SSA Has a More Straightforward Definition Than You Might Have Anticipated

Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time on TikTok is aware that the platform is absolutely filled with slang terms that are hard to decipher unless you already know what they mean. Sometimes these terms mean what you might exect them to, and other times, their meaning is a lot more unclear.

Some users have noticed the term SSA circulating across TikTok and other social media platforms, and are wondering what it means. Here's what we know about what the term refers to.

Although SSA most commonly refers to the Social Security Administration, it may not shock you to learn that that's not what users on TikTok mean when they use the term. Instead, SSA is actually the word "a--" backward (you know, the cuss word that refers to a person's rear end). It's simply that word backward, and it's being used by people across social media to avoid having their content censored by the platform.

Basically, users on the platform type in what looks like nonsense or an acronym so that the censor does not recognize it, but the people who are reading the post can still understand it. Of course, this isn't a perfect system, as there are plenty of people who see these posts and have no idea what they mean or what they refer to. That's the most common meaning for the term on social media though.

SSA can also stand for same-sex aggression, which is a term typically used for animals. If you have two female dogs, for example, they may be more likely to be aggressive toward one another than they would be if one of them was male. That is definitely a valid use for the abbreviation, but it's less common on social media than the version of the term that refers to a person's rear end.

The slang terms on TikTok can take a wide variety of forms, but SSA is just the latest in a long line of emojis and slang terms that are designed to avoid censors. The grape emoji is another example of an icon that is used most frequently in place of the world "rape." These terms help ensure that content does not get downplayed or taken down completely by a platform's algorithm.

As TikTok and other platforms continue to develop more complicated and sophisticated algorithms, though, it may be necessary to continue to develop new slang terms to meet their increased sophistication. For now, users are going to continue using SSA to mean something slightly more explicit, even if the word it stands for isn't all that severe in and of itself.

TikTok has tried to become a place that is safe for people of almost all ages, but those efforts are never going to be perfect. Users are endlessly creative, and so we get terms like SSA that seem like nonsense unless you already know what they're meant to stand for.