Really? I thought approaching the dude/bro/buddy issue from a linguistic perscriptivism vs descriptivism perspective was at least a somewhat novel approach, and worth bringing up for discussion if anyone felt comfortable doing so with me.

I personally have met transphobes that will make this argument so they don't have to out themselves as transphobic in groups that might not accept them going mask off about it. I'm not saying you're doing it, but it feels kinda similar to when transphobes go out of their way to use they/them pronouns for people when they're talking to someone who is very obviously presenting in specific gendered ways. are they and them generally gender neutral? yeah, obviously but there's certain contexts where it's totally not the best way to talk to/about people.

No worries. Just wanted to provide some context. Given you didn't realize where you were posting, its fine. But yeah, you're basically saying the same things as lot of people have dealt with. Memes like this one are common because of how common people get it. The exact details or examples given might vary. This is a problem a lot of communities have to deal with. r/Fuck_cars is another community that had a constant influx of people spamming the same things and surprised when people are rude to them. Even if their arguments aren't mainstream opinions, those types of communities tend to attract those types of people.

Personally, I don't care about dude, but I think gendered language in general is kinda ick and would prefer if all language was gender neutral (but don't push that only others - don't want people thinking I'm one of those people who complain about trans people upholding traditional gender cause that's another all too common argument).