Non-violent offence

[davidn]

Whitney sent me a link to an article rather inappropriately declaring itself to be about "kick ass violence-free video games". I don't think that there's anything on the list that people won't have heard of, but there are a couple that I'd meant to get around to playing. I love the sudden turn the list takes as you scroll down - Portal, Journey, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, SLENDER, Gone Home, Katamari...

What really caught my eye, though, was this:

If the last time you touched a game controller involved a spastic blue hedgehog...

And... I know that even after seven years, every single week in this country leads to a new misunderstanding, but this is absolutely not an okay thing to say in Britain! When I read that, I thought... well, I'm not a great fan of him either - I mean, look at this prick - but where I'm from, "spastic" is a really offensive term for someone mentally disabled, equivalent to (and I do apologize for this) the word "retard".

Apparently, here it just means high-energy or twitchy, which makes a lot more sense in context. And it sort of makes a nice change, not being the one that says something massively offensive by mistake due to the language difference.

Comments

[just-a-notion.livejournal.com]

I hear "spaz attack" being said a lot here. I make a point of letting them know that it is indeed akin to the flippant use of "retarded"

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

So far as I'm aware, 'spastic' was derived from The Spastics Society, which was the former name for a support group for sufferers of cerebral palsy. After it became used as an insult, they eventually changed their name to Scope - at which point 'spastic' was dropped from the common argot and replaced with "scoper". There really is no way round it; people will find ways to be insulting no matter what you do.

Generally, the compromise here now is just to use 'spaz(z)' (second 'z' optional) which is still frowned on in politically correct circles but is softened and robbed of bite enough that generally people will know you're not using it as a serious insult.

The old adage about Britain and America being separated by a common language seems to be proven more true every day...

D.F.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Yep. If there's one thing humans are masters at, it's being jerks.