Way before TikTok, Amazon used to censor product reviews in a similar fashion. 10-15 years ago I bought a rug and wanted to alert other potential purchasers that it was “shag” not “pile” as the description claimed. I had to bowlderize “sh*g.”
And yes, I really dislike this new set of awkward euphemisms.
Bored Panda’s censorship is insane.
“He’s unalived, Jim” just doesn’t have the right resonance.
Probably a complaint from the Tenctonese.
I interviewed for a job recently, and the interviewer (without prompting) explained that they sometimes defend employers in lawsuits where an employee was “unalived,” which is a “neutral term” that doesn’t imply fault.
Can’t say I am a fan but whatever. “Died” is the neutral term, IMO.
~Max
I’m surprisedthis one didn’t become:
Unalive is a fullwise plusgood word.
Well, it uses three syllables, you see, which we ran by the stakeholders, who inputted their views and opinions, and their views and expressions indicated that we needed to use such a three-syllable term on a going forward basis. In other words, we leveraged our optimization capabilities, to arrive at a consensus that satisfied all concerned parties, especially without alienating our core base, while maximizing our strategies with the fence-sitters in the future.
In other words, it’s corporate bullshit for “most people agree that it means ‘dead.’”
This still really, really bothers me. To the level of irrational anger.
Ditto.
I used to play this casual game on my phone that used both beach balls and disco balls as game objects, but if you used the word “balls” in the in-game chat, it wouldn’t post and you’d get some stupid and overly cute automod message about “watching your mouth”.
I complained to tech support, explaining that I wanted to use this word to discuss strategies in the chat. They had removed the filter by the next day. It was probably the only time in my on- line life that a single complaint had any effect.
And I was compelled to use the word in its vulgar sense in the chat once.
Often it’s fear of censorship as much as it is actual censorship - for example YouTube is fairly lenient about profanity and sensitive language these days, but nobody knows if they are going to change their policies tomorrow and suddenly declare a load of existing content invalid for monetization, so people err on the side of caution. Also people self-censor because everyone else does.
From what I have seen (mostly youtubers complaining about it), the problem with youtube is that they don’t tell you what is and isn’t acceptable. They publish vague guidelines, but then their mysterious “algorithm” can change at any moment. You can be demonetized for something that was perfectly acceptable yesterday, or you can find yourself buried in the recommendations so far down that nobody ever sees your videos, and no one at youtube will tell you why.
And yes, as you said, youtube can easily change their published guidelines tomorrow. Some channels have had to remove numerous older videos because the guidelines changed and even though those videos were fine when they were posted, they are now no longer acceptable under the new guidelines.
I hate to say this but the euphemistication of ordinary words is a hammer the right uses to demonize “woke”. All of us here appear to think protecting feelings from the slightest chance of encountering an objectionable word is foolish, yet it falls directly into the extremist behavior that mostly college kids who are the main consumers of certain social media were loudly exhibiting a few years ago.
When the right wants foolish examples of “woke” behaviors, these are easily findable and obscure the reasons why true woke is the only civilized behavior for a society.
I think a lot of people like to complain about YouTube. Their policies are pretty well explained I think.
But stuff like “unalived” has nothing to do with the change from, say, mentally retarded to “differently a led,” or calling short people “vertically challenged,” or even homeless to “people who are unhoused.” Those have all been conscious movements from people who think words have impact.
This stuff is just kids trying to get around filters, both leftist kids and conservative kids have to do it.
A lot of YT channels are also on other platforms with different censorship. Rather than edit it for specific platforms, they just make a version that will work for all of the ones they use.
Is it true they call it “surfing the web” because you never see the wave that wipes you out?
I’ve seen examples of people scolding others for using regular terms like suicide or dead or killed because they are triggering for people or similar reasons. I think you’re getting cause and effect reversed: the censorship occurred because people didn’t want to see the terms and wanted the euphemisms instead, and the companies found it beneficial to cater to them.
Like the very awkward term “unalived” doesn’t draw attention to itself?