me + Sue circa 2020
This morning on Threads, I entered a conversation about piracy. When I shared something that I've seen A LOT of people share someone came in and told me all the reasons I was wrong for saying what I said.
My immediately response was to defend myself, but after one response it became clear that this individual was in no way wanting to have a conversation about what she found offensive (a quote I'd used that I've seen others say) or about the original piracy conversation. This person blocked me, which is also great. People should block anyone they dislike or don't wish to see on their social media.
However, the whole interaction has me thinking.
This is one of those things on the internet where one person says something and another person immediately comes in with all of their statements about why they are correct without looking at any of the nuance or just immediately intending to talk down to the person they're responding to. In this instance I was quoting that people defending piracy say something like, "what about people in third world countries? They deserve to read too." This person immediately said it is wrong to say third world countries.
And yes, (history lesson incoming) the phrase is actually archaic as it does not fit the original definition. The original phrases were part of The Three World Model. This came about during the Cold War as a way to tell who was allied with who. The US + allies were known as First World, while the Soviet + allies were Second World, and the remaining countries that were not aligned with either were Third World. These were not economic classifications but rather political.
Over time, Third World became a way to categorize economically poor and non-industrialized countries. In many circles this term is not pejorative and is synonymous with developing countries. In some areas for some scholars, the term developing countries is pejorative and they feel inaccurate. As it denotes that "developed countries" are the ideal when the truth is not there. The terms Global North and Global South were also explored with the connotation that the Global South was made up of economically disadvantaged and developing countries, but this is not accurate as many economically advantaged countries are in the Global South and vice versa.
The truth is that sweeping generalized terms will never be accurate for everyone or agreed upon for everyone. When I personally talk about countries, I just use the name of the country. If I'm referencing a region, then I reference the region geographically. When I reference what someone else said I quote it, even if it's not the best term. I think it's because of my background in academic writing where individuals know that using direct quotes might mean using offensive words and do not take it to mean that the person writing is okay with those terms. Whereas on the internet, everyone is subjected to some sort of weird critique by every single other person on the internet.
Anyway, it was just something I was pondering this morning and my personal blog is a good way for me to just sort of talk myself through things as well as share some fun facts with the world!
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