Category Archives: Transhuman News

/pol/, short for "Politically Incorrect",[2][3] is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan.[4][5][6] As of 2022, it is the most active board on the site.[7][8][9] It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture while acting as a platform for far-right extremism;[10][11][9] the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content.[23] /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence.[9][24][25] It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title previously considered to have belonged solely to /b/.[21]

Common /pol/ content involves discussion of history, far-right ideologies, hatred of black people, and current news. A 2020 report categorized about 36% of news sources frequently posted to the board by American users as "junk news", a category that includes sources considered to be propaganda, sensationalist, or conspiracy theory content. Outside of traditional news sources, users also commonly rely on alternative media such as YouTube commentary as a source of news.[26][7]

Flags are displayed on each post. A national flag corresponding to the user's geographic location (based on their IP address, which could be manipulated using a proxy server) may be displayed. Alternatively, users may select a "meme flag" (also referred to as a "troll flag"), corresponding to various political identifiers.[2][18][27] However, these are not common per amount of poststhe "Nazi" meme flag was the most commonly used meme flag in a 2020 analysis, while posts with an American geographic location were about 57 times more common (and appeared the most of any flag).[2]

Each post also has a unique ID attached, which is likewise associated with the user's IP address.[28] However, these unique IDs will only tend to remain attached to a user per a single thread, as they are not persistent between multiple threads.[29][30] Threads have a limited lifespan, effectively prioritizing newer content.[28]

Much of the content on /pol/ relies heavily on Internet memes to further spread ideas.[31][16] Many have questioned the sincerity of users on /pol/ as possible trolls.[32][33] According to Mic, "On a place like /pol/, there's no clear delineation between sincerity, irony and cynicism."[34] First Monday commented that "The creation of character-based archetypes is common on /pol/ and makes this online space semi-performative and semi-authentic."[18]

While 4chan's /pol/ board is the most popular board under the "/pol/" name, versions on other websites have existed. These include Kohlchan, 8chan (later 8kun), 16chan, Shitchan, and Endchan, with some less popular "/pol/" themed boards accessible through the Tor network on sites such as 9chan and Neinchan.[5] However, 4chan's /pol/ board has become increasingly "synonymous with 4chan as a whole", according to New Media & Society.[35]

Prior to the creation of /pol/, there were two boards intended for discussing news that had been added and removed from the site. The first of these was /n/, which was added on 8 April 2006. It replaced /n/'s previous topic of animals and nature, which was moved to the /an/ board. /n/'s topic was changed to transportation on 19 February 2008, without moving the news topic to another board, effectively removing it.[36][user-generated source]

Another news board, /new/, was later added on 25 January 2010. It was deleted a year later on 17 January 2011.[36][user-generated source] According to 4chan's creator and ex-administrator Christopher Poole, this was because it had "devolved into /stormfront/".[37][38][39] This was comparing /new/ to Stormfront, which is the oldest and largest Holocaust-denialist white supremacist site.[39][40] The /new/ board was the direct predecessor to /pol/.[41]

/pol/ was created on October 23, 2011.[21][42] According to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, /pol/ was created by "4chan's founder [...] to siphon off and contain the overtly xenophobic and racist comments and memes from other wings of 4chan."[43] This has led to /pol/ acquiring the nickname of a "containment board", because its purpose is to keep far-right and generally political content off of 4chan's other boards.[39][12][10]

Screenshots of Trayvon Martin's hacked social media accounts were initially posted to /pol/ in 2015.[44][45]

After the Umpqua Community College shooting, /pol/ began attempting to circulate on social media claims that comedian Sam Hyde was the perpetrator of a mass shooting event or terrorist attack. They repeated this after several other mass shootings, in attempts to troll mainstream news outlets into reporting Hyde as the attacker.[46] According to BBC News, CNN mistakenly included Hyde's image on their coverage of the Umpqua shooting.[47] After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, a Google search for a different man's name returned a /pol/ thread in the "top stories" section falsely identifying him as the shooter. A spokesperson for Google said that the thread had appeared because search queries and news about the man were rare, allowing for the thread to appear in results, but that the thread did not appear in broader searches about the Las Vegas shooting.[48][49]

On April 6, 2016, users on the board's /sg/ (short for Syria General) thread collaborated with a Russian Twitter account to locate an encampment of Syrian rebels.[50][51] The account then claimed to have forwarded the location to the Russian Ministry of Defense.[50] The board's users also allegedly located an ISIS training camp near Mosul, Iraq. The users coordinated on Telegram as well as on 4chan.[52]

In summer 2016, /pol/ users coordinated "Operation Google", a campaign to associate the name "Google" with the ethnic slur "nigger".[14][53] This was undertaken in response to Google's Jigsaw subsidiary developing Conversation AI, a tool made to recognize offensive language.[53][54]

One of the most popular memes found on the board during the period surrounding the 2016 US presidential election was Pepe the Frog, which has been deemed a hate symbol in some contexts by the Anti-Defamation League due to its use in uniforms, places, and people associated with Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, and antisemitism.[55][56][57] Many /pol/ users favored Donald Trump during his 2016 United States presidential campaign.[12] Some right-wing memes about the presidential campaign originated on the board.[58] Upon his election, a /pol/ moderator embedded a pro-Trump video at the top of all of the board's pages.[59][60][61][62]

Users of /pol/ engaged in coordinated attacks on LaBeouf, Rnkk & Turner's HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US, a 2017 performance art project made to protest Donald Trump's presidency.[39][63] Some users on the board suggested committing acts of violence against participants in the art project.[39] Users also organized the It's OK to be white poster campaign the same year.[64][65]

