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Ask HN: Why are people offended by everything now?

11 points by woofiefa ↗ HN
There is currently a tendency where people are offended by things that wasn't a problem one or two years ago. For example I read about a software project that had replaced all occurrences of master/slave with leader/follower, my first thought was that it must be a joke, but it wasn't. It seems that is not only in the tech industry but everywhere, as it has even been a theme in latest season of the American sitcom "South Park".

Does anyone know what started all this?

5 comments

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edoceo
I'm offended you've even asked the question :p
techjuice
These was bound to happen eventually as the technology culture evolves. The master/slave terms was more then likely not the best terminology in the start and does not help those who are not technical understand what it is up front without thinking about slavery at first.

If you know someone who was a slave, had it as apart of your family history or are currently living in illegal slavery the master/slave naming can be very offensive and in some cases trigger PTSD from events that occurred to you in the past.

With the changing to something easier to understand and more neutral it removes the bad baggage that comes with the initial terms and in most cases helps people new to the technology understand or at least relate better to what is going on.

I've had colleagues pull me aside for advice on better terms to use than the defaults so they would not offend their coworkers, current and potential customers or other friends. If you feel embarrassed or wrong about the master/slave reference there is a good chance it will cause some issues spoken and unspoken as there are better alternatives for it that are more in line with our modern cultures.

Changing master/slave to primary/replicas is more appropriate as it helps people understand what it is at first, has no bad baggage associated with it and easier for non technical people to understand.

staunch
> Changing master/slave to primary/replicas is more appropriate as it helps people understand what it is at first, has no bad baggage associated with it and easier for non technical people to understand.

1. Master/slave may be more accurate than primary/replica, depending on the specifics.

2. There's no inherent baggage in master/slave, beyond what you bring to it. It's a concept, not a slur. There's nothing unethical about one computer being a slave to another.

3. The understanding of non-technical people is not an important consideration in technical terminology. Non-technical people don't know what HTTP means either.

> If you know someone who was a slave, had it as apart of your family history or are currently living in illegal slavery the master/slave naming can be very offensive and in some cases trigger PTSD from events that occurred to you in the past.

And this is where you lose all the reasonable people.

jakeogh
It's much easier to control people if they are fighting amongst themselves, this works out well for the political class since they can distract folks from figuring out how bad they are getting fucked.

This is part of the more general war on freedom of speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM