this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Privacy
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Stop using twitter for f*cks sake
Seriously.
This is the internet; you can say “fuck” here.
Sir this is a Wendys, go rant somewhere else for fucks sake
Excuse me, I'm going to have to ask you not to curse here.
this is a Christian Minecraft server
I always thought it was "fuck's sake".
Fecking hell
Don’t do that it’s annoying. If someone doesn’t want to write out curse words, more power to them. It doesn’t inconvenience you in the slightest. It’s just a patronizing comment that has been made into a meme.
Can any late teen-early 20s armchair philosophers once-over this for me?
I have a theory. Never before on the internet (going on 30 years of it) have I seen so many curses used but not fully spelled out ('f*ck' for example).
I believe the change has to do with social media and specifically short-form video apps (Tiktok, IG Reels, Youtube Shorts) - not all of which I am familiar with, but I know at least YT and I believe TT does as well. When curse words or words like rape and murder are used in text (or 'subtitle' text on screen) the video reach can be penalized in some way. I assume it's similar in comments.
So you have a ton of the younger generation consuming hours each day of censored curse words, and in their mind it becomes just what you're supposed to do, socially. They end up doing it with each other over text, and consequently in comments. I have a younger co-worker who will gladly say "F*ck that dude hes a b*tch" in group chat, and when I asked him why he doesn't just say the words he's using, he said "I just don't like to curse." Which makes no sense to me, as it's the same word and intent.
I know some Lemmy instances will remove words, but generally only 'bitch' and derogatory slur words.
So I hypothesise it's simply unexamined social conditioning, where they see their peers doing it so they do it too, never questioning why.
[Grandpa Simpsons voice] Back in my day, we used to say "pr0n" instead of "porn" to avoid keyword spotters, and saying it that way just got to be a habit. Nowadays e.g. twitch comments auto-mods have block lists. I think kids just do the same thing.
What's funny is when you're watching something like an AI summary of a movie on youtube, it'll use euphemisms like "self-delete" instead of "suicide" and "naughty place" instead of "brothel" to avoid the algorithm penalties you mention.
That's true, there is the Scunthorpe problem. I guess we're just doing another 20 year cycle like we have for all of civilization. If someone centuries in the future finds this comment chain, please name the solution to your 20 year repeating fractal math problem something like the CockSyn Solution. I want to be like Shadow from American Gods. Or more accurately like Pythagoras with his stealing murder cult.
Its happening with "killing" or "dead" being subbed for unalive too. I don't inherently think its bad, just culture moving forward and changing how it always has. "Its simply unexamined social conditioning where they see their peers do it so they do it too never questioning why" Thats just society, friend. Why does anybody do anything?
I'm 36 and don't understand plenty of young people's shit now, but that doesn't inherently make it scary or bad. I don't really have a point here I guess, except that we should strive to not be the old men who yell at clouds about "those damn kids." Life and time marches on, things change, and thats fine. 🤷
Unalive etc came about as a way to skirt TOS violations and demonitisation.
I'm aware, but it's made its way into peoples vocabularies IRL as well.
There are other things that get self-censored due to filters. The two that I'm thinking of are "suicide" and "murder" (which a lot of people reword as "unalived" or "committing game over").
Another one that I saw was a history summary channel I watch on YouTube couldn't get monetized because they kept mentioning Hitler (in a video about the end of WW2) so they had to keep saying "the toothbrush moustache having Austrian man" to get around the censor.
As another poster said, we used words like pr0n, and one that I personally have never used either of that replaces the "er" ending of a word with "a."
Hell, half of the time we used l33tsp33k was to avoid using specific words.
This is not a new thing.
I’ve never had the experience of seeing young people refrain from using curse words. It’s usually as people grow up they see it as an immature way to communicate. I personally use them a lot, but in formal settings I certainly don’t. Some people simply don’t turn the switch on and off and elect not to use them so much. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing even if it’s not how I operate. It’s up to each of us how we want to communicate, so frankly, I just don’t concern myself with it.
As for people self censoring online, I have seen that since my old messageboard days when I was a kid. “You can curse on the Internet“ is a pretty old meme. Literally decades.
People who see it as an immature way to communicate won't use the words at all. People who are actually immature despite growing up will use the word and think it makes a difference if they put an asterisk in there instead of spelling it out.
spoiler
sdfsafI am not judging people for using profanity, I am judging people for thinking fuck vs f*ck makes a difference.
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sdfsafMakes sense. It's the USAtion of the world. Their puritanism is spreading. Wouldn't surprise me if people started censoring themselves when saying "moist", but getting excited when talking about guns, wars, and bombing the middle east.
Anti Commercial-AI license
I’m sure that factors in, but people censoring their curse words online has been going on for decades, as has the refrain “you can curse on the Internet.“
It really baffles me how often I still see it talked about. Especially on Lemmy. I never liked it myself but now the musk owns it, I would've assumed there wouldn't be much controversy here: it's dead and gone, move on, people.
Problem is it isn’t gone and it’s still helping foment huge political/social issues in the US. It impacts us whether we want it to or not.
Doesn’t mean I use it. I don’t. But it negatively impacts my life all the same.
Ah yes politics, the thing that can be discussed in 140 characters or less. Twitter is definitely the prime place for this discourse.
I get what you’re saying, I really do, I just think its super fucked up that our politicians have collectively decided this is THE place to engage people when there is no political topic that could possibly be discussed properly this way. I’m pretty sure I already exceeded the limit just saying this.
i'm fairly sure the point (whether calculated, or more likely, mostly not) of having politics moved there is because there is no political topic that could be discussed properly there. it makes for good, distracting noise.
it makes for a lack of meaningful critique, or for that critique to be instantly buried in bad actors. noise is a shield. noise is easily dismissable.
monetized social media, in general, is made to be clickbait, to feed negative emotions because that's what gets people addicted to outrage, it steers people towards thinking less and reacting more. nuanced discussion and thoughtful spaces are drowned out and cast aside for the loudest and most obnoxious players. this is appealing for someone trying to uphold the status quo or push society towards hate.
i don't think it's a coincidence that politicians have moved there, that spaces have become so polarized and negatively charged, and that the most prime example of both of these happenings is xwitter. everything is connected in this big, terrible, and vaguely randomly evolved system. i do think evolution is the best word for it. what lives, survives to propagate. it doesn't matter how healthy it is. the result is this blind, meandering, gargantuan worm, following the scent of blood, feeding on the worst of it all.
xwitter is easy and, notably, if you're a powerful white man, you can build your base with no accountability. it exists in this space where it's the most serious news source that almost no one takes that seriously. of course it's appealing.
It's more stupid than that. The idea is that 140 characters is a lower barrier of entry for a reader, compared to reading a series of paragraphs that might be able to at least talk about something, or attempt to summarize an issue. It's why accounts like wint can pop off, and become so prolific.
Two things can be true.
I mean I just don't think it's so much a calculated effort by the ruling class as kind of a natural evolution of the market taking hold of and exploiting the human mind to the nth possible degree, such as they have always done.
You're phrasing this as a rebuttal when these points were an explicitly acknowledged part of my original stance. It is a bit odd.
Both quotes from my original posting, here. If you want to point out something that I had missed, it would be more time efficient to have picked something I had missed?
I'm bemused.
I'm gonna be honest most times when I write a response I'm taking a shit and not paying very much attention to the thread which it belongs beyond my vaguest recollection to what was said
It doesn't matter if its the worst possible place if its still the only place they can operate in. The biggest soap box is what they want.
Yes exactly. Which is one of a few reasons why I wish people would stop using it
I've found a fair amount of strong loyalty to the place from all sorts of people. I was never a twitter person, so I don't understand it, but AFAICT, all sorts of people have a real emotional bond to the place, like for them it's been their main internet experience in life or something.
I made accounts on Mastodon and Blue Sky but most people still use Twitter, so if there's info you're looking for, or if you want to share things, you're forced to use what most people are using.
I deleted my 2007-era Twitter account in 2022 and not once have I felt like I was missing out on any “info” or felt like I wasn’t able to share things.
Seriously, I just dont understand microblogging. It seems deliberately shallow.
I've never had a Twitter account and never felt the need for one, also haven't been missing out on that junk. I've read lots of tweets, on occasions when I was offered a twitter link for whatever, but just never felt like I needed to join up at all. Just seems like a waste of time to get on social media where all the posts are just small bits of opinionated content without much depth.
You can do your part to get that info off of Twitter.
Get a separate browser just for Twitter use. If there’s info that’s only on Twitter re-post it elsewhere.
I hear you ... most people are still there (I've claimed in the past that it will be the MS Windows of social media, that no one really openly talks about using but is actually everywhere).
But I feel it may be useful to distinguish FOMO and social media gossip from actual useful information. I'm not saying there's nothing useful on Twitter (I don't actually know). But we're talking about microblogging and social media here.
Thats cool but it is a transitional thing. If you keep going back the transition doesn’t happen. Stand your ground.
What info do you need from Twitter you can’t get elsewhere unless you’re a journalist? Genuine question this isn’t bait lol
I just accepted I'm not getting the information now; but a whole bunch of small creators will basically only talk about their content and schedule on twitter. Like if something is going to be late, they are going on vacation or they are doing an extra stream or etc.
spoiler
sdfsafI’m not sure, but wanted to add another hot take: if you’re a journalist and you use Twitter as a primary source for your work, you’re not a journalist.
Stop humouring the assholes that are still on that bigoted network. It’s X not twitter. Twitter is dead.
Every time someone calls it twitter, don’t give them the satisfaction of disassociating themselves from Musky’s X.
Oh so you’re an X’er. You like to Xeet a lot eh?
And Reddit, and Facebook while we’re at it
I was resistant to ending my use of reddit, but now they have nerfed the mobile site so bad I can't even login anymore so I've stopped trying. I still peruse it on my PC at least once daily but I think that the moment RES finally stops working will spell the end of that.
As for Facebook. I mostly keep it around for an easy connection to family and friend and a few meme groups that amuse me. But again, only like once a day do I check in ion that site.
Edit: I should mention that I have never and will never use either of those website's apps.