Algospeak: You Can’t Unalive Meaning

Unalive. Seggs. Leg booty. Terms like these pop up all over social media. To the uninitiated, they may seem fairly strange. Which, as it often goes with new slang, is kind of the point.

These words are part of the phenomenon known as algospeak, a strategy used to circumvent social media content moderation algorithms relying on keywords. According to Merriam-Webster, the term algospeak is a blend of the algo- from algorithm and -speak, a suffix indicating a type of jargon. They date its usage from 2021. Old enough to have generated plenty of discussion, recent enough that said discussion is still immersed in the fear of change.

You don’t have to look far to find judgement on the usage of algospeak. Just a quick search on Instagram for the word itself led me to such examples as posts deriding algospeak as not being ‘real language’ and ‘actual English words’, a teacher joking that their students had been watching too many videos online, and a cartoon depicting a character at a library asking for ‘To Unalive a Mockingbird’. I can’t be sure what different examples other people might see with the same search because of… well, the algorithm.

It is perhaps understandable to have a visceral negative reaction to what could be seen as watering down serious topics. I myself was particularly caught off guard to learn of the use of sewer slide instead of suicide. But in an environment of heavy corporate censorship, directing our ire towards mostly young people and the language they use seems very much like missing the point.

Is Algospeak ‘Real Language’?

The principle of descriptivism is considered very important in modern linguistics. This entails a focus on actual usage without judgement. All language is real language; there is no objective authority that gets to decide definitively which language is right and wrong. The fact is, algospeak is being used; it is a genuine variety that means something to a growing group of people, and denigrating their usage does nothing to fight censorship.

The terms themselves are also not always quite as new as they may seem. For instance, the phallic implications of the eggplant emoji are older than algospeak as a concept, with an Instagram ban in 2015 leading to the hashtag #FreeTheEggplant. Similarly, terms like le$bean and P@l*st-ne employ a method reminiscent of leetspeak, an older form of internet jargon in which letters are often replaced by other characters (e.g. !337$p34k for leetspeak itself). The point is, algospeak is not an entirely new and impenetrable code; it is merely yet another development of language, using what familiar tools are available, and sometimes upgrading them.

Of course, algospeak comes with the specific motive of avoiding certain other words, but this is no indication of not using ‘real language’ either. However we may feel about euphemisms, the history of English is littered with them, with certain topics being very consistently targeted. For example, in the University of Glasgow’s Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE), the category Die (01.02.05) contains 212 words/phrases, and by my count, euphemisms make up 177, or 83.5% of these. Some are very old, such as give up the ghost, which appeared in Old English (OE) as gast agiefan. Common phrases like pass on/away also express similar sentiments to OE words like forþfaran ‘to go forth’.

Compared to such terms, unalive seems relatively blunt. Such euphemisms have always existed alongside blunter terms like die and OE cwelan and steorfan (origin of starve, originally meaning to die of any means). Avoidance of direct references to uncomfortable or stigmatised topics is a perfectly normal aspect of human language in its own right. Most of us probably do it in small ways in our everyday lives, even if it’s just to avoid swearing in front of kids or to soften a sensitive topic when trying to comfort a friend.

Connection and Activism

The issue is not the language itself, but the additional political and technological forces accelerating and policing it. In fact, in the midst of such forces, I think we should take some hope from the adaptability and linguistic creativity being shown. The heart of the matter is simply people caring very deeply about certain topics and finding ways to communicate about them even while their communication is restricted. An interview-based study on TikTok by Steen et al. (2023) found a particular need for algospeak by marginalised communities, such as LGBTQ+, Black and disabled people. These communities often use it to spread important messages, such as discussions of oppression, sex education and suicide awareness. That has to be better than these topics simply disappearing on platforms like that. If you get a message that helps keep someone from suicide by calling it sewer slide, the end result is still that they’re alive.

You might very well ask, why not just use different platforms? After all, the algorithm doesn’t make it easy for them. Steen et al. reported experiences of it gradually learning and filtering terms like seggs, as well as the inner workings just being generally opaque, with some participants having videos removed without even knowing why. But the fact remains that certain sites just have a monopoly on global attention at this point, and many people are going to go where their messages reach the biggest audience, even if it’s hard work.

Another study by Hess et al. (2026), specifically focusing on pro-Palestine activists, found that TikTok was favoured for its personal, video-based interface and chances of wider reach through recommendations. This kind of reach is especially important when tackling an issue as heavily censored as Palestinian activism. Participants reported that videos on this subject tended to be removed more quickly even than other political content, and that even non-political content pertaining to Palestine in itself was flagged. This bias is deeply embedded in multiple platforms. A report by 7amleh (AKA the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media) showed clear repeated discrimination against Palestinian users by Meta, with the automated moderation system needing only a 25% confidence threshold to remove content by users in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2021, leaked documents also revealed that Facebook posts written in Arabic were subject to overzealous moderation of innocuous content.

In this kind of environment, practical solutions are often employed, like removing diacritics from Arabic words and mixing in some Latin script. This is similar to the previously mentioned pattern of replacing letters in English words, which is also abundant in Palestine-specific posts.

Alongside these practical replacements, there is the particularly poignant usage of the watermelon symbol. First adopted to represent the colours of the Palestinian flag while displays of the actual flag were being suppressed by the Israeli government following the 1967 Six-Day War, its likeness now adorns many social media pages in emoji form. A symbol with such a history sends a strong message that Palestinians and their allies will not be silenced, even as new methods and contexts of censorship are continually invented. A far cry from the vapid caricature often associated with algospeak, it represents communities of intelligent, socially conscious people who will not give up.