I will be real with you here Spider - if you follow anything objectionable up stream you’ll always end up with a handful of ethically and morally bankrupt capitalists. My emphatic “fuck Spez” isn’t just groupthink on this occasion. I appreciate that CEO is a job, and ultimately there’s a level of corporate responsibility - but Spez lied to us, ignored us (the AmA was laughably bad, answered 6 comments disingenuously and then dipped), attempted to defame or gaslight 3rd party Devs, violated data protection laws to preserve the sinking ship and has directed the entire company to basically dig in and starve us out. Users are the only thing bringing value to the platform - and this change is only harming the most productive users.
He might have the faith of the greed council backing his idiotic decision - but they weren’t the ones pissing off of the top diving board into our swimming pool.
He could have stood with us, we could have had transparent communication and even if we didn’t get compromise we could have had at least a conversation about why this is happening. but instead of any good faith engagement he decided to tell a bunch of transparent lies and throw a tantrum and then change the rules of moderation to reduce our power to fight for what we wanted.
Fuck Spez specifically for these reasons.
Fuck capitalism for everything else.
Yes, you’re right about the English definition - talking politics is difficult in a global forum because of these strange idiosyncrasies.
I do try to use the language flatly, avoiding emotive words where possible. It’s interesting you say that “woke” has positive connotations, as I think the Republican🇺🇲 and Conservative🇬🇧 crowds have been using that word as something approaching a slur!
When I say “conservatism” I am strictly referring to the definition in the dictionary or the wiki. I feel like the UK Tory party is definitely following a more anarcho-capitalist expression of the ideology, but their trans exclusionary rhetoric does have the air of “traditional” CoE values around it. In the states, the creeping in of a Christian flavoured version of Sharia law is an interesting development under a lib president, as I would consider this an expression of conservatism.
Personally, I think the connotations that the term conservatism has earned over the last hundred years are well earned, especially as the core values of conservatism seem to be somewhat nebulous. Ultimately we can only judge by the totally flawed implementation of the system that we have - just as we have judged Communism to be a totally unworkable and flawed system by studying the facist regimes of Russia and China as examples - despite the similarities between communism and what the USSR/CCP were/are being almost nil; though this is probably what you were driving at with your closing statement! 😅