As the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued, language constitutes our world, it doesn’t just record it or label it. Words are not simply a verbal badge we attach to things; they are how we create and understand the world around us.
If we have no word for “freedom”, for example, how can the concept exist? Likewise, without the word “perimenopause,” how does one account for the surge of violence that erupts when presented with a loved one breathing through a whistling nostril? You see? Words matter.The other lovely thing about words is that they are always changing. Language is not static, but is in a continual state of renewal and adaptation. Yes, we all have a lot of fun bemoaning how Gen Z are abusing the sanctity of the English language with their “rizz,” “delulu,” and “lit,” but deep down we know that it’s a rite of passage for the young to come up with a new lexicon that baffles their elders. We all did it. I came of age during that bizarre Pauly Shore movie blip in the 1990s, when he would say things like, “don’t tax my gig so hardcore, cruster”. I used to try and talk like that, just to be cool.
You might work yourself up into a right old huff railing about “not being able to say anything anymore” when a HR representative gently points out that “tosspot” is not an appropriate word to use in a performance review, but linguistic change is essential. The fact that our language responds to changing social narratives and can adapt to be more representative and more nuanced is truly a wonder, and one that I am very much here for.
However, I do have to put my foot down when words become more opaque and less nuanced. And when that is being done to satisfy an algorithm, action must be taken. If you are not on social media, you may have been spared this, but others of you may have become aware of a lexical shift that began a few years ago to avoid online censors, primarily on TikTok.
Users became concerned that the automated screening of videos posted to the app (which is notoriously censorious) would either suppress content or remove it entirely if certain trigger words were used. So, people started to self-censor and created a new register of alternative words to avoid a penalty.
I will give you some examples. “Dead” has become “unalive/unalived”. To “die by suicide” has become “unalived themselves”. “Murder” is now “shmurder”. “Guns” are now “pew pews”, and “shot” is “pew pewed”. “Rape” has been absurdly censored to “grape,” “sexual assault” is “shmexual assault,” or “SA”. I have seen “paedophile” being cleaned up with “PDF file,” and “domestic violence” has been reduced to “DV”. This list is not exhaustive, there is more of this rubbish. (Sorry, more of this “untidied refuse”.)
Perhaps this wouldn’t be so worrying if it stayed on TikTok, but it has escaped and is regularly being used in other online spaces and has even started cropping up in everyday conversation.
“Unalived” has even made it into the dictionary. A perfectly serious sentence using this parlance might go: “A man with a history of DV graped and SA’d his partner, then shmurdered her and unalived himself with a pew pew.” And if that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is.
A person who has died, has died! I don’t want to get all Monty Python about this, but they are dead. That is the correct – not to mention the most respectful – word to use. It is beyond insulting to call someone who has been killed “unalived”, which frankly, smacks of zombie apocalypse films.
A good friend of mine died recently and if anyone had called her “unalived”, I would have “un-not-hit” them in the throat. If someone has been raped or sexually assaulted, is it not the height of offence to make that hideous crime sound vaguely comical and reminiscent of a fruit salad?
“She was graped” – what on earth is that? Not only does it sound absurd, but the censoring of the very words needed to talk about such issues risks reinforcing the stigma such crimes thrive in. How can you reassure a rape survivor that they should not feel shame if the word itself cannot be said aloud?
This is not the first time that a new lexical register has emerged in order to obfuscate certain terminology and avoid sanctions. Polari was a dialect of the queer community with origins back in the 18th century. Although it is all but obsolete today, it allowed primarily gay men to converse in public spaces without risking arrest or community violence against them. Cockney rhyming slang emerged in the East End of London within criminal communities to avoid the bottle stoppers (coppers).
But this shift in lexicon is not about avoiding arrest or even about not causing offence. It’s about not violating TikTok’s community guidelines.
TikTok has very strict guidelines in force that rightly prohibit anyone showing sexually graphic content, nudity, drug use, violence, hate speech, disordered eating, and a whole lot more. When I say it’s strict, I mean it is strict. I once had a video removed because it violated their rules on sexually explicit content. What had I done? I showed an image of Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, David, who happens to be in the buff. TikTok is also one of the few social media apps that pays its content creators if they meet specific requirements, so you can understand why users are keen to toe the line.
However, there is nothing in any of TikTok’s guidelines about the use of certain words (except those that constitute hate speech or slurs). The very fact that TikTok and other social media apps do not censor themselves when they are laying down the law to their users should be testament enough to why precise language is critical. They don’t, for example, ban the use of “smexually suggestive content”; they say, “sexually suggestive content”. They don’t say “unaliving themselves”; they say “suicide”.
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I cannot find any official list of prohibited words and I’m not convinced that using such terms will result in a penalty. In fact, I have seen plenty of content where such words are rightly and appropriately used. News channels use such terms all the time and still clock up millions of views. It seems like this censoring is entirely self-inflicted, and quite unnecessary.
But whether or not social media algorithms really are suppressing content for the use of certain words is not what irritates me. These are very serious subjects and ones that aren’t spoken about nearly enough as it is. How does reducing the very words we need to describe murder, rape, assault and suicide to silly rhymes or acronyms help anyone have such important conversations?
Personally, I don’t believe that the correct use of such words is being suppressed online. But if they are, the answer is not to kowtow to such absurd censorship, but to push back and insist on using the correct language.
In fact, I would rather lose every single one of my social media accounts than call a rape victim a “grape victim”. If you ever catch me doing it, please feel free to, if not un-alive me, then definitely “un-silent” at me.
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