WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.679 Have you ever really stopped to think about how 00:00:05.679 --> 00:00:08.560 much implicit trust you put into correct spelling? 00:00:08.859 --> 00:00:10.779 Oh, absolutely. We take it completely for granted. 00:00:11.019 --> 00:00:12.839 Right. I mean, just think about your average 00:00:12.839 --> 00:00:15.279 morning. You know, you're reading a news article 00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:18.600 over coffee or maybe skimming an employment contract. 00:00:18.620 --> 00:00:20.920 Or just glancing at a street sign on your commute. 00:00:21.179 --> 00:00:25.100 Yeah, exactly. There is this invisible, ironclad 00:00:25.100 --> 00:00:28.039 social contract that the words you're looking 00:00:28.039 --> 00:00:30.899 at will be spelled exactly the way they're supposed 00:00:30.899 --> 00:00:33.399 to be spelled. It is very orderly. It's predictable. 00:00:33.859 --> 00:00:36.039 But when someone breaks those rules on purpose, 00:00:36.460 --> 00:00:38.659 it is incredibly jarring. Like, it practically 00:00:38.659 --> 00:00:40.799 stops you right in your tracks. It really does. 00:00:41.100 --> 00:00:42.780 And, you know, there is a neurological reason 00:00:42.780 --> 00:00:46.359 for that. Oh, really? Yeah. We are wired to process 00:00:46.359 --> 00:00:48.460 written language automatically. Once you are 00:00:48.460 --> 00:00:51.149 a fluent reader... You do not sound out words 00:00:51.149 --> 00:00:53.270 letter by letter anymore. Right. You just sort 00:00:53.270 --> 00:00:55.369 of recognize the whole word at once. Exactly. 00:00:55.570 --> 00:00:58.649 You recognize their overall shapes. So when there 00:00:58.649 --> 00:01:01.450 is a glitch in the matrix, when a word's shape 00:01:01.450 --> 00:01:04.569 is suddenly wrong, it forces our brains out of 00:01:04.569 --> 00:01:07.750 autopilot and into a manual override. You literally 00:01:07.750 --> 00:01:10.090 have to stop and figure out what went wrong. 00:01:10.349 --> 00:01:12.950 Precisely. And that actually brings us to our 00:01:12.950 --> 00:01:15.489 mission for today's deep dive. We are taking 00:01:15.489 --> 00:01:18.629 a look at a fantastic collection of sources detailing 00:01:18.629 --> 00:01:21.250 the concept of satiric misspelling. It is such 00:01:21.250 --> 00:01:23.810 a great topic. It really is. We are going to 00:01:23.810 --> 00:01:26.989 extract the most fascinating insights into how 00:01:26.989 --> 00:01:30.030 deliberately spelling things wrong is used to 00:01:30.030 --> 00:01:33.120 critique the status quo. Whether that is through 00:01:33.120 --> 00:01:35.799 intentional malapropisms, incorrect grammar, 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:39.099 or just swapping out a single letter. Yeah, exactly. 00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:41.239 And we'll see how it's used to signal rebellion 00:01:41.239 --> 00:01:44.500 or in a lot of cases just build a community through 00:01:44.500 --> 00:01:47.140 humor. It is brilliant because it reveals that 00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:49.459 spelling is not just a matter of strict grammar 00:01:49.459 --> 00:01:52.239 or getting a gold star in grade school. Right, 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:54.629 it's way more than that. In the right hand, spelling 00:01:54.629 --> 00:01:57.390 is a highly effective rhetorical weapon. It is 00:01:57.390 --> 00:02:00.170 a way of visually communicating an entire ideology 00:02:00.170 --> 00:02:02.489 before the reader has even finished pronouncing 00:02:02.489 --> 00:02:04.769 the word in their head. Okay, let's unpack this. 00:02:04.769 --> 00:02:07.049 Yeah. Because the history here goes back a lot 00:02:07.049 --> 00:02:09.629 further and gets a lot heavier than you might 00:02:09.629 --> 00:02:11.750 think. Oh, for sure. We are not just talking 00:02:11.750 --> 00:02:15.099 about careless... internet typos today. We were 00:02:15.099 --> 00:02:18.439 talking about the immense historical weight of 00:02:18.439 --> 00:02:21.099 a single letter. That is right. And the clearest 00:02:21.099 --> 00:02:23.680 example of this, like the absolute most stark 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:27.159 demonstration of how a single consonant can completely 00:02:27.159 --> 00:02:29.860 rewrite the political alignment of a word, is 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:32.740 replacing the letter C with the letter K. And 00:02:32.740 --> 00:02:35.360 just to pause here for a second to set the ground 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:37.780 rules for today's conversation. Good idea. In 00:02:37.780 --> 00:02:39.919 looking at the history of how these spelling 00:02:39.919 --> 00:02:42.360 tactics developed, we are going to be discussing 00:02:42.360 --> 00:02:45.659 examples that take aggressive shots at both the 00:02:45.659 --> 00:02:47.740 political left and the political right. Yes, 00:02:47.759 --> 00:02:49.840 the sources cover the whole spectrum. Right. 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:53.219 And our goal today isn't to validate or endorse 00:02:53.219 --> 00:02:55.539 any of these political takes. We're just looking 00:02:55.539 --> 00:02:58.259 at this impartially. Almost like forensic linguists. 00:02:58.439 --> 00:03:01.000 Exactly. We are just examining the rhetorical 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:02.960 blueprints these different historical groups 00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:05.580 used. I am not taking sides here. And neither 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:08.240 am I. We have to be clear to you, the listener, 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:10.259 that we are impartially reporting the source 00:03:10.259 --> 00:03:13.080 material. The focus is entirely on the lingu 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:15.590 - mechanics of the protest, not the politics 00:03:15.590 --> 00:03:18.530 themselves. Perfect. So looking at that C to 00:03:18.530 --> 00:03:21.849 K pipeline, the earliest and most infamous adoption 00:03:21.849 --> 00:03:24.669 traces back to the 19th century, right? Yes, 00:03:24.770 --> 00:03:27.550 with the Ku Klux Klan. They deliberately swapped 00:03:27.550 --> 00:03:31.030 the C for a K in their early years to create 00:03:31.030 --> 00:03:34.620 a distinct Insular visual identity. A practice 00:03:34.620 --> 00:03:36.780 that historically they obviously maintained. 00:03:37.039 --> 00:03:39.719 Right. But what is truly fascinating is how that 00:03:39.719 --> 00:03:42.139 exact same mechanism was later weaponized by 00:03:42.139 --> 00:03:44.520 groups on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. 00:03:44.699 --> 00:03:47.020 Yeah. If you jump forward to the 1960s and early 00:03:47.020 --> 00:03:49.639 70s, you had the hippies. The Youth International 00:03:49.639 --> 00:03:51.439 Party. Right. In the United States. They were 00:03:51.439 --> 00:03:53.699 protesting the Vietnam War and the establishment, 00:03:54.099 --> 00:03:56.840 and they started spelling America as A -M -E 00:03:56.840 --> 00:04:00.409 -R -I -K -A with a K. And that choice of the 00:04:00.409 --> 00:04:02.550 letter K was incredibly deliberate. It wasn't 00:04:02.550 --> 00:04:05.110 just to be edgy. No, not at all. It was a visual 00:04:05.110 --> 00:04:07.550 allusion to the Russian and German spellings 00:04:07.550 --> 00:04:10.550 of the word. Wow. By forcing the reader to see 00:04:10.550 --> 00:04:13.610 that Germanic K, the yippies, were visually suggesting 00:04:13.610 --> 00:04:15.889 that the American establishment was sliding into 00:04:15.889 --> 00:04:19.889 fascism and authoritarianism. It is such a brilliant, 00:04:20.029 --> 00:04:22.189 if unsettling, tactic. You know, it's almost 00:04:22.189 --> 00:04:24.649 like a musical key change. Oh, I like that analogy. 00:04:24.750 --> 00:04:27.850 Yeah, think about it. You take a familiar, patriotic 00:04:28.519 --> 00:04:31.579 major chord -like, the traditional spelling of 00:04:31.579 --> 00:04:34.259 America, a word you see a hundred times a day. 00:04:34.279 --> 00:04:36.959 Right. And by shifting just one single note, 00:04:37.879 --> 00:04:41.319 one letter, you instantly turn it into this sinister 00:04:41.319 --> 00:04:44.740 dystopian minor chord. The whole feeling of the 00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:47.540 word transforms. That is a perfect way to describe 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:49.459 it. And the reason it works so well goes back 00:04:49.459 --> 00:04:51.800 to that idea of visual dissonance we talked about 00:04:51.800 --> 00:04:53.519 earlier. Because it breaks the shape of the word. 00:04:53.759 --> 00:04:56.360 Exactly. When you encounter America with a K, 00:04:56.670 --> 00:04:59.569 The architecture of the word is broken. It forces 00:04:59.569 --> 00:05:02.329 the reader to stumble. And in that split second 00:05:02.329 --> 00:05:04.569 of hesitation, they are forced to consciously 00:05:04.569 --> 00:05:07.490 process the underlying critique. Yes. And we 00:05:07.490 --> 00:05:10.230 actually see this tactic going global, too. Oh, 00:05:10.230 --> 00:05:12.230 right, with the anarchist movements. The anarchist 00:05:12.230 --> 00:05:14.610 and punk movements in places like Italy, Spain, 00:05:15.129 --> 00:05:17.209 Catalonia, and Portugal did something very similar. 