Or, to be more verbose, sometimes somebody creates, publishes, and endorses a crafted good or work which is incredibly inferior not just to current state of the art, but also prior art and future ideals, but without any indication that the creator has encountered any reason to believe that their invention will not stand the tests of time, merchantability, reliability, insight into the human condition, etc.
In those cases, it's incredibly useful to identify and call out these things as bad. If we can't use the full width and breadth of language, then it gets harder to do so; invariably, all attempts at censorship start with the negative parts of language in an attempt to whitewash thought and opinion. (As recent examples, consider Facebook's omission of a "Dislike" button, or American Idol's refusal to allow voters to indicate unfavorable opinions of all contestants. The historical ideal is Newspeak.) When we can't say that something is bad, then we lose some of our freedom, not to mention some of the expressiveness required to attack everyday problems.
What always amuses me is the tendency of some people to "censor" out profanity (f* vs fuck and s* vs shit), as if by not actually typing the word, the writer could write about profanity and yet not be "sullied" by it, or something to that effect.
Seriously, loosen up. This almost puritanical aversion to profanity is unhealthy.
People are always offended for "other" people, I would be curious to hear the thoughts of a person who is truly offended by the word fuck. Does it have some magic powers that cause it to fire off a pain circuit in mutant brains?
Swear words are swear words because they actually are processed differently in your brain than regular propositional speech is. They're the linguistic counterpart of the emotional signals used by other social animals. The difference is that the sounds associated with our signalling systems are learned as part of language, rather than being hard-coded and instinctual. Hence, there's the possibility for different people to have their brains trained in different ways. So, for some people, the "f-word" may not have any ill effect, but don't deceive yourself thinking that there aren't people who really are hurt by it.
Since the psychological reaction is associated with the signal, not with whatever additional propositional meaning it might have in the language, referring to it by circumlocution really does have a point- it lets you talk about the words without risking triggering someone's reaction to the words.
It almost does. I'm not offended by the word fuck, because English is not my native language. I have little emotional attachment to profanities of other languages, so they don't really affect me.
But there is one in my native language. It is not the equivalent of fuck, but something usually considered a milder swear word. I'm almost physically unable to say or type that word. If I try to force it out I get panicky and my chest starts to hurt. It is the strangest feeling and when added to that the fact that I'm completely aware how irrational and, well, stupid that is just increases the mental scuffle I'm going through.
I know exactly when I developed this. I was about 8 years old when one of my friends trashed something I had made and called me names. I went to home and complained to my mother what a twat this guy had been. I quoted what the guy called me and used the special word. My mother was visibly shocked, took a moment, and very calmly informed me how that was the worst word to say. And that's it. She didn't punish me or yell at me, just explained that there literally wasn't any worse word I could have uttered. According to her. And that hit me. I had done something bad that I, or anyone else, couldn't top. I hit peak profanity. I learned that reception from her and took it to heart and haven't used the word since.
Now, saying it out loud clearly is hard for me. But what about hearing it? Well I wouldn't use the word "offended". It is not your problem that I have this emotional connection to a certain word. If you didn't try to offend me with it I'm not offended. But I do go through a certain train of thoughts after hearing it. First I get a little shocked because I wasn't prepared for it. Then, because now my focus is on that word, I repeat it in my head as we all do with words we read or concentrate on (altough many 'speed-readers' say they can read without verbalizing words, this is not possible. You can limit it, but not turn it off completely). And verbalizing the word in my head causes a similar reaction, but milder, as saying it does. For a second I can't concentrate on what you are saying because there's something going between my ears and I need a second to calm it down. And after that it is still nimbling in my thoughts for some while before I forget it.
It IS kinda like when someone insults me. First you get shocked when someone really stabs you, then you get various emotions like anger, frustration, feelings for vengeance, sadness, and what not. Then you calm down but the memory of the feelings is still there for a while. Then you forget it and move on. It is the same thing with me and hearing that word, except I don't feed offended and I have nothing against you. I have something against myself and that is not a pleasant state of mental affairs.
If you are trying to present something to me or lecture me about some subject, I don't think that is the reaction you are looking for.
edit: oh and it isn't anything religious as me and my mother are both atheists. The f-word in my language means vagina and this word is the male counterpart.
It's not words themselves that matter. It's what people mean by them. Saying "please", vacuous as it might be, communicates consideration. Profanity communicates the opposite.
Of course, it isn't that simple; language is language and context is everything. Sometimes someone swearing at you means, "Some people would be offended by this, but I know you can take it." The inconsiderate language is a compliment. Sometimes it means, "We don't have time for social niceties; this is important." It's like pounding your fist on a table or slamming a door. But by itself, the meaning is closer to, "I don't care about you, because I just don't."
