Here’s an example from me

If you want to de-normalize a nation’s state/government, call them

spoiler

a regime


Other examples include: hospital --> loony bin

Edit: the more I think about it, the more I realize dysphemism are insults?

    • @[email protected]
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      246 months ago

      And it’s not wrong to call them that. We are entitled to social programs that we paid into. The issue is the popularity of people saying that some are “entitled” instead of “self-entitled”.

      • @[email protected]
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        6 months ago

        I don’t disagree (that we should get what we paid for), but I think that term is meant to imply that beneficiaries of these programs are spoiled brats. Its idiotic, but then so is our politics. The distinction between ‘entitled’ and ‘self-entitled’ I think is way too fine a point for our national discourse.

    • @[email protected]
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      56 months ago

      I like the term “earned benefits” for things like Social Security that you have to pay into.

  • SanguinePar
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    256 months ago

    Calling refugees “immigrants”

    Calling making an effort to be inclusive with people marginalised in some way, “woke”

  • @[email protected]
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    116 months ago

    Back when I was in high school, I remember people calling introverts and goths “freaks” (i.e. people who are outside the “norm”.)

      • Maple Engineer
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        106 months ago

        I tell my friends that Asperger’s is a super power and that the word, “normies” is an insult.

        • TheWoozy
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          36 months ago

          I’ve aways assumed “normie” was an insult. But I might be over sensitive to such things, becaise “cis” also sounds like an insult to me.

          • Maple Engineer
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            26 months ago

            A lesbian friend was the first person to call me cis. I had no idea what it meant. Now that I understand I have embraced the term to make clear how I see myself. I am a cis male.

  • @[email protected]
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    66 months ago

    There are a number of dysphemisms that are used to signify a person displaying symptoms of mental illness:

    • crazy

    • whack job (or whacko)

    • lunatic

  • @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    “Socialism turns out to work pretty well and is beating our ass” --> “Now, no one — certainly not me — is discounting the power of markets,” Sullivan noted at the time. “But in the name of oversimplified market efficiency, a large non-market economy had been integrated into the international economic order in a way that posed considerable challenges.”

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
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      46 months ago

      “Now, no one — certainly not me — is discounting the power of markets,” Sullivan noted at the time. “But in the name of oversimplified market efficiency, a large non-market economy had been integrated into the international economic order in a way that posed considerable challenges.”

      “Despite the best that has been done by everyone […] the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage,”

  • @[email protected]
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    36 months ago
    • Motorcycle riders : temporary Australians; or meat crayons
    • Mental hospital : Napoleon factory (credit to Robert Heinlein)
    • GulbuddinHekmatyarOP
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      36 months ago

      meat crayons

      Now, that’s a colorful right there

      Mental hospital : Napoleon factory (credit to Robert Heinlein)

      Why wouldn’t we want more Napoleons tho?

  • Call me Lenny/Leni
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    36 months ago

    Relevant to your second example, a lot of people here tend to call therapists “paid friends”.

    • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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      126 months ago

      Populism typically means playing to the appetites of the electorate without any intent to actually benefit them. Empty promises are the heart of it.

      • EndMilkInCrisps [he/him]
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        86 months ago

        Yeah but it’s used for things like Bernie wanting universal health care or Corbyn renationalising the railways. Which would benefit people.

        • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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          86 months ago

          True enough. It’s often used wrong as a way to smear good-faith attempts to actually govern as impractical or insincere.

          • GulbuddinHekmatyarOP
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            16 months ago

            What’s the other?

            I mean come on, demagoguery and populism shouldn’t be subsects of each other… they practically are synonymous, but one has a more neutral connotation…

            • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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              16 months ago

              They’re both negative. Scapegoating an outgroup is another form of demagoguery, so is decrying experienced political institutions as corrupt while claiming to be a reformer.

              • GulbuddinHekmatyarOP
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                6 months ago

                They’re both negative. Scapegoating an outgroup is another form of demagoguery, so is decrying experienced political institutions as corrupt while claiming to be a reformer.

                Pardon me if I find this confusing but this seems to be case of “There’s actually zero difference between bad and good things.” without context…

                Have you fully thought through your words to type this out? 😔

  • molave
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    6 months ago

    So-so no Frieren (I actually think it’s goated, btw)

    You’ll see a lot of dysphemisms in the 2____4u communities as well.