Ask HN: What exactly *is* the definition of “toxic”? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What exactly is the definition of “toxic”?

9 pointssylvilagus10 comments

I see the word "toxic" being used more and more in a social context, but does it have a real objective meaning, or does it simply describe things someone subjectively doesn't like?

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I think the reason why toxic is getting used more frequently is because it is saying "a thing I/We don't like has a viral quality".

Flamewars notoriously have that feature, like a black hole dragging in more and more participants until everybody is Hitlin-Staler.

I would <personal opinion incoming> that most modern news websites and television news channels are toxic because they make the viewers more neurotic and in a way that spreads because misery loves company.

I suspect that a ban on news would magically improve social networking. People would still talk of news but the toxicity would go way down. No exceptions, total ban.

If a nuke goes off or the zombies are coming - you'll find out somehow.

Sometimes I miss out on daylight savings time changes or something basic everybody appears to know and I'm fine with that. Some people will think this impedes some democratic process - I can't imagine what happened before 24 hr news was invented or the television, I'm sure it was a complete nightmare.

"Toxic" is an assessment of behavior, that covers a lot of different possible actions. The set of actions that are obviously toxic or obviously not won't be the topic of much discussion, but as we all already know interesting conversations happen at the boundaries where assessments conflict.

So, when "toxic" is used to the exclusion of actually describing what happened you have to ask yourself: why isn't the speaker communicating more clearly? Maybe they're bad at stating their point, maybe it's a loose informal conversation, or maybe they benefit from the information asymmetry.

It's become a near-meaningless particle to indicate that the speaker dislikes something and wants to cast it as some great evil at the root of society's problems.

Toxic always brings forth memories of either Ninja Turtles or Swamp Thing, for me though.

I think it is related to the (in)famous talk the Subversion developers held in 2008 about "Poisonous people" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-3E8pyjFo Both terms are kind of meaningless because the allegory to toxic substances doesn't work at all. Water, salt, alcohol, DDT and lead are all toxic but in different ways. Imo, more specific terms are better like "Help Vampire," which according to some, would be a poisonous person.

Something which is toxic is poisonous. In a social context, it refers to behaviors, words, actions or situations which have a similar effect on the social fabric or body politic that literal toxins do on living tissue, which encourage the spread of collectively negative or harmful behaviors.

It means exactly what it says on the tin.

The problem is not that there are not toxic ideas or words, but the term has been so (ab)used that it has lost all meaning.

It is a bit like the word fascist which used to have a specific meaning, but which has been so widely applied that it is now pretty much meaningless except as a term of abuse.

A reasonable definition of the current usage might be that toxic means extreme.

"This gaming community is toxic" could be read as "This gaming community is extremely obscene"

"This forum is toxic" could be read as "This forum is extremely negative"

Seems to match the usage I see anyway.

While I suspect this thread is not going to last long, toxic is just another word that has lost all meaning by being applied by people to any topic they don't want to see discussed.

To answer your question toxic no longer has a real meaning outside of science and medicine.

i'm not able to answer your question, but the first thing i think of when i read "toxic" on hackernews* is this:

Iseendai's "Sick systems: How to keep someone with you forever" post: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html

which is about abusive and exploitative relationships / organisations / businesses / cults . probably a bit of a tangent, but perhaps a more useful one to read and think about.

* probably as a result of mentally associating hackernews ~ software jobs ~ bad software jobs ~ abusive/exploitative workplaces ~ toxic relationships ~ "toxic"

in a social context I see the word toxic being used to describe behaviours that are detrimental to other members of the community, to the extent that the members of the community that do not engage in those behaviours will disassociate themselves.

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