On the other hand, I can't write "sanity check" without getting on HR's naughty list.

The fact that you can only name a handful of people who survived full frontal attacks (for now) indicates that this is more than merely annoying. The ranks of the cancelled far outnumber them and we should recognize the disturbing historical parallels too. This type of language editing was a key plot point in 1984 because it is the habit of extremely dangerous far left regimes. I feel like the west is in danger of experiencing a communist revolution at some point.

Now a lot of readers will feel like that's absurd, extreme, maybe even trolling. But it was only a handful of years ago that I was posting here warning people that they should refuse to rename git master branches to main because accepting this for short term convenience or out of ideological sympathy would lead to an endless spiral of power games, used to purge anyone not on the far left. And here we are, not so long after, with lists of banned words so long nobody even bothers enumerating them all, any one of which can be used to build a case for getting rid of you.

There's a clear pattern here in which people are repeatedly not taking wokeness seriously enough. This isn't a game and they spend every waking hour taking over every institution. A communist revolution doesn't require capturing the seat of government permanently, if you can capture every institution that surrounds it and essentially eliminate all ability for a non revolutionary government to operate.

The fix is simple enough though: do a DHH and get rid of all woke people in your organisation. It's quite easy as given a hostile environment they tend to leave en masse and they weren't doing much work for the organisation anyway. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

There’s a cute story I read the other day about an “Offensiveness consultant” who teaches companies how to be just offensive enough on Twitter to make sure woke people don’t want to work at your company. The story is written for comedy - but the more I think about it, the more I wonder might be something people actively do, for all the reasons you’re talking about.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/even-more-bay-area-hou...

That story is really great - I can honestly imagine a Silicon Valley startup party going exactly like the story describes.

You don't even have to be offensive. Just give an all hands where the leadership publicly commits to merit-based promotion/hiring, tell people the org is now "mission focussed", stick a few rugs around the place that say "Meritocracy" on them and then get rid of anyone who complains. No offense will be taken by anyone who you don't want to be offended.

Policing language and beliefs is a lot older than communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

Beliefs, yes. But which part of the Inquisition was specifically about banning long lists of specific words, replacing them with semantically identical equivalents? Perhaps they did it, my history isn't that good, but the wiki page doesn't seem to discuss it much if so.

The Reformation replaced the Latin mass with something pretty much equivalent, but in a different language

I certainly agree with you, and I do believe this is a very active fight where both sides are going strong. I'm not sure yet that they are losing, but it does feel like it's a worth fight. Of course, whoever is fighting against must also be sharply aware of not letting the fight itself get completely derailed by the opportunist bigots on the other side.

> Or JK Rowling, who has been cancelled over and over again, but the latest video game based on her IP is incredibly popular.

I think to some extent this is largely because Rowling was kept at arm's length. If Rowling was the mouthpiece for the game's story, showing up in interviews, etc., then I think more of the backlash against Rowling's personal actions would be impacting the game.

See also how Disney happily sells Pirates of the Carribean while maintaining they will never work with Johnny Depp again.

Don't forget that Rowling wasn't invited to the filming of the giant Harry Potter reunion special.