Scunthorpe Problem: Difference between revisions
WHEN?? (in doubt, punctuate.) This Troper. Word Cruft. Shall I go on?
(I think I caught someone being a Bluenose Bowdlerizer. Especially due to the nature of this trope, the spoiler mark isn't necessary. Also, you'd probably know why it was censored anyway.) |
(WHEN?? (in doubt, punctuate.) This Troper. Word Cruft. Shall I go on?) |
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[[File:scunthorpe 1 6748.jpg|frame|They forgot to add 'bane of internet profanity filters'.]]
We all know [[Censorware|automatic profanity filters]] on message boards and elsewhere on the Internet can be ridiculously and unimaginatively strict. But the problem is much worse: Sometimes, it sees swearwords ''inside'' other words. Thus, you can get hilarious [[Malaproper|malaprops]]—like "hecko" instead of "hello", "
This is known as the [[wikipedia:Scunthorpe Problem|Scunthorpe Problem]], after an incident in 1996 when AOL's rather simple-minded dirty-word filter prevented residents of several English towns and counties—among them S''cunt''horpe, ''Penis''tone, Ligh''twat''er and Middle''sex''—from creating accounts with AOL because it matched strings within the town names to "banned" words. Since it also checked the town names against the postal codes, users from these towns could not get around it by entering modified versions of the names—they were [[Gosh Darn It to Heck|darned if they did]], [[Morton's Fork|darned if they didn't]]. It's also known as the "[[Incredibly Lame Pun|clbuttic mistake]]". The ubiquity of the trope suggests that the profanity filter industry employs a lot of [[Idiot Programming|very lazy programmers]]. [http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html#uh-1 Read this] to see what they likely have to wrestle with.
And of course when anyone reads some bizarrely censored text, they are absolutely going to assume that you swore like a drunken sailor at them, with either terrible or hilarious results. Poorly-designed censors are also bound to cause [[Bleep, Dammit!]]
Compare [[This Trope Is Bleep]]. See also [[The Problem with Pen Island]], [[Censorware]], [[Fun with Autocensors]].
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* AT&T has banned numerous words from use as or in usernames, including some [https://web.archive.org/web/20060613050047/http://gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2006/5/30/125253/724 not normally considered offensive] such as "[[Never Say "Die"|kill]]", nor will it tell people the words they can't use. At least one anecdotal account reports that a complaining user was told he should ''change his name'' in order to avoid the filter.
* The [[IMDb]] boards keep mild swearing but replace worse words with *beep*. For example, "ass" is allowed, while its derivative, "asshole", is beeped and as a further result, talking about [[Alfred Hitchcock]] is more or less impossible. The censorship policy also beeps certain Japanese words with worse swear words within them, such as "dashitara" and "Odago",<ref>for the anti-Italian slur "dago"</ref> both of which are perfectly okay. This occasionally makes talking about characters in Japanese films a problem - [[Battle Royale|Yoshitoki Kuninobu's name]] being rendered as *beep* Kuninobu, for example.
** Also, it's hard to tag LG with the backronym "Les Gooks" on the boards when discussing their
** They had to allow the word "Pussy", after a minor outcry by James Bond fans.
** [[Marx Brothers]] fans have difficulty referring to Harpo's trademark funny face, called the "Gookie," because the word contains the ethnic slur "gook" within it.
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*** It doesn't help that the shipped product correctly lists the set code as "COK" followed by the contents: Booster packs. COK Boosters.
** Wizards publishes ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', which features a [https://web.archive.org/web/20070326124251/http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Cockatrice Cockatrice] as a creature. "Cock" is legitimate (if potentially naughty) shorthand.
*** ''Magic Online'' had a notoriously restrictive swear filter. "Damn" was verboten, despite numerous Magic cards existing with "damned" or "damnation" in the titles (and, indeed, one card existing whose ''entire'' name is "Damnation"). The card "Deep Analysis" suffered from a similar problem. "Mick" is also censored thanks to it being an old slur against Irish Catholics.
