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Comment by SketchySeaBeast | Hacker News Reader

Normally I'm more than happy to roll with someone's choice of words - if you want to use "literally" to describe things that are not literal, please, fill your skibidi or whatever, but I'm hostile towards it when it's an attempt to appease a corporation's filters. I get it, you gotta use it where you gotta use it, but I hate the indicators that our language is being filtered everywhere by certain social media's moderation rules.

That's not language changing because of fresh eyes, it's because of tired eyes looking towards the bottom dollar.

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HN doesn't filter "suicide" though. This is organic language. Free-range, grass-fed, and GMO-free.

Yeah, my argument is we shouldn't use "unalive" when we don't have to.

you just did tho

(I am currently reading and infected by Hofstadter's "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking" which I think would side with using unalive, which might also construe a set larger than that of "dead.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio...

I quoted it for specificity. I suppose I could have said "the word formerly known as suicide" but that is probably a phrasing that anyone young enough to unironically use the word formerly known as suicide wouldn't understand.

It's not about filters, I like using unalive in the context of suicide when I have no sympathy to the person who dies. It's such a nice dehumanizing word.

It sounds kinder and gentler, to me, more like a word you’d use in polite company to avoid speaking crassly about someone respected.

Suicide is a statement, it is the last act of somebody against the society. It is something serious that puts the burden on the shoulders of the remaining. It has long, deep history attached to it.

Unalive on the other hand is a simplistic word that has neither of those, it is originally derived as an attempt to bypass automatic filter. IMHO using it for someone without the practical need to bypass censorship takes away the heft of their act. Makes it insignificant.

I would be very surprised if anyone other than you sees it that way. The fact you had to explain that distinction shows the uselessness of the word. In fact all you’ve done is draw attention to this guy’s suicide and give it significance.

Given the upvotes, obviously there are more people that are on the same page with me on this than not.

But it's entered the vernacular because of the filters.

Pick any sentence and trace the words back to their origin and you'll find some sort of story about where it was borrowed from. That's just how language works. It isn't anything new -- we're all just older than we've ever been. Every generation coins new terms.

I'm not against language growth, but the reason this is happening is upsetting to me.

If you're taking the time to write one or more posts about this, you are implicitly against language growth, you've just found a justification for being against it that you find acceptable to your worldview.

Yes, there are occasions where I would take exception to language evolution. If we entered a pattern of 1984-era newspeak I'd take exception there as well. I think it is usually the product of a poorly considered stance for one to be an absolutist about the vast majority things.

Euphemism is already common, particularly when discussing sensitive topics like the cycle of life, bodily functions, etc. You are probably okay with many existing euphemisms because they are familiar. This really isn't a social media thing, newspaper obituaries also use euphemisms for death. e.g. "passed away", "departed", "eternal rest", etc.

Yes, because that euphemistic language is there to lighten the blow. "unalive" is an attempt to bypass a social media filter and speaks to the shift in how and why words enter our lexicon.

Are you against profanity filters? What's the difference?

Well, because "suicide" isn't profane. It might be considered a pseudo-profanity, but people don't stop saying swearing because of profanity filters. This is an instance where the filter is feeding back into the zeitgeist.

That's true, some day in the future somebody will make 5 seconds long, long format documentary about the fascinating origins of the word :)

It has a passive aggressive character, I like that word a lot.

I get the opposite out of it. Using the negative prefix weakens the word, emphasizing what it is not instead of what it is, when act like suicide is not just the state of being not alive. The phrasing isn't committed enough to be oxymoronic and it ends up feeling impersonal and indirect.

But maybe I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud.

> I'm hostile towards it when it's an attempt to appease a corporation's filters

Maybe you should be hostile towards the corporations that create those filters instead.

Yes. I am more upset by the one responsible for the filtering than the effect it's having on the zeitgeist.

Why not both?

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