The Penny Arcade guys brought my attention to a campaign to get folks to stop using “mean” words. (Quotes mine.) Because I’m a wimp, I’m not going to type, here, the words they want you to stop using. I don’t think anyone ever finds my infrequent blog via Google, but I’d hate to mislead folks here looking for something else.
Go to their link. You’ll see exactly what’s going on. But too bad it won’t work. In fact, it’s going to backfire horribly. They’re going to turn the G word into the N word. I mean, I can respect the effort. And it’s horrible that teens are persecuted and abused by their peers. But you know what, they’re going to be persecuted and abused anyway. They need to address the sorts of social situations where this abuse is even possible. Won’t they don’t need to do is get a bunch of people to recognize and institutionalize the words used in this abuse.
It all comes down to “popularity,” according to studies I can’t be bothered to look up right now. If the popular kids smoke, other kids will try smoking. If the popular kids have sex, everyone wants to try it (everyone wants to try it anyway—it’s just a matter of how hard they try to hide it). And if the popular kids use “mean” words to hurt people, everyone else will too. Yep, even those who are getting hurt.
The campaign is also misguided in that it’s trying to humiliate perpetrators of being mean—which is hypocritical at best. And, as I said, won’t be effective in the least. Take a look at the downloadable posters.
I say start addressing self-respect issues. You’re not going to get everyone to stop using the bad words, so why not work on not giving a damn about the bad words. (Maybe that’s what those posters are for—to reassure the abused that people who use those words are losers. Alas, the message there would be “losers too,” which does nothing for self-esteem, or “the real losers,” which tries to maintain the class system that exists in pretty much every high school I’ve ever heard of).
Anyway, I have not blogged in a while, so this is what I came up with.