** The Gatherer ''Magic'' card database's discussion section has a similar problem. You get the old standby cl***ic, as well as the somewhat less common cir***navigate. Not to mention ***ulative upkeep, a (now outdated) rule that appears quite often in older cards.
*** Somewhat strange in that first case, given the the full name of the 6th edition core set is ''Classic Sixth Edition''...
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* ''[[Neopets]]'' used to have this problem on its forums. Saying the word f{{spoiler|iretr}}uck would get censored. Also, too bad if your RP character's wearing a bikini—it'd inevitably get switched to "cardigan".
** The fact that ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' was often said to live in Cardinal Bottom was rather less optimal.
** ''[[It Got Worse]]''
** "uncle" is also not allowed. [[Subverted Trope|Turns out it's because pedophiles were using it as a code word.]]
** They're also not very fond of "isn''''t it'''", "doesn''''t it'''", or anything of the sort.
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* The [[Spore]] forum does this, censoring any swear for "SPORE". [[Idiot Programming|And, inevitably, new members who type SPORE in all capitals when talking about the game are mistaken for swearing and placed under close scrutiny.]]
** While we're on the Sporum, as it is called, they censor "Roblox", thanks to a spamming spree relating to said website. And also "sperm", which has problems for people trying to talk about whales.
** Even then, they don't bother to censor Flash items in user signatures, or fix the problem with UBBC code bypassing the censor (example: f[b][/b]uck).
* One online script for ''Sweeney Todd'' censors Mrs. Lovett's line about "popping p{{spoiler|ussies}} into pies". However, she's talking about cats.
* The Xbox forums censor the word ''hell''. This is all fine and dandy until you're talking about ''Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway''.
* The movie review site Mr. Cranky has fun with its profanity filter: Offensive words in posts come out as "Melanie Griffith".
* The (now defunct) Nintendo of Europe forums had this problem with a certain legendary bird [[Pokémon]] called '''Ho'''-Oh.
** The Spanish forums had this with the word "Rojo" (literally "Red"; blame Spanish history), which made talking about
* A fifth-generation [[Pokémon]] by the name of "Co''fag''rigus" has created this problem.
** The in-game Global Trade Station is designed to reject any Pokemon who have offensive nicknames. At the moment, "fag" is on the list of banned words, which means every Cofagrigus traded on the GTS is either non-English or nicknamed. At least Cofagrigus is an evolved Pokémon.
** Which means that by the time impressionable kids have learned ''why'' they can't put up their Cofagrigus on the GTS, they've also learned the offending word. [[Sarcasm Mode|Great planning there, guys.]]
**
**
** Nosep'''ass''' and Probop'''ass''' are still unable to be traded without a nickname, though Cofagrigus has at least been fixed.
* ESPN.com's filters apply only to the user comments, not to the writers themselves, so you could be directly quoting the article on which you're commenting and end up getting censored. (This was particularly bad when "Boobie" Gibson was involved; thankfully, the nickname seems to have passed and all references to him use his actual first name.) Oddly enough, "eff" is considered out of the question, which is unfortunate considering that [[Bill Simmons]] was the one who popularized the idea of the [[Rubber Band AI|"No Effing Way Game"]].
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** Specifically, any phrase that has both a sexual-sounding word and a word for any family member hidden somewhere in it--for example, "unclean horsemen"—gets blocked, because apparently it could somehow be referring to incest or something.
* Comment sections below ''[[Cracked.com]]'' articles censor the "jap" in "''Jap''an". Considering that almost half of their articles are about how crazy Japan is (the other half being dick jokes), this is quite annoying. An article can say all seven dirty words with no censorship, yet they feel the need to censor the comments section. This is made even more ludicrous because ''Cracked'''s primary demographic consists of 18-34 year old males, who would have no need for a filter. One can turn off the filter, as there is a button that says "show profanity". But it's always on by default, and one must switch off the filter ''for every individual article''.
