Whats the point of writing prn, f@ck, sht or anything like that instead of the actual words? You can still read them, its not like they are gone if you replace a letter or two.

  • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    One possible reason is that some words on controversial subjects can attract mobs of posters with an agenda. They search for keywords to find threads to flood with their arguments.

    So posters would get in the habit of saying something like "I love p1n3apple on p*zza" to avoid the wrath of pizza purists (made-up example, but substitute with anything more controversial).

    • _danny@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This was a big problem during the 2016 election on reddit. There were armies of idiots who searched for comments containing 'Trump' and would brigade the shit out of it. But if you changed the 'p' to a 'р' (the Cyclic character) or changed the 'u' to a 'ս' (the Armenian character) miraculously you wouldn't be brigaded.