WEBVTT 00:00:01.359 --> 00:00:03.480 Imagine you're walking down a street in Barcelona, 00:00:03.700 --> 00:00:06.019 right? Right. And you see a brick wall covered 00:00:06.019 --> 00:00:09.339 in fresh graffiti. OK. But the protesters, they 00:00:09.339 --> 00:00:12.800 didn't spray paint some massive, sprawling slogan. 00:00:13.199 --> 00:00:15.500 They didn't paint a mural. They just spray painted 00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:18.739 a single letter, just a K. Oh, yeah. That is 00:00:18.739 --> 00:00:21.800 literally it, just a K replacing a C in a word 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:24.120 painted on a squatter's building. And you have 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:26.359 to wonder, why does changing one single letter 00:00:26.359 --> 00:00:29.280 in a word suddenly turn it into an act of warfare? 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:33.740 Well, because it completely shatters our expectation 00:00:33.740 --> 00:00:35.899 of authority. I mean, usually, when we think 00:00:35.899 --> 00:00:37.939 about spelling, we treat it like a mathematical 00:00:37.939 --> 00:00:39.259 equation, right? Yeah, like there's only one 00:00:39.259 --> 00:00:41.359 right answer. Exactly. You look up a word in 00:00:41.359 --> 00:00:43.640 the dictionary, it has a specific arrangement 00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:46.479 of letters, and that arrangement is fixed. But 00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:49.420 when you intentionally break that shared orthography, 00:00:49.759 --> 00:00:51.539 you're basically signaling to the world that 00:00:51.539 --> 00:00:54.280 you reject the underlying rules of the system 00:00:54.280 --> 00:00:57.399 itself. Welcome to the Deep Dive. If you're joining 00:00:57.399 --> 00:00:59.200 us, you are the kind of person who wants to cut 00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:01.960 through the noise. You are the learner. You want 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:04.159 to understand the why and the how behind the 00:01:04.159 --> 00:01:06.599 things we see every day without feeling, you 00:01:06.599 --> 00:01:09.060 know, completely overwhelmed by information overload. 00:01:09.180 --> 00:01:12.519 Right. Today, we are exploring a linguistic phenomenon 00:01:12.519 --> 00:01:15.799 called satiric misspelling. We're looking at 00:01:15.799 --> 00:01:17.939 the intentional misspelling of a word, a phrase 00:01:17.939 --> 00:01:21.040 or a name specifically for rhetorical effect. 00:01:21.319 --> 00:01:23.920 And, uh... To be clear, we are not talking about 00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:26.140 accidental typos here. No, not at all. If you 00:01:26.140 --> 00:01:28.480 accidentally hit the wrong key on your phone, 00:01:28.519 --> 00:01:30.599 that's just a mistake. We were talking about 00:01:30.599 --> 00:01:33.299 intentionally weaponizing language. And sometimes 00:01:33.299 --> 00:01:36.620 this happens through intentional malapropisms. 00:01:36.980 --> 00:01:38.680 Right, which is when you substitute a word for 00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:41.060 one that sounds similar but has a drastically 00:01:41.060 --> 00:01:43.959 different and often comedic or shocking meaning. 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:47.060 Yeah, exactly. Think about a... Swapping the 00:01:47.060 --> 00:01:49.659 word election for erection, you're forcing the 00:01:49.659 --> 00:01:53.219 listener to do this mental double take. Or there's 00:01:53.219 --> 00:01:55.439 a knowledge, which is another great concept. 00:01:55.980 --> 00:01:58.719 That's when you intentionally use incorrect grammar 00:01:58.719 --> 00:02:01.620 for a specific effect, like a sports fan saying, 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:04.439 we was robbed. Oh, sure. Yeah. They know the 00:02:04.439 --> 00:02:06.920 grammar is wrong. But saying we were robbed just 00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:09.900 sounds too formal. We was robbed conveys this 00:02:09.900 --> 00:02:13.270 raw, authentic, defiant emotion. But the most 00:02:13.270 --> 00:02:15.349 common and arguably the most powerful form of 00:02:15.349 --> 00:02:18.509 this is simply replacing a single letter or symbol 00:02:18.509 --> 00:02:21.530 to entirely change the subtext of a word. Right, 00:02:21.770 --> 00:02:24.770 but before we get into the actual mechanics of 00:02:24.770 --> 00:02:26.629 how that visual disruption works in the human 00:02:26.629 --> 00:02:29.210 brain, we need to pause and establish a really 00:02:29.210 --> 00:02:31.469 crucial ground rule for this conversation. Yes, 00:02:31.569 --> 00:02:34.090 this is vital. Because this phenomenon is fundamentally 00:02:34.090 --> 00:02:36.490 about rebellion and critique, it has been used 00:02:36.490 --> 00:02:38.629 heavily across the entire political spectrum. 00:02:39.129 --> 00:02:41.050 Throughout this deep dive, we are going to be 00:02:41.050 --> 00:02:43.389 discussing highly charged political examples 00:02:43.389 --> 00:02:45.449 spanning both the left wing and the right wing. 00:02:45.789 --> 00:02:49.069 So we must explicitly state to you, the listener, 00:02:49.729 --> 00:02:52.550 we are not taking sides. Emphatically no. We 00:02:52.550 --> 00:02:56.050 are not endorsing any of the viewpoints, the 00:02:56.050 --> 00:02:58.550 insults, or the political messaging we're about 00:02:58.550 --> 00:03:01.750 to discuss. We are impartially reporting on the 00:03:01.750 --> 00:03:05.310 factual reality of these terms to explore this 00:03:05.310 --> 00:03:07.189 as a linguistic phenomena. Yeah, we're looking 00:03:07.189 --> 00:03:09.430 at the mechanics of the language. We are studying 00:03:09.430 --> 00:03:12.069 the tools, not validating the people wielding 00:03:12.069 --> 00:03:13.830 them. We're looking at the hammer, not the carpenter. 00:03:13.969 --> 00:03:16.550 Perfectly said. Okay, let's unpack this. We're 00:03:16.550 --> 00:03:20.090 gonna start with what I would call blunt force 00:03:20.090 --> 00:03:23.639 typography. The simplest most visceral form of 00:03:23.639 --> 00:03:26.280 a satiric misspelling is just replacing a single 00:03:26.280 --> 00:03:28.819 letter. Right. To me, this is essentially linguistic 00:03:28.819 --> 00:03:30.919 graffiti. It's like slapping a bumper sticker 00:03:30.919 --> 00:03:33.879 over a word to totally deface its original meaning. 00:03:34.020 --> 00:03:36.599 Go ahead. And the undisputed king of this blunt 00:03:36.599 --> 00:03:39.020 force defacement is the letter K. Oh, absolutely. 00:03:39.199 --> 00:03:41.819 The letter K carries an incredibly heavy, almost 00:03:41.819 --> 00:03:44.800 brutalist rhetorical footprint. If we look back 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:48.400 at the 1960s and early 1970s in the US, counterculture 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:50.379 groups like the Yippies began referring to the 00:03:50.379 --> 00:03:52.659 United States as America, but spelled with a 00:03:52.659 --> 00:03:55.039 K instead of a C. Wow. Just changing that one 00:03:55.039 --> 00:03:57.250 letter. Yeah, because typographically the letter 00:03:57.250 --> 00:04:00.370 C is curved, classical, it's soft. The letter 00:04:00.370 --> 00:04:04.150 K is angular and harsh. By swapping them, they 00:04:04.150 --> 00:04:06.530 were making a deliberate visual allusion to the 00:04:06.530 --> 00:04:08.830 Russian and German spellings of the word. Right, 00:04:08.889 --> 00:04:10.969 because they wanted to suggest an underlying 00:04:10.969 --> 00:04:13.389 authoritarianism within the American establishment. 00:04:14.050 --> 00:04:17.250 You see that K and your brain immediately associates 00:04:17.250 --> 00:04:20.509 it with, like, the Cold War era aesthetic of 00:04:20.509 --> 00:04:23.810 the KGB or the historic memory of fascism. Exactly. 00:04:24.009 --> 00:04:26.009 It instantly signals rebellion, which brings 00:04:26.009 --> 00:04:27.889 us back to that graffiti in Barcelona you mentioned. 00:04:28.009 --> 00:04:30.430 Right, the K on the wall. Yeah. European squatters 00:04:30.430 --> 00:04:32.730 and anarchist centers do the exact same thing 00:04:32.730 --> 00:04:35.790 to signal anti -establishment resistance. In 00:04:35.790 --> 00:04:38.810 Spanish, the word to occupy or squat is ocupa 00:04:38.810 --> 00:04:41.850 with a C, but the movement writes it as ocupa 00:04:41.850 --> 00:04:44.750 with a K. Oh, interesting. It stems from a mix 00:04:44.750 --> 00:04:47.310 of English borrowings and the punk movement using 00:04:47.310 --> 00:04:50.170 the K to visually separate their lifestyle from 00:04:50.170 --> 00:04:53.069 mainstream, legally sanctioned society. It's 00:04:53.069 --> 00:04:55.810 literally a flag planted right in the middle 00:04:55.810 --> 00:04:59.029 of a word. What I find so compelling is how a 00:04:59.029 --> 00:05:01.910 single letter can be culturally co -opted. and 00:05:01.910 --> 00:05:04.610 then entirely flipped and re -weaponized against 00:05:04.610 --> 00:05:07.389 the original users. Oh yeah. Because historically 00:05:07.389 --> 00:05:10.310 in the United States, replacing a C with a K 00:05:10.310 --> 00:05:13.490 was notoriously used by the Ku Klux Klan during 00:05:13.490 --> 00:05:16.430 its early years to brand their terminology. And 00:05:16.430 --> 00:05:19.589 that creates a highly recognizable, deeply oppressive 00:05:19.589 --> 00:05:23.670 linguistic pattern. But then, by the 1970s, opponents 00:05:23.670 --> 00:05:26.209 of racism began taking that exact lettering, 00:05:26.250 --> 00:05:28.750 the three Ks, and inserting it into the names 00:05:28.750 --> 00:05:31.660 of institutions to accuse them of systemic racism. 