Wait, i MEANT to say “What a Baby stealing curse casting theiving traveler!” :rolleyes:
No, that’s what i would have said if i had meant to slight gypsies. Be offended all you fucking want, i don’t give a flying rats ass. everything offends everyone because everyone is stupid. so fuck all that shit. My cursewords have offended the curse patrol, my lack of capitals offended the grammer gestapo, my use of gestapo has offended hajario, this board needs to grow some damn skin. Words can mean something different from what you say they mean, but since you are playing “they are telling us what offends me” victim, this is falling on deaf ears.
Tar Tarkas, I usually agree 100% with you, but this time we disagree bigtime.
It’s one thing to unintentionally offend. But to say something after you’ve been told that it’s not very nice and then get huffy when someone tells you about yourself…well, that’s just rude and ignorant.
I didn’t really know the etymology of the word until recently. Before that, I’m sure I used it fairly often. Now I don’t. Not because it offends me personally (because it doesn’t). But because I don’t want to come off looking like an insensitive idiot to anyone who MAY be offended* (or simply irked, as Kal seems to be).
How hard is it to use another word?
*[sub]I’m well aware of the argument “anyone can be offended by anything” but in this case I think Kal makes a good case for why “gyp” isn’t just any ole word.[/sub]
All y’all yankees talkin’ about rednecks don’t worry me none.
[old country music song]
“We don’t fit in with that white collar crowd
We’re a little too rowdy and a little too loud
But there’s no place that I’d rather be than right here
With my red neck, white sox and Blue Ribbon beer”
[/old country music song]
When I went to college in Mississippi, my English professor used to make fun of me and make sarcastic comments because I am a Yankee. She believed that I felt I was better than the Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama natives who filled the classroom, and that I needed to be taken down a peg.
Note that she decided this before I’d said a word beyond my name and, when my accent raised the question, my state of origin.
News Flash: Not all Yankees hate Southerners. Not all Southerners hate Yankees. Not all of any group hates all of any other. Don’t be an asshole and assume that the hate is there if it hasn’t been shown.
There’s a reason I don’t attend that university any more, and it has nothing to do with me possibly thinking I was “too good” for it. The students were just like kids up home, but with different accents. It’s some of the professors who were complete and utter fucks.
Many of the posters seem to operate on the assumption that there is no limit to the efforts one must make to avoid causing offense. While I can agree that giving intentional offense can tend towards the assholish (love that word) end of the behavior spectrum, so can the taking of offense.
The offenderati seem to enjoy the role as policemen of innocent speech. The key is context. Some people seem almost tone deaf as to the context and intention in which a remark is made. Words by themselves, unless they are universally regarded as offensive, have less power than that with which they are credited. The context in which they are used, and by whom, is much more important.
So to the OP I say fine. Congratulations on your new word. We really need to recognize new ways in which we could be offended, even if it takes a lot of effort. To those who insist on posting as drive bys in threads which they are otherwise uninterested just to let a poster know they have offended them. Good work. Glad we can be endlessly inventive with the things we can get huffy about.
Really though isn’t there a better use for our vast brain power.
Sorry for the delay in answering. I was at a wedding and the attendant parties for a friend in Mobile, Alabama (which probably deserves its own thread in MPSIMS as one of the most insanely chaotic events I’ve seen in years…among many, many other things, it included a father-of-the-bride who got so hammered on Pastis and pot that he couldn’t be woken for the rehearsal or the rehearsal dinner (even though one of his sons blasted away tunelessly with a trombone in his ear) and a grandfather-of-the-bride who’s had his earlobe recently chewed off in a bar fight.)
Anyhow,
This is unfair and unacceptable. I asked an honest, fair question and was expecting an honest, fair answer. Instead, I got what appears to be an indictment of my “white victimhood” from someone who has never met me nor, to my knowledge, with whom I’ve ever had significant interaction.
If you’d like to convince me, please put in the work. If not, please avoid sweeping, unwarranted statements and simply say, “Eh, I don’t feel like it.”
Terms like “grammar gestapo” don’t bother me. The thread to which I think you refer was one where someone (not you, as I recall) said that some trivial thing was just like the Nazis. I took offence to the ignorance of that comparison. That started some sort of argument between us that I had forgotten until now. Now that my memory has been refreshed I see that you are doing the same childish shit, using words that you know offend on purpose. Grow some damn skin? You need to grow up.