KABOOM, blunt and mean messages sacrifice honesty too. They intentionally downplay positives and exaggerate wrongs for effect. Like, most of what is expressed as kaboom is not straightforward telling truth at all.

Extremely common way to be dishonest are jokes/mockery that imply things that are not entirely true, the expletives that imply more bad that actually is and such.

These are as dishonest as sugarcoating if not more.

There is a middle ground.

You can err toward honesty but still remove hostility.