The trend of self-censoring words like 'dead' and 'kill' appears to be relatively new, motivated by TikTok and YouTube algorithms, but spilling over into the general internet.
I agree, although I was referring to asterisks like de*d and k*ll (or censoring with black bars, or using emojis) - euphemisms of course have always been part of language evolution.
I chose unalive because i didn't know google trends allowed searching for asterisks. Appears it does. k*ll was apparently used even before tiktok but usage increased markedly around the same time as unalive appeared. Interestingly d*ad and r*pe don't follow this pattern. I am not sure it treats asterisks correctly, nor that google trends is the right tool to research this, given people searching for the word is only a poor indicator of its usage.
Sidenote, I wish all websites supported markdown properly and not a custom weird subset they found convenient.
Word filters are only the beginning. LLMs are being phased in to flag and filter content based on more sophisticated criteria.
I read somewhere that chinese people used the ability of their language to form new meanings by concatenating multiple symbols in many different ways to get around censorship and that each time the new combination was banned, they came up with a new one. I wonder how long that'll be possible.
I think you're not taking what I wrote nearly literally enough. Really, you should be showing me diagrams of the Von Neumann architecture missing a censorship module. Maybe even gasp at the omission of it in Babbage's letters.
But why stop there? Let's bring out the venerable Abacus! We could have riveting discussions about how societies even back then, thousands of years ago, designated certain language as foul, and had rules about not using profanities in various settings. Ah, if only they knew they were actually victims of Orwellian censorship, and a globalist conspiracy.
If people are tolerant, they're woke. If people are intolerant, they're nazis. Standards of conduct are oppressive, but the lack of them indicate a shithole. And of course, anything in-between is just performative fence-sitting.
Tough crowd over here. Cultural bankruptcy speedrun much?
Ah yes, after muricans bad, let's have some euros bad.
I learn some amazing things on this site. Apparently the culture agnostic, historical practice of designating words and phrases as distasteful is actually a modern American, European, no actually Globalist, but ah no actually religious, but also no maybe Chinese?, no, definitely a Russian mind virus. Whatever the prominent narrative is for the given person at any given time.
Bit like when "mums is blaming everything on the computer". Just with political sophistry.
People easily forgot how they laughed at wizards in Harry Potter series who said "You-Know-Who" instead of "Voldemort". Now they are doing exactly the same thing.
