Profanity Doesn't Work
hanselman.com
hanselman.com
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."
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 =\
From personal experience with long history of doing phone support, swearing helps. My rule of thumb is swear to one 'level' less than the user. If they're saying 'fuck', you can say 'shit', if they're saying 'shit', you don't swear. I've found that if you're not swearing and they are a lot, it puts them offside and they feel uncomfortable. One more unnecessary thing to manage.
But the author's sensitivities are ratchetted way too high. Do I want to 'help' my industry 'outlaw' swearing? Fuck no. I'm more interested in the content of what someone says than the way in which they say it. I'd rather listen to a profanity-laden speech about a tech topic than a slick-as-snot marketroid drone on about nothing important. It's 2011 - we should be offended by context, not by mere words.
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.
That said, I actually think that the phrase "shit work" perfectly expresses the point, and I'm not sure I would have called it anything else if I were the author.
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.
My opposition nature now wants to start a conference with swearing as a central theme.
I'm from Norway. To me a typical American's reaction to swearing is more offensive than the swearing itself. It offