“Censorship is bad” yeah, sure, I agree. But the fact that you still know it’s a curse word means it’s not really censoring anything.
Curse words are so common now that they’ve lost a bit of their oomph. They’re supposed to convey intensity, but they’re used so casually that they’re basically lazy filler.
A strike through line, or a box that doesn’t quite cover, reintroduces a bit of the taboo. This is a bad, naughty word, you shouldn’t be reading it. You know what it is, but attempting to cover it draws attention to the fact that it’s something some people want to cover, which reintroduces some of the oomph.
It’s kinda like sequined pasties at a nudist colony; it turns something that was once taboo, but had since been normalized, back to taboo again to reclaim some of the intensity.
This is a bad, naughty word, you shouldn’t be reading it.
Can’t wait till I’m all grown up, so I can decide for myself.
Exactly. You are grown up, and you know what the word is.
You are grown up
But it’s up to others, what I should and shouldn’t be reading
It is a very selfish viewpoint to only consider how a rule will affect you personally.
That being said, I agree with you, just I think that as a society we should clearly delineate what is appropriate for a preteen or younger and what is appropriate for a teen and an adult.
People only get a certain amount of time in their life to be innocent.
Even though we should definitely remove the innocence (that comes from ignorance) from people before they become adults so that they can make informed and logical, rational decisions for their own lives, there should be, like, a generally agreed upon time and place for that to start happening in a newborn human’s life, and the more reliably we can clearly communicate that this is a 13 and up, versus a 13 and under, or whatever, the better the world will be for those people.
I’m not doing a great job of explaining, but yeah, basically I think that there should be easy or like an agreed upon cut off in American society where we say this age and under is a poor innocent child and should be protected from all bad naughty no-no words and their ilk and then the point we all agree this person is old enough to know better.
Not to shield them from knowledge, but to allow their innocence to be a larger part of their lives.
basically I think that there should be easy or like an agreed upon cut off in American society
That place never even crossed my mind. I’m to used to have freedom and democracy.
I absolutely despise it. It feels like I got interrupted while reading it, it feels like screeching (or an interruption depending on how it’s done) while hearing it.
imo curse words don’t need oomph and they don’t need to be taboo, but if they absolutely have to then I prefer they don’t exist and the sentences have good flow instead of potholes, bumps and sirens.
South Park is infinitely funnier to me with the curse words bleeped out. I dunno why.
There’s definitely a context where the bleeps are more comedic than the words themselves. I agree that South Park is one of the times when it is funnier censored.
And then there is this absolute comedy brilliance: https://youtu.be/KUkjrWDv200
My favorite bleeps are the pinch harmonics in Metalocalypse
Even better are the censored “curses” (and also slurs) in the subtitles of MeTV etc. where you get people drinking ****tails and a kid moaning about his homework ***ignment, because the censor bot is about as stupid as the DOGE boys cutting everything with “trans” in it. When I have the sound off, it sometimes takes me a few seconds to figure it out, like “there’s a ***** in that wall” made sense once I saw the guy tuck the dynamite stick into it.
I guess they finally managed to condition people into supporting their hypocritical censorship.
Not really, I’m just bored by casual swearing.
Or - and hear me out on this - if you don’t want people to read a curse word, don’t write it. There’s any number of non-curse alternatives to use, depending on how creative you want to be.
It’s funny as hell when they bleep a “fuck” and you hear “F-bleep-ck.” Like you heard the whole fucking word still but the U was simply higher pitched. 🤣
It’s also funny bleeping regular words that weren’t swear words to begin with because then even an innocent phrase sounds dirty.
I think this opinion is objectively bad. More up votes for you
I mean, define “objectively”.
Objectively, “objectively” only has one meaning. Otherwise it wouldn’t be objective.
I agree with OP. Anyone remember Adam Sandler’s “Ode to My Car” song, for example? The radio edit is so much funnier than the straight version. Swearing is boring and gauche, but a little bleep over the obvious course word adds a bit of silliness or maybe a hint of taboo depending on the execution.
Kudos for a really unpopular opinion, and your rationale is great. I don’t know if I’m into it but it’s a cool thought.
Fully agree, absolutely. Very sensible take!
only silly and/or half-assed censorship (like when you can clearly hear the beginning and end of the word) are funny to me but in these cases I agree
That’s why I like strikethroughs best
I’m down with this. Sometimes I’ll just smash @$*#&% if none of the real swears are strong enough too. It’s like the string of beeps on tv, the specific words don’t matter, it’s about how it conveys a mood.
I only hate it because most of the time the reason for censoring them is monetization, and that reminds me that the Internet nowadays is not authentic but driven by that and algorithms (not here thankfully).
One stupid trend word that I see on social media (LATAM) that replaced the word “sex” is “detonate” I feel like everyone is talking like a stupid LMAO.
Very Freudian.
Have you considered that swearing is a marker of emotional deregulation, emotion overcoming taboo, and so the increased use might be effect rather than cause, that people are less inhibited by taboo in general, and so their swearing is an accurate indicator of their relationship between social alignment with taboo and individual emotion, and thus your desire to reduce swearing is a desire to see a move away from an emotional individualism and toward a normative social cohesion?
I didn’t say I have a desire to reduce swearing, I said that censorship in the form of strikethroughs, bleeps, etc. restores the emotional intensity of the swear.
“I don’t give a fuck” reads as dull and apathetic. The swear isn’t really conveying anything, it’s just lazy filler.
“I don’t give a
fuck” reads as aggressive and emotional. The swear has impact, it conveys intensity.Never thought of censored words as being more impactful. Swearing often is simply lazy filler for when someone is too emotional, stupid, or some combination of the two to select a more precise word, but I’m not sure where you’d get an entailment of greater aggression from a censored, written word. If anything, if the person censored themselves, it conveys less emotion because they had the rational control to self-censor. And if the word was censored by someone else, it has nothing to do with the speaker’s emotion; it expresses the sensibilities of the censor more than the intentions of the speaker.
And there is a certain implication of wanting to reduce the swearing in calling it ‘dull’ or ‘lazy’ or saying it ‘isn’t really conveying anything.’ These are largely regarded as negative sentiments. On a certain level ‘fuck’ and ‘
fuck’ could be considered as having different intentions, as in ‘I don’t give a fuck’ becomes ‘I don’t care<emotional>’ and ‘I don’t give afuck.’ becomes ‘I don’t care<emotional>, but I do care enough not to fully include this offensive word.’ which would also be a reduced impact and emotionality.How does this compare in your perception to, say:
- ‘I don’t give a fuck.’
- ‘I don’t give a FUCK.’
- 'I don’t give a
fuck.’
None of them are censored, but certainly convey something subtly different.
I’m talking about perception, intention is beyond the scope of this opinion.
In any case, the censorship draws attention to the swear in a world where swearing is so casual as to become invisible. I’m going to repeat my analogy of tasseled pasties at a nudist colony.
There are other ways to add intensity, sure, the same things you can do to any other word. But censorship is a technique specific to swears that specifically highlights their vulgarity. The other methods don’t carry quite the same specific subtext.