Profanity can certainly be used well, but without a redeeming purpose the vibe is somewhere between stupidity and rudeness. I find that offensive. Not as in, "I'm wounded", but as in, "that's unpleasant."
Some of it's cultural, too. One family may be big on courtesy -- always saying, "please pass the butter" at dinner. Just reaching across the table at that house would give a lot of offense because it violates how they show consideration to each other. In another house, everyone may just reach for everything all the time, and it doesn't mean anything.
Profanity is a lot like that. In some crowds, any uncensored profanity is highly offensive, a nine out of ten. In others, vocabulary alone can't push the needle past two, and you need to start in with creative graphic descriptions if you really mean to offend.
People have a couple of different reactions to that.
Some people, particularly the folks with a high pain threshold, just assume their culture is better. They swear a lot and the subtext is, "I don't care if you're offended because I think your culture sucks anyway." Hardly polite.
Other folks try to speak the language of the crowd they're in. If you say "X is sh*t" to a mixed group, some will hear "X is stinky socks" while others will hear "X is bestiality and I hate you." If you're pretty sure where on the spectrum your crowd falls, you can go ahead and use the expression. If it's mixed, though, you had best go ahead and use whichever of the two phrases it is you actually mean.
Context is far more important than profanity. Saying 'please' in the right way can be highly offensive, depending on context.
Despite being 'the magic word', there's nothing magic about 'please'. It's just a word. It's the context it's used in that communicates consideration or not.
To you. By adopting this mindset, you give the word much more power than the speaker is (most likely) intending.
By all means it's your right to be offended and maintain your personal standards for such things, but don't mistake you being offended with someone else trying to offend.
I used to work for a company with an internet content filter. I'd search for a topic, see a promising link, and bam! the content filter blocked the page for profanity. I try to limit / self-censor my profanity in deference to the working stiffs of the world stuck in that situation.
Know your target audience. Sometimes it's appropriate to take an tone with the audience to get a point across or make that impact. A blog has a pretty wide audience.
My opposition nature now wants to start a conference with swearing as a central theme.
I'm not sure what industry Scott actually works in? I can look at our code-base here at work, and there are plenty of swear words through out. The classic foobar as an extension on fubar, as in fucked up beyond all recognition.
Then there was that article a few years ago (which I can't even remember the actual argument, but I think it was about censorship) that the linux kernel source code would be black listed because it had 7000+ counts of the word fuck in it.
Swearing almost goes with the territory of being a programmer.. Oh wait, we're not supposed to call our selves programmers any more. Colour me confused! Ok, so I add value to my organisation, I remove obstacles, and if I happen to swear while doing it, oh well!
> Swearing almost goes with the territory of being a programmer.
I respectfully disagree.
As a counterexample to your codebase, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single swear word in the 50k lines of one of my projects - even in the commit messages.
Sure, some of the guys on our team wouldn't commit so much as damn or hell, but they are in the minority
We have something akin to a swear jar going on at work, where instead of a coin donation, you must slap yourself in the face for swearing, it's a bad day if it's not even gone 9am and you're slapping yourself
And after Embarcadero finally released a 64-bit Delphi compiler complete with memory leaks and 8000% slower compile times, there was a lot face slapping going on =\",
What makes swearing any more offensive than say, not wearing a tie at some conference? Is there anything inherent in the tie and words or is there a cultural attachment to these things that raises emotions?
So then, do we always cater to the current cultural trends, or do we pave our own ways in some way? Some times we're not always looking to please, attempts to be polite can lead to concealment of details that matter. So sometimes it's worth not being polite, and politeness, too, is in the eye of the beholder.
Offensive is largely still a subjective matter, you have to decide how much you value this subjectivity.
Some people get offended and start throwing shit at the wall, and some people don't give a fuck.
I think he's correct in his assumption that it's only really in America that people are offended by swear words on a slide. I'm in Europe and no one I know would blink twice to see that - although I'd defo leave it out in a sales pitch!
I personally thought the unnecessary swearing was quite amusing. It's nice to see someone not taking themselves too seriously (for a change). Also reminded me of Ted Dzuiba - anyone know what happened to him? His articles on theregister were highly amusing.. Almost as funny as the comments where people just bemoaning the swearing. That was hilarious.
I disagree with the article. Swearing is highly effective but only if rarely used. The article's author hints at innuendo, euphemisms, dysphemisms and doublespeak as alternatives to swearing. I am a firm believer and follower of concise eloquence so avoiding calling a spade a spade is akin to heresy. Come out and say it, don't avoid words when they perfectly describe something.
Think of swearing as an alternative to hitting someone. Sometimes you really want to hit someone and there may be a good reason for it but violence is never appropriate. Swearing in such a contexts is how humans don't continuously tear each other apart. They should be a tool of last resort to express our most powerful emotions.
Expletives are the most powerful words in every language, but they only retain their power when used infrequently and in contexts that demand them.
The article's author hints at innuendo, euphemisms, dysphemisms and doublespeak as alternatives to swearing.
I love wordplay and regularly engage in it with my friends. But to write an article using wordplay as the basic tool for explaining anything other than wordplay is worse than being offensive. You run the risk of alienating a lot of English-as-second-language folks for a start, as they lack a lot of the fluency required. But even further, I've learned heavily and repeatedly that there are considerable differences between what many American English and British English speakers can take from talking in metaphor. British English speakers (and the British themselves, in particular) live and breathe metaphor.
I find that most people who can't understand speaking in metaphor are either English-second-language; American English speakers; or Brit English speakers who have dropped out of education early and have very little socialisation.
It's not to say there aren't American English folks who don't understand metaphor well, it's just that it's so common for them to misunderstand it. If you hear an individual saying "But that's not literally what I said" to defend what they have actually have said between-the-lines, it's unlikely that they're a British English speaker.
Second-language English speakers should always be seen as your target audience for any professional communication. Most English speakers alive today do not speak English as their first language. Also, many who speak English as a first language are not experts in English either. Metaphor, idiom and wordplay are great, interesting and they have their uses, mainly in social contexts and for identifying yourself as a member of a group. But they do little but confuse and isolate readers or listeners who aren't part of your cultural or linguistic group. Most of what I write professionally is devoid of complex words and almost every literary technique in order to be as accessible as possible (Hacker News doesn't count, I'm being myself in this forum).
As for American English not having metaphors, do you not notice all of the sporting metaphors frequently used by almost every stereotypical American manager? Out of the the ball park, centre field, hit a home run, loaded bases, the bullpen, etc. I'm Australian so I spent a month watching American sports to grasp what some managers were on about in conference calls.
By 'speaking in metaphor' I mean that the speakers wind in and out of allegory and double-meaning, not that they are using one-shot cliche metaphors, and that what is said between-the-lines is readily acknowledged as being part of the message, just as much as what is literally stated.
The word "shit" is not profane, just coarse. And vulgarity has it's honored place in the lexicon. In fact, I'd say that "shit work" is an excellent term to use when describing unpleasant, meaningless activity.
The linked article "The Nine Parts of Speech and the F-word" is silly. Replacing "John went to the bakery" with "That f* went to the bakery" does not a pronoun make, any more than "That person went to the bakery" makes "person" a pronoun. The reflexive pronoun examples are similarly weak. The third line under "Adverbs" has at least one error that makes it nonsensical. I stopped reading at that point, but I'm sure there is plenty more garbage in that article.
However, you take no chances of offending by not swearing, but you guarantee to offend someone if you do.
Good. Fuck them. Believe me, we aren't going to get along. Best to know now. Also, I believe in evolution, think the earth is more than 4000 years old and I support gay marriage. That offends a ton of people and expressing that opinion has the same effect on those "relationships" as saying "fuck".
You might think you're being polite. You're not. As Bill Hicks would say, you're sucking on Satan's cock, ice ice baby.
And as a matter of economic reality, I've found that the better educated, and economically advantaged a person is, the more likely they are to use words that others have judged to be offensive. "Manners" are what the servants have.
Then there's an anecdotal inverse correlation between the likelihood that a person uses the word "fuck" and the likelihood that they support dropping cluster-bombs on civilian areas. That is people go all weak at the knees if I say "fuck", but those same people are all for shredding small children: just so long as they are "non-christians". (Yeah, I'm sure you don't do that Mr No-Potty-Words HN reader - its just a general observation).
If you're writing people off as "too far outside your value system to be worth bothering with" because they happen to find swearing offensive, you're missing out on knowing a lot of really awesome people for a pretty stupid reason. Then again, your policy does save them hassle, so maybe it's for the best. Penalties offset...repeat first down.
You have the cart before the horse. He's not preventing the relationship by using profanity, it's those other people that are preventing the relationship by refusing it due to profanity. It's very rare to have a user of profanity refuse to talk to someone else simply because they're not swearing.
If you're writing people off as "too far outside your value system to be worth bothering with" because they happen to find swearing offensive, you're missing out on knowing a lot of really awesome people
No, not so far. Its pretty much a 1-1 correlation. Offended by sounds and symbols => holds irrational beliefs => easily convinced to support abhorrent acts.
In fact if I meet someone who is utterly unphased by continuous war, hunger, famine, rape, and torture, then they are guaranteed to be offended by a simple sound and make a huge fucking deal about it.
