Words evolve over time: it's a pretty standard trend in linguistics.
However, I think there is a specific trend that no linguist dares to talk about, mostly because linguistics nowadays is a slave to "social" """sciences""": forced word meaning change through reduction to a stereotype.
We've all seen it in the last 15 years of social justice warrior bullshit, how the word "fascist" changed to functionally become "person I disagree with". The key ironic characteristic of the word "fascist" in particular is that the ones using such a word are typically the ones enforcing some sort of totalitarian restriction/imposition over those they call so.
This phenomenon of a word referring to a particular state, situation or population category being coopted and its meaning reduced to only one aspect of the referent is historically exemplified by the words "plebeian", "spartan" and "draconian". Take an already existing word, reduce it to one characteristic of the original referent, almost always negative (plebeian = lowly, spartan = excessively frugal, draconian = extremely severe, strict) and repurpose it.
This phenomenon, though, acquired a new quality after WWII, during the Cold War, with the "Red Scare" and all. Back then it was "commies", nowadays it is "fascists", different exoskeleton same insides - cattle needs a boogeyman or else their mediocre lives are utterly incomplete and void.
Which brings me to my point. With the rise of the """blackpill""" among mainstream culture (a very edulcorated, "normie proof" version of it, at least), the word "incel" has lost all of its original meaning, simply representing involuntary celibate individuals of the male sex, and became associated with "misogyny, racism, ableism" and more worthless "isms". This due in small part to the empirical observations about race, physical and mental integrity etc... playing a very relevant part in the everyday intersex dynamics, and to the empirical descriptions of the female sex in relationship dynamics, and beyond, but mostly due to individual incels venting their frustrations on this forum or other places on the internet (not that it's wrong to vent).
Besides the undeniable fact that the Manosphere, the various pills and incels are often conflated into the same category while they refer to separate things, the obvious issues with this phenomenon are that:
1) Things are not able to be pragmatically categorized efficiently anymore (because what is an incel if everyone who disagrees with you is one?);
2) A wide propaganda machine is enabled to run without resistance, giving soyciety another worthless thing to debate over instead of trying to tackle some actual issues;
3) It attributes to incels a behaviour that is not even attributable to them.
Aside from the facts that bluepilled incels (aka incels in denial) will never express misogyny as they mostly simp out for girls and become white knights in denial, and that many blackpilled incels are not misogynistic for observing the reality around them and formulating either a judgment of sorts, or withholding sympathy for a particular social category is automatically categorized (most generally) by "leftists" (of the social type, for instance, SJWs, activists for movements related to LGBT/Feminism/BLM etc...) as "hate" or "hate crime", generating a sort of moral panic that has manifested itself in the continuous degeneration of the internet over the last 10-15 years (about ever since tumblr opened the floodgates and made such things mainstream), the extreme cherry-picking and subsequent improper generalization don't take into account that most of these outbursts come from people who only want to come in here to fedpost and leave 2 days later, that some of the members who engage in such outbursts do not have any other outlet, and that the perceived "violence" never translates into real life acts of violence of any sorts (except...).
I wonder if people would have the same reaction as that one dude who made a """documentary""" on incels, when being replied "7-15" to his question "how many deaths due to incel acts of violence have ever been recorded?".
People, generally females, use this word unsparingly, even towards normies or chads, transforming it into a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. By calling everyone that does not profess their unwavering devotion to the female sex an incel, they are effectively not only inappropriately repurposing a word neutral in nature and warping its meaning to become an insult on par with the various "phobics" and "isms", but hurting their own agenda and end goal at the same time, diluting that repurposed meaning until no one will be an incel anymore because everyone is.
It's pathetic really.
However, I think there is a specific trend that no linguist dares to talk about, mostly because linguistics nowadays is a slave to "social" """sciences""": forced word meaning change through reduction to a stereotype.
We've all seen it in the last 15 years of social justice warrior bullshit, how the word "fascist" changed to functionally become "person I disagree with". The key ironic characteristic of the word "fascist" in particular is that the ones using such a word are typically the ones enforcing some sort of totalitarian restriction/imposition over those they call so.
This phenomenon of a word referring to a particular state, situation or population category being coopted and its meaning reduced to only one aspect of the referent is historically exemplified by the words "plebeian", "spartan" and "draconian". Take an already existing word, reduce it to one characteristic of the original referent, almost always negative (plebeian = lowly, spartan = excessively frugal, draconian = extremely severe, strict) and repurpose it.
This phenomenon, though, acquired a new quality after WWII, during the Cold War, with the "Red Scare" and all. Back then it was "commies", nowadays it is "fascists", different exoskeleton same insides - cattle needs a boogeyman or else their mediocre lives are utterly incomplete and void.
Which brings me to my point. With the rise of the """blackpill""" among mainstream culture (a very edulcorated, "normie proof" version of it, at least), the word "incel" has lost all of its original meaning, simply representing involuntary celibate individuals of the male sex, and became associated with "misogyny, racism, ableism" and more worthless "isms". This due in small part to the empirical observations about race, physical and mental integrity etc... playing a very relevant part in the everyday intersex dynamics, and to the empirical descriptions of the female sex in relationship dynamics, and beyond, but mostly due to individual incels venting their frustrations on this forum or other places on the internet (not that it's wrong to vent).
Besides the undeniable fact that the Manosphere, the various pills and incels are often conflated into the same category while they refer to separate things, the obvious issues with this phenomenon are that:
1) Things are not able to be pragmatically categorized efficiently anymore (because what is an incel if everyone who disagrees with you is one?);
2) A wide propaganda machine is enabled to run without resistance, giving soyciety another worthless thing to debate over instead of trying to tackle some actual issues;
3) It attributes to incels a behaviour that is not even attributable to them.
Aside from the facts that bluepilled incels (aka incels in denial) will never express misogyny as they mostly simp out for girls and become white knights in denial, and that many blackpilled incels are not misogynistic for observing the reality around them and formulating either a judgment of sorts, or withholding sympathy for a particular social category is automatically categorized (most generally) by "leftists" (of the social type, for instance, SJWs, activists for movements related to LGBT/Feminism/BLM etc...) as "hate" or "hate crime", generating a sort of moral panic that has manifested itself in the continuous degeneration of the internet over the last 10-15 years (about ever since tumblr opened the floodgates and made such things mainstream), the extreme cherry-picking and subsequent improper generalization don't take into account that most of these outbursts come from people who only want to come in here to fedpost and leave 2 days later, that some of the members who engage in such outbursts do not have any other outlet, and that the perceived "violence" never translates into real life acts of violence of any sorts (except...).
I wonder if people would have the same reaction as that one dude who made a """documentary""" on incels, when being replied "7-15" to his question "how many deaths due to incel acts of violence have ever been recorded?".
People, generally females, use this word unsparingly, even towards normies or chads, transforming it into a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. By calling everyone that does not profess their unwavering devotion to the female sex an incel, they are effectively not only inappropriately repurposing a word neutral in nature and warping its meaning to become an insult on par with the various "phobics" and "isms", but hurting their own agenda and end goal at the same time, diluting that repurposed meaning until no one will be an incel anymore because everyone is.
It's pathetic really.
