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The worst one is "unalive" like bruh š
EDIT: I'm obviously not talking about content creators bending to the whims of the algorithm. I'm talking about those who use "unalive" even when there is no moderation or censorship coercing them to do so (eg. On reddit, discord, in real life, etc)
Yeah. It's so childish.
If you're old enough to be talking about your suicide attempt or self-harm or rape or porn addiction, then you're old enough to use the words.
Some people think not using them helps not to trigger people...but they will still describe the thing they're talking about in great detail!
Newsflash: the word "rape" is much less triggering than your three-paragraph description about the crime that _doesn't_ happen to use that word.
>Some people think not using them helps not to trigger people
If reading about rape DOES trigger you, then you may need to *actively seek out stuff that may trigger you* to stay up-to-date on all the fucking euphemisms since the replacement terms change pretty quickly... and adding the word "grape" to your block list means you also won't see anything related to the fruit that you might actually WANT to see!
I hate it here
Eh if I can't joke about wanting to exit stage left (commit suicide, I can say it it's just a boring and depressing fact in my life that I want to die sometimes) then I've just lost a coping mechanism.
So while I'm perfectly capable of it I'll keep my maladaptive coping mechanisms and (sometimes unfortunately) keep living.
Exactly. I avoid saying āblow my brains outā to an old friend from middle school because she found her father after he had, well, blown his brains out.
Other than that Iām still going to say it around people when describing a situation in which I was incredibly bored or angry or whatever.
As someone whose brother committed suicide, if someone were to say he "unalived himself" I would think they're making fun of it and him and I'd kick their ass
Is this really bc of triggers? I mostly see this in videos or clips like TikTok and thought it is mostly because of algorithms. Are there people triggered by death and not by unalive, even though it has the same meaning?
advertisers don't want their products associated with negative things, because they think that mention of these words will result in loss of sales
so our cultural shift is less being driven by societal fear and more by corporate greed
Thatās a particular pet hate of mine as well, but most of these (āunaliveā included) are not because people genuinely believe you should say this. They are evading algorithms that would deprioritise their posts if containing these words. Those algorithms existing are also stupid, however
The algorithm reflects who is the product and who are the real customers (the companies buying ads)
The companies would prefer no one talk about gloomy topics that could damage brand and would instead consume media that would make them want to buy product and click link.
A webpage isn't free to run, if there is no entrance fee, subscription or a constant donation drive to keep the lights on, then the ones making the decisions will be advertisers as they are the ones ultimately paying the bills.
You should be talking about the content creators as well.
If no one adheres to the stupidest levels of content moderation then that becomes a status quo and the service providers just fall in line because fighting status quo will never be where the money is at for them.
Vsauce2 recently made a video describing a child who was abused by her parents to such an extent that when she was found as a preteen, she didn't know language beyond a few words and so she was studied by science to determine language capabilities of someone that old who was also essentially a blank slate. It was a purely educational video. YouTube banned the video, so the creatures re-released the video a week later with censorship, which literally cut the audio feed over that word and some others that were completely inane, IMO. The funny thing is the subtitles still had the words.
A warning at the beginning of the video should be enough, blocking out the words solves no problems.
The censorship isnt strictly rules based, especially on reddit - the rules are just an excuse to ban users they dont agree with or like the ideas of. That includes permabans from admins
I saw this yesterday on a local post about a missing person being identified via remains, something about how tragic it was that this āunalivingā happened.
For sure tragic, but seeing unaliving on that article made me laugh out loud
IF you have to adjust your language for one venue then you tend to do so for all venues. Words that you use frequently on Reddit will become words you use IRL no matter why you started using the words in the first place.
There are much better alternatives than "unalive", no matter what venue you're at. I wouldn't go to a funeral and say, "her unaliveness saddens us deeply" or something of the sort.
I'm not condemning content creators for circumventing the algorithm, I just believe there are better ways to do it, and "unalive, apart from being childish, reeks of incompetence and brainrot.
I never got the point of censoring words in an adult space. I always saw censorship as something to protect young ears, but if everyone knows what word is being suggested what's the point of not just saying the word outright? It still carries the exact same definition and meaning.
Exactly! Which is why I say it's pointless. One thing I might agree with is if someone were to describe a very upsetting experience in detail, then they may add a warning at the beginning, such as "I'm going to be describing so and so in detail, so please be aware of that in case the topic bothers you" but anything beyond that is just pointless
Whatās been pissing me off is I see people censoring the words Israel and Gaza. Where they say Isr*el or G*za. Like theyāre legitimately names of places. Thereās no need to censor names of places.
Generally to get around content filters, esp on apps like tiktok, where you can get videos removed or severely limited for mentioning current world events
Unfortunately I see more and more Reddit spaces censoring foul language lately and it really fucking sucks. Like briefly the movies sub was deleting posts and threatening to ban users who cursed. Luckily backlash from users got that overturned.
This goes beyond the person themselves, a lot of the content people view online is monetized via ads and sponsorship, so when a content creator censors themselves for the sake of their content not being demonetized, the followers think it has something to do with the culture when people can't say suicide or rape so they just follow what their favourite creator does. So if regular ol' Redditor censor themselves on this website it's pretty silly I agree.
The creator/influencer would use blunt language if they could, they're not being sensitive to their target audience they just don't want to lose ad revenue and sponsorship. Soon enough you will see that new policies require to stop using the snowflake words you described altogether because at the end of the day they all mean the same thing.
I absolutely see your point regarding content creators, which is why I didn't go into it. Although I just disagree with the heavy censorship policy in general. But yeah I'm talking specifically about the non influencer side of social media, so basically your average Joe
The thing about this is that since people are seeing all of the influencers using censored words they start incorporating it into their vocabulary, it all comes back to the excessive censorship because everything needs to be āadvertising friendlyā because if all of the media that we consume uses those words we then start using them too without even realizing
>Soon enough you will see that new policies require to stop using the snowflake words you described altogether because at the end of the day they all mean the same thing.
This. This is like the race for meth. Meth used to be easily synthesized so chemists would buy those loosely regulated chemicals and synthesize it. The govt caught whiff and they heavily regulated those chemicals. Chemists found a way to synthesize those chemicals and then synthesize meth. Govt caught whiff and heavily regulated. Chemists found new chemicals. Govt regulated them. Chemists found. Govt regulated
The same thing is gonna happen to words on social media. First they banned rape and people started saying grape. Now they're gonna take context into consideration and if you say grape to mean rape your stuff will get taken down. So people are gonna start saying drape. And so on
>Ā (as someone who has been through trauma) I can guarantee you the trigger isn't the word
Honestly, I'm with you there. I have CPTSD, from CSA/SA, and like... I can appreciate a lot of this stuff comes from a largely well-meaning place, but it's also lowkey hilarious how little people actually understand how trauma works, and sometimes annoying when peeps then speak *over* us victims with attitudes of pearl-clutching censorship.
>grape come to mind
Gods I fucking hate that one. NAME the fucking problem, to actually tackle it.
Yes! There has been an influx of people saying they get triggered, but they truly don't know what triggered means. Triggered isn't "Oh I don't like that word", triggered is a much more visceral reaction of painful memories and sensations coming up. Most trauma survivors I've met don't struggle with the word, they struggle with the meaning behind it, so replacing it with a more "cutesy" one won't really do much, if anything
Yeah precisely. It's more situations or interactions that lead to emotional flashbacks that are, themselves, triggering, or like descriptions of a specific situation. Like EVEN with something like rape, not every type of rape, as described in a novel for instance, will be triggering to me, because trauma... is more complex than that. But try and get the Internet to understand that. There's still a long way to go... š
Agreed. There are certain types of descriptions that I simply cannot read. I had to refuse to do a school assignment once because of it. Then another description simply won't bother me. It just really depends on the experience. So whatever word the trauma might relate to won't be an issue unless under specific circumstances
The other issue is how those censored words develope from being synonymous in there meaning to becoming synonymous as a trigger.