00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:33.560 But they flipped the script. Exactly. Instead 00:05:33.560 --> 00:05:35.560 of just calling a system racist, which is, you 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:37.939 know, easy to ignore, they forced the reader 00:05:37.939 --> 00:05:40.399 to visually confront the accusation. Right. You 00:05:40.399 --> 00:05:42.519 see this emerging in the early 70s in publications 00:05:42.519 --> 00:05:45.540 like Black World magazine, right? America with 00:05:45.540 --> 00:05:48.079 three K's. It's a brilliant, aggressive form 00:05:48.079 --> 00:05:51.000 of wordplay. You are taking the oppressor's own 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:53.959 symbol and turning it into an inescapable accusation 00:05:53.959 --> 00:05:56.180 embedded right in the name of the country. And 00:05:56.180 --> 00:05:58.860 that spelling became a massive cultural touchstone, 00:05:58.860 --> 00:06:02.319 especially in 90s hip hop. Ice Cube had his 1990 00:06:02.319 --> 00:06:05.319 album, America's Most Wanted, and Tupac Shakur 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:08.339 used a Z and a K in two of America's Most Wanted. 00:06:08.339 --> 00:06:11.740 It is everywhere. It really is. It became a customizable 00:06:11.740 --> 00:06:14.480 template for political insults across the board. 00:06:14.639 --> 00:06:17.339 You see people on opposing sides using it to 00:06:17.339 --> 00:06:19.860 brand their political rivals. Republican for 00:06:19.860 --> 00:06:22.819 the Republican Party or Democrat for the Democratic 00:06:22.819 --> 00:06:26.050 Party. Someone even called David Duke David Duckie. 00:06:26.129 --> 00:06:28.509 Just shoving it right in there. Right. It's a 00:06:28.509 --> 00:06:31.209 blunt instrument used to accuse an opponent of 00:06:31.209 --> 00:06:34.110 the most extreme bigotry imaginable just by repeating 00:06:34.110 --> 00:06:36.649 a single consonant. But there's another branch 00:06:36.649 --> 00:06:40.129 of this blunt force defacement that doesn't target 00:06:40.129 --> 00:06:43.069 authoritarianism. It targets money. I'm talking 00:06:43.069 --> 00:06:45.540 about currency symbols. Replacing an S with a 00:06:45.540 --> 00:06:47.759 dollar sign, an E with a euro symbol, or an L 00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:49.899 with a pound sign. Oh, this is a masterclass 00:06:49.899 --> 00:06:52.720 in psychological priming. When an activist replaces 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:55.480 the S in an oil company's name, like Esso, with 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:58.220 two dollar signs, or replaces the S in Scientology 00:06:58.220 --> 00:07:00.399 with a dollar sign during protests, they are 00:07:00.399 --> 00:07:02.740 literally hacking your visual processing. Because 00:07:02.740 --> 00:07:05.060 the phonetic pronunciation stays exactly the 00:07:05.060 --> 00:07:09.120 same. You still read it out loud as Esso or Scientology. 00:07:09.439 --> 00:07:14.000 Yes. But visually, Your brain processes symbols 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.180 faster than it processes letters. Before you've 00:07:17.180 --> 00:07:19.920 even sounded out the word in your head, the currency 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:22.360 symbol has already primed your brain with the 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:25.500 concepts of greed, plutocracy, and unethical 00:07:25.500 --> 00:07:27.819 wealth. That is so wild. It is a dual -channel 00:07:27.819 --> 00:07:30.120 attack. You're hearing the orthodox name, but 00:07:30.120 --> 00:07:31.879 you're seeing an indictment of their motives. 00:07:32.139 --> 00:07:34.839 And it's everywhere. People write Microfoft with 00:07:34.839 --> 00:07:38.959 a dollar sign, or Congrat with two, or my favorite 00:07:38.959 --> 00:07:41.779 pop culture irony, the singer Keha. Oh, we're 00:07:41.779 --> 00:07:44.079 right. She famously adopted the dollar sign in 00:07:44.079 --> 00:07:46.980 her own name while she was entirely broke. She 00:07:46.980 --> 00:07:48.779 basically took this anti -capitalist critique 00:07:48.779 --> 00:07:50.939 and turned it into an ironic personal brand. 