00:05:17.389 --> 00:05:20.170 They took their local word, ocupa, which means 00:05:20.170 --> 00:05:22.990 to occupy. Usually referring to squatting in 00:05:22.990 --> 00:05:25.009 abandoned buildings, yeah. And they changed it 00:05:25.009 --> 00:05:28.550 to Okupa with a K. Drawing heavily on English 00:05:28.550 --> 00:05:31.069 loanwords and the aggressive visual style of 00:05:31.069 --> 00:05:34.769 the punk scene. Exactly. When you see Okupa spray 00:05:34.769 --> 00:05:37.829 -painted on a brick wall, that K tells you immediately 00:05:37.829 --> 00:05:41.050 that this is an ideological anti -establishment 00:05:41.050 --> 00:05:43.230 stance. It is not just people looking for free 00:05:43.230 --> 00:05:45.759 rent. It is a political statement. But, you know, 00:05:45.860 --> 00:05:47.959 because language is flexible, this exact same 00:05:47.959 --> 00:05:49.839 auditory trick can be used for pure comedy, right? 00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:52.420 Oh, man, it totally can. It reminds me of that 00:05:52.420 --> 00:05:54.959 classic Monty Python sketch from the 70s. The 00:05:54.959 --> 00:05:58.300 travel agent sketch. Yes. Eric Idle plays this 00:05:58.300 --> 00:06:00.980 incredibly nervous man who has a psychological 00:06:00.980 --> 00:06:04.060 block where he pronounces the letter C as a B. 00:06:04.300 --> 00:06:06.740 Right? Right. So he is sitting there saying words 00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:10.019 like, blasified, instead of classified. And Michael 00:06:10.019 --> 00:06:11.779 Palin is playing the travel agent. Yeah, and 00:06:11.779 --> 00:06:13.540 Palin gets frustrated and asks, well, can you 00:06:13.540 --> 00:06:17.180 say the letter K? Idle says yes. So Palin suggests 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:19.579 he just spell those words with a K instead. And 00:06:19.579 --> 00:06:21.980 then Idle's character responds with total sincerity. 00:06:22.199 --> 00:06:25.100 He says what you mean pronounced blastified with 00:06:25.100 --> 00:06:29.180 a K, classified. Oh, it's very good. I never 00:06:29.180 --> 00:06:31.740 thought of that before. What a silly bunt. It 00:06:31.740 --> 00:06:34.139 is a phenomenal joke because it plays perfectly 00:06:34.139 --> 00:06:37.000 on the ridiculousness of English spelling rules. 00:06:37.339 --> 00:06:40.160 Exposing the gap between the visual representation 00:06:40.160 --> 00:06:43.410 of a word and its auditory reality. Exactly. 00:06:43.750 --> 00:06:45.389 But pivoting back to the political weight of 00:06:45.389 --> 00:06:48.449 the letter K, the history shows that this tactic 00:06:48.449 --> 00:06:51.610 eventually escalated. Right. It wasn't just swapping 00:06:51.610 --> 00:06:54.149 one C for a K anymore. Groups started inserting 00:06:54.149 --> 00:06:57.529 three Ks directly into words, KKK. This is where 00:06:57.529 --> 00:07:00.089 the critique becomes much more pointed. Highly 00:07:00.089 --> 00:07:03.170 pointed. By the 1970s, you start seeing America 00:07:03.170 --> 00:07:08.360 spelled as America. A -M -E -R -I -K -K -K -A. 00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:11.060 And the earliest recorded use was actually in 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:14.939 a July 1970 issue of an African -American magazine 00:07:14.939 --> 00:07:16.680 called Black World, right? That's right. But 00:07:16.680 --> 00:07:19.500 it really exploded into mainstream cultural awareness 00:07:19.500 --> 00:07:22.779 in 1990. With Ice Cube. Exactly. Ice Cube released 00:07:22.779 --> 00:07:25.639 his debut solo album, America's Most Wanted. 00:07:25.819 --> 00:07:27.980 Such an iconic album. And by capitalizing those 00:07:27.980 --> 00:07:30.240 three Ks right in the middle of the word, he 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:32.459 was making a blistering critique of systemic 00:07:32.459 --> 00:07:35.430 racism. He was visually arguing that the legacy 00:07:35.430 --> 00:07:38.410 of the Ku Klux Klan was still embedded in the 00:07:38.410 --> 00:07:40.990 fabric of American society. And the justice system. 00:07:41.129 --> 00:07:43.110 And once that blueprint was out there, people 00:07:43.110 --> 00:07:45.290 started applying it everywhere. Yeah, you see 00:07:45.290 --> 00:07:48.029 Republican targeting the Republican Party. And 00:07:48.029 --> 00:07:50.529 Democrat targeting the Democratic Party. You 00:07:50.529 --> 00:07:52.670 even see it used against specific individuals, 00:07:53.389 --> 00:07:56.910 like spelling the name of David Duke, the former 00:07:56.910 --> 00:08:00.199 Grand Wizard of the Klan, as David Duck. refusing 00:08:00.199 --> 00:08:02.839 to let anyone forget his history. To powerful 00:08:02.839 --> 00:08:05.699 stuff. And then, interestingly, hip -hop culture 00:08:05.699 --> 00:08:08.819 also developed a softer, more stylistic variation 00:08:08.819 --> 00:08:12.579 of this in the mid -90s. Oh, like Tupac Shakur's 00:08:12.579 --> 00:08:16.019 1996 song, Two of America's Most Wanted. Featuring 00:08:16.019 --> 00:08:19.040 Snoop Dogg. He spells America's with a K and 00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:21.620 a Z. And that track was on