Reminds me of this:
I think atproto is a good protocol, but god bluesky-the-company is dogshit.
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Based solely on the source this man doesn’t seem to deserve any ire. In fact he breaks down the statement “chat is a 4th person pronoun” quite well. What’s stuck in your craw, old fruit?
Well, folks, it deserves ire because it's a ridiculously incorrect statement delivered in an authoritative tone. Chat is a noun and it's used the exact same way as many other nouns. To claim it's grammatically a pronoun you have to either misunderstand what pronouns are or misunderstand how it's being used.
The entire thing boils down to a rhetorical trick: "here are the ways chat is not like other pronouns, so it's reasonable to say it's in a fourth category of pronoun." It entices you to accept the incorrect premise that it's a pronoun and then try to come up with flaws in the inarguable part, which is that this noun doesn't function the same way any pronoun would.
Yeah nah, that’s not what he says at all. In that video, he says: “there is no accepted definition of a fourth person pronoun, here are some concepts that are sometimes referred to as the fourth person, does the modern usage of “chat” fit any of these?” and the answer is: “in some specific ways yes, in other ways no.”
I don’t think he’s the one that started the idea of chat being a fourth person pronoun, I think he’s just discussing the statement and using it as an opportunity to communicate some linguistic concepts, which is cool and good. Also, what’s in your craw, different person?
It's not a pronoun, so if one is pretending to talk about linguistics authoritatively one should know that and clearly state it to your audience so that they're not misled into thinking that calling it a fourth-person pronoun is in any way reasonable.
Uh, in its contemporary usage in “chat is this true,” it absolutely is a pronoun
I've rewatched the video in case I was being uncharitable. Nope. He accepts the premise (direct quote: "that's kind of true"). He then does the exact thing I said, which is argue that it's not acting like a normal pronoun: "the 'fourth person' can also refer to a generic pronoun [...] it doesn't refer to a specific referent, like 'he' or 'she'. [...] if 'chat' is being used to refer to nobody in particular, then arguably it is a new fourth person pronoun." This is complete and utter nonsense packaged as exciting linguistic concepts, which is not at all "cool and good."
(As a bonus bit of wrongness that I didn't catch on the first watch: he says that chat used like "y'all" is third person plural, which is another thing that maybe you shouldn't get wrong in a supposedly educational video.)
well i mean you are being uncharitable. This is a tiktok, not, like, a paper. “Kind of true” doesn’t mean “absolutely true in all cases across space, time, and other universes”. Yes, he did misidentify “y’all” (it is second person plural) but that just changes what the statement should have meant to “chat is used as a second person plural pronoun”.
I think this analysis is about the usage of “chat is this true/real” outside of streams. Like if someone said out loud “chat is this true” to nobody in particular. Or in like, a meme or something.
No, don't be silly. "Chat, is this true?" does not start with a pronoun. Here "chat" is a noun, just like the nouns in "Peter, is this true?" or "Dude, is this true?" or "Friends, Romans, countrymen; is this true?" or "Ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd."
Addressing someone does not require them to be present or real, so the presence or absence of a literal chat does not somehow transmogrify this noun into a pronoun.