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:53.920 But, um, I have to push back on this whole blunt 00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:56.019 force concept for a second. Go away. Does this 00:07:56.019 --> 00:07:57.839 actually persuade anyone? Like, let's say I'm 00:07:57.839 --> 00:08:00.180 a voter who is totally on the fence about a new 00:08:00.180 --> 00:08:02.680 corporate tax law. Does seeing a politician's 00:08:02.680 --> 00:08:04.720 name stole the dollar sign or seeing a political 00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:07.120 party spelled with three Ks actually make me 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:10.470 rethink my stance? Probably not. Right. Or is 00:08:10.470 --> 00:08:14.449 this purely about preaching to the choir? To 00:08:14.449 --> 00:08:16.470 me, it feels like tribal signaling for people 00:08:16.470 --> 00:08:18.930 who already agree with you. You've hit on the 00:08:18.930 --> 00:08:21.009 core limitation of satiric misspelling right 00:08:21.009 --> 00:08:23.069 there. You're completely right. It is almost 00:08:23.069 --> 00:08:25.490 never persuasive to the opposition. In fact, 00:08:25.610 --> 00:08:27.649 it usually alienates them further. Yeah, that 00:08:27.649 --> 00:08:31.009 makes sense. Linguistically, it acts as a shibboleth, 00:08:31.310 --> 00:08:34.690 a password or a custom that distinguishes a specific 00:08:34.690 --> 00:08:37.450 group of people. Like a secret handshake but 00:08:37.450 --> 00:08:40.440 spelled out on a sign. Precisely. It signals 00:08:40.440 --> 00:08:43.679 to your in -group, I'm one of you and I see the 00:08:43.679 --> 00:08:46.820 truth behind the facade. It's less about changing 00:08:46.820 --> 00:08:49.320 the minds of your enemies and more about solidifying 00:08:49.320 --> 00:08:51.460 a shared identity with your allies. And, you 00:08:51.460 --> 00:08:53.259 know, sometimes to your point about signaling, 00:08:53.659 --> 00:08:56.059 it isn't even about deep political warfare. Sometimes 00:08:56.059 --> 00:08:58.480 changing a letter is literally just about dodging 00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:00.639 a censor to make a joke. Which is the perfect 00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:02.679 pivot to something a little lighter. If you're 00:09:02.679 --> 00:09:04.519 just swapping a letter to get around a rule. 00:09:04.730 --> 00:09:07.230 you end up in the territory of that classic Monty 00:09:07.230 --> 00:09:10.850 Python travel agent sketch. Oh, yes. It is the 00:09:10.850 --> 00:09:13.889 perfect palate cleanser for this concept. Eric 00:09:13.889 --> 00:09:16.389 Idle plays a character with a bizarre speech 00:09:16.389 --> 00:09:19.789 affliction where he pronounces the letter C as 00:09:19.789 --> 00:09:22.750 a B. Right. So he says, Blassified instead of 00:09:22.750 --> 00:09:25.990 Classified. And Michael Palin's character, trying 00:09:25.990 --> 00:09:28.909 to be helpful, asks if he is physically capable 00:09:28.909 --> 00:09:31.889 of saying the letter K. And Idle says he can. 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:34.799 So Palin suggests, why don't you just spell words 00:09:34.799 --> 00:09:37.759 with a K instead? And Idle's character responds 00:09:37.759 --> 00:09:40.100 with absolute joy. He goes, what you mean pronounced 00:09:40.100 --> 00:09:42.379 blastified with a K classified? Oh, it's very 00:09:42.379 --> 00:09:43.899 good. I never thought of that before. What a 00:09:43.899 --> 00:09:46.039 silly pun. It's brilliant, because the character 00:09:46.039 --> 00:09:48.139 is trapped by his own absurd linguistic rules. 00:09:49.850 --> 00:09:52.110 we need to move away from the blunt force sledgehammer 00:09:52.110 --> 00:09:54.789 of just swapping out one letter. Because if that 00:09:54.789 --> 00:09:57.470 first method is about violently defacing words, 00:09:58.029 --> 00:10:00.210 this next method is about dissecting them. It's 00:10:00.210 --> 00:10:03.470 about revealing a hidden truth that supposedly 00:10:03.470 --> 00:10:05.889 already exists inside the orthodox spelling. 00:10:06.139 --> 00:10:08.379 Yeah, we're moving into the realm of word -in 00:10:08.379 --> 00:10:11.740 -word manipulation, puns, and acronyms. This 00:10:11.740 --> 00:10:13.860 requires a much more surgical manipulation of 00:10:13.860 --> 00:10:16.279 language. You aren't just changing the letters, 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:19.059 you're changing the emphasis. You see this a 00:10:19.059 --> 00:10:21.059 lot with people capitalizing specific letters 00:10:21.059 --> 00:10:23.720 in the middle of a word, or using parentheses 00:10:23.720 --> 00:10:26.799 to isolate a concept. For instance, following 00:10:26.799 --> 00:10:29.220 the highly controversial 2000 U .S. election, 00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:32.080 opponents of George W. Bush started writing his 00:10:32.080 --> 00:10:35.480 title as president with a lowercase p and a capital 00:10:35.480 --> 00:10:38.149 R. Think about the physical act of typing that. 00:10:38.529 --> 00:10:40.610 You have to intentionally hold down the shift 00:10:40.610 --> 00:10:43.450 key in the middle of a word. It's a micro rebellion 00:10:43.450 --> 00:10:45.730 at the keyboard. The implication they were making 00:10:45.730 --> 00:10:47.830 was that he wasn't legitimately leading the country. 00:10:48.289 --> 00:10:50.590 He was merely a resident occupying the White 00:10:50.590 --> 00:10:53.009 House. Right, or look at how opponents of the 00:10:53.009 --> 00:10:55.809 Patriot Act manipulated that acronym. They began 00:10:55.809 --> 00:10:59.389 re -spacing the words to spell it, USA Pat Riot 00:10:59.389 --> 00:11:02.350 Act, or putting the pat in parentheses to visually 00:11:02.350 --> 00:11:05.169 isolate the word riot. Yes. They're trying to 00:11:05.169 --> 00:11:07.370 strip away the warm patriotic implication of 00:11:07.370 --> 00:11:09.590 the acronym and reframe the legislation as something 00:11:09.590 --> 00:11:12.379 inherently chaotic or oppressive. And this surgical 00:11:12.379 --> 00:11:15.159 dissection happens globally, by the way. It's 00:11:15.159 --> 00:11:17.899 a universal human impulse to find the insult 00:11:17.899 --> 00:11:21.279 hidden inside the formal title. In French, the 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:23.940 prefix con is a very severe insult, meaning essentially 00:11:23.940 --> 00:11:27.940 a moron. OK. So critics of conservatism write 00:11:27.940 --> 00:11:31.580 it as conservateur, literally hyphenating the 00:11:31.580 --> 00:11:33.860 word to forcefully separate the insult from the 00:11:33.860 --> 00:11:35.879 rest of the title. It's like finding a flaw in 00:11:35.879 --> 00:11:38.220 the armor and just driving a wedge into it. Exactly. 00:11:38.759 --> 00:11:40.919 In the Philippines, there were major allegations 00:11:40.919 --> 00:11:44.460 that Senator Ramon Bong Revilla Jr. pocketed 00:11:44.460 --> 00:11:47.559 public funds. The Filipino word for plunderer 00:11:47.559 --> 00:11:50.850 is mandarm -bong. So Nettison's just capitalized 00:11:50.850 --> 00:11:52.429 his nickname right there at the end of the word, 00:11:52.490 --> 00:11:54.669 dubbing him Mendambong. The word was already 00:11:54.669 --> 00:11:56.850 waiting for him. It really was. And in Brazil, 00:11:57.389 --> 00:11:59.750 critics of former president Jair Bolsonaro looked 00:11:59.750 --> 00:12:02.629 at the devastating Amazon rainforest wildfires 00:12:02.629 --> 00:12:05.470 and his perceived indifference to the pandemic, 00:12:05.490 --> 00:12:09.169 and they dubbed him Bolso Nero. Oh, wow. Yeah, 00:12:09.169 --> 00:12:11.649 they split his name to create a direct reference 00:12:11.649 --> 00:12:14.629 to the Roman emperor Nero, who famously fiddled 00:12:14.629 --> 00:12:17.070 while Rome burned. We also see this dissective 00:12:17.070 --> 00:12:19.740 approach in academia. The feminist theologian 00:12:19.740 --> 00:12:23.759 Mary Daly famously used slashes to critique patriarchy. 00:12:24.139 --> 00:12:26.779 She would write gynecology, stagnation, or therapist. 00:12:27.220 --> 00:12:29.980 By inserting that slash, she forces the reader's 00:12:29.980 --> 00:12:32.740 eye to physically stop. You literally can't skim 00:12:32.740 --> 00:12:35.379 past it. Right. You have to examine the linguistic 00:12:35.379 --> 00:12:37.740 roots and the ugly associations of the words 00:12:37.740 --> 00:12:40.519 we use every day. She is weaponizing punctuation. 00:12:40.779 --> 00:12:43.559 She absolutely is. But I have another analogy 00:12:43.559 --> 00:12:45.080 for you and another pushback. All right, let's 00:12:45.080 --> 00:12:48.450 hear it. Looking at these word -in -word puns 00:12:48.450 --> 00:12:52.620 like president or USA Pat Riot. Isn't this type 00:12:52.620 --> 00:12:55.139 of wordplay essentially just confirmation bias 00:12:55.139 --> 00:12:57.940 disguised as cleverness? To me, it feels like 00:12:57.940 --> 00:12:59.620 staring up at the clouds, finding one that looks 00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:01.820 like a dog, and then forcing everyone else to 00:13:01.820 --> 00:13:04.500 see that exact same dog just to validate your 00:13:04.500 --> 00:13:06.659 own political grievance. That is a remarkably 00:13:06.659 --> 00:13:08.980 sharp observation. You're right. It relies almost 00:13:08.980 --> 00:13:11.940 entirely on phonetic coincidence. George W. Bush 00:13:11.940 --> 00:13:14.480 didn't invent the English word president, and 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:17.220 the Patriot Act was a highly engineered forced 00:13:17.220 --> 00:13:19.860 acronym to begin with. The hidden meaning isn't 00:13:19.860 --> 00:13:21.799 actually there by design. Right, it's just a 00:13:21.799 --> 00:13:23.840 coincidence of the alphabet. But you have to 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:26.480 remember that the human brain is fundamentally 00:13:26.480 --> 00:13:30.039 a pattern recognition machine. When an activist 00:13:30.039 --> 00:13:33.620 highlights a word within a word, they're hacking 00:13:33.620 --> 00:13:36.519 that cognitive pattern recognition. It does not 00:13:36.519 --> 00:13:38.679 matter if it is a coincidence. Once you see the 00:13:38.679 --> 00:13:40.799 shape in the clouds, you can't unsee it. That 00:13:40.799 --> 00:13:43.120 makes total sense. The hack is successful because 00:13:43.120 --> 00:13:46.100 it creates a permanent cognitive link between 00:13:46.100 --> 00:13:48.659 the orthodox word and the subversive meaning. 