the album All Eyes 00:08:21.620 --> 00:08:24.639 on Me. where I is spelled with a Z instead of 00:08:24.639 --> 00:08:26.899 an S. Right. And that wasn't about protesting 00:08:26.899 --> 00:08:29.300 authoritarianism. That was about claiming the 00:08:29.300 --> 00:08:31.319 language. Bending the Queen's English to fit 00:08:31.319 --> 00:08:33.759 a specific street aesthetic. Exactly. But, you 00:08:33.759 --> 00:08:35.899 know, we've seen how a single letter can act 00:08:35.899 --> 00:08:38.080 as a political weapon. But what happens when 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:40.080 an ideology doesn't have a convenient letter 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:42.519 to swap? You have to escalate. You have to start 00:08:42.519 --> 00:08:44.960 borrowing from mathematics and economics. Let's 00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:48.399 look at the typography of wealth. specifically 00:08:48.399 --> 00:08:51.059 weaponizing currency signs. This is a widely 00:08:51.059 --> 00:08:53.940 used tactic where currency symbols like the euro, 00:08:54.179 --> 00:08:56.600 the dollar sign, and the pound sign are inserted 00:08:56.600 --> 00:08:59.759 in place of the letters E, S, and L. And the 00:08:59.759 --> 00:09:03.399 explicit goal here is to visually indicate plutocracy. 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:07.840 Yes, or corporate greed or the pathological accumulation 00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:10.179 of money. Think about the brands you interact 00:09:10.179 --> 00:09:13.539 with every day. Back in the late 90s and early 00:09:13.539 --> 00:09:15.940 2000s, during the height of the open source software 00:09:15.940 --> 00:09:18.740 movement, you couldn't go onto a tech forum without 00:09:18.740 --> 00:09:20.980 seeing Microsoft spelled with a dollar sign. 00:09:21.379 --> 00:09:25.450 M -I -C -R -O. dollar sign, O -F -T, or just 00:09:25.450 --> 00:09:28.309 abbreviate it as M -dollar sign, F -T. Yeah, 00:09:28.429 --> 00:09:30.529 and that wasn't just a typo. No, for the open 00:09:30.529 --> 00:09:32.769 source advocates, spelling it with a dollar sign 00:09:32.769 --> 00:09:35.529 was a way to visually code the company as a greedy 00:09:35.529 --> 00:09:38.269 monopoly. One that prioritized profits over user 00:09:38.269 --> 00:09:39.789 freedom. And you saw this applied everywhere. 00:09:39.990 --> 00:09:42.990 Dinny, Nonny, United Tates, or spelling Europe 00:09:42.990 --> 00:09:45.330 with the Euro symbol. The Stop Esso campaign 00:09:45.330 --> 00:09:47.669 in the UK is a prime example of this, too. Oh, 00:09:47.669 --> 00:09:49.659 right. They were protesting the oil company, 00:09:49.840 --> 00:09:52.279 ESSO's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate 00:09:52.279 --> 00:09:54.779 Change, and they encouraged millions of people 00:09:54.779 --> 00:09:59.639 to boycott the company by branding them E $ $O. 00:09:59.759 --> 00:10:03.879 It was a massive campaign. It was. But I have 00:10:03.879 --> 00:10:06.500 to push back here for a second. Sure. Because 00:10:06.500 --> 00:10:10.080 looking at all this writing m dollar sign FT 00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:12.820 or spelling Bush with the dollar sign Isn't this 00:10:12.820 --> 00:10:15.200 just a bit childish childish? Yeah, like writing 00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:17.179 a mean note about your teacher in middle school 00:10:17.179 --> 00:10:20.120 Does replacing an s with a dollar sign actually 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:22.340 persuade anyone to change their mind about climate 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:24.600 change or corporate monopolies? What's fascinating 00:10:24.600 --> 00:10:28.320 here? Is that persuasion in the sense of a reasoned 00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:30.779 logical point -by -point debate isn't actually 00:10:30.779 --> 00:10:33.620 the goal at all wait really Then what is the 00:10:33.620 --> 00:10:36.179 point? It is about immediate visual shorthand. 00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:38.940 OK, go on. A reasoned debate requires the reader 00:10:38.940 --> 00:10:41.759 to sit down, process your argument, and weigh 00:10:41.759 --> 00:10:45.799 the evidence, but a satiric misspelling. It completely 00:10:45.799 --> 00:10:48.720 bypasses the rational, deliberative part of the 00:10:48.720 --> 00:10:50.759 brain. Because you see it all at once. Yeah. 00:10:50.980 --> 00:10:53.620 Exactly. It instantly staples the concept of 00:10:53.620 --> 00:10:56.059 corruption directly to the brand's identity before 00:10:56.059 --> 00:10:58.299 the critical mind can even put its defenses up. 00:10:58.659 --> 00:11:03.210 So when you see m $ft, the critique is permanently 00:11:03.210 --> 00:11:06.509 baked right into the name. It is highly aggressive 00:11:06.509 --> 00:11:08.929 gorilla branding. That makes a lot of sense, 00:11:08.950 --> 00:11:11.509 like you can't unsee it. And it is so effective 00:11:11.509 --> 00:11:13.769 that it even gets re -appropriated for irony. 