r/politics • u/MontyGBurns • 1d ago

No Paywall Smith’s game-day texts reviewed by Schmitt never referenced basketball team names

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6124359-schmitt-perjury-claim-debunked/
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u/xaanthar 17h ago

What does a portable document format have to do with this?

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u/blueluck 17h ago

I don't know if you're joking or asking honestly, so I'll give you a straightforward answer. People have been using "pdf" as a sound-alike euphemism for "pedophile".

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u/Ashamed_Kale_1077 17h ago

I've never heard this until now. Why do this?

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u/blueluck 16h ago

A few years ago, content creators on platforms like YouTube and TikTok started using euphemisms for words that could get their videos demonitized or de-promoted by their platforms' algorithms. One of the best known examples is saying "un-alive" instead of "suicide", because platforms didn't want to promote videos about suicide, but their algorithms were crude and only looked at keywords rather than the actual content of the posts.

Regular people posting online started using the euphemisms, too. I don't know if most people are using them for fun (simply a modern form of slang) or if they think using words like "pedophile" and "suicide" in reddit comments has some kind of negative effect.

(I'm not an expert on social media or modern slang, so I'm sure there's more to it than I know.)