There are also written accents on social media: cat accounts want to sound "cat". The accent becomes part of identity, which is what I show to others with/through my accent. Fascinating topic
I was 60% into your book, and then you cited Chaucer and the last paragraph of a chapter made me well up in tears, and then suddenly it was all over! 😭 Thanks for the great book - I'm a 45-year-old historical linguist and I learned a lot! (Including the Chaucer quote, ironically!)
Amazing piece, compact yet very informative! Made me think about other states and countries where there is heavy censorship (on top of the algorithmic one) and people invent their own language to avoid both.
I just find it interesting that in all the talk about how impactful word choice is the word Adam chose to use was war. It's a level of erasure and denial that is harmful to the liberation of Palestinians.
If I have one personal style of performance for my wife, another for my kids, one for work in my role there, and yet and still different among my male friends what does that say about the —authentic— me? Is there such a personage in life or is it all just role switching for the situation in which we find ourselves at the moment?
Kind of agree, kind of don't — agree that authenticity in the normal sense doesn't exist, but I think it can exist in a less standard sense. For example, when you were talking about crafting content for the algorithm, I thought to myself "aha! so I'll have to be authentic and not go with what the algorithm wants", but then realized that would still be going with the algorithm, but just in the opposite direction. There's a parallel to this in Buddhism, which, yeah, the Middle Way, but the key is that it's not actually getting to some objective middle, which is how it's often understood, but rather discerning the point at which you are not moved by compulsion towards or against. In that sense, being authentic wouldn't be never changing your actions to fit the circumstance, but it would be a different internal relation to those changes — being free of the "compulsion" to code-switch but potentially still code-switching if it's appropriate. Kind of like being able to authentically engage in inauthenticity since that's still an authentic choice you're making. Similar to how someone who has recovered from OCD doesn't stop washing their hands entirely, they just are no longer compelled to do so and just wash them when it's reasonable.
Going to order your book, by the way! Been a fan of your IG reels for a while and happy to support — hope you make the bestseller lists!
IOF is used as substitute to the IDF to subvert and counter the embedded propaganda in the original name and foster awareness of the settler colonial dynamics. Israel cannot act ‘in defense’ as an offensive project, the name of the (Israel Defence forces) is whitewashing for a genocidal apartheid regime and propaganda used to skew the drastic power dynamics of their illegal occupation and colonisation and to maintain their own baseless narrative as victims of aggression. Everything about Israel’s existence as a parasitic, racist, expansionist, occupying settler colony that subsists on the blood, theft of land of its natives is inherently aggressive as settler colonies are aggressive by design. Israel was founded upon ethnic cleansing and land theft and name of the IDF is one way Israel masks its expansionism, by reframing their ongoing colonisation of Palestine through illegal settlements and invasions of neighbouring countries as protective,
Israeli Occupying Force however is overt partisan terminology, not used as ‘algospeak’ to avoid nonexistent censorship for the word IDF, asserting that is purely ahistorical. the phrase IOF itself is tied back to describe pre-Nakba settler militias, and far predates the existence of trends in social media.
The name IDF in a vacuum is propagandistic and implies they are reactive and protective which aligns with the mainstream and Israel’s official narrative, there is 0 friction with the word on social media and the phrase IOF is purely blunt rhetoric used to invert the propaganda and stop normalising a fake defensive framing, unlike the watermelon which is symbolic stand in born purely from censorship and oppression
The IOFs core function exists to subjugate an occupied people, and enforce their illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Their main operations of enforcing checkpoints, demolishing homes, restricting movement, defending settler violence, and extrajudicially murdering children are purely mechanisms of control. The defense label exists to sanitise their actions and mystify the dynamics, influence public perception and invoke sympathy with a victim/defender story, the word IOF exists to counter the name rhetorically, which everyone sees as an overt political statement, like calling the US military American imperial forces, not coded subterfuge unlike you imply.
Other people in the comments have said it better, but describing calling what the UN and every relevant scholar and institution has called the most documented genocide in history a ‘war’ is sorely disappointing. To see such deliberate spinelessness, denial and erasure from someone who devotes so much time to making instagram reels centred around how words have the capacity to be so dangerous, and have real world implications especially by bad actors. But not if they’re a certain brown I imagine
Already posted this in a more recent post, but this screams Terry Eagleton´s moral technology and subjectivity argument. Definitely go check it out! Eagleton talks about literature as a moral technology, but as I implied before and what you´re circling here and in other articles is the same concept. Reading that might help you flesh out your ideas a bit more? Are influencers themselves also a subject within the prison camp as defined by Eagleton? Or are they playing along with the prison camp via the moral technology creating more subjects? What does that mean for your role as an influencer? Black hat or whate hat?
For me it's neither here, nor there. Just curious as I've been reading too much about subjectivity lately.
"Nerdy yet brainrotted"? How dare..... Nah you right.
This is exactly how I reacted XD I thought they were incompatible, antonyms - but apparently too much brainrot leads to Etymology Nerd 🤷♀️
another great piece. congrats on the launch!!!
