Seggs Meaning: Why the Sexy Slang Is All Over Social Media. – Men’s Health

If you spend time on TikTok and other social media sites, youve probably encountered the word seggs in a hashtag or captionand it definitely wasnt a typing error. Seggs is an alternate spelling of, well, sex.

Why add extra letters to the three letter word we already know and love? Let's talk about seggs, baby.

Censorship on social media has long been a subject of debate. When is social media censorship protecting users from threats and hate, and when is that censorship suppressing positive, educational content?

TikTok, the video-based social media platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is notorious for pulling content that most people would consider benign, as well as its lack of action against some users whose content is genuinely dangerous.

In 2021, TikTok announced that the company would be using an automated system to weed out videos that violate community guidelines. Now, when that system catches a video that violates the platforms standards, the video is immediately removed. The creator then has to go through an appeals process if they want to get their video back on the app.

The problem? Automated systems make mistakes. TikTok says that last year, the companys automated removal system had a false video removal rate of 5%. That might not sound like much, but when you consider just how much content is available on TikTok, it means the app removed millions of videos that did not violate the companys policies.

The platforms most recent iteration of its community guidelines states: We do not allow nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content on our platform. Since the app sometimes uses an automated system to enforce its sex-related policies, sex-positive content, sex workers content, and sex education content gets unfairly swept off the platform.

I noticed that the censorship on TikTok was much more severe than on other social media platforms I have done sex education on, says Eva Bloom, the sex educator behind the YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok accounts called @whatsmybodydoing. I've had multiple videos taken down for violating guidelines around talking about sexuality on TikTok.

Eva and other users have found that if they attach the word sex to a TikTok video, that video is more likely to be removed by TikTok. Thats when creative spelling (seggs) comes into play.

As of the writing of this article, the TikTok hashtag #seggs has 1.7 billion views. Variations include #seggys, #seggseducation, and #seggsuality. According to Bloom, seggs is better at circumventing censorship than other alternate spellings of sex.

My first video to get removed was removed even with censorship of the word sexuality' already, but another variation, Bloom says. That variation was sxuality. I have been locked out of my account for more than 24 hoursand Tik Tok has threatened to delete my account.

Bloom switched to using seggs in captions and hashtags on their educational videos. Since adopting the term, Bloom hasnt had any videos removed for language, although some of Blooms videos have since been removed for showing sex toys or discussing specific sex acts in an educational context.

Willie B. Thomas//Getty Images

On Instagram, the hashtag #seggs has been used in around 12,000 posts. While Instagrams community guidelines dont prohibit sex education content, using the word sex can still trigger unjust consequences. Some Instagram users use seggs in their captions and hashtags to avoid being shadowbanned, which occurs when Instagram restricts or hides a users account without their knowledge.

Rachel Wright, MA, LMFT, who shares educational content about sex and relationships on Instagram, has experienced shadowbanning firsthand. Ive been shadowbanned a lot, Wright says. The first time I ever noticed it, I was at a mixer exchanging Instagram handles with some folks I met. When they went to search me, I wouldnt come up. You had to type in my full, exact handle to find me.

Wright plans to continue sharing sex-postive content on Instagram, despite having to make some spelling adjustments. There is so much shame around sex, and the more we talk about something, the more shame goes away, she says.

Ro White is a Chicago-based writer, sex educator, and Autostraddles Sex & Dating Editor.

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Seggs Meaning: Why the Sexy Slang Is All Over Social Media. - Men's Health