In 2017, users of /pol/ coordinated a campaign to convince mainstream news organizations that the OK gesture was a white power symbol; the OK gesture was later used meta-ironically by white supremacists.[66]

In October 2017, a tripcode user referred to as "Q" began posting on 4chan's /pol/ board in what would become the QAnon conspiracy theory and political movement. Q soon moved to 8chan.[67]

In 2019, 4chan and 8chan were temporarily blocked by internet service providers in Australia and New Zealand for containing videos of the Christchurch mosque shootings.[68][69] Before the shootings, the shooter posted on 8chan's /pol/ board.[5][70][71] The suspected perpetrators of the Poway synagogue shooting and the El Paso shooting also allegedly posted their manifestos there.[70][71] In late 2019, a poster campaign coordinated on the board received some local and regional news coverage. The posters stated, "Islam was RIGHT about women".[72]

In late February and early March 2021, users on /pol/ boosted a social media trend called "super straight", which they said was a new sexuality describing heterosexuals who would never have a sexual relationship with transgender people.[73][74] The trend began with a later-deleted TikTok video by a user who said he had created the term because he was tired of being called transphobic.[75][74] The Daily Dot stated that "trolls, bigots, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists" were "reframing their harassment of transgender people" through this trend.[76] The trend spread to other platforms as well, including Twitter, and 4chan users were eager to "red pill" those in the Generation Z age group, create division among LGBTQ communities, and use the language of LGBTQ rights to troll leftists. Some 4chan members used Nazi symbols in their symbolism, including the logo of Adolf Hitler's Schutzstaffel, which also used SS as an acronym. Colors associated with "super straight", often used in the form of flags, were black and orange.[22][76][74]

In a manifesto allegedly written by the accused perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting, the author said he was introduced to his far-right ideology (including a belief in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory) through browsing /pol/, beginning in May 2020.[77][19]

The day after the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) falsely claimed that its perpetrator was a "transsexual leftist illegal alien" in a tweet, which was taken down two hours after it was posted.[78] The claim was based on a rumor started by an anonymous poster on /pol/, who posted the Reddit account of a transgender woman and claimed that she was the shooter; photos of the woman were widely shared on social media, including in conservative Facebook groups, where she was also erroneously identified as the shooter and harassed.[79][80]

/pol/ has been characterized as predominantly racist and sexist, with many of its posts taking explicitly alt-right and neo-Nazi points of view. In particular, the board is infamous for the prevalence of antisemitic threads and memes.[81][13][82][83][84][12] One common antisemitic meme on /pol/ is the Happy Merchant.[11][16][85] Southern Poverty Law Center regards /pol/'s rhetorical style as widely emulated by white supremacist websites such as The Daily Stormer; the Stormer's editor, Andrew Anglin, concurred.[13]

Many have speculated whether the website is kept online as a honeypot for far-right groups, or to monitor extremists.[86][87] In 2015, an Australian Department of Defence graduate used /pol/ to share classified information, only to be caught by another former Department of Defence worker browsing the site.[88] Within /pol/, suspected agents of various intelligence communities are called "glowniggers,"[89] commonly shortened to just "glowies,"[86] a reference to the computer programmer Terry A. Davis, who said the "CIA niggers glow in the dark, you can see them if you're driving, you just run them over."[86] Because of this, suspicious posters are said to be "glowing", and activity on the forum deemed similar to those of CIA agents is referred to as "glowposting".[86]

In 2020, several past and current moderators spoke to Vice Media's Motherboard about what they perceived as racist intent behind /pol/ and 4chan as a whole. They described how the manager of 4chan's volunteer "janitors", a moderator known as RapeApe, wishes to generate right-wing discussion on /pol/ and has dissuaded janitors from banning users for racism. Additionally, they noted how janitors were often fired whenever they held left-wing opinions. Hiroyuki Nishimura was described as letting RapeApe have full control of the site.[90]

A 2017 quantitative analysis found that /pol/ was an important influencer of news content on Twitter, with the board contributing 3% of mainstream news links and 1.96% of alternative news links on Twitter (as a fraction of all links co-appearing on Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan). The researchers concluded that "'fringe' communities often succeed in spreading alternative news to mainstream social networks".[91]

According to a 2017 longitudinal study, using a dataset of over 8million posts, /pol/ is a diverse ecosystem with users well-distributed around the world. The percentage of posts containing hate speech ranges from 4.15% (e.g., in Indonesia, Arab countries) to 30% (e.g., China, Bahamas, Cyprus). Elevated use of hate speech is seen in Western European countries (e.g., Italy, Spain, Greece, and France).[12] They also examined raids performed by /pol/ users against other platforms, particularly YouTube videos. They found that when a link to a YouTube video was posted on a /pol/ thread, an increase in hateful comments appeared on the video's comments section for the duration of that thread's existence.[92][93] Another study found that adjusted for Internet-using population per country, users were most commonly from Canada, Australia, the United States, Ireland and Croatia. Users from other countries in Europe were also found to be common.[2]

Following the announcement of a COVID-19 lockdown occurring in Wuhan, China, in January 2020, an international team of researchers noted an increase of anti-Chinese sentiment and anti-Asian slurs on /pol/ in reaction to the events surrounding the virus outbreak, in an analysis that also examined similar activity on Twitter.[94][15] This included calls for violence against Chinese people.[15] According to a 2020 report by the British charity Community Security Trust, many threads contain "explicit calls for Jews to be killed".[95]

