Episode #119: I. Are. Unalived!

It took about two weeks or so, but I got about 97% of my den & side of the basement the way I wanted. I still have 3% left to move into more crates {three Time-Life book series}, but I want to show what I've managed to get done so far.

If the title of his blog post seems weird, that's because one of the words from title was pulled from a mediocre Bored Panda article, and that word has become my new favorite stupidly woke descriptor that now replaces George Orwell's "unperson" from 1984.

That word is "unalived."

There are very few things that can get me worked up to the point of frothing at the mouth at the utter stupidity of the object in question. As you saw from a post from about month and a half ago, one is book censorship. For this post, it's the censorship of "offensive" words. Now I'm not talking about George Carlin's List Of Seven Words You Can't Say On Television {T.L.;DR: this was done back when cable did not exist and you had only ABC, NBC and CBS to play with, and I'm not gonna link 'cause I'm pretty sure you know what they are}. I'm talking about everyday words that people use in stories, news articles, essays, etc. etc. etc.

Anyways, I was reading a story on my phone from Bored Panda about 30 of the coolest people from history. But within the first seconds of reading, I was seeing a pair of this particular symbol, [ ], inserted into a story. As I further progressed with my reading, I saw them being inserted into almost every story. At first, I thought the word "sic" was being used because the prior word was somehow originally misspelled, but sadly, that was not the case.

It turns out they were substituting a supposedly "offensive/icky" word {keep in mind it seems that this website is based in one of the Scandinavian countries} with words they consider "not offensive", which in turn ultimately craters the original meaning of the phrase. Here are some wonderful examples.

1} Changed "saving around 20 lives and dying a damn hero" to "saving around 20 lives and passed away a damn hero;

2} Changed "using his Bowie knife, killed Cyrus Turner" to using my new fave word "using his Bowie knife, unalived Cyrus Turner";

3} Changed "It's one level of bad-a**ery to die for your cause" to "It's one level of bad-a**ery to take out for your cause", and finally;

4} Changed "To become a war chief he had to touch an enemy without killing him" to "To become a war chief he had to touch an enemy without unaliving him",  and in the next paragraph, they used the phrase "passed away" instead of the word "died".

This level of nonsense irritates me to no end, and I put this irritant right up there with those so-called "diversity readers" that seem to be all the rage these days. I mean, how whipped do you have to be, how afraid do you have to be, of inflicting...GASP!....a microaggression or worse, activating a non-legitimate trigger on a dainty-delicate soul who doesn't want to read bad words/or somehow read something that was innocently gotten wrong {e.g. describing someone with a medical condition incorrectly}.

Note: I am in no way mocking the legitimate triggers that people have. An ex-friend has some PTSD from certain events in her life, so that was always in the forefront whenever I was deciding to show bits, pieces and parts of my writing. If something that I'd written met her criteria, I simply didn't show it to her.

Is this what we, as a distinct group of people, have allowed to happen to the written word? Am I simply the last of chosen few who doesn't get offended by words in general, but does get offended by people, places and things?

For me, this kind of crap is just another nail in the coffin of common sense. Personal pronouns, the devaluing of a majority of people to appease a distinct minority {what is a woman?}, eliminating a person's ethnic identity (Latinx?}, you name it, someone is going to get offended or offer up a "safe/approved" substitute that you must use or else.

I like the grammar police about as much as I like the moronic revisionists who try to apply today's screwed up values and hyphenated identities (using African American for the 17th through the mid-20th century, instead of the normal descriptor of Black as a better alternative).  You simply cannot judge people/places/events of yesteryear with the crappy values/mores/ethics of today.

Same goes for grammar. I understand when workarounds are needed in order to post something to a social media platform that normally gets flagged. I've done it numerous times myself, both here and elsewhere, so I really get it. But to change the meaning of a sentence, a paragraph, or even a story, simply because you were being "offended" by the original words, just you makes look like all those people clutching their pearls when Elon Musk bought a sizable chunk of Twitter and wants to buy it outright.

Ultimately, it should be left up to the reader of the written word on whether they want to be offended or not, not the person who is writing or re-writing a story, an article, an essay, or whatever the medium is.

With that being said, have a spiffy rest of your week.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved