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• @sodiboo@gaysex.cloud 2026-09-22 12:13

  @gwenthefops@booping.synth.download @luna@lunar.place omniscient in that sense. hm. i suppose? but i don't see how this is any different from praying to god? "god, please give us a bountiful harvest this spring". you don't literally expect a response. there's not actually a meaningful interlocutor to address. in the abstract "chat, are we cooked" i feel like the underlying sentiment is "i think we're cooked" [statement in the first person] and you might ask it towards someone [addressing the third person] to convey that sentiment. but grammatically, it follows the rules for "chat" being the second person (even though they're not actually, in the broader conversation. "chat" does not refer to an interlocutor). i think it is more useful to analyse this as semantic vs lexical "degree of person". like, clearly, lexically, we must shape the sentence as if it is second person. but semantically, it's very clearly a third person term of address (and an abstract/omniscient one at that, like a deity), and the sentence is not meant to be interpreted as second person, even though that's the shape all the elements must have. this feels similar to singular "they": it still follows the "plural form" of lexical elements no matter if it actually refers to more than once individual. and we accept that it just Doesn't Imply Plurality. similarly, "chat" in "chat, are we cooked?" does literally use the second person lexical form. but we have to accept that it refers to a third person. alternatively, i think it also makes sense to analyze "chat, are we cooked?" as a single literal interjection. i don't think asking chat questions out of context is a generalizable grammatical construct. but i've heard this one. so i think it's fair to say that the entire phrase behaves like a single root of meaning; rather than literally being the sum of its parts.

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