Why we all started talking like toddlers on the internet just to keep the algorithms happy
Ever wonder why people say unalived or seggs instead of the real words? We’re diving into the weird world of Algospeak and why we're all playing a game with a ghost.
- neuralshyam
- 5 min read
If you’ve spent more than five minutes on TikTok or Instagram lately, you’ve probably noticed that everyone has suddenly forgotten how to speak English. We’re out here talking about people getting “unalived,” adults having “seggs,” and weapons being “pew-pews.”
It feels like we’re all back in kindergarten, whispering “bad words” so the teacher doesn’t hear us. But the “teacher” in this scenario is a bunch of lines of code that can effectively erase your digital existence if you say the wrong thing. Welcome to the era of Algospeak—a weird, coded dialect born out of pure, unadulterated paranoia.
The Great Digital Guessing Game
The vibe on social media right now is basically a giant game of “The Floor is Lava,” except the lava is invisible and the rules change every Tuesday. Creators are terrified. If a video you spent eight hours editing gets zero views, what happened? Was it the lighting? Was the hook boring? Or did you dare to say the word “YouTube” while posting on TikTok?
Take a guy like Alex Pearlman. He’s got millions of followers, but even he’s out here playing word games. He’s noticed that if he mentions his YouTube channel, the TikTok algorithm seemingly throws his video into a deep, dark hole. So, he avoids it. When things got heavy with the Jeffrey Epstein news, he started calling him “The Island Man.”
The problem is, when we start talking in riddles, we lose the plot. If half your audience doesn’t know what “The Island Man” means, you aren’t really spreading information anymore—you’re just talking to an “in-group” while the rest of the world stays confused.
The “Corporate Gaslighting” Phase
Now, if you ask the big tech companies—TikTok, Meta, YouTube—they’ll look you dead in the eye and say, “We don’t have a list of banned words. That’s a myth, bro.” They claim their systems are nuanced and care about “context.”
But let’s be real: history tells a different story. Remember back in 2019 when leaked docs showed TikTok was actively suppressing content from people they deemed “ugly” or “poor” to keep the app looking “fancy”? Or how about the “heating” button TikTok admitted to having, which basically lets employees decide who goes viral?
If they have a “make this famous” button, you can bet your bottom dollar they have a “make this disappear” button, too. Creators aren’t making up these fears out of thin air; they’re reacting to years of being ghosted by the apps they live on.
The Fake Music Festival Incident
This paranoia reached a peak in 2025 during some major US protests. Suddenly, the internet was flooded with people talking about a “Sabrina Carpenter music festival” in Los Angeles. There were light shows! There were sets! It was amazing!
Except, there was no festival.
It was a giant, coordinated lie. Protesters were using the term “music festival” as code for “massive street demonstration” because they were convinced the algorithm would bury any video mentioning civil unrest.
Here’s the kicker: some experts think the algorithm wasn’t even suppressing the protest news to begin with. But because people believed it was, they used the code, the code made the videos feel like a secret club, more people engaged, and the videos went viral. This convinced everyone that “Algospeak” was the secret sauce to beating the machine. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where our own weird behavior actually shapes how the machine treats us.
The “Algorithmic Imaginary”
Linguists call this the “algorithmic imaginary.” It’s basically us telling ghost stories about why our posts failed. We don’t know why the “gods of the feed” are angry, so we start sacrificing specific words to appease them.
“Maybe if I don’t say ‘pandemic,’ the AI won’t smite me.” “Maybe if I spell it ‘C@sh,’ I’ll get more views.”
It’s reached a point where we’re self-censoring more than the platforms probably ever intended. We’re building our own digital cages because we’re scared of a shadow that might not even be there. Or it might be. That’s the fun part: we’ll never actually know.
Follow the Money (As Always)
At the end of the day, social media isn’t a public square; it’s a shopping mall. And mall owners don’t want people screaming about war and death right next to a Sephora ad.
The real reason for all this “sanitization” isn’t some grand political conspiracy—it’s just boring old capitalism. Advertisers want “brand safety.” They want to sell you sneakers in a world that looks sunny, happy, and non-threatening. If your video about a serious human rights issue makes a Nike ad look “vibey-ly off,” the algorithm is going to tuck your video away where the shoppers can’t see it.
The tech giants are just trying to keep the vibes high enough that the money keeps rolling in. If that means we all have to talk like we’re in a Pixar movie, they’re perfectly fine with that.
So, Are We Stuck Like This?
It’s a bit of a tragedy, isn’t it? We have the most powerful communication tools in human history, and we’re using them to say “seggs” and “unalived.”
We’re essentially letting private companies dictate the boundaries of our language. Every time we swap a real word for a “safe” one, we’re handing over a little bit of our reality to a corporation that just wants us to keep scrolling.
Maybe the move isn’t to find better code words, but to start asking why we’re okay with living in a digital world where we’re afraid to speak like adults. Until then, I guess I’ll see you at the “music festival.” (Wink, wink).
What do you think? Have you ever felt “shadowbanned” for saying something totally normal? Or is it all just in our heads? Drop a comment (but maybe use emojis just in case the algorithm is watching).