Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
If someone can't state their point without warping the very language they use to support their point, it makes it very hard to feel like anything they're saying is credible.Example 1: someone is trying to convince me to vote Republican. They go through the Republican platform issue by issue, and compare/contrast it to the Democrats' stand. However, every time they use the word "Democrat" they instead say "Democrap" or "Dumbocrat" or "Dumbocrap". That does not make me think they are clever wordsmiths; rather, that makes me think that they think I'm an idiot and that they think they can actually manipulate me with such silliness. It also makes me think they arrived at their own philosophy not by trying to understand opposing views, but by inventing their own strawmen for whatever tribe they imagine they are opposed to. It makes me think they are driven by tribalism rather than ideas.Example 2: well, here, RMS' insistence on using the word "useds" rather than "users" when referring to people who are on Facebook. Yeah, I get it. Ha ha ha. It doesn't make me think you're clever, it makes me think you literally do not possess the capacity to reason about anything without invoking strawmen. It calls into question every single observation you are making. It makes it sound like you don't respect the people you are supposedly trying to convince, and are instead just enjoying preaching to your choir.It's not like an isolated incident, it is literally his primary rhetorical device in nearly everything he's written over the last 3 decades. Even the appropriation of generic terms like "free" to mean very, very, very specific and non-intuitive things reeks of intellectual dishonesty. It's so frustrating because he does have some (some) very insightful and constructive ideas about a lot of things, and could be such a positive contributor to the world, but it's like he wants to alienate his non-choir audience right out of the gate. It's like he's terrified of actually engaging with people that are not already 100% (not 99.9%, he demands 100%) on his side. He is right about some (some) things, but so many, many people will never know it because he wants to shoot himself in the foot as soon as possible.