It seems to me that one of the issues is that the (more extreme) woke culture has put the entire burden of communication on the speakers rather than the listeners. Is not enough that you intend to offend, or that you say something that offends someone, is whether something that you say could possibly offend someone, even if you didn't have the slightest intentions. On the other say the listeners are free to interpret the message in the most uncharitable way possible, and blame you for it.
I describe these scenarios to my young children as concentric circles. One person can be acting reasonably (small circle around them) or very badly (larger circle). A person nearby can be very resilient (small circle) or fragile (larger circle). Where the circles overlap, is when there is tension and there are fights, tears or anything else that requires me to intervene.
Obviously very bad behaviour (large circle) is going to overlap with a nearby resilient child. Or a very tired and fractious child is going to sulk by their sibling doing just about anything. But the more resilient and better behaved the combinations, the better.
If the children are fighting, I've taken to just calling out "Circles!"
Unfortunately, a polarised society and social media seem to make everyone treat interaction as war, which is pretty tedious.
But interpreting someone's words in the most uncharitable way possible is an ancient sport, intended to slight and annoy the opponent, when finding reasonable, material objections fails. It's just an ancient hold of wresting in the (verbal) mud. It sort of gives the party who successfully pulled it an upper hand.
Now that these wrestlers found out that they can persuade the public that the most uncharitable interpretation is actually harmful to some third party (nobody from the audience usually says that they personally are offended), this approach became immensely popular.
Since simple reason would usually dispel much of the effect, leaving only the small and easily correctable issue, it is common to excite a large amount of reason-eclipsing emotions over such issues, preferably the righteous rage.
But it may feel fun to express a strong and righteous emotion, especially in a crowd of other people doing the same. It does not take thinking, it does not take making a difficult decision (because everybody around can't be wrong), so it feels good. A big echo chamber like a popular Twitter thread make it feel epic in scale.
This makes that kind of righteous rage a very convenient tool of manipulation, for fun, profit, and any other purposes.
And to be clear, these uncharitable interpretations go far beyond word policing.
The one that actually annoys me the most is “analogy policing”. If I say “would you be ok if i stole your bike”. And then your response is “now you’re equating me to a bike thief!” Or “ you’re trivializing This to bike theft?!”
We can’t have discussions because every phrase is taken as a way to win an argument. IMO this is far worse than language policing as there is not even the intention of trying to protect a disadvantaged group.
I personally believe that 2 things have greatly affected P2P communications. Anonymity and attempting to hold meaningful conversation strictly through text. When we communicate with text we cut off non-verbal communications that are a major source of interpreting the intent of the speaker and the receptiveness of the listener. In-person conversations are constantly adjusting what and how things are said depending on non-verbal cues. This becomes impossible in text only communications so the words have to convey everything and word choice the dominant replacement for non-verbal cues. The fact that we are communicating primarily via text these days has spilled over into in person communication. IMHO
Eh, that’s just internet discourse in general. Once you put down Twitter this stops being an issue. I would love for someone to deconstruct what about social media, regardless of leaning of the platform, the people, or the subject being discussed causes these bad faith takes.
The issue is when you didn't say it on twitter, or even intend it for public consumption and it's posted as receipts on twitter as examples of your badness - often out of context. Then there are some knock on second and third order effects on your life.
It's one thing if communities on twitter would like to define their own use of the language - it's another when it's imposed on others without their consent.