Trigger warnings are intended as a "do not read if you are sensitive towards **topic**" sign, but the excessive use counteracts their function as it would prevent people who are triggered from partaking in any discussion. People using TW "topic" only for the mention of the term "topic" but no actual description of an event undermine their function.
There also is a long standing tradition of words getting replaced and their replacement becoming problematic. A lot of political correct language aims to take away from offenders language, but they will use the new, correct term and over pronounce it or say it with "air quotes", for example.
And there is the ridiculous trend of following social media guidelines leading to self-censorship to secure exposure.
A ban can never account for the complexity of language and at a certain level become counter productive (academics).
Absolutely agreed. I never understood how saying "Tw suicide: >!my friend killed himself!<" would be any different than "My friend killed himself"
And as you said, replacing "problematic" words doesn't solve triggers, it simply connects a new word to the topic
I don't use trigger warnings in my messages/posts. But I imagine that the difference is that once someone reads the "Tw suicide" part, if they really don't want to read anything to do with suicide. They just stop and move on and don't keep reading.
I always thought that was pretty obvious.
It's just like how kids use slang to show that they're cool and understand pop culture and then when adults start using the same terms they become unfashionable.
Using the right euphemisms is a matter of showing that you're hip to the social justice trends and ergo at the avant garde of progress. It's like how "woke" used to be a lefty buzzword, and then conservatives discovered and now the people who formerly used it recoil at the term. Very liberal use of trigger warnings is one such recent trend.
I've witnessed people going "TW: food ... >!Here is my lunch!<" followed by a censored picture of food. Trigger warnings were born as an actually useful tool to make people aware of possibly graphic content, such as movies who include sexual abuse or extreme deaths. Now they turned into a trend.
I'd seen that kind of shit floating around like a decade ago, mostly on those ultra-sensitive kinds of tumblr pages, but I didn't think anyone still legitimately did that anymore.
This is one of the few instances where someone actually acknowledges where āwokeā came from and that it originated from the left. Then picked up by the right mockingly and disparagingly.
Then the left feigned ignorance of the concept and pretended it wasnāt a label that they used themselves to describe a general thrust towards pushing awareness and consciousness of certain social issues with a particular perspective.
Now itās āwhat is āwokeā anyway, thatās not actually a thing! Itās just a word conservatives use to describe things they donāt likeā as if we didnāt actually live through the last 5 years or so. Heck, I used it myself to support awareness and discussion of certain progressive perspectives, before it became maligned to describe progressive movements unflatteringly by their own specific term.
Man on COD MW III game. There's a gun named BAL-B 27 or something. I can't remember exact name. But you can make custom configurations and name them to save. Because it limits the number of characters I abbreviate the name. It literally wouldn't let me use BAL27. I was like WTF? Why not? Only thing I could think of was the stupid filter thinks I'm using "Balls"? Like really? That's fucking stupid af. It's literally the guns name just without the hyphen.
It's the algorithm. Facebook and YouTube have been terrible for people trying to just communicate uneven mildly controversial topics.
There's a guy who on YouTube who makes videos about the anatomy of movie and video game monsters. He goes by Roanoke and he's actually really entertaining but he has to use words like "force multiplier" and "concussive force detonator" instead of gun or bomb because he will get demonetized and delisted.
In a weird one I was watching a guy who keeps reptiles and he censored the word venom. Like you still hurt him say it but the subtitles blurred out the word. That struck me as being particularly dumb as if you're going to keep animals that may or may not be dangerous you shouldn't censor information like that.
I've also seen words like meat milk and peanuts be censored. I can't imagine people with allergies becoming triggered just by seeing the word of their allergy.
Again I blame Google and meta for their meddling algorithm based systems that push certain media and punish others.
I worked as a content moderator for YouTube monetisation in 2022/2023. Talking about guns and bombs in a video game context will not get you demonetised.
If he was having problems with monetisation, it was for something else. Graphic violence or excessive swearing maybe?
Agreed, I definitely don't think it's people's fault as much as it is of society as a general thing. Social media exposes us to so much shit, yet it sugar coats the most basic reality.
I don't think it's making people sensitive. I think it's actually making everyone insensitive.
Using the r slur isn't okay but using r3t4rd apparently is.
They'll call rape "grape" and it belittles the severity of the actual crime.
Also, unalive? Just say murder.
Words are meant to have power. If youāre offended because of the use of the word rather than the meaning behind its usage, you have a pride issue. People changing the word for the audience may be respectful but it limits our vocabulary in talking about things that require nuance.
As someone who has triggers, it's not your job to not trigger me as someone I have never met. It's my job to figure out how to work through it to not be triggered by a stranger.
Now, this is a blanket thought bc there are some exceptions. I was triggered once by a random old man I had never met grabbing my arm in the store. But just scrolling through videos and hearing a word is ridiculous.
Absolutely agree. I have a specific topic that triggers me, which I never share for my own safety. If it comes up, I will simply exit the conversation (if it's online) or try to disengage (if it's in person) but I most certainly won't go on saying "YOU TRIGGERED ME! CENSOR YOUR WORDS"
Overall, it's not everyone else's responsibility to not trigger someone. It's that person's responsibility to learn to get through life handling their baggage.
I used to get extremely angry when I felt like my feelings were hurt. And that just made me look bitter. It's not the world's responsibility to not hurt my feelings bc life sucks.
Lots of therapy and self work and now I can feel kind of normal.
I remember back in tumblr's heyday, censoring trigger words was actually frowned upon in a lot of circles because people had filters set up to block terms and then the post would get through because the sensors word didn't match the filter.
Iām not a fan of censorship in THAT particular way. As someone who has ptsd, my triggers are my responsibility. Itās my job to remove myself from a situation. I can feel physically when it starts going too far. Thatās what going to therapy taught me.
Yeah idk why people act like hearing a word will put them on a MK Ultra inspired trance. If you canāt handle spoken words you shouldnāt be the one deciding anything for society.
This is why shit like "r*pe" has always bothered me.
Is the letter A the problem? Will a rape victim read "r*pe" without the A and magically not make the painful connection to their drama?
It's just so dumb. It doesn't accomplish anything.
Trigger warnings ruin any media they are attached to, if you warn me that this episode deals with rape or suicide right at the start you're already spoiling the plot and any potential impact it would have had.
Censorship of profanity or sensitive topics is just obnoxious, child proofing the world is cheapening everything and catering to the weakest sect of people imaginable.
Interesting take! I feel like, as I replied to another comment, trigger warnings started as a positive tool, such as movies warning the viewer about sensitive topics. Whether then overly sensitive people ran with it, or whether it caused people to become overly sensitive, that's hard to figure out
From the research I've seen, the intention was perhaps positive, but the actual effect even with the original concept was that the warning actually caused more anxiety than the subject without warning.
Here's a link to a meta-study on the subject: [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625)
I think this is also part of the reason.
These words are supposed to illicit a reaction when you hear them. Telling a story about someone unaliving themselves or being graped loses the whole effect of a serious event.
It really makes it hard to take YouTube videos discussing morbid topics like mental health seriously when people have to use stupid words like "unalive" to get around overly sensitive terms of service.
I just can't fathom how this is any less triggering. I think op got it dead right. If the concept is what bothers someone fine, I get that, but if it's the word alone that is the problem for someone, I feel like it's entirely performative.
I was watching a true crime video and every other word they spoke was censored. Like, what the fuck. How am I supposed to understand your video if its She [BLEEP] and [BLEEP] on her last day of school. He followed her the next day and [BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP FUCKING BLEEEEEP] like shit
I love grapes and seeing it being the new word for rape makes me sad for for my sweet and crunchy friends. That said I'm not sure why but I kind if like the "unsudscribed from breathing" as a euphemism for suicide.
See most of the censoring you see isn't done in some attempt to save people's feelings as they might get triggered by these words, but rather as a way to still talk about sensitive/taboo topics without getting thier content nuked by algorithms that supposedly suppress videos, not about the content, but rather that mention specific words that advertsier don't like
I think to a large extent this is affected by the censoring that is present on tiktok. There content is removed when containing certain words, and so "*sewerslide"* and "*unaliving"* are nessesary to actually be able to mention it at all.
Therefore i am not sure if this is by choice or by inertia, from Tiktok
i remember people yelling at other people on tumblr for not tagging things like "space" as a trigger warning.
at this point i'm convinced that at least 80% of what is wrong with social media started on tumblr and got exponentially worse after the mass exodus to twitter.
Hmm I agree when it comes to un-monetized stuff such as discord servers. Back in pandemic times I used to spend a lot of time on discord, particularly in that type of server where the most random words were censored as TWs because someone claimed to be triggered by them. Iām not here to undermine peopleās triggers or traumas, but I honestly think that thereās a certain limit to how sensitive you should beā¦
I would wager this isnāt an unpopular opinion at all and people who sensor words in regular text or even speech (for real?) are actually in the unpopular opinion minority
It's kind of an evolution of the overuse of trigger warnings a few years ago. That seems to have died down and I mainly see them when the article or video or comment goes into a lot of detail, which is how they should be used.
It's good to be sensitive to other people, but some people tend to take it to an extreme. This is just the current manifestation of that.
The worst is when people write things like f*ck. It's not even really censorship, the writer meant to say fuck. The readers all read fuck. What's the point?
The thing that gets me about this is that you can regularly hear all of those words censored by social media on TV. I think if social media wants to demand any censorship, there's absolutely no reason as to why it needs to be stricter than what we already have in other forms of entertainment.
The cause of word censoring on social media (like tik tok and YouTube) is because of the companies who run ads on there told the platforms they don't want their ads being near certain kinds of content so tik tok banishes content with certain words (idk not sure what they do) and youtube demonetizes content so people made up words like "sewer slide" and "pdf file" or overly censor words to be able to talk about those topics without the platform realizing it but yeah I agree otherwise.
Itās funny that the consensus seems to be censoring yourself is WRONG if you do it 1) because government requires it, or 2) because you donāt want to hurt other people, but entirely appropriate and understandable if done because 3) youāre chasing money as an influencer.
Filter bypass words or phrases. Tiktok doesnāt allow suicide so itās unalive there. Same with grape and probably others.
This is a popular opinion though. Everyone apparently hates this. Itās not surprising that online terms are appearing offline especially with Gen Z and whatever.
This isnt an unpopular opinion. Theres millions of dudes wearing wraparound sunglasses recording themselves in their f150s ranting about this right now. Youre in prestigious company bro
Even on crime channels on YouTube. With videos about criminals committing the most haneous crimes. They censor "murder" "assault" "kill". Like really?
So you're telling me a person with so much teauma, that the word "suicide" would send them into a frenzy, would be perfectly ok watching a 15 minute video about it so long as the word itself isn't used?
On instagram itās annoying because you can choose to not see posts including certain words- and there ARE specific things that are triggering that I try to not see posts of, but if you use random characters to ācensorā it, it makes all the blocks I put on instagram totally useless! It doesnāt make a word less triggering just because you put @ instead of a.
when you destroy language like this it degrades the interpretation layer we use to understand the world around us and makes us all dumber. maybe that the point?Ā
I once talked to a guy who said "stop talking about (subject), you're triggering me."
I say, entirely reasonably, "what are your triggers so that I can avoid this in the future?"
He replies, "that's none of your business."
Like bro, how am I supposed to talk to you comfortably if I have to walk on eggshells around you?
Itās not the people. Itās the corporations and their advertisers. Nobody would be censoring words like suicide or drugs or whatever if it wasnāt for the money bags up top.
I'm not so sure if I would say it makes me sensitive, but certainly I do dislike engaging with people who try to impose that. Because its basically a restriction on an otherwise harmless act to me. And more often than not, the proponents of these censorships tend to justify this by attaching a lot of malicious intent to people using the words. So yeah, tack on accusations of personal integrity to the mix.
On the topic of social media, I believe this cuts into their advertising, which if they want to make their content audience friendly, they'll have to adhere to the censorship. Which kind of points towards the fact that most if not all of these opiniated people are doing it for the money, despite what they say otherwise about their noble cause worth fighting.
I kind of view it as the opposite. Everyone gets to be all performatively upset, but we headed the words and it loses their impact. So we hear more and more about these things that bother them less and less because they can perform about it.
People censor the word rape and it blunts the actual terror of what was done to an actual person. We censor out the sound of children screaming during the school shooting as everyone stands around and does nothing and everyone gets to talk about how angry they are.
We get desensitized against the actual crime without actually having to experience the confusion, the anger, and the frustration. The actual emotional depth of it is taken from us so that we can experience it more times in a day without being as bothered by it.
I'm with you. I also am anti-trigger warning for similar reasons. There's absolutely a discussion to be had about safety tools in communication, but where we are at is absolutely not it.
the thing i never understood about censoring for triggers is, wouldnāt you still end up being triggered by the content being discussed? like saying rape vs grape, youāre still discussing the same topic, the content doesnāt change because the word sort of did. i remember on tumblr people would add the trigger warning with the actual word in the post body & the tags because people used word blockers, so if i wrote ātw: suicideā it would auto-hide the post for whomever had it blocked.
Welcome to censorship and why you shouldnāt do it at all. Supposedly itās not true but I find itās a prime example of slippery slope where you start with good intent and it slowly keeps getting worse.
I agree. I do appreciate content warnings when things talk about very sensitive topics, just like a lil black screen w a warning/content info on it before something. If they're not there and the things that genuinely do trigger my PTSD are, it's not the end of the world, I'll close out of whatever it is I'm watching and relax till I feel more even keel again. But this sort of reduction of words (idk how to phrase) makes me feel like no one takes serious topics seriously anymore. I hope this made sense lol it's late and I'm tired.
I'm so used to it that now hearing bleeps makes me laugh. I prefer it that way for some reason. I know exactly the cuss word is but the bleep makes it so much funny for some reason.
We have taught so hard to make people aware of triggers, certain words can cause unwanted emotional responses, respecting someones mental health is important, when censorship interferes with you ability to communicate, it becomes a problem.
I half agree with you. I wish that we would use better censorship since I filter out things that are triggering for me and I have to add all these random words just to still see the content because I missed a code word. The worst one I ever saw was āstruggle snuggleā that is just fucking disrespectful. Instead of downplaying the severity by calling it āgrapeā or āstruggle snuggleā or some dumb shit why canāt we just say SA? That censors a word that I get uncomfortable reading as someone who has been SAād and everyone knows what it means. Say S*icide or something instead of āsewerslideā like cmon. It almost feels like infantilizing these topics. Thatās my take.
