unalive

The intent was for them to appear unalive while still getting across a sense of the person they used to be.

The necrophile, however, is driven by a love for all that is dead, destroyed or decaying—or, the author believes, in a modern departure—for what is unalive and purely mechanistic….

Now she’s a middle school teacher in New Jersey, and when her students’ phones and TikTok access are taken away, their out-loud whining has a 21st-century digital twist: “I feel so unalive.”

“Whoever says ‘unalive’ intends to communicate something about suicide, and knows that, and assumes that whoever is on the other end will be able to retrieve that intention,” Beltrama says.

Beltrama draws a parallel between “unalive” and how a saying like “Let’s go Brandon” has become a way to express disdain for President Biden without using the profane phrase that it’s code for.