Humor and Translation: Algospeak
By Mark Herman
…a very small percentage of social media posts dominate a very large percentage of our [online] attention. Since the posts that work often employ specific tactics, like using certain phrases or keywords, those tactics will be self-perpetuated….
…I believe that influencers [, that is, influential internet content creators,] aren’t solely at fault here. Social media platforms are doing the same thing as creators, but on a macro scale. They’re trying to keep your attention through any means possible, directly building this conduit for the most attention-grabbing language to reproduce from creator to consumer. Algorithms are the culprits, influencers are the accomplices, language is the weapon, and you, dear reader, are the victim. (78)
——————–
The above quotation is taken from Adam Aleksic’s book on Algospeak,1 which maintains that humanity’s ever-changing languages are now being changed even faster and in new directions by algorithms that determine what content gets posted on social media and what subsequently gets recommended to internet users.
Aleksic himself is an online content provider, and, contrary to what he says in the above quotation, he also states throughout the book that the algorithms of social media aren’t all bad. He says that by allowing geographically separated individuals with similar interests to communicate with each other, algorithms can be forces for good as well as for evil. However, for good or ill, according to Aleksic, there are now new forces changing how we speak, which ultimately influences how we think.
First and foremost, Aleksic believes that the language gatekeepers have changed. No longer are those who post content bound by prescriptive rules such as those of standard American dialect or the King’s English. (By “content,” Aleksic primarily means the images and words contained in short videos shown on social media platforms.) That doesn’t mean there is now full linguistic democracy in which anything goes. Instead, the rules are imposed by the algorithms, some of which don’t allow the posting of content that contains certain words. However, such censorship is easily circumvented by the time-honored use of euphemisms. For instance, on certain social platforms where the word “suicide” is proscribed, people don’t commit suicide. Instead, they unalive themselves. Like all newly coined slang words, “unalive” will either die out, remain slang (though not necessarily confined to the online group that coined it), or be absorbed into English as an ordinary word. In that last case, if the concept of suicide is still taboo on certain platforms, “unalive” will require a new euphemism of its own.
Aleksic points out that algorithms control language in ways other than outright censorship. What is popular will be recommended by the algorithms and therefore become even more popular. What’s not will not be recommended or be seen or heard even by those few people who might be interested. This has led to the necessity for all creators to rely on a number of stratagems, such as utilizing what Aleksic calls certain speech “accents” with respect to speech speed, rhythm, and vocabulary. Two other stratagems are the use of intriguing, even if misleading, titles and the inclusion of irrelevant introductory material. And all this is to keep the attention of eyes and ears on the screen so that algorithmic recommendations keep increasing the size of the audience. Creators are paid by the amount of time their creations are watched, not by the quality of their creations. The more time online, the more advertising revenue collected by the social media platforms.
The algorithms foster the creation and dissemination of new words by creating geographically widespread communities of people sharing (at times very narrow) particular interests, and these communities in turn extend language by creating in-group jargons called sociolects. In an ironic twist, by this very expansion into multiple geographical and therefore multiple dialectical realms, the algorithms tend to obliterate regional dialects in favor of the sociolects (and the above-mentioned algo accents). However much they may vary, almost all online sociolects tend to be dialects of “standard” English, so the original gatekeeper is not completely superseded after all.
Further, because the reach of the internet is global, English has become “indisputably the lingua franca online” (207). Before the internet, English was already the primary language for trade and international relations, but now it’s being used more and more as informal everyday language worldwide. This threatens even faster extinction for the many languages of limited diffusion, and even for a major language such as Hindi, spoken by 7.5% of the world’s population but featured on less than 0.1% of the world’s websites (214). This extinction is occurring even as computers and the internet are otherwise being used by linguists to try to preserve minority languages.
Some sociolects are not wholly benign, such as, for example, the sociolect, much discussed by Aleksic, of die-hard fans of the singer Taylor Swift, a sociolect that has been called the “Swiftie fanilect” (99). The malevolence, which is probably not apparent to many fans of Swift, arises from the fanilect’s creation and inclusion of phrases and words referring to intimate details of Swift’s life that are not necessarily true, but which users of the fanilect believe they are “in the know” about. Two such idioms in the Swiftie fanilect are “red scarf,” a supposed reference to Swift’s loss of virginity, and “Gaylor,” the belief that Swift is a lesbian (100).