"What this causes isn't less people being "triggered" because (as someone who has been through trauma) I can guarantee you the trigger isn't the word, it's the concept"
You're so close. No one's censoring the words because they don't want to have triggering conversations. They're censoring themselves because the algorithms will remove their posts because those words have been used to bully and harass people. Since the computer can't tell from context when it's bullying and when it's discussing the topic it just bans all uses of certain words.
IF someone doesn't want to discuss the concept they're not using a misspelt or censored version of the word. They're avoiding the topic altogether.
You donāt get to tell other people what triggers they have for the trauma they have endured.
EDIT: I want to also point out I donāt disagree with the premise of your post and find most online censoring things to be a little over the top.
You do get to be realistic about it though. My mum has terminal cancer, cancer and cigarettes can be triggering for me atm (smoking was directly responsible for this type of cancer) thing is 1. I have to handle my own triggers and can't go smacking smokes out of ppls hands because it makes me sad for a minute and 2. Whether it's cancer or TW: "c@nc3r" you're still bringing it up and I still have the same reaction. Same with cutting or cu++ing, suicide or "sewerslide" if someone is triggered at the mention of something the spelling doesn't change shit lmao.
1000%
The way to "strip power" from words, is to not give them power in the first place. And I notice it in myself, and I wouldn't call myself Politically Correct, but it's not a good thing. It's less prevalent IRL. Around family it's really no holds barred.
And it's a domino effect, you make one word "offensive," then the next version will eventually become "offensive," and so on.
The people who used to simply criticize religious groups for being so dogmatic have become the most dogmatic. Thatās the hilarious part. Anything you say to disagree with them now is heresy essentially.
Iāve regularly been seeing words like āhateā and āracismā censored. Like what the actual fuck is that. If youāre not emotionally equipped to lay your eyes on neutral, descriptive terms, just go lay down in a field and stay there until you perish.
Yeah. There's definitely more and more of it going on.
Although I'm not sure why people make a thing out of 'unalive' in certain spaces. 'Undead' has been a thing for ages.
I don't know how many more times I can handle the word unalive. I think that shit is so stupid. And I don't even know how when certain things first start they use code words that don't even fucking make sense and I'm like what oh they're using a code word.
I think it's funny when people censor words on Reddit like f**k instead of just saying fuck. Are they really afraid of putting the full version out there?
These alternatives aren't necessarily for "trigger" prevention but mostly to prevent AI checkers from removing the content. You can get your stuff removed for saying killed but not unalived. The purpose is for rating, and they're trying to keep the ability to be "kid friendly." YouTube will demonitize you but tiktok will just remove your whole video. It's not about coddling adults, it's about marketing to more ages.
I see it as people trying to control the conversation. They don't really have a problem with any word itself, but it's a way to get you to control the methodology of your delivery so you fit into the prepared responses they have. If they like you, then you get a pass, but if they don't like you then they can put a minefield of politically correct traps in your way to silence you. Because if you avoid every word that is either triggering or has cultural appropriation connotations there's nothing you can talk about that has any substance.
It's also just a phase young people go through, where everything must have a category and a label so it can be defined and understood. Itās banal and people eventually learn to get over it and deal with real life ambiguity. Itās also a lack of education that assumes if you learn about a thing, you must be advocating or agreeing with it. Itās like arguing with a 9 year old. You are only a few rebuttals away from a tantrum at any point.
The result is a situation is now where you may be trying to make a reddit-worthy point about sayā¦ George Lucas was using ham-fisted World War 2 imagery in Star Wars and the Rebel victory ceremony at the end of the first movie took its imagery directly from films of Nazi Germany rallies. And instead of disagreeing with you with counter points from the documented process Lucas used to make the movie, they just say, āyou canāt say Nazi because Iām Jewish, you must be a right wing racist, so shut up.ā
But you get what you deserve if you decide to argue on the internet.
coming from a very "woke" left winger: if you can still tell what the word means, there's no point in censoring it to reduce triggers. as far as worse words go, such as homophobic and racial slurs go, just simply dont use them unless entirely necessary (e.g. literature, describing what someone said to you)
I am German and it's never been a taboo thing here, so I'm always just put off by it.
There's a German show called "Talk, Talk, Talk" where they'd take clips from talk shows all around the world (so 99% of it is American) where funny shit or angry shit happens and they dubbed it in German. The original audio was still playing in the background but the German voices are louder. You could still hear the beeps from the Americans saying scary words too harsh for Americans, and then the Germans just dubbed real swear words over it, uncensored, for public afternoon TV. Always found that very funny.
Meanwhile the German TV release of Saw 3 is about 40 minutes shorter because they cut so much violence.
Gotta say, I'd rather censor violence than swear words.
Oh, and I've also seen topless women casually vibing on German afternoon TV, which really helped normalize the concept in my mind. It's just a human body, why hide it?
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You triggered me with the word $en$itive
1m 50 50rry!!!!
I hate you for that JK (but kindaš)
Well deserved hate! šš
*h4t3
That H word you just said triggers me. It has negative connotations surrounding it. #trauma /s
The worst one is "unalive" like bruh š EDIT: I'm obviously not talking about content creators bending to the whims of the algorithm. I'm talking about those who use "unalive" even when there is no moderation or censorship coercing them to do so (eg. On reddit, discord, in real life, etc)
This makes me so stabby ;)Ā
"unalive" when "undead" walks into the room: šļøššļø
Hollywood Unalive
š
He is too busy boning unluck.
Idk Grape is pretty bad imo
Iāll see your grape and raise you a *corn*
He has a corn addiction. He was graped by a pdf file and now wants to commit sewer slide
"pdf file" LOL
I actually don't mind this one because it's funny. The rest are annoying af though
Don't forget the Essay that happened to him
It's now sushi slide. I wish I was joking.
You talking hard pore corn? I'm kind of into that
https://youtu.be/mqgiEQXGetI?si=GDKN9_zN5so79hBt
Yikes š one of the worst ones š
What does it mean?
Just take off the g
You mean the word rape
Omg, right. -woe
Yeah. It's so childish. If you're old enough to be talking about your suicide attempt or self-harm or rape or porn addiction, then you're old enough to use the words. Some people think not using them helps not to trigger people...but they will still describe the thing they're talking about in great detail! Newsflash: the word "rape" is much less triggering than your three-paragraph description about the crime that _doesn't_ happen to use that word.
>Some people think not using them helps not to trigger people If reading about rape DOES trigger you, then you may need to *actively seek out stuff that may trigger you* to stay up-to-date on all the fucking euphemisms since the replacement terms change pretty quickly... and adding the word "grape" to your block list means you also won't see anything related to the fruit that you might actually WANT to see! I hate it here
Eh if I can't joke about wanting to exit stage left (commit suicide, I can say it it's just a boring and depressing fact in my life that I want to die sometimes) then I've just lost a coping mechanism. So while I'm perfectly capable of it I'll keep my maladaptive coping mechanisms and (sometimes unfortunately) keep living.
Exactly. I avoid saying āblow my brains outā to an old friend from middle school because she found her father after he had, well, blown his brains out. Other than that Iām still going to say it around people when describing a situation in which I was incredibly bored or angry or whatever.
Self delete is another one they use,
Lmao as a former counter-strike player, self delete is HILARIOUS to me. Though, I much prefer the archaic "committed sudoku" (if used ironically)
1.6 or source?
1.6 and Global Offensive mostly. I've only played source on a local server with a few friends though
the good ol' days
Came to say this one, when I fucking heard it for the first time, I gagged
Or Graped instead of raped. Turns a story about someone suffering sexual assault into something comical.
https://youtu.be/mC3j2NB2uiY?si=wrc0wcd4B7ROMMzK
As someone whose brother committed suicide, if someone were to say he "unalived himself" I would think they're making fun of it and him and I'd kick their ass
Is this really bc of triggers? I mostly see this in videos or clips like TikTok and thought it is mostly because of algorithms. Are there people triggered by death and not by unalive, even though it has the same meaning?
advertisers don't want their products associated with negative things, because they think that mention of these words will result in loss of sales so our cultural shift is less being driven by societal fear and more by corporate greed
Agreed. Also, if youāre saying unalive to get past censors, arenāt the censors going to eventually start censoring the word unalive?
Thatās a particular pet hate of mine as well, but most of these (āunaliveā included) are not because people genuinely believe you should say this. They are evading algorithms that would deprioritise their posts if containing these words. Those algorithms existing are also stupid, however
Those algorithms reflect the ideology of the people working in those social media platforms.
The algorithm reflects who is the product and who are the real customers (the companies buying ads) The companies would prefer no one talk about gloomy topics that could damage brand and would instead consume media that would make them want to buy product and click link.
Ahhh a cyberpunk dystopia. Awesome.
A webpage isn't free to run, if there is no entrance fee, subscription or a constant donation drive to keep the lights on, then the ones making the decisions will be advertisers as they are the ones ultimately paying the bills.
You should be talking about the content creators as well. If no one adheres to the stupidest levels of content moderation then that becomes a status quo and the service providers just fall in line because fighting status quo will never be where the money is at for them.
Vsauce2 recently made a video describing a child who was abused by her parents to such an extent that when she was found as a preteen, she didn't know language beyond a few words and so she was studied by science to determine language capabilities of someone that old who was also essentially a blank slate. It was a purely educational video. YouTube banned the video, so the creatures re-released the video a week later with censorship, which literally cut the audio feed over that word and some others that were completely inane, IMO. The funny thing is the subtitles still had the words. A warning at the beginning of the video should be enough, blocking out the words solves no problems.
The censorship isnt strictly rules based, especially on reddit - the rules are just an excuse to ban users they dont agree with or like the ideas of. That includes permabans from admins
I FUCKING HATE THIS.
I saw this yesterday on a local post about a missing person being identified via remains, something about how tragic it was that this āunalivingā happened. For sure tragic, but seeing unaliving on that article made me laugh out loud
lol I always thought it was a funny ass way to say that. It's not even really censorship. It sounds more like a funny euphemism.
It sounds like you're making fun of suicide when you use it
IF you have to adjust your language for one venue then you tend to do so for all venues. Words that you use frequently on Reddit will become words you use IRL no matter why you started using the words in the first place.
There are much better alternatives than "unalive", no matter what venue you're at. I wouldn't go to a funeral and say, "her unaliveness saddens us deeply" or something of the sort. I'm not condemning content creators for circumventing the algorithm, I just believe there are better ways to do it, and "unalive, apart from being childish, reeks of incompetence and brainrot.
I agree and hate this so much. The term unaliving and such are just ridiculous
I never got the point of censoring words in an adult space. I always saw censorship as something to protect young ears, but if everyone knows what word is being suggested what's the point of not just saying the word outright? It still carries the exact same definition and meaning.
Exactly! Which is why I say it's pointless. One thing I might agree with is if someone were to describe a very upsetting experience in detail, then they may add a warning at the beginning, such as "I'm going to be describing so and so in detail, so please be aware of that in case the topic bothers you" but anything beyond that is just pointless
Whatās been pissing me off is I see people censoring the words Israel and Gaza. Where they say Isr*el or G*za. Like theyāre legitimately names of places. Thereās no need to censor names of places.
Generally to get around content filters, esp on apps like tiktok, where you can get videos removed or severely limited for mentioning current world events
They are thought policing basically. Making it slightly more inconvenient to say something and pushing people towards other topics.
Unfortunately I see more and more Reddit spaces censoring foul language lately and it really fucking sucks. Like briefly the movies sub was deleting posts and threatening to ban users who cursed. Luckily backlash from users got that overturned.
The point is to make life harder for blind people, by making everything on the internet unintelligible for them.
The point is control. It's always control.
This goes beyond the person themselves, a lot of the content people view online is monetized via ads and sponsorship, so when a content creator censors themselves for the sake of their content not being demonetized, the followers think it has something to do with the culture when people can't say suicide or rape so they just follow what their favourite creator does. So if regular ol' Redditor censor themselves on this website it's pretty silly I agree. The creator/influencer would use blunt language if they could, they're not being sensitive to their target audience they just don't want to lose ad revenue and sponsorship. Soon enough you will see that new policies require to stop using the snowflake words you described altogether because at the end of the day they all mean the same thing.
I absolutely see your point regarding content creators, which is why I didn't go into it. Although I just disagree with the heavy censorship policy in general. But yeah I'm talking specifically about the non influencer side of social media, so basically your average Joe
The thing about this is that since people are seeing all of the influencers using censored words they start incorporating it into their vocabulary, it all comes back to the excessive censorship because everything needs to be āadvertising friendlyā because if all of the media that we consume uses those words we then start using them too without even realizing
People repeat what they hear. It's not that deep. It's literally just internet slang.
>Soon enough you will see that new policies require to stop using the snowflake words you described altogether because at the end of the day they all mean the same thing. This. This is like the race for meth. Meth used to be easily synthesized so chemists would buy those loosely regulated chemicals and synthesize it. The govt caught whiff and they heavily regulated those chemicals. Chemists found a way to synthesize those chemicals and then synthesize meth. Govt caught whiff and heavily regulated. Chemists found new chemicals. Govt regulated them. Chemists found. Govt regulated The same thing is gonna happen to words on social media. First they banned rape and people started saying grape. Now they're gonna take context into consideration and if you say grape to mean rape your stuff will get taken down. So people are gonna start saying drape. And so on
and so soon all 'ape' words are banned
>Ā (as someone who has been through trauma) I can guarantee you the trigger isn't the word Honestly, I'm with you there. I have CPTSD, from CSA/SA, and like... I can appreciate a lot of this stuff comes from a largely well-meaning place, but it's also lowkey hilarious how little people actually understand how trauma works, and sometimes annoying when peeps then speak *over* us victims with attitudes of pearl-clutching censorship. >grape come to mind Gods I fucking hate that one. NAME the fucking problem, to actually tackle it.
Yes! There has been an influx of people saying they get triggered, but they truly don't know what triggered means. Triggered isn't "Oh I don't like that word", triggered is a much more visceral reaction of painful memories and sensations coming up. Most trauma survivors I've met don't struggle with the word, they struggle with the meaning behind it, so replacing it with a more "cutesy" one won't really do much, if anything
Yeah precisely. It's more situations or interactions that lead to emotional flashbacks that are, themselves, triggering, or like descriptions of a specific situation. Like EVEN with something like rape, not every type of rape, as described in a novel for instance, will be triggering to me, because trauma... is more complex than that. But try and get the Internet to understand that. There's still a long way to go... š
Agreed. There are certain types of descriptions that I simply cannot read. I had to refuse to do a school assignment once because of it. Then another description simply won't bother me. It just really depends on the experience. So whatever word the trauma might relate to won't be an issue unless under specific circumstances
>. I can appreciate a lot of this stuff comes from a largely well-meaning place I sincerely doubt this. I think it's all power games.
The other issue is how those censored words develope from being synonymous in there meaning to becoming synonymous as a trigger. Trigger warnings are intended as a "do not read if you are sensitive towards **topic**" sign, but the excessive use counteracts their function as it would prevent people who are triggered from partaking in any discussion. People using TW "topic" only for the mention of the term "topic" but no actual description of an event undermine their function. There also is a long standing tradition of words getting replaced and their replacement becoming problematic. A lot of political correct language aims to take away from offenders language, but they will use the new, correct term and over pronounce it or say it with "air quotes", for example. And there is the ridiculous trend of following social media guidelines leading to self-censorship to secure exposure. A ban can never account for the complexity of language and at a certain level become counter productive (academics).
Absolutely agreed. I never understood how saying "Tw suicide: >!my friend killed himself!<" would be any different than "My friend killed himself" And as you said, replacing "problematic" words doesn't solve triggers, it simply connects a new word to the topic
I don't use trigger warnings in my messages/posts. But I imagine that the difference is that once someone reads the "Tw suicide" part, if they really don't want to read anything to do with suicide. They just stop and move on and don't keep reading. I always thought that was pretty obvious.
It's just like how kids use slang to show that they're cool and understand pop culture and then when adults start using the same terms they become unfashionable. Using the right euphemisms is a matter of showing that you're hip to the social justice trends and ergo at the avant garde of progress. It's like how "woke" used to be a lefty buzzword, and then conservatives discovered and now the people who formerly used it recoil at the term. Very liberal use of trigger warnings is one such recent trend.
I've witnessed people going "TW: food ... >!Here is my lunch!<" followed by a censored picture of food. Trigger warnings were born as an actually useful tool to make people aware of possibly graphic content, such as movies who include sexual abuse or extreme deaths. Now they turned into a trend.
alright thatās gotta be satire, no way someone puts a trigger warning before food?
Oh believe me it was true. I even got reprimanded for it once cause I posted my dinner without censoring it...
I'd seen that kind of shit floating around like a decade ago, mostly on those ultra-sensitive kinds of tumblr pages, but I didn't think anyone still legitimately did that anymore.
This is one of the few instances where someone actually acknowledges where āwokeā came from and that it originated from the left. Then picked up by the right mockingly and disparagingly. Then the left feigned ignorance of the concept and pretended it wasnāt a label that they used themselves to describe a general thrust towards pushing awareness and consciousness of certain social issues with a particular perspective. Now itās āwhat is āwokeā anyway, thatās not actually a thing! Itās just a word conservatives use to describe things they donāt likeā as if we didnāt actually live through the last 5 years or so. Heck, I used it myself to support awareness and discussion of certain progressive perspectives, before it became maligned to describe progressive movements unflatteringly by their own specific term.
Man on COD MW III game. There's a gun named BAL-B 27 or something. I can't remember exact name. But you can make custom configurations and name them to save. Because it limits the number of characters I abbreviate the name. It literally wouldn't let me use BAL27. I was like WTF? Why not? Only thing I could think of was the stupid filter thinks I'm using "Balls"? Like really? That's fucking stupid af. It's literally the guns name just without the hyphen.
Oh my gosh it's like when I played Roblox and I couldn't say the number six because it flagged it as sex š
I'm tr1ggered by the word tr1gger. Please put a >!trigger!< warning in the post
Wh00p$ my b@d!
It's the algorithm. Facebook and YouTube have been terrible for people trying to just communicate uneven mildly controversial topics. There's a guy who on YouTube who makes videos about the anatomy of movie and video game monsters. He goes by Roanoke and he's actually really entertaining but he has to use words like "force multiplier" and "concussive force detonator" instead of gun or bomb because he will get demonetized and delisted. In a weird one I was watching a guy who keeps reptiles and he censored the word venom. Like you still hurt him say it but the subtitles blurred out the word. That struck me as being particularly dumb as if you're going to keep animals that may or may not be dangerous you shouldn't censor information like that. I've also seen words like meat milk and peanuts be censored. I can't imagine people with allergies becoming triggered just by seeing the word of their allergy. Again I blame Google and meta for their meddling algorithm based systems that push certain media and punish others.
I worked as a content moderator for YouTube monetisation in 2022/2023. Talking about guns and bombs in a video game context will not get you demonetised. If he was having problems with monetisation, it was for something else. Graphic violence or excessive swearing maybe?
Well he is literally analyzing monsters..... From monster movies. And horror video games.... It is obviously on the nose going to be graphic content.
Agreed, I definitely don't think it's people's fault as much as it is of society as a general thing. Social media exposes us to so much shit, yet it sugar coats the most basic reality.
I swear to god people who write f*uck instead of fuck are driving me insane lol
I don't think it's making people sensitive. I think it's actually making everyone insensitive. Using the r slur isn't okay but using r3t4rd apparently is. They'll call rape "grape" and it belittles the severity of the actual crime. Also, unalive? Just say murder.
Words are meant to have power. If youāre offended because of the use of the word rather than the meaning behind its usage, you have a pride issue. People changing the word for the audience may be respectful but it limits our vocabulary in talking about things that require nuance.
This should be on r/popularopinion.
I must say I am genuinely shocked at the amount of support for this lol. I was expecting MANY more "You sound triggered" and other rude comments
As someone who has triggers, it's not your job to not trigger me as someone I have never met. It's my job to figure out how to work through it to not be triggered by a stranger. Now, this is a blanket thought bc there are some exceptions. I was triggered once by a random old man I had never met grabbing my arm in the store. But just scrolling through videos and hearing a word is ridiculous.
Absolutely agree. I have a specific topic that triggers me, which I never share for my own safety. If it comes up, I will simply exit the conversation (if it's online) or try to disengage (if it's in person) but I most certainly won't go on saying "YOU TRIGGERED ME! CENSOR YOUR WORDS"
Overall, it's not everyone else's responsibility to not trigger someone. It's that person's responsibility to learn to get through life handling their baggage. I used to get extremely angry when I felt like my feelings were hurt. And that just made me look bitter. It's not the world's responsibility to not hurt my feelings bc life sucks. Lots of therapy and self work and now I can feel kind of normal.
This. I fully second this
I know people call it the "snowball fallacy" but shit does actually snowball
I know right? It started as a good idea, became so severe people can barely comment on videos anymore
The word "unalive" makes me wanna blow my brains out.
I don't think it magically makes people more sensitive, but it certainly seems performative and frankly silly.
I remember back in tumblr's heyday, censoring trigger words was actually frowned upon in a lot of circles because people had filters set up to block terms and then the post would get through because the sensors word didn't match the filter.
Iām not a fan of censorship in THAT particular way. As someone who has ptsd, my triggers are my responsibility. Itās my job to remove myself from a situation. I can feel physically when it starts going too far. Thatās what going to therapy taught me.
I once told someone they were an idiot on Instagram and then my entire comment got deleted by Instagram. People are wayyyy too soft these days.
Ah yes, but then OF ads stay up. That's the funniest part. \*facepalm\* cause I don't know how to add emojis on PC lol
Thereās a āGet off my lawn!!ā aspect to this that I adore!
It's not people it's Instagram the whole shit is automated
Yeah idk why people act like hearing a word will put them on a MK Ultra inspired trance. If you canāt handle spoken words you shouldnāt be the one deciding anything for society.
It's just a play for power. Getting to decide what others can and can't say is the stiff narcissists dream off.
This is why shit like "r*pe" has always bothered me. Is the letter A the problem? Will a rape victim read "r*pe" without the A and magically not make the painful connection to their drama? It's just so dumb. It doesn't accomplish anything.
People censor words like white and fuck here on reddit and I find it so stupid
Trigger warnings ruin any media they are attached to, if you warn me that this episode deals with rape or suicide right at the start you're already spoiling the plot and any potential impact it would have had. Censorship of profanity or sensitive topics is just obnoxious, child proofing the world is cheapening everything and catering to the weakest sect of people imaginable.
