And, generally speaking, anyone who you could hope to convince of your point can smell this from a mile off.
Edit. Just caught myself say "parroting". That's one of those needlessly contentious or offensive words.
The buzzword of 2020/2021 appears to be "grifter" and its variations.
On topic with the article and related to this is the word "dogwhistle". (The funny thing is that "dogwhistle" can itself be a dogwhistle.) It doesn't get used as much in my experience as "grifter", though, which is so wantonly thrown about nowadays that it may as well have no meaning.
I avoid using both of these words. There are better ways to say it.
It's like "gaslighting", which people seem to now use as a synonym for any kind of abuse. Or how people say "humblebrag" for regular brags.
Then it was used as a descriptive accusation by outgroup members to claim that the speaker deliberately used coded language to appeal to an ingroup.
Then it was used to describe the deliberate tactic of crafting word choice to appeal to a group while maintaining plausible deniability and avoiding alienating those not in the know.
Then it was used to disparage certain groups by claiming that the group's writers and readers were communicating in coded language by tacit agreement, to affirm among each other positions the critics considered reprehensible.
And finally it achieved self-reference by becoming a word some feel is being used as coded language by other groups to disparage them.
It's unfortunate because each shade of meaning is a useful concept that would benefit from a succinct descriptor, but 'dogwhistle' has been churned through the semantic drift to where it's a word of subjective vitriol and not an objective descriptor of anything in particular.
Is this entity intentionally and repeatedly lying to you in a way to make you doubt your own sanity and rely on them for determining what is real or not
......or are they just disagreeing or disputing?
Doesn't matter, if you call something gaslighting you get to be the victim and the other side can be labelled an abuser and who wants to side with an abuser?
It might be needlessly contentious or offensive, but not in the exact same way that the original post is talking about: although it's an insult, it doesn't signal an affiliation, and it isn't hard to understand properly without a lot of background or explanation. (You might signal an affiliation through your choice of whom you compare to parrots, or which ideas or concepts you compare to their squawks, but every audience will probably easily understand correctly what you meant by doing it!)
However, if someone says it and doesn’t know what it means, yeah, they’re probably sharing an emotional viewpoint or repeating someone else’s words or both.
https://news.google.com/search?q=crook&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=U...
Excluding Crook as a name, it still seems to be in pretty common usage. It seems far more likely there is just regional variation. Most of the articles seem to be either from England or from the east coast. I heard the word in the Midwest all the time, although I can't say I've ever heard anyone on the west coast use the word.
Further, some parroted points are useful. Most HN comments are in essence parroted points from books, articles, and papers. The fact that we choose what to parrot is a kind of filter, and that filtering can bring useful information to the table.
The kind of folks who can "smell" parroted points are reacting emotionally and viscerally, yet seem to think it is others that cannot make cohesive/rational arguments.
More and more I see that there is no hope to trying to convince these people of anything - they've already made up their minds about these concepts and are not interested in having their minds changed.
In both cases, a significant amount of time is required to fully evaluate the other person's contribution, and you also have strong (heuristic) information telling you that the contribution is likely to be of extremely low quality.
(In the case of parroted buzzwords, specifically, it's likely that they'll state a point you've already heard dozens of times before and lack the ability to provide anything more than that even when directly poked).
There is a significant difference between the example in your analogy.
If you are a maintainer of a code base, and you are looking at a merge commit from a stranger, you are the authority. The domain is the one you are the expert in, and you are encountering strangers of dubious credibility whose claims you have to evaluate drawing upon your experience.
That's valid.
But, judging from your example and the forum on which we are speaking, your domain is NOT sociology, psychology, philosophy, or politics (and whatever intersection of those fields leads to analysis of racism/gender discrimination etc). Maybe you took some classes in it. Maybe you even have a minor. But it's probably not your profession or area of study.
Yet you are willing to dismiss academics who've chosen to spend years of their life studying these concepts, analyzing root causes, and coming up with conclusions.
How does that work?
However, when you hear people using academic buzzwords in a typical social situation (either online or offline), it's almost always the case that they're not an expert in the topic but instead just trying to show off how smart/woke/edgy they are by using some of the same language that the "thought leaders" do.
Why do you assume that you know more about these concepts (in social situations) than others you encounter do.
But actually that assumes incompetence, you're actually suggesting malice if you say they are just trying to show off how woke/smart they are.
If they are incompetent, why do you assume malice?
And why does using the buzzwords suggest incompetence if the language is the same as the academics. How can you know these people aren't well educated on the subject.
Remember, your thesis was that you ignore these people outright when they use these buzzwords. But you also admit academics use the same ones.