Ask Lemmy

Something rather cringe and obnoxious in hindsight was the over use of the word "ocd" It was quite common in media and in my circles for somebody to say "I'm so ocd" when referring to some perfectly normal thing they do like tidying bookcases and organising things.

It's pretty cringy now and I'd never say it now. I feel bad for saying it... but hey personal growth I guess. I was in school/college at the time too so it was a long time ago. There were a lot of things that were common at school that I used to say that are definitely not pc nowadays and I accept that. I don't pretend to be a perfect and morally righteous invidual. I have flaws as much as the next person

I've done ny best to shake out ableist, racist, and other harmful speech.

We may be able to speak freely but we are all held accountable for the words we say

Quite a few. I grew up in a conservative, racist family. It took me a long time to unwind the problematic casual phrases I grew up with. I'm not proud of it, and I occasionally cringe looking backwards. I realize now the tremendous weight and damage those phrases could do. Now I just try to be better day by day, and to make sure I don't perpetuate those damaging habits in my own children.

Racism.

While I was never into it myself thankfully, I let it pass a lot in my family. Being in university changed that though, it just feels too uncomfortable to have my family say racist shit in front of me while I have so many people of color as friends. I still struggle to call out their transphobia though but that is due to my own identity issues.

Misogyny in books. I was reading a Morse book. He described the woman of a couple from dyed hair to hammer toes but had no physical description of her husband whatsoever.

smoking. growing up in the 80s, everyone was smoking - in bars, restaurants, airplanes, even hospitals.

everyone I knew, their parents smoked tobacco or chewed tobacco. I started smoking myself, around 16 or so, as did all of my friends & even people I didn't associate with. it was just part of the culture - and yes, I was aware at the time that it was a dangerous activity, but kids are stupid.

and then around 15 years ago or so everyone stopped or switched to vaping. now I really only see homeless people smoking. it's quite the culture shift.

I never realized how frequently I called things “lame” until I said it in front of a coworker paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. Hopefully he understood, but it just took that one glance telling me he heard it for me to stop. To try to stop.

Calling everyone "man", "bro", "you guys"

I know it's controversial, but moving away from "guys" when I address a group and more or less defaulting to "they" when referring to people I don't know.

They was practical, because I deal with so many students exclusively via email, and the majority of them have foreign names where I'd never be able to place a gender anyways if they didn't state pronouns.

Switching away from guys was natural, but I'm in a very male dominated field and I'd heard from women students in my undergrad that they did feel just a bit excluded in a class setting (not as much social settings) when the professor addresses a room of 120 men and 5 women with "Guys", so it just more or less fell to the side in favour of folks/everyone.

I'm not as naive. There usually is no simple solution to complex problems and when someone suggest one it's almost always wrong by definition. It's a messy world and sometimes the right thing to do sounds counter-intuitive

"if I were you". When I was younger I lack the ability really consider others' situation and put myself in their shoes. Not because I thought I'm better than them but thought I see a better way. I don't exactly remember when I stopped using it but I'm pretty sure it's around when I realized I would beat the shit out of me if I was my own child.