Phil Christman has this rather good idea, which he exposits here, of "discursive basilisks."
Basically, there are some discourses that are so bad that the only healthy way to engage with them is not only not to engage with them but if possible not to directly look at them. Certainly to attend to them with any specificity is to boost their power. You can talk about them in a vague way, you can gesture at them, but you need to stay carefully on the side of the use-mention distinction, where you’re vaguely gesturing at them. There is something radioactive about the words themselves.
This is how he explains it initially. But for my money, there's an expansion a little later on, spinning from that last sentence, that's even better. The discursive basilisk is something that
will play and replay in your head forever and make your head a worse place to live.
