formerly sandscreamsintothevoid

now that almost 300 people have agreed with my great points, i feel the need to disclose that this was prompted by a post about a physics professor writing “BDE: 69” on the whiteboard

also cis (gender) vs CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States)

NB is also the abbreviation for New Brunswick, a Canadian maritime province.

It can also be the case that, no matter how common the acronym is or seems to you, others just… had no idea it also meant something else? Acronyms can be highly regional or subject-specific. Like, I’ve never in my life encountered nb as meaning non-black until this post. My use of nb (lowercase) to mean non-binary hasn’t been one of exclusion against another meaning — it’s just the only meaning I knew it had. Give people a chance to learn before assuming malicious ignorance.

I also got shit on Facebook over the NB thing. Honestly, people need to get offline sometime and realise not everything is a dogwhistle. Its almost as I’d the Internet is predominantly teenagers who have no idea what they’re talking about

Yeah! Like I lost a valuable community resource and a few acquaintances too. I’m in a goth trans fb group where saying nb to mean nonbinary is banned, which is just frustrating as the whole group is trans themed, so surely nb would not get lost in any other context. I keep my mouth shut so I can enjoy the group, but making people worry they might say the wrong thing by accident and get their communities taken away (esp. for closted people) is just a bad way to run a community space.

and sometimes certain acronyms form certain words. that doesnt mean that the Aggie Speleological Society is secretly an ass. or that omegaverse fics are secretly racist. or that any shared letter combination is actually STEALING WORDS!!!! because it isn’t.