It feels like the reduction of a nuanced problem into a simple one with a single victim and a single perpetrator, and only one acceptable narrative.

"It's not my fault I left my window open and you took advantage of it. I shouldn't have to keep my windows locked."

"If you see an unlocked window it's not an opportunity for you to take advantage of."

That's admittedly fairly obtuse, but you can see elements of this play out even in this thread, where it becomes a debate about the accuracy of the metaphor and not a discussion of the actual problem. It is so much easier to attack the language than it is to dig out the real concerns and talk about those, so you get a pro and anti situation or semantic nitpicking.

If you agree that the older generation can only think in the metaphorical sense and are practically stuck in the 50s with how they describe it, you also have to accept that it is so far out of whack with reality that it causes continual debate about what actually does reflect the situation and completely detracts from the problem at hand. It is beyond idiotic and it's symbolic of an unhealthy resistance to change.

As an aside, this happens in places like HN and Reddit all the time. A metaphor is introduced into a discussion and it totally derails it, and you're not talking about the source material any more, you're talking about the metaphor and how it can be more accurate. It's like the metaphor is more important than the problem itself sometimes and it's intensely sociopathic, because the linguistics take priority over the humanity.