We Are Going to Kill “Unalive”  🔗 **Source:** [We Are Going to Kill “Unalive”](https://www.anildash.com/2026/10/06/kill-unalive/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [platform-moderation, algorithmic-censorship, euphemism, content-warnings, open-web] > author: Anil Dash > source: anildash.com > reference: https://www.anildash.com/2026/10/06/kill-unalive/ > date created: 2026-10-07 09:43 > --- > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > # 🏷️ Title: We are going to kill “unalive” > ## 🧭 Table of contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning styles assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO analysis](#️-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > - [🔄 Refactor appendix](#-refactor-appendix--we-are-going-to-kill-unalive) > ## 📝 Summary > This is a descriptive reading of a personal essay. It does not give mental-health guidance, and it adds no advice about suicide, self-harm, or sexual violence beyond what the author argues. Anil Dash published the essay on anildash.com on 2026-10-06 (date per the task metadata). It is opinion and advocacy, written in the first person with strong language, and it argues for a change in how people write on platforms. The captured text shows no sponsor, advertisement, or commercial disclosure. > - **What happened.** Dash argues that "unalive," misspellings such as r*pe, and emoji substitutes like 🍇 spread because people believe (or have found) that platforms punish plain words for death and sexual assault (P2, P4, P7). Dash says the habit began on algorithmic-feed platforms such as TikTok and now shows up in speech (P3). Dash then calls on readers to say what they mean, build presences on several platforms and on sites they control, and push back publicly when a platform limits them (P16-P30). > - **The claim.** The central argument is that euphemism written to appease an algorithm costs people twice. It filters out the people who use content filters (P6), and it trains a generation to let platforms choose their words (P9). The thesis line is the call to "kill" the word (P22, P32). > - **Documented examples versus argument.** The essay states a small set of concrete examples: the phrase "he unalived himself" heard aloud (P3), the way people refer to the central crime in a Cornell University case (P4), and a toddler saying "please like and subscribe" (P10). It also states facts about people and companies: the Ellison family and TikTok, and Musk and child sexual abuse material (P12). The reasoning that connects them (a deliberate system, a lost generation, harm to AI training data) is the author's argument, not a documented finding. No study, platform policy, or moderation log is cited in the capture. > - **Why it matters.** If the author is right, content-warning tools and keyword filters stop working because the vocabulary keeps shifting (P6). If the claim is a perception, as P2 and P28 allow, the habit could persist with no enforcement behind it. > - **Key stakeholders.** Writers, artists and activists who post on algorithmic platforms; younger people the author says grew up inside those platforms; readers who use content filters; platform operators named in the essay (TikTok, Meta, Google, Instagram, YouTube, X, Substack, Spotify); and people who write about or are affected by death, suicide, and sexual assault. > - **Risks and tradeoffs.** The author's own instruction carries risk for the people who follow it: P16 quotes the objections "it will cost me audience" and demonetization, and the essay answers with "what if they do." The essay endorses content warnings and abbreviations like "SA" (P5), so the target is euphemism done for the algorithm, not all careful wording. The topic involves suicide and rape, and the essay treats the words as things that should be sayable. Readers who are sensitive to those topics may want to read with that in mind. > - **Bottom line.** A forceful commentary with one useful, checkable distinction (warning markers a reader chooses versus wording a platform forces) and a set of unverified causal claims. The author concedes in P2 and P28 that part of the phenomenon may be belief and self-censoring, not enforcement. > ## 📖 Main content > **The definition and the spread (P1-P3).** Dash opens by saying older people who ask what "unalive" means usually don't know, except those with kids or those who study internet culture (P1). Dash defines it as a word used in place of dying, death, or killing on platforms where saying those words is expected to draw punishment from the algorithm, and adds that this may be perception, since "no one is actually willing to find out" (P2). The author says the pattern started on TikTok, spread to nearly all digital media, and now appears in speech, with the example of hearing someone say "he unalived himself" about a death by suicide (P3). The sentence is reported as the author's account of what Dash has heard. > **A second example and the author's limits on the argument (P4-P6).** The author says the pattern became more visible during recent online discussion of a Cornell University rape case, where people write r*pe, "grape," or the grape emoji (P4). Dash then states what they are not against: content warnings, sensitivity markers, abbreviations such as "SA," and ironic distance as a coping tool (P5). Dash's objection is to wording chosen to appease platforms, because a filter user's tool "will no longer be effective" once everyone uses misspellings and imagery (P6). > **Thesis and the "constraints" argument (P7-P13).** P7 states the thesis: people spread mangled syntax because they believe or have experienced silencing for plain description. P8 is a subhead. P9 argues that a generation hasn't noticed how extreme it is that platforms chose its language, and that algorithm demands pushed creators to make exaggerated thumbnail faces. P10 uses the parental anecdote of a toddler saying "please like and subscribe." P11 describes Instagram users begging for cultish comment phrases to earn AI-generated replies, with the algorithm described as "an angry god." P12 argues that the people who pretended to defend free expression now accept billionaires deciding allowed words, names Larry Ellison (TikTok) and Elon Musk (X), and links the author's own guide to leaving X. P13 argues that AI tools trained on this internet may not know the uncensored world, with "genocide" as the example. > **The creative argument and the answer (P14-P22).