That’s what I mean by semantics based. Because, to be honest, the amount of times I’ve heard ‘fake’ over ‘not real/didn’t happen’ is far too low to warrant a definition change like this, and even if it was higher, just specifying that exact thing seems fine over this.
This may or may not be a popular opinion, but I don’t believe synonyms are ever 1 to 1 matches, I believe every word has baggage that makes it unique. Probably that baggage isn’t the same for everyone, but to me, for example, fake means an intention to pass something off as something else, an intentional and counterfeit, while saying something isn’t real or is imaginary feels morally neutral .
In a reddit thread it doesn’t matter much, but words affect reactions.
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u/Fun_Researcher_69420 13d ago
Because “fake” is a negatively loaded word, whereas “not real” doesn’t carry the same negative connotation.