Not objecting to the concept—having more concepts is good. But I think if you want to contribute to language, concepts are less than half of the work. Most of the work is finding the right words and making them work well with other words. Here’s a programming analogy: if you come up with a cool new algorithm and want to add it to a system that already has a billion lines of code, most of your effort should be spent on integrating with the system. Otherwise the whole system becomes crap over time. That’s how I think about these things: coining an ugly new word is affixing an ugly shed to the cathedral of language.
“Escalation spiral” is mixing two spatial metaphors, both far removed from the thing we’re talking about. That’s too abstract for me: being in a bad online argument doesn’t feel like walking up a spiral staircase. I prefer words that say how I feel about the thing—something like “quarreling”, “petty disagreement”, or “argumentative black hole”.
Not objecting to the concept—having more concepts is good. But I think if you want to contribute to language, concepts are less than half of the work. Most of the work is finding the right words and making them work well with other words. Here’s a programming analogy: if you come up with a cool new algorithm and want to add it to a system that already has a billion lines of code, most of your effort should be spent on integrating with the system. Otherwise the whole system becomes crap over time. That’s how I think about these things: coining an ugly new word is affixing an ugly shed to the cathedral of language.
Still curious if “escalation spiral” feels more or less clear.
Also wanted to flag that I think your most recent argument seems quite different from your initial one (i.e. “flame war. don’t invent new words.”)
“Escalation spiral” is mixing two spatial metaphors, both far removed from the thing we’re talking about. That’s too abstract for me: being in a bad online argument doesn’t feel like walking up a spiral staircase. I prefer words that say how I feel about the thing—something like “quarreling”, “petty disagreement”, or “argumentative black hole”.