00:13:48.899 --> 00:13:51.620 Which perfectly explains the power of acronyms. 00:13:52.059 --> 00:13:54.019 People will take an established acronym and just 00:13:54.019 --> 00:13:56.220 swap out one word to completely change the narrative. 00:13:56.620 --> 00:13:58.960 If you look at DRM, Digital Rights Management, 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:01.399 software activists like Richard Stallman call 00:14:01.399 --> 00:14:03.980 it digital restrictions management. Because they 00:14:03.980 --> 00:14:06.519 want to force the conversation away from corporate 00:14:06.519 --> 00:14:09.840 rights and focus on user restrictions, it completely 00:14:09.840 --> 00:14:12.019 changes the premise of the debate. You see the 00:14:12.019 --> 00:14:14.519 exact same tactic used by critics of the NSA's 00:14:14.519 --> 00:14:17.539 PRISM program. They took National Security Agency 00:14:17.539 --> 00:14:20.320 and rebranded it the National Surveillance Agency 00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:23.460 or even the National Socialist Agency to point 00:14:23.460 --> 00:14:26.039 to what they perceive as a dystopian invasion 00:14:26.039 --> 00:14:29.590 of privacy. And the British media are absolute 00:14:29.590 --> 00:14:32.710 masters of this. The satirical magazine Private 00:14:32.710 --> 00:14:35.669 Eye famously insulted the prestigious law firm 00:14:35.669 --> 00:14:39.610 Carter Ruck by replacing the R with an F, so 00:14:39.610 --> 00:14:42.309 printing it as Carterfuck. When the law firm 00:14:42.309 --> 00:14:44.690 sent an angry cease and desist letter complaining 00:14:44.690 --> 00:14:46.909 about how their name was spelled, the magazine 00:14:46.909 --> 00:14:49.990 engaged in a brilliant piece of malicious compliance. 00:14:50.370 --> 00:14:53.009 They changed the spelling in the next issue to 00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:56.580 Fart or fuck. It is so petty and so incredibly 00:14:56.580 --> 00:14:59.059 effective. They also regularly refer to the Guardian 00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:01.940 newspaper as the Growney ad. Which is just a 00:15:01.940 --> 00:15:03.960 great joke. It is. It's a way of permanently 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:06.899 mocking the paper's historical reputation for 00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:09.659 terrible typographical errors. What is consistent 00:15:09.659 --> 00:15:11.440 across all these examples from the yippies with 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:13.480 their k's to private eye with their anagrams 00:15:13.480 --> 00:15:16.299 is that they are highly intentional, deeply ideological 00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:19.299 attempts to subvert power. But here's where it 00:15:19.299 --> 00:15:21.620 gets really interesting. Because this deep dive 00:15:21.620 --> 00:15:24.320 takes a massive, almost absurd left turn right 00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:27.620 here. We move away from serious political subversion 00:15:27.620 --> 00:15:30.519 and we enter the internet era. The internet takes 00:15:30.519 --> 00:15:32.980 these exact same rebellious linguistic tools, 00:15:33.340 --> 00:15:35.940 these hacks of the human brain, and applies them 00:15:35.940 --> 00:15:41.059 to pictures of pets. Yes. The mid -2000s internet 00:15:41.059 --> 00:15:43.580 gave birth to a phenomenon called lull speak. 00:15:43.740 --> 00:15:47.000 Okay, as cheeseburg. Exactly. The tech blogger 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:49.580 Anil Dash famously described this intentionally 00:15:49.580 --> 00:15:52.340 poor spelling and fractured grammar as kitty 00:15:52.340 --> 00:15:56.179 pigeon. Words like kitty became kidda. It was 00:15:56.179 --> 00:15:58.480 a completely organic, community -driven restructuring 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:00.220 of spelling for the sole purpose of conveying 00:16:00.220 --> 00:16:02.639 the imagined, goofy inner monologue of a cat. 00:16:02.919 --> 00:16:05.320 And it didn't stop with cats. It evolved directly 00:16:05.320 --> 00:16:07.759 into what we now call doggolingo. Dog becomes 00:16:07.759 --> 00:16:10.299 doggo, puppy becomes pupper, a bird is a birb, 00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:12.620 and a snake is a snake. What is wild to me is 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:14.899 that these re -spellings actually alter the pronunciation 00:16:14.899 --> 00:16:17.299 of the words. We are just changing a letter for 00:16:17.299 --> 00:16:19.080 a visual gag anymore, like the dollar sign in 00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:21.480 Microsoft. We are literally changing how people 00:16:21.480 --> 00:16:24.620 speak out loud. And that is a crucial evolution 00:16:24.620 --> 00:16:27.500 in satiric misspelling. When you write b with 00:16:27.500 --> 00:16:29.820 a dollar sign, you still pronounce it. bush. 