LOS ANGELES — Online trend watchers have been flagging a noticeable rise in the use of “algospeak,” euphemistic terms used to avoid sex-related censorship on popular platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Much like in the era before the sexual revolution of the 20th century, when people got around blanket cultural prohibitions about mentioning sex by using terms like “Greek lessons” (anal sex) or “friend of Dorothy’s” (a gay man), 21st-century social media users are using esoteric and often absurd lingo to replace even basic sexual terms.
As tech culture site Lifehacker reported last week, algospeak comprises “coded words and emojis that aren’t immediately decipherable — but whose meaning you could infer alongside the right context clues.”
Lifehacker provided several examples of the trend, including:
Accountant: Sex worker or Only Fans creator. (Chosen because who’s going to ask more about your job after you say you’re an accountant? No one.)
Spicy [eggplant emoji]: Vibrator. Or, you know, the other thing that looks kind of like a flesh-colored eggplant.
P+[star emoji]: Porn star.
Leg booty: A phonetic reference to the LGBTQ community.
Seggs/Seggsytime: Stand-in for sex.
@nal: Anal.
[Corn emoji]: A stand-in for porn. This is unfortunate given that this kid went viral for being obsessed with actual corn.
Nip nops: Nipples.
Le dollar bean: Lesbian (a literal text-to-speech pronunciation of Le$bian, the precursor to “le dollar bean.”)
“While the inner machinations of algorithms are largely unknown,” Lifehacker noted, “being blackballed by one can suppress your content and seal your doom — and one of the quickest ways to do that is to use language that could be flagged as a violation of the platform’s content guidelines or terms of service. So internet content creators have developed a growing glossary of terms designed to circumvent automated brand safety filters.”
The rise of algospeak shows that while the century may have changed, people's need to resort to subterfuge in order to bypass self-appointed moralists and communicate about perfectly normal sexual behavior surely has not.