While it’s unlikely that the online group of Swift fans was formed with the purpose of doing harm, that’s not the case with many other online groups. When social media allows formerly isolated people to communicate hateful ideas to each other, real harm can result. One such group, to which Aleksic devotes much of an entire chapter, are the incels, or involuntary celibates, heterosexual men who believe their lack of sexual success with women is the result of evil women judging men solely by their appearance.2
The incel movement started in 1997 when a Canadian woman began a website for people who believed they weren’t getting enough sex, a website which was open to all genders and sexual orientations. Other websites followed, more male-dominated and misogynistic, and when one of them, 4chan, also served as a site for right-wing extremists in general, the modern incel movement was launched in earnest. (127)
The sociolect of the incels includes many newly coined in-group words that, through algorithmic recommendations, have received widespread use on and even offline. These words include
- blackpill philosophy: The ideas of the incel movement
- lookism: the idea that sexual hierarchies are determined by looks alone
- Chads: attractive men who can get as much sex as they want
- betas: average-looking men who, by being loyal to Chads, get the Chads’ romantic leftovers
- mog: dominate, which Chads can always do
- cuck: emasculate, which Chads can always do to betas
- maxxing: enhancing appearance in various ways
- foids: a derogatory term for women
- roasties: another derogatory term for women
- dumpsters: still another derogatory term for women
The Wiki page of the incels explicitly argues that rape is justified because “involuntary celibacy is more painful for men than rape is for women” (130).
Paraphrasing the work of Sofia Correa, “who anonymously ran one of the largest incel Discord servers in the world” (129), Aleksic claims that the use of incel jargon makes members of the group feel better despite their sexual failings. Ironically, there is higher status for “truecels,” indicating a total lack of sex, and even for KHHVs, kissless, hugless, and handholdless virgins. The language further reinforces incel identity by regarding all interactions between men as hierarchical and all interactions between men and women as sexual (129).
Ideally, a sociolect with an increased vocabulary, such as that of the incels, would allow them to express more varied ideas and more nuanced thoughts. Unfortunately, just the opposite is true, because the incels, like many other groups, use:
thought-terminating clichés: loaded expressions that cut off any dissonant thinking. If an incel mentioned a negative experience with a woman, he would be flooded with comments about how “it’s over” or “AWALT” (meaning “all women are like that”)3, which immediately stops any introspection of whether the interaction had some other explanation beyond just lookism. (130)
The creation and influence of social media algorithms isn’t a unique event. Throughout history, new technology has changed the way people use language, thereby influencing how they think. Previous examples include the inventions of writing, the printing press, and mass media. Algorithms are a major force for the creation and spread of new language while simultaneously serving as a (perhaps minor) gatekeeper hindering linguistic change. The result over the long term is, as always, unpredictable.
——————–
Here are some examples of peculiar English encountered by the humorist David Sedaris a couple of decades ago in Japan.4
The safety section of a booklet in a hotel room was titled Best Knowledge of Disaster Damage Prevention and Favors to Ask of You. There were three paragraphs, each with a boldfaced heading: “When you check in the hotel room,” “When you find a fire,” and the last, which Sedaris used for the title of his book, “When you are engulfed in flames.”
Another example of weird English was on an apron with a picture of a dog asleep in a basket: “I’m glad I caught you today. Enjoy mama.” And, on bags such as might be used for gifts: “When I think about the life in my own way I need gentle conversations,” “Today is a special day for you. I have considered what article of present is nice to make you happy. Come to open now, OK?” and, finally, one that Sedaris claims gave him a headache: “Only imflowing you don’t flowing imflowing.”
Notes
1. Aleksic, Adam (aka @etymologynerd). Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language (Alfred A. Knopf, 2025).
2. Chapter 6, Wordpilled Slangmaxxing, 124-143.
3. Così fan tutte!
4. Sedaris, David. When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 309.
Submit items for future columns via e-mail to mnh18@caa.columbia.edu. Discussions of the translation of humor and examples thereof are preferred, but humorous anecdotes about translators, translations, and mistranslations are also welcome. Include copyright information and permission if relevant.
