# Closed Captioning strangeness **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 3, 2024, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213 "2024-08-03T23:46:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Redcanoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b487fb/32.png) [@Redcanoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redcanoe)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2024, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/1 "2024-08-03T23:46:02Z")
I put this here because it deals with TV. It probably belongs somewhere else. I was sitting at the bar at Red Robin for lunch today and they had the NFL Hall of Fame ceremony on the TV. Closed captioning was on and during Andre Johnsons speech the word ‘shooting’ or 'shootings" came up every few lines of dialog, then the cursor would backspace to ‘sh’ and the speech would continue normally for a few lines. At first I thought they were trying to say ‘shouting’ to describe crowd noise but they used 'cheers and applause" in brackets several times which makes more sense. Shooting and shootings with backspace to sh happened dozens of times in one persons speech, it started to seem really bizarre. I know typos are common in CC but the same one over and over? Am I missing something? ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2024, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/2 "2024-08-03T23:56:25Z")
Abbreviation? Guessing. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2024, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/3 "2024-08-03T23:58:58Z")
If it was only that word, my WAG is that it was being censored (maybe someone was censoring it in real time). Note how often the tiktok generation (which bleeds into other social media sites) censors these types of words. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/4 "2024-08-04T00:15:53Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Abbreviation? Guessing Typing out the entire and then backspacing it down to 2 letters, dozens of times? ---
**Author:** ![Redcanoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b487fb/32.png) [@Redcanoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redcanoe)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/5 "2024-08-04T00:17:19Z")
I just went and watched a video of his speech, I didn’t hear anything that needed to be censored. It was strange. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/6 "2024-08-04T00:43:01Z")
Perhaps either live captions (done as the event occurs without error correction) or automated ones? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/7 "2024-08-04T01:02:09Z")
CC is mostly done by AI now so it could just be unfathomable glitchiness. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/8 "2024-08-04T01:08:34Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > CC is mostly done by AI now Just what I was going to say. But why it was backspacing down to ‘sh’ is bizarre. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/9 "2024-08-04T01:12:31Z")
I see it do that on my devices sometimes. I think it (mis)hears a word but corrects it from context. Did the speaker use “sh” as a hesitation sound (like um)? ---
**Author:** ![Redcanoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b487fb/32.png) [@Redcanoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redcanoe)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/10 "2024-08-04T01:44:46Z")
No. He spoke very clearly. It was probably AI weirdness. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/11 "2024-08-04T07:04:51Z")
I would just assume the Closed Captioning was glitched. Maybe it was just nonsense that got interpreted as you described. Sure, AI auto captions can put up weird words, but I’ve never seen it backspace. And humans usually only backspace to fix things. That is what suggests a corrupted signal to me. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2024, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/closed-captioning-strangeness/1005213/12 "2024-08-04T12:55:29Z")
Could an automated system have misinterpreted the vowel, shall we say, and decided to censor it?