I SAW THIS MEME AND IT REMINDED ME OF A CURIOUS TREND.

That trend is the use of an asterisk in place of one or more letters in a word.

It’s no challenge to mentally replace that asterisk with the proper character, the letter “a.”  The intention of the meme is to infer rape statistics have increased due to mass migration policies.

This article isn’t going to debate the veracity of the claim, but simply to wonder who finds this form of “masking” useful?  There are at least two other characters in the English language that fit this pattern, giving the words “ripe” and “rope.”  Neither makes sense in the context of the message, so the obvious word is, “rape.”

I find this neither ingenuous nor clever.  I am not aware of any web site, platform or media outlet that bans the word “rape.”  Sadly, too many news reports list this crime of violence and use the word openly.  So, why do people think it’s necessary to do so?

Asking Perplexity.ai (one of the best AI engines, in my opinion, as it displays the sources along with its results) the reason some people feel the need to do so yielded a lengthy exposition, many sourced from another social media site, Reddit, that indicated various possible motives.  The two I like best are

• It works to bypass algorithms on some sites that consider some words “dangerous” or “triggering.”  Yes, some sites still have “nanny” bots.
• It makes the reader auto-complete the word–a reading “hiccup” as it were.  This puts an emphasis (intended or not) on the word.

Speculation exists that some sites that have a specific focus might want to avoid listing words that might act as triggers.  However, what level of genius is required to decipher masked words like, k*ll, s**cide, t*rrorist, and the aforementioned r*pe?  Software developers and implementors who feel this type of censorship have a very low opinion of their users and customers.

Rational adults don’t need to be censored, and you won’t find such artifice here.  A reprimand my mother used on more than one occasion has stayed with me:  Vulgarity is immaturity personified.  The use of a word for its shock value has nearly completely disappeared, as has been demonstrated by Democrats in the media lately.  Some people are incapable of speaking without peppering their speech with curse words.  I have no time for them.

(This is the first article I’ve posted since ‘reclaiming’ my independence from Substack.  I hope to continue to write articles here, and hope you enjoy reading them.  Comments are welcome–but are moderated, so if you choose to respond, be kind, be clean, be intelligent!).