00:11:13.929 --> 00:11:17.549 Oh, like pop star Keha. Yes. Early in her career, 00:11:17.669 --> 00:11:19.629 when she was famously struggling financially, 00:11:20.070 --> 00:11:22.669 she deliberately adopted the dollar sign into 00:11:22.669 --> 00:11:25.269 her stage name. It was a deeply ironic gesture. 00:11:25.450 --> 00:11:28.070 She was playfully wearing the typography of extreme 00:11:28.070 --> 00:11:30.610 wealth at a time when she had absolutely none. 00:11:30.889 --> 00:11:33.690 That is so clever. So we've gone from the blunt 00:11:33.690 --> 00:11:36.049 instrument of swapping letters to the guerrilla 00:11:36.049 --> 00:11:38.529 branding of currency symbols, but the source 00:11:38.529 --> 00:11:41.129 material outlines an even more surgical form 00:11:41.129 --> 00:11:43.370 of this. It's like a linguistic Trojan horse. 00:11:43.570 --> 00:11:45.889 Yeah. You are using an established respectable 00:11:45.889 --> 00:11:49.090 word, but you use punctuation and capitalization 00:11:49.090 --> 00:11:51.389 to sneak an insult right through the front gates. 00:11:51.710 --> 00:11:54.529 Exactly. We are moving into the realm of word 00:11:54.529 --> 00:11:57.409 and word puns. So this is where a word is written 00:11:57.409 --> 00:12:00.289 in its orthodox spelling, but it is altered. 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:03.759 internally. With strategic capitals, hyphens, 00:12:03.879 --> 00:12:06.500 or slashes to force the reader to see a hidden 00:12:06.500 --> 00:12:10.299 concept lurking inside the word itself. The political 00:12:10.299 --> 00:12:13.100 examples here are incredible. Like after the 00:12:13.100 --> 00:12:16.419 highly controversial 2000 U .S. election, critics 00:12:16.419 --> 00:12:19.899 started referring to George W. Bush as the president. 00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:23.389 With a lowercase p and a capital R. or they'd 00:12:23.389 --> 00:12:25.529 put the lowercase p in parentheses. The visual 00:12:25.529 --> 00:12:28.129 device there is brilliant. It suggests that the 00:12:28.129 --> 00:12:30.629 person is merely a resident occupying the White 00:12:30.629 --> 00:12:33.710 House rather than a legitimate elected president. 00:12:33.889 --> 00:12:36.389 Just by tweaking the capitalization, you visually 00:12:36.389 --> 00:12:39.090 strip away their executive authority. And the 00:12:39.090 --> 00:12:41.350 exact same tactic was deployed against Bill Clinton 00:12:41.350 --> 00:12:43.470 by his critics during his impeachment hearings. 00:12:43.710 --> 00:12:46.570 Or look at how opponents reframed the USA PATRIOT 00:12:46.570 --> 00:12:48.509 Act. Oh, that's a great example. They started 00:12:48.509 --> 00:12:51.419 writing it as the USA PATRIOT Act. with a space 00:12:51.419 --> 00:12:53.779 between the T and the R. They were literally 00:12:53.779 --> 00:12:56.419 trying to strip away the patriotic flag -raving 00:12:56.419 --> 00:12:59.259 implication of the law's title by isolating the 00:12:59.259 --> 00:13:02.059 word riot hidden inside it. And this fracturing 00:13:02.059 --> 00:13:05.259 of words isn't just for politicians. The feminist 00:13:05.259 --> 00:13:08.059 theologian Mary Daly utilized this extensively 00:13:08.059 --> 00:13:10.820 to critique patriarchy in her writing. She used 00:13:10.820 --> 00:13:13.840 slashes to violently break words apart to force 00:13:13.840 --> 00:13:17.070 a new highly critical reading. Like gynecology 00:13:17.070 --> 00:13:21.110 became gin slash ecology. Stagnation became stag 00:13:21.110 --> 00:13:23.870 slash nation. Therapist became the slash rapist. 00:13:23.970 --> 00:13:25.669 It's an aggressive disruption of how you read 00:13:25.669 --> 00:13:27.669 and it happens in other languages too. Oh right 00:13:27.669 --> 00:13:30.149 like in French the word con is a pretty severe 00:13:30.149 --> 00:13:33.009 insult meaning moron or idiot. So critics of 00:13:33.009 --> 00:13:35.190 conservative politicians write the French word 00:13:35.190 --> 00:13:39.110 conservateur as con hyphen servateur. We see 00:13:39.110 --> 00:13:42.580 similar surgical strikes globally. In the Philippines, 00:13:42.899 --> 00:13:45.200 netizens protested corruption allegations against 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:48.379 Senator Ramon Bong Ravilla Jr. by nicknaming 00:13:48.379 --> 00:13:51.039 him Mandarim Bomb. They capitalized his nickname 00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:53.200 right inside the Filipino word for plunderer. 