Trigger warnings and algospeak
Amusing ourselves to death
This is gonna be a long one.. buckle up
I added a little warning when entering my site, and on the blog post page. Not to self-censor. More so I can put the responsibility of managing triggers on the person who decides to visit. Cause I write whatever the fuck I want, this is my space.
So it got me thinking, spiraling about the broader subject of trigger warnings, censorship, and algospeak.
So yeah, on trigger warnings. I sometimes go on does the dog die? Cause me personally, I don't wanna watch movies where women are brutalized for spectacle, or there's sexual assault, or children are abused. I just don't wanna see it. So when I have a doubt, I check. Sure, maybe it spoils the movie a little, but if I'm right, I'm just not gonna watch it.
The point being: I manage it myself. The onus is on me, not my environment.
Having lived with PTSD, I know how serious and debilitating it is. I know how much it sucks when a trigger just pops up and you don't always know what the hell is gonna set it off.
You could be having a coffee, take a look outside, a bird shits on your car, and then you're frozen:
Oh shit. Somehow I'm reliving one of the worst moments of my life.
A butterfly could fart on a Tuesday taco night and for some reason, you look like the dog gif where he smells muffins and has a thousand yard stare. Like this :
Or you're on the metro and somebody passes by and you catch their perfume and it's somehow... the exact same perfume your abusive ass alcoholic ex wore when she'd drunkenly assault you. Or when I watched someone die, horrifically, violently in the same metro system from a suicide. I used to be plagued by panic attacks and flashbacks.
Imagine getting triggered by fucking BBQs. Un esti de barbeq tabarnak. That was my life. It was fucking.. exhausting.
You can't systematically suppress external triggers. I tried. You can't control other people. But you can control what you expose yourself to, to a degree.
The only way out is through the damn shit you don't want to face
PTSD attacks are your mind and body telling you there's still shit to process. Delayed processing. The only way out is through. (Therapy, therapy, therapy. For me: meditation + art + therapy.)
There's no substitute for self work and introspection. The goal isn't to tiptoe around the triggers forever. The goal is to dismantle them and chuck em in the bin. To not let that shit control your life anymore. That's the ultimate fuck you to life, the world, and the people who fucked with you. The ultimate fuck you is living well.
Repeat after me : "Fuck. You"
A side note on the IndieWeb kiddos
But yeah. I put the warning up because I'm increasingly aware that a lot of people on Nekoweb/Neocities and in the IndieWeb are teenagers. Mostly very young. So I guess I was just doing my due diligence like the age ratings on movies. "Rated 16+ the content blah blah might not be suitable for a younger audience. Viewer discretion is advised blah blah."
And honestly? It's kind of remarkable and beautiful. They weren't even alive when the web was like this, and here they are trying to relive it, remixing late 90s/early 00s aesthetics and making it their own. And I like that they're realizing that current social media is absolute hot garbage. That the net has become an enshittified propaganda machine. A vector for fifth generation warfare.
(The warnings probably do nothing. Teenagers don't give a fuck about rules anyway. Which, honestly, good. Like I gave a fuck about warnings at their age either..)
I'm old in comparison. I've lived a lot of shit. My way of dealing with it is rambling, screaming into the void, and making creepy ass fucked up art sometimes. These youngins give me hope.
The Death of thought: Why I Hate Algospeak
Bon, now on to newspeak... ahem algospeak
Coded vocabulary of cowardice
Note: This is very important for me to state as I'm positive some other ghosts are going to misinterpret my point. This is specifically regarding neologisms that concern self-censorship, otherwise language must and does evolve. I can name le dictionnaire du chilleur as an example of positive neologisms that add diversity to québécois.
So this connects to something that's been rotting whatever is left of my brain. Algospeak. It's fracking everywhere on YouTube whatever antisocial media. Now, every true crime interrogation I watch, to every reality TV commentary I watch to disconnect (looking at you 90 day fiancé), everyone is using coded language to dodge demonetization in service to the omnipresent and omnipotent algorithm.
"Unalive" instead of suicide or murder. "PDF file" instead of pedophile. "SA" instead of sexual assault. "CSAM" instead of child sex abuse material. Fucking "Grape", "les bean". For fuck's sakes.
I hate that shit. I can feel my eyes rolling back so far I end up going back to before I was a dead ghost.
Words exist for a reason
"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced." 1
If we don't use the right words to describe what we see, how the fuck are we supposed to understand reality and categorize the complexities of the human condition and existence? Collapsing multiple distinct things into one vague substitute narrows the range of thought. The whole point of having language is specificity and expression.
Orwell already mapped this out. Syme, in 1984:
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." 2
"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words... We're cutting the language down to the bone." 2
And the method isn't complicated. You just replace everything with compounds:
"Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well... Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good'... 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still." 2
Sound familiar? "Unalive." Right.
Like. The difference between loneliness and solitude. Solitude is inherently positive, the peace of being comfortable alone with yourself. Loneliness implies isolation, disconnection, absence of genuine human connection. One word cannot do what two words do. They're not interchangeable. They describe different internal mappings to different territories.
Ouroboros
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." 1
And here's where it comes back and ties into itself: trigger warnings aren't inherently bad. A show warning you about violence or sexual content? Fine, useful, cool. But the moment trigger warnings become about inventing substitute words to avoid naming the actual thing but means multiple things, you've crossed into Orwellian newspeak. The absolute antithesis of liberty. I will die on this hill.
Shit, never thought we'd be living in a world where Huxley and Orwell had a dystopian baby. Some more quotes if you'd so kindly oblige:
"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible." 3
And then there's this, which should make anyone online in 2026 deeply uncomfortable:
"The keyword here is BLACKWHITE... Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary." 4
This is supposed to be fiction.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.