something I've always wondered about is why the word 'expat' exists.

in general i've operated on the assumption that it is mainly used by people who are uncomfortable with/opposed to the notion of considering themselves an immigrant or something of that sort, which seems a bit weird

I guess the fact that I've mostly heard it used by 'american expats' plays a part in that assumption. just seems a bit cringe imo.

or am I totally off base here? legit question

@Chel I often say I want to "emigrate to Germany" and I was once told that I should say "relocate to Germany" or something, because emigration implies being on a convict ship to Australia or something. Which isn't correct anyway (that term was "transportation") - but perhaps says a bit about how many people view immigrants...

@Chel "expat" is just "immigrant" for racists

@niki that's sadly the vibe i've gotten from the majority of the folks I've seen use it

@Chel americans and brits in Prague love to call themselves that

@niki thaaat makes sense

@Chel so i once considered myself an expat worker. The difference for me was that i never intended to live in that country past the job. Had i planned to settle there, i would have called myself an immigrant.

But i think my understanding might be incorrect

@protocol7 I think that's pretty reasonable, tbh.

My confusion is largely just because it has generally seemed like I've mostly ran into the word in the context of people with a fair amount of privilege that moved to a different country, have been there for a fair while, and have no real plans to leave

@Chel I recently watched this that explained a bit

Basically yeah many white people prefer calling themselves expats because they don’t like immigrants, but there is also more to it than that. It’s also about whether someone tries to integrate into the culture or just tries to benefit from it

@LivingCooki ooo, I'll have to take a look at this once my brain is a bit more alive than it is right now, thank you

and yeah, that makes a lot of sense and definitely fits with the vibes I've gotten

@Chel It's supposed to mean someone who's only in another country temporarily, but it's often just used by white people who don't see themselves as "filthy immigrants". My partner and I both call ourselves immigrants because we intend to stay.

@robinsyl I guess that distinction makes more sense, though like you say, it does seem to more generally be used in the other way

I look forward to being an immigrant at some point, in the hopefully not super distant future

@Chel I know fedi likes to clown on Jason NJB, but I do appreciate that he has noticed this distinction, and makes a point of calling himself an immigrant instead of an expat.

@seabass oh jeeez.

yeah, that's... a hell of a thing to say

@Chel No you're right. It's exactly a word for "immigrant" for people who don't want to admit that they are immigrants.

@unworthyBeatrix so... jackasses?

@Chel often worse!

@unworthyBeatrix

@Chel @unworthyBeatrix I'm afraid it's widespread amongst...

*leans in, lowers voice*

...the /British/.

@LionsPhil @Chel @unworthyBeatrix i am fascinated by the mixed use of actual italics and mock-italics in this post.

@nycki @LionsPhil @unworthyBeatrix ...this is my regular reminder of the limitations of mastodon

@Chel @LionsPhil @unworthyBeatrix oh dang, i didn’t realize sharkey applied markdown “retroactively” to incoming mastodon posts. huh.

@nycki that's honestly good to know for future reference

I wish gargron would be less of a stick in the mud about really weird things like that, tbh. just give people a bloody profile option to disable (or even to enable) markdown rendering

@nycki @Chel @LionsPhil @unworthyBeatrix *key always interprets the incoming posts as MFM if I'm not mistaken, i don't think you can control this

it is a bonkers setting that i cannot fathom why they did it, but *key is full of weird decisions...

@Chel @nycki more importantly, I'm writing text/plain in my client, so don't mistakenly reinterpret it as something other than that, *especially* inconsistently across readers.

some old fancy IRC clients (...mIRC? HexChat?) realized that if they're going to make things bold or italic, at least leave all the original characters intact. A bar we've apparently failed to clear in the opportunistic markdown era.

Always fun when you're using to send someone e.g. a shell command

@LionsPhil @Chel discord escape a backtick inside a backtick-monospaced string challenge impossible

@LionsPhil @unworthyBeatrix

y-you need to CW your jumpscares!

(kidding!)

@Chel I assume that anyone who calls themselves an expat is either an XML parser or a former double agent who can't return to their original country for fear of being arrested or assassinated, because that's the context in which I first heard that word being used (referring to Sergei Skripal)

@noisytoot I like this approach