• Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      21·
      7 days ago

      Both the thorn and the long s are so fucking annoying. I basically don’t block anyone ever but I’ve strongly considered it for a few people who insist on using that shit

      • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        I kinda like it. I don’t do letter revivalism myself, but when I ſee ſomebody typiŋ like þis (for instance), then the text becomes awkward to read, and I hear the words in my head as somebody with a speech impediment. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because many of the people who do stuff like archaic letter revivalism probably do have speech impediments! Or they might have difficulties with intonation or otherwise speak in ways that the people around them find “grating”, so they’re used to people saying that they sound really annoying when they talk. Which is to say that I see letter revivalism as a very autistic-coded practice, that whole sort of conlang / etymology / pop historical linguistics subculture it’s rooted in leans pretty neurodivergent on the whole, ask me how I know. And so I can respect these letter revivalists for doing a small thing in writing that I personally find a bit annoying, because that small bit of annoyance makes me think about what sorts of voices people don’t listen to because they’re judged as annoying, right? I’veknownpeoplewithpressuredspespeechandandandandststutters, p’eople who actually ejectivize p’losives at the st’arts of words, pẽõplẽ wĩth ãll sõrts õf dĩffẽrẽnt qũĩrks ĩn thẽĩr spẽẽch, but when people write in this sort of broadly unmarked, standard style as I’m doing now, then what sort of voice do you read that as in your head? Do you hear those voices? Voices that read as obviously neurodivergent, voices that probably got teased in school? Or do you just hear a generic voice that reads as neurotypical? It can be good for neurodivergent people to be able to put on a neurotypical voice through writing, but it can also be good to make writing itself read as neurodivergent; and marked, proscribed, “going against the grain” practices like letter revivalism are exactly how to achieve that effect. Whether the people who engage in the practice consciously realize it or not, “I AM BEING LOUDLY AUTISTIC” is the effect they’re creating by continually rejecting social norms around writing, even when people loudly complain or they get constantly bullied for it.

        Otherwise, letter revivalism also signals belonging to an in-group of people who know about that particular topic. This can be sort of a double-edged sword, since while this sort of signal can help people connect with people with similar interests, it can also make the writer look like a bit of a know-it-all who has to say “look at what I know” to satisfy their ego. But I think it’s best to assume the best from people in these sorts of cases. We can handle people being a little annoying. “All objects in the world come into existence, but the sage does not judge them; they are born, but the sage does not possess them; the sage acts, but relies on nothing; he accomplishes and moves on, and by moving on, he never has to leave.”

        christmas-crab-legs You should watch SPARKLE ON RAVEN: The Life of DrillGirl; it is a very good show. CēterumFurthermore cēnseōI think iūs auctōriscopyright esse dēlendummust be destroyed.

        • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          11·
          5 days ago

          Tbh, as an autistic person myself, it reads to me strictly as attention-seeking. “I don’t care about effectively communicating with you, using wacky UnIqUe letters is the top priority” is a flavor of antisocial behavior I have no patience for. If you just want to see your funny letters use them in your journal, don’t make me decipher them

          • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            5 days ago
            Browser script for replacing thorns and long S's with th and short S's 
            // ==UserScript==
// @name           Replace Text On Webpages
// @namespace      http://userscripts.org/users/23652
// @description    Replaces text on websites. Now supports wildcards in search queries. Won't replace text in certain tags like links and code blocks
// @include        https://hexbear.net/*
// @copyright      JoeSimmons
// @version        1.1.0
// @license        http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
// @downloadURL https://update.greasyfork.org/scripts/10976/Replace%20Text%20On%20Webpages.user.js
// @updateURL https://update.greasyfork.org/scripts/10976/Replace%20Text%20On%20Webpages.meta.js
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
    'use strict';


    /*
        NOTE:
            You can use \\* to match actual asterisks instead of using it as a wildcard!
            The examples below show a wildcard in use and a regular asterisk replacement.
    */

    var words = {
    ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////


        // Syntax: 'Search word' : 'Replace word',
        'þ' : 'th',
        'ſ' : 's',
        'Þ' : 'Th',


    ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    '':''};











