“Every new word the kids use is literally 1984” - an idiots guide to linguistics.
The words you mentioned were made to appease the extremely sensitive sensibilities of advertisers, not really the effect of a government conspiracy.
Comment on TikTok is a Time Bomb
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 8 months agoYou ever read 1984? You remember the bit about newspeak? Well go have a conversation with a zoomer sometime and pay attention to the word choice they use for controversial subjects like suicide and murder (self/other unalive), depression (big sad), pornography (corn), neurodivergence (neurospicy), etc.
I’m not saying TikTok is solely to blame, but content recommendation algorithms are definitely warping the language people use. Almost all of these genZ slang terms originated as weasel words to talk about these touchy subjects without getting deplatformed by an algorithm designed to keep things advertiser-friendly
trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 8 months ago
catloaf@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It’s true that it’s affecting language, but if anything it shows that trying to force newspeak doesn’t really work. People get creative.
In monocultures like most of China, it can work locally, such as in suppression of knowledge of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but outside their direct control they can’t stop the signal.