Gaslighting

[Phoebe]

From today's news feed:
"Merriam-Webster announced its 2022 word of the year is "gaslighting," which it defines as "the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one's own advantage.""

Is it just me or is this a bad definition of gaslighting?! From the dictionary?
Deliberately deceiving for one's own advantage maybe something bad and it may even have a name, but I don't think gas lighting is the name for it.
To me gaslighting happens specifically when you manipulate someone (could be deception or it might not be, I don't know) in a manner that causes them to question whether their own judgments are reliable. Gaslighting is an underhanded way of convincing someone that their beliefs are false when they really are true.
But I am not the dictionary.

[Mike]

Deliberately deceiving someone for personal advantage is called fraud. Gaslighting is much more personal and deceptive, and (I think) normally involves trying to convince another person that their own perceptions or recollections are wrong. At least that was the original meaning I took from the movie that started it. But it's probably evolves well beyond that on common parlance. Probably enough that it's current usage really is just a different shade of fraud.

[Phoebe]

Exactly. I wasn't even getting it right above because it's something more than simply convincing a person that they have false beliefs when you know the beliefs are true.
It has to touch something deeper causing the person to doubt their own capacity for judgment.
So if someone criticizes you for doing a bad thing, gaslighting is not just saying that they're wrong, but that it never happened in the first place or the person is so confused about it that they aren't fit to judge what happened.

[Mike]

Exactly. I like what I believed to be the original meaning and connotation of the term gaslighting, but by the time I was aware of it and it gained mainstream cache, it was already being expanded and diluted. Kind of a shame.

[Phoebe]

Wait a stinkin minute... What's this all about? Different story, same dictionary, different definition cited?!
This is why people cannot trust the media and democracy is being eroded.

"Merriam-Webster named “gaslighting” the word of the year. Searches for the word on Merriam-Webster.com surged 1,740% in 2022 over the prior year, despite there not being an event that the publisher — known for its dictionaries — could point to as a cause of the spike.
It defines gaslighting as “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.” - this one from Market Watch

[Eliahad]

So we're being gaslit about gaslight?

[Tahlvin]

No, everything is fine. I don't know why you think there's an issue. Gaslighting isn't even a real "thing". Just go back to being a good nerd and stay in your lane.

[Phoebe]

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