Just in case you’re interested: I think the word ‘cultish’ is massively overloaded (with negative connotations) and mis-used. I’d also point out that saying that a statement is one’s gut feeling isn’t equivalent to saying one doesn’t endorse the feeling, and so I felt pretty defensive when you suggested my idea was cultish and not compatible with our community.
I wrote this because I thought you might prefer to know the impacts of your comments rather than not hearing negative feedback. My apologies in advance if that was a false assumption.
Thanks – helpful feedback (and from Owen also). In hindsight I would probably have kept the word “cultish” while being much more explicit about not completely endorsing the feeling.
Something went wrong with the communication channel if you ended up feeling defensive.
However, despite generally agreeing with you about problems with the world “cultish”, I actually think this is a reasonable use-case. It has a lot of connotations, and it was being reported that the description was triggering some of those connotations in the reader. That’s useful information that it may be worth some effort to avoiding it being perceived that way if the idea is pursued (your stack of examples make it pretty clear that it is avoidable).
Thanks for clarifying!
Just in case you’re interested: I think the word ‘cultish’ is massively overloaded (with negative connotations) and mis-used. I’d also point out that saying that a statement is one’s gut feeling isn’t equivalent to saying one doesn’t endorse the feeling, and so I felt pretty defensive when you suggested my idea was cultish and not compatible with our community.
I wrote this because I thought you might prefer to know the impacts of your comments rather than not hearing negative feedback. My apologies in advance if that was a false assumption.
Thanks – helpful feedback (and from Owen also). In hindsight I would probably have kept the word “cultish” while being much more explicit about not completely endorsing the feeling.
Something went wrong with the communication channel if you ended up feeling defensive.
However, despite generally agreeing with you about problems with the world “cultish”, I actually think this is a reasonable use-case. It has a lot of connotations, and it was being reported that the description was triggering some of those connotations in the reader. That’s useful information that it may be worth some effort to avoiding it being perceived that way if the idea is pursued (your stack of examples make it pretty clear that it is avoidable).