A study with data collected from April 2020 to June 2020 and published in Perspectives on Terrorism in February 2021 analyzed the popularity and content present on different /pol/ boards. To analyze board content, they examined which word sets were most common per board. They found that schisms were characteristic of this subculture, with splinter communities being less popular and more extreme on average. For example, discussion on 8kun's /pol/ board contained more racial content than did 4chan's much more popular /pol/ board, which hosted racist content as well. Neinchan, hosted on the Tor network, was indicated as having among the most extreme /pol/ boards, albeit with low traffic. The researchers indicated that academic work examining this subculture of far-right imageboards was lacking.[5]

In a study published in January 2021, researchers found that there were escalating amounts of antisemitic rhetoric used on /pol/ after mass shooting events, particularly the Christchurch mosque shootings and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.[18] Another study found that activity on the board more generally tended to increase rapidly following mass shootings committed by right-wing extremists.[71]

A July 2021 analysis of climate change discussion on /pol/ found that there were large contingents of users who discussed the topic using antisemitic, racist and conspiracy theorist themes. It also found a growing trend of "climate nationalism" (i.e. the integration of nationalist and racist beliefs with narratives about the occurrence of climate change) among the board's users who participated in these conversations. These discussions still featured prominent amounts of debate concerning the scientific aspects of climate change, such as academic publishing and the validity of the scientific consensus on climate change. However, a trend was observed where, over time, this was a slowly declining feature of such discussions.[10]

A study published in New Media & Society in January 2022 discussed the interactions between /pol/ users and the researchers who study their community. The study observed the reactions of /pol/ users to a research workshop dedicated to studying them. The researchers suggested that studies that aim to learn about the /pol/ community and its users should take into account (for research design purposes) that they may be aware of observation by external entities, "rather than seeing it as a community that can be externally observed without consequence." They also suggested that, "[A]cademics may be influenced by knowing that 4chan is watching. /pol/, and associated communities, have long been associated with attacks on those trying to study or criticise them..."[11]

In June 2022, it was made public that a chat bot named "GPT-4chan" (or "gpt-4chan") was trained by Yannic Kilcher, a machine learning expert, using 134.5 million /pol/ posts. He allowed ten such bots to post on /pol/ without restriction for two periods of 24 hours, mimicking human users.[96][17][8] It made 15,000 posts during the first period: about ten percent of the total /pol/ posts during that time.[97][98] Overall, GPT-4chan had posted 30,000 times in 7,000 threads.[8] One iteration of GPT-4chan could be distinguished from most other /pol/ users by its Seychelles flag, displayed due to Kilcher's use of a proxy server. He used 4chan's paid "4chan Pass" service to bypass anti-spam restrictions (such as CAPTCHA).[8][99] The influx of GPT-4chan posts gained attention from /pol/ users, with some suspecting a government agent or a dedicated team of posters.[8][96][100] Some also suggested a bot could have been posting.[101][96][99] The experiment had some lasting impact on /pol/, with accusations between posters of bot use continuing past the experiment's run-time.[96][100][98] The bot frequently posted racial slurs and conspiracy theories.[97][101][99] GPT-4chan gained significant attention among media and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers.[96][102][3] Kilcher's GPT-4chan experiments, as well as his decision to release the underlying model for the bot online, were controversial.[96][3][8] A letter entitled "Condemning the deployment of GPT-4chan" was signed by hundreds of AI researchers and developers.[103][104] One AI ethicist with the Australian Institute for Machine Learning said that it violated "every principle of human research ethics".[96][97][8] A DeepMind researcher said GPT-4chan "contributed to 4chan's echo chamber" and that it was "not impossible that gpt-4chan pushed somebody over the edge in their worldview".[97][96][8] The Next Web commented that "[GPT-4chan] highlights AI's ability to automate harassment, disrupt online communities, and manipulate public opinion ... it also spread discriminatory language at scale."[8] MIT Technology Review said, "Considering the material it was trained on, this outcome was depressingly inevitable."[105] Hugging Face, the website where the bot's model was published, restricted access to it.[99] The site's CEO stated: "[T]he experiment of having the model post messages on 4chan was [in my opinion] pretty bad and inappropriate [...]". However, he also said that it "brought interesting insights into the limitations of existing benchmarks by outperforming the TruthfulQA Benchmark compared to GPT-J and GPT-3".[96][97] The Register added that, "GPT-4chan ... has some value for building potential automatic content moderation tools or probing existing benchmarks."[101]

Original post:
/pol/ - Wikipedia

Politically correct terms are a hot topic. The focus on using PC words has sky-rocketed recently with so much focus on diversity & inclusion in the news. We decided to create a list of the top 20 most-Googled questions on PC terms to help better understand each one.

Disclaimer: There are words or phrases in this article that are politically incorrect and might offend you. I am sharing the exact phrases/questions that people are querying on Google (source: ahrefs). I couldnt think of any other way to answer these questions without listing them exactly as the user typed them into Google. I am not an expert in politically correct terminology.

Ok, here are the top 20 questions users search about on Google (verbatim):

People of Color (POC for short) is widely used but not everyone approves of the term and there are often better alternatives.

A few alternatives are:

People of Color is a term used to identify people who are not white or of European heritage. The phrase People of Color was introduced in the 1960s by Black leaders in an effort to move away from terms like colored people and Blacks. POC is still widely being used worldwide today, but not everyone approves of the phrase.

The Washington Post interviewed 25 People of Colorand was met with comments like:

Not everyone likes this label, it flattens differences and it simplifies complexities.

What is another word for people of color? BIPOC, which stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color is a more inclusive term that is being widely accepted as a replacement for POC. BIPOC is one of the hottest words in diversity, gaining traction since the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The popularity of the term POC (people of color) dropped 50% from January 2020 to June 2021 (while BIPOC grew 6X during the same period. (source: Google Trends

Are Asians People of Color? It may depend on who you ask. People of Color may be an accepted label for some, but it is always best to ask a person what they prefer to be called.

