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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7276150" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm a lifelong nerd.  I was that nerd back in 1983 playing D&D, back before being a nerd was somewhat cool and a source of fascination and popular fantasy.   I've been hit, kicked, tripped, stoned, stabbed, and generally bullied in just about every way you can be bullied, often by older kids or gangs of kids.  So I can certainly speak to having been merely called demeaning names.And I got to tell you, that your context is clueless.When you reach the point that someone is deliberately identifying themselves with what was formerly a slur, the slur has already lost its sting.  So yes, absolutely I would be fine with you calling your team 'The Neckbeards'.  I'd find it funny.  People don't self-identify with things that they consider worthless.   If you are calling your e-Sports team 'The Neckbeards', it's because in some sense you yourself and your intended audience (your fans or your opponents) believe that 'Neckbeards' have a certain power in e-Sports that might make them worthy of respect at least in the context of e-Sports.   In effect what you are doing is identifying a privileged identity with a formerly unprivileged identity, without fear you'll be pulled down by this association.  If that association was truly negative, you probably wouldn't make it.   Intent matters, and there is a scale of mockery that I think you can only understand if you've been on the end of it.  By the time you are self-identify with someone, you've moved your scale of mockery over into the end that is closer to affection and soon it is not mockery at all, but inclusion.UPDATE: Other than the fact you aren't really an expert on being bullied or the bullying dynamic if this is the sort of weak analogy you are making, I really have to wonder what sort of point you think you are making in the context of cultural appropriation.   No one has denied at any point that demeaning portrayals of people and people groups can occur, and that in particular when it feeds into vile stereotypes that were in the past justification for abuse and injustice can be wrong.   But none of that has a thing to do with cultural appropriation.   Even were I to agree that calling your e-Sports team 'The Neckbeards' would be wrong (the way I would consider calling it 'The Chinks' to be wrong), the wrongness would have nothing to do with cultural appropriation.   Evidence that discrimination or racial discrimination or racial hatred can occur is not supporting evidence that 'cultural appropriation' is wrong or even that it is a thing.</blockquote>

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