The Cutprice Guignol

Sewerslide. Self-deletion. Unalive. Grape. The creep of linguistic censorship on social media has been virtually impossible to ignore – but, while it’s intended to protect users from distressing topics, it’s actually serving to do more harm than good, especially when it comes to discussions of suicide.

If you’ve been mercifully free of social media for the last few years, a quick catch-up: in order to dodge algorithmic censorship, users of certain social media platforms (TikTok being perhaps the most prominent) began to invent euphemisms for subjects that might have landed them on the wrong end of the mighty banhammer. Sensitive topics like sex and sexuality were most often the target of this new language, with the targeting of conversations around lesbianism, for example, shoving gay women behind the ridiculous euphemism of “le-dollar-sign-bean”. And, while these are undoubtedly problematic in their own right, these algorithm-dodging phrases have stretched into subjects of a more serious nature – discussions of suicide were cloaked behind “sewerslide”, “self-deletion”, and “sue-decide” – sexual assault became “grape”, child sex abuse material “child corn”.

And, look, I want to make it very clear that I am not blaming the creators across various platforms who’ve been manhandled into using this kind of language if they want to maintain their platforms. For some of these people, their profiles are a major if not sole contributor to their income, and to use this kind of language uncensored can limit the advertisers willing to promote via their content, and thus their reach and income takes a hit. Violating these rules, which are often poorly-defined and nebulous, can lead to shadowbans and limited content reach, and using these terms allows for at least some discussion of these topics without risking the wrath of the algorithm.

From the point of view of these social media sites, this kind of censorship is meant to be protective – to keep users from having to interact with content that might be upsetting, or triggering, or harmful in some way. But, as someone who’s dedicated plenty of digital space to writing about issues related to suicide and self-harm, I can tell you that using these bizarre euphemisms for very real harm does a lot more to cause damage than it does to protect against it.

When it comes to talking about serious issues such as suicide, accurate, neutral language has long been accepted as the most helpful way to go about discussing it in public forums. While I’m not expecting social media users to consult the best reporting practices for every post they make, this kind of censorship forcing this kind of language is an obviously counterproductive measure to this approach. Veiling discussions of suicide under these euphemisms, by their very nature, paints the issue in a negative light – ghettoizes discussion of it in an open and honest way, neither neutral nor accurate, but stigmatizing, even silly.

It’s not less triggering to skulk around the edges of the conversation with this evasive language – if anything, it makes it harder for people who are genuinely trying to avoid content regarding this topic even harder to dodge, as the scope of the words and language that needs to be filtered grows exponentially and out of necessity.

When it comes to discussions of suicide, neutral, factual information has been consistently shown to be the most effective and helpful when it comes to helping those impacted by the issue, and, frankly, the kind of bullshit language policing that takes place when platforms turn these topics into taboos are as stupid as they are harmful. While there’s no doubt that these conversations can be uncomfortable, trying to disguise them in ultimately useless euphemism only makes them more difficult than they need to be – and, when it comes to suicide, the last thing we need is to throw up any more barriers between people trying to seek help and the information they clearly need.

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