ronburgundy
Contributor
Again, the problem is not that there are not people like that. The problem is the mistaken belief thatHere is the Urban Dictionary definition that does a better job of describing what people don't like about Social Justice Warrior.
[P]"A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation. A social justice warrior, or SJW, does not necessarily strongly believe all that they say, or even care about the groups they are fighting on behalf of. They typically repeat points from whoever is the most popular blogger or commenter of the moment, hoping that they will "get SJ points" and become popular in return."[/P]
I underlined the key aspect. It is people who rush to be the first to point out (or share) a rumored injustice before giving any reasoned thought to the situation or having enough facts to actually know that an injustice has occurred or what the nature of the injustice is.
People that sincerely care about injustice want to reduce them. This goal is objectively harmed by false positives of "injustice" and inaccurate assessments of what the nature and real cause of it is. Since avoiding false positives and inaccurate understanding of injustice is only possible via careful evidence gathering and reasoning about and event, those who act (which includes expressing outrage) before they plausibly had the time and available evidence to make these determinations must not care sincerely about reducing real injustice. They are SWJs. The label works as irony. People that care about injustice generally don't try so irresponsibly hard to show you how much they care about injustice. They essentially are labeling themselves. That is their ulterior motive. This irony of the term is so transparent that Nexus is quite right that anyone implying that anyone using the term pejoratively must be against actual social justice is being dishonest.
Basically, an SJW is someone that abuses the cause of fighting for justice as a game of one-upmanship. Much like the person that seeks to show their superiority by being the first to adopt a commercial trend, the SJW seeks to be first to adopt a new outrage. Also, you get double the points if you not only protest a presumed instance of something that would be a legit "injustice" if it had occurred, but also promote the idea that everyday interactions that are not injustices should be classified as injustices (as is the case with much of what falls under cultural appropriations and micro-aggressions).
Obviously, conservatives are going to latch onto the term and abuse it discount any and all claims of injustice. But, as with "politically-correct", that doesn't mean the term does not refer to a real and problematic tendency among many on the left who do more to distract from actual injustice and to fuel the conservative base than to promote justice or fight bigotry.
1) one can instantaneously discern what someone actually believes, and
2) this type of person is restricted to one end of the political spectrum.
When people are declaring outrage over incidents before they could plausibly know the relevant facts, then it is reasonable to infer that most of them fall into this SJW category. When people go to lengths to ignore obvious but less outrage-inducing explanations for events, it is reasonable to infer that most of them fall into this SJW category.
Also, they are mostly on the left, because people on the right do not support social justice even in theory, so they wouldn't seek to promote their righteousness via manufacturing injustices to others that they are outraged about. People on the right obviously invent injustices, but they are always about their own group, so they aren't doing it for the righteously glory but for more directly self-serving advantages. They often use the "injustice" card as a way to defend their own ability to commit injustices, for example by saying that restrictions the limit their own ability to use government to attack homosexuals is an attack on Christianity. It is a different form of abusing concerns for "justice" to which the term social justice warrior doesn't apply. Also, it is more tired and worn and not gaining harmful social traction that masks real injustices, unlike what leftist SJWs are doing.
