There are limited examples of this effect working in reverse. Take the word “Nice” for example. Nice back in ye old medieval times used to be a synonym for “stupid” or “simple” so saying someone was “nice” was insulting. Then there was this prolonged long fad where things being very plain and straightforward was considered a good thing and “Nice/simple” gained a positive connotation. Saying someone is “simple” or a “simpleton” retains this original sort of vibe but “Nice” now just means pleasant.

Ohhh no… As a person who regularly builds random shit for film and television, the single slotted screw is the bane of my bloody existence. Some designers fucking love em for the aesthetic but the cam outs on them are terrible. Is it technically easier to produce? Yes, is it viable to use for construction purposes comparitively - fuck no. Every time you cam out ( lose traction on the screw) you risk accidentally damaging whatever medium you are screwing into.

Locally there is an insane institutional preference for the Robertson screw (which is basically a square) because it doesn’t cam out much, drives in well and arguably resists stripping better than a Phillips… This is believed in so much that any screw not seen by the camera is a Robby (usually size 2) while anything that is perceived by the audience is a phillips or a single slot screw. Given a choice nobody wants to handle single slots and chances are good you only find them in period specific builds or when the designer is a psychopath.

I theorize this is because she’s had to adapt to code switch to speak a rhetoric specific for wider media coverage. Since the attention span of the general reader is fairly narrow and so many readers demonstrate confusion at perfectly correct terms (or the right wing coverage co-opts things in a very specific pattern) there’s a certain way of looking at language utilized in short, quotable format as a unique tool. In those instances it’s more useful to approach language from the aspect of what is the specific choices being made doing rather than saying. It’s not always correct to believe the person saying it believes what they are saying is strictly literally true. The reasons for an intentional error are many, it could be phrased that way for a personal political reason, to attempt (though not always successfully) to make the quote more legible to someone with only a passing understanding or to achieve some kind of specific desired result in the reception of the audience.

Those who know better usually find it frustrating to interface with but if you are speaking to a large group you are actually speaking to multiple audiences and usually your target is to capture those at the bottom of the engagement curve. As an informed audience member target wise you are far more likely to understand what is being implied and are thus not the ideal target for the potential language tools being employed. In many ways as an audience type you can be safely ignored in favor of outreach to people who are generally not so literate or aware.

Wow, your name is pretty accurate huh?

Wow, lucky you.

While I won’t argue that the media is causing a number of problems thinking it’s a storm in a teacup is your privilege showing. Even though I live in one of the most trans accepting places on the planet I have had the unique experience of having to sneak past protesters who are trying to remove people like me from public life, using slurs over megaphones and openly marching hundreds strong in the streets… And again this is rated one of if not the most trans friendly place in the world. There is no safer place to go.

It’s a lot harder to see it as a storm in a teacup when the world is dramatically becoming a smaller place for us personally because laws keep passing that people do not understand or do not care how they actually impact us. The media doesn’t report a lot of us who are murdered even when it’s a hate crime. This year in the US there was 41-ish such hate motivated crimes which is near double 2023’s total… But we can’t be sure of the actual number because a lot of the time the transness of the victim and the nature of the motive is obscured by the media reporting. Some of the media shenanigans only gets caught only by loved ones as media frequently uses vagueness and dead names that friends and community members don’t recognize because that person hasn’t gone by that name for decades.

Your opinion comes from the fact you don’t personally have a horse in the race so whether you engage with it or not is a choice. The safe places are radically shrinking. The next government projected to win federally here is known to be openly hostile to trans people and I know that at least one of my friends will die directly as a result from them removing the supports currently in place. So enjoy the storm you aren’t living friend but realize saying it doesn’t exist is really crass to those who cannot find shelter.