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Comment by ronnier | Hacker News Reader

Offtopic: I only see "genius" used these days to describe an idiot. I guess this is how words change meaning over time. At some point in the future being called a "genius" will always be seen as pejorative.

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I don't think the definition is changing at all. To me, we've just lost the ability to comprehend sarcasm.

That's because calling an idiot an idiot plainly is apparently considered uncouth and attracts downvotes, flags and downvotes often mean oblivion. In fact you will find do-gooders chome in with "be civil" but you flip the word and it's all kosher. The thing is all of us do and say idiotic things. So that makes a bit tricky indeed.

> in the future being called a "genius" will always be seen as pejorative.

If you are not a genius and someone calls you a genius, well, for you the future is already here, genius! (Shit I didn't really mean that :P)

There should be a name for this style of speech, using "good" to mean "bad".

Irony? Camp? “genius is a camp - so good that it’s bad”. “In the sentence ‘this is the sh1t’, ‘sh1t’ is camp - so bad that it is good”.

Sarcasm

Semantic inversion or contronym

There’s a lot of this in African-American vernacular. I’m not exactly sure what a “bad bitch” means but I believe it means attractive whore, but does it or does it just mean a good woman? Either way that’s two traditionally negative terms that seem to be used positively.

just like 'Nimrod' becoming an insult

Or "dunce."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duns_Scotus

Genius take!

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