    //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // This is where the real code is
    // Don't edit below this
    //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    var regexs = [], replacements = [],
        tagsWhitelist = ['PRE', 'BLOCKQUOTE', 'CODE', 'INPUT', 'BUTTON', 'TEXTAREA'],
        rIsRegexp = /^\/(.+)\/([gim]+)?$/,
        word, text, texts, i, userRegexp;

    // prepareRegex by JoeSimmons
    // used to take a string and ready it for use in new RegExp()
    function prepareRegex(string) {
        return string.replace(/([\[\]\^\&\$\.\(\)\?\/\\\+\{\}\|])/g, '\\$1');
    }

    // function to decide whether a parent tag will have its text replaced or not
    function isTagOk(tag) {
        return tagsWhitelist.indexOf(tag) === -1;
    }

    delete words['']; // so the user can add each entry ending with a comma,
                      // I put an extra empty key/value pair in the object.
                      // so we need to remove it before continuing

    // convert the 'words' JSON object to an Array
    for (word in words) {
        if ( typeof word === 'string' && words.hasOwnProperty(word) ) {
            userRegexp = word.match(rIsRegexp);

            // add the search/needle/query
            if (userRegexp) {
                regexs.push(
                    new RegExp(userRegexp[1], 'g')
                );
            } else {
                regexs.push(
                    new RegExp(prepareRegex(word).replace(/\\?\*/g, function (fullMatch) {
                        return fullMatch === '\\*' ? '*' : '[^ ]*';
                    }), 'g')
                );
            }

            // add the replacement
            replacements.push( words[word] );
        }
    }

    // do the replacement
    texts = document.evaluate('//body//text()[ normalize-space(.) != "" ]', document, null, 6, null);
    for (i = 0; text = texts.snapshotItem(i); i += 1) {
        if ( isTagOk(text.parentNode.tagName) ) {
            regexs.forEach(function (value, index) {
                text.data = text.data.replace( value, replacements[index] );
            });
        }
    }

}());

            Modified from this browser script. You can copy-paste the above script into Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey or a similar browser script extension and it will magically make every archaic letter revivalist you encounter on Hexbear appear to type the same way as you do. If you’d prefer not to use a browser script, then there are a number of free and open source word replacement browser extensions, such as Word Replacer Max for Firefox, that you could use for the same purpose. Or if none of these options seem worthwhile, you can still copy-paste letter revivalists’ comments into e.g. Notepad and use the find and replace function there. Is there any particular reason you haven’t tried any of these solutions already? Normally when people are this bothered by something, they try to find a solution for it, and in this case the solution seems pretty easy and doesn’t require you blocking anybody. It is opting out of seeing archaic letters rather than opting in, but barring a reason I haven’t thought of, it really seems like you either just never thought to try finding a solution to your problem (in which case, why?) or you were in fact choosing on some level to continue to expose yourself to something you found very upsetting (in which case, again, why?)

            I won’t make assumptions about your motives, but how you’re writing reminds me of this one non-binary autistic person I used to know who really hated neopronouns. They used they/them pronouns and basically wanted every other non-binary autistic person to use the same pronouns as them. They made all the exact same points about neopronouns as you’re making about the letter thorn: because they didn’t understand neopronouns, because they found neopronouns “weird”, and because neopronouns are mildly inconvenient, then neopronouns had to be “antisocial attention-seeking behavior.” It’s a problem you see in a lot of autistic spaces in general, speaking as one autistic person to another: the inherent tension between the spectrum encompassing a wide variety of different types of people with different desires and needs, and the individuals on that spectrum strongly desiring routine and predictability. How do you make a coalition out of people who can’t stand each other? Many autistic people want every other autistic person to be exactly the same as them, and are vexed by this being impossible to achieve. But there’s an extra dimension to this issue by the fact that some autistic people are more privileged than others: autistic people with relatively low support needs who are better at masking are privileged over autistic people with relatively high support needs who are worse at masking; hetero-cismasc autistic people are privileged over queer or fem autistic people, even within non-binary autistic people there are some who play the “respectability” game and make fun of xenogenders; unracialized autistic people are privileged over racialized autistic people; rich over poor; et cetera. What this means is that much of the time, autistic people who are themselves pretty “weird” will punch down on “the bigger weirdo” rather than on the genuinely privileged when they complain about other autistic people. I think that complaining about letter revivalism constitutes a form of this phenomenon.

            You know what happens when people let themselves hate others for doing annoying but ultimately harmless things “as a choice”? They just end up declaring themselves the ultimate arbiters of all that is and is not a “choice”, as if they have ESP and can read people’s minds and motivations. You cannot ever trust such people to accurately discriminate between what is and isn’t a choice, since it never was about choices, it was always about giving themselves excuses to be angry about annoying but ultimately harmless things, it was always about them wanting everyone else to be the same as them. This is the same logic that gives us myths like “tics are antisocial, attention-seeking behavior”. Yes, “antisocial” and “attention-seeking” — even setting aside which behaviors are and are not, who taught us that it must always be bad to be “antisocial” and “attention-seeking”, anyways? People who want you to unquestioningly accept a society that hates you without ever complaining or making your presence known? And who taught you that it isn’t worth listening to people if it takes slightly more effort on your part to understand them? I have always tried to write like a neurotypical, but people still put words in my mouth, read intentions into my words, misunderstand me, sometimes to the point where writing intelligibly feels like a complete waste of my time and effort. People who are willing to be inconvenient in front of others understand the fruitlessness of trying to fit in much better than I do, if they’re willing to self-select who listens to them.

            So please, you can change your logic. If, and I emphasize if since I said I wouldn’t make assumptions about your motives, you find that you’re getting mad at inconsequential things “for the sake of it”, then understand that that isn’t good for you. You don’t have to live in a world where deviance must be wilful, antisocial, attention-seeking behavior that must be eliminated. That world is a bad and colorless world that only gives you more things to be mad about than necessary. You can live in a world where some people are just weird and some people just take a little more effort to communicate with, and that’s OK. You don’t even have to stop being annoyed by them.

            christmas-crab-legs You should watch SPARKLE ON RAVEN: The Life of DrillGirl; it is a very good show. CēterumFurthermore cēnseōI think iūs auctōriscopyright esse dēlendummust be destroyed.

            • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              11·
              3 days ago

              You keep comparing things like speech impediments and tics to purposefully making one’s writing more difficult to understand and I feel like that is an ableist and unreasonable comparison. If someone chose to affect a speech impediment or tic they would be rightly and widely criticized. People with speech impediments and tics do not choose to speak that way, generally they are frustrated by it, and generally they would choose not to do it if they had the ability.

              • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
                3·
                2 days ago

                I’ll try to rephrase one more time, in the most rigid philosophy I can muster.

                1: Logics of Hate

                There are two types of human behavior: voluntary and involuntary. The voluntary also has a non-dominant involuntary aspect and vice versa, i.e. volition is really a spectrum, but for now accept the simplification.

                There is furthermore a distinction between what a first party sees as (in)voluntary behavior, and what a third party sees as (in)voluntary behavior: perception of the self and perception of the other rarely match up. Neither of these are the exact same as what is objectively (in)voluntary, but the self-perception tends to be closer, since people have access to their own inner worlds but not others’. In most cases, other-perception treats more behavior as voluntary, and self-perception treats more behavior as involuntary, at least in my experience.

                Few people would choose to hate somebody for something done involuntarily.

                Many people would choose to hate somebody for something done voluntarily.

                But the problem with hating people for things done voluntarily, is that you will only ever be able to judge what behavior in other people is or isn’t voluntary from a third person perspective: you will never have true, unfiltered access to either objective reality or to other people’s perceptions of themselves. This means that if you hate people for things done voluntarily, you will always run the risk of accidentally hating people for things done involuntarily as well, because you wrongly believed that behavior to be voluntary.

                Emphasis on risk: this does not necessarily mean that everybody who hates other people for things done voluntarily does hate other people for things done involuntarily as well, only that they’re capable of such hate, because they already subscribe to a logic where their own perception of others reins supreme over both objective reality and others’ perceptions of themselves. This is why people who subscribe to this logic so often end up declaring things that we see as obviously involuntary, as voluntary.

