By Mia Hanuska
Trigger Warning: This article discusses mature topics such as suicide, death, and rape, and is thus not suitible for young audiences. Please read with caution; if you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
If you’re on Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, X, Facebook, or any social media nowadays, you’ve probably heard, “Guys, we gotta unalive them,” “when I was 12, I attempted to unalive myself,” or the even more extreme version, “my dad was un@l!ved before I was born.” What do these all have in common? They refrain from using words specific to killing—“kill,” “suicide,” “murder.” And even if you’re not on social media, you’ve probably still heard “unalive” floating around: today’s middle schoolers use it regularly to refer to death.
Popularized and pushed by social media, the term “unalive,” and its various alternate spellings (“un@live” and “un@l!ve,” to name a few), have become mainstream in efforts to avoid the censorship on social media platforms. Many platforms will shadow-ban, stopping showing a profile’s posts to new users, or directly ban those who don’t adhere to the community guidelines of the site. However, in order to maintain conversations and spread awareness around suicide and death, users have begun finding alternative words, phrases, and spellings to subvert the algorithm. A similar phenomenon has started with the word “rape,” where in order to discuss rape or sexual assault, users must censor themselves with “r@pe,” grape,” the grape emoji (🍇), or SA (abbreviation of sexual assault) to avoid consequences from the algorithm.
The need to change or alter words in order to please a computer algorithm has infiltrated the English language, and it’s beginning with the newest generation. Young children today are using “unalive” in day-to-day speech much more frequently than other terms regarding death. Although this replacement of words is not necessarily a new concept—look at the etymology of “deceased,” for example—it does show the importance of exposure to a diverse selection of media from a young age. While social media users may have to use “unalive,” movies such as Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, and The Incredibles all directly refer to or show attempted suicides. Most importantly, they talk about suicide, and in doing so, help to remove the stigma around discussing the life-altering effect it has on people. The mass social media need of the words “unalive” and “grape” is a paradox in of itself: it risks “contributing to a culture of silence and shame around these topics,” yet is also required in order to actually share these topics in the public discourse.
Furthermore, linguist, author, and content creator Alex Aleksic highlights the euphemistic nature of the term, stating, “many adolescents use it when they’re uncomfortable talking about the concepts of death, since ‘unalive’ sounds like a less scary word.” He predicts “unalive” will continue to spread to formal applications, such as academic papers and institutions, as the word becomes more normalized.
But what does this mean for English?
Frankly, this integration of online jargon is the future of the English language, as Aleksic emphasizes in his novel Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language. While some are worried about the adoption of words like “unalive” and brainrot terms like “sigma,” “mew,” “6-7,” the process these words are currently undergoing is not a new one—think back to the 2010s’ “chungus,” “upvote,” and “dabbing.” Some slang simply becomes part of peoples’ vocabulary; others, forgotten as new terms replace them.
Plus, English is becoming more and more influenced by new technology such as social media algorithms and large language models like ChatGPT. AI’s unusual speech patterns have begun to become more mainstream in vocabularies, with more people using words such as “delve” in everyday life because of ChatGPT’s overuse of it. English will continue to be shaped by the platforms where it’s used the most, where most people spend hours scrolling and consuming content.
“Unalive” and “grape” are just the tip of the iceberg of how avoiding censorship on social media and trying to trick algorithms is impacting English. Unfortunately, with the novelty of these specific occurrences, we’ll just have to wait and see how English continues to acquire more and more words from algospeak, or how algorithms shape how people speak.
Interested in learning more? I highly recommend checking out more of Adam Aleksic’s work on his substack, articles, or by reading his novel, Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language. He can also be found online by his handle @etymologynerd.