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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Just a little bit of feedback. Creative new language can be fun... but the headline is completely incomprehensible to me!
I often feel annoyed when checking out new communities that create their own "elitist" lingo or abbreviations to "save time". It doesn't save time for the reader!
BTW coded language is also a warning sign for cults :D
PS: Also maybe a better slang might be fucar (from fuck-cars)
Weird way to defend your own ignorance ?
I've been riding motorcycles on roads for 40 years, as long as I have many other riders have referred to car drivers as cagers, and cars as cages. I don't use the terms but to infer its some new set of elite words becase you haven't heard it before is bizzare.
Open a dictionary, there will be many 1000s of words that are new to you.
Non car users are punching up, the world and its peoples are being destroyed and dominated by inappropriate car use.
Thanks for the info, that is interesting. But you do agree that it is specific slang for a specific subculture, and the purpose of slang is to get people invested and define an in-group and out-group.
I read a headline in "all" that was completely incomprehensible to me. It DID make me feel stupid. Clearly this shows how I am not really part of the motorcycle or (UK?) bicycle scene and ignorant ;) Or maybe I am getting old and grumpy. I could have walked over to my wall with the bookshelves, opened the dictionary and looked it up and then "joined in". I grok! I can speek the leet too! :D
Maybe it is a good PR strategy in order to establish a "fuck cars" counterculture.
Not just you. I have never in all my decades cycling this earth, heard the terms cager or cage to mean car driver or car?! The headline made feck all sense to me on first read.
Imagine attempting to kill people for your mild inconvenience.
I don't need to. I'm a cyclist, I get it on a regular basis.
I changed the title to get rid of the typical pro-cager spin and report what happened accurately.
While I'm at it, I'll also correct some of the disgusting passive-voice loaded-language in the article itself:
Protesters had gathered to demand accountability, after a ~~police car struck and killed a woman~~ police officer killed a woman by hitting her with his car near a homeless encampment on Monday.
I give up, what’s a cager?
A car driver, i.e., a person so cowardly that they insist on transporting themselves inside a cage (car frame) instead of walking or biking like a decent person.
By context, probably a car
Doesn’t quite fit, but I guess. Im curious why the OP chose to use a euphemism though.
Hi, OP here. On the contrary: "cager" is quite the opposite of a euphemism, LOL!
I'm using it to deride the cowardice of the person who assaulted the protestors and the police officer who killed the woman with his car, because it's for damn sure that neither would've started shit if they had been approaching their victims on equal terms as pedestrians instead of being ensconced in two tons of metal.
Thanks for the reply! It just seemed euphemistic to me as cages have a predominantly positive connotation with safety or protection. Roll cages, faraday cages, and shark cages protect those within. Most other cages are for the protection of those outside, which cars obviously aren’t.
The only negative connotation cages have is animal cruelty or false imprisonment, and even then you sympathise with those within the cage.
Now say car-nut, petrolhead, or even just driver, and I have clear enough picture painted.
Ah, I can see how it wouldn't be clear if you weren't already familiar with it as bicyclist/motorcyclist slang. It is a thing, though; I didn't make it up.
I should also note that I'm perhaps using it in a particularly derogatory way in this instance. As the first two Urban Dictionary definitions note, sometimes it's about how how drivers don't see cyclists because the bars of their cage (their car's A-pillars) get in the way, or how cars get trapped in traffic in a way that bikes and motorcycles do not (because motorcycles can split lanes, bikes can ride on the shoulder or along paths, etc.).
Cager = Car driver. Because driving a car is a like driving your own cage, metaphorically and literally. I don't think it's a particularly useful word.