                There are only two ways to avoid the risk of accidentally hating other people for things they do involuntarily: either you just happen to have a perfect understanding of the inner workings of other people’s minds through intuition, or you do not define who you hate based on whether or not the given trait is voluntary. The former is as good as impossible, the latter is definitely possible.

                A better way to define who to hate is then based on whether the things they do meaningfully harm you: while “Are they doing it voluntarily?” centers one’s other-perception, “Am I being harmed by this?” centers one’s self-perception.

                Here’s an admittedly crappy chart of all the dialectics I’ve done so far:

                2: In the Case of Thorn

                Does writing þ instead of th harm you? I have a hard time seeing how it can, when it’s so easy to avoid the problem entirely through find-and-replace þ → th. Maybe there’s a reason why find-and-replace doesn’t work as a solution for you that I’m unaware of — my whole point here is that I am not you and you are not me — but assuming that find-and-replace does work as a solution for you, then the only reasons I can imagine for why you haven’t already implemented this solution are either:

                1. You never thought to look into a solution.
                2. You didn’t really want to find a solution.

                The former leaves open the possibility that seeing the letter thorn genuinely harms you, in which case the issue becomes why you didn’t look into a solution when you were being harmed by something.

                The latter would imply that you chose on some level to continue to expose yourself to something harmful, in which case the issue becomes whether something is truly harmful if one chose to expose oneself to it.

                But then I have to consider this: you contemplated blocking the person in question. This would also stop you from being exposed to the letter thorn, yes, but there are significant qualitative differences between blocking as a solution and word replacement as a solution:

                1. Word replacement does not prevent you from communicating with the person in question. It is also a permanent and universal solution, since even if you meet a second thorn revivalist, or the first thorn revivalist makes a new account, then the same word filters will also apply to those accounts’ comments.
                2. Blocking completely prevents you from communicating with the person in question. It is also a temporary and individualized solution, since you’ll have to block any other thorn revivalist accounts you see, one by one.

                Your problem with thorn revivalism being that the thorns make communication with the person difficult, shouldn’t you prefer a solution that makes communication with the person easy, and disprefer a solution that makes communication with the person impossible? So why, you needing to do something on your part no matter what, was the dispreferable solution the only one you considered? Again, you either just didn’t think of the preferable solution, which leaves open the possibility that there is no difference between your stated and true motives; or blocking the person was the real preferable solution the whole time, which would imply that there is a difference between your stated motives and your true motives: that it’s not the difficulty of communication that really bothers you, but something else.

                I want to make it very clear now that I am not accusing you of lying. I’ve been wrongly accused of lying before, and it’s one of the worst feelings I’ve ever known. I want there to be something I’ve missed. Even if there really is a difference between your stated and true motives, this does not have to be a deliberate untruth, but more likely something like a rationalization of your subconscious that you never questioned.

                You never actually blocked the person, you only considered it. This means that you were aware of a (dispreferable) solution and nevertheless opted to continue exposing yourself to the problem anyways. Why was this? Every option I can think of ultimately just loops back to questions of why you did consider blocking and did not consider word replacement. The only way I can think to make sense of this conundrum of you thinking of blocking without actually doing it is if you are not harmed by people using archaic letters (hence why you didn’t block), but just do not want to listen to people engaging in a harmless practice regardless (hence why you considered blocking).

                Which would mean that you hate people for doing something that does not harm you. What, then, might be the reason you hate them instead? From your own words it certainly seems like it’s because thorn revivalism is “voluntary” and annoys you. Which loops us back to the beginning of this comment, and the idealist, supremacist thinking that underpins this whole logic, the logic of believing oneself to be the measure of all creation, the judge and possessor of all that comes into being, “I know everyone else better than they know themselves, and that gives me the right to mold them in my own image.”

                Here’s an argument map reiterating what I’m trying to argue:

                3: Conclusion

                …And with that, the test of character concludes. As a shepherd divideth his sheep from his goats, the proverbial “Lord” will say unto them on His right hand, “Come, ye blessed, for I was ‘cringe’ or ‘annoying,’ and ye lived and let live; ye knew your station was in equality, not supremacy, for ye did not think yourselves the arbiters of all things; ye judged Me not for My tics, My accent, My autistic intonations, My speech impediments at all;” and the righteous shall answer Him, saying, “When did we do these things?” And the “Lord” shall answer and say unto them, “Verily I say unto you, ye judged not the thorn revivalist, nor the nounself collector, nor the child who said ‘uwu’ and ‘watashi’, and inasmuch as ye judged not the least of these My children, ye judged not Me.”

