Who says this stuff?

A classmate in my current online course used the word "tard" to refer to someone who was inept at using technology. It was an obvious suggestion that only a retard or tard would not understand technology.

I am not a hyper sensitive PC person, but it really pissed me off. So I wrote a individual email to him...

"Hello,

I found your usage of the word "tard" to be very offensive. I normally do not go all PC on people but it just seems highly inappropriate for the setting we are in. I happen to have a nephew that is mentally and physically disabled. In another time he would have been called a retard and I suspect that when he gets to school age he will be called the word that you have so easily used.

It is a tough world, a world that needs much more compassion and much more thinking before speaking.

-Maggie"

Who says the word tard anyway? Wasn't that used in like 1990?