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Comment by fshbbdssbbgdd | Hacker News Reader

I’m no prescriptivist, but can’t help but find the dilution of meaning of this term to be disappointing. There’s plenty of other words for lying, but there’s no other word for gaslighting.

I wonder if the word is by its nature particularly prone to semantic drift. If somebody’s in the state of mind where they are talking about gaslighting, they are not ready to receive the message that they are using the word wrong. Nobody wants to die on the hill of correcting the usage of this term, so there’s no natural guardrails to stabilize its meaning.

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I like your explanation for why the word might be drift prone but I think the explanation is much simpler: In contemporary social and political conversations disagreement isn’t an acute occurrence. People who share even a slightly different view are not just wrong, they’re rotten to the core and consciously systemically undermining good in the world.

Words like wrong, disagree or even lying don’t express this sentiment. They give the person who disagreed with you a pass on what they really are: A manipulator who is attempting to assault your psyche and break you down.

I really hope we as a society get out of this mode of thinking soon. I’d love to be able to have rational discourse again in my lifetime outside of a very small circle of trusted people.

The problem, as I see it, is that individuals may not be "rotten to the core", but movements can be. The most active participants are often the worst ones, and the less-awful ones will often make excuses for them. Even by saying nothing, but simply ignoring it while identifying with the group, they will be seen by both enemies and allies as approving of the worst behavior.

In my opinion, the best way to "get out of this mode of thinking" is for people to look at their allies and say, "Hey, can we tone it down a little?" As it is, right now, it's the ones who are not "rotten to the core" with the most ability to change things. And failing to do so means that they are, indeed, "systemically undermining good in the world".

Unfortunately, asking people to tone it down is a dangerous tactic. It may improve the world, but at a cost of decreasing your own power. That's why the nastiness not only persists, but expands.

Sometimes, asking your allies to tone it down a little puts you in their enemy list.

And with good reason, in the sense that the extreme rhetoric can be very successful. It is a way to excite the base. The trick is to avoid alienating the people who imagine themselves to be centrists.

So asking your allies to tone it down a little is a genuine risk. You have to be willing to take up the side of the people who are being harmed. Or you can accede to the harm. But you don't get to opt out of that choice -- one thing or another happens.

I opt out every day by not logging into twitter. We don't have a moral obligation to intercede in every argument.

Masses dilute true meaning of words. It happened to few words:

"hacker" - used to mean deep understanding of a system and using it in unusual or unintended way, now it means criminal

"troll" - used to mean creating specially crafted post to trigger emotional response (like a posting in star trek forum that trailer looks fake because we all know there are no shadows in space), now it means bully that wants someone to commit suicide.

"leak" used to mean data you can download, now it means someone stole the data.

“crypto”

“literally”

"ban" used to mean the prohibition of something, but now it's being used to mean the voluntary cessation of an action. E.g. "macdonalds bans plastic straws". No, they decided to stop using plastic straws.

Less than 10% of “their” restaurants are theirs.

They prohibited the owners/operators of the other 90%+ from providing plastic straws.

I remember when "troop" meant more than one soldier.

"Orange", as the name of the order of British nationalists in Northern Ireland, named after the (Dutch) Prince William of Orange, named after the Principality of Orange (French), named after the city of Orange, named after the Celtic word for forehead or temple.

The color of the Orange Order is named after the fruit, derived from a corruption of 13th century French or Spanish (approximately "an orange" ≈ "a norange" ~> naranja, but spellings from that era aren't consistent anyway), from Arabic, ultimately from an unknown Dravidian language.

Happy, awesome, enormity, sophisticated, egregious, cute, bully, girl, ...

And of course: fast, inflammable, sanction, cleave, dust, bolt, oversight, peruse, table.

I’m sure this has always been the case, but I’m thinking social media has accelerated it: there seems to be a trend of bending vocabulary for effect. Add a result we lose dynamic range in language.

> There’s plenty of other words for lying

I don't think that misuse of gaslighting is not in favor of "lying", but rather the "manipulation", at least from my experience of hearing this when misused.

Could you imagine, Twitter instead of censoring things with AI, corrected people's word usage with that AI? It would be concerning but also kind of cool.

"You mean to use 'accept' rather than 'except'" "You drank an 'espresso' not an 'expresso'" And the French Academy would no longer have a reason to exist.

The french academy would undoubtedly find a reason to be upset, and being unable to negotiate with a bottom of the barrel AI blackbox that only knows how to suggest different words, start WWIII in an attempt to right what they consider wrong.

As MW says, the present more expanded usage of "gaslighting" isn't synonymous with lying; it's closer to "systematically lying".

> The idea of a deliberate conspiracy to mislead has made gaslighting useful in describing lies that are part of a larger plan. Unlike lying, which tends to be between individuals, and fraud, which tends to involve organizations, gaslighting applies in both personal and political contexts.

All words with bad connotations get overused and diluted: gaslighting, racism, bigot, etc.

Found the fascist.

...

Concept creep. Should be word of the decade or something :)

Not only negative connotations, but also.

My grandmother (born around the time Ireland gained independence from the UK) used "Irish" to mean "stupid" shortly before her Alzheimer's diagnosis.

When my mother (born during WW2) also got an Alzheimer's diagnosis, she started using "glory hole" to refer to the kitchen cupboard. (I had to look it up, but it's apparently a legit though obsolete meaning).

"Democratise" is my personal bugbear. Doesn't have anything to do with voting or dispute resolution.

My dad had a problem with the words "millennium" not being used for the period starting Jan 1, 2001, and the word "gay" switching from the mid-20th-century meaning to the late-20th-century meaning.

Don't forget "sexual assault".

I'm still not sure I properly understand what the word means.

> Nobody wants to die on the hill of correcting the usage of this term.

"Correcting" language use is just not "the cool thing to do". Think of the term "grammar nazi" - how many activities do we ever associate with Nazis? Very few, but talking to people about grammar is one of them.

Granted, it can be rude to bluntly tell someone they are using a word wrong. But there are some soft ways of doing it that can be acceptable depending on the context. Eg: “did I hear that right, or did you just say [correct usage]?”

You can also be attacked by people plainly wrong. Some will defend their incorrect grammar or pronunciation to the grave, and tell you you need to get on with the times. English native speakers are egregious for that.

But in general people really dislike when they are wrong, in any context.

> Some will defend their incorrect grammar or pronunciation to the grave, …

For example, the portion of the population who pronounce “gif” wrong

Huge grammar nazi here. Unashamed.

One of my favorites: "It's 'hanged', not 'hung'."

Got it, so: "I think you're dating him just because he's hanged".

I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

TBH "grammar nazi" is probably the kindest common use of "nazi" I can think of, wherein it means (in context): "one who strictly adheres to the perceived grammatical rules of the used language" or something close to that. Calling someone a "grammar nazi" is far softer in result than calling someone an "actual nazi" (usually).

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