"Homie" is short for homeboy afaik, still gender-related imo. That's funny because I have same concerns for in-game talks around my table and in french (my native language) it's not easy at all. "Comrade" from uwtartarus is a good idea because, perhaps it's not about the langage itself but about the polity/faction (I talk only for in-setting) "Comrade" could be used with autonomist/anarchist for example and in jovian/conservative habitat, old genders are still used ("ladies and gentlemen" and uplifts are refered as "abomination") On Glitch (around Neptun if I remember) perhaps everyone refers others as "program" (like TRON) :) And on Extropia, everybody uses "consumer" :) I tend to agree with uwtartarus about the rapid-mutation of slang in EP universe since each habitat has its own rules and habits with multiple co-existing official languages without any centralization in the solar system. Back IRL on internet, I find the term "netizen" very neutral. my 2 cents

I'm really curious about what will come out of this thread myself. Linguistically I'm not sure I can properly call this "slang" actually - it's serving the purpose of a plural-2nd person form or as a collective-noun. So it's a little more linguistically necessary than you'd think. Sort of like how the "Yeah, no -" phrase is actually meaningfully different than either a straight yes or a no - not an indecisive speaker. In OOC: I've seen some recent push to drop using "guys" as the generic 'group of people', because it has an implication of maleness for some audiences. (Not me, but back to how squishy slang is.) "Peeps" and "homies" both have cultural and regional connotations. As does "y'all". Though at least from me with my RL accent that one fits... (Yeah, I'm southern. We ain't *all* backwards. ;) ) "Comrade" absolutely has some big cultural connotations there too, though I appreciate the sentiment it's not something I'd use in mainstream groups. "Folks" seems safe, but it's not entirely depending on your audience... it's a word that's been picked up by a branch of Ásatrú (aka Heathenism aka Nordic paganism) as a code-word for "white people". So yeah... in the OOC: Tricky as hell and I'd love to see some good suggestions that could be pulled over to IC. In IC: Based on what I'm seeing in OOC - your local term for gender-nuetral-plural-you is probably going to be culturally dictated.

Looking through the books again, I came across this: "Skinning can also be used for the opposite effect. Any undesired content of reality can be edited out, veiled, or censored by modern software programs or muses that engage in real-time editing. Tired of looking at someone’s face? Add them to your killfile, and you’ll never have to acknowledge their presence again. AR censorware is also common in some communities with strict religious or moral convictions." - EP 240 Which means that in all likelyhood, most communication is filtered to some degree anyway. I recall an earlier thread where it was theorized people might have their preferred pronouns, etc. on their mesh profile. Taking that a step further, I could see someone who likes to be referred to a certain way, or an environment a la post Revolution Soviet Russia where a certain title is enforced, simply having that as their audio censor tag. You can probably tell when it's being filtered, whether through a little audio bug or an incomplete censoring forgetting to mask the lip movement or something, and I would strongly question what this would mean for a lot of social cues. OOC, you could probably handwave any places you feel your creativity isn't up to snuff this way, since that would reinforce how ubiquitous the tech is to your players. It's probably a hell of a faux pas to fuck that up, though. Abuse of it could easily lead to "No, I didn't say that, that's what your fucking Muse said for me" situations. Ah, post-singularity teenagers are going to be fun... As for broad slang that IS heard, "people" is likely very common in English, especially in +uplift/+AGI habs. Maybe some shortening of "sapient" too. Sap (pronounced "Saep") has a bit of a ring to it, though it also feels a bit forced like so many other sci-fi slangs. I've personally pulled inspiration for Extropia from Sigil from Planescape Torment, with lots of bashers and cutters out for a bit of jink to cover their kip. Though that probably sidesteps the politeness a bit. Still, "slagger" has a nice ring to it if you want to out yourself as a biocon. I can't help but think that, given how thoroughly initialization and acronyms have entered our vernacular in the last century that another century and a half or so is only going to deepen it. We're already starting to see nested initializations, so that's probably going to continue. And then you have the delightful tradition of military slang, where phonetic pronunciations of intializations provide such a delightfully vulgar and descriptive way of communicating.

I think some of it depends on the individual. For instance, I come from the Southwestern US, where terms like "guys" or "y'all" [which is considered to be more of a South/Southeast thing, but we use it too] are useful because they're effectively gender neutral as far as the receiving audiences. This is because we use a very loose dialect (and, despite having plenty of formal education in the English language, I am looser than most), but the region tends to be fairly socially conservative and say "suck it up, you know we meant you too".