OK, quick: define “mascara”. If you answered “a substance you apply with a wand to your eyelashes” or something along those lines, then congratulations – you are officially not a young person on TikTok.
If you run in those circles, however, then “mascara” is code for a variety of things ranging from a vibrator to a penis to a romantic partner.
Julia Fox, the Uncut Gems actor, came to this eye-opening revelation in an extremely awkward way last week. She made a jokey comment on a viral TikTok video in which someone talked about their “mascara” being stolen and was promptly accused of making light of sexual assault. After a frankly ridiculous backlash, Fox apologised and explained that she thought the person was talking about “mascara like as in makeup”. Which, if you are not very young (Fox turns 33 on Thursday) and not extremely online, is a perfectly natural thing to think.
“Mascara” is far from the only code word being used on social media. There are well-founded concerns that posting about “controversial” or explicit subjects might get your account “shadow-banned”, meaning the platform artificially limits your reach. To avoid this happening, users have started getting creative. People will talk about having “seggs”, for example, or use “accountant” as a stand-in for sex worker. Anti-vaxxers on Instagram apparently refer to vaccinated people as “swimmers”. My personal favourite? “Le dollar bean” is code for lesbian (it’s how TikTok’s text-to-speech feature pronounces “le$bian”).
Emojis are also deployed artfully: the corn emoji (🌽) is a censor-friendly way to talk about pornography. This modern-day cockney rhyming slang has been termed “algospeak”, because you are gaming the algorithm.
Perhaps Fox’s faux pas has put the fear of God into you (as it has me). Perhaps you are wondering if the next time you make an innocent gag on a TikTok about sausage rolls you will be accused of genocide denial. I wish I had failsafe advice on how to avoid this fate. Alas, the only way to stay on the right side of the internet is to stay off the internet.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