00:13:53.259 --> 00:13:56.000 And in Brazil, environmental critics of Jair 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:59.289 Bolsonaro. dubbed him Bolso Nero. A play on the 00:13:59.289 --> 00:14:01.950 Roman Emperor Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. 00:14:02.289 --> 00:14:04.350 Directly referencing Bolsonaro's controversial 00:14:04.350 --> 00:14:06.669 handling of the Amazon wildfires. And we can't 00:14:06.669 --> 00:14:09.850 forget acronyms. Oh, I love acronyms. That's 00:14:09.850 --> 00:14:12.490 when you take an existing acronym and swap out 00:14:12.490 --> 00:14:15.169 one of the core words to change the meaning entirely. 00:14:15.399 --> 00:14:18.299 Like software freedom activist Richard Stallman 00:14:18.299 --> 00:14:21.519 famously insisting that DRM, digital rights management, 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.139 should actually stand for digital restrictions 00:14:24.139 --> 00:14:26.980 management. Or the NSA being called the National 00:14:26.980 --> 00:14:30.179 Surveillance Agency. Or even the National Socialist 00:14:30.179 --> 00:14:33.259 Agency. Or look at the history of the British 00:14:33.259 --> 00:14:36.779 satirical magazine Private Eye. They are famous 00:14:36.779 --> 00:14:39.480 for this. What did they do? They had a feud with 00:14:39.480 --> 00:14:43.320 a rival law firm called Carter Ruck and they 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:46.240 deliberately misspelled it as farderfuck. Oh 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:48.820 wow, that is blunt. And they constantly refer 00:14:48.820 --> 00:14:52.220 to the esteemed Guardian newspaper as the Growniad. 00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:55.879 Why the Growniad? It is a historical jab. In 00:14:55.879 --> 00:14:58.700 the pre -digital age, before spell check, the 00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:01.120 Guardian was somewhat notorious in the UK for 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:04.250 its frequent typesetting errors. Oh, I see. So, 00:15:04.330 --> 00:15:06.470 Prof and I just permanently scrambled the letters 00:15:06.470 --> 00:15:09.269 of the newspaper's own name. It is a psychological 00:15:09.269 --> 00:15:11.649 weight. Every time a reader sees the Growniad, 00:15:12.009 --> 00:15:13.950 they are subtly reminded not to take the paper 00:15:13.950 --> 00:15:16.309 too seriously. Okay, here's where it gets really 00:15:16.309 --> 00:15:18.350 interesting, though. Looking at things like the 00:15:18.350 --> 00:15:21.809 Growniad or the Pat Riot Act, is this type of 00:15:21.809 --> 00:15:24.529 wordplay actually persuading anyone who disagrees 00:15:24.529 --> 00:15:27.200 with you? That's the big question. Or is this 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:30.679 just massive confirmation bias? Like, finding 00:15:30.679 --> 00:15:33.080 insults that just happen to be phonetically convenient 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:34.980 for people who already share your worldview. 00:15:35.320 --> 00:15:38.519 That is a highly perceptive critique, and honestly, 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:41.399 yes, it absolutely preaches to the choir. Do 00:15:41.399 --> 00:15:44.019 it. If you firmly believe the Patriot Act is 00:15:44.019 --> 00:15:46.720 necessary for national security, seeing it written 00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:49.100 as Pat Ryadak with a space in it isn't going 00:15:49.100 --> 00:15:51.399 to suddenly make you switch sides. Right. It 00:15:51.399 --> 00:15:53.850 just looks like a cheap shot. Exactly. But this 00:15:53.850 --> 00:15:55.710 raises an important question about the purpose 00:15:55.710 --> 00:15:58.649 of rhetoric. Persuasion is not the only function 00:15:58.649 --> 00:16:00.289 of language. Well, what's the other function? 00:16:00.950 --> 00:16:03.509 Solidarity. For the in -group, the people who 00:16:03.509 --> 00:16:05.830 already agree with the critique, these word -in 00:16:05.830 --> 00:16:08.750 -word puns create incredibly powerful, sticky 00:16:08.750 --> 00:16:11.389 aha moments. Because they're fun to decode. They 00:16:11.389 --> 00:16:14.289 are intellectually satisfying to decode. And 00:16:14.289 --> 00:16:17.029 that shared satisfaction solidifies group identity. 00:16:17.389 --> 00:16:19.669 It is a linguistic wink and a nod to your allies 00:16:19.669 --> 00:16:22.009 that says, we see the truth hidden underneath 00:16:22.009 --> 00:16:24.799 the surface. Which perfectly sets up our final 00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:26.960 segment, because everything we have talked about 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:30.580 so far, the KKK, the currency signs, the political 00:16:30.580 --> 00:16:33.860 Trojan horses, has been deeply rooted in societal 00:16:33.860 --> 00:16:36.399 conflict and critique. Very serious topics. But 00:16:36.399 --> 00:16:38.960 when we transition into the digital age, it is 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:41.059 like the politics gets stripped away entirely. 