What's the consensus on swearing here

squid_slime@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 106 points –

Noticed not many people use curse words.

So.. why the fuck not?

103

Fuck knows, fuck you, and merry fucking Christmas.

In seriousness though: no idea. It's nice though, not every sentence needs an f-bomb or a c-nuke. They're just helpful and/or satisfying sometimes.

You may often be understood quite well even without using harsh language in every fucking sentence.

Infact, refraining from using harsh language increases the impact of it when you actually need to for some god damned reason.

So please, consider using some bloody restraint, and only curse when you actually shit ass need to.

I hope that this comment has cleared it up for you, have a lovely new year!

I try to ease up on the c word when I think I might be replying to an American because I'm aware it has pretty hideous connotations over there.

I'm an American and I throw cunt out often enough. I'm from Jersey though and we curse a bunch, and I also was in the Marines, where we cursed a lot. It's where I picked up the phrase cunt hair, as in the unit of measurement.

Ah, Finnish army also has (or at least had) that unit of measurement, "pillukarva", literally pussy hair.

Is karva related to the Polish kurwa? I'm American and you guys are close to each other in my uneducated estimation, and so I feel like there's gotta be something there right? And oldest profession is an old word.

Merry Christmas, and thanks for the new word.

It sounds similar, but karva is hair. Finnish and Polish are pretty far apart as far as European languages go. Merry Christmas!

I doubt. Karva is just any hair, except hair on head (facial hair is still karva though it has also specific words too).
Animal hair can also be karva, but only when it's "fallen off" such as dog or cat hair sticking your clothes

there's a subset of women here that go absolutely berserk if you call them a cunt in certain contexts. besides them though, its just another curse word here. use it as you please. pretty fun to say sometimes. and if you say it with an aussie accent, you have a free pass to say it whenever you want

Just use ankle for Americans, it’s less offensive to them and most of them are about three feet lower than a cunt anyways.

American here. I try to remember that other folks outside the US don't have the same negative association we do with that word. It certainly helps ease the stigma I have for it when it's said in good fun in a conversation. I still can't bring myself to say it or write it often though.

You can bet your fanny that we have a stronger connotation for that word here.

You're a cancer on society. JK I love the word cunt, but yeah some Americans are just as sensitive about a word as they are a titty

I don't swear often because that makes it so much more satisfying when I do. It's like rationing out my favourite snacks.

Also it makes you sound much more intelligent when you can express yourself with other words. It forces you to utilize your vocabulary.

Well go fornicate with your own self, you inadequately intelligent segment of fecal matter.

Not exactly what I had in mind. Other factors play a role as well, of course. 🙄

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Because one of the luxuries of conducting discourse by post is that you have time to choose words that are more suited for your specific intention. When speaking, saying "fucking" is often simply a replacement for "uhh". At least, it is for me.

How a sentence with swearing is perceived is wildly unpredictable. For example, "science: it works bitches" was a comic and tshirt by Randall Munroe. Not for a second when he wrote that did the sexist interpretation of "ladies, start trusting science" enter his head. I'm not saying that is a lesson in not swearing. I'm just saying swears tend to have loads of meanings, and they are hard to use unambiguously. In art, ambiguity is often key though. I am against censorship.

When speaking, saying "fucking" is often simply a replacement for "uhh".

Fucking what now?

Oh wait.......

I see swearing as a spice to be used sparingly in our conversations. You don’t want to overdo it, else they lose their effect, you want them there for a purpose or to accentuate a point. I’m not offended by swear words and curse pretty frequently through the day, but in written communication I try to be a bit more thoughtful with how I apply the shit.

There's not really much need for swearing in most comments/posts I come across on lemmy/kbin, so I'm not surprised it's uncommon.

I don't see a problem with bringing out the occasional swear word for particular emphasis or humour, but when someone can't write regular posts/comments without cursing it's pretty likely they're just a kid trying to be edgy on the internet.

It makes me laugh when some people give certain words magical powers. They are just fucking words for Christ's sake.

They're not "magical", they just have meaning and connotations.

But certain words DO have power, even if it's just power attributed by others it's still power, and it's really naive to think they don't.

Agreed. Words are what made us different than animals and words describing abstract ideas made us better than other primates. Words are maybe the strongest power we have

Given the way humanity works, words generally do and should have power ("profane" or otherwise). If they don't, what's the point?

On profanity, to me it's a set of special words to break out for emphasis. If I just casually use them, then they lose value as emphasis. If those words were just as mundane as others, what would be the point of their existence?

Meh, I save my swears for special occasions, for when I want to make it clear shit is real.

Otherwise metaphors more plum than the violets of Persia do me fine. (That's actually a simile.)

Step one: instead of "Ass," say "Buns" Like "Kiss my buns" or "You're a buns hole" Step two: instead of "Shit," say "Poo" As in "Bull-poo," "Poo-head," and "This poo is cold" Step three: with bitch, drop the 'T' 'Cause "Bich" is Latin for generosity! Step four: don't say "Fuck" anymore 'Cause "Fuck" is the worst word that you can say So just use the word, "M'kay!"

You are frequenting an incredibly select number of communities.

Also, discussions tend to be more respectful here than on low bars like reddit, so crutches like swearing don't come into play as much.

In my case, my f****** speech to text won't f****** write out the c*** d*** c*** swear words, which I think is hilarious.

I'd be having fuckin words with that speech to text program

I think there's an option for that..

