Words are just containers to throw our emotions into. The actual word used is irrelevant. I would rather hear an honest cuss word, than fakey friendship vocabulary.
I was once invited to do some content writing on a now defunct site called, “Lemon Sauced”. It had a few good boards in it to choose from and at first, the other writers were fairly good concerning their posts. Admin was pretty loose as long as no one attacked someone’s religion or race and it wasn’t really a thing when someone came out with a curse word or two. But, it didn’t take long for the posters to catch on and start acting like a bunch of giddy school kids practicing their “dirty words”. As things do, it got progressive and within a couple of months, one couldn’t distinguish one topic from another because of a few people who decided it was “cute” or something to interject a totally useless barrage of idiocy. Another site which is still running is a high IQ site that I joined a couple of years ago but no longer even go to read the topics. Again, admin is pretty loose and there are a few guys and gals who cannot resist referring to females in the crudest of ways. The f bomb and some of it’s derivatives are commonly used throughout sentences in some posts making them ridiculously unreadable and hardly understandable. I really do not care what people do out in public or in their own homes but truthfully, if a person doesn’t have enough of a vocabulary to exercise his or her emotions in an intelligent manner on a ultra mixed forum such as this one, then I’ve definitely been in the wrong place since this forum began. No, I’m not writing about the slug words like darn or gosh or even the dreaded, drat. But if everyone will note, the example in the OP is in direct reference to the f bomb which I have a very large aversion to reading or continually listening to. To me, if a person really wants to write a bunch of curse words, there’s plenty of room in the PM’s where two, three or even a dozen people can just have a ball writing the stuff all over the walls.
I can see what you are saying, @Bess Barber , and I much prefer an honest conversation as well. However, to me there is a completely difference between someone who adds profanity as an exclamation to something that they are graphically describing, and the person who simply uses cuss words because they don’t have a better vocabulary, or do not care if it might be offensive to another person. When I was growing up, gentlemen did not use profanity in front of women and children, and only talked that way when they were in a more private setting. My dad and mom never used profanity, and both taught me that I needed to enrich my vocabulary so that I could carry on an “adult conversation”. I remember going through the part of the Reader’s Digest where they gave you words to guess what they meant, and learn to speak intelligently. My mom spent time to teach me that if I didn’t have an extensive vocabulary, I would seem uneducated, and filling in with profanity looked even worse. I was taught to act like a lady, and expected men to act like a gentleman. One of the things that was deeply ingrained for me was that we should have respect for other people, in every way, and our language was one of the ways we should show respect. When I first met Bobby, one of the things that I noticed first was that he had an excellent vocabulary, and was able to fully express his thoughts without having to include profanity or being vulgar (which I hate even worse than profanity !), and he is the epitome of a gentleman in my eyes. I don’t see much difference between someone writing the actual profanity, or changing the letters around to disguise it. Then , it is not only repulsive, but disingenuous as well.
See if I get Banned for this Best thing on a cold winter's English Morning is having a faggot for breakfast. The other one was I gave up fags(cigarettes) years ago. Last time I used that was when playing poker in Vegas and I said it and was abused by a women
Actually, Beth, when you run into something like this during the heat of the moment it sort of de-escalates the issue, I think. Cracked me up.
On some internet sites, Bobby, they allow this and I agree, it is ridiculous as it really doesn't disguise anything.
[QUOTE="Beth Gallagher (Incidentally, I am a world-class foul mouth, so I use considerable restraint in some posts. ) After reading this confession, I guess it is time I get my big girl panties on and confess also. I love to cuss! I know that will shock many of you. One of my favorite words is a spin-off of a medically accepted word of an activity described in the bible, Genesis 38:9 . I use it to describe rude horomanal teenagers. Wankers! Zek pointed out that in fact if they were wankers, the teenage pregnancy rate would drop drastically. He is right, but I am trying to get away from using uglier words involving their mothers and on occasion their fathers, which I always preface with little.
I agree with @Yvonne Smith . A forum that lets it get all out of hand can really begin to look like a bad hip hop song. I try to watch what I say because I don't want to offend other people, but let me bump my knee on the coffee table and all polite decorum blows out the window.
I have a confession to make, although I'm sure it's on my permanent record somewhere. When I was in the 7th grade, in a school that included K-8th grade, there was a hill behind the school. Although we were allowed to play on the hill, we weren't supposed to go behind the hill. Of course, we did. In the older grades, the lunch hour was staggered by 15 minutes, so that the 7th graders got out fifteen minutes before the 8th graders. At times, there would be a battle for the hill, as the 8th graders fought to take the hill. I won't go into the story of the battle of the sumacs because I'm pretty sure I've told that somewhere in the forum before. However, related to that event, a few of us wrote some profane threats on some of the larger rocks that were on the hill, intended for the 8th graders as they were making their way up the hill. We were called into the principal's office the following day, where he had assembled a collection of these rocks, which had apparently been reported by someone in one of the younger grades because we had, of course, left them in place after the battle was over. I can remember that, in all seriousness, we were told that this would be on our PERMANENT RECORD, so I figured I'd better put it out here before someone discovers a copy of my permanent record and outs me for it.