** After a second subhead (P14, profane in the source), P15 argues that imagination is limited by the words available, so work is "unalive before it is even born." P16 gives the answer, "say what you mean," and admits it takes courage and possible sacrifice. P17-P19 ask whether readers will push, move platforms, or use the ones they already have (email newsletters, podcasts, the author's own blog), and add the aside that Substack is not an email newsletter and a Spotify show is not a podcast. P20 speaks to readers from the 20th century: MySpace styling, open-source LiveJournal code, and cheap blogs show another world is possible. P21 speaks to readers from this century and calls the situation "a system working as designed." P22 closes the section with "It is time to kill “unalive”." > **The six-step response and the close (P23-P32).** P24-P30 list actions: start from what you mean, build a presence on every platform, tell the audience free speech matters more than corporate convenience, build alliances, release uncensored work and see where platforms push back, make noise if a platform limits you, and praise others who push back. P28 adds that readers may find they were censoring themselves against limits tha I talk to a lot of old people, those who were born in the 20th century, and if I ask them what the word “unalive” means, they usually have no idea what I’m talking about, except for some of them who have kids or who study Internet culture. This will, of course, probably seem *very* weird to most people who were born in or grew up in the 21st century. Just to recap for the olds: “unalive” is the word you use to represent concepts like dying, or death, or killing or being killed, on digital platforms where saying those words accurately will cause the algorithm to punish or censor you. Or, maybe, where the *perception* is that using those words will result in being censored by the algorithm, and no one is actually willing to find out what happens if you use the forbidden words. This sort of attack on people’s expression started on platforms like TikTok, where nearly all content is distributed through an algorithmic feed, but has since become ubiquitous in nearly all digital media that we see. In fact, these tics are now *so* prevalent that it’s routine to hear people using this kind of language in everyday life, even though there’s not yet an algorithm to appease in the physical world. I’ve heard people say, out loud, “he unalived himself”, in reference to someone dying by suicide. And all of this has become even more visible in recent days as online conversation has turned to discussion of the horrific lack of accountability around the tragic [rape case at Cornell University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Cornell_University_rape_allegations). Across the Internet, people are routinely referring to the central crime in the case as r\*pe or “grape” or even using the 🍇 emoji, without a second thought for what it means that the very *word* can’t be said online anymore. Or, at least, the *assumption* is that it can’t be said. To be clear, I am very much in favor of people using content warnings or sensitivity markers for content, and fine with people using abbreviations like “SA” for references to disturbing or triggering topics like sexual assault; we should provide people with as much context and control as possible when choosing what information they want to consume and when. I also know that sometimes, people use lesser terms for stressful subjects like death or assault to create a bit of ironic distance from painful or upsetting topics. But most of the different variations of wording and emojis are coming from trying to appease the platforms, and there’s a heavy cost for those who are worried about being mindful: If someone *is* using a tool to filter out content, it will no longer be effective because everyone is using misspellings and euphemisms and imagery to get around the algorithm. The spread of censored and mangled syntax is happening because people believe, or have experienced, that platforms will silence them for accurately describing the world in plain language. This shit is terrible, and it has to stop. #### You Were Not Born With These Constraints One of the things that’s most concerning to me is that an entire generation has grown up not realizing how *extreme* it is that their very language is being chosen for them by platforms run by people who hate that generation’s ability to express itself, and who hate the things it has to say. From their youngest days, this generation grew up watching people make stupid faces at them for YouTube thumbnails and never had a chance to reflect on the fact that those creators didn’t want to be humiliating themselves by making those expressions — the demands of the algorithms of Big Tech *forced* them to do that. The rituals of feeding the algorithm are so built into people’s everyday habits that they’re invisible to people who weren’t alive before today’s platforms took over. Every parent of my cohort remembers the first time they heard their toddler finish doing something cute in their living room, and then turn around and say, “please like and subscribe!” afterwards. It’s a ghastly, sickening feeling to confront the fact that our little kids were being brainwashed into thinking that every adorable thing they did should be followed by a prompt to provide data to Google. Over on Instagram, where people originally signed up thinking they were going to see someone’s vacation pictures, or shots of their cousin’s kids, you’re now stuck watching people beg for everyone to reply with cultish phrases in the comments, which will then earn them an obviously AI-generated response in return, all in service of “showing activity” to the algorithm, like it’s an angry god that needs a sacrifice. They’re just not sure exactly *what* the angry god wants. Your free speech was taken away from you, and the people who did it are the same ones who spent *years* pretending to care about “free expression”. They contrived examples of lack of free speech on college campuses while squashing protests, and cried crocodile tears about “cancel culture” while getting people fired for political criticism. Now they have *no problem* with billionaires deciding exactly what words everyone is allowed to say. Larry Ellison is not content with his family owning all of the movies and TV shows — his family has