PC Term Google search volume: Is People of Color politically correct?(450/month);is people of color capitalized (350); people of color synonym (300); people of color definition (300); are asians people of color (700); another word for people of color (5)

What is a politically correct term for disabled? A PC term for disabled is people with disabilities. Disabled is considered a politically incorrect word because it is tied to negative stereotypes. The phrasepeople with disabilities is less de-humanizing.

When referring to a single person with a specific disability it is more appropriate to say the person has that disability instead of saying they are disabled. For example, anarticle on inclusive language at Colorado State University says:

Less Appropriate: Sue is an arthritic, diabetic, paraplegic.

More Appropriate: Sue has arthritis, diabetes, paralyzed, has paralysis in her legs

Another PC word for disabled is the disability community. This phrase refers to a group of people with disabilities and is also received more positively than the word disabled.

Irelands National Disability Authority says the following about addressing people with disabilities:

When writing or speaking about people with disabilities it is important to put the person first. Catch-all phrases such as the blind, the deaf or the disabled, do not reflect the individuality, equality or dignity of people with disabilities.

When speaking about the disabled community, you also hear the word handicapped. A politically correct term for handicapped is disabled person, or person with a disability.

What is the politically correct term for mentally disabled? Neurodivergent, a person who has an emotional disability, or neuroatypical are all PC terms.

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for disabled? (500/month); handicapped or disabled what is politically correct (60); what is the politically correct term for disabled (30); what is the politically correct term for mentally disabled (20); another word for disabled (300); proper term for disabled (200); politically correct term for handicapped (100); another word for handicapped (100)

What is the politically correct term for mental retardation? A PC term for mental retardation is intellectual disability.

The term mental retardation was introduced to replace words like idiot and imbecile that were used in the past to identify people with certain levels of intelligence. But just like those derogatory words, the term retardation has become an insult, along with the word retard.

Mental Retardation as a phrase has even been legally replaced by the term intellectual disability according to an article addressingAppropriate Language About People With Disabilities.

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for retardation (250/month);politically correct term for mental retardation (200); politically correct term for retard (80); what is the politically correct term for mental retardation (80)

There are 4 popular questions around PC terms for the word Black:

What is the politically correct term for Black?

Is Black or African American politically correct?

What is another word for Black?

What are other words for Black?

The terms Black and African American can be used interchangeably, according to Keith Mayes,associate professor of African American and African studies at the University of Minnesota.

Mayes said that descendants of slaves have historically been referred to as African Americans, but the percentage of those folks is decreasing in the United States.Mayes said:

We have more Black people here from other parts of the diaspora and other parts of the continent. We have a lot of East Africans here. West Africans here, always had a lot of Caribbean Blacks in the United States. When I address you as Black or African American, they both apply but it may be a situation where some black folks whose parents come from other parts of the world may not identify as African American. It is better to call them Black American

Finding a PC word for Black can be tricky because it depends on where a person comes from as well as what they prefer to be called. So in this case, it is best to ask someone which term they are comfortable with, whether it be Black, African American, Black American, Black Caribbean, Person of Color, etc.

PC Term Google search volume: Other words for Black (1,700); Another word for Black (1,400); Politically correct term for Black(200/month); What is the politically correct term for a Black person? (100); Black or African American politically correct (150); Another word for African American (80); What is the politically correct term for Black? (20);politically correct term for Black (30)

Is Mulatto offensive? In 2021, the popular rapper Mulatto (who has 1 Black father and white mother) was forced to change her name (to Latto) after a huge backlash over her name not being PC. If you search Google for Mulatto rapper backlash, you get 3.2 million results!

Mulatto was once a word used to identify people of mixed race or mixed ethnicity. In 1850 the U.S. Census Bureau used M as a racial category for mulatto, which meant someone with one Black and one white parent. The Mulatto category became a catch-all for people whose race was not just Black or white, this included Native Americans.

A more PC term for Mulatto (as well as mixed race and mixed ethnicity) is biracial or multiracial. Multiracial is used to describe people with blended ancestries.

Over time terms have changed, so another way to be more politically correct is to identify a person by a group, like Latinx or Mexican American.But, mixed race is still used and accepted by people who are comfortable with saying Im Mixed.

NPRs article onAll Mixed Up: What Do We Call People Of Multiple Backgrounds?says that celebrities may also set trends for multiracial people. For example:

Rihanna,Drake,Key and PeeleandShemar Moorehave all used the term biracial to self-identify. Barack Obama, ever tongue-in-cheek, likes to throw aroundmongrelandmutt.Slash,Nicole RichieandTrevor Noahhave used mixed.

PC Term Google search volume: Is mulatto derogatory (450/month); Is mulatto offensive (400/month); Mulatto politically correct (200/month);politically correct word for mulatto(5);Which is more politically correct Mulatto or Mixed Ethnicity? (5)

The terms Dwarf and Midget are widely misused and can be considered derogatory. What is the politically correct term for midget?

First, make sure youre being precise.

Little People of America (LPA) defines midget vs. dwarf in this way:

Dwarfism is a medical or genetic condition that usually results in an adult height of 410 or shorter, among both men and women, although in some cases a person with a dwarfing condition may be slightly taller than that.The average height of an adult with dwarfism is 40, but typical heights range from 28 to 48.

In some circles, a midget is the term used for a proportionate dwarf. However, the term has fallen into disfavor and is considered offensive by most people of short stature. The term dates back to 1865, the height of the freak show era, and was generally applied only to short-statured persons who were displayed for public amusement, which is why it is considered so unacceptable today.

Midget is on its way out

Midget has been met with criticism from organizations like the Little People of America (LPA).

LPA surveyed their community and 90% of members stated that the word midget should never be used in reference to a person with dwarfism.

Recommendations for using the term Midget and Dwarf

The LPA suggests you use:

But the LPA says that most people would rather be referred to by their name than by their label

PC Term Google search volume: How tall is a midget (1,400/mo.); What height is considered a midget (900); Dwarf vs Midget (1,000); Midget vs Dwarf (700); Difference between dwarf and midget; Is midget a slur (500/mo.) How tall is a dwarf (500/mo.) Politically correct term for midget (200/month); proper term for midget (200/month); what is the politically correct term for midget (150); pc term for midget (150) politically correct term for dwarf(100);pc term for dwarf(100); what is the politically correct term for a dwarf? (10)

What is the politically correct term for mental illness? There are many different alternative terms to use when it comes to mental illness. Health Partners has an excellent detailed list of some of these more PC terms for mental illness, and also lists terms to avoid. Some examples:

Dont use Mental Illness as an aggregate term (its too broad)

Instead, use Mental illnesses or A mental illness

Dont use Afflicted by mental illness, suffers from mental illness or is a victim of mental illness

Instead, useLiving with a mental illness

Dont use Mentally ill person

Instead use, Person with a mental illness

Another term related to mental illness is special needs. Special needs has been met with criticism from people with disabilities. What is the politically correct term for special needs? A person with a disability or disabled person is more politically correct. Special needs can make people feel excluded or belittled.

This article,12 different ways to say disabled, has multiple comments surrounding the use of special needs, from both teachers and people with disabilities.

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for mental illness (150/month); what is the politically correct term for mental illness(5)

What is the politically correct term for gypsy? The word gypsy has ties to racial discrimination and the politically correct term is Roma which means people.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says:

Roma (Gypsies) originated in the Punjab region of northern India as a nomadic people and entered Europe between the eighth and tenth centuries C.E. They were called Gypsies because Europeans mistakenly believed they came from Egypt.

A blog post from the Mindful Mermaid explains why we should stop saying gypsy. The blog says:

Gypsy is straight-up racist, similar to using the n-word. The word is as a racial slur against the Roma people, the PC term for gypsy.

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for gypsy (150/month);what is the politically correct term for gypsy(10)

What is the politically correct term for gay? Gay is an acceptable term, along with gay person, gay people, and lesbian.

GLAAD says however the use of homosexuals should be avoided.

On a related note, a lot of people ask Whats the politically correct term for LGBT?LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and its variations are PC terms when referring to gay people. Over time LGBT as an acronym has evolved into many more acronyms in the effort to be more inclusive to the gay community.

The New York Times discussedThe ABCs of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+back in 2018. The author talked about the addition of the letter Q for questioning or queer and said:

Now theres also I, for intersex; A, for ally (or asexual, depending on whom youre talking to); and often a plus sign meant to cover anyone else whos not included: L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+.

PC Term Google search volume:Politically correct term for gay (90/month); What is the politically correct term for gay? (20);Politically correct term for LGBT (40/month)

What is a politically correct term for race? Race is a PC word that is used to divide people into groups based on shared physical or social qualities. Race can be based on skin color, ethnic association, cultural history, or ethnic classification.

Here is a list of race-related terms that are used most frequently:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people can choose more than one race to indicate their racial mixture (e.g. American Indian and white).

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for mixed race (100);Politically correct term for race (90/month);what is the politically correct term for a mixed race person(5); Politically correct terms for race (90); list of politically correct terms for race(5)

What is the politically correct term for deaf? Deaf is considered a PC word, as well as hard of hearing or people with hearing loss according to the National Association of the Deaf. Other terms like hearing impaired are not widely accepted in the deaf community and could be considered derogatory.

The term hearing impaired was not coined by the deaf community, and a 2019 article on Medium.com titled The Deaf Culture Hates Being Politically Correct says:

The word impairedmeansweakened or damaged or having a disability of a specific kind.

The deaf community may not see their deafness as a disability, so it is best to avoid hearing impaired. Another word for impaired could be limited hearing or partially deaf.

PC Term Google search volume: Another word for impaired (150); Politically correct term for deaf (80/month);what is the politically correct term for deaf(5)

What is the politically correct term for minority? The term minority was popular in the 1990s and replaced the use of the offensive phrase colored people, but its popularity as a PC term has lost traction in recent years.

One reason that minority is politically incorrect is that the word minor in minority suggests someone of lesser significance.

More inclusive terms are now being used to replace the word minority like:

The other alternative is to refer to groups individually (e.g. Asian American, Mexican American, Inuit, etc.)

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for minority (80/month); what is the politically correct term for minority (5); what is a minority? (1,900/mo.)

Googlers also search for politically correct terms for ethnic groups like the ones listed below.

What is another word for white? Caucasian is the most common, formal word to identify a white person, but federal data collection also simply uses the word white. Caucasian is defined as a person of European origin which derived from the word Caucasus, but according to workforce.com:

Most white people in the U.S. arent descended from the Caucasus region between Europe and Asia (touching Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) but from western and northern Europe.

This author says white people is acceptable and politically correct language.

PC Term Google search volume:Another word for white (1,000/mo); Other words for white (600/mo);white or caucasian politically correct(80); What do you call a white person? (70/month);politically correct term for white person(5)

What is the politically correct term for Eskimo? Inuit is the most widely used term to replace Eskimo, which is plural meaning people. The singular term, which means person is Inuk.

