheap shot, but people that write rage blog posts with bolded words are generally a pain to work with professionally.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Stan
I had to look it up; I was under the mistaken impression that Stan was the male equivalent of Karen, but I guess there are some similarities between them.
If there is one thing the incel or general far-right community has been very successful at, it's coopting and hiding behind popular vocabulary and arts - most notably Pepe the Frog, but also... have a look on how modern neo-Nazis look like at rallies. It used to be the case up until the 90s that neo-Nazis could easily be spotted: shaven head, Lonsdale/Consdaple clothing, combat boots. Nowadays, they show up in everyday ordinary clothing, listening even to rap music, wearing all kinds of hairstyles.
For instance you could almost figure out what ‘anti-racism’ is based on the composition rules of language. (But you might think “anti-“ means “opposed to” whereas “anti-“ as in anti-matter is more like it according to Coates.)
Someone who went to the movies might dimly understand the “pills” (or do some people just take a lot of drugs?). On the other hand you could never figure out “chad”, and “stacey” without explanation.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Or, you know, context.
I don’t know what a Stan is but could easily understand what they were referring to by the way they used the word.
Incels? What’s that? Pots that call the kettles black?
Same for toxicity, where I actually do not even agree to your definition: toxicity refers to something toxic, you are the one adding the “codependency” aspect but it works well without it. There’s no such thing as “real toxicity” btw. Or should a biologist forbid you to use the term because it originally refers to poisonous creatures and not relationships?
Anyway, would you please consider not trying to gate-keep the use of words?
I did not say it can only be used for personal relationships. I said it only _works_ in such relationships. Because that is a fact, once we narrow it down to its original definition.
Of course you are free to use whatever words for whatever you want. But it means someone who wants to be able to clearly communicate loses their ability to do so. I am asking people to reconsider, and be precise. If you call that "gate-keeping", we can start a whole new conversation about what "gate-keeping" actually _means_. Because if we do not agree on definitions of words, we simply can not communicate with each other.
“I did not say it can only be used for personal relationships. I said it only _works_ in such relationships.”
I didn’t say I was right, I said you were wrong, and this is a fact. …
IMO this use is not unclear or imprecise. And you were previously arguing that it was important because “they are watering down important terms“, but now you say it’s about communicating more efficiently. You are inconsistent.
That's precisely how forums full of Nazis get recruits; by being attractive to folks trending in that direction.
This is precisely the case with cultish groups like neo-Nazis.
They draw vulnerable/disaffected people in, they have attractive elements (sense of community, us-versus-the-world, positive feedback on traits others see as negative) that make it hard to leave, and they hurt you (job loss, friends and family disown you, reinforcement of those negative traits).
The key thing is, sooner or later just like a pond full of toxic mining waste, the toxic waste seeps through and eventually the dams fully break.
We've seen exactly this in politics - it began with Trump and others spreading "birther" conspiracy myths in the Obama time, progressed with the Tea Party and culminated in a full-blown coup attempt where mass casualties were only barely averted.
If you just let a pond of toxic waste accumulate and don't do anything to clean it up, you will inevitably head towards disaster.
And that is the force behind many of the cargo cults.
"I spoke to everyone" is, by definition, not a single statement.
Everyone telling you you're wrong definitely can instill doubts about your perception.
Continously being told to "be wrong" can instill such doubts, but more precisely it would be me worrying about you "seeing it wrong", not accusing you of _being_ wrong about something. Your quote does not necessarily carry that meaning.
I am your friend, trust me.
This is exactly what gaslighting is, a trusted person changing your perception.
I'm not sure if you already read all the above in the article, and know it/are willfully setting it aside to create a fake argument against their statements, or you just disagree with their statements, or you don't think the author is genuine.
Did you just want to have a discussion about those terms and made the conversational leap?
Thanks for setting me straight on that!
Well, not always. A gaslighting, especially when you are the target of it, will look as something completely inexplicable and without a central point.
Do you remember who you first heard about the wonderful AngularJS from? Personally, I don't. But information about it was pouring in everywhere. At some point, several companies where I worked started massively adopting Angular. In the end it was a complete disaster. A huge amount of code was written, all that code went to the trash because it was unmaintainable and unextensible (although the advertising posters promised otherwise).
Do you remember who you first heard about the wonderful React from? Did somebody told you that there is some magic thing called ShadowDOM and it solves all the problems, even better then Blockchain and ChatGPT does? But many years later it was revealed that actually it does not. Now we all are just slaves of old myths massively produced by Google/Microsoft/Facebook back in the days. That's what gaslighting is all about.
Re AngularJS: Nope, I don't remember who. I feel that the reason I heard about AngularJS so much was because Google saturated the market with meetups, events and funding. It was an intentional choice to brute force market/mindshare.
Even if it weren't in many cases the exact same pundits offering the nearly-identical praise while disappearing their previous plaudits down a memory hole, it would still qualify as gaslighting because collectively, an entire industry of experts has decided to act as if history began the moment they started to type, and that the collective previous claims of the group don't exist any more.
If you watched the movie and didn't see how the situation could possibly apply beyond a husband/wife relationship, then I suppose you watch movies differently than I do. If you instead picked up on popular usage of the term without watching the movie, then I suppose might not understand the actual meaning of the term. But if you're defending terms you clearly don't fully understand yourself, please, leave the terms to defend themselves.
Laurie Voss, one of the focusses of the article, is not one of these people.
So can you give an example of one of the “many people” who did this?
If not then your post reduces to a claim that two people who have never met and may disagree in good faith are gaslighting a third person if they work in the same industry. Which seems like a stretch.
Toxic means poisonous.
I think you're talking about addiction.
Which, along with the author's "you were sold something" angle - seems perfectly appropriate. He's saying you were lied to on purpose, you were told to doubt your own experience. That's gaslighting in this context.
"Gaslighting" is an important term for someone messing with your perception, so you begin to fundamentally doubt your own feelings and experiences. It only works in contexts where there is an important relationship, e.g. a boss, or a partner, and over time. Not every simple lie is "gaslighting".
Same for "toxicity". An asshole is not toxic. A forum full of nazis is not toxic. An important element for real "toxicity" is something _attractive_, something that pulls you in, and keeps pulling you back in even when you are hurt.
If people continue to abuse these terms, they are watering down important terms for something that is really, really harmful. I'm not saying being lied to is not violence, or that an asshole is not an asshole. But there is no comparison to REAL gaslighting and REAL toxicity.