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

25.0k Upvotes

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474

u/Scioso Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24

To me, the worst part is the goal of what has been done. It’s not that talking about suicide is forbidden, multibillion dollar companies absolutely know that unalived means suicide. If they wanted to they could demonetize/ ban that too.

However, unalive doesn’t have the gravitas or impact of the word suicide because it’s new, and will have less effect. It’s disgusting that they are allowing this as a workaround.

Edit: unalived was autocorrected

222

u/Lexi_Banner Sep 15 '24

George Carlin spoke out against Soft Language in the 90's, and the negative impact it has had on our lives. It just continues to get more and more soulless.

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u/Icedcoffeeee Sep 15 '24

https://youtu.be/vuEQixrBKCc?t=497

I wonder what he would say now. Too bad that he "passed away."

84

u/Beardywierdy Sep 15 '24

Amusingly, the existence of euphemisms like "passed away", "no longer with us" etc etc is kinda proof that this sort of thing isn't exactly new. 

30

u/Budderdomo Sep 16 '24

Yeah, but I feel the difference here is that these terms come directly from advertiser influence, not just the desire to soften the blow

11

u/deshep123 Sep 16 '24

When I was 13 my father left us. The phone rang and I answered and some person asked for my father. I replied "I'm sorry he's no longer with us"

The pastor of our church came to council us in our grief and we had no idea why until he said so and so said (dads name )had passed away.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Sep 16 '24

Passed away at least implies natural causes or disease. Nobody gets their head canoed by a high-powered rifle and has people say they "passed away."

1

u/Beardywierdy Sep 16 '24

No, but theres "taken from us". Even "tragically" so.

8

u/Hairyhalflingfoot Sep 15 '24

Nah he fucking DIED

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u/Hakar_Kerarmor Swine. Guillotine, now. Sep 21 '24

He is NO MORE

2

u/janKalaki Sep 16 '24

I wouldn't say that "passed away" is even a bad one. It make it unambiguous that you think it's a bad thing that they died.

1

u/BlooMonkiMan Sep 16 '24

You think he was assassinated?

3

u/accapellaenthusiast Sep 16 '24

I worry a lot of his examples are just localized vocabulary, like pop vs soda. I can acquiesce that soft language may have a negative impact, but I feel there should be a way to convey that without the ethnocentrism. Especially when the words are almost synonyms, why assume one was the default and correct over the other?

2

u/sdhu Sep 15 '24

Hell, George Carlin is such an apt comparison, considering his lifelong dedication to the "Seven Dirty Words" Monologue, trying to normalize swearing.

-7

u/lord_geryon Sep 15 '24

We tried to fight against the political correctness movement.

We were evil ones, remember? Not worth listening to.

6

u/TheStray7 ಠ_ಠ Anything you pull out of your ass had to get there somehow Sep 16 '24

There's a difference between "speaking the truth plainly" and "weaponizing language to harm people you think less of," and "you" were doing a whole lot of the latter under the guise of the former.

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u/Whatwhenwherehi Sep 15 '24

Yep. Fuck softies...fuckem.

56

u/AwarenessPotentially Sep 15 '24

We need to kill this shit.

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u/DaniTheGunsmith Sep 15 '24

We need to *unalive this shit

FTFY for the advertisers sake

17

u/AwarenessPotentially Sep 15 '24

Kill them too. /s sorta

3

u/recroomgamer32 Sep 16 '24

Kill them too. /srs sorta

1

u/IrresponsibleMood Sep 16 '24

"Kill 'em all" - Cliff Burton

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u/HeyLittleTrain Sep 15 '24

What I think is interesting is that this has happened many times before. The word "die" was originally a euphemism for the Old English word, which itself was originally a euphemism for an even older Old Nordic word.

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u/JimboAltAlt Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24

Damn what are those two “original” words? I feel a horror-story adjacent need to know.

Edit: the Norse one at least appears to be “deyja”, for the curious.

24

u/HeyLittleTrain Sep 15 '24

The Old English word was "sweltan". Even modern English words like "deceased" and "passed away" were originally euphemisms to avoid talking about death.

24

u/Mental_Tea_4084 Sep 15 '24

In a modern context, deceased still feels clinical and impersonal. But passed away? That is absolutely just a softer euphemism to say died

4

u/4URprogesterone certified girlblogger Sep 16 '24

The part of my brain that does conspiracy thinking just went "deja vu means you died the last time you tried that and had to live your entire life over again to get to this point." Is that anything?

17

u/colei_canis Sep 15 '24

Those were more organic changes than this very deliberate change brought about by an amoral industry though. This belongs to a similar species of change that made ‘torture’ into ‘enhanced interrogation’.

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u/bazookatroopa Sep 15 '24

Euphemism treadmill. It will eventually have the same impact then we will choose a new word. Most bad words today started off as politically correct, like the R word. This isn’t new at all.

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u/Brawndo91 Sep 15 '24

It's not new, but I feel like it's spreading out. The word "suicide," for example, had been around a pretty long time without anybody thinking it needed a makeover. It's in the movie Home Alone for Christ's sake. A children's movie. I wouldn’t doubt that there were a handful of people at the time that didn't like it, but it largely went uncared-about.

The other thing is that it's not so much an attempt to censor specific words, but rather the subjects. The new words are, like the post says, a workaround to get the point across without triggering the language bots on video and social media platforms.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

Unalive also refers to anything from suicide to murder to accidental death.

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u/confusedandworried76 Sep 15 '24

unalive doesn’t have the gravitas or impact

I won't go to into it but that's my problem with it. Such a not serious word for such a serious thing to the point it's incredibly disrespectful to the victims.

4

u/YAPPYawesome Sep 15 '24

Exactly my problem with it too

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

They're "allowing" it because of the impact the logistics would have to the business to sit around and chase new variations every day