Please add this word to the banned words list
I run a small discord for a niche game (about 200/300 members) and this has come up before from an over-eager non-American egoist who wanted to use it in daily use. It got a bit of pushback, mostly from Americans, and not in the “I think it’s a slur” way, but more directly “this makes me uncomfortable, please stop using that word” way.
IMO context is essential for language and slur use, which is why it’s not a slur to call the broad class of foods like apples and pomegranates fruits, but you absolutely can’t use that in the context of LGBTQ+ people. Calling random things that you think fit the egoist use “spooks” without guiding context makes it really easy to misinterpret it as casual (if old-timey) racism, but I would see prefacing it with CIA/FBI as giving it appropriate context to make it clear it’s not intended in a hateful way. That said I would rather just avoid the word and use a handy synonym like goon, ghoul or whatever.
