in a way that strongly annoys some people for essentially superficial reasons. And he’s being either persistently oblivious or illegibly principled in how that keeps happening, in ways that seem eminently avoidable by adjusting how he’s talking at a superficial level, without impacting any substantive points he’s making
Speaking as the sole surviving member of what you once called an endangered species, I don’t think the principle is that illegible, and I don’t think superficial changes would have worked.
As an example of what an actually superficial conflict over writing style would look like, I’m probably not the only one who’s annoyed that Vaniver spells though as tho, but there’s no coalition demanding him to adopt standard English orthography or be deposed. No one wants to do that, because that would be petty, and it would be pretty precisely because it’s superficial: both the standard and reformed spellings mean the same thing.
Speaking as the sole surviving member of what you once called an endangered species, I don’t think the principle is that illegible, and I don’t think superficial changes would have worked.
As an example of what an actually superficial conflict over writing style would look like, I’m probably not the only one who’s annoyed that Vaniver spells though as tho, but there’s no coalition demanding him to adopt standard English orthography or be deposed. No one wants to do that, because that would be petty, and it would be pretty precisely because it’s superficial: both the standard and reformed spellings mean the same thing.
In contrast, the reason people wanted Achmiz to write words that convey a different tone is because the different words would have a different meaning. The kind of people who would make that demand wouldn’t be satisfied with mere compliance, because it would be easy to infer that Achmiz was only saying what was demanded of him as the price of being allowed to speak at all
If they don’t want compliance, what do they want? That’s a harder puzzle. I present my theory in §VI.3 of my new commentary post.