i remember my friends and i would say “he repented her” instead of sexual assault/rape because it was “lighter”, and because some places like school may have banned the word.
I stop myself from calling somebody a swear word and take the pause to reword my sentence
No. It’s an artifact of dodging algorithmic suppression of speach, and should be avoided in any circumstance where you won’t be punished for speaking clearly. And generally any communication system or social circumstance that requires that requires you to speak unclearly or ambiguously should be avoided in favor of those where you can speak in a way that is clear.
that’s gotta be the most fucked up example of self censorship word replacement i’ve ever seen. ‘unalive’ sounds like something from 1984, but at least it means what it means. ‘repent’ instead of ‘rape’ sounds like you think sexual violence is a moral good.
but in short, no. the more serious the subject, the more important to speak plainly. if the subject isn’t appropriate for the situation, then drop the subject, don’t sugarcoat the language.
Absolutely not. I use the proper word for the situation. If someone raped someone, I’m going to use the word rape, not sugar coat to soften the blow and lessen the severity of the action. If the audience I’m talking to doesn’t know what the word rape means, then we probably aren’t having the conversation to begin with.
that’s fair. we did it as young teens because we couldn’t say “rape” but i get that it’s disrespectful
You could always say ‘rape’, even as a teen. Why do you think you couldn’t?
i meant at our school, we couldn’t
Why? What was stopping you? Would you get sent to the principal’s office or written up if you spoke normally about rape, but not if you used tiktok lingo?
honestly, probably. i don’t know why i didn’t, i was 14-15.
I think when you’re young it’s especially easy to get cowed into following strange rules and patterns, even when the authority or consequences demanding that you do so are vague or unclear.
I guess I just find the use of psudo-homophones as euphemisms/codes for platform (or school?!) based psudo-profanity to be particularly weird. Like I get that an advertisement-dependent platform will want to de-prioritize content that discusses suicide because Frosted Flakes doesn’t want to be associated with people killing themselves, and I also understand people wanting to be able to speak freely and be heard and therefore finding comprehensible euphemisms to use on ad-based platforms. I guess what I don’t get is how it leaks over into unmonitored communication or even out into offline contexts. Actually I kinda do; it’s basically Foucault’s panopticon. But I don’t think the solution is just to become ungovernable, but there is certainly utility in being able to recognize the tools that are used to structure your behavior and thoughts.
Idk, maybe that’s too much of a tangent, but it’s weird, right?
No, it’s disrespectful
fair enough
No. That’s doubleplus ungood.
I use legal/bureaucratic slang when I write some legal bureaucratic shit. I use kids slang when I talk to kids. I use Reddit slang when I post here. Should I continue or you get the idea?
To further this person’s point, the term for that is “code switching”
ohhh i get itttt
The old ban the word and you don’t have to worry about the thing that the word describes
No
