I made a conscious decision to replace "dude" with "darling" in my vocab a while back when I realized I only ever said "dude" to be rude. I hoped that, by replacing it with something unabashedly nice, I'd wind up wanting to actually -be- nicer.
It's mostly worked? Like, every time I e.g: catch myself saying to another driver, "turn signal, my darling", I always soften toward them after, no matter how snarky my original intent.
Plus, it's a cute word (◡‿◡✿)
@makyo OK that's cute, I'm stealing it
@makyo this is good content.
@makyo i tend to use "dear" round my enby/trans friends and honestly that works great too