While the History, Rinse, and Repeat article earlier this week focused on speech codes and regulations imposed on speech by a body of authority, just as interesting a topic is the flip-side of speech codes: self-censorship.
The concept of uncensored and free speech is still a relatively new one, arguably created in 1791 when it was included as the First Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. Before then, speech that was considered seditious or unpopular was not protected and, unless self-censored, was either undertaken in secret or – more interestingly – in code.
One of the best examples of this is Cockney rhyming slang. In 1829, London was bustling with a massive population growth and an increase in crime. Though the city was nominally patrolled by the Bow Street Runners, Sir Robert Peel, who served as Home Secretary in 1822 and later went on to become Prime Minister in 1838, decided to create an organized police force with the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. (As a side note, policemen are often referred to “bobbies” in the United Kingdom as a slang reference to Peel’s first name.)
Though the London public understood the need for law and order, the creation of a police force was not a popular one, especially since most officers were not local to their beats. One 1832 article from The Poor Man’s Guardian described the police as follows:
“The police-fellows go about breaking heads and laying informations, in both of which accompaniments they are most diabolically indiscriminate … we have no hesitation in declaring our conviction that a more deservedly unpopular body of men never disgraced the name of constable or peace-officer more than these blue-coated bullies.”
Another broadsheet from 1830, written by William Carpenter, reported that in a mass meeting at St. Pancras, over 2,000 angry citizens protested the loss of their “right of governing [our] parochial affairs” and noted the right of appointing guardians [constables] of [our] own property has been arbitrarily wrested from [us] and usurped by the secretary of state for the Home Department.”1
With new policemen suddenly patrolling areas known for criminality, those up to no good needed a way to communicate without raising alarm. The solution was to substitute words with phrases or other terms that rhymed. Some famous examples include “apples and pears” for stairs, “porkie pies” for lies, and “loaf of bread” for head. Oftentimes, the phrases were later shortened – for example, use your loaf of bread became use your loaf and telling porkie pies morphed into telling porkies.
Though it is unlikely that criminals would openly discuss dastardly plots using rhyming slang directly in front of police, the emergence of a pseudo-code undoubtedly provided a layer of privacy and security from the authorities, and this likely helped the practice spread to the Cockney population at large, who – as seen above – bristled at the constant presence of constables in their neighborhoods.
The new version of Cockney Slang
Cockney slang is far from the only example of coded language in history. Author Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, who suffered from censorship in Tsarist Russia, even joked that his works were written in an “Aesopian Language” when referencing his secretly subversive content.
However, a similar pattern is emerging in the world today. On social media, certain terms, phrases, or movements are either blacklisted or suffer from low engagement because of each app’s algorithm. To avoid such consequences, many users have developed something known as “algospeak.” Some aspects of algospeak are relatively simple, such as using a zero instead of an “o” or an asperand instead of an “a” to spell words. Alternatively, users will purposefully misspell words in ways that still make phonetic sense. For example, a common way of writing “sex” is “seggs;” “weed” is sometimes spelled “ouid.” Emojis also play a part, with certain images used in lieu of banned or controversial terms.
There are more complex substitutions as well. For example, algorithms downgraded content related to COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic as a way to combat misinformation; as a result, users referred to the crisis as the “Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour.” Sex workers are banned from most social media platforms, and accordingly list their occupations as “accountants” to fly under the radar. Since mentions of suicide are heavily moderated, users often use the expression “to unalive oneself” instead. Recently, the use of “camping” referred to matters relating to Roe v. Wade.
Such practices are only growing; according to Forbes, almost one third of Americans on social media or gaming sites have claimed that they have “used emojis or alternative phrases to circumvent banned terms.”2
But while the creation of algospeak and Aesopian Languages throughout history are very similar, there are important differences. The most obvious is that being kicked off of Twitter or Facebook is not the same as being thrown into jail. That said, lack of access to social media is not a light-hearted matter, either. Modern daily life is incredibly intertwined with social media – for example, half of recruiters confessed they would reject a job applicant if he or she did not have an online presence.
Another big distinction is the fact that, throughout history, the authority against which Aesopian Languages were created were governments and state agents. In today’s world, the pseudo-surveillance state is dictated by a cabal of private tech companies, highlighting their immense power and influence.
But the biggest difference, in this author’s opinion, is that the use of algospeak is used by everyone – both those who have views that are opposed by big tech and those that have views in line with them. This is something entirely new: it is doubtful a Soviet author would use code words when praising the Communist Party.
The distinction, however, is that the police or government can only punish actors; it cannot really reward them. In contrast, social media doesn’t just decide who will be the losers of society, but also the winners – and all with a mysterious algorithm that no one understands. While Cockneys once grumbled that the police were “diabolically indiscriminate” in their acts, most young people feel the exact same way today about the social media algorithm.
For example, in an article on influencer culture in Aero Magazine, one writer looked into the success of TikTok mega-star Charli D’Amelio. He concluded that “what propelled D’Amelio to instant fame wasn’t her better than average dancing, attractive face and physique or consistent posting schedule: it was TikTok’s complex algorithm.”3
Similarly, after a rumor circulated that using the term LGBT didn’t perform as well on the algorithm, users instead began calling it “leg booty,” despite knowing that social media platforms are overwhelmingly sympathetic to the “leg booty community.” It is not known whether there was any substance behind the rumor, but the fact that a new term was hurriedly put into use and spread so quickly again shows the influence of the algorithm.
Over the past decade, levels of anxiety and depression in young adults has had a meteoric rise: after all, how can young people not feel on edge when their every social media move is graded in terms of popularity?
But what is scarier is that it remains to be seen what the full effects will be from this untested frontier of social engineering. In the words of Shakespeare and later Huxley, it’s certainly a brave new world.
https://reynolds-news.com/2022/08/29/police-brutality-history-stephen-basdeo/#_edn26
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2022/09/16/algospeak-social-media-survey/?sh=52da108c55e1
https://areomagazine.com/2022/04/22/the-fame-trap-gen-z-tiktok-and-influencer-culture/
AH Childs is on target. She writes of a practice with a long tradition. See how Arthur Meltzer, of Michigan State, updates Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing in his Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing.