I don’t believe that more than .0001% of people actually felt annoyance. Master branch was used referencing a master, as in the master copy of a record, not a slave master. No normal people were actually annoyed by that.

You need to add all of the real world breakage to scripts and tutorials on the right side of that ledger. Plus the negative effects of virtue signaling undermining efforts at substantive change.

Also, are we supposed to ban the word master from all of it's dozens of normal English use-cases? I never got a clear answer on why git branch names were so much more harmful than someone mastering a skill or making a master record.

Can you name any person who publicly registered any form of annoyance reading the old name, prior to the movement to replace the name?

Can you cite any person, before, during or after, who gave a valid, coherent argument as to why the old name should annoy anyone? (Or are you willing to attempt one yourself?)

Note: the two arguments I am familiar with boil down to "it could be understood as describing a bad historical event, and ipso facto must not be uttered", and "if I am annoyed by something then that is inherently valid and you lack standing to question me, on account of my identity characteristics". I don't accept either of these as valid, for hopefully obvious reasons.

(And in fact, I can't recall actually ever seeing the second argument deployed honestly. I can only recall seeing people not of the relevant identity characteristics presuming that they were defending people who would feel that way.)

It was preformative nonsense that caused (and still causes!) more hassle than it was worth

I mean, if you were to do that, I'd wager more people are annoyed with the change than were annoyed with the original name. So no, it was a negative direction overall.

nope. to this day, it's still fucks people up and causes mistakes. it was stupid then, and it's still just as stupid. virtue signalling is always fucking stupid, and sometimes, like in this case, is flat out egregious