Voldemorting

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Voldemorting is a method of deliberately starving "trash celebrities" (or websites) of attention (or clicks) by not referring to them by name (or screenshotting them). The practice makes reference of the characters in the Harry Potter series of books who refer to Voldemort as "He Who Must Not Be Named" or "The Dark Lord".

According to Emily van der Nagel, the coinage is attributed to Eugene in a comment on a post on 2013-01-31:

I think Simone’s idea regarding the reality “stars” is a solid one! In fact I think I have a great name for it: Voldemorting. Voldemorting: The act of never speaking the name of someone truly terrible. Eg “Don’t bother sending me those links, I’m Voldemorting those losers!”

Examples

• "Birdsite" a commonly used referent to Twitter often seen on Mastodon
• "The Cheeto", "45", and "Individual-1" are referents to Donald J. Trump

Other Uses

Some celebrities have such vociferous fan(atics) that criticizing them online can cause unwanted backlash for those posting about them.

See Also

• Welcome to Voldemorting, the Ultimate SEO Dis in Wired 2018-10-09
• ‘Networks that work too well’: intervening in algorithmic connections by Emily van der Nagel in Media International Australia
• subtweet
• snitch tagging
• SEO
• person mention
• dunking
• identity
• search
• DeTrumpify, a browser extension
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/08/algospeak-tiktok-le-dollar-bean/ voldemorting specific words to avoid content moderation