with tact (Destiny)

by Xenos , Shores of Time, Thursday, July 30, 2015, 23:09 (3402 days ago) @ slycrel

I don't agree that we should always be "careful not to accidentally exclude swaths of the community by the words you choose". Because it's not my responsibility to keep tabs on the perspective of the people posting in a given thread, the forum as a whole, or even in the larger community. I'll try to be a good guy as much as possible. But I may say something that offends someone, or is taken out of context. That's life, especially on the internet.

I don't think Claude is suggesting that if you post something and it offends someone that you are ALWAYS at fault, I think he's more suggesting that some people don't consider it AT ALL. The biggest complaints I have about people on both sides of any argument are:

1. Many of them never take into account what they are saying, don't even re-read it or think about it after expressing it.
2. Many of them take offense at a single word or phrase in an otherwise totally fine comment.
3. Many of them after seeing that some people react like 2. to a post they made as 1. then instead of realizing "oh that was kind of dickish, I should explain what I meant." they react like 2, starting the process all over again.

You can see it on this forum, reddit, bungie.net, and pretty much any other discussion site anywhere (you can even see it in this very thread, and no I don't want to discuss which ones), and to me is the core of most heated, hurtful arguments on the Internet, and CAN be easily avoided by both sides. Does this mean you have to carefully go through and sanitize every post you make, of course not, that would be insane (and is the core problem behind political correctness), instead it means using an attitude of acceptance instead of an attitude of hostility. The issue is always figuring out if you are someone who needs to adjust your attitude (I have no idea if I do, and I am prideful enough I wouldn't trust anyone telling me if I need to or not).