00:16:41.259 --> 00:16:44.379 The Internet took these exact same tools of intentional 00:16:44.379 --> 00:16:47.220 misspelling and used them to create completely 00:16:47.220 --> 00:16:50.899 new inherently joyful dialects. Exactly. The 00:16:50.899 --> 00:16:53.360 intention shifts away from weaponizing language 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:55.799 against an opponent and moves toward building 00:16:55.799 --> 00:16:58.720 a shared cozy culture with your peers online. 00:16:58.980 --> 00:17:01.879 Enter the Lullcats. Oh man, the Lullcats. If 00:17:01.879 --> 00:17:03.539 you're anywhere near a computer in the mid to 00:17:03.539 --> 00:17:06.000 late 2000s, you know exactly what this is. Pictures 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:08.519 of cats paired with deliberately fractured grammar 00:17:08.519 --> 00:17:11.900 and spelling. I can has cheeseburger. Spelling 00:17:11.900 --> 00:17:15.079 kitty is kidda with an e -h? The tech blogger 00:17:15.079 --> 00:17:17.380 Anil Dash famously described this phenomenon 00:17:17.380 --> 00:17:19.940 as kitty pigeon. And the use of the word pigeon 00:17:19.940 --> 00:17:22.180 there is very accurate, right? Linguistically, 00:17:22.420 --> 00:17:24.579 a pigeon is a simplified form of communication 00:17:24.579 --> 00:17:26.819 that develops between two or more groups that 00:17:26.819 --> 00:17:28.900 do not have a language in common. So in this 00:17:28.900 --> 00:17:31.759 case, it was humans role -playing a simplified, 00:17:32.019 --> 00:17:34.700 broken English to imagine how animals would talk 00:17:34.700 --> 00:17:37.680 to us if they could. And that kitty pigeon evolved 00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:41.049 directly into dog -o -lingo? Yes. This is internet 00:17:41.049 --> 00:17:43.670 slang that fundamentally alters the pronunciation 00:17:43.670 --> 00:17:47.269 of the words. A dog becomes a doggo. A puppy 00:17:47.269 --> 00:17:51.289 is a pupper. A bird is a birb. B -I -R -B. A 00:17:51.289 --> 00:17:54.349 snake is a snick. It is essentially a form of 00:17:54.349 --> 00:17:58.119 collective, crowdsourced baby talk. but for adults. 00:17:58.480 --> 00:18:01.240 If we connect this to the bigger picture, intentional 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:04.039 misspelling in this context operates as an in 00:18:04.039 --> 00:18:06.420 -group shibbolah. Meaning a kind of cultural 00:18:06.420 --> 00:18:09.380 password. Precisely. Using verb instead of bird 00:18:09.380 --> 00:18:11.440 proves you are fluent in the culture of the internet. 00:18:11.599 --> 00:18:13.599 It signals a shared sense of humor and warmth. 00:18:13.859 --> 00:18:15.900 You aren't speaking down to an animal. You're 00:18:15.900 --> 00:18:18.450 using the dialect. to bond with other adults 00:18:18.450 --> 00:18:20.369 online. Okay, I actually need you to explain 00:18:20.369 --> 00:18:22.250 this next one to me because I live through this 00:18:22.250 --> 00:18:24.150 era of the internet and I remember seeing it 00:18:24.150 --> 00:18:26.470 everywhere and it made absolutely zero -a -sense 00:18:26.470 --> 00:18:29.690 to me. Oh, lay it on me. The bee emoji. We are 00:18:29.690 --> 00:18:32.289 talking about the bright red square emoji with 00:18:32.289 --> 00:18:34.789 a white bee inside it. How did this become a 00:18:34.789 --> 00:18:37.069 spelling phenomenon? The journey of the bee emoji 00:18:37.069 --> 00:18:40.069 is a fascinating case study in digital semiotics. 00:18:40.289 --> 00:18:43.630 I am all ears. Originally, that emoji was designed 00:18:43.630 --> 00:18:47.099 for a very mundane purpose. to represent blood 00:18:47.099 --> 00:18:50.660 type B in text messages. Okay, makes sense. But 00:18:50.660 --> 00:18:52.640 then members of the blood street gang started 00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:56.410 using it online. just as they historically replaced 00:18:56.410 --> 00:18:59.269 the letter C with B in their speech to disrespect 00:18:59.269 --> 00:19:02.250 their rivals, the Crips. Writing words like bloods 00:19:02.250 --> 00:19:04.930 with the B emoji. Exactly, they naturally adopted 00:19:04.930 --> 00:19:07.809 the emoji as a visual marker. But then meme culture 00:19:07.809 --> 00:19:09.789 somehow got a hold of it. Yes, and it spread 00:19:09.789 --> 00:19:12.470 rapidly and chaotically. Internet users started 00:19:12.470 --> 00:19:14.750 utilizing the emoji to replace the first letter 00:19:14.750 --> 00:19:16.950 in words. Any word. Well, most controversially, 00:19:17.049 --> 00:19:18.630 it was used to replace the first letter of the 00:19:18.630 --> 00:19:21.980 N -word. Oh wow. Yeah. The sources note that 00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:24.619 this drew intense criticism