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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

Why choose that pronouns are the problem and not your reaction to them? It costs nothing to refer to someone how they want to be.

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The example given contains an example of interrupting and correcting another person. You need to keep track of it, it cannot be inferred. I does cost something, even if a little.

correcting is part of human communication. it happens all the time, nothing personal.

Wastes people's time with useless interruptions for made up conventions.

Wearing a hat at all times and using thy/thee to refer to the second person singular is not even weird in this context, because it does not externalize pronpun usage onto others.

Sure, but we do that all the time for all sorts of made up conventions. We say "please" and "thank you". We ask people how they're doing as a greeting, when we don't care and they know we don't care.

It's useless, but it's also just basic common courtesy and politeness.

Probably, but I'd rather use please, thank you and how are you than learn a bunch of made up pronouns which make no sense to me and match each to a different person.

I get that it might feel like the rules you learned about how to refer to people are changing and that you might get chided for something you didn't even know what a "rule". Everyone feels that way. Even outside of the world of pronouns we make social faux pas and don't always really get the rules everyone else seems to be using. I know I have, giving unsolicited advice was a big social rule I had to learn the hard way.

My point is, I'd like to think we can rise to the challenge. If the rules made sense to you, do you think you would feel more comfortable engaging with them?

My point is that all human social norms are 100% made up, but we follow them, out of respect and trying to be nice to our fellow humans. Why not this one? It doesn't really hurt you :)

Would you get annoyed if someone said the same thing about your given name? If your name is Peter and someone called you Mike because they don’t care enough or are oddly stubborn and just want to refer to you how they want… it’s pretty damn annoying. It’s identity nullifying - a deliberately sent signal that I’m not willing to make a minimal effort to acknowledge your identity.

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