we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor
my poor professor was SO confused that she asked them to repeat themselves and they went “you know, like, blank . . .” and kept just vaguely gesturing until she somehow connected the dots. i fucking hate art school
god i wish i was making the shit i witness at this place up. my life would be so much easier if i didn’t have to deal with my classmates seriously arguing about fandom discourse in the group project chat
the price you think you're paying by going to art school: tuition, supply costs, etc
the price you're actually paying by going to art school: having to put up with the most brain-rotting terminally online discourse imaginable in real life
I had someone argue with me that it was problematic for me to have watched Frozen with my niece because I was encouraging her to become an emotionally abuse codependent sibling. I'm a senior and I've had someone else doing their senior thesis ask, genuinely, if she was problematic for doing her thesis on domestic abuse, because sometimes domestic abuse effects rich white women and they're privileged, so therefore her doing it on that is racism apologism. I've had to sit there and watch people say "unalive", "SA", "PDF file", and my favorite, "marital relations" (it only happened once but it's really funny) to professors who look at them in total despair.
Hamlet didn't unalive himself, he killed himself. Our Crime Prevention class is discussing sexual assault and pedophiles. The implication of this paper we're reading in Intro To Africana Studies is not about white settlers marrying and having gentle loving monogamous funtimes with slaves, it's about rape.
I genuinely do not see how I'm supposed to take the people around me seriously. How am I supposed to believe you have incredible insights into something you can't bring yourself to say? How am I supposed to look over your rough draft and not cross out the euphemisms and write grown-up words?
And I DO NOT go to art school! I go to Montana State! I'm in redneck country - remember when redneck meant tough enough to at least say words?! Not anymore!
Do you know how stupid I feel that I couldn't figure out that "PDF File" was supposed to be censorship slang for "paedophile"
I should chime in and say that if this sort of thing pisses you off you *need* to be vocal about it. Because, short term and short-sighted, this is just people being overly sensitive about plain language and carrying online habits to real life which is “cringe” and “annoying” or whatever.
But long term, this type of shit is what contributes to erasure and historic inaccuracy in the first place. And its the same mentality that allows people to think that censorship, thought policing and book-banning is okay.
Please don’t let corporations and social media companies’ affinity for ad revenue and web sanitation condition you into thinking that plain honesty, communication and reality is something that can be sugar-coated and dressed up into something easier to swallow. This shit is much more dangerous than you think. If you are talking to someone in real life and you catch them talking like this, you NEED to remind them, “Hey this isnt TikTok. You can say exactly what you mean. What are you afraid of?”
