Ages ago, it occured to me that some words are just red flags for ridiculous arguments. Not exactly groundbreaking, I know. Yet it was surprising that there’s quite a lot of them. In my biased experience, when someone uses one of these words in an argument, this is usually an indication that they’re saying something cringeworthy.
Of course I don’t mean that I don’t accept any of these as concepts (there are some that I don’t but most I do, in a limited sense). It just means that I’ve found that something like 90% of the time, the person who uses these terms unironically is also about to stick their foot in their mouth. It’s prejudicial, sure (it is after all a heuristic), and it’s guilt by association (since a lot of language use depends on the social groups you belong to) but I think that’s what makes it useful.
It would be interesting to write a little app that analyses a webpage or email for these words to calculate a red flag status. Thanks to these resources that helped me compile the list.
You might disagree about some specifics. You would of course be wrong(!) but that’s life. For some, I am sad that they have been ruined by so much misuse, yet there they are. There must be plenty I missed so, please add your own. Is there any word or phrase whose unironic use sets off a huge red flag for you and serves as a good predictor of silliness?
- account for
- ad hominem (almost always applied incorrectly and ironically as an example of an ad hominem itself, read more here)
- allopathy/allopathic
- arrogant (when applied to someone for thinking they’re right and providing arguments for this)
- attention whore
- balance [ADDED]
- being (as an abstract noun eg. the ground of all being)
- Big Pharma
- both sides (as in, “both sides are just as bad”)
- chemicals
- common sense
- cure for cancer
- Darwinism
- detox
- dis ease [ADDED]
- dogmatic (when applied to atheism/skepticism/feminism/science/materialism etc)
- drama (as in, “I don’t do drama”, on which see the relevant paragraph in this post)
- energy (unless there’s an equation)
- evolved (as a compliment)
- faith
- feminazi (the word that inspired this whole list, in case you were wondering!)
- free market
- fundamentalist (when applied to atheism/skepticism/feminism/science/materialism etc)
- harmony
- healing
- holistic
- homosexual (as a noun)
- hysterical
- illusion (when referring to something like love)
- Inquisition (unless you’re a historian)
- intuition
- intuitive (ESPECIALLY as a noun)
- lived experience
- macroevolution
- materialism/materialist (when referring to culture/consumerism)
- Meaning
- meaning (when used as a stand-alone noun [as opposed to the meaning of something])
- mere [ADDED]
- microevolution
- militant (when applied to anyone not actually holding an automatic weapon)
- misandry
- missing link
- more evolved
- Mystery (or lower-case uses that are similar in connotation to the capital-M use)
- nanny state
- natural
- nihilism
- nothing more than [ADDED]
- nuance/nuanced (alas)
- official story
- paradigm (outside of actual science or philosophy of science)
- people of faith
- politically correct
- politically incorrect
- presupposition
- priesthood (when referring to someone who’s not a member of an organised religion)
- rabid
- radfem/radical feminist (see socialist)
- religion (when talking about something other than Jainism, Islam, Shinto, Christianity etc)
- scientism
- sheeple
- show trials (unless talking about Stalin)
- shrill
- slut
- socialist (since most uses at the moment don’t seem to know what this actually means)
- spiritual
- strident
- Taliban (unless talking about Afghanistan or Pakistan)
- toxins
- unconditional love
- vibrations [ADDED]
- ways of knowing
- Western (except when talking about western countries as a shortcut for wealthy industrialised countries — which I don’t agree with either but that context is not a red flag to me)
- whore
- wisdom (sad that a perfectly fine concept is on this list but I’ve found it’s a good predictor of nonsense)
- worldview
- worship (when referring to something other than an organised religion)
- virgin/virginity (except when reporting on the views of others)
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