I hear you. There’s room for confusion in much more than just titles, too. Often when someone reports something “literally” happened it’s some thing on the edge of credulity, but not past it, and you have to stop and clarify “wait, so the cop asked to search your car and you literally shit your pants?”

Bisexual Republican?

Alas, it is a mere emphasis modifier.

Not all dictionaries, true. But enough of them have given in that appealing to dictionaries at all becomes a stalemate. Good luck debating the D-P spectrum with someone who can’t use “literally properly.

And no one owns English, true. That also means though that I’m in no position to complain about anyone’s usage of words. Eh. It’s just not a battle I pick anymore.

I’m not a hardcore prescriptivist - I just dislike changes that destroy useful nuances. And I think that’s a good, utilitarian standard we should be able to apply universally.

Like nowadays “decimate” just means the same thing as “devastate” or “destroy” and we no longer have a specific word for “reduce by one-tenth.” Sure, that word is only occasionally needed, but we didn’t need a third word for destroy/devastate at all. And I still wonder for half a second, when someone talks about an army being decimated, if they mean 1/10 or totally.

The dilution of “literally” is similar. It reduces our options for specificity and often leaves you confused about what someone is saying. That’s a bad change IMHO and dictionaries should resist it. The whole point of dictionaries was to retard the morphing of language. They’re a big reason that change has slowed down since the times of Chaucer. But they have abdicated this and become mere linguistic enthographers.

So it’s quite the shit show? I never had any illusions enlisting would change anyone, and in fact I d expect the military to get more problematic people than average. I just thought they were decent at managing them.

It does sound like they are careless but you also sound a little reactive. The thinking I see in your post goes like this:

a thing is either wholly corrupted or wholly pure

corrruption spread from whole thing to home thing by touch

It’s kind of a “cooties” mentality. The trash can? Wholly corrupted! It’s trash! And it touched the table now so the table is wholly corrupted! The table is where you eat!! It’s exactly the same thing as eating trash!!

It’s not. Truth is that the ideal is somewhere between sterility and filth. Sterility is not healthy to grow up in, nor is filth. Sterility may be preferable to filth, but that doesn’t make it ideal.

How clean does a thing actually need to be? This is always my question. Am I serving my soaghetti straight onto the tabletop? No, it’s on a plate. So do I care if something touches the edge of the table? No.

Spare yourself the anxiety of pursuing an ideal that isn’t even healthy.

Top comment said hetero-sectional but everybody seems to want to make him bi for some reason.

Oh I’m with you, but I stopped fighting for the word “literally” when the damn dictionaries gave up and added shit like this:

2 informal : in effect : VIRTUALLY  —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible

I literally died of embarrassment.

… will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or inju

Oh I haven’t. But isn’t the discipline pretty strict? I mean I’m sure they get all kinds of randos enlisting, but aren’t they controlled very strictly during their training, to prepare them to follow orders well later?

I’m genuinely curious here. Feel free to educate me.

Then how about this: speaking on behalf of bisexual men everywhere: we don’t want him, and we don’t appreciate him being made a member of our group as a joke.