Post #2281986

2026-05-01 02:09 UTC

Huh? Is this how people interpret defensiveness? That's wild to me. If someone told me they thought it was a good idea for them to steal all my stuff and kill me, for instance, you best believe I'm getting defensive. People get *defensive* when you *attack* something they want to defend. Edit: to be clear, all I'm saying here is that people can get defensive about something without secretly thinking its bad. I despise Joe Rogan and I think his listeners are dumb.

Replies (2)

@RaphaelSchmitz@feddit.org 2026-05-01 14:34

Yeah English is not a clear, direct language. When English speakers say someone gets defensive, it usually doesn't refer to literally the act of mounting a defense, without any moral connotation. Instead, they usually refer to someone telling on themselves, by mounting a defense where there was no attack intended on them. Like that recent trump interview, where pedophiles got mentioned, and he immediately "got defensive", screaming that he's not a pedophile, even though nobody made that statement about him in that interview.

Open ##2281989
@skisnow@lemmy.ca 2026-05-01 03:16

lol, you just proved their point quite well. Your example implicitly makes the equation between listening to Joe Rogan with theft and murder, and it immediately being understood as such just by virtue of being asked “do you listen to Joe Rogan”?

Open ##2281990