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Degenerate's in increasingly common use. I can't speak to the parent's use of the term, indeed from the context of their statement, there's good reasons to be suspicious of their intent. However, my social circle uses it quite heavily to refer to things like people who consider pet ownership equivalent to parenting, neonazis, and karens who fabricate sleights against themselves in order to haggle prices at retail outlets.
Despite its distasteful origins, it's becoming a catch-all for self-aggrandizing anti-social behavior, and destructively anti-normative sentiments.
I realize this kind of behaviour has been normalized by the president over the last four years, but I thought HN was better than this.