@monsterbater
"Welcome to Reddit.
Come for the cats, stay for the empathy."

is what prompted this post, but my reaction to it was "here too?"

I first saw it like 2 years ago, but now researching it, it turns out it's become a marketing buzzword.  Can't wait (deep sarcasm) for political marketing to get ahold of it.

By weaponization, I mean using the word 'empathy' and associating it with your brand, purely for emotional manipulation purposes.

It also bugs me because by emphasizing that 'empathy' is why a brand stands out, it implies that the other brands lack empathy, or to construe it another way, are sociopathic.

Meanwhile, what is more sociopathic than weaponizing the idea of empathy?

In Reddit's case, though, I read that 'empathy' as receiving confirmation bias from echo chambers and bots.