This is was so insightful! I guess I’d recognized this on a subconscious level but could never articulate it
Ikr
There are also written accents on social media: cat accounts want to sound "cat". The accent becomes part of identity, which is what I show to others with/through my accent. Fascinating topic
I was 60% into your book, and then you cited Chaucer and the last paragraph of a chapter made me well up in tears, and then suddenly it was all over! 😭 Thanks for the great book - I'm a 45-year-old historical linguist and I learned a lot! (Including the Chaucer quote, ironically!)
I bought a ticket to Wordhack! It sounds fun!
I just read the bit about 🍉 in the book this morning. Loving it so far!!
Amazing piece, compact yet very informative! Made me think about other states and countries where there is heavy censorship (on top of the algorithmic one) and people invent their own language to avoid both.
Looking forward to picking up the book at Politics and Prose this Friday!
when even the new york times is finally calling it a genocide and yet you’re still using the word war, unusual level of cowardice
I just find it interesting that in all the talk about how impactful word choice is the word Adam chose to use was war. It's a level of erasure and denial that is harmful to the liberation of Palestinians.
If I have one personal style of performance for my wife, another for my kids, one for work in my role there, and yet and still different among my male friends what does that say about the —authentic— me? Is there such a personage in life or is it all just role switching for the situation in which we find ourselves at the moment?
yeah i think authenticity is kind of made up
Kind of agree, kind of don't — agree that authenticity in the normal sense doesn't exist, but I think it can exist in a less standard sense. For example, when you were talking about crafting content for the algorithm, I thought to myself "aha! so I'll have to be authentic and not go with what the algorithm wants", but then realized that would still be going with the algorithm, but just in the opposite direction. There's a parallel to this in Buddhism, which, yeah, the Middle Way, but the key is that it's not actually getting to some objective middle, which is how it's often understood, but rather discerning the point at which you are not moved by compulsion towards or against. In that sense, being authentic wouldn't be never changing your actions to fit the circumstance, but it would be a different internal relation to those changes — being free of the "compulsion" to code-switch but potentially still code-switching if it's appropriate. Kind of like being able to authentically engage in inauthenticity since that's still an authentic choice you're making. Similar to how someone who has recovered from OCD doesn't stop washing their hands entirely, they just are no longer compelled to do so and just wash them when it's reasonable.
Going to order your book, by the way! Been a fan of your IG reels for a while and happy to support — hope you make the bestseller lists!
IOF is used as substitute to the IDF to subvert and counter the embedded propaganda in the original name and foster awareness of the settler colonial dynamics. Israel cannot act ‘in defense’ as an offensive project, the name of the (Israel Defence forces) is whitewashing for a genocidal apartheid regime and propaganda used to skew the drastic power dynamics of their illegal occupation and colonisation and to maintain their own baseless narrative as victims of aggression. Everything about Israel’s existence as a parasitic, racist, expansionist, occupying settler colony that subsists on the blood, theft of land of its natives is inherently aggressive as settler colonies are aggressive by design. Israel was founded upon ethnic cleansing and land theft and name of the IDF is one way Israel masks its expansionism, by reframing their ongoing colonisation of Palestine through illegal settlements and invasions of neighbouring countries as protective,
Israeli Occupying Force however is overt partisan terminology, not used as ‘algospeak’ to avoid nonexistent censorship for the word IDF, asserting that is purely ahistorical. the phrase IOF itself is tied back to describe pre-Nakba settler militias, and far predates the existence of trends in social media.
The name IDF in a vacuum is propagandistic and implies they are reactive and protective which aligns with the mainstream and Israel’s official narrative, there is 0 friction with the word on social media and the phrase IOF is purely blunt rhetoric used to invert the propaganda and stop normalising a fake defensive framing, unlike the watermelon which is symbolic stand in born purely from censorship and oppression
The IOFs core function exists to subjugate an occupied people, and enforce their illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Their main operations of enforcing checkpoints, demolishing homes, restricting movement, defending settler violence, and extrajudicially murdering children are purely mechanisms of control. The defense label exists to sanitise their actions and mystify the dynamics, influence public perception and invoke sympathy with a victim/defender story, the word IOF exists to counter the name rhetorically, which everyone sees as an overt political statement, like calling the US military American imperial forces, not coded subterfuge unlike you imply.
Other people in the comments have said it better, but describing calling what the UN and every relevant scholar and institution has called the most documented genocide in history a ‘war’ is sorely disappointing. To see such deliberate spinelessness, denial and erasure from someone who devotes so much time to making instagram reels centred around how words have the capacity to be so dangerous, and have real world implications especially by bad actors. But not if they’re a certain brown I imagine
Already posted this in a more recent post, but this screams Terry Eagleton´s moral technology and subjectivity argument. Definitely go check it out! Eagleton talks about literature as a moral technology, but as I implied before and what you´re circling here and in other articles is the same concept. Reading that might help you flesh out your ideas a bit more? Are influencers themselves also a subject within the prison camp as defined by Eagleton? Or are they playing along with the prison camp via the moral technology creating more subjects? What does that mean for your role as an influencer? Black hat or whate hat?
For me it's neither here, nor there. Just curious as I've been reading too much about subjectivity lately.