When to join a respectability cascade

...and when to join a disrespectability cascade

A respectability cascade happens when an idea, word, or behavior that was once stigmatized becomes increasingly accepted as more respectable people start endorsing it. At first, only a few outsiders or risk-takers use it, but as slightly more mainstream figures adopt it, the social cost of using it decreases. Eventually it becomes widely accepted, or even the new standard. Think of how terms like "queer" or "they/them" pronouns moved from niche usage to mainstream acceptability over time.

A disrespectability cascade is the reverse: something that was once neutral or respectable becomes tainted and socially unacceptable as more people reject it. This often happens when a word gets associated with a disliked group or an idea gets labeled as offensive. For example, once a phrase is linked to extremists, even neutral people start avoiding it, pushing it further into disrepute.

Both processes can be arbitrary or strategic, driven by activists, media, or social momentum. Sometimes, a new word replaces an old one for practical reasons—other times, it's just a cascade effect, where people switch simply because they don’t want to be left behind. The key question isn’t just whether to accept or reject these cascades, but when to resist and when to go along with them.

I think it becomes more important to struggle against a cascade the more annoying the new word is. There are a variety of factors that contribute how annoying it is, here are five of them:

1. Is the new word longer? (Because we want to waste less time)

2. Is it easier to pronounce/type? (Because we care about easy of use)

3. Is it less descriptive? (Because we care about people quickly grasping the concept)

4. Is it dissimilar to the old word? (Because we want to minimize transaction costs)

5. Is it likely to cause another cascade? (Because we dislike cascades)

If tomorrow people say that "black people" is bad but "black peoples" is good, I would jump on board once 60% of the population is on board, because it scores well in all aspects (except 5). If however people want to replace it with "abcedifoguhajekilomun" that's worse in all aspects (except 5) so I would strongly push against it (maybe only jump on board at 95%).

Conversely if people want to reclaim a word and start a respectability cascade I would jump on board rather quickly (I like having the freedom to use a lot of words), but I would jump on board even more quickly the better it scores on those different aspects.

For example, I'm on board with reclaiming the word "queer" because lgbt is longer and more annoying to say, requires an explanation for a new user, and quickly causes another cascade (what about intersex? Okay we'll say lgbti. What about asexuals? Okay we'll say lgbtia etc).
Queer on the other hand scores well on all aspects (even transaction cost since we still have a lot of books lying around about "queer theory" etc).

I don't think we should be trying to put a number on this (e.g. I add 10% for every aspect it has) because a lot of it depends on social context. With rarely used jargon I value descriptiveness over brevity, with words I use in everyday life it's the other way around. Let's all agree we jump onboard a disrespectability cascade at more than 50% and onboard a respectability cascade at less than 50%. How much more or less we'll change depending on a lot of hard/impossible to quantify social factors.

Note that this is just a heuristic and moral reasoning obviously takes priority. Queer people wanting to make "queer" a respectable synonym of "lgbt" is fine. But if the nazi-party wants to start a respectability cascade to make "holocaust" a respectable synonym of "morality" you should (probably) resist jumping on board even once the majority of the population has.

This heuristic can be adapted/used for other respectability cascades too (like clothing, tattoos, style guides etc).