                To live and let live is to stand at the gate of all creation.

                I have tics myself, you know. Not bad enough to get a Tourette’s diagnosis or anything, but I do have them and people do occasionally comment on them. Different people can have different relationships to their disorders/disabilities. You yourself said “generally”, yet act as if everybody wants to be “fixed.” Many people do, yes, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting that; but there are also many people who “talk weird” who are actually perfectly fine with how they sound, people who would sooner live in a world where other people are more patient and less judgmental, than have to change anything about themselves. There’s a pretty notable stuttering pride movement, for instance, I’m sure you’ve at least heard of Scatman John. As communists, we’re trying to build a world of freedom with room for both groups, both people who want to assimilate into the majority and people who don’t, because it’s their decision as individuals to make.

                There’s other points I could reiterate from my previous comments, but I think these were the most important ones. I hope I’ve made my stances a bit clearer and that this meets you well. I really do not want you to see this as an attack on your character, I really do just think that you have some bad ideas you’ve internalized from society that are making you unhappier than you have to be.

                • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  11·
                  2 days ago

                  I think you’re taking all of this far more intensely than it needs to be. I will try to respond to the best of my ability to all you’ve said:

                  Why not replace their words with something else? Because I find that idea repulsive. I would never unilaterally change someone else’s words without their knowledge. That strikes me as an incredible disrespect and dishonesty. Furthermore, it doesn’t really solve the problem which is that these things indicate the kind of person who is not interested in communicating with me and thus I have less interest in trying to communicate with them. Think of the idea of someone using slurs. Sure, I could just replace all the slurs with rough non-slur equivalents, but I don’t want to chat with people who regularly use slurs even if I don’t know it. If I block people who do things which indicate that they aren’t worth interacting with, I have created a better situation than if I simply blinded myself to the red flags.

                  Why didn’t I block them then? Because they might grow up. I only run into these people very rarely. If there were any very active posters who insisted on consistently using non-alphabet letters in their posts I would very definitely block them and my experience using the site would be improved by doing so.

                  Why do I get to judge that they’re being annoying? Because I’m the other half of the interaction, communication does not happen in a vacuum. Again, I don’t care one bit how you write in your journals. You can write your journals entirely in your conlang that you’ve never shared with anyone, it doesn’t affect me one bit. But if you’re trying to communicate with me, you need to convince me that your communication is worthwhile. I’m not obligated to entertain your QuIrKy writing style, I have the power and the right to unilaterally close the channel of communication if you aren’t approaching that communication in good faith. Obviously you understand that–we ban liberals, and chuds, people who use slurs, people who spam, etc. But you seem to find it unreasonable to take the same approach with people using ancient dead letters because you have created a connection in your mind between these people and people with disabilities. Could your argument not be just as easily applied to suggest we shouldn’t ban slur use? Who are you to say they voluntarily used the r-slur?

                  I also have some minor tics fwiw, specifically some echolalia and palilalia that crops up every now and again. It’s pretty annoying. If I decided to start just writing lines several times in superscript in all my comments, everyone would rightly find that fucking annoying and many would block me.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      7 days ago

      The surname MacKenzie is the letter yogh’s equivalent to “ye olde”: printing presses imported from mainland Europe didn’t have movable type pieces for certain Old English letters, so those letters would just get replaced with the most similar-looking letter that did have type. So, Þ became Y, and Ȝ became Z. MacKenȝie with a yogh was pronounced like “MacKeng-yee”, which is why in Scotland today, unlike the rest of the world, the surname MacKenzie is pronounced “MacKen-yee”. Elsewhere, people started saying it how it was spelled.

      christmas-crab-legs You should watch SPARKLE ON RAVEN: The Life of DrillGirl; it is a very good show. CēterumFurthermore cēnseōI think iūs auctōriscopyright esse dēlendummust be destroyed.