The act of simply being mean to someone is not violence. The act of being called names and pejoratives is not violence. Cussing someone out is not violence. Being curt, angry, blunt, rude, mocking, sarcastic, taunting, smug, smarmy, condescending, patronizing, whatever is not violence. Being an asshole is not inherently the same as being violent.

If any of these things removed from context constitute violence, then the term violence is a thought-terminating cliche that lump-sums everything that makes people uncomfortable into one gray amorphous blob.

To utilize a term that can collapse hate crimes, genocide, colonization, imperialism: unspeakable atrocities into calling someone ignorant/privileged/bigoted/etc., mocking/clowning on someone, cussing someone out: just being mean/standoffish/rude/condescending, is to equate discomfort with harm, to flatten social relations, and to fundamentally terminate all thought about anything that causes enough discomfort.

I am not a linguistic prescriptivist. If you want to use violence to describe uncouth behavior, you are more-than-welcome to do so. What I’m trying to say with this is that, if you are to broaden the definition like this, it’s harmful to you to use it as a term of any weight in discussions; you narrow your viewpoint and considerations based on how nice and polite people are to you, and reduce all anger, no matter it’s righteousness, to an undue equivalence.

My personal definition of violence, and you’re welcome to disagree with me, is harm that can be, or is, materially (as in, in reality) reinforced.

If you want an example of an actually violent form of communication: slurs. The point of a slur, as contrasted with a pejorative, is to remind the targeted individual of their place within society; of their ‘inferiority’, and subjugation. Thus, the function of a slur is an attempt at domination, reinforcement of hierarchy, and an implicit threat. The point of, say, the use of the N-word, is to remind the black people targeted by it that they are not safe within the person’s vicinity, that they are seen as ‘lesser’, and to reinforce the social hierarchy of racism. A slur is a threat, and I’d categorize it as violence.

Violence is much more than just slurs, of course. However, I wanted to use slurs specifically for my point: What harm, in reality, does someone calling you an ignorant chucklefuck on an internet forum cause to you? Even in real life, if they called you that, what material harm would that imply?

I’m not saying people don’t say worse here, we do, and I’m not here to debate individual instances of gray-areas you believe cross the line that you’ve experienced, but I’ve seen people on this network of forums lump pejoratives ‘shithead’, ‘freak’, ‘nerd’, ‘dickbag’, ‘asshole’, etc. into an all-encompassing violence, an attack, some form of harm. I ask again: what harm do these imply? Because a slur implies a threat. A pejorative is simply uncouth. Lump-summing the two neuters your capacity to analyze harm.

I just think it’s a personal disservice to consider violence utilizing the aforementioned framework. At that point, it’s a thought-terminating cliche. You kneecap your ability to understand the wide array of perspectives on this bright, beautiful earth if you dismiss all that are expressed with any form of mirth or edge.

Feel free to pick this apart, I’ll leave it here. I’ve said my piece, and I remind you that I’m not here to talk about any anecdotes you might have for instances of behavior. I simply won’t get into the weeds of it. It’s not something I want to do with my finite time on this earth.