you want to know the weirdest trend in modern social media? the word "suicide" has become replaced with terms that denote it, but speak around actually saying the word itself. so, instead of saying suicide, you'd say something like "unalive," and it's very bizarre when a young person on the internet doesn't say the word suicide but says unalive, as if there is something terribly wrong with simply saying a word that holds such darkness.we live in a world ruled by people who are willing to act in reaction to the expression of feelings. you can't really express how you actually feel about something, because someone might actually take you too serious, and do something awful. maybe at some point all internet radicals were just edgy internet kids who wanted to argue about something they didn't fully understand, until some mass shooter or politician takes them seriously.i don't know why i'm posting this on here. the internet used to be fun? well i remember it used to be.
From what I've heard it's because of algorithms, and possibly avoiding automatic labeling and hiding of content based on the word "suicide". Kids are basically learning that they need to speak a certain way for their words to be seen and it's very disturbing. I can't imagine such an experience back in the day.
>>2It's so fucking confusing to me because all this roundabout speak and self-censorship can't even amount to much, can it? Do they really think the billion-trillion dollar companies with the largest, fastest-learning algorithms running social media platforms on a global scale can be tricked with an asterisk or weird alternate words? When millions of people are saying ""un-alive yourself"" on their website daily would the algorithm they're apparently so scared of not quickly learn the context and meaning of that? Has it not already?This general self-repression/self-censorship is probably one of my absolute least favorite trends of the modern internet. It reminds me of an old George Carlin bit about "soft language" from the 2000s. This mortal fear of being offended or punished because of words is going to trivialize things that should be taken seriously until they're completely unrecognizable. Well I say "going to" but I think we're already there, frankly.Beyond social/political issues it's also a fucking terrible precedent to set for artists/other creative people. You see it everywhere already, people who make ""content"" instead of art and are constantly sucking sponsors' dicks and censoring/re-editing their work in fear of an algorithm marking them as demonetized.Every day I become more and more thankful that my only real internet vice is tiny imageboards and textboards, and that my life, my art and my income are all firmly rooted IRL. I feel like we're living through a bad ending of Serial Experiments: Lain or something.
>>3>Do they really think the billion-trillion dollar companies... ...can be tricked with an asterisk or weird alternate words?I do think what people are doing on these giant sites are generally unknown to the operators until it becomes a major issue. They're famously bare in regards to human moderation, so before an AI can detect it as an issue a human needs to talk to other humans to designate it as one. And these places have far worse things on them. >it's also a fucking terrible precedent to set for artists/other creative peopleYeah, it's very creatively stifling. I think part of the runaway success of Asian media lately is the comparative freedom they have. You can just focus on a story or a drawing without thinking of how it could be twisted into some sort of battle. It's just "this guy is cool because he can shoot lasers out of his eyes".