I did 5 years in the Navy, so I have to try really hard NOT to swear occasionally. I generally don't have a problem around children or my great grandma, but when I'm giving a talk it's pretty hard not to.
I used to work in a hospital with children forming half our patient load. One of my fellow technicians was annoyed because she was saying 'sugar' instead of 'shit' at home now, and it didn't have the same cathartic feel to it.
We used to play around with finding good 'child-safe' profanity. My favourite was 'sweet chilli chicken', which has a nice cadence to it. "Sweet chilli chicken, what do you think you're doing!?". It's a little long, but it worked for a short while...
This is a little prissy. I'm far more offended by a poorly-edited tl;dr blog post than the occasional f-bomb. Both can show disrespect for the reader; there's an art to it.
You're sitting in a meeting to talk about strategy next quarter. Ideas are flying. People are talking over each other. Every so often someone scrawls something on a whiteboard. Then they start talking about dates and "quick wins." Estimates get thrown out, which inspires another furious rush of discussion.
You keep trying to interject. You lost two engineers a month ago. Another one has put in his notice. You hired a bright kid a week ago, but he's going to need time to ramp up. You keep trying to say that hiring needs to be the focus of any new strategy, because nothing's getting done if you don't have the engineers to do it. You keep trying to raise this point and get the group to talk about how you can redouble your recruiting efforts, but everybody wants to talk about "establishing social media channels" and "improving our performance marketing network."
So finally, you sigh, and raising your voices a couple notches, you say:
"There is no way we're doing to do ANY OF THIS SHIT with our current staff."
The room quiets down. All heads turn to you.
Then the CEO says, "All right, let's talk about recruiting."
The poster is right. Next up, I'm expecting another whiny thread about why all these t-shirt wearing "fuck that shit" guys aren't paid or treated like doctors, lawyers or architects.
These are _public_ presentations. Act professional. There are almost no other professions where it would be considered de rigueur to pepper your professional presentations with profanity, or, for that matter, porn.
You want to swear in your office, or in your source base (not in the public-facing API stuff), go ahead. But if you want to swear in your public persona as a professional, don't expect to be treated like that much of a professional.
The frequency of swearing increases as you descend the ranks of society down to the lowest levels, down to the floor where you have drunken hobos sleeping in their own filth on the side of the road. Where profanity is the most common.
I support your right to use profanity, and I support my right to judge you poorly for it.
PROFANITY IS KIND OF LIKE USING ALL CAPS TO GET PEOPLE TO READ THIS POST. ALL CAPS IS A GREAT WAY TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS RIGHT!
"The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." - Mark Twain
There are occasions where only the word fuck will do.
They're less common than what the habitually profane might guess (and I regrettably count myself among that group).
Still – there is a talent to swearing. Part of it is delivery. Part of it is timing. But the most crucial part is knowing when – and when not – to use a particular tool for a particular instance. The people who write the Onion's headlines have this air-tight.
It is a poor man who relies upon swearing to have an impact upon his readers or listeners. I view it similar to "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
Swearing may get the attention of people though it seems like a quick fix that won't last. You know what else gets people's attention? Slapping them. :P What is more lasting is effective teaching skills and telling stories well and to do these well it requires practice and study. Instead of swearing try asking a good question that will get them thinking and again, good questions usually take preparation and it's not 'bad' to prepare questions as some people seem to think all good questions must be thought up on the spot.
The author mentions that it's more likely that Americans (Or rather, native English speakers) find the words more 'offensive' than other countries and I've noticed this too in a few Asian countries. For example, when I was in the Philippines and we'd be talking to kids/teenagers and some would outright swear (Sometimes at you) though were ignorant of it's true meaning/effect and simply had heard it on movies/TV shows and the internet.
Don't assume that everywhere that speaks English has the same monoculture. A very strong aversion to swearing is, as far as I can tell, specifically American.
I'm Scottish and I swear more or less continuously, using words that are considered to be the 'most offensive'. This isn't 'trying hard', it's simply a cultural artefact, a side-effect of growing up working class in a particular place in the world.
This kind of reaction to swearing is really just parochial nonsense.
(On the other hand, if you do have a character trait that some people consider a flaw, you might as well go out of your way to own it, and so: http://theswearingrubyist.com/ )
In case people are assuming I'm American, I'll clarify. I'm not American, at all. My father is from Glasgow and I was born in Australia (Australians are known for their liberal swearing, it's the culture, apparently)—what other culture aside from Scots and Australians swear more and are less likely to be offended by it? ;)
With flaws/weaknesses I agree that they should be 'embraced' so that they can be improved upon and if needed, removed, and not to use flaws/weaknesses as excuses which may be for poor behaviour/actions/whatever.
