We live in a world where 500+ refugees just drowned off the coast of
Greece while the global north took photos from afar and just let it happen.
We live in a world where even a democratic president in the US is shutting the doors to asylum seekers in the U.S. and not receiving any significant political blowback for it.
We aren’t refugees for having to find a new website.
I am NOT saying this to scold people or to talk condescendingly down from some high horse as if I am more righteous than others, I just don’t want this word to catch on because there is so much pain and suffering happening to refugees in this world.
Imagine you were a refugee and you joined the fediverse because you were curious about it and the first thing you saw was people calling themselves refugees for having to… make an account on a new website. Would you feel welcome or like this place was for you?
I generally disagree with language policing like this. If we’re not allowed to use metaphors then language becomes very boring indeed.
Alternatively, lets live in a world where metaphors are taken as metaphors and not as something that suggests the two things are exact equivalents
Yeah, that seems like exactly the kind of selfserving virtue signaling that makes the left look like a bunch of edgelords.
But I guess, it’s easier to start such “actions” to feel like you’re doing something than actually doing something. (not that I’m actually doing something, but I’m not pretending either)
In German, there’s a relatively new phrase for that: Gratismut, free bravery. On the surface it looks “brave”, but it’s actually 100% riskfree and has no consequences whatsoever. But you do look brave.
Man I’d kill for a hamburger right now.
DON’T YOU KNOW SOMEBODY IS BEING KILLED RIGHT NOW? JOHN FERDERBACHER KENNEDY WAS KILLED DON’T USE THAT WORD HOW DARE YOU?
All language is metaphor.
“Reddit refugee” is a metaphor that conceptually makes a lot of sense and sounds good to the ear. No one using this term is making a political statement about asylum seekers.
We live in a world
Have you perhaps considered that we live in a society?
Interesting thought that is definitely worth considering. I used the term “Reddit refugee” in reference to my status. I am a little hesitant to shrink language by turning it into a competition or making words political. Refugee legitimately has multiple definitions, and the appropriate course of action would be to qualify the term; political refugee or Reddit refugee.
This sort of concept leads to all sorts of other similar issues. If I am having difficulty making it through a hike and I comment that I need to just “soldier on”, does that make light of the sacrifices of real soldiers who are dying all over the world? Should most people be disallowed from saying that they are starving because there are people in the world who are actually starving and not just hungry? Is it insensitive to say that I’m struggling to make it through the day at work when others, somewhere, are struggling to even stay alive?
For what it is worth, I’m okay with “refugee” by itself implying “political refugee”, and requiring other forms to be qualified.