They literally said unalived in the fucking comic. That doesn’t look like an edit.
It’s there purposely as a part of the satire. It’s meant to be a critique of the use of passive voice in news headlines.
This is how language evolves.
Better than some of the other words I’ve seen created in my lifetime, no cap.
But why does it though? Because corporate sanitization efforts make them. A whole generation raised on social media language norms most definitely is doubleplusungood If you excuse the obvious reference. A shrinking vocabulary also eventually shrinks the thoughts people can articulate.
We can’t know with certainty why they chose to use that word.
It could be, as you seem to suggest, that the artist is so brain-riddled by living in a social media dystopia that they subconsciously avoid the word “killed” without thinking about it.
Personally, I choose to believe they made an intentional decision here, and are consciously applying that amelioration for reasons; maybe the stylistic effect of using that neologism out of context. Maybe to signal that they themselves and the comic are both of a certain generation, and so create shared context and subtext with readers also of that generation in how the comic is meant to be perceived.
The author also decided to use an intentional anachronism in the comic “t’is” in *t’is not butter", so the evidence to me is present that they are thinking carefully about word choice.
Adding a word increases available vocabulary and widens the scope of expression.
Unless it replaces an existing word because the Lords of Advertisements don’t approve of the old one.