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:32.399 But when you're at birb instead of bird, you 00:16:32.399 --> 00:16:34.740 are forced to pronounce that soft B at the end. 00:16:35.179 --> 00:16:38.120 It moves from a visual typographic trick to an 00:16:38.120 --> 00:16:40.500 actual dialectical shift. People actually start 00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:43.320 speaking doggolingo in real life. Yeah, exactly. 00:16:43.740 --> 00:16:46.200 And the mechanics of internet meme culture have 00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:50.019 codified these absurd jokes into incredibly rigid, 00:16:50.279 --> 00:16:53.059 almost academic, linguistic rules. Okay, you 00:16:53.059 --> 00:16:55.980 have to explain the B emoji. meme to me because 00:16:55.980 --> 00:16:57.960 this is the most baffling and fascinating part 00:16:57.960 --> 00:17:00.320 of this entire phenomenon. It truly is a journey. 00:17:00.659 --> 00:17:02.740 So we're talking about the negative squared letter 00:17:02.740 --> 00:17:05.900 B emoji. Visually, it looks like a white B inside 00:17:05.900 --> 00:17:08.279 a solid red square. Originally, this was just 00:17:08.279 --> 00:17:10.799 an innocent utilitarian medical emoji designed 00:17:10.799 --> 00:17:13.559 to represent blood type B. Just a standard symbol 00:17:13.559 --> 00:17:16.200 on your phone keyboard. Right. But then it was 00:17:16.200 --> 00:17:18.890 adopted by members of the Bloods gang. They have 00:17:18.890 --> 00:17:21.049 a long -standing practice of replacing the letter 00:17:21.049 --> 00:17:23.369 C with the letter B to disrespect their rivals, 00:17:23.549 --> 00:17:26.509 the Crips. So they started using this red B emoji 00:17:26.509 --> 00:17:28.690 to write words on social media, like spelling 00:17:28.690 --> 00:17:30.910 bloods with the red emoji at the front. So it 00:17:30.910 --> 00:17:34.369 goes from a blood type to a gang sign. and then 00:17:34.369 --> 00:17:36.329 the internet gets hold of it. And meme culture 00:17:36.329 --> 00:17:39.430 does what meme culture does. It exploded into 00:17:39.430 --> 00:17:41.869 a bizarre trend where people started using the 00:17:41.869 --> 00:17:45.150 bee emoji to replace hard consonants in totally 00:17:45.150 --> 00:17:48.170 innocuous words. The classic example was replacing 00:17:48.170 --> 00:17:50.450 the P in the cartoon character Peter Griffin 00:17:50.450 --> 00:17:53.049 to make it e -suter. It's just the incredible 00:17:53.049 --> 00:17:55.430 irony of it all. You have hardened street gangs 00:17:55.430 --> 00:17:58.789 signaling rivalries and mid -2000s internet users 00:17:58.789 --> 00:18:01.289 looking at pictures of animals. And they are 00:18:01.289 --> 00:18:05.089 utilizing the exact same rhetorical as the anarchist 00:18:05.089 --> 00:18:08.150 squatters in Barcelona. But it gets darker and 00:18:08.150 --> 00:18:10.990 then incredibly complex. The emoji was eventually 00:18:10.990 --> 00:18:13.630 used to replace the N in a racial slur. Oh, wow. 00:18:13.890 --> 00:18:17.089 Yeah, and this sparked severe and justified criticism 00:18:17.089 --> 00:18:20.890 as non -black internet users were using the emoji 00:18:20.890 --> 00:18:24.250 as a loophole. They were acting as if the taboo 00:18:24.250 --> 00:18:26.410 around the word magically vanished just because 00:18:26.410 --> 00:18:28.430 they swapped out one letter for a red square. 00:18:28.769 --> 00:18:31.410 It's a prime example of how these satiric misspellings 00:18:31.410 --> 00:18:34.279 can be used as a shield. to try and dodge accountability. 00:18:34.799 --> 00:18:37.430 Precisely But linguistically, what happens next 00:18:37.430 --> 00:18:39.930 is what is truly astounding. The internet community 00:18:39.930 --> 00:18:41.970 didn't just use this emoji randomly. They didn't 00:18:41.970 --> 00:18:45.529 just throw it anywhere in a word. By 2017, extended 00:18:45.529 --> 00:18:47.890 usage of this emoji led to the development of 00:18:47.890 --> 00:18:50.670 highly specific unspoken linguistic rules. Wait, 00:18:50.670 --> 00:18:52.910 what kind of rules? So in contemporary usage, 00:18:53.009 --> 00:18:55.529 the B emoji can only replace a consonant that 00:18:55.529 --> 00:18:58.150 starts a word, or if it is in the middle of a 00:18:58.150 --> 00:19:01.309 word, it must replace what linguists call a plosive 00:19:01.309 --> 00:19:04.009 consonant, which is a sound made by a sudden 00:19:04.009 --> 00:19:07.819 burst of air. like a B, P, T, D, G, or K, and 00:19:07.819 --> 00:19:09.900 it can only replace those plosive consonants 00:19:09.900 --> 00:19:12.039 specifically at the beginning of a stressed syllable. 