I don't think "steel man" has entered the common vernacular yet. At first I thought it was a typo.
Although if you think that term is hard to understand, I'm sorry to inform you about literally anything written by Europeans, which is more or less made to be impossible to understand on purpose.
I don't think most reasonable people will make that mistake.
> people who want to do philosophy without studying any of it
strikes me as unnecessary gatekeeping. The context here is fairly basic logic and critical thinking that clearly does not require formal study. I hope that more people who haven't ever been formal students of philosophy employ critical thinking, not less!
The people who say “steelman” a lot aren’t just busy with other things. They’re like full time bloggers and write huge essays constantly about their own system of critical rationalism and thinking correctly and all that, all philosophical topics.
Avoiding the literature is more intentional. Part because they want their community to use all different words so they’ll sound different and engineer-y. Part because they’d be annoyed that midcentury philosophy already tried their project and now thinks it doesn’t work.
Language is mutable and redundant. Different people come up with similar concepts independently over centuries and that's fine. Nobody has a copyright on philosophy.
Making your scarecrow out of steel doesn't make them a better arguing partner.