**
** And the "i" and "c" in "spices"
** They censor the term "homo". You'd expect ''Homo Sapiens'', ''Homo [[Inherently Funny Words|Erectus]]'' and ''[[X-Men|Homo Superior]]'' to be blocked thanks to the space, but ''[[Not Helping Your Case|H**ophobe]]''?
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* The [[Order of the Stick|Giant in the Playground]] forums used to use a filter that would replace any text deemed to be racist with ''[racist language is not allowed]'', and obscene words for male of female genitalia with ''[male genitalia]'' or ''[female genitalia]''. Which resulted in several discussions about someone looking for a [racist language is not allowed] in his armour, and one forum member having his forum name automatically changed to "Nigh[female genitalia]ch".
* Bethesda Softworks' Official Forums censor the word "handbag" to "han****" because of a word most users will not know without recourse to the Urban Dictionary.
* At least one board{{Where}} replaces "o[[N-Word Privileges|r egg in]]" with "onubian" due to a racial slur spelled backwards.
* One board censors the string "tard" because it's a slur against people with mental disabilities...which leads to the ironic censorship "bas****".
* The [[Discovery Channel]] forums once censored fart (that's right. They considered the word ''fart'' to be obscene), leading the word "farther" to become ****her.
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* [https://web.archive.org/web/20200122161218/http://retired.getsatisfaction.com/ Ludia] has admitted to this problem in their games. Among the things which trigger their swear filter are '''screw'''driver, Sa'''turd'''ay, s'''crap''', and ba'''semen'''t. It also tries to catch people trying to circumvent the filter, by also censoring "hore", which hits "s'''hore'''" and "c'''hore'''s". Then the filters looking for Spanish cussing also hits "re''puta''tion". It also censors the "hoo" in "hooray", perhaps because "hoo hoo" is a euphemism for the vagina in some regions.
* Meebo Rooms tries to prevent people from circumventing the swear filter by ignoring hyphens when looking for swear words. This leads to a lot of false positives when taking about Pos'''t-Its'''. Typing "is hit" or any word that ends with the letter "S" before Hitler, saying "fini'''sh''' '''it''', or Simpson''''s Hit'''N'Run is difficult too. The phrase '''Sit on my face''' is also censored, oddly enough, as it is probably rare among anyone aside from the more savvy ''[[Monty Python]]'' fans.
* The old ''Wizard World'' comic book forums back in the late
* The forums at City-Data.com have word filters that make it impossible to say "He graduated magna cum laude." without "cum" being blocked.
* On the ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' and Battle.net forums, "rape" is censored. Want to talk about and link that D'''rape''' of the Twins your guild's healer obtained in the Bastion of Twilight? You're SOL, sorry. Also, [[Godwin's Law|"Nazi" is censored,]] but not "Hitler" or "Soviet."
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** Made even worse when the words "Jew" and "Jap" were both censored. And all of this happened while Maplestory's content filter caused a popup to appear that didn't allow you to control your character until you closed it. In higher level areas, this was fatal. It was even worse when "Tit" was censored, as saying even something so simple such as "Can't it?" would show the annoying "Cursing is not allowed." popup.
** If you use a screen name that ends with an S, "hit" as the first word in a message will be omitted along with the S in the screen name. The word filter is so bad, it even '''''ignores the colon and space that separates the screen name from the message text!'''''
** Further hilarity
*** Also, it blocks the word "Blow", and several skills have that word in their names.
**
** There are also so many variations of trying to avoid curse words that are censored
* The examples that follow are from ''[[RuneScape]]''.
** For a time, even the word "fletching" was asterisked out. Understandable when you realize that it's extremely similar to the name of a sex act, not so much when it hits you that they censored out the name of ''one of the in-game skills''.
** It also censors out milk and eggs... when one is referring to cake ingredients for a quest.
** Most strangely, it bleeps out "Yahoo". Which is apparently an obscure slang term for breasts. Despite much more frequently meaning "an exclamation of glee or success," or "a search engine".
** ''[[RuneScape]]'' also censors the word "s'''quid'''" and anything with .com/.net/.org, and the abbreviation pw, because it doesn't like advertising or people giving out their passwords.
