Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Lazysexweb: What Is The History of NSFW?
filed under: Strange Bedfellows, Retrosexual, Lazysexweb by Melissa Gira
Apropos of Susie Bright’s questioning of the overuse of NSFW…
NSFW is unmandated, unlegislated censorship — there’s no ballot to punch, no senator to harangue.
The great majority of NSFW warnings are the result of unconscious class bias, with the conceit of American ethnocentrism. It’s made a mockery of out of journalism and the First Amendment.
NSFW and its slippery slope of “assumptions” leads to stories and ideas of all kinds being banned, firewalled, off the grid in places from universities to major wire services.
… and doing a bit of research…
I have searched for a history of this term but can find nothing. Interestingly enough though it seems as though every page on the web, that I have encountered, which purports to explain the history of NSFW is actually search engine SPAM designed to raise the Google juice for gambling and viagra sites.
… and of course, consulting the usual suspects, I’m still not any more clear on the origins of NSFW. Tips, pointers, remedy for our gaps in web history? Lux and I were reminiscing just this morning on our days online back when nary a banner ad had popped, but for the life of us, we can’t put a finger[1] on when NSFW was first deployed.
[1] Jokes for old sex nerds.
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Hm, I wonder if this might be in the OED? Remind me to check tomorrow.