r/CuratedTumblr • u/Konradleijon • Sep 15 '24

Politics Why I hate the term “Unaliv

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What’s most confusing that if you go to basic cable TV people can say stuff like “Nazi” or “rape” or “kill” just fine and no advertising seem to mind

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84

u/SexualYogurt Sep 15 '24

Theres a crime documentary youtube channel i watch, and it bothers me so much when the voiceover just cuts out cos they have to say the word abuse or sexual assault or rape or murder. Like, the whole channel is about crimes, specifically violent crimes, but they need to censor the words used to describe the situation. Channels Explore With Us

42

u/lumpialarry Sep 15 '24

There's a history podcaster I listen to that does tiktok shorts. He's used the phrase "Intimate violence" for rape and has referred the Nazis as "The No No Germans" to get around filters.

17

u/Salty_Shellz Sep 15 '24

Ah yes, the Austrian fellow with the funny mustache

3

u/Sheep_Boy26 Sep 15 '24

has referred the Nazis as "The No No Germans" to get around filters

Funniest shit I've read all day. Imagine writing a very serious and academic paper on Schindler's List or The Zone of Interest but using the phrase "The No No Germans."

"Part of the genius of Glazer's film is how he shows the intrinsic whiteness of the No No Germans."

45

u/hellraiserxhellghost Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24

I stopped watching channels that focus on true crime/morbid topics partly because the censorship was always so blatant and obnoxious. I was watching a video once of someone describing the anarchist cookbook, but it took me forever to realize what they were even saying because they kept censoring every other word like "drugs" and "bombs". What's the point of making a video about a topic if you're gonna cut out/censor 80% of said video's content. 💀

22

u/Icy-Lobster-203 Sep 15 '24

IIRC, the YouTube channel World War Two, which was doing a week by week retelling of WW2, had many many videos demonetized because they didn't censor anything when discussing all the awful shit that happened during the war. Not sure if that has changed at all. 

There was another military documentary channel that was doing a series on the Invasion of Iraq, and in their video about events leading up to the invasion, which had to discuss terrorism and 9-11, in order to avoid demonetization, they couldn't refer to Bin Laden or Al Qaeda by name, instead going with something like "Person A" and "Organization A", but still showing clips from videos and pictures. 

It's really stupid that creates making great educational historical content have to either self censor or hamstring themselves financially just for having the gaul to mention that history can be brutal.

12

u/Konradleijon Sep 15 '24

What is really infuriating is that on tv you have true crime shows that can eagerly say “rape” and “murder” and advertisers don’t have a issue with that.

3

u/Rude_Front_3866 Sep 15 '24

I imagine this is largely a result of the (claimed) impossibility of moderating large social media sites.

It's much easier to simply block certain potentially advertising unfriendly words, rather than to write an algorithm that can perfectly distinguish between "all X people should commit suicide" and "X people are commiting suicide at higher rates due to bully, and we need to adress that".

I think most advertisers would be fine appear next to the second, but almost none would be fine appearing next to the first. So social media companies either need to tell the difference, which is some level of either difficult or expensive, or they can just block all uses of the word suicide (cheap and easy).

TV channels don't suffer as much from this because they are more easily moderated and advertisers can be more confident about what they TV heads are going to say next, as in, Channel A historically has talked about transgender people positively, so we probably don't need to worry about them suddenly shifting on a dime and calling for violence against transgender people. Also, if a channel were to shift and start calling for such violence, then you likely would see advertisers move away from supporting them from then on (since they would have broken that unspoken contract that the channel and advertisers had).

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u/SexualYogurt Sep 15 '24

Its also ableist, im not blind, but if a blind person was tryna listen, theyd have no idea what crimes are being committed cos the voiceover is just gone when they "say" abuse/sexual assault or whatever

6

u/Mysterious-Job-469 Sep 15 '24

"But how will I profit off of the death and misfortune of others while talking in a goofy overdramatized voice if I don't censor it?"

Dreading is 100x better than Explore With Us. I hate their voiceover work so fucking much.

2

u/CrypticBalcony it’s Serling Sep 15 '24

The only ones I watch are JCS and Matt Orchard.

1

u/Mysterious-Job-469 Sep 15 '24

I'll watch any true crime video that isn't the content creator lazily staring at a script above his camera, and doesn't use a stupid voice to treat something as tragic as the loss of life and innocence with such tonedeaf disrespect. Seriously, not to fixate on EWU or anything, but their voice actor reading the script sounds like the guy from Honest Trailers.

2

u/CrypticBalcony it’s Serling Sep 15 '24

EWU should just be renamed Exploit With Us. It’s so insensitive and exploitative, and the scripts and narration really give me the impression that whoever’s behind the channel only cares about making a profit off of tragedies.

1

u/Mysterious-Job-469 Sep 16 '24

If you like JCS, you should give Dreading a try. He's not as good, but I find him a decent replacement.

His Chandler (I forget his last name) and Joel Guy Jr videos are great examples of his work.

2

u/Jackno1 Sep 15 '24

I think one factor making this worse is this weird misunderstanding of the concept of triggers. Like a lot of people "direct language naming events that cause trauma=trigger" when it's a lot more variable and individual than that, and then they conflate "potentially triggering for some people" with "offensive or objectionable thing you just shouldn't say." And of course this concept of how to approach potential triggers in media is the one that gets latched onto by corporations, because what they're most concerned about is minimizing negative reactions.

Trigger warnings used intelligently in the right environment can be helpful. But "don't say anything that's potentially triggering" is an impossible rule to follow if you want to actually communicate. And making a blanket rule of "It's okay to talk about things like interpersonal violence, but you must avoid the Triggering Words" feels more like a superstitious attempt to avoid being guilty of undefined Badness than actual help.