To my mind, Ban has always meant permanent.
“You’re banned from this place! You’ll never be allowed in again!”
While I’ve always thought of Suspend as being temporary.
“You’re being suspended from school for 1 week, over fighting.”
Ban:
- to prohibit especially by legal means
- bar entry
- to debar temporarily especially from a privilege, office, or function
- a: to cause to stop temporarily
b: to set aside or make temporarily inoperative - to defer to a later time on specified conditions
- to hold in an undetermined or undecided state awaiting further information
When I hear someone mention they were banned my reaction is: “Holy shit! WTF did you do to earn that!” Then I find out it was only for a day or three: “Oh… That’s not a Ban! That’s minor. Go touch grass. You’ll be fine.”
I’ve been banned from subreddits and communities a few times. At least once I never even noticed because it was so short.
How is it a Ban if I didn’t even notice?
Why did Ban in online forums and games, come to mean temporary?
Is it simply an example of the intensification of language? To make something mundane, seem more severe than it is?
Does it bother anyone else? Or am I alone here?
Then explain perma-ban
Joke aside though - ban is a toggle. You can toggle something on or off, but it usually implies something temporary. You can then manually unban someone at a later date, or have the unban be automated in some cases.
“I turned the lights on” - there is no expectation that you never turn them off again
“It is snowing outside” - at some point it will stop snowing
“I’m banned from my local book club for repeatedly asking if they made a movie for that one” - this too shall pass. Maybe in 4 years when I go back they’ll forgive me and let me back in, and by that time I’ll have watched Moby Dick - manual toggle of the ban back to ‘off’ is expected here.
“I was banned from Day9’s stream for backseating” - here the ban would have an automatic limit, maybe something like a million seconds.
Perma-ban started being used because people began using Ban when meaning something temporary.