because many non 00:19:24.619 --> 00:19:26.640 -black internet users were utilizing the bee 00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:29.490 emoji as a sort of racist loophole. Acting as 00:19:29.490 --> 00:19:31.710 if the taboo around the word magically vanished 00:19:31.710 --> 00:19:33.789 just because they swapped the first letter with 00:19:33.789 --> 00:19:36.349 a cartoon emoji. Exactly. That is incredibly 00:19:36.349 --> 00:19:38.890 dark. But the meme kept mutating beyond that. 00:19:39.109 --> 00:19:41.930 Oh, right. It did. It became totally unmoored 00:19:41.930 --> 00:19:44.549 from its origins. It started showing up in surreal 00:19:44.549 --> 00:19:47.230 memes about the cartoon character Peter Griffin. 00:19:47.410 --> 00:19:49.430 Spelling his name better with the bee emoji. 00:19:49.630 --> 00:19:54.150 Right. And by post 2017, the internet had organically 00:19:54.150 --> 00:19:57.089 agreed on a new linguistic rule for the meme. 00:19:57.269 --> 00:20:00.220 What was the rule? The B emoji could be used 00:20:00.220 --> 00:20:03.000 to replace absolutely any starting consonant 00:20:03.000 --> 00:20:06.240 of a word or any plosive consonant and the beginning 00:20:06.240 --> 00:20:08.640 of a stressed syllable. OK, wait. Break that 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:11.059 down for me. What exactly is a plosive in this 00:20:11.059 --> 00:20:13.559 context? A plosive is a linguistic term, but 00:20:13.559 --> 00:20:15.680 it is exactly what it sounds like. It's a tiny 00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:18.000 explosion in your mouth. An explosion. Yeah. 00:20:18.099 --> 00:20:21.259 If you try saying a P, a B, a T, or a K, you 00:20:21.259 --> 00:20:23.279 have to literally block the airflow in your mouth 00:20:23.279 --> 00:20:25.779 and then release it in a sharp, sudden burst. 00:20:26.220 --> 00:20:30.369 OK, good. Exactly, because those sounds are naturally 00:20:30.369 --> 00:20:33.130 aggressive and punchy, replacing them with a 00:20:33.130 --> 00:20:35.950 bright red bee emoji makes the meme feel incredibly 00:20:35.950 --> 00:20:37.750 disruptive and loud when you read it in your 00:20:37.750 --> 00:20:40.529 head. That is wild. It is language evolving in 00:20:40.529 --> 00:20:43.190 real time visually right on our screens. From 00:20:43.190 --> 00:20:45.950 a medical blood type symbol to gang slang to 00:20:45.950 --> 00:20:48.950 a highly controversial loophole to a universally 00:20:48.950 --> 00:20:51.549 understood marker of deep -fried meme culture. 00:20:52.250 --> 00:20:54.730 So what does this all mean? We have covered some 00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:57.250 serious ground today. We really have. We started 00:20:57.250 --> 00:21:00.049 with the heavy historical weaponization of the 00:21:00.049 --> 00:21:04.130 letter K, tracking how it visually signaled authoritarianism 00:21:04.130 --> 00:21:07.269 and systemic racism. Then we unpacked how a simple 00:21:07.269 --> 00:21:09.490 dollar sign can be used as guerrilla branding 00:21:09.490 --> 00:21:12.329 to instantly label a corporation as corrupt. 00:21:12.490 --> 00:21:15.190 We've seen how a well -placed slash or capital 00:21:15.190 --> 00:21:18.109 letter can act as a linguistic Trojan horse to 00:21:18.109 --> 00:21:20.809 reveal hidden insults. And finally, we saw how 00:21:20.809 --> 00:21:22.970 the internet adopted all of these exact same 00:21:22.970 --> 00:21:25.470 strategies. to create the joyful absurdity of 00:21:25.470 --> 00:21:28.029 burbs, doggos, and the endlessly mutating bee 00:21:28.029 --> 00:21:30.569 emoji? If there is one overarching takeaway, 00:21:31.069 --> 00:21:33.609 it is that spelling is never truly neutral. The 00:21:33.609 --> 00:21:35.589 next time you spot a typo in a text message, 00:21:35.869 --> 00:21:38.210 a forum post, or an article, take a second to 00:21:38.210 --> 00:21:40.710 stop and ask yourself, was it really just a careless 00:21:40.710 --> 00:21:43.609 mistake? Or is the author trying to subtly change 00:21:43.609 --> 00:21:46.500 the entire meaning, the entire feeling? of that 00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:48.900 word. And perhaps more importantly, think about 00:21:48.900 --> 00:21:51.839 your own digital footprint. What words do you 00:21:51.839 --> 00:21:54.019 consciously misspell in your own group chats 00:21:54.019 --> 00:21:57.339 to signal exactly who you are and who you belong 00:21:57.339 --> 00:22:00.819 with? It makes you realize that invisible social 00:22:00.819 --> 00:22:02.660 contract of correct spelling we talked about 00:22:02.660 --> 00:22:05.319 at the beginning, we break it on purpose and 00:22:05.319 --> 00:22:07.940 we break it all the time. Constantly. Keep your 00:22:07.940 --> 00:22:10.140 eyes open for that jarring little glitch in the 00:22:10.140 --> 00:22:12.079 matrix. Until next time.