The IETF (Internet Engineering Taskforce) has released an RFC (Request for Comment) document detailing proposed changes to language used in computer and network engineering on the basis that certain terms are offensive, oppressive and when used, hurt and harm people.

Full RFC document is available here: https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-00.html

While I've never personally been a fan of the term "master/slave" when describing interconnected computer systems, one has to take a fairly large leap to somehow start thinking that this is a language designed to oppress humans. The context of a term's usage is actually pretty important. "Kill that" used to describe stopping a process from running on a computer would cause absolutely no-one to blink. "Kill that" when describing a living being would be horrendous. Context is key.

It seems to me that the complexity of requiring an understanding of context before a judgement is made and it can be posted swiftly on Facebook et al is a major driving force behind the attempt to ignore context. It is so much easier for a reader to disengage from critical thinking, apply a simplification lense to the language being used and make vast assumptions in lieu of actual contextual meaning so that when posted on a social media platform everyone else around them can jump on the outrage train, yelling from the pulpits about how terrible something is without ever having taken any time to verify anything.

It's not important if the vilification of a writer's prose was justified, it is only important to gain as many likes as possible on the internet, swarming the writer like a plague of locusts out to eat up as much public virtue as they can before swiping down on their timeline to start the whole process over again.

In a modern "consume and spit out" culture that has been fostered by social media, virtue signalling is more important than critical thinking because critical thinking takes time. Virtue signalling just requires clicking a like button as a sort of "like-button zombie".

Like zombies like zombies.