This is Blog 16 in my A-Z Blogseries:
P.C.
Urban Dictionary is a website I often turn to when trying to find creative ways to describe a word or when I hear a word being used in a way “on the street” that is unfamiliar to me.
Urban Dictionary is not so much a dictionary as it is a lexicology forum where people post and discuss definitions of words. As we have come to expect when people try to have online conversations, things can get heated very quickly though. Also there are plenty of trolls out there that create, fuel and feed off of online discord.
Political Correctness (or its abbreviation P.C.) is a term that is really interesting to analyze. The internet is hugely divided as to what it means and if it is a good or bad thing. It has become pretty hard to define it without picking a side. The Cambridge Dictionary made an attempt:
In recent years being called P.C. has actually become an insult. I found this quite confusing at first (and I even wrote a blog about it back in 2016).
A quick scroll through Urban Dictionary produced the following results:
“PC” has come to refer to people who tell you which words you are and are not allowed to use.
A small part of me understands the complaint. It is very annoying to talk to someone who is focusing more on the individual words you are using, instead of the message you are actually trying to bring across.
Sometimes though, the message being conveyed is just as horrible as the words you have chosen to express it. In that case you just need to face it: you are a shitty specimen of a human being and the PC crew is actually right!
Epiphany 
I often turn to Urban Dictionary to define a term and then find myself regretting that decision when I read the definition. 🤣
I know what you mean. But from an anthropological point of view it is kind of interesting!
You don’t go to Urban Dictionary to find the definition of a word but to see how people are (wrongly) using it.
Take the word “literally”, for example. It has become synonymous to “very much”.
But apart from that that, urban dictionary definitions paint a picture of the type of people using those words (and the ones describing those very people). All super interesting. 😛
Love the cartoon and your closing words! Much of the criticism of “political correctness” comes from the right, although you’re correct, not all of it. I suppose when we take care to use language more sensitively, without its built-in biases, we need to be clear that we’re not just nit-picking about terminology.
It’s a broad term in which, most times, goes into the gray zone which is open to numerous interpretations. I just wrote a rant about this. You’ve written a very good post here.