*** Even worse is that changing the spelling slightly would cause the word to get through in most cases. Fortunately, the filter is now much more intelligent, although it still makes the occasional mistake.
** Sometimes you have to wonder about the filter; the word "darndest" is censored.
*** Or for that matter, "screw" is censored. Fair enough, you'd think, as it does have obvious alternate meanings... That is until you realize words like buttfucker, assfucker, cumstain and a slew of other [[Sarcasm Mode|SLIGHTLY]] more offensive words aren't.
**
** It used to be that you couldn't say "suck". As in you're about to die and you want to say "Well, this sucks."
** At one point the word "phone" was also blocked. "One second, <nowiki>*****</nowiki> ringing"
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** It also made it difficult to talk about {{spoiler|yohohoyos}}, an in-game item containing another code word.
** Though in the chat's defense, you are free to use profanity. It's encouraged not to do so, but no one is forcing you not to do so.
** Meanwhile, their forums, as a joke,
* In ''[[Gunbound]]'', the "word" ''Tai'' used to be censored for some odd reason, making it quite difficult to say "Moun''tai''n"... in an ''artillery game''. One that still exists is ''Suck'', which might be fine until you note that one of the mobiles has an attack that pulls nearby mobiles toward its landing spot. And things always were fairly amusing when players couldn't even speak the name of one of the people in the guild -- {{spoiler|Spic}}ule.
** The filter that one-time North American distributor ''ijji'' put on the thing censored such terms as ba''semen''t, cl''ass''y (a favourite of mine, before the transfer away from SoftNyx) and inef''fec''tual. And of course would block the whole line rather than bleep the "swear."
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*** The filter in ''Tri'' is very imaginative. Among the censored words are "sa" and "blitzkrieg", which makes talking about the in-game weapon "Blitzkrieg" difficult, especially since it's a switch axe, logicaly shortened to "sa". The "Hell hunter jacket" is also censored. Any word including the fragment "kak" is censored, which is bothersome in Finnish where it's not uncommon.
* ''[[Guild Wars]]'' has a built-in world filter that censors the name of minor character Captain {{spoiler|Quim}}ang and the enemy type {{spoiler|Damn}}ed Cleric. Thankfully, it can be turned off. This one isn't the game developers' fault, however, as it's included in all games published by NCSoft.
**
*** Which becomes rather humorous if one is playing a Blood Necromancer using Wallow's/Vampiric {{spoiler|Bite}} or a Beast Mastery Ranger pinging the target of his/her pet's Poisonous {{spoiler|Bite}}.
*** {{spoiler|Bite}} is the french word for {{spoiler|dick}} (and likewise, {{spoiler|verge}} is a synonymous for {{spoiler|penis}}).
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** "ass" is censored, and thus so is "class." Oops.
** One could speculate that the only reason "Hell" isn't censored is that it's a critical part of the word "Hello".
** This tends to be a
* MMO golf game ''[[Pangya]]'' recently{{When}} changed hosts in North America; the chat filter [[Ntreev USA]] installed is notoriously anal-retentive. For months, the [[Game Master]]s have neglected to fix this, to the frustration of players everywhere. Ironically, the ridiculously strict filter ''ignores chat macros''. Profanity ensued.
** Not so applicable to the U.S. version, but GOA's EU version seems to have developed a problem thanks to the filter's need to recognise the character set presently in use. Players with a non-standard character set or locale setting (such as Japanese) will find every instance of certain letters caught as {{spoiler|s}}we{{spoiler|a}}rword{{spoiler|s}}. Oh and there's a "three strikes, then gag" policy in effect.
* The filter in ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]] Online'' will censor people trying to talk about perfectly legitimate items of "Spell '''Penetration'''" —a common modifier that benefits a character trying to use magic on a monster with Spell Resistance.
* [[Aion]] Online famously had this problem in its open beta—particularly as there is an Assassin class. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in notes for the repair patch: "******ins can now talk about their cl***."