It seems a common idea so far here and in most places is that 'not swearing' is inherently a religious side-effect. I have friends who are not religious and maintain their concepts of good, clean speech, of valuing what they say.
It seems a common idea so far here and in most places is that 'not swearing' is inherently a religious side-effect. I have friends who are not religious and maintain their concepts of good, clean speech, of valuing what they say.
Two of the most proficient users of profanity I know are a pair of linguists, mother and daughter. They are both heavily passionate about the English language and will engage on the topic for hours at length if you let them. Both think that books are sacred and have groaning bookshelves. The mother was an editor for a very long time and has articles in peer-reviewed journals on the topic, the daughter is a speech pathologist. They are very proficient in English, and know the science and arts behind it, far more than the vast majority. They are proficient in getting communication across in a variety of ways, and both of them regularly use profanity in casual speech.
It's a total and utter misconception that 'people who really care about language don't swear'. Anyone spending time with passionate linguists, speech pathologists, and English Lit enthusiasts will know that use of profanity is not uncommon amongst that demographic.
> It's a total and utter misconception that 'people who really care about language don't swear'. Anyone spending time with passionate linguists, speech pathologists, and English Lit enthusiasts will know that use of profanity is not uncommon amongst that demographic.
That isn't quite what I was implying. There is a difference between being aware of how beautiful languages are and being able to mechanically use them well and those who value what they say and the effect of them.
An example is, I have a friend in the Philippines who when speaking while she does not have an exhaustive vocabulary (I'm not talking about English but her native tongue), as she is from the lower class and most simply use the conversational version of their dialect, obviously valued what she said and would do her to best to simply speak well, convey her ideas, have tact, etc.
Then there are those I know who do care for what they say though swear as well so we return, apparently, simply to one's opinion of profanity. Out of that comes understanding and respect. People who have been in support of this person's blog post have been told to loosen up, implied that they're puritants, mocked, etc. I've seen the same happen in other respects like at university I overheard a group of people commenting about another student because she chose to dress well and not reveal half her body and they said she was a religious nut and other derogatory things. Funny thing is, she's not religious.
Here and elsewhere people have said, basically, "I'm going to swear and I don't care if you're offended" and while I find the concept of being offended usually ridiculous it shows a lack of understanding.
Profanity has a purpose. It expresses strong dissatisfaction, quite eloquently in my opinion. The article was called "Don't Give Your Users Shit Work", and maybe ZH could have gotten the point across by saying "Don't Burden Your Users With Unnecessary Tedium". But seriously, "shit work" more accurately conveys the soul-crushing awfulness of it all. Listening to this author's ideas on what constitutes appropriate (who asked him anyway?) is unnecessarily handicapping one's ability to communicate.
"Specifically, to give offense is to imply that a person or group has or should have low status. Taking offense then becomes easy to explain: it’s to defend someone’s status from such an implication, out of a sense of either fairness or self-interest."
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 93.7 ms ] threadOr, to be more verbose, sometimes somebody creates, publishes, and endorses a crafted good or work which is incredibly inferior not just to current state of the art, but also prior art and future ideals, but without any indication that the creator has encountered any reason to believe that their invention will not stand the tests of time, merchantability, reliability, insight into the human condition, etc.
In those cases, it's incredibly useful to identify and call out these things as bad. If we can't use the full width and breadth of language, then it gets harder to do so; invariably, all attempts at censorship start with the negative parts of language in an attempt to whitewash thought and opinion. (As recent examples, consider Facebook's omission of a "Dislike" button, or American Idol's refusal to allow voters to indicate unfavorable opinions of all contestants. The historical ideal is Newspeak.) When we can't say that something is bad, then we lose some of our freedom, not to mention some of the expressiveness required to attack everyday problems.
So, yeah, fuck that. Sometimes shit sucks.
Seriously, loosen up. This almost puritanical aversion to profanity is unhealthy.
Stephen Pinker gave a talk on the subject at Google a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU
Swear words are swear words because they actually are processed differently in your brain than regular propositional speech is. They're the linguistic counterpart of the emotional signals used by other social animals. The difference is that the sounds associated with our signalling systems are learned as part of language, rather than being hard-coded and instinctual. Hence, there's the possibility for different people to have their brains trained in different ways. So, for some people, the "f-word" may not have any ill effect, but don't deceive yourself thinking that there aren't people who really are hurt by it. Since the psychological reaction is associated with the signal, not with whatever additional propositional meaning it might have in the language, referring to it by circumlocution really does have a point- it lets you talk about the words without risking triggering someone's reaction to the words.
(I believe this is just an excerpt from his book, The Stuff of Thought, but it's been a while since I've read the book so I don't remember.)
But there is one in my native language. It is not the equivalent of fuck, but something usually considered a milder swear word. I'm almost physically unable to say or type that word. If I try to force it out I get panicky and my chest starts to hurt. It is the strangest feeling and when added to that the fact that I'm completely aware how irrational and, well, stupid that is just increases the mental scuffle I'm going through.
I know exactly when I developed this. I was about 8 years old when one of my friends trashed something I had made and called me names. I went to home and complained to my mother what a twat this guy had been. I quoted what the guy called me and used the special word. My mother was visibly shocked, took a moment, and very calmly informed me how that was the worst word to say. And that's it. She didn't punish me or yell at me, just explained that there literally wasn't any worse word I could have uttered. According to her. And that hit me. I had done something bad that I, or anyone else, couldn't top. I hit peak profanity. I learned that reception from her and took it to heart and haven't used the word since.
Now, saying it out loud clearly is hard for me. But what about hearing it? Well I wouldn't use the word "offended". It is not your problem that I have this emotional connection to a certain word. If you didn't try to offend me with it I'm not offended. But I do go through a certain train of thoughts after hearing it. First I get a little shocked because I wasn't prepared for it. Then, because now my focus is on that word, I repeat it in my head as we all do with words we read or concentrate on (altough many 'speed-readers' say they can read without verbalizing words, this is not possible. You can limit it, but not turn it off completely). And verbalizing the word in my head causes a similar reaction, but milder, as saying it does. For a second I can't concentrate on what you are saying because there's something going between my ears and I need a second to calm it down. And after that it is still nimbling in my thoughts for some while before I forget it.
It IS kinda like when someone insults me. First you get shocked when someone really stabs you, then you get various emotions like anger, frustration, feelings for vengeance, sadness, and what not. Then you calm down but the memory of the feelings is still there for a while. Then you forget it and move on. It is the same thing with me and hearing that word, except I don't feed offended and I have nothing against you. I have something against myself and that is not a pleasant state of mental affairs.
If you are trying to present something to me or lecture me about some subject, I don't think that is the reaction you are looking for.
edit: oh and it isn't anything religious as me and my mother are both atheists. The f-word in my language means vagina and this word is the male counterpart.
It's not words themselves that matter. It's what people mean by them. Saying "please", vacuous as it might be, communicates consideration. Profanity communicates the opposite.
Of course, it isn't that simple; language is language and context is everything. Sometimes someone swearing at you means, "Some people would be offended by this, but I know you can take it." The inconsiderate language is a compliment. Sometimes it means, "We don't have time for social niceties; this is important." It's like pounding your fist on a table or slamming a door. But by itself, the meaning is closer to, "I don't care about you, because I just don't."
Profanity can certainly be used well, but without a redeeming purpose the vibe is somewhere between stupidity and rudeness. I find that offensive. Not as in, "I'm wounded", but as in, "that's unpleasant."
Some of it's cultural, too. One family may be big on courtesy -- always saying, "please pass the butter" at dinner. Just reaching across the table at that house would give a lot of offense because it violates how they show consideration to each other. In another house, everyone may just reach for everything all the time, and it doesn't mean anything.
Profanity is a lot like that. In some crowds, any uncensored profanity is highly offensive, a nine out of ten. In others, vocabulary alone can't push the needle past two, and you need to start in with creative graphic descriptions if you really mean to offend.
People have a couple of different reactions to that.
Some people, particularly the folks with a high pain threshold, just assume their culture is better. They swear a lot and the subtext is, "I don't care if you're offended because I think your culture sucks anyway." Hardly polite.
Other folks try to speak the language of the crowd they're in. If you say "X is sh*t" to a mixed group, some will hear "X is stinky socks" while others will hear "X is bestiality and I hate you." If you're pretty sure where on the spectrum your crowd falls, you can go ahead and use the expression. If it's mixed, though, you had best go ahead and use whichever of the two phrases it is you actually mean.
Despite being 'the magic word', there's nothing magic about 'please'. It's just a word. It's the context it's used in that communicates consideration or not.
To you. By adopting this mindset, you give the word much more power than the speaker is (most likely) intending.
By all means it's your right to be offended and maintain your personal standards for such things, but don't mistake you being offended with someone else trying to offend.
(which was funny
My opposition nature now wants to start a conference with swearing as a central theme.
Then there was that article a few years ago (which I can't even remember the actual argument, but I think it was about censorship) that the linux kernel source code would be black listed because it had 7000+ counts of the word fuck in it.
Swearing almost goes with the territory of being a programmer.. Oh wait, we're not supposed to call our selves programmers any more. Colour me confused! Ok, so I add value to my organisation, I remove obstacles, and if I happen to swear while doing it, oh well!
I respectfully disagree.
As a counterexample to your codebase, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single swear word in the 50k lines of one of my projects - even in the commit messages.
We have something akin to a swear jar going on at work, where instead of a coin donation, you must slap yourself in the face for swearing, it's a bad day if it's not even gone 9am and you're slapping yourself
And after Embarcadero finally released a 64-bit Delphi compiler complete with memory leaks and 8000% slower compile times, there was a lot face slapping going on =\",
So then, do we always cater to the current cultural trends, or do we pave our own ways in some way? Some times we're not always looking to please, attempts to be polite can lead to concealment of details that matter. So sometimes it's worth not being polite, and politeness, too, is in the eye of the beholder.
Offensive is largely still a subjective matter, you have to decide how much you value this subjectivity.
Some people get offended and start throwing shit at the wall, and some people don't give a fuck.
I personally thought the unnecessary swearing was quite amusing. It's nice to see someone not taking themselves too seriously (for a change). Also reminded me of Ted Dzuiba - anyone know what happened to him? His articles on theregister were highly amusing.. Almost as funny as the comments where people just bemoaning the swearing. That was hilarious.
Also reminded me of this, which was on HN a while back: http://andrewvos.com/2011/02/21/amount-of-profanity-in-git-c...
Think of swearing as an alternative to hitting someone. Sometimes you really want to hit someone and there may be a good reason for it but violence is never appropriate. Swearing in such a contexts is how humans don't continuously tear each other apart. They should be a tool of last resort to express our most powerful emotions.
Expletives are the most powerful words in every language, but they only retain their power when used infrequently and in contexts that demand them.
I love wordplay and regularly engage in it with my friends. But to write an article using wordplay as the basic tool for explaining anything other than wordplay is worse than being offensive. You run the risk of alienating a lot of English-as-second-language folks for a start, as they lack a lot of the fluency required. But even further, I've learned heavily and repeatedly that there are considerable differences between what many American English and British English speakers can take from talking in metaphor. British English speakers (and the British themselves, in particular) live and breathe metaphor.
I find that most people who can't understand speaking in metaphor are either English-second-language; American English speakers; or Brit English speakers who have dropped out of education early and have very little socialisation.
It's not to say there aren't American English folks who don't understand metaphor well, it's just that it's so common for them to misunderstand it. If you hear an individual saying "But that's not literally what I said" to defend what they have actually have said between-the-lines, it's unlikely that they're a British English speaker.
As for American English not having metaphors, do you not notice all of the sporting metaphors frequently used by almost every stereotypical American manager? Out of the the ball park, centre field, hit a home run, loaded bases, the bullpen, etc. I'm Australian so I spent a month watching American sports to grasp what some managers were on about in conference calls.
Good. Fuck them. Believe me, we aren't going to get along. Best to know now. Also, I believe in evolution, think the earth is more than 4000 years old and I support gay marriage. That offends a ton of people and expressing that opinion has the same effect on those "relationships" as saying "fuck".
You might think you're being polite. You're not. As Bill Hicks would say, you're sucking on Satan's cock, ice ice baby.
And as a matter of economic reality, I've found that the better educated, and economically advantaged a person is, the more likely they are to use words that others have judged to be offensive. "Manners" are what the servants have.
Then there's an anecdotal inverse correlation between the likelihood that a person uses the word "fuck" and the likelihood that they support dropping cluster-bombs on civilian areas. That is people go all weak at the knees if I say "fuck", but those same people are all for shredding small children: just so long as they are "non-christians". (Yeah, I'm sure you don't do that Mr No-Potty-Words HN reader - its just a general observation).
Whatever.
No, not so far. Its pretty much a 1-1 correlation. Offended by sounds and symbols => holds irrational beliefs => easily convinced to support abhorrent acts.
In fact if I meet someone who is utterly unphased by continuous war, hunger, famine, rape, and torture, then they are guaranteed to be offended by a simple sound and make a huge fucking deal about it.
I don't put swear words in my slides, though.
We used to play around with finding good 'child-safe' profanity. My favourite was 'sweet chilli chicken', which has a nice cadence to it. "Sweet chilli chicken, what do you think you're doing!?". It's a little long, but it worked for a short while...
You keep trying to interject. You lost two engineers a month ago. Another one has put in his notice. You hired a bright kid a week ago, but he's going to need time to ramp up. You keep trying to say that hiring needs to be the focus of any new strategy, because nothing's getting done if you don't have the engineers to do it. You keep trying to raise this point and get the group to talk about how you can redouble your recruiting efforts, but everybody wants to talk about "establishing social media channels" and "improving our performance marketing network."
So finally, you sigh, and raising your voices a couple notches, you say:
"There is no way we're doing to do ANY OF THIS SHIT with our current staff."
The room quiets down. All heads turn to you.
Then the CEO says, "All right, let's talk about recruiting."
These are _public_ presentations. Act professional. There are almost no other professions where it would be considered de rigueur to pepper your professional presentations with profanity, or, for that matter, porn.
You want to swear in your office, or in your source base (not in the public-facing API stuff), go ahead. But if you want to swear in your public persona as a professional, don't expect to be treated like that much of a professional.
I support your right to use profanity, and I support my right to judge you poorly for it.
PROFANITY IS KIND OF LIKE USING ALL CAPS TO GET PEOPLE TO READ THIS POST. ALL CAPS IS A GREAT WAY TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS RIGHT!
There are occasions where only the word fuck will do.
They're less common than what the habitually profane might guess (and I regrettably count myself among that group).
Still – there is a talent to swearing. Part of it is delivery. Part of it is timing. But the most crucial part is knowing when – and when not – to use a particular tool for a particular instance. The people who write the Onion's headlines have this air-tight.
Swearing may get the attention of people though it seems like a quick fix that won't last. You know what else gets people's attention? Slapping them. :P What is more lasting is effective teaching skills and telling stories well and to do these well it requires practice and study. Instead of swearing try asking a good question that will get them thinking and again, good questions usually take preparation and it's not 'bad' to prepare questions as some people seem to think all good questions must be thought up on the spot.
The author mentions that it's more likely that Americans (Or rather, native English speakers) find the words more 'offensive' than other countries and I've noticed this too in a few Asian countries. For example, when I was in the Philippines and we'd be talking to kids/teenagers and some would outright swear (Sometimes at you) though were ignorant of it's true meaning/effect and simply had heard it on movies/TV shows and the internet.
I'm Scottish and I swear more or less continuously, using words that are considered to be the 'most offensive'. This isn't 'trying hard', it's simply a cultural artefact, a side-effect of growing up working class in a particular place in the world.
This kind of reaction to swearing is really just parochial nonsense.
(On the other hand, if you do have a character trait that some people consider a flaw, you might as well go out of your way to own it, and so: http://theswearingrubyist.com/ )
With flaws/weaknesses I agree that they should be 'embraced' so that they can be improved upon and if needed, removed, and not to use flaws/weaknesses as excuses which may be for poor behaviour/actions/whatever.
It seems a common idea so far here and in most places is that 'not swearing' is inherently a religious side-effect. I have friends who are not religious and maintain their concepts of good, clean speech, of valuing what they say.
Two of the most proficient users of profanity I know are a pair of linguists, mother and daughter. They are both heavily passionate about the English language and will engage on the topic for hours at length if you let them. Both think that books are sacred and have groaning bookshelves. The mother was an editor for a very long time and has articles in peer-reviewed journals on the topic, the daughter is a speech pathologist. They are very proficient in English, and know the science and arts behind it, far more than the vast majority. They are proficient in getting communication across in a variety of ways, and both of them regularly use profanity in casual speech.
It's a total and utter misconception that 'people who really care about language don't swear'. Anyone spending time with passionate linguists, speech pathologists, and English Lit enthusiasts will know that use of profanity is not uncommon amongst that demographic.
That isn't quite what I was implying. There is a difference between being aware of how beautiful languages are and being able to mechanically use them well and those who value what they say and the effect of them.
An example is, I have a friend in the Philippines who when speaking while she does not have an exhaustive vocabulary (I'm not talking about English but her native tongue), as she is from the lower class and most simply use the conversational version of their dialect, obviously valued what she said and would do her to best to simply speak well, convey her ideas, have tact, etc.
Then there are those I know who do care for what they say though swear as well so we return, apparently, simply to one's opinion of profanity. Out of that comes understanding and respect. People who have been in support of this person's blog post have been told to loosen up, implied that they're puritants, mocked, etc. I've seen the same happen in other respects like at university I overheard a group of people commenting about another student because she chose to dress well and not reveal half her body and they said she was a religious nut and other derogatory things. Funny thing is, she's not religious.
Here and elsewhere people have said, basically, "I'm going to swear and I don't care if you're offended" and while I find the concept of being offended usually ridiculous it shows a lack of understanding.
At least 'shit' here is an adjective, instead of a direct insult.
"Specifically, to give offense is to imply that a person or group has or should have low status. Taking offense then becomes easy to explain: it’s to defend someone’s status from such an implication, out of a sense of either fairness or self-interest."
Hence I never read articles that start with profanity - people who start shouting before they can explain themselves are rarely worth listening.
Which is not always a problem. Much content we read here is for information; many comments and blogs are little more than small talk.
We refer back to classic posts like P. Graham's because they were crafted with deliberation.
...at least that is assuming that "shit" has the same effect as "damn".