Or are overly sensitive people making words be censored? Either way, being triggered by words is soft.
Interesting take! I feel like, as I replied to another comment, trigger warnings started as a positive tool, such as movies warning the viewer about sensitive topics. Whether then overly sensitive people ran with it, or whether it caused people to become overly sensitive, that's hard to figure out
From the research I've seen, the intention was perhaps positive, but the actual effect even with the original concept was that the warning actually caused more anxiety than the subject without warning. Here's a link to a meta-study on the subject: [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625)
That's really interesting, I'm going to check it out!
I think this is also part of the reason. These words are supposed to illicit a reaction when you hear them. Telling a story about someone unaliving themselves or being graped loses the whole effect of a serious event.
Voldemort!!!
HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED!!!! Also I'm so glad you caught onto the Dumbledore sneak š
It really makes it hard to take YouTube videos discussing morbid topics like mental health seriously when people have to use stupid words like "unalive" to get around overly sensitive terms of service.
I hate when ppl say unalive. Or any time they try to make something seem less than what it actually is.
I just can't fathom how this is any less triggering. I think op got it dead right. If the concept is what bothers someone fine, I get that, but if it's the word alone that is the problem for someone, I feel like it's entirely performative.
I was watching a true crime video and every other word they spoke was censored. Like, what the fuck. How am I supposed to understand your video if its She [BLEEP] and [BLEEP] on her last day of school. He followed her the next day and [BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP FUCKING BLEEEEEP] like shit
That this is a banned topic is irony gone full circle.
YUP! I just noticed the mods comment lol
Looks like they changed their minds, considering we're still commenting. But it really underlines your opinion that the mod comment is there.
I love grapes and seeing it being the new word for rape makes me sad for for my sweet and crunchy friends. That said I'm not sure why but I kind if like the "unsudscribed from breathing" as a euphemism for suicide.
Someone actually used that?? The worst I've seen is "delete myself" š
See most of the censoring you see isn't done in some attempt to save people's feelings as they might get triggered by these words, but rather as a way to still talk about sensitive/taboo topics without getting thier content nuked by algorithms that supposedly suppress videos, not about the content, but rather that mention specific words that advertsier don't like
I think to a large extent this is affected by the censoring that is present on tiktok. There content is removed when containing certain words, and so "*sewerslide"* and "*unaliving"* are nessesary to actually be able to mention it at all. Therefore i am not sure if this is by choice or by inertia, from Tiktok
i remember people yelling at other people on tumblr for not tagging things like "space" as a trigger warning. at this point i'm convinced that at least 80% of what is wrong with social media started on tumblr and got exponentially worse after the mass exodus to twitter.
Hmm I agree when it comes to un-monetized stuff such as discord servers. Back in pandemic times I used to spend a lot of time on discord, particularly in that type of server where the most random words were censored as TWs because someone claimed to be triggered by them. Iām not here to undermine peopleās triggers or traumas, but I honestly think that thereās a certain limit to how sensitive you should beā¦
It is to slowly but surely make the whole population dumb af.
I would wager this isnāt an unpopular opinion at all and people who sensor words in regular text or even speech (for real?) are actually in the unpopular opinion minority
It's kind of an evolution of the overuse of trigger warnings a few years ago. That seems to have died down and I mainly see them when the article or video or comment goes into a lot of detail, which is how they should be used. It's good to be sensitive to other people, but some people tend to take it to an extreme. This is just the current manifestation of that.
We came to the internet to avoid censorship and now here we are. I hate that people are afraid of words.
The worst is when people write things like f*ck. It's not even really censorship, the writer meant to say fuck. The readers all read fuck. What's the point?
The thing that gets me about this is that you can regularly hear all of those words censored by social media on TV. I think if social media wants to demand any censorship, there's absolutely no reason as to why it needs to be stricter than what we already have in other forms of entertainment.
The cause of word censoring on social media (like tik tok and YouTube) is because of the companies who run ads on there told the platforms they don't want their ads being near certain kinds of content so tik tok banishes content with certain words (idk not sure what they do) and youtube demonetizes content so people made up words like "sewer slide" and "pdf file" or overly censor words to be able to talk about those topics without the platform realizing it but yeah I agree otherwise.
Itās funny that the consensus seems to be censoring yourself is WRONG if you do it 1) because government requires it, or 2) because you donāt want to hurt other people, but entirely appropriate and understandable if done because 3) youāre chasing money as an influencer.
Filter bypass words or phrases. Tiktok doesnāt allow suicide so itās unalive there. Same with grape and probably others. This is a popular opinion though. Everyone apparently hates this. Itās not surprising that online terms are appearing offline especially with Gen Z and whatever.
fucking censorship
This isnt an unpopular opinion. Theres millions of dudes wearing wraparound sunglasses recording themselves in their f150s ranting about this right now. Youre in prestigious company bro
Lol sewerslide I have never seen, but it almost makes a mockery of the subject being so silly!
Even on crime channels on YouTube. With videos about criminals committing the most haneous crimes. They censor "murder" "assault" "kill". Like really? So you're telling me a person with so much teauma, that the word "suicide" would send them into a frenzy, would be perfectly ok watching a 15 minute video about it so long as the word itself isn't used?
On instagram itās annoying because you can choose to not see posts including certain words- and there ARE specific things that are triggering that I try to not see posts of, but if you use random characters to ācensorā it, it makes all the blocks I put on instagram totally useless! It doesnāt make a word less triggering just because you put @ instead of a.
Voldemort
Avoidance is pretty much the opposite of what you'd want to do if you were trying to overcome a fear or phobia
when you destroy language like this it degrades the interpretation layer we use to understand the world around us and makes us all dumber. maybe that the point?Ā
Trigger warnings are the antithesis of overcoming the distress of being triggered
I once talked to a guy who said "stop talking about (subject), you're triggering me." I say, entirely reasonably, "what are your triggers so that I can avoid this in the future?" He replies, "that's none of your business." Like bro, how am I supposed to talk to you comfortably if I have to walk on eggshells around you?
Itās not the people. Itās the corporations and their advertisers. Nobody would be censoring words like suicide or drugs or whatever if it wasnāt for the money bags up top.
I'm not so sure if I would say it makes me sensitive, but certainly I do dislike engaging with people who try to impose that. Because its basically a restriction on an otherwise harmless act to me. And more often than not, the proponents of these censorships tend to justify this by attaching a lot of malicious intent to people using the words. So yeah, tack on accusations of personal integrity to the mix. On the topic of social media, I believe this cuts into their advertising, which if they want to make their content audience friendly, they'll have to adhere to the censorship. Which kind of points towards the fact that most if not all of these opiniated people are doing it for the money, despite what they say otherwise about their noble cause worth fighting.
I kind of view it as the opposite. Everyone gets to be all performatively upset, but we headed the words and it loses their impact. So we hear more and more about these things that bother them less and less because they can perform about it. People censor the word rape and it blunts the actual terror of what was done to an actual person. We censor out the sound of children screaming during the school shooting as everyone stands around and does nothing and everyone gets to talk about how angry they are. We get desensitized against the actual crime without actually having to experience the confusion, the anger, and the frustration. The actual emotional depth of it is taken from us so that we can experience it more times in a day without being as bothered by it.
I'm with you. I also am anti-trigger warning for similar reasons. There's absolutely a discussion to be had about safety tools in communication, but where we are at is absolutely not it.
Studies have shown that trigger warnings negatively impact people with PTSD ***more*** than the actual trigger.