* The actual game ''[[Splinter Cell]]: Chaos Theory'''s messaging system censored (among other stupid things) anything with the letters "spic" in it. ''Anything.'' And it did so by preventing you from sending the message with no explanation beyond a generic "something bad is in your message" statement.
** Also, it censored the letters "halo". HAH! Hilarious, right? No. Even less funny when, a couple of years later, an update to their game would actually ''prevent ''Halo 2'' from working on
* The MMORPG ''[[Free Sky Online]]'' has or had a very odd filter. It censored {{spoiler|system}}, but didn't censor whore, as at least one player found out while venting about his mom.
* The online game ''[[Aetolia]]'' introduced one of these filters as an April Fool's joke. Talking about assassins became quite funny.
* The Brazilian version of ''[[Grand Chase]]'' took this trope to a [[Up to Eleven|whole new level]] by censoring "cu" (ass).
* On [[Furcadia]], there used to be rampant problems with the filters in lower-rating maps—these problems have long been fixed in updates, but for years there was an issue in the popular dream "Lost Lakes" where words like "assassin" or "tithe" would be censored. Particularly annoying, as Tithe was the username of a dream regular...
* On [[Mega Ten]] Imagine, while it's possible to turn the filter off, it's weird enough to censor the word raccoon, replacing all but the first and last letters with asterisks. Said word is an old racial slur against African Americans usually in the Deep South.
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* [[World of Warcraft]] has a somewhat overzealous chat filter that apparently also censors words that sound like bad words (making conversation about the 5th of November or Dumbledore's phoenix kind of odd, for example).
* Humorously, [[Adventure Quest Worlds]] once muted you if ended a sentence with the word grape followed by a period or space. Yet, they have failed to censor semen from their swears list.
* One of the words censored in ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]'' (though it is possible to turn off the profanity filter), is the word "queer". Naturally, this becomes a bit of a problem as the [[Have a Gay Old Time|word was used quite frequently]] in the [[The Lord of the Rings|books]] that the game is based on. It becomes even more noticeable when
{{quote|'''Frodo:''' Have you been in Rivendell long? Sam thinks it's a ***** place, but I think he likes it too.}}
* [[DC Universe Online]] is bad with this. Among many frustrations with the filter, it's inconsistent. If a string of letters has a bad word in it, no matter if it has a space to denote that they aren't words, it will censor (i.e. " Wish it" would become "Wi#####" because of the filter.). However, words with a bad word in it (Such as Scunthrope) can get by. It's even possible to say the word "bitchass" even though both words would trip the filter on their own. "Ass" itself is a special word in that "Ass" is used in game content (Wonder Girl uses it in her cut scene). To compound the problem, at the time of writing{{When}} there is no way to turn off the filter to avoid this problems, and the devs act shocked that the players are asking for one.
* ''zOMG!'' used to have one of these. And then [[Gaia Online]]'s developers realized it was censoring B{{spoiler|ass}}'ken Lake, one of the major areas in the game. It also censored words in other languages, which would annoy English-speaking users who didn't understand why several mundane words kept getting censored.
* [[Wizard 101]] has three levels of chat. Menu chat which allows play to only say things from a list of phrases. Open chat allows all words except ones on a small list of obvious curse words. But the fun comes in on text chat. Text chat players cannot say or see any word not from a very large list of words, this list does not include any numbers except "one" but it does include order numbers so players often refer to needing to beat "'''fifth''' more enemies." For a while players took advantage of this by swearing using capital letters (ex. Go to [[Hello]]) until Kingsisle finally stopped allowing capitalizing letters.
* The Chat filter of LUNA Online is so notoriously terrible, not only for completely blocking your intended words and replacing it with "LUNA users use more refined language. Stay classy, San Diego!" but having what seems to be no sense at all. Typing something as innocuous as "class" will result the filter message, but typing "ass" works just fine. This not only makes communication in the game practically impossible, but in a bit of irony, typing the filter phrase into the chat block also results in it being filtered. It's so awful that the publisher
* One of the developers of [[Toontown Online]], wanting to get around this problem while at the same time allowing players to interact, suggested using a list of approved words that and sentence fragments that a user could string together to form full sentences. This idea was shot down by one of the other developers who had tried the approach in another game. The 14-year old boy who was testing the software was able to, within a minute, construct the following sentence: "I want to stick my long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny".