00:19:12.319 --> 00:19:14.480 Wait, are you telling me that millions of internet 00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:16.680 trolls collectively, subconsciously invented 00:19:16.680 --> 00:19:19.839 a complex phonological rulebook for a red square 00:19:19.839 --> 00:19:23.200 emoji? Yes. They organically created a strict 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:26.259 grammatical framework for an inside joke. If 00:19:26.259 --> 00:19:28.319 you put the B emoji in the wrong part of the 00:19:28.319 --> 00:19:30.700 syllable, the internet will tell you that you 00:19:30.700 --> 00:19:33.609 spelled the meme wrong. That is amazing. So what 00:19:33.609 --> 00:19:35.950 does this all mean? We've gone from anarchist 00:19:35.950 --> 00:19:38.150 squatters in Barcelona defacing buildings with 00:19:38.150 --> 00:19:40.829 the letter K to activists surgically renaming 00:19:40.829 --> 00:19:44.670 the NSA to internet trolls applying strict plosive 00:19:44.670 --> 00:19:48.069 consonant rules to Peter Griffin. If we synthesize 00:19:48.069 --> 00:19:50.410 all of this, the core takeaway is that you are 00:19:50.410 --> 00:19:53.269 witnessing the fundamental human desire to hack 00:19:53.269 --> 00:19:56.369 language. We so often think of language merely 00:19:56.369 --> 00:19:58.990 as a utility, right? Like a sterile pipe meant 00:19:58.990 --> 00:20:01.950 to transmit information from my brain to your 00:20:01.950 --> 00:20:03.910 brain. Yeah, tool for communication. But it is 00:20:03.910 --> 00:20:05.970 so much more than that. Language is a playground 00:20:05.970 --> 00:20:08.569 and it is a battlefield. Whether it's to signal 00:20:08.569 --> 00:20:11.009 political defiance against an authoritarian regime, 00:20:11.470 --> 00:20:14.009 to mock a powerful corporation, or just to make 00:20:14.009 --> 00:20:16.450 a picture of a dog look a little sillier, human 00:20:16.400 --> 00:20:18.380 Students refuse to accept the dictionary as the 00:20:18.380 --> 00:20:21.519 final authority. We will bend, break, and rebuild 00:20:21.519 --> 00:20:24.539 words to force them to carry our exact emotional 00:20:24.539 --> 00:20:27.180 and tribal intent. It is absolutely brilliant. 00:20:27.799 --> 00:20:29.599 But what will leave you, the learner, with a 00:20:29.599 --> 00:20:32.500 final thought to chew on today? We've established 00:20:32.500 --> 00:20:35.500 that a satiric misspelling only works if the 00:20:35.500 --> 00:20:38.279 reader knows the correct spelling. The joke, 00:20:38.420 --> 00:20:41.539 or the protest, relies entirely on the friction 00:20:41.539 --> 00:20:44.240 between the dictionary definition and the defacement. 00:20:44.500 --> 00:20:46.259 Yeah, you need the orthodox spelling to exist 00:20:46.259 --> 00:20:48.039 so that the subversive spelling has something 00:20:48.039 --> 00:20:51.140 to push against. Exactly. But we are moving into 00:20:51.140 --> 00:20:53.440 a digital world that is increasingly governed 00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:56.539 by autocorrect algorithms, AI spell -checkers, 00:20:56.960 --> 00:20:59.539 and entirely new generations raised purely on 00:20:59.539 --> 00:21:02.259 internet slang. So what happens when the machines 00:21:02.259 --> 00:21:06.160 decide to fix our linguistic rebellion? Oh, that's 00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:09.240 a great point. when an AI smooths out all our 00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:13.019 purposeful, defiant typos. Or, even wilder, what 00:21:13.019 --> 00:21:15.059 happens when the satiric misspelling outlives 00:21:15.059 --> 00:21:17.619 the original word, when the satire just becomes 00:21:17.619 --> 00:21:20.099 the new standard? Will future historians dig 00:21:20.099 --> 00:21:22.140 through our digital ruins and conclude that a 00:21:22.140 --> 00:21:25.299 doggo was an entirely distinct biological species 00:21:25.299 --> 00:21:27.579 from a dog? It really makes you wonder how permanent 00:21:27.579 --> 00:21:29.839 the dictionary actually is when we have the power 00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:33.240 to edit it in real time. It really does. Next 00:21:33.240 --> 00:21:35.500 time you see a typo on a billboard, in a tweet, 00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:38.200 or on a protest line, pause and ask yourself, 00:21:38.319 --> 00:21:41.500 is this a mistake or is this a message? Thank 00:21:41.500 --> 00:21:42.940 you for joining us on this deep dive. We'll catch 00:21:42.940 --> 00:21:43.420 you next time.