I have recently written about how the popular youtuber and math popularizer Matt Parker has, deliberately or inadvertently (it's not clear to me which), started to litter his speech and is videos with an almost constant use of the word "they" when referring to one singular person, sometimes to quite excessive and unnecessary extents, probably as a form of social engineering in an attempt to try to make the usage of that pronoun normal and widely adopted (and again I'm not sure if he's doing this consciously and deliberately, or inadvertently), and how the use of that pronoun to refer to one single person, especially a friend, can be quite dehumanizing and even offensive.
It has, in fact, become so bad and so frequent that I just cannot watch his videos anymore, even though I was quite a fan and subscriber for years.
Out of curiosity I checked his latest video (as of writing this) which talks about Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I couldn't get past the 2-minute mark when he referred to Einstein as "they".
For some reason that really angered me. So far his constant use of that word has been merely annoying and cringey, but in this case I actually got angry. If I had been in his presence I would have been tempted to tell him "fuck you asshole, that's Professor Einstein to you!" I had to stop watching the video because I got so angry.
When I calmed down and thought about it a bit more rationally, I realized more things about why the use of "they" in this case is just so unfitting and just sounds wrong.
Firstly, notice that "they" doesn't really work as a singular pronoun in a grammatically correct sentence. It works as a plural pronoun even if used to refer to one single person. Consider how it affects the verb inflection connected to it. For example, contrast:
"Mark is here and he is quite happy."
with:
"Mark is here and they are quite happy."
Nobody, not even the strongest advocates of the usage of "they" as a singular pronoun, would say "they is". The pronoun just doesn't work in singular. "Mark is here and they is quite happy" just doesn't work, and sounds wrong. The pronoun is inherently plural, and only works as plural in a sentence. But this, of course, introduces a conceptual clash because a single person (for example "Mark" here) is referred to with verbs inflected in plural ("they are happy").
Another problem with this usage is that even if we were to accept for the sake of argument that the pronoun "they" is being used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, think about what that means. It means that "they" is, essentially, a synonym for "he or she".
In other words, in any situation where one would normally write "he or she" when referring to just a indeterminate person, it has been proposed that the word "they" could be used instead. So, for example, if the text were
"The owner of target permanent shuffles it into his or her library, then reveals the top card of his or her library. If it's a permanent card, he or she puts it onto the battlefield."
it could, according to this proposition, be written by using the pronoun "they" instead:
"The owner of target permanent shuffles it into their library, then reveals the top card of their library. If it's a permanent card, they put it onto the battlefield."
However, what this means is that it should be possible to do the change in the other direction, and the sentence should still make sense and be natural. In other words, whenever the pronoun "they" is being used to refer to one single person, it should be possible to substitute it with "he or she" and the sentence should still be sensible.
However, consider Matt Parker's use of "they" when referring to Albert Einstein:
"Einstein came out with the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and then went away, had a think, and around 1916 they came out with the General Theory of Relativity."
If this were a legit use of the pronoun "they", it should be possible to substitute it with "he or she" and the sentence should still be equally sensible. Is it?
"Einstein came out with the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and then went away, had a think, and around 1916 he or she came out with the General Theory of Relativity."
No, I don't think so.
(Also notice how the use of the pronoun is superfluous in that sentence anyway. If you leave it out completely, the sentence still works perfectly fine. Deliberately or inadvertently, Matt Parker is unnecessarily littering his speech with "they" even when it's superfluous and not needed.)
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