What Does the Grape Emoji Imply on TikTok?

Content material warning: This text mentions sexual abuse.

When you’ve ever been on TikTok, you seemingly know that it is not at all times straightforward to grasp precisely what of us on the platform are speaking about. Typically, they provide you with new phrases or acronyms that really feel completely impenetrable, and generally, they use emojis in locations the place it does not appear to be they need to go.

Just lately, some customers have observed that the grape emoji is popping up throughout TikTok, and try to determine why it is getting used so regularly. This is what we all know concerning the emoji, and what it appears to be standing in for.

As is the case with nearly any emoji, the grape emoji can imply a few various things. Typically, it could possibly genuinely be referring to grapes. Different occasions, it seems to be a stand-in for the phrase “nice,” largely as a result of the 2 phrases sound so comparable.

The chief method that the grape emoji is used on TikTok, although, is as a stand in for the phrase “rape.”

The explanation that the emoji is used is that really utilizing the phrase rape on TikTok can flag the platform’s censors and result in penalties on your account. Rape will not be the one phrase that has acquired this therapy, which is why some individuals now say that somebody was “unalived” of their movies as a substitute of merely saying he was “killed.” TikTok has led to the creation of a whole new language designed to get round their censors.

Phrases like kill and rape are, by their very nature, fairly critical, which is why some customers on TikTok get very aggravated when much less critical substitutes are used of their place. Whereas some individuals could do it to make gentle of those subjects, most individuals wind up utilizing the substitutes as a result of it is the one method they’ll focus on the subject in any respect on TikTok.

Whereas some individuals could focus on issues inappropriately on the platform, there are additionally some customers who’re annoyed by the subjects that they’re utterly unable to cope with significantly on TikTok.

That is at the least partially intentional on TikTok’s half. The platform is designed for lighter subjects and leisure, and censoring sure phrases implies that movies about these subjects are being fairly actively discouraged.

After all, as is commonly the case in each space of life, that call additionally got here with some unintended penalties. So, as a substitute of individuals simply refusing to debate these subjects on TikTok, they got here up with new methods to debate them that labored round TikTok’s censorship.

If conversations about delicate subjects are going to occur on TikTok whether or not the platform needs them to or not, it’d make extra sense for them to be taking place with out the necessity to describe rape as “grape” and killing somebody as “unliving” them. Within the fast future, although, it does not appear to be TikTok is planning to reevaluate its insurance policies.