"bullying" in this context is a good thing, and gp intended it as a good thing or I'll eat my hat. Any time something is "punching up" and you call it "bullying" it's just a tongue-in-cheek way of saying group action gets results.
I understand if you've never seen it used this way before, but pistcow didn't deserve this response.
EDIT: Honestly, this was literally at the top of my social media feed and it's ABOUT THE SONY THING by a completely different person.
You don't get to change the definition of a word with an extremely negative connotation and real victims. Even if you literally tell me, especially in the context of a corporation.
Suddenly lemmy doesn't believe that language evolves. You understood what they meant, that's all that matters, and policing language is ableist and racist.
My dude, every comment you've made is decidedly in the negative, so that's just not true.
There's no such thing as punching up in bullying, that's what makes it bullying. It's always punching down. This is not bullying, and to draw false equivilencies between it and the real suffering of vulnerable people is damaging.
You are the one who does not understand the definition. Some random cherry picked example does not change the meaning. Just take the L, accept that your niche circle that uses the word wrong is just that, a unique niche, and move on.
It's a bad word to use, and no amount of twisting it can change that.
The word "bullying" in English has very strong negative connotations. It's inappropriate to use it for something you support, unless done in a way that is very obviously ironic. Pistcow might have intended it ironically. Maybe. But their comment was far too vague on that point if so.
Or perhaps the comment isn't "drenched in sarcasm" and would need to actually capture an essence of comedic tone to come off that way.
If it was intended as sarcasm, perhaps an edit would be warranted. It'd be much better than digging in your heels and making personal attacks at anyone who doesn't read your comment with the tone you had in your head when you wrote it.
This was an incendiary thread. I have a scorched earth policy regarding moderation. I kindly ask all parties to threat it as a dead topic and move on. Thanks.