[Ansteorra] Stolen from the Ealdomerian Lexicon
Marc Carlson
marccarlson20 at hotmail.com
Sun Sep 24 14:09:03 PDT 2006
>L T ldeerslayer at yahoo.com Because the first two terms that people think
>of in regard to people who
>like and try to do period stuff are "period police" and "period nazi"...
I would be the last person to say that those terms dont come up, and that
there are some folks who can think of no other way to describe a concept
that may have only been expressed negatively. I am also aware that there is
an irritating (to me) tendency in the Society to find a term to call
something, and then use that term ceaselessly for that *and anything else
even similar* from then on, without ever giving any thought to what that
means (Hence things like Autocrat, Feastocrat, and whatever the heck-ocrat
is out there this week)..
I guess my point is that it doesnt matter what the term that is being used
IS as much as that there is a term at all. What we have is a spectrum of
people with different feelings about a particular topic. I may not agree
with this person or that person, but Im not sure I need a label that
denigrates their humanity to express their position on that spectrum.
Certainly there are people who are very obnoxious about how they feel, and
how they act to those with a different position in that spectrum I have a
whole slew of humanity denigrating labels for THEM, but they appear all over
that same spectrum. The fact they are acting like flatulent twits has
nothing to do with their position on the spectrum of authenticity/accuracy.
Yes, some people who are interested in accuracy and authenticity do label
themselves as Authenticity Police, or Authenticity mavens, or what have
you (although Im not sure that Ive ever seen anyone who called themselves
an authenticity nazi). While in general I dont, I have come up with some
attempts at humorously using Authenticity Police as a way of trying to cope
with the insult. For the most part though, Im not sure that most people
who fall into the category of flatulent twits who prefer authenticity
(assuming that they actually really exist in the numbers suggested) actually
realize that they are acting in any way that might seem Police like, or Nazi
like.
I appreciate that you are wanting to make things easier for people, and try
to remove the sting of insult. But really, lets say that we decide to call
all people who prefer authenticity Blahblahs, how long will it be before
people start using Blahblah as a negative term to refer to those flatulent
twits?
As far as Im concerned, Im a person, hes a person over there, shes a
person, them over there, we just have different interests and approaches.
By labeling me a blahblah, you will soon stop thinking of me as a person
first, but as a thing first. Here let me demonstrate replace blahblah
in the previous sentence with self-important, condescending, tight-assed
bozo and see how tempting it is? :)
Marc/Diarmaid
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