NPR gives reasons Why You Probably Shouldnt Say Eskimo in an article addressing the confusion behind the word. The article says:

People in many parts of the Arctic consider Eskimo a derogatory term because it was widely used by racist, non-native colonizers.

PC Term Google search volume: Politically correct term for Eskimo (50/month);what is the politically correct term for an Eskimo? (5)

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The Top 20+ Questions on Politically Correct Terms [with Answers!]

Found on r/AskReddit.

Our stereotypes have at least a basis in truth.

A few decades back the bad Asian driver was a popular stereotype. And that came from the years before had a wave of Asian immigrants. Many of them came from countries where most people did not drive. So there were a lot of first and second generation Asian drivers out there and their ratio of accidents where higher than average because of that. Hence the stereotype being born.

Today we are on the third, fourth, and fifth generation of those immigrants who have now grown up around cars. Now that ratio of accidents are about the same across the board and, since there is no longer that grain of truth in that particular stereotype, it is dying out. In fact the only times I hear it anymore are from older people who grew up with it. Younger people dont subscribe to thatstereotype because it no longer makes any sense to them.

Now I am not saying that stereotypes are right and true. I am saying there is a grain of truth behind the stereotype that caused it to come about.

Eugenics works. If we can breed horses to be bigger, we can do the same with people. If we can breed dogs to be smarter, we can do that same to people. You can argue all you want about the moral and social ramifications, but the truth is that people are subject to all the same laws of heredity that animals are.

The rate of homicides involving a firearm decreased by half from 1992 to 2011

I save links to things I find interesting.Heres one about Rape convictions. Women are duped into thinking rapes are harder to solve than they are.

Theres a huge health risk with being mixed race, and thats getting organ transplants apparently.

Religion either is good for the mind/body, or people who are religious are from a healthier (mentally, physically, socially) demographic to begin with. The correlation and causation is hard to gauge, but here are some sources showing positive correlations with religion.

Ive already posted it, but Circumcision has huge negative effects on a person, and the benefits are controversial. Have some studies, the first one in particular, published last year, is one of the most massive.

The idea that men make much more money than women as an unfair advantage may not be as it seems.Since immigration and integration is becoming controversial in Europe.Heres some data on minorities in the UK, who are in fact a disproportionate source of crime.

Similar in Sweden, where immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crime, mostly those of non-western background. The article is in Swedish but can be translated, but for the most serious crimes the instance among these certain groups is 300-400% higher.

Denmark has a similar problem, but its restrictions on refugees has potentially saved billions. In Denmark immigrants do not necessarily account for a disproportionate number of crimes, only certain immigrants particularly middle eastern. Chinese and Americans actually commit crimes lower than ethnic Danes.

The gender gap for wages is no longer an accurate reflection of systemic discrimination. It is now due primarily to personal choices women choosing to work part time receiving less pay overall, taking time off to raise children, choosing particular low paying industries, not choosing to pursue higher-level positions with certain characteristics, etc. From the report below: the raw wage gap continues to be used in misleading ways to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.Source:

Also, not talked about are the other effects of this division of labor. Because of the industry choices men and women make, men may get paid more but make up something like 92% of all workplace deaths, and a similar percentage of workplace suicides.Source:page 8.

In short lets stop talking about women being paid less than men. We won that one already.

Bureau of justice stats here:

Between 1980-2008 blacks accounted for 56.9% of all gun related murderswhile being 10-12% of the population. If you were to somehow remove guns from black people gun crime would drop by 50-60% overnight.

Im probably late to the game, but heres one. The USA actually has the highest life expectancy once you remove non-natural deaths such as accidents and murders.Also, I cant remember where I read this one but I remember it: the US also does not have a higher infant mortality rate, it is because not all countries calculate the statistic the same. In many other countries, babies born before a certain week are not counted in the infant mortality rate, while in the US, all of them are.

Young Male Muslims are more likely to be terrorists than elderly Swedish grandmothers.

Proof: I have been unable to find a single case of a Swedish grandmother hijacking a plan or committing a suicide bombing.

Nevertheless, they all have to take their shoes off in airports.

Im new to reddit, and I realize the sentiment on here runs VERY against this, but Ill jump in.

Marrying a promiscuous woman is a poor investment.Essentially, it boils down to Batemans Principle.Briefly, sperm(male sex) is cheap, eggs(female sex) are expensive. A female with an unrestricted sociosexuality (loosely- promiscuity) is incurring substantial risk due to the cost of the act, the differential investment applied, as well as an increase in disease exposure.

The rebuttal for this is the advancement of technology. We now have birth control, which takes away parental investment, the cost, as well as disease exposure. I agree.That covers the physical side of things. In the modern day, slut-shaming occurs due to the psychological side of things.

Kahn and London, 1991 and more recently Teachman, 2003 as well as others have demonstrated that women who have an unrestricted sociosexuality are more likely to be involved in marriages that divorce and extra-pair fertilizations (cheating). No similar robust correlation exists for men. Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that this may be due to a release of Oxytocin, which facilitates pair bonding with the previous men(decreasing the value of current commitment) due to the aforementioned differential parental investment.

Furthermore, Agostinelli, 1994 has linked an unrestricted sociosexuality with poor impulse control as well as risky decision making. Additionally, Ramrakha, 2013 has found a strong correlation between drug use in women who have an unrestricted sociosexuality, which has a substantially weaker effect for men.

This psychological and biological landscape paints a picture wherein having many sexual partners leads to poor impulse control and risky decision making for both genders, and in women, correlates with drug use, dissolved marriages and cheating to a much stronger degree.

