seriously.

insert potato joke

"why is that funny?"

let them try to explain

"oh, I thought it was about he Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole."

see how awkward it can get.

As someone who lived 5 years in ireland and saw the history its absolutely fucking horrible. If you think about it its kinda ironic. Uk occupies a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. By the way as a neurotypical who has autistic family members and friends, in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event. Also the israel one is political. Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.

This is true, (see my second to last paragraph) but ... that is not as widely known.

Most people just think 'Idk, Irish people like potatoes'.

Most people think it is just in the realm of dietary preferences and cuisine and don't know why.

Even though there is a fairly direct equivalence if you actually know the history of the stereotype, most people don't.

Thus you are perceived as overreacting if you jump right to genocide.

To attempt an analogy:

It's like if a boomer tells a millennial or gen z to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they point out that the original meaning of that phrase was meant to encapsulate the literal physical impossibility of doing so as analogous to making a decent living for yourself in an economy where very very few people have the means/opportunity/connections/dumb luck to earn more than basically a subsistence wage.

The boomer just gets offended or bewildered because they didn't know that, or they don't believe it, and they're too arrogant to admit they have no real, useful advice, and that all they have to offer is infantilization.

Their ignorance (and inability to admit their knowledge is flawed) allows them to keep using an offensive phrase and not see this as offensive.

I laughed