We Need to Kill “Unalive”

Graphic by: Téa Sklar

I don’t know about you, but the word “unalive” makes me want to “unalive” myself. Every time I hear that word, my face tenses and I have to stop myself from reaching through my phone and strangling someone. When “unalive” was purely online, it was annoying and sounded vaguely like someone was casting spells, but it was tolerable. When I heard people start to say it to my face, however, I had to put my foot down. I couldn’t believe that someone had the audacity to actually say that word in real life, let alone in front of me, a known adamant hater of, well, everything.

The source of this tragedy: YouTube cracking down on swearing in videos. YouTubers that once swore like a sailor were now avoiding cussing (at least forthe first couple of minutes of their videos) to get around the algorithm. This new era of YouTube was hell on earth. It felt like the very essence of YouTube was stripped away. The censorship later spread to other apps such as TikTok, where the infamous “unalive” was born.

At first, “unalive” seemed smart: use a word that the algorithm doesn’t recognize to continue talking about real issues. But then it mutated. People were using “unalive” in every single post that referenced anything remotely violent. It was as if some kind of evil algorithm god was going to strike them down if they dared to say the words “kill” or “murder”. And despite there being absolutely zero evidence of any algorithm god (or goddess– we don’t discriminate) present, people started blindly following suit. They discouraged others from using words that were too direct for fear of the ultimate punishment from the almighty algorithm: having a video taken down.

But like any cult, there were nonbelievers. Soon, people began to test the algorithm by creating two nearly identical videos with the only difference being whether they used “unalive” or “kill”. Can anyone guess what the results of this experiment were? Surprise, surprise! The video that said “kill” almost always performed the same, if not better than the other video. But despite this evidence, the cult of the algorithm god was in too deep. They were brainwashed, and nothing that anybody said could save them.

Luckily, it seems like the internet is beginning to take back its independence from its algorithm overlords. Twitter users have continued to shame people for saying “unalive”, YouTubers are swearing more often, and most of the internet has (thankfully) agreed that using “unalive” is, ultimately, cringy. For the first time in a long time, all is well.