IMDb Staff: Please permanently ban these keywords

Please read this thread for the reasons why I am suggesting the deletions of these keywords. Otherwise, I will decline to play pointless political whataboutism games. If you feel that other keywords should be deleted for other reasons, feel free to create your own post.

I've no objection to a "toxic femininity" keyword, but I do worry that contributors may apply it without fully grasping the meaning, which probably requires some synthetic thinking rather than simply looking up the word combo as a term. As it would stand to reason, "toxic femininity" has to refer to unethical behavior bred of some kind of emphasis on female gender roles. So, while violence and intimidation would be expected to be a major part of toxic masculinity, a thing more like the unhealthy obsession with being pleasing to men would characterize toxic femininity, for the sake of the concepts being analogous with each other. So to speak, on one hand, there is a pimp mentality, and on the other, there is a whore mentality.

@Michelle 

It has been three months since I posted this. Since then, a handful of the keywords I asked about have since been permabanned. I appreciate that very much.

Also since then, I and @bradley_kent (and probably others) have managed to delete a lot of the instances of the remaining keywords.

We also learned through our editing efforts that a single individual is apparently responsible for much of the subjective sexual keywords (e.g., the subjective and objectifying keywords like "leggy-chick"). Since I posted this thread, that contributor seems to have abandoned his keyword spamming. That is a good turn of events as well.

But many instances of his previous keyword spamming remain on IMDb. I am writing to follow up on some of these particular keywords. Can these keywords please be banned? Or at the very minimum, can they be consolidated/merged?

I will group the keywords below based on the obvious patterns. These keywords are not only inherently subjective and sexist, they are also spam. The same person posted these keywords all over IMDb, often posting multiple synonymous keywords on the same title. This is spam, pure and simple.

I will also note that the vast majority of the instances of these keywords are not on Adult titles. So there is not really any argument that these keywords are necessary for Adult titles. 

slim-woman (28 titles)

slender-woman (99 titles)

hot-body (15 titles)

pretty-body (34 titles)

pretty-legs (101 titles)

hot-legs (45 titles)

sexy-legs (132 titles)

slender-legs (97 titles)

thin-legs (87 titles)

shapely-legs (48 titles)

If staff is not willing to permanently delete and ban these keywords, then can the keywords at least be merged? For example, can the "slender" and "slim" keywords be merged into the "thin" keywords? Otherwise, IMDb staff will be sending the message that it's okay to spam multiple keyword synonyms.

It is also worth noting that the keywords "beautiful," "beauty," "attractive," "attractive-woman," "hot-girl," and "hot-woman" are already permabanned as too subjective and/or vague. If those keywords are not acceptable, then why would keywords like "thin-and-attractive,""thin-attractive-girl," and "hot-legs" be acceptable?

Thanks in advance for anything that can be done about these keywords.

Wow. I didn't even know that the adjective "Asiatic" was considered racist. Funny how things like that work. I did know that the adjective "oriental" has been considered for a long time to be derogatory, inappropriate, outdated, politically-incorrect, colloquial or at the very least confusing for describing people with ancestry rooted in eastern Asia. Some of the colloquialisms have arisen over the past two centuries in order to distinguish between the demographics of India (which is in South Asia) and the parts of Asia largely east of there. An interesting thing about the pronouncedness (for lack of a better word) of the shape of the epicanthic fold, a feature of the human body, is that the people indigenous to the Americas, likewise the pacific islands, have it too but seemingly not as strongly. Note: My remarks ought not be taken as an invitation for the apparent trolls to start arbitrarily tagging IMDb title pages with "epicanthic", because it would only be appropriate on documentaries specifically dealing with areas of physiology significant to anthropology. On the other hand, it would be confirmation that they or folks sharing the same echo chambers as them are monitoring the forum in regards to IMDb keyword issues.

@jeorj_euler​ 

Yeah, you can see further discussions of this particular keyword troll and his racist keywords like "almond-eyes," "slit-eye," "asiatic-woman," "oriental-woman," "chinawoman," etc. at these older discussion threads.

Racist keywords - Help needed from IMDb staff

What does this keyword mean?

@bradley_kent @jeorj_euler @Bethanny 

The troll is back at it as we speak. Here are examples where he has illegitimately added the keywords "almond-sweet" and "almond" (in place of the racist "almond-eyes") to titles where these keywords do not belong. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11022284/keywords

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6429238/keywords

This IMDb user is a racist troll who incessantly refers to Asian women as having "almond eyes" -- he is obsessed with this phrase. 

This capture via the Wayback Machine shows the legitimate use of the "almond" keyword on IMDb, before this troll began co-opting it with keyword sabotage and abuse.

https://web.archive.org/web/20221120094312/https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=almond

And the keyword "almond-sweet" only legitimately applies to one title on IMDb: Baaria (2009).  Yet the troll also uses this keyword as a substitute for "almond-sweet" on titles where it does not belong.

@Bethanny Is there anything that can be done about this troll's keyword abuse? I realize that the keywords "almond" and "almond-sweet" are not in and of themselves objectionable, but the problem is that the troll is applying these keywords to titles where they do not belong, since he can no longer add "almond-eyes" in his racist trolling.

It doesn't make sense to block the "almond" and "almond-sweet" keywords since they are legitimate keywords, but there has to be some solution available here.

The keyword troll is probably using sock accounts to perform this keyword sabotage, since he controls literally hundreds of sock accounts. But if you look back over the history of the "almond" and "almond-sweet" keywords over the past several weeks, you may find that at one point he was using his main account to post them. Either way, I hope something can be done to block his further abusive behavior.

@keyword_expert​ 

I think we should not judge too fast or too hard.

The terms "asiatic-woman" or "oriental-woman" for me are not necessarily racist, because i have also seen a huge amount of keyword-combinations of "black-woman", but also "black-man".

Many of these keywords or keyword-combinations i believe were added with some kind of pride according to the black lives matter movement #blm.

Some people just are happy to see more diversity, just like we can see more of the lgbt(q+) keywords "gay", "lesbian" - and so on.

I do not believe that all these keywords were added by racists - but by people with pride.

And i think they should exactly do that - and they should be allowed to do so.

Even if there are surely keyword-combinations which suggest that it is more about personal preferences. But the question here then could be, is it really hate or might it be love?

@DataOrganizer​

I appreciate your optimism and faith in people, but I assure you that this is the work of a single troll who views women and girls as objects, and therefore adds keywords like "velvety-thighs," "creamy-legs," "almond-eyes," "slit-eye," "chubster," "girl-with-short-manly-hair," and yes, even "asiatic-woman." This is the same troll I wrote about on your other thread here.  

He is well aware of these distinctions and he even reads the messages in this forum, yet even after that he insists on continuing with his racist and sexually objectifying keywords. In his mind, he believes he loves and respects Asian women (especially Japanese women), but the truth is he treats them as sex objects. He is particularly obsessed with films that feature Japanese actresses playing human sex dolls that come to life, if that helps shed light on his mentality. For him the keywords like "chinawoman" and "slit-eye" are not a matter of pride, but rather just another tool for trolling people. It is really disappointing that this particular troll insists on abusing these keywords, but his behavior speaks for itself. 

Many years ago terms like Oriental person, Asiatic person, and Chinaman were commonly used, but these days we should all use the much more acceptable terms "Asian," "Asian person," person of Asian heritage, etc. There is a discussion about these terms here, and there used to be more of a discussion in that forum thread but some of it has been removed, so here are some additional external links:

What is the difference between Asian and Asiatic?

Why did the descriptive "Orientals" shift into a pejorative?

Both context and history are important. While long ago terms like "colored man" and "Oriental man"  were okay, today we should instead say "Black man," "Asian man," or even better, "Black American," "African American," "Asian American" etc. (if the person lives in the USA, otherwise we would say Asian Canadian if they live in Canada, etc.) But if they live in Asia they should be referred to as simply Asian plus their country, e.g., Japanese man. 

@DataOrganizer​ p.s. The fact that he continues to add the keyword "almond" specifically because "almond-eyes" has already been banned tells us everything we need to know about his trolling/abusive approach to keywords.

As a matter of fact he just added "almond" to the TV series Squid Game, plus several other titles, today.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10919420/keywords

I forgot all about Sprinklr thread 60c5b2e0a4586b59556bdfe8, but seemingly there wasn't really much of a discussion, just a problem report and some supplementary remarks.

@jeorj_euler​

There once was more of a robust discussion in that thread. A user named @RaviNathan posted this:

"Asiatic" is descriptive and should stay.

"Almond-Eyes & Almond-Shaped-Eyes" are not racist, but not particularly useful - they should go.

The other three are racist and should also go.

And then the discussion ensued from there. 

There was also pushback from @daniel_francis_gardecki in a completely different thread about whether these keywords are racist. In particular Mr. Gardecki advocated strongly to be able to use the keyword "almond-eyes" in order to "annoy" me and @bradley_kent.  

Mr. Kent and I pushed back on both of these approaches, and ultimately we won, because @Michelle blocked most of the reported keywords. (I had thought that the keyword "oriental" was also blocked, but that keyword reemerged briefly this weekend.)

Anyway, it appears that both RaviNathan and daniel_francis_gardecki have either closed their accounts or been banned from this forum, and when their accounts disappeared, so did their comments in this forum and responses thereto. 

By the way, the outdated term "colored people" was a thing somewhat on account of the fact that people of Black descent come in all colors, as Michael Jackson, somebody who suffered from vitiligo, had pointed out a decade or so before he died. Of course, at least one problem with the term (similarly with the wording "people of color") was the fact that the people belonging to the human classification in question aren't really the only who come in all colors, just like how ancestrally Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Filipino, Malaysian, Indonesian or Singaporean, or so, etc., aren't the only people who have the distinctively-shaped epicanthic fold. Another problem is how "colored" may feel like a pun on the act of coloring something, like monochromatic doodles or other monochromatic images, so lost may be the fact that somebody's skin is automatically colored by genetics. Seemingly over the decades, the word "black" is the only adjective around which society has been able to build at least some kind of consensus, for the time being, and it has been a sound substitute for "negro" and "negra", words from the Romance family of languages, which people from the United States have tended not to pronounce correctly, like vocalizing "knee grow" instead of roughly "nay grow". Worse yet, there was the whole "negress" thing, as though being a "negro" was some kind of occupation like prince, duke, steward or governor. At least, now, nobody has to worry about the emergence of some nonsense like "Negrx". Hahaha! All that being stated, I do sort of wonder if our troll might be a child, presumably a teenager, since they are slightly more likely than adults to find a perverse amusement in the subject matter, if not being totally confused by the nomenclature/lexicon.

@jeorj_euler​ The troll is definitely not a child physically, although he does seem to have the mentality of a child intellectually. And by the way, he himself is of Asian descent, specifically Iranian descent. But that doesn't stop him from being racist against other Asians and people of Asian descent. 

I've no idea how you know all this, keyword expert. Has he come to the forum and posted remarks thereupon before? Or is the information inferred from patterns of changes going live at one time or another on the IMDb website? Are many of the edits being commenced upon title pages for material in Iranian cinema? Does he have multiple sockpuppet accounts? Have the IMDb data editors contacted him about his behavior?

@jeorj_euler​ Although he has never (to my knowledge) posted in this forum, he did post on the original IMDb forums back when they existed, and I have been able to glean a lot of info about him based on his IMDb accounts (his main IMDb account plus his many sock accounts). He is responsible for just about every violation you can possibly think of on IMDb. He also trolls Wikipedia. I don't know whether the IMDb data editors have ever contacted him about his behavior, but if not, they should do so. As for your question about Iranian cinema, he largely steers clear of that; his primary focus is Japanese cinema. 

@keyword_expert​ Hi!

Will investigate and keep and eye on this.

Thanks!

@Bethanny​ Just to add to the investigation, he has already re-created and added the keyword "slanted" (as in "slanted eyes," since he was blocked by @Michelle from adding "slit-eyes") to three titles.

Once IMDb staff regain their ability to block keywords, I will definitely follow up and ask for the keyword "slanted" to be blocked. That keyword has no legitimate purpose and is only being used for trolling.

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=slanted

Hello keyword_expert,

I'm following up here to confirm that this issue has now been resolved and the keywords were blocked and deleted.