If I was saying that the change already happened I would have said ‘affectED’ past tense, which I did not.

I’m advocating for something to cause change, I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

Oh my god. You’re using “change” as an object noun after a transitive verb which itself has no connotation or denotation of creation or causation. That implicitly means you’re saying that the thing it’s referring to must already exist.

I’m advocating for something to cause change,

Yes! That is what “effect” means.

I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

Yes you are! “Affect (v.)” already means “change (v.)”. “Affect (v.) change (n.)” means “change (v.) the change (n.)”.

It’s like if I said “This salt will really affect my spaghetti”. That implicitly says/presumes that “my spaghetti” already exists, or else it wouldn’t be able to be affected.

I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

🙄

FFS, I explained the grammatical reasoning, and linked to historical usage data, and linked to four different dictionaries to back that up.

You know what, fuck it. I only mentioned “effect” vs. “affect” because I thought that was somewhat interesting and more obscure rather than annoying to point out, but if you’re going to just be obtuse about it I may as well have some fun and point out the various other grammatical and semantic mistakes too…

“The Congress app” should not have a definite article because the app you linked to is, per the app ID, developer info, and first line of its description, unofficial and unaffiliated with the U.S. Congress. “Representative” should be plural, though that’s probably just a typo. The second “despite” should have a conjunction such as “and” immediately before it. “Want” should be conjugated as “wants” after “citizenry”, because the noun it applies to in this case is the singular “majority”. “Affect” should be “effect”, because “affect change” isn’t a thing and is actually nonsense. The clause right after that, beginning with “that’s what the corporations”, is a run-on sentence and should probably be fixed with a conjunction denoting causality or reasoning. The clause after “involved” is also a run-on sentence, and should probably either be its own declarative statement or be semicolon-delimited. The third “to” on the second sentence of your next reply needs a listing conjunction right before it. And in your latest reply, the clause after “cause change” is also a run-on sentence and should probably be delimited by either a full stop or a semicolon instead of a comma.

Now I suppose I’ll wait for you to explain why you “stand by” these other plainly incorrect (and, frankly, inconsequential) errors as well.

It’s funny how you started out pretending to champion political change, and to be against frivolously “commenting about it on an Internet forum”. … I should know better.