• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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    4 hours ago
    1. I don’t think the competitive Scrabble scene (of which there is a very intense one) really needs to be in charge of the game for everybody. But I get why that contingent is incredibly upset. The set of allowed words is locked in stone, such that people practice and optimize particular memorizations around the particular set of words, and they are barely words at that point, just random collections of letters that form the stepping-stones in their grand strategic endeavor. There are Scrabble experts who do not speak the language, just have memorized the words and are good at the strategy. I get why they’re upset.
    2. They’re not releasing the exact list, which is automatically a red flag of some fuckery to me.
    3. Nonetheless it has been confirmed that “Paki,” “fenian,” and “shiksha” are all on the banned list. Bro what?
    4. “Bitch,” “faggot,” and “slut” are all still in the game. 👍

    Deciding the list of officially banned words was always going to be a hopeless task, but even within that it looks like they’ve been doing a bad job.

    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/uproar-over-scrabble-words-that-can-no-longer-be-used/news-story/bb72350938e787cf5566c01109c98dd0

    Edit: Uncapitalized

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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        4 hours ago

        “Paki” maybe. The other two I don’t think are.

        I think it’s especially hilarious that “fenian” is a slur. For any Irish person for whom it would become relevant at all, I feel like if you called them a “fenian” they would swell with pride.

        • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          a pakistani woman I knew explained to me that Paki was deeply offensive and that I should never use it, but she knew I probably didnt know that. she did suggest I never use it again unless I was trying to upset someone

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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            2 hours ago

            Yes, but presumably if avoiding that situation was the goal they would have removed “faggot.” I can’t even really understand what is the reasoning which might have led them to be extremely aggressive about finding weird slurs that very few people use to root out and remove, while leaving the ones that are actual issues alone. In some way, I think the impotence of the final decision set is somehow connected with the performative nature of it all. Maybe? I have no idea.

            Ultimately it seems like they’re just trying to fit in with the times as their clueless executives understand them. I think they’re a few years behind the times, though, actually. Maybe if they were a little more hip they would be trying to release a “free speech” Scrabble with a bunch of new words added and with “liberal” and “woke” removed, now that the 2010s’ brand of stupid performativeness is being replaced with a new type of performativeness that’s different and much darker.

  • fossilesqueOP
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    6 hours ago

    My grandma, a very sweet, timid small old lady, once threw down a “C U N T” then innocently said, “What? It’s a word.”

  • Delilah (She/Her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 hours ago

    “scores” = groups of 20

    so somewhere between 40 and 100 players quit the game because they couldn’t say a racial slur. In a game with apparently 2.5 million daily players. That can’t be right. In a playerbase that size I’d expect the percentage of bigots with no life to be somewhere in the tens of thousands.

    Guess it was a slow news day

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      I feel like the amount of bigots in a game that requires knowing lots of words is below the population average.

      But not THAT far.

  • brian@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    So I get why they didn’t, but I’m very irked that they don’t have a list of the banned words. I’m just curious how they came up with 400 inappropriate words.