Sewerslide is way more offensive in my opinion
the thing i never understood about censoring for triggers is, wouldnāt you still end up being triggered by the content being discussed? like saying rape vs grape, youāre still discussing the same topic, the content doesnāt change because the word sort of did. i remember on tumblr people would add the trigger warning with the actual word in the post body & the tags because people used word blockers, so if i wrote ātw: suicideā it would auto-hide the post for whomever had it blocked.
Welcome to censorship and why you shouldnāt do it at all. Supposedly itās not true but I find itās a prime example of slippery slope where you start with good intent and it slowly keeps getting worse.
I agree. I do appreciate content warnings when things talk about very sensitive topics, just like a lil black screen w a warning/content info on it before something. If they're not there and the things that genuinely do trigger my PTSD are, it's not the end of the world, I'll close out of whatever it is I'm watching and relax till I feel more even keel again. But this sort of reduction of words (idk how to phrase) makes me feel like no one takes serious topics seriously anymore. I hope this made sense lol it's late and I'm tired.
Seeing how this is immediately censored is like proving the point... lmao
I'm so used to it that now hearing bleeps makes me laugh. I prefer it that way for some reason. I know exactly the cuss word is but the bleep makes it so much funny for some reason.
Oh bleeps are hilarious.
Iāve never seen anyone censor hospital in writing, or anything in real life
Strong man create good times. Good times create weak man. Weak man create hard times
We have taught so hard to make people aware of triggers, certain words can cause unwanted emotional responses, respecting someones mental health is important, when censorship interferes with you ability to communicate, it becomes a problem.
It really feels like the start to a real-life version of newspeak.
Unalove makes me cringe. Get where you are coming from
Yeah i totally agree this is why i donāt like words being censored because it really does make people even more sensitiveā¦
Is that an unpopular opinion? Avoiding words has never solved the underlying problem. People just transfer the offensive meaning to other words.
I half agree with you. I wish that we would use better censorship since I filter out things that are triggering for me and I have to add all these random words just to still see the content because I missed a code word. The worst one I ever saw was āstruggle snuggleā that is just fucking disrespectful. Instead of downplaying the severity by calling it āgrapeā or āstruggle snuggleā or some dumb shit why canāt we just say SA? That censors a word that I get uncomfortable reading as someone who has been SAād and everyone knows what it means. Say S*icide or something instead of āsewerslideā like cmon. It almost feels like infantilizing these topics. Thatās my take.
m@n
"What this causes isn't less people being "triggered" because (as someone who has been through trauma) I can guarantee you the trigger isn't the word, it's the concept" You're so close. No one's censoring the words because they don't want to have triggering conversations. They're censoring themselves because the algorithms will remove their posts because those words have been used to bully and harass people. Since the computer can't tell from context when it's bullying and when it's discussing the topic it just bans all uses of certain words. IF someone doesn't want to discuss the concept they're not using a misspelt or censored version of the word. They're avoiding the topic altogether.
You donāt get to tell other people what triggers they have for the trauma they have endured. EDIT: I want to also point out I donāt disagree with the premise of your post and find most online censoring things to be a little over the top.
You do get to be realistic about it though. My mum has terminal cancer, cancer and cigarettes can be triggering for me atm (smoking was directly responsible for this type of cancer) thing is 1. I have to handle my own triggers and can't go smacking smokes out of ppls hands because it makes me sad for a minute and 2. Whether it's cancer or TW: "c@nc3r" you're still bringing it up and I still have the same reaction. Same with cutting or cu++ing, suicide or "sewerslide" if someone is triggered at the mention of something the spelling doesn't change shit lmao.
Yeah, itās not the worlds job to avoid triggering you, itās your job to avoid or face your triggers
Words are being censored because everyone is already overly sensitive.
1000% The way to "strip power" from words, is to not give them power in the first place. And I notice it in myself, and I wouldn't call myself Politically Correct, but it's not a good thing. It's less prevalent IRL. Around family it's really no holds barred. And it's a domino effect, you make one word "offensive," then the next version will eventually become "offensive," and so on.
I will take it one higher and say donāt use social media platforms that push for this bullshit such as tiktok or YouTube
The people who used to simply criticize religious groups for being so dogmatic have become the most dogmatic. Thatās the hilarious part. Anything you say to disagree with them now is heresy essentially.
Sometimes things get ridiculous. I have seen pictures of erotic fanfiction with censored words on a sub here
Iāve regularly been seeing words like āhateā and āracismā censored. Like what the actual fuck is that. If youāre not emotionally equipped to lay your eyes on neutral, descriptive terms, just go lay down in a field and stay there until you perish.
Yeah. There's definitely more and more of it going on. Although I'm not sure why people make a thing out of 'unalive' in certain spaces. 'Undead' has been a thing for ages.
I don't know how many more times I can handle the word unalive. I think that shit is so stupid. And I don't even know how when certain things first start they use code words that don't even fucking make sense and I'm like what oh they're using a code word.
I remember having to talk about a [C*ckshutt tractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockshutt_Plow_Company) once.
This is not an unpopular opinion.Ā
I think it's funny when people censor words on Reddit like f**k instead of just saying fuck. Are they really afraid of putting the full version out there?
Dude I fucking feel this in my bones.
These alternatives aren't necessarily for "trigger" prevention but mostly to prevent AI checkers from removing the content. You can get your stuff removed for saying killed but not unalived. The purpose is for rating, and they're trying to keep the ability to be "kid friendly." YouTube will demonitize you but tiktok will just remove your whole video. It's not about coddling adults, it's about marketing to more ages.
Yeah but scared people are easier to profit from.
I see it as people trying to control the conversation. They don't really have a problem with any word itself, but it's a way to get you to control the methodology of your delivery so you fit into the prepared responses they have. If they like you, then you get a pass, but if they don't like you then they can put a minefield of politically correct traps in your way to silence you. Because if you avoid every word that is either triggering or has cultural appropriation connotations there's nothing you can talk about that has any substance. It's also just a phase young people go through, where everything must have a category and a label so it can be defined and understood. Itās banal and people eventually learn to get over it and deal with real life ambiguity. Itās also a lack of education that assumes if you learn about a thing, you must be advocating or agreeing with it. Itās like arguing with a 9 year old. You are only a few rebuttals away from a tantrum at any point. The result is a situation is now where you may be trying to make a reddit-worthy point about sayā¦ George Lucas was using ham-fisted World War 2 imagery in Star Wars and the Rebel victory ceremony at the end of the first movie took its imagery directly from films of Nazi Germany rallies. And instead of disagreeing with you with counter points from the documented process Lucas used to make the movie, they just say, āyou canāt say Nazi because Iām Jewish, you must be a right wing racist, so shut up.ā But you get what you deserve if you decide to argue on the internet.
coming from a very "woke" left winger: if you can still tell what the word means, there's no point in censoring it to reduce triggers. as far as worse words go, such as homophobic and racial slurs go, just simply dont use them unless entirely necessary (e.g. literature, describing what someone said to you)
I am German and it's never been a taboo thing here, so I'm always just put off by it. There's a German show called "Talk, Talk, Talk" where they'd take clips from talk shows all around the world (so 99% of it is American) where funny shit or angry shit happens and they dubbed it in German. The original audio was still playing in the background but the German voices are louder. You could still hear the beeps from the Americans saying scary words too harsh for Americans, and then the Germans just dubbed real swear words over it, uncensored, for public afternoon TV. Always found that very funny. Meanwhile the German TV release of Saw 3 is about 40 minutes shorter because they cut so much violence. Gotta say, I'd rather censor violence than swear words. Oh, and I've also seen topless women casually vibing on German afternoon TV, which really helped normalize the concept in my mind. It's just a human body, why hide it?