Comment by ebg13

I don't consider it offensive. I consider it vague and euphemistic.

It happens with all non-specific language. The word "problematic" is vague; it doesn't say anything about what the problems are, just that someone thinks something is wrong somehow. The only thing the reader can do given vague words is guess at what the writer meant.

Then _that_ phenomenon collides with idiomatic euphemism. Vague words become euphemisms exactly because of how vague and weak they are, weakness being basically the entire purpose of a euphemism.

IMO the first thing that people should be taught in school about writing (assuming schools bother teaching anything about writing) is that writers should always use the most concrete, specific, unambiguous words possible. But we don't learn that, so the world doesn't communicate that way, and so the world falls apart.