The modern version of the word 'aesthetic' encompasses a complex and multi-layered perceptual standard of personal branding. It takes cues from pop-culture, sub-pop-culture, indie-pop-culture, insta-pop-culture, with subtle nods to minimalism (get rid of clutter for the daily coffee snaps). It is so influential that within modern communication, innovators and trend setters have established a new informal 'aesthetic rhetoric' to communicate on subjects pertaining to the field succinctly and effectively. For instance if one's homie posts a particularly minimalist photo of architecture with a notably faded and bright color palette, it would be appropriate to send a DM such as "this is so ~aesthetic~ and ~hip~". A mainstay of aesthetic rhetoric is the utilization of the squiggly squiggle, commonly referred to as the tilde (~). In the previous example, it allowed emphasis on "aesthetic" and "hip", to elevate their meanings. The squiggly squiggle adds emphasis where italics, bolds, or simple vernacular cannot. In doing so it opens up a vast possibility of communications over text celebrating modern aesthetic and it's disciples.
Yet for all its benefits, Facebook has recently taken aim at this movement. In a not-entirely-recent-but-still-recent-enough update to the messenger.com text formatting, Facebook adopted a new standard of converting the tilde (squiggly squiggle) wrapping into a strikethrough. It strikes at the very heart of aesthetic conversation. Considering the pervasiveness of messenger as a means of communications, a significant portion of the modern population has been stripped of their right to free and open communication. Without a means to distinguish aestheticism from normal conversation, a critical new frontier of text communication has been forcibly attacked. Facebook is not alone in this affront. Slack recently adopted a similar feature for strike throughs, seeking to decimate aesthetic rhetoric. So much for the laidback work environment it's software encourages. Gone are the days collaborative group projects with excellent features and conversations of ~hip~ new trends. The level of modern day censorship is astounding.
One would perceive that such a widespread assault originated via a standardized rejection of squiggly squiggles in conversation. Yet according to a blog post on the Daring Fireball website, home of Markdown, such actions came as the result of independent actors, not from a centralized Markdown decision to add censorship through squiggly squiggles. Markdown, commonly considered the standard of plain text markups, asserts that the corporate censorship adopted via squiggly squiggle strike throughs does not represent the interests of the community. Anyone with a bit of sense and reason would have to agree. It seems that unique special interests within Silicon Valley are at foul.
Aesthetic posts and videos will not go away. The culture remains too strong among millennials and some baby boomers still clinging to the last strands of their youth. But this decision to use the squiggly squiggle as a means of striking through words has undoubtedly dealt a blow to the ability for members of the aesthetic community to share their views and opinions. In an increasingly connected world, digital communications have become a bottleneck of information transfer. It seems only ripe for special interests to prime for an assault. While vast marketing campaigns utilize artsy photos and videos to drive large promotional profit margins, piggybacking on the modern aesthetic movement, ~artsy~ text formatting, it seems, is a just another liberty to be stricken through.