* ''[[Call of Duty]]'' bizarrely censors custom class names—despite the fact that these are only visible to the user. If a name is considered obscene, the game will pop up a warning and refuse to change the name. Unfortunately, the game considers, among others, "Basic" to be an unforgivably profane name.
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** "Jailbreak" is censored thanks to the iDevice modding community, affecting albums and songs entitled "Jailbreak".
* ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield]] 2'' servers with the profanity filter enabled will call you out for saying "''ass''ets", as in "Commander Assets"—the widely used term for certain structures that can be destroyed to hinder the enemy team.
* ''[[Smackdown vs. Raw]] 2010'' falls victim with its
* A fairly casual ''[[Team Fortress Classic]]'' server kicks players who say "HWgay," not for being offensive so much as for being whiny. Fine and dandy, except that it does so if it detects letters in that order, regardless of how many letters come between them. So if someone says "I have a baby s'''h'''o'''w'''er to '''g'''o to tod'''ay'''", they get the boot.
* ''[[Rock Band]]'' has a filter preventing bands with offensive names or slogans from posting their scores to the online message board. It once censored "Laissez les bons temps rouler" without comment, possibly because "les bo" looked like a censor bypass.
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* ''Tetris Friends'' live beta's chat censor was incredibly inconsistent in the beginning. "Ass" was perfectly acceptable, but "lust" was not. This was made even more irritating by it ignoring spaces and punctuation, so "Well us too" turns into "Wel* ** *oo" alongside warning against profanity.
* A Safari 5 security extension called Cuss Off also has this problem. When this extension is installed and enabled, it ignores context: For example, "grasshopper" becomes "gr***".
* ''Inklink'', a picture charades game, includes "cocktail" and "pussywillow" in its limited word list. [[Unwinnable by Mistake|If they come up on your turn to draw, you'll have to pass it, because correct guesses are blocked as inappropriate.]]
* This sort of filtering is not limited to profanity. In [[World of Warcraft]], the moderators of the game banned the display of a number of website names that were notorious for violating the terms of service (mainly selling in-game gold and items for real-world money). One of the banned names was "ukow", and it has been banned in all forms, including with spaces in the middle. The result was a rash of humorous, faux(?) outrage that it was no longer possible to say that one's "talbuk owns" (a talbuk is a type of animal in the game) in the in-game chat. A forum moderator with a sense of humor responded to the "controversy" by suggesting an extensive list of alternatives to the word "owns" that could be used to describe an exceptional talbuk.
* The filter in the avatar mode of [[Kingdom Hearts coded|Kingdom Hearts Re: coded]] censors all sorts of things out of your username, including, for some reason, the word "race". Good luck to you if your first name is Grace.
* ''[[Spiral Knights]]'' has a few filters. One turns all your capital letters into lowercase ones if there's too many (rendering something like "YES, WE DID IT" as "yes, we did it"). One - the only one which can be disabled - turns certain cuss words into random punctuation, even if they're in the middle of a word. And one simply destroys posts containing strings like 'rape' and 'viol'. So, no, you cannot talk about grapes or your violins.
* It may be that the United Kingdom's mandatory ISP-level "smut filters" are subject to this. According to [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/22/puritanical_purience_punting_puts_game_patch_in_sinbin/ this article] in ''[[The Register]]'', British players of the game ''[[League of Legends]]'' have reported downloads of upgrade packages stalling when reaching a pair of files named "Varu{{color|red|sEx}}pirationTimer.luaobj" and "XerathMageChain{{color|red|sEx}}tended.luaobj". It's not confirmed yet, but the possibility exists.
* Some brave soul decided to make a font called [https://vole.wtf/scunthorpe-sans/ Scunthorpe Sans], which (ab)uses font ligatures to replace dirty words with black boxes. So now you can invoke this trope on any website!
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