this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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TL;DR: There are two levels of annoyance here. One is the person having to use wanky language to get around censorship. The other is the person who can't help but take to the comments and complain about it, boringly, and without any attempt to offer solutions. I put it to you, good sir, that person #2 is the one who ought to give his larynx a rest.

Yeah, it's annoying to see and hear the words "unalived" and "ess ehhed" in place of "murdered" and "sexually assaulted", but they are not words people use in speech in the real world or even when talking to each other directly online. They are like "LOL"; only demented cunts (or people being ironic) walk around the real world saying "ell oh ell". No one is running down the street screaming "he's trying to unalive me, someone help!" Language is doing just fine.

People in the comments under videos which use these terms are incessantly complaining about "brainrot" being the death-knell of language. These people are tedious wankers who need to chill the fuck out and find something else to fret over, like microplastics or fascism. We all understand why these annoying terms are used, and it's not because the people using them enjoy using them. If they want their content to make it through a blunt and braindead censorship algorithm, they have no choice. We all know this. So maybe shut the fuck up about it? "Unalived" is not a hot new word being used by kids; these words are not changes to the language, they're linguistic backdoors that allow people to say what they need to say while simultaneously not triggering a censorship bot, and that's all they are.

And not for nothing, and somewhat off-topic, but literally every generation that has ever existed frets over the youth's behaviour and the way they use language. Even Plato was whining about it in exactly the same way people do today. This doesn't need to be a tradition you blindly adhere to. You can choose to not be that old reactionary fuck talking apocalyptically about the next generation and just accept that language is and always will be an organic and ever-shifting entity, and that the only people who attempt to crowbar it into a rigid relational database are grating bores and grammar nazis, or, god forbid, the French.

top 13 comments
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[–] QualifiedKitten@discuss.online 1 points 4 hours ago

I have most definitely heard people using those words in offline communications or other situations where censorship/algorithms aren't a thing.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Is there actually any proof that people get banned over those words? I see / hear kill, killed, dead, etc all the time in forums and YouTube videos, and I've never once seen any of those taken down over it.

[–] Noja@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

YouTube will demonetise the videos, effectively banning these words from channels which rely on YT for income, the rules are also weird and change constantly.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

We all understand why these annoying terms are used

No we don't. All you are doing is validating the idiocy by moving it to platforms where it doesn't exist. Most of these claimed censorship rules don't even fucking exist at all. People don't get posts pulled just for saying "murder" anywhere on the Internet. They get content strikes and then think it's from a single word because they are fucking idiots. And now the lexicon has become a meme - a participation marker for "content creators."

No, it's not a linguistic implosion but it's still extremely fucking stupid brainrot.

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

Language changes and it doesn't matter if you like it or not. Complaining about it is just "old man yells at cloud".

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 23 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Censorship can change the language though. Kids will grow up with these words in their vocabulary, and they will be added to the dictionary eventually, just because of censorship. Mark my mouthies.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago

Personally I loath the Anglo Saxon habit of making ever more words taboo. It just leads to people circumventing the taboo words with alternate phrases and once those get too popular, they risk becoming taboo as well. Another problem is that what should be normal innocent phrases have become innuendo. It's very easy for a foreigner to make a direct translation to English and what comes out is unintended sexual innuendo or something perceived as a veiled threat.

I'm not going to complain about the absurd censorship it in the youtube comments though, instead I simply don't comment.

[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours ago

I think you're spending way too much time on tumblr if you think this is an unpopular opinion

[–] AnalogAllamma@lemmy.world -5 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I don't think fretting over micro plastics does any kind of good whatsoever. Unless you're a university scientist facing a funding deadline for a micro plastic study. The average Joe doesn't have high powered micro scopes with a degree in biology

IMO micro plastics is the latest socieital "Boogie man".

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

IMO micro plastics is the latest socieital “Boogie man”.

Yeah just like global warming right?

[–] AnalogAllamma@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

The WEF abandoned that term because every time winter came around, people's fear of global warming dropped significantly.

[–] Zarobi@aussie.zone 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

That's exactly what someone composed of 10% plastic would say 🤔

[–] AnalogAllamma@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Made of plastic, it's fantastic.