Whenever this topic comes up I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would waste so much energy mud slinging over some personal language project. It only makes sense if it’s become a hate meme. My pocket word for an event that’s a sort of social singularity. It occurs when enough popular voices have directed the entirety of a community to shame a target based on some perceived wrong, real or otherwise.
Wherever it comes up I’m pretty taken aback by how tribal and ego focused we can be, even among the smartest of us. And that thought isn’t meant be taken as condescending. After all, we’re only human. And for a larger span of human history, that word has meant “hairless ape” more than anything else.