I assume there is, but the asterisks make me laugh every time, like when Aubrey plaza has her mouth blanked out every time she swears at Scott Pilgrim

Check out the fucking cunt whose fancy fucking transcription software turns out to be a steaming pile of bullshit that won't even pick up basic fucking words like cum guzzling knob goblin.

eta: Merry Fucking Christmas.

It's a f****** feature, not a bug, you twat cock. Hm. Twat cock's fine.

Murreh crizz-mats

Consensus? You're asking the fediverse for a consensus?

Yeah, no idea what OP expected.

My two cents is that swearing with people you don't know might lead to misunderstandings, so probably it would be best to keep that shit to a minimum.

The fuck would i care if people fucking swear or not, as long as you don't fucking target your fucking swear at others then you be fucking damn sure no one will fucking have any fucking problem with your fucking swear.

I fucking direct my swears to whomever the fuck I want. Fuck you. And merry fucking hannukah.

Cursing all the time is like yelling all the time. It loses its effect. That said, If you're going to swear, don't fucking censor your words. It's just stupid.

The common "curse" words like "shit" and "fuck" are pretty impersonal. They can signal an escalation, but are typically pretty minor. They don't even do that when the speaker is like "I just took a huge shit. Don't go in there for a while"

Other words, like racial slurs and anti-queer stuff, invoke more history and violence. If someone calls someone an asshole that's probably not that big a deal. If they call someone a n-word f-gay-slur, there might be a hate crime about to happen.

So I don't use those words. I don't want to bring the stuff they import into the scene.

People who are the typical recipients of the slurs using them themselves is a related topic I'm not very qualified to speak on, and I wouldn't try to police their language.

It can be totally tonally jarring. I swear all the time, but if I threw some swears in my comments from my history then the messages behind them would be weakened.

Every other word (not literally) out of my mouth is a curse word, so much so that I feel less of a need to use them here. Plus every-once-and-a-while peeps take my rando opinions far too seriously. So, (to compensate), I try to be more polite than I would when actually speaking

because constant swearing makes swears lose meaning

Cursing and not cursing will both get you pretty much no reaction here.

But... if you self censor curse words with f*** or s***.... some lemmings lose their $#!+!

for myself I try not to cuss out other people but if I see someome doing something eggregious egregious or I do something stupid then I'll swear at them or myself

otherwise I try not to swear too much
ymmv

hope everyone has a fucking fantastic holiday tho!🤗

I swear a lot more irl than I do on here. A lot of a swears value is in the tone you deliver it in, that's kinda how you communicate which variation/definition of "fuck" you're actually using, of the huge number of possibilities. This opens up possibilities for humor, expressing subtle (or not so subtle) emotion, etc.

On here, since I lack that fine control, I tend to just revert to using it as an exclamation. And I just don't do that often, I don't use exclamation marks very often either.

It just lacks the same value. That's all, really.

For me, it's just uninteresting and pointless, and detracts from when I might use them for emphasis, if they are used all the time.

I also find a lot of popular media leans on vulgar as the entire end game. Like a comedy where the only attempt at being funny is saying words you're not "supposed" to stay. Use your language as you wish, but you better have something more to bring to the table than a willingness to say "dirty" words.

Admittedly, it's not as much a thing as it used to be. With media not caring much about language anymore, it stopped even in theory being funny by itself, but there was a time in the 80s and 90s where a number of personalities were nothing but swearing in contexts they weren't "supposed" to, and it was so boring.

So that carries forward to why I don't bother to swear, because I found it so unimaginative then and that stuck with me.

I noticed my posts don't get submitted when I swear. I also don't post in this case, because sometimes you need to swear to make a point.

For me personally, I got into a lot of drawn out arguments on Reddit. I said some LGBTQ performers doing a performance that involved a cross was “child friendly” and for 8 months I still got messages from pearl clutching conservatives calling me a pe**. Here, I try to limit my hot takes to 24 hours of engagement, and I try to be more respectful.

Also, I’d like to think that there is a better class of people here than on Reddit. So, I act accordingly. I like my new home. It’s not totally full of assholes yet, and I don’t fancy creating any.

Swearing is one of the most immoral atrocities. Parents who swear in front of their children should have their guardian status taken away, and the State military should take care of them to teach them morality. Overall, swearing should be illegal and punished with death penalty, including swearing on the Internet.

I'm going to have to assume you meant to add something like "/s" because it sounds fucked up without that...

Because control freak dickheads think you're being 'uncivil'. Fuck them and the cat they rode in on.

What the fucking fuck kind of panzie azzed question is this. If you can't handle a few fucking grown up words your life will just go down the shitter.
Don't be a whiny azzed biotch and ask such fucked up questions.
.
That is all.

Swearing is unimaginative and dull.

It's literally just words. If it's all someone uses, sure, it can be unimaginative and dull. But the implication in your blanket statement often then extends to the person which I would say is then wrong.

Lemmy has a hard-coded swear word filter that replaces a number of words with removed. Not seeing words makes you less likely to use them yourself.

That depends on the instance, on lemmy.zip I don't have any filters to my knowledge.

We do as far as I know. But more for actual slurs (like homophobic ones).

Generally I'm against filters, if someone writes a bad word I want to see it and then decide for myself if I report and/or block them.

it used to have it hardcoded in software but I believe they made it an instance option a bit before the reddit exodus