I generally disagree with language policing like this. If we’re not allowed to use metaphors then language becomes very boring indeed.

Alternatively, lets live in a world where metaphors are taken as metaphors and not as something that suggests the two things are exact equivalents

All language is metaphor.

“Reddit refugee” is a metaphor that conceptually makes a lot of sense and sounds good to the ear. No one using this term is making a political statement about asylum seekers.

We live in a world

Have you perhaps considered that we live in a society?

Interesting thought that is definitely worth considering. I used the term “Reddit refugee” in reference to my status. I am a little hesitant to shrink language by turning it into a competition or making words political. Refugee legitimately has multiple definitions, and the appropriate course of action would be to qualify the term; political refugee or Reddit refugee.

This sort of concept leads to all sorts of other similar issues. If I am having difficulty making it through a hike and I comment that I need to just “soldier on”, does that make light of the sacrifices of real soldiers who are dying all over the world? Should most people be disallowed from saying that they are starving because there are people in the world who are actually starving and not just hungry? Is it insensitive to say that I’m struggling to make it through the day at work when others, somewhere, are struggling to even stay alive?

For what it is worth, I’m okay with “refugee” by itself implying “political refugee”, and requiring other forms to be qualified.

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Imagine you were a refugee and you joined the fediverse because you were curious about it and the first thing you saw was people calling themselves refugees for having to… make an account on a new website. Would you feel welcome or like this place was for you?

I have no idea, and neither do you (unless you’re a refugee, but then you would’ve written this different). Do they see themselves as refugees? I have no idea, I don’t know people in this situation so I can’t tell.
I don’t think “refugee” will loose meaning when using it in this way and I don’t think using “refugee” would make the word less of value.

I doubt many would care considering they have much more pressing issues of concern other than policing the speech of random internet users… but for those refugees who would care - why not let them make this post? At that point we could get a conversation started but until then I just don’t get this.

Hey I teach English to refugees as a volunteer. The reality of being an irl refugee is so far detached from what’s going on here that I just can’t fathom the propensity for a refugee to navigate their way into federated forum instance and then suddenly feel unwelcome because people are using an English term in a way that doesn’t directly apply to them.

I work with people who are trying to learn how to get a bus ticket, how to write their names on a piece of paper to get a job, wondering if they’ll ever be able to see their family or if there’s any point in trying to succeed in a new country where they’re barely getting fair access to the same rights as the rest of us. If you really want to do something meaningful for refugees, you could do a lot more than try to police how people talk in some random forum on the web.

Of course it depends on the person, but ensuring that only they are refugees and nobody else is might actually be more harmful than you think. They need community, and seeing the label thrown around in a bit of light hearted fellowship could teach someone to not be disheartened by it.

Nevertheless, just to humor you, I believe “migrant” would be a better word for most users here because many of us just moved away from reddit in search of a better alternative voluntarily. 3rd party app developers, and the users who were forced off of reddit because they needed those apps to interact with it, could be labeled as “displaced”. Mods & users who actually got proactively threatened or outright banned could appropriately be referred to as “refugees”.

Okay, I’m fine with borrowing a term from post-cyberpunk transhuman works - infogee. We’re leaving one place and seeking something still. Rather than physical refuge, we seek information. We could also be called commugees, as many of us seek community. If you wish to retain refugee to mean “a person seeking physical refuge”, I understand it; but understand that the connotation will still be understood, and we all understand that our hardships are not theirs.

black people are actual refugees from virtual spaces like twitter, as are queer people…

as the language landscape changes, so does language usage. and this whole notion of trying to police speech in such a way is bit too prescriptive for me tbh. it may be a virtual home but it is still a home in a very real sense where real connections and community are made, so the word refugee definitely applies.

@dumpsterlid Thank you. ‘Escapee’ works just as well without minimising the real world tragedy of refugees and their oppression by governments around the world.

Nah… I’m gonna continue saying whatever I want. Thanks for your post; I found it amusing.

Why don’t you let refugees speak for themselves instead of assuming you know how they feel or what they want? I’m sure they have much larger concerns in life than worrying about whether or not someone uses the evocative term “refugee” as a metaphor to describe their process of fleeing from Reddit to sites with a more palatable leadership and rules.