Please add this word to the banned words list
I think it already is, unofficially
I had a comment removed for using the word in reference to a member of an alphabet agency as it is also an (antiquated) racial slur
Is it still a slur? I think the only time I've ever heard it used to refer to a black person was in that dumbass Clint Eastwood movie about the racist guy who loves his car and uses his immigrant neighbors for free labor. I use it to refer to feds, but I'll stop if it offends people.
This is silly. Can anyone point me to anyone who could be hurt by "spook"?
Like what is this supposed to address? In case some invader pulls out old timey slurs no user has ever heard that are about as impactful as using slurs from olde english?
Yup, completely agree. I've already said this in a previous debate about this issue, but if the word "spook" is banned, we pretty much shouldn't be allowed to use any of the words on this list.
What was that red fruit called again? What kind of animal is a human? Who knows, banned :1984:
Now that I think about it, "red" could be a slur for indigenous people so I'm pretty sure I should be tossed in the gulag for saying "red fruit"
“Using words in an everyday context is the same exact thing as referring to a person with the same words”
:think-about-it:
there's a difference here. it's pretty well understood that it's a slur.
It's also pretty well understood that fruit is a slur, when it's used in that context. This is actually a fantastic example, because there is so little difference between the terms. Both are extremely harmless words with normal meanings commonly used in everyday conversation, with extremely antiquated and niche uses as slurs which some nerds here are for some reason bringing up and dwelling on when the terms are used in a context in which they are obviously not slurs.
the term isn't reappropriatable, and there's no real reason to not just come up with a different way to refer to the cia. we can come up with something else. the only reasonable manner the term is used in a normal meaning would be like "this guy spooked me" as if you got frightened.
he term isn’t reappropriatable
There's no "reappropriation" here because the term's normal, harmless meanings have already been established for centuries. I'm not going to stop using a normal word because some racists also used that word in a different way several decades ago and never since.
fruit is something that refers to a major food group, a term that can get used in every day life. spooked literally the only normal harmless meaning is to be frightened which can also be replaced with scared. there is no reason to be insensitive about this subject except to be argumentative and stubborn.
Difficult to respond to unconstructive and insulting comments with anything constructive. When someone starts harassing people over nothing, I'm not the one being argumentative when I tell them to leave people alone. The argumentative side is the side perpetuating an argument over literally nothing.
I mean I've been here since /r/cth, I'm not bothered by silly internet arguments and I'm perfectly happy to take part. If it did actually bother me I'd just log off :gigachad:
I definitely get that, I wasn't always good at logging off myself. But yeah, this one looks like it's staying pretty mild anyway.
i feel like you should be banned for being an asshole, and not like a cool asshole. just an asshole.
and you can just say ghost. if we need a cool term to refer to the feds, we can just come up with something, or there's others. just even referring to them here, we put plenty of negative emphasis on their presence, we don't need to be insensitive to people who don't want to see a term that could make them remember some fucked up shit that happened in their past and calls back to an extremely negative time in history. i don't get why we have people be insensitive about this shit.
we don't let users get away with derisively referring to effeminate men as that, because it's fucked up. and we don't let people call people that here because it's racist, and context matters, but we don't let other people refer to others as the friendly use of the blatantly racist n word without a hard r either, despite them having different meanings entirely, because this isn't the place to battle that. there is no reappropriation that can occur nor is necessary as far as this term goes - and as repeated, the word fruit in the way it's meant to be used is an every day term. the word spook is not and is easily replaceable.
reviews list
turns into John Cleese from the self-defense sketch
It is not that antiquated of a slur. I know as a fact that it was used up until the 70s at least in pop culture in blaxploitation films. There are people alive today who have had that word used against them
It doesn't even have to be directly hurtful to everyone, it also just makes enough people uncomfortable that it makes sense to advise against using
Don't know tbh, so I've stopped as well; I've only ever seen it used to refer to CIA goons and the like, never heard it used for anything else (though I think some dated literature I read used it as a slur) but it's not really a biggie to just use something else
You think are beloved intelligence community members who put their lives on the line are g**ns? Do you really mean that? See below:
- A generally low ranking member of a gang or syndicate. Typically the recipients of street-level work. These are generally the most disposable members of a organization, built to take the fall in order to protect the higher ups in the case of illegal activities gone awry that have attracted police attention.
You think the CIA is a gang? #cancelled
- One who participates in vandalism, loitering, public displays of ignorance, outward obnoxiousness, and other non-socially acceptable practices justified by a directionless but nonetheless strong pack mentality and conformity with other similarly outlandish behaving individuals.
You think the CIA acts professionally and leaves a mess in their wake? #cancelled
- An Individual of sub-standard wit or mental competency. commonly identified by a less than reputable character, bad personality, and/or poor taste in personal style.
Don’t be ableist towards the CIA because you are a Russian bot that thinks they have less than reputable character. #cancelled
I tried to do some research because I'm fairly clueless too and what I found is that it comes from a Dutch translation of the word 'spectre,' hence the use of the word spooky around halloween, and was later used as a slur against black people circa WWII. Not sure about when it started to be used for spies, but my assumption is that would've happened either around WWII or later because intelligence agencies didn't exist until about that time. Still not sure about the history of how it would've jumped from racial slur to term used for spies though so if someone could fill that piece in that would be cool.
According to the link below, the first known written use to refer to spies is from 1942. The CIA had not been formed at the time, but its predecessor (the OSS) was around.
It’s funny because my first guess was that it was a reference to the original ‘ghost’ meaning of the word because of the nature of the work a spy would be doing
I run a small discord for a niche game (about 200/300 members) and this has come up before from an over-eager non-American egoist who wanted to use it in daily use. It got a bit of pushback, mostly from Americans, and not in the "I think it's a slur" way, but more directly "this makes me uncomfortable, please stop using that word" way.
IMO context is essential for language and slur use, which is why it's not a slur to call the broad class of foods like apples and pomegranates fruits, but you absolutely can't use that in the context of LGBTQ+ people. Calling random things that you think fit the egoist use "spooks" without guiding context makes it really easy to misinterpret it as casual (if old-timey) racism, but I would see prefacing it with CIA/FBI as giving it appropriate context to make it clear it's not intended in a hateful way. That said I would rather just avoid the word and use a handy synonym like goon, ghoul or whatever.
That said I would rather just avoid the word and use a handy synonym like goon, ghoul or whatever
Agreed. I honestly forgot it could be used in such a manner, so it's easier imho to just pick a different term; it's not like we have a shortage
before i heard it referred to as cia agents, i always heard the term used in a racist manner. i don't think that it's unreasonable that it's banned, because that was my initial understanding of the term. we can come up with some other shit to call these mother fuckers, this shouldn't be a struggle session.
You just committed misogyny by calling women "girlbosses" and men as just men. You need to be banned.
I'm going to start using this as a hashtag for whenever a fella starts #girlbossing.
Girls don’t need another descriptor to show that they’ve reached “maturity,” sweatie
ITT: people unironically doing the slippery slope :freeze-peach: bit that right wingers love to do.
