Urban Dictionary Will Be Losing Its Charm Soon
Urban Dictionary is blocked on my current company laptop. There are other sites blocked as well, but Urban Dictionary? What is there to be blocked? I was surprised.
I found out that people complained about the derogatory language used to explain the word meanings and they also said a lot of shit about the shits Urban Dictionary has.
I know, Urban Dictionary has a lot of dark and edgy jokes and it is filled with slang and insensitive words, but that’s what Urban Dictionary is. It’s fun. People are so sensitive about everything these days. What is wrong with the definition of the below word, “Urban Dictionary”.
Anyway, to solve this problem, in July 2020, Urban Dictionary decided to take some strict actions and to do that it also decided to keep the power to decide what is and what isn’t acceptable.
Every sentence in the vision was fine, but the last part where Urban Dictionary got an overriding authority over the user’s contributions was a worrying sign of upcoming trouble. Deciding for others is a complete “no-go zone”. Who will decide the difference between offensive, hate speech and freedom of expression? They sound the same but are totally different things.
I shared the same thoughts with the Urban Dictionary in their feedback form. In my opinion, Urban Dictionary is a lingual history of the English language — it should be kept democratic and not be moderated by an administrator per se.
The definitions of hate speech and abuse have kept changing throughout history, it is not justifiable to silence the spirit of Urban with these temporary excuses.
I bet, there might be people who will also take offence at the usage of the “Urban” in “Urban Dictionary”. There does not exist any algorithm in the world right now that can fully understand the difference between sarcasm and humour.
Don’t push this vision, Urban Dictionary. If you do it, you will either lose or worst, you will stop becoming Urban Dictionary. You definitely don’t want the latter.
