I'm not on tiktok or instagram or any of that, so I've been more or less sheltered from the whole censoring language so as not to piss off the algorithm thing. I knew it was happening, intellectually, but I wasn't really seeing it so it was out of sight, out of mind.
Now I'm starting to see it in just basic text conversations for some reason? Discord messages, group texts, and the like. I'm gonna be honest, it bothers me. Partially because it's a bit infantilizing (I'm a man in his 30's for god's sake, I don't need you to censor the word "sex" or "porn" or "killed" or whatever else). But mostly because it's eerily puritanical. I grew up in a very strict, fundamentalist environment that loved censoring language. I once remember having to go to a Bible class in which the teacher, a local pastor, put the word "Sux" on the board as if it were the height of profanity and then proceeded to lecture about how the words we say form us as a person. And sure, pissing off the algorithm isn't equivalent to pissing off a god who will damn you to an eternal hell, but I fear the real world result will end up being much the same.
In my religious youth, we rendered ourselves incapable of having mature, adult conversations about important, universal topics because we simply did not have the words. The words were sinful, using the words was bad, it generated "evil" thoughts. At most you might be able to whisper the words in dark corners with more understanding people, and they would nod sagely for knowing the word existed and what connotation it contained, but the conversation would basically end at that point. There was no discussion about adult topics, no expression via adult language, just a continuing cycle of self-repression.
And listen, I don't think words are power or we speak reality into existence or anything like that, but I do think that the way we think about and formulate language ties inextricably into our psyche. If we're repressing common terms for the sake of the algorithm, how are we any less repressive than the fundamentalists? If we're willing to modify even our language, is there a mold we won't sculpt ourselves to fit should it be demanded of us?
