#+SETUPFILE: ../../../template/level-2.org
#+TITLE: What-is-a Clickbait
#+DATE: <2022-09-25 Sun 10:08>
#+AUTHOR: vaeringjar
#+EMAIL: vaeringjar@land
#+DESCRIPTION: Defining things is hard and sometimes clickbait. Also, a followup to a previous post on pronouns and titles etc
#+KEYWORDS: blogging


* Disclaimer

This continues some thoughts from a previous post[fn:previous-post].

I decided not cite the whatisabait (more on that term below) arguments
whether text or video. I just don't want to associate my blog with
them directly.


* Titles, addresses, honourifics, etc

Please note, I will use the word title mean all of these, for lack of
my own better understanding.

Before I get to the main topic I want to add this:

In my previous post I mentioned that "San" might work as a good
replacement in English for Ms, Mr, etc. At the time of writing I
explicitly had thought of the Japanese origin of the word. But a day
or two later it occurred to me that many Romance Languages already use
that for what English already has for Saint or St. So to avoid that
possible ambiguity I take back "San" as a recommendation, at least for
a prefix position title. However, my recommendation for an abstract or
general title remains.

And now the main topic...


* All the "what is a..." clickbait

I don't remember when I started seeing these, but "what is a woman"
and the mostly YouTuber clickbait is just a bunch of trash. Like
before, I'll appeal to the software engineers out there, but anyone
who has ever had to refactor their code already knows that once
something has been defined, if something new gets added and there's a
conflict, it doesn't mean the original doesn't work. You just update
the logic, bump the version, and move on. And so I call all of this
clickbait because that's what it is, unless for some case someone
didn't ever actually know. Hello Data, and now we're back to appealing
to Trekkies as I did in the previous post.

And just like software, it's never really done. People freaked out
about "what is a planet" a few years ago. Poor Pluto. My main gripe
with all of that relating to my tendency to want to call all
exoplanets also planets. Or maybe also that gas giants and
Earth/Venus/Mercury rocks all planets. Those don't matter in terms of
communication. But for the clickbait, these people are just trying to
disrupt or act like experts on something they either know nothing
about or have no rational process to address their own thoughts other
than cashing in on that sweet monetization.

So what is a planet? Planets orbit a star, clears its own orbit, blah
blah. So why not Pluto? Not big enough. Even NASA writes that "This
seemingly simple question doesn't have a simple answer". Though, take
note that in this case, NASA asks "What is a Planet?" with sincerity
and with an actual answer[fn:nasa-planet].


* Okay but what is a woman?

For my own working definition, based on what I know and what I wrote
about last time, "woman" is currently the gender normatively
associated with female humans. So by contrast, "man" or what I dubbed
"karlman" is the gender normatively associated with male humans. From
that I imply that gender does not equate to sex. So what is sex? It's
something related to reproduction and/or sexual preference. And
whether or not I'm wrong, I'm going to stop there because my point is
that defining things works like this for anything. And I could have
picked anything, but planets just seemed like the most recent thing
that was big in the news media where folks either actually had trouble
accepting the definition or where it had some political reason.

I suppose instead of planets I could have also brought up racism,
fascism, assault rifles, or machine guns. Great, now I've appealed to
"both" sides.


* Whatisabait

The insincere "what is a" argument feels like a close cousin to
whataboutism. I think coining a term might be a good idea.
"Whatisabait" feels odd to me, but that doesn't mean it's wrong, just
new. Those asking "what is a" (or perhaps sometimes just "what is")
don't actually care about the answer. They're usually trying to
discredit some else's thoughts by pointing out absurdities.


* Footnotes
  :PROPERTIES:
  :CUSTOM_ID: footnotes
  :CLASS: unnumbered
  :END:

[fn:previous-post] [[file:language_2022-07-07_pronouns.org][English Language Pronouns]]
[fn:nasa-planet] [[https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/in-depth/][What is a Planet? | Planets – NASA Solar System
Exploration]]
