Without actually saying it in so many words, my therapist has indicated that I probably don’t seem as weird to “normal people” as I think I do.

It depends on whether they laugh.

Sometimes you take a risk in comedy. The risk is real. The choice is yours.

My wife and I regularly refer to ourselves as “artistic” when neither of us are particularly art-oriented 🤣

I think it’s good to check. I’ve experienced similar things with words like “dude”. It’s safest when speaking to friends, I’ve found. Like, I game with a group of friends who are almost entirely trans/nb, and none are men, yet sometimes we will jokingly refer to the group as “lads” or similar. In the context of me saying it, it isn’t offensive to them, because they know that I respect their gender and identity, so it’s clear that it’s ironic and joking.

With strangers, some extra caution is warranted. For example, I am autistic and often make autism related jokes at autistic friends, in a way that could be offensive if I was saying it to a stranger. To give a specific example, if a friend said they wouldn’t be around later because they were going out with friends, I replied “don’t lie — you don’t have any friends, you autistic weirdo”. In context, this was very funny because both of us are autistic so the fact that I was saying it to my friend negates the insult because we both clearly have at least one friend (another layer of funny is that my friend’s friends were also very neurodivergent, so another disproving of the “autistics don’t have friends” insult). Without this irony, that comment would seem cruel and mean-spirited.

The problem is that you can’t necessarily assume good intentions from strangers, especially on the internet. I have been insulted in the way I jokingly insulted my friends, and it hurts (and I think sometimes jokes with friends can feel like healing from the hurt of genuine insults and slurs). It’s hard to laugh at a joke when you’re not sure whether it’s a joke or not.

In the context of dude, I think that’s a good example of why hard and fast rules don’t work. I’m a cis woman and generally I’m fine with being called dude (and also tend to use it in a gender neutral way (with the understanding that some people won’t receive it in a gender neutral way, even if I intend it that way. In practice, that I know some friends who prefer not to be called dude, and I try to be mindful of assumptions when talking to strangers)).

Sometimes though, I do feel irked to be called dude — often it’s in an online discussion where it seems like the person I’m speaking to is assuming that I am a man (because thinking of men as default is a pervasive thing that even I find myself doing.) Often assumptions like that aren’t personal, but especially as a woman in science, I often feel weary of the frequent implications that I am a guest in male spaces. “Weary” is the key word here — sometimes if I feel irked, it isn’t so much about that individual conversation, but more a case of the background miasma of unpleasant people in my life causing me to become hyper vigilant.

This is a long way of saying that whilst it’s good to be mindful of using memey phrases (especially amongst strangers), you should try not to take things too much to heart if you are chewed out by someone; sometimes the level of ire that someone expresses is disproportionate to your error because their annoyance may relate to how many people have made that error towards them, rather than the number of times that you have made that mistake. Online conversations unfortunately make it too easy to assume poor faith of people, and that can lead to a very hostile tone to things. Having a lot of shit to deal with isn’t an excuse for being unkind, but it can be an explanation. That in mind, it’s useful to check about what’s okay to say, but realise that there’s no straightforward set of rules. What’s okay for one person might cause someone to blow up the next. Or it might vary day by day. This is frustrating to deal with if you’re just wanting to avoid pissing people off, but I find it easier to understand if I think about how little context I have of the person who is yelling at me. Their life circumstances may cause them to be overly guarded, and that’s not your fault, but you can help to shift the balance by showing compassion and acknowledging that there’s a human on the other side of the screen, and apologising and moving on (which may or may not mean changing your behaviour in future).

This got overly long, my apologies. For the record though, I don’t think it’s a dumb question you asked. It’s a kind one. Figuring out how to coexist in a messy online world is hard, but being considerate of other people’s needs is a good start.

Depends on the person.

I think it’s funny. But it definitely depends on the person/situation.

“Dude” is more problematic as sounding aggressive, dismissive, or juvenile than gender issues. There is a loophole, though. If you are a man who is willing to say, “I fuck dudes,” you can call anyone a dude.

Maybe don’t live your life based on the opinions of internet strangers?

Generally, no. Some people may not have a problem with it, but others consider it offensive, mainly due to its recent use as an insult on social media to bypass hate filters.