I have said this before, but I think this is one of the reasons that younger generations are so Puritan about… Everything. They’ve grown up on platforms like YouTube that censor the fuck out of every thing. So censored, that they don’t even put it in the captions. And you are demonetised if you say these words.
So these kids are grown up with these banned words and having to use alternative words to describe them (rape/grape, paedophilia/pdf, etc) being the worst things you can do.
However, simultaneously, they’ve also grown up seeing powerful people both in the media, as well as political world leaders who are accused of these things that are sodevastatingly serious no one is even allowed to say the word – and yet these powerful people have zero consequences – or even happily joke and admit that they do these things.
This is such an absurd dichotomy. That the word is the real danger, but that the perpetrators – some of whom had admitted these things – not only retain their power and positions, but actually continue to rise and rise and gain more power.
As an Old watching all of this, I’m able to understand that the act itself of rape or sexual assault or paedophilia or abuse has a far more devastating impact on people than the words.
But these kids growing up on the YouTube generations have grown up with the opposite reality. They’ve grown up with the reality of, sure, the president of the most powerful country in the world can openly joke and brag about the fact that he has sexually assaulted people and that he is sexually attracted to his own daughter – but if you say that in a YouTube video, the video will be buried and possibly even taken down because you said those words. You didn’t censor them.
It baffles me that people are genuinely confused about why the kids these days are so Puritan when it comes to the language of things like sexual assault, but they don’t take the actual act of sexual assault very seriously.
Because they have grown up in a world that Encourages monsters to continue to gain power and popularity despite – or because they are monsters. You’re just not allowed to label their crimes.
Their crimes are acceptable in this society. But people calling them out on those crimes is not.
Orwell was very concerned about the government imposing NewSpeak on the people, but the people have done it themselves.