When I joined, just a few days ago, the number of users at lemmy.ca had just climbed above a thousand. I see that now it’s well over two thousand.

That’s quite the growth!

  • EhForumUser
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    1 year ago

    The dictionary defines refugee as : “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” While those could lead to mortal danger, they may only lead to undue suffering. Fleeing one’s home to avoid said undue suffering still qualifies as refugeeism, as refugee is defined by the dictionary.

    Of course, the dictionary is only a record of observation around how people have commonly use words in the past, not some kind of rule of law. Language is merely a tool, and one that is available to be used by the user as they see fit. Refugee is whatever we want it to be, and from context we understand that refugee here means someone who left Reddit to use Lemmy. How refugee is used in other contexts is irrelevant.

    • jerkface
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      1 year ago

      It’s irrelevant to you. It is not irrelevant to actual refugees, who are present in this forum. It trivializes their experience. The same way you would not use rape victims as a careless metaphor for whatever your current First World Problem is, you should not abuse refugees in a similar way.

      • EhForumUser
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        1 year ago

        This verbal rape is poorly considered. There is no reason not to use rape as a metaphor when it works. This is like saying I wouldn’t butter my toast with a knife because some people have been unwelcomely stabbed. Except I would, because there is no connection between someone being stabbed and me buttering my toast. Words are just a tool. Ascribing emotions to a tool may be something people do, but it does not make sense to.

        No doubt there are stabbing victims who are affected by someone buttering toast with a knife, but at some point it has to be their problem to sort out. Society would stop functioning if we had to consider everyone’s irrational idiosyncrasies. But we have chosen to live in a functioning society, so that means only problems shared by the collective as a whole are to be considered by the whole. Individual concerns are on the individual to figure out. Like it or not, that is what living in a society entails.

        • jerkface
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          1 year ago

          There is no reason not to use rape as a metaphor when it works.

          Stopped reading. Thanks for letting me know I’m wasting my time with you.

          • EhForumUser
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            1 year ago

            You come to write comments on an Internet forum when you could be doing literally anything else with your life and you only just now realized you were wasting your time?