I apologize if I didn’t write my post very clearly. I was not talking about “the problem with the name”, but about the problem with how some people have reacted to it, specifically the expectation that someone from another culture must be familiar with all possible meanings of a word before using the word.
So, to clarify: I did not say that this expectation is prescriptivism, but rather that it seems to me that it’s similar to prescriptivism, because I feel that it is an instance of people from one culture mandating to people from a different culture (a culture that was once brutally subjugated by the first culture) how to use a certain word. Like prescriptivism, the language policing in this situation seems like it could easily turn into cultural imperialism (although I do not feel it has gotten to that point). I only mentioned prescriptivism as another example of something that can be used for linguistic oppression; I don’t really care what we call what is happening in this situation.
I know that it seems like shitting on the company’s name is “punching up” because the company has something to do with blockchain bullshit, but I really feel like that has obscured that there is some “punching down” going on here too.
I think that this sums it up rather well:
As I said in my post, I totally get that this seemingly one-person company messed up, and I agree that they should change the name. But, when viewed from a cosmopolitan perspective, I feel like there has been some overreaction to this.
