this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Yes, your point is that "hunger" should be interpreted very loosely, meaning in a sort of addiction-psychology way.
I think that's a sophisticated re-rendering, and that most ordinary folks do associate the word "hunger" with famine, with starving, with terrible deprivation. Which is a real situation in a handful of desperate places in the world. I don't think we should be conflating these two problems. One of them is far more urgent than the other.
I see this as just another instance of disingenuously sensationalist language and I would prefer people used the correct terms for what they are in fact talking about.
For the underlying substance, I agree with you and all the other censorious downvoters. I am just concerned about vocabulary and manipulation.
I'm saying that it simply isn't well defined. There's a reason we have terms like "malnurished" or "undernourished". Your definition is only as narrow in certain contexts, e.g. "world hunger". I personally wouldn't use the word in the context of first-world issues either, but that's because it's ambiguous, not because it's wrong.
So if "malnourished" is better, as you imply, let's use that instead. The issue is not hunger by any non-academic definition of the word.
You've made your case. Mine is that this is a clear example of sensationalist lexical inflation. Like calling everyone right of center a Nazi, it is intended to provoke engagement and emotion rather than to describe a fact.
I agree with you on the fact that this inflation is a problem. I just think that we need to avoid inflation in terms of complaining about it as well. As it stands now anything that's at least not contradicting the dictionary is tolerable in my opinion. Well, at least on social media. In academia your approach is obviously best.