Absinthe

The term Gypsy is a corruption of "Egyptian", as Europeans had thought that this was where the Roma initially came from. So, it came about from ignorance and it's continued use is a testament to insensitivity. It's like calling south Asian people black. The first time is a simple mistake, continuing to do so is rude.

This is a common myth.

Actually, the Romani people had no origin stories. They didn't know where they came from either. And Muslims were referring to them as Copts (Christian Egyptians) long before they arrived in England. The odds that the English independently made the same mistake is slim to none. In all probability it was the Romani people who designated themselves as Egyptian. Still, we will never now.

And whatever the origin of the term it has absolutely no relevance to its use today.Take "man" for example. Man was just an indefinite article. It was often used in a demeaning manner to refer to adult male servants. The terms for distinguishig between gender were wer and wif. Wifman (woman) was used to refer to adult female servants. But clearly that is not how these terms are used today. If we are going to play these stupid little word games, we might as well ban communication altogether.

My character is just a tribal princess. Her people spent their days hunting and riding and their nights singing and dancing. So gypsy + hunter/ranger captured it well. Wandering bard does not. In fact, she would find it offensive. Praise-blame poetry was vulgar and bards debased themselves by doing it for unworthy motives. It is wrong for her to call herself a gypsy but it is OK for Nexon to call her a whor* ?

I think Nexon completely fails to grasp why the right of self-designation is important in a pluralist society.



Unlike “gypsy”, “bard” was actually a derogatory term. Bards were seen as itinerant trouble makers. And “wandering bard” reinforces the negative stereotype of bards as vagrants, vagabonds, rogues, tramps, drifters. Itinerant communities are constantly having to battle this tendency of settled communities to lump them in with derelicts.

Of course language is constantly evolving. Sir Walter Scott gave us this romanticized bard as like the lyric poets of Ancient Greece. And “wandering bard” in this romanticized sense can be seen as idyllic (the lyric poet wandering the hills, seeking inspiration).

Bard in each of these cases has the same referent. They are just different senses of the same word. Gypsy and gypsy on the other hand are capitonyms. The meaning of the word changes based on whether or not it is capitalized. Examples: Turkey (the country)/turkey (the bird), China (the country)/china (porcelain), March (month)/march (walk) or march (frontier). Sometimes these words evolve independently (March/march) and sometimes not (Turkey/turkey; China/china). Nevertheless, most rational people don’t run around claiming turkey is a pejorative for Turks, or that Turkey is a pejorative given by people who see Turks as like turkeys, or that turkey’s “appropriated” their name from the Turks. And most sane people don’t run around calling for bans on Thanksgiving claiming it as a national holiday celebrating anti-Turkish sentiments.


Gypsy (proper noun)

In American English, the proper noun “Gypsy” is commonly used in reference to Romani ethnicity. There is no historical evidence of the term ever being offensive or contemptuous. And prior to the 1980s every Romani-American sub-culture translated its self-designation to English as Gypsy. But some newer immigrants like the Sinti and Roma have never called themselves Gypsy. To call them Gypsy is to deny them the right of self-designation. Some might take offense. So it is generally recommended to use the term cautiously if at all.

Where I live Romani-Americans traditionally designate themselves as either Rom or Gypsy. Rom expresses belonging to a Gypsy community. Gypsy expresses belonging to the Gypsy ethnic group. One can be Rom and not be Gypsy. One can be Gypsy and not be Rom. So the terms are not synonyms despite efforts by some to treat them as such. And they don’t typically get offended if people don’t know the difference.


Gypsy (common noun)

In American English, the common noun “gypsy” is just a generic term that refers to any itinerant person. When it was coined it was obviously in the sense of “like a Gypsy”, who were at the time itinerant people. But the term hasn’t been connected to any racial or ethnic group for well over 500 years. And there is no reliable source that even urges caution when using this term, much less urging us not to use it.

In 2018, a woman in Portland, Oregon claimed that it should be taken as offensive. And naturally every wannabe social justice warrior had to jump on the bandwagon.

On Bullshit wrote:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

The Gypsy Robe incident is a perfect example. One of the claims surrounding the Gypsy Robe tradition was that it “appropriated” the name of an ethnic group. This was blatantly false. The name actually derived from the fact that the robe passed from one show to another. The other claim, that Gypsy is a pejorative, was also blatantly false. In the end they gave into fear that the issue would divide the community and changed the name. But even they didn’t go so far as to change the name for those already carrying the title. Nexon just took the bullshit to an all new level.

Hardmuscle wrote:

Absinthe wrote: »

In "real life" it is not unusual for sellers to bid on their own items up to their reserve price.

You're right when you imply it's not unusual for this to occur; but you're wrong to attempt justification.

No matter how you slice it.... a shill is a shill (no matter the intellect used to describe it; a fake is a fake).

Guilt by association?

You’re grasping at straws.

Shills are proxies that bid for the seller. But it does not follow that therefore all proxies who bid for the seller are shills. Bidding up to the reserve price is accepted practice because there is absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be. There is no deception involved. The seller is simply bidding up to their value like the buyer is bidding up to their value.



You also misrepresent my position. I favored second price sealed bid auctions where speaking the truth actually is the best policy as opposed to paying lip service to speaking the truth while in truth practicing deception.

You emphasize fake as if the means of deception really mattered. The only thing I have to prove to establish a deceptive trade act is that I would not have made the trade if I had known the truth. Deception is deception. Deception by omission rather than deception by faking doesn’t give you the moral high ground. The buyer is not speaking the truth any more than the seller is.

Suppose the seller is willing to accept 10m and the buyer is willing to pay 100m. Any price between 10m and 100m is fair. To make a case for unfair trade practices you’d have to prove that the seller’s fake counteroffer resulted in the buyer paying more than 100m. It is not enough to simply argue that it was a fake counteroffer.

Let’s look at it in a different context.

Suppose I use a fake counteroffer to get a prospective employer to give me a significantly better deal. The gamble pays off. I land the job. Later the employer discovers the counteroffer was faked. What’s he going to say? Clearly I was worth more to him than he let on. He was trying to lowball me. I just beat him at his own game.

Over 85% of buyers will try to lowball on their initial offer. If not fake counteroffers, what do you propose sellers do to counter lowball offers? Nothing. You just want to be able to lowball sellers with impunity.

Your perfect world is one where the powerful are a privileged class. Those with power can leverage it to force hardball negotiators into revealing the truth and thus get paid what they are actually worth. Those without power have no leverage and get paid only a fraction of what they are worth. F*** that.