When considering the divorce, alimony, child-custody, child-support and domestic abuse laws that govern most first world countries. This makes choosing a woman who has an unrestricted sociosexuality a poor investment for your future.

ummmm most black people in the us (70%) cant swim. Looked this up after I saw that story about about all those people in Louisiana who drowned trying to save that little girl and was very surprised.

If you have unprotected heterosexual sex with a HIV-infected woman (that is, insertive penile-vaginal intercourse), there is only a 1 in 2000 chance that the disease will be transmitted. Vice verse, it is still only a 1 in 1000 chance. For receptive anal intercourse, the risk jumps to 1 in 200.

I consider it controversial firstly because the transmission rate is surprisingly low generally, and extremely low (in comparison to general expectations) for heterosexual sex.Source.

Yes. The cause of the sudden windfall reduction of crime in NYC in the late 90s was not due to better policing or a better economy or anything like that, but because 15-30 years ago abortions had a windfall increase. This is also largely based on the finding that unwanted children are more likely to become criminals.

I did a report on how the perceived ideal body differed through American cultures. Long story short, black and Latino men prefer their chicks at least 2-3 dress sizes larger than Caucasian preferences.

Getting rid of all the obese people in the US could save over 21% of their healthcare budget.Source:

Edit : great my most upvoted comment is about eugenics (somewhat) sorry guys.

That children with parents who are MARRIED, are better off emotionally, financially, and health wise that any other type of parent relationships. That includes families in loving cohabitation for 50 years, homosexual marriages and multiple other family situations. I wrote a paper on in a couple years ago. But I was so surprised that maybe that piece of paper actually has an effect.

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15 Very Politically Incorrect Things That Are Also Absolutely True ...

"The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated and driven from society as we know it," then-President Donald Trump said during a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention. It was remarkably similar to a sentiment expressed by another Republican president about political correctness nearly 30 years earlier. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

"The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated and driven from society as we know it," then-President Donald Trump said during a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention. It was remarkably similar to a sentiment expressed by another Republican president about political correctness nearly 30 years earlier.

When former President Donald Trump announced his lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google this month, he used a word that has become a familiar signal in modern politics.

"We're demanding an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well," Trump said in a speech.

That term, "canceling," has become central to the present-day debate over the consequences of speech and who gets to exact them. It has ascended from minor skirmishes on Twitter to the highest office in the country, and it actually mirrors a cultural conversation that started three decades ago.

"This is a power struggle of different groups or forces in society, I think, at its most basic," says Nicole Holliday, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. "And this is the same case with political correctness that used to get boiled down to, well, 'Do you have a right to be offended if it means I don't have the right to say something?' "

The idea of being "politically correct," having the most morally upstanding opinion on complicated subjects and the least offensive language with which to articulate it, gained popularity in the 1990s before people on the outside weaponized it against the community it came from just like the idea of "canceling" someone today.

"I do think that 'cancel' in particular is something that was invented sort of by young people, and it actually just kind of means boycott, right? It means 'Do not support this thing,' " Holliday says.

Now, she says, "conservatives have picked it up not to just mean boycott, but rather to say: Our value system is under threat by these people who want to [de-]monetize or de-platform us because we have unpopular opinions."

But it's not just conservatives figures who think cancel culture has gone too far. The fear of being "canceled" has caused some everyday people to be more aware of and at times, concerned about what they say and post online.

So how did an effort to hold people accountable for their actions become politicized and get so out of control? To understand the uproar over cancel culture, it may help to examine the past.

Ruth Perry has seen the long arc of these kinds of debates. She's a professor emeritus of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked for almost four decades and founded the women's studies department in 1984.

Back in her early career, Perry says, she ran with a crowd of idealists.

"We cared about the Earth, we cared about ecology, we cared about treating animals correctly," she says. "We cared about sexism, we cared about white supremacy all these things."

Perry says her peers would use the phrase "politically correct" to tease each other over whether their actions lined up with their ideals.

"Somebody would say, 'Would it be politically correct if we had a hamburger?' somebody who was a vegetarian would say that. Or somebody who was a feminist might say, 'It may not be politically correct, but I think he's really hot,' [about] some sexist movie star or something," says Perry.

"Politically correct" was a kind of in-joke among American leftists something you called a fellow leftist when you thought the person was being self-righteous. "The term was always used ironically," Perry says, "always calling attention to possible dogmatism."

Then, right-wing think tanks and conservatives started to use the term as a form of attack in both the media and academia.

"It felt like, 'Oh, my God, they're using this against us,' " Perry says. "And they're acting as if this term really was a kind of litmus test for political correctness, which it never had been."

A search of newspapers and magazines in the archive Nexis shows just how rapidly the term expanded beyond its original scene. In 1989, the phrase "politically correct" appeared fewer than 250 times in print. By 1994, the archive shows more than 10,000 hits. The idea was everywhere: from comedy shows like Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect to cartoons like Beavis and Butt-Head and even current events shows like Firing Line on PBS.

This national obsession didn't just bubble up organically.

"It is an industry," John Wilson, author of the 1995 book The Myth of Political Correctness, says. "There are all these right-wing foundations and books that were published that made a lot of money promoting this idea."

He adds that the word "myth" in the title of his book is important to understanding how it became a phenomenon.

"A myth is not a falsehood: It doesn't mean it's a lie. It doesn't mean everything is fabricated," he says. "It means that it's a story. And so what happened in the '90s is, people, with political correctness, they took certain sometimes true anecdotes and they created a web, a story out of them, a myth that there was this vast repression of conservative voices on college campuses."

Wilson says there were grains of truth to the conservative argument isolated examples of conflicts and protests, often on college campuses, and real cases of people getting punished or fired but that those isolated cases got magnified into a sweeping national narrative that the right used to claim conservatives were being silenced. And by claiming victimization, Wilson says, conservatives were able to use the term "political correctness" as a bludgeon to hammer the left, a lot like the way the phrase "cancel culture" is used today.

Then, like now, local debates that might have stayed largely unknown beyond college newspapers suddenly became national news.

For example, in 1988, NPR and several other news organizations reported on a fight over Stanford University's freshman requirements. The name of the course at the center of the controversy was "Western Culture," which the students wanted replaced with a more multicultural class, Wilson says. People like Education Secretary William Bennett a Republican took the student protests as a broader attack.

"Right from the beginning, this was an assault on Western culture and Western civilization," he said in a 1988 PBS interview.

By 1991, this panic had reached all the way to the president of the United States.

President George H.W. Bush waves to a crowd of over 60,000 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Mich., on May 4, 1991, as he arrives to deliver the University of Michigan's commencement speech. Greg Gibson/Associated Press hide caption

President George H.W. Bush waves to a crowd of over 60,000 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Mich., on May 4, 1991, as he arrives to deliver the University of Michigan's commencement speech.

"We find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses," said then-President George H.W. Bush in his commencement address at the University of Michigan in 1991. "The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land."

Bush went on: "The disputants treat sheer force getting their foes punished or expelled, for instance as a substitute for the power of ideas."

Another Republican president, Donald Trump, who denounced political correctness during his 2016 presidential campaign, made the same argument against cancel culture almost 30 years later at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

"The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated and driven from society as we know it," Trump said during a speech.

Discussion about public cancellations increased in the years leading up to the 2020 election, and that points to something else that these two battles in the culture wars share.

"There tend to be these flare-ups or panics about political correctness in moments of institutional transformation or instability," historian Moira Weigel says, "and I think it tends to be a way that certain groups claim authority in a changing public sphere."

In those political correctness wars of the '90s, college campuses were becoming more diverse, and Weigel says something similar is taking place right now.

"It usually happens in response to movements for racial and gender and sexuality justice, and I think it's no accident that it's with the rise of BLM [Black Lives Matter] that you see it come back again as a big media theme," she says.

Before the entire country started to weigh in on a single person's actions, "canceling" started out on a much smaller scale.

Meredith Clark, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, says "cancel culture" builds on a process of accountability that has unfolded in Black communities for years. But, she takes issue with the description of "canceling" as a part of our broader culture.

"Canceling is what comes out of Black discourse it's what comes out of Black queer discourse but the assignment of 'culture' to that makes it a label that's big enough to be slapped on anyone and anything," she says. "And that is where the weaponization of what is otherwise accountability really takes off."

If this had remained something that just stuck within Black communities, within Latinx communities, then this wouldn't really be a story.

Meredith Clark

Clark thinks one reason that cancel culture has become such a hot national topic is people in powerful positions are unaccustomed to having to answer to marginalized people who, through social media, have greater access to them than ever.

"That's what it's all about," Clark says. "If this had remained something that just stuck within Black communities, within Latinx communities, then this wouldn't really be a story."

"But because it has crossed over," she continues, "now this becomes newsworthy, and it becomes something that is positioned as something that every everyday person should fear."

Undoubtedly, the biggest difference between discussions of political correctness in the '90s and cancel culture today is the way social media creates access to both public and private individuals and puts their dialogue on equal footing.

Jon Ronson has been studying that transition for a decade and wrote about the way private individuals have been disproportionately punished for minor transgressions on social media in his 2015 book So You've Been Publicly Shamed. He thinks the issue with cancel culture is not so much one of right versus left, but with the idea that private individuals should be judged in the same way as public figures.

"The term 'cancel culture' has become this ridiculously catchall term where a private individual who did nothing much wrong, whose life was very heavily impacted by an overzealous social media shaming, is suddenly put into the same basket as a provocateur newspaper columnist," Ronson says.

Clark's studies illuminate a similar problem. She says that when you look at the small percentage of the U.S. population that is on Twitter 42% of adults between 18 and 29 and only 27% of adults between 30 and 49, as of February 2021 you understand how out of proportion the narrative of cancel culture is.

"Given the tiny, tiny portion of the American population in particular that uses Twitter, we're not really talking about a lot of people who are clamoring to cancel others," she says. "It sounds loud because it gets amplified. The Twitter commentary gets amplified by mainstream media; it gets picked up in discussions [with people] that otherwise would not have been privy to what was happening online."

Ronson thinks one way to alleviate the debate over cancel culture is to better understand how powerful social media and our actions on it can be.

"This is a very new weapon that we have. On Twitter, we're like children crawling towards guns," he says. As with any weapon, the best advice for navigating social media may be to proceed with caution and think before you shoot.

"I just think it's up to every individual on social media to be curious and patient. ... It's absurd to think that you know everything about somebody just because of one poorly worded tweet, and we are judging people that way," Ronson says.

Ronson says he remembers growing up in a culture of racism, misogyny and homophobia in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and '80s and how the idea of political correctness was used to address those issues. In the cases of both political correctness and cancel culture, he thinks some degree of correction is necessary, but what we're witnessing may be overshooting the mark.

"We're living in this very binary world," he says, "and in this world, people on the right are saying, 'You know, we are being silenced by a woke mob,' and people on the left are saying, 'It's not happening we're just holding people accountable.' "

The truth, Ronson says, "is somewhere in the middle."

Mia Venkat, Noah Caldwell and Patrick Jarenwattananon produced and edited this story for broadcast. Alejandra Marquez Janse adapted it for the web.

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From Politically Correct To Cancel Culture, How Accountability ... - NPR