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Reddit experimenting with blocking mobile browsers
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I hate when people use passive voice in these things. It's such a slimy way to try and avoid responsibility.
"We have blocked you from using a mobile browser." is the active voice. It includes a subject ("we") and a verb ("blocked"). It says that someone made a decision, executed that decision, and is responsible.
"It looks like ... ", " ... is currently unavailable" is so fucking weaselly and irresponsible. You are 100% a complete piece of shit if you ever say something like that. You are not responsible enough to handle a Wendy's drive-through order, let alone a large organization.
I didn't know there was a word for it. I always just called it "corperate talk"
You learn to talk like this inside a large corporation too. I try not to do it, but it's difficult and I catch myself doing it every now and then, because you see other people writing like this all the time.
I learned to do it when in a call centre to avoid laying blame on any particular party (the company or the customer). Agreed though it can come across pretty shittily.
Even in corporations that are committed to a good culture of kindness, you can still find opponents who won't hesitate throw you under the bus in order to further an agenda.
Using active tone in corporate is risky, because office politics can accuse it of being aggressive/hostile in order to block a policy. They don't necessarily care that the messenger winds up getting written up by HR and sent to sensitivity training.
I find myself being very careful about then tone of my emails after getting caught in the crossfire between two warring factions. Passive tone is less likely to come back to haunt you.
I really hate having to navigate office politics, but it is what it is.
I think many people only know what it is because MS Word would (does?) suggest rewriting passive voice into active.
Its a commonly taught thing in English classes where I'm from (Ontario) -- we would get harped on it fairly regularly
It was common in the States when I was in school. How well someone learned to extract those lessons and apply them is a different matter. Is it more important for someone to learn how to use active voice over passive, or remember the lecture where they were told what that means? Even if you were an A student how long would you remember if you weren't constantly applying that knowledge?