Linguistic Bastardisation
I have noticed throughout the years the bastardisation of the English language and how it has taken over the language to the point that the majority of its speakers use this bastardised language. I am annoyed by this and would like to list some of the words and terms I avoid that I believe exist as a result of this bastardisation. Words and terms will be in alphabetical order.
Authorities
I refer to the use of this word in context of police or any other law enforcement agency. The reason I disdain this word being used in this context is because it implies police are superior to you. Instead of their being a fellow citizen to assist you that is better trained and equipped to deal with whatever situation that may require them, they instead are your superior, your authority to obey. The term "authorities" being used in reference to them cements the illusion that these people are above you, better than you, and that you are unequal to them. Use of this term propagates a class system among citizens, creating the belief that they are indeed inferior to the "authorities".
Branding
I refer to this term used in place of aesthetics, imagery, or design in a non-commercial context. This is part of the corporatization of English. For example, one may say the colors black and purple are part of my personal "branding". Even though I'm not selling anything nor trying to make any money, this corporate language will be used. Unless you are selling something and the elements of the design are there to sell it, do not use the term "branding". An example of this is YouTube which if you have a channel, refers to the customizable elements of your channel such as your profile picture, description, and banner as "branding" even if it's just a personal channel and has no commercial purpose whatsoever. Giant internet platforms corporatizing language is the main reason it bleeds into people's normal vocabularies.
Community
I avoid this word mostly in contexts where it's used as "[insert thing] community". I hate this word because it often lumps people into this collectivist perception of whatever thing. Whether it's relating to something you were born as or something you choose to be a part of, people often refer to people as being a part of some "community", taking away their individuality and ascribing a collective label to them. It really annoys me when people say stuff like "[insert thing] community has a [insert bad guy] problem" when said "community" is extremely diverse. People often think of these "communities" as being unitary entities where everyone has some collective connection to everyone else when in reality, they are more akin to confederations that only fall under a label due to a single shared trait or interest and often many subgroups under these labels despise each other.
Consume
More corporatization of language. I refer to the verb "consume" and the noun "consumer". While I'm generally okay with the use of "consumer" in legal contexts, to refer to using things or interacting with media as "consuming" degrades the action of using or interacting with things and to refer to people whom use things as "consumers" degrades them. This is because use of this word is simplifying many ways of interaction to a simple, corporatized word which investors can use to measure how much a company's crap is being bought and used. You're not watching a movie, playing a game, using a device, you're "consuming" whatever thing. You're just a "consumer" who will "consume" whatever "content".
Content
Even more corporatization of language. People refer to their own and others' artistic works as "content" and this word degrades the value of their works. "Content" makes it sound as if a work is just filler for people to "consume", that it's non-valuable slop that simply exists to push out to make a profit. This is probably the most commonly used term on this list as I often see people whom do make actual art that is out of passion and not to feed an algorithm refer to their work as "content" and it's sad. This doesn't apply to the use of this word in a grammatical sense. For example, while to call the articles on this website themselves "content" would make me want to vomit, to say the articles of this website are content of this website is okay because the word is used as a generic replacement for a noun in a genitive phrase. It's like how you would say cans of food are the contents of a box but you wouldn't call the cans themselves "content" unless rest of the genitive phrase is implied.
Creator
I refer to the context of calling oneself or another simply a "creator", usually a "content creator". So not only are you degrading works by genericizing them as "content" but you are degrading the makers of the work by calling them "content creators". Like with "content", using creator as a noun in a genitive phrase or an implied one is fine such as while saying I'm the creator of this website, simply calling me a "creator" or Mox forbid a "content creator" is akin to calling my writings "content". It degrades the value of the person whom makes whatever thing by genericizing them as just someone whom makes crap for people to "consume".
CSAM
CSAM stands for "child sexual abuse material" and is essentially the new hip way to say 'child porn'. While I don't know if this is the origin of the term, it became the replacement for the term 'child porn' back when Apple announced it would scan everyone's devices for what they called "CSAM". Since then, I noticed how pretty much no one says 'child porn' anymore and everyone's saying "CSAM" now. While the words that comprise of "CSAM" seem like they don't shy away from what it's referring to as some corpo newspeak, comparing both terms, I realized the term "CSAM" both takes away from the severity of the term 'child porn' and creates an implication that doesn't apply to all child porn. The term 'child porn' is a simple noun adjunct-noun phrase and gets the point across as simply as it can in the English language. "Child sexual abuse material" is a noun adjunct-adjective-noun adjunct-noun phrase that's just stringing a bunch of words together which in my mind, diminishes the to-the-point nature of 'child porn'. Whenever I see English phrases that are just a bunch of noun adjuncts strung together, the phrase in its entirety just blends together and loses meaning in my mind. I believe this is why "CSAM" is replacing 'child porn'; because while it seems to convey the same meaning in more formal language, its grammatical construction lacks the simple punchiness 'child porn' has which is often viewed as too icky of a term for people to say. Another reason I won't use the term "CSAM" as a replacement for 'child porn' is because it implies all child porn exists as a result of sexual abuse even though no matter how much you may hate the fact that child porn exists, not all of it comes into existence as a result of a sexual transgression. While all "CSAM" is child porn, not all child porn is "CSAM".
Former/Latter
I will never user the words "former" and "latter" when referencing one of two previously mentioned things not because it bastardises the English language through corporatization or sanitization or anything but because I simply cannot process the information when these words are used. Every single time I hear someone say the "former" or the "latter", I have to stop and think which thing the "former" or "latter" is referring to and if I'm reading, I have to look back and check which is which. No matter how much I come across their use, I simply cannot process what is being said without pausing and thinking.
Identity
People refer to their "identity" as some individualist trait they have when in reality, pretty much all identities are just an association with some collective. A person's "identity" isn't some self-liberating title that gives you individuality, it's a memetic virus that creates an illusion of individuality. You're just ascribing the collective "identity" to your personal traits. By taking on an "identity", you are psychologically limiting yourself to that "identity", usually at the behest of a greater collective.
LGBT
I will never refer to someone as being "LGBT". It's pretty much the same reason I don't say "community" in certain contexts. Often people will say "LGBT culture" or "LGBT community", lumping not only one diverse kind of people as all being in some unified collective but multiple diverse kinds of people as one big unitary entity. This creates the perception that gay people and transgender people all share a homogenized sort of culture, taking away from their individuality. Not to mention that this issue of collective ascription is worsened when you start doing the LGBTQIA+ stuff, further creating a perception of a homogenization of people of even more different kinds. If someone is gay, I call them gay; if they're trans, I call them trans; if they're nonbinary, I sperg out about gender nihilism. Because I hate it when people lump people whom share my traits as being in some "community", I refuse to refer to an individual as being "LGBT" whether they "identify" as that themselves. Let's not also forget it's possible for a gay person to be anti-trans, for a trans person to be anti-gay, or any other person with some queer trait to be against another with a different one; just because someone is gay or trans or nonbinary or whatever doesn't mean they're "LGBT".
Minor
From my article Absurdity Of Kids' Internet Safety: I've also noticed how the word "minor" has risen dramatically in its use and it's so overused, I cringe every time I hear it. The word is used in legal contexts to refer to people under the legal age to do something and can still be used in reference to legal adults such as a 20-year-old who is a minor when it comes to alcohol laws in the US. Because a minor is someone under the age of 18 in most contexts, I believe people began using this as a synonym for child because when talking about predators and whatever, it's always law and legality that's invoked to explain the wrongness of the perpetrators. It's not that an adult victimized a child, it's that an adult victimized a minor which is why people freak out over people who could've gone to high school together e-dating or whatever.
Person Of Color
I refuse to unironically call someone a "person of color" or a group "people of color" because it's the exact same as calling someone a colored person. Instead of color being an adjective, you're just making it a genitive noun. "Person of color" being the new politically correct way to refer to black and brown people seems like a sick joke by someone tricking people into thinking racist language just with a different grammatical construction is the new safe way to refer to them. And if it was about reclaiming the term 'colored person', we'd be saying 'colored person', not this pretend politically correct term.
[Insert] Rights
Read Rights Don't Stop Bullets
Product
I avoid this word for the same reasons I don't say "content". Whereas "content" usually refers to works people have made, "product" refers to anything, including "content" that is being sold. It degrades the value of whatever thing by labeling it as something to simply be sold and "consumed".
Other Stuff
I absolutely refuse to use algospeak. To use algospeak is to give corporations power over people's use of language and spread the memetic virus of self-censorship.
I refuse to use substitutes for slurs. Not only because I'm anti-censorship but also because making slurs taboo words amplifies their power. We live in an age were simply saying a slur regardless of context or if it's even an actual slur is enough to get you cancelled, doxed, labeled an -ism, whatever. When you make these word such a taboo that people go to great lengths to ruin the lives of people that say them, you only give them power. On the other hand, think of the gamer kids who're constantly screaming slurs. People laugh at them. This is why I think people overusing slurs can be a good thing, it turns the slurs into jokes to be laughed at. This is why around the mid-2010s, people weren't so uppity about slurs because everyone was an edgy little shit and slurs lost their power due to their increased use.
Unnecessary pluralization is possibly my biggest gripe in English in terms of grammar. I really hate it when people pluralize loanwords from languages that lack pluralization or they pluralize what should be collective nouns. For loanwords, take the example word 'haiku'. Many if not most English speakers pluralize 'haiku' to be 'haikus' when this is completely unnecessary. The word comes from Japanese, a language where you don't need to pluralize things; therefore in English, there's no reason to add pluralization and you can't make the excuse it's for clarity because other grammatical functions imply plurality. Using plural demonstrative pronouns such as "those haiku" already indicates plurality. Plural verb conjugation also indicates plurality without pluralizing the noun such as the difference between "the haiku resonates" and "the haiku resonate". For collective nouns, people often won't register things as being collective nouns when they are. The most common example I come across is the word 'Bitcoin'. There is no reason to pluralize the word 'Bitcoin' because it is a digital currency that doesn't actually have a countable value. Even though there is a numerical value, this value is like counting water as opposed to rocks. You may make arbitrary measurements like buckets of water or integers of Bitcoin but you would never say you have 'waters' in this context. I refer to people whom unnecessarily pluralize words as 'pluralcels'. Feel free to use this word too.
Something I notice happens in written English that is incorrect is the use of a double-x in spelling. This mostly occurs within neologisms that have entered English vocabulary since the 2010s. The most common examples are people spelling 'doxing' as 'doxxing', '-maxing' as '-maxxing', and spelling names such as my nickname Moxy as 'Moxxie' or 'Moxxy'. Both phonetically and in terms of spelling rules, a double-x cannot occur in English. Double consonants in base words usually exist because you're supposed to pronounce them in two different syllables but a double ks sound doesn't exist in English. Even in inflected syllables, at most, a person may pronounce the s sound in a different syllable but it's not another full ks sound. The different spellings of words with a single or double consonant depending on whether the preceding sound is a vowel or diphthong (or as most English speakers incorrectly call a long vowel) is also not an excuse to use the double-x either since words ending in an x that are suffixed have always been spelled with a single-x even if the preceding sound is a vowel. The problem of the double-x has gotten so bad that even non-inflected words will be spelled with a double-x such as how I often see 'dox' spelled as 'doxx'. Do not use a double-x under any circumstance outside of proper nouns.
Written 2025-9-8 Published 2025-10-1