I'm fairly suspicious that there's a psyop online where anytime a word or phrase begins to tug at the empire's mask it is routinely used in nonsensical and flat out backwards ways until people start to tune it out.

People who don't exactly know the meaning of words like imperialist might have thought they had a general sense but then they see it used in so many conflicting contexts that they might assume it doesn't mean what they thought.

On the other hand there are those people who neither know nor care what words mean but are more than willing to wrongly use any word that they think has some weight. When enough of them do this then the word or phrase has lost meaning because others get tired of yelling into the void that it doesn't mean what they're intending it to mean.

Eventually people avoid those words and phrases altogether because it starts fights even with people who do understand them because nobody trusts that anyone else understands anymore.

This seems like a general pattern that repeats pretty often, and not even just online. It somehow bleeds into everyday life too which is even more exhausting.