to control what words people are allowed to speak on [TikTok](https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/06/the-threat-to-video-creators/), too. Elon Musk isn’t content to merely [generate and distribute child sexual abuse material for profit](https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/18/threatening-kids-with-ai/) — he wants to silence the messages of the few decent people who are foolish enough to remain on Twitter/X, too. (That’s why I wrote you [a guide](https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/23/taking-action-ai-harms/) on how to get your organization off of that cursed platform.) Now that an entire generation has grown up using these Orwellian euphemisms, and all of the Big AI products are trained on the Internet that was created under this regime, do you think today’s AI tools even know that the real, uncensored world exists? If you can’t say “genocide” on any of the major platforms, yet those are the ones all of the Big AI tools used as their training data... well, then the AI tools sure aren’t very likely to know much about genocide, are they? #### Fuck the Algorithm Our creativity can be constrained by the language we use — our imaginations are limited by what we can think to say. If we’re trained to limit the words we speak just by habit, and those limits are put in place by people whose social, political, cultural and moral goals are the opposite of what we value, then our work is unalive before it is even born. The answer to this is simple: say what you mean. This will take, to some degree, courage. It may even take, I hesitate to say, some sacrifice. When I suggest this course of action to people, they inevitably say, “But it will cost me audience!” or “But what if I lose followers!” or “What if they demonetize me!” Okay, what if they do? What if they do. Are you willing to push on this? To make a point about it? To move to platforms where you can actually say what you mean? Or to remember that you *already have* platforms where you can say what you mean? On an email newsletter or [podcast](https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/28/apple-video-podcast-power/) you can say whatever the hell you want and nobody can stop you. On my blog right here, I can even curse in a headline and it won’t affect anything about how my site operates. (And a reminder: [Substack](https://www.anildash.com/2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/) is not an email newsletter, and a Spotify show is not a [podcast](https://www.anildash.com/2024/02/05/wherever-you-get-podcasts/) — they’ll be unaliving your distribution any day now.) If you are a 20th century relic like me, it is incumbent upon you to remind the generation that grew up inside the algorithm that [another world is possible](https://www.anildash.com/2026/03/27/endgame-open-web/), and that we know this because we lived it. We were able to style a MySpace page in any way that we wanted; the code for LiveJournal was entirely open source so there was no part of the algorithm that was unknowable. A blog like the one you’re reading right now could be made by anyone, and put up for pennies, and nobody could stop it from being read by millions of people. (And that last one? It’s still possible.) If you are from *this* century, forget all that rambling bullshit about ancient history: all that matters is you getting what you deserve, because you’ve been fucked over by the same billionaires who’ve poisoned your planet and infested your world with slop. The best artists around you are invisible to you, and the most important statements by activists that you care about are being silenced. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s [a system working as designed](https://www.anildash.com/2024/05/28/systems-the-purpose-of-a-system/). And the proof is as obvious as the fact that the angriest activists you know can’t even talk about systemic abuses or state violence without having to put it in algorithmically approved speech or censoring their captions like they’re going to be read by 5-year-olds. It should make you furious. It is time to kill “unalive”. The response is simple: * For every message you put out, start by *saying what you mean*. Don’t work backwards from what the algorithm wants or what a platform permits. * Build a presence on every platform you can, even the ones where you have fewer followers or where you’re harder to find. * Tell your audience that your speech being free matters more than corporate convenience. Keep saying it, and keep it positive: independence gets them better art, better information, and more connected communities. * Build alliances with other artists, activists and people who share your values, and let them know you’re going to start sharing your work uncensored. * Start releasing your work uncensored and see where the platforms push back. (You may be surprised: sometimes you were censoring yourself in anticipation of limits that weren’t even there.) * If a platform does try to limit your reach or expression, make a LOT OF NOISE about it. Tell the press, rally your alliance, and spread the word on your other platforms, using the moment to build audience and raise support there. Get others to amplify the parts of your work that don’t violate platform policy, so the controversy drives people to the rest. * Find the others pushing back on algorithmic control of expression, and raise and praise their work when they do the same. If we keep accepting the words that are forced upon us by TikTok and Meta and Google and all the rest, while platforms like Twitter/X allow the most hateful and harmful content in the world to be distributed completely unfettered, we’ll only see authoritarianism rise, and the harms against the vulnerable accelerate. But what breaks my heart almost as much is that we’ll see so many brilliant artists and activists and thinkers whose genius will be muted or silenced by mindless, heartless algorithms that capriciously decide who gets to say exactly what words, in what ways. I get angry every time I think about it. The tech tycoons get ever more brazen in what they’re willing to say publicly, boasting about how they’re going to cause the end of the world, or calling for ethnic cleansing, all while putting tighter and tighter reins on the speech and expression of ordinary people. It’s time for “unalive” to die., We Are Going to Kill “Unalive”, Anil Dash, 01m4b8ec1hmx5y8jbzr7hj3cwp.