He refuses to use the commonly established language which distorts reality. It is a radical choice (given how well established the manipulative language is).
I can see how some may find this irritating. You may want to take a look at this lecture to see why language is so important and influential.
Some of his substitutions are arguably valuable rhetorical devices, but the majority are just childish digs which don't add anything because they're far more distracting than they are challenging.
Every time I run into one of his idiosyncratic terms, it interrupts my train of thought, and dislodges any argument he had been constructing there.
> Every time I run into one of his idiosyncratic terms, it interrupts my train of thought, and dislodges any argument he had been constructing there.
In the spirit of ergodic literature, such as the use of extensive, awkward footnotes in Infinite Jest, some consider this to be a good and effective thing. If the reader isn't willing to put in the cognitive effort to constantly overcome this and extract the meaning of the overall argument, then that reader was probably just looking for some easy confirmation bias reason to disgree or criticize in the first place.
By constantly jarring you out of feeling comfortable while reading, it means that, if you are determined to read it seriously, you will have to exert more effort and by the end will likely have gotten much, much more out of it than if it had been designed to feel pleasant for the reader.
I actually love this style of writing and can't get enough of it. I also like the music of the band Swans and eat lots of meals with bitter foods (like huitlacoche, bitter melon, extremely earthy green tea). I don't know what it is, but I feel this kind of constant, just-on-the-cusp-of-being-too-unpleasant disruption for almost any sense qualia really leads me to appreciate things more, dig into them more deeply, retain more about them later on, and quickly separate things I do care about consuming from things I don't care about consuming.
It's kind of like putting up with the pain of a deep tissue massage to get the more satisfying muscular relaxation that comes later.
Well it's nice that the true believers get something entertaining to read, but there are a lot of people looking for reasons to disagree or criticise who might find themselves converted if he put in some effort to address his arguments to them. As the figurehead of Free Software, we should expect more from him than esoteric literature.
It's not the true believers who should be happiest about the effects of ergodic writing. Instead, it's the ones who disagree, but for serious reasons. If someone would only be converted if the writer makes it super easy, then I think e.g. Stallman feels like why should he waste his time on someone like that?
I do think there is something important to be gained by those childish digs which is avoiding branded terms while still being able to communicate about them. Take Crapple for example, they have hundred million dollar marketing campaigns designed to get people to associate Apple and iPhone with $desired_positive_qualities and you want to break your readers out of those associations. You can get around this by genericizing the brand (e.g. iPhone -> smartphone) but this doesn't work when you don't have a problem with the generic term or you want to talk about a specific companies product.
I can see how some may find this irritating. You may want to take a look at this lecture to see why language is so important and influential.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM