One thing that I had said in Discord on the subject is that, yes, restricting the usage of the R slur might seem a bit overly PC, but from a pragmatic perspective, if we pick and choose which slurs to allow or allow them depending on certain contexts, you'll always have that lawyer, perhaps a literal one (fire cape
), arguing about the logic or enforcement of the rules—which, by the way, I'd like to note, is exactly how the rule became what it is today, shown in the screenshot posted by Mikan. One might even wonder if complaining about the slur in the first place in order to get them all banned was in preparation for a thread like this
. At the end of the day, we're all unpaid volunteers and I don't want to have a daily debate over who gets to say which slur and why.
Another thing to note about the R slur is that the same thing could've been said about "autistic" or, especially, "gay" a few years back; if anything was even slightly annoying, a common way to describe it in the gaming community would be "gay" (e.g., "man, I just got killed by a noob tube, this shit's so fucking gay, bro") or if anyone was even slightly weird or a bit dumb, they'd be called "autistic" or an "autist" within minutes. Both of which seem a bit gauche in 2021, don't they?
Language evolves. Evolve with it. One word gets removed and another will get invented. You'll find new creative ways to insult each other. Losing access to the R slur isn't the end of the world. I already tried my best to distance myself from it personally over the past few years.