"They" as a singular pronoun is dehumanizing

I have written before that, even though spoken languages change naturally over time, and sometimes new words are invented or new meanings attached to existing words in order to fill a need to describe something new, the case of trying to make the word "they" the gender-neutral pronoun in English is done for all the wrong political reasons, via massive social engineering.

I also wrote another post where I gave a rather egregious example of this social engineering in action. Matt Parker is a youtuber and math popularizer who for years has made really entertaining and high-quality videos (and who is a regular at the Numberphile youtube channel.) He has made some of my all-time favorite videos, which show the entertaining side of maths. For example The Best Square in New York, and There is only One True Parabola (both of which I highly recommend).

For some reason he has become quite a prolific activist (I don't know if deliberately or unwittingly) at forcing the use of the word "they" as the singular gender-neutral pronoun, as lately he has been littering his videos with that word in that usage, to the point of being quite obnoxious (I give an example in that second link above).

It's one thing to use the word when he's commenting on submissions made by people all around the world, and it's not clear from a foreign name whether it's a man or a woman, or there may be some uncertainty. Heck, the same proper name maybe that of a man in one country and of a woman in another. Without doing some research it can be easy to make an error here. In this case the use of "they" might be somewhat justifiable so that one doesn't need to be saying "he or she" which sounds really awkward, especially in speech. (But maybe do a bit of research before making the video? But whatever.) Even then, he seems to litter that word needlessly often, more than would be necessary.

However, when it becomes a lot more obnoxious is when he's referring to someone he personally knows, someone who may even be his close friend, as "they", even though he knows perfectly well if it's a man or a woman. In pretty much all of his recent videos he has been doing this more and more often, talking about someone that he knows personally, and keeping referring to that person as "they".

I highly doubt that every single one of his friends has told him "my preferred pronoun is they". He is quite deliberately using that word even in situations where there's zero ambiguity.

Recently, when he kept referring to a friend as "they" for the umpteenth time in yet another video of his, I got so fed up with it that I unsubscribed from both of his main channels which I had been subscribed to. It just started to irk me really badly. I know it's a bit petty, but I'm so fed up with all this SJW political correctness bullshit, and he has been so overtly obnoxious about it, that I just got completely tired of it. Fuck it. It's a shame because most of his videos are quite interesting, but I can't enjoy them when he keeps littering them with "they they they them they they their they they" when talking about a person.

But why does that word bother me so much? Disregarding why it's being pushed so much, isn't it just a fine word to be used for this purpose? Why does it irk me to this extent?

I think I realized why.

The pronoun "they" is inherently plural. I realized that, serendipitously or deliberately, referring to a singular person as "they" is collectivist language.

"They" removes individuality, and is very impersonal. By the very fact of being a word of pluralistic nature, it makes it sound like a person is just part of some unspecified group, rather than an individual independent singular person.

"They" is stereotypically used to refer to unspecified non-determined groups of people. Stereotypically conspiracy theorists talk about "them" when referring to eg. shadowy government organizations and secret societies set on taking over the world and controlling everything. "They" spy on you, "they" control all higher echelons of society, "they" control all commerce, "they" want to exploit you. Who's "they"? Some secret shadowy organizations doing things behind the scenes that nobody knows about.

"They" is so impersonal. Not only does it distance the person being referred to from the speaker, it could also be considered a bit demeaning and even insulting, not very dissimilar from using the pronoun "it" when talking about a person.

Especially when talking about a friend, referring to him as "he" or her as "she" feels more personal, warmer and friendlier, than referring to that person as "they", which feels distant, detached and very impersonal, and kind of makes that person sound like just a member of some non-determined group instead of an individual person. It removes individuality and one of the most personal characteristics of a human being, and it collectivizes people.

I think that doing this to a friend, especially, is demeaning and insulting. Not all that different as if referring to him or her as "it".