The ultimate weapon of mass distraction

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    You 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
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      5 months ago

      “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.