Death Metaphor Debate

The cluster focuses on debates about the appropriateness, offensiveness, and accuracy of using death-related terms like 'killed', 'dead', 'death', and 'mortem' metaphorically in tech contexts such as project post-mortems or app descriptions.

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2,408
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#337
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
1
2008
14
2009
21
2010
33
2011
49
2012
65
2013
117
2014
79
2015
81
2016
104
2017
117
2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2022
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2023
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2024
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2025
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2026
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Keywords

ycombinator.com youtube.com i.e death died dies dead killed word way saying suicide slight phrase

Sample Comments

aj3 Jul 2, 2021 View on HN

I think they mean "death prevented" vs "death inflicted".

gknoy Apr 2, 2013 View on HN

That's a pretty roundabout way of saying "It's a pity they won't die a painful death".

jbob2000 Mar 5, 2020 View on HN

How is using the word “dead” offensive?

csb6 Nov 21, 2020 View on HN

“Death” seems a bit dramatic in this context.

bakhy Dec 6, 2016 View on HN

i understand i'm nitpicking, but maybe someone should tell the author what "mortem" means? i was expecting something dead, a failure story. pick another worn out phrase ;)

resolutebat Jun 16, 2023 View on HN

That's very different from "killed".

selestify Jan 25, 2021 View on HN

The word used in the grandparent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25899179) was “killed,” not “murdered”

robertlagrant Feb 2, 2023 View on HN

It's not taboo, it's just misleading. It's like someone falling over, grazing their knee and saying, "Wow, that was like dying, but partial". It doesn't share enough key attributes with the thing you're comparing it to to be useful.

Thats a funny way of saying killed with obvious malicious intent.

Intermernet Oct 6, 2019 View on HN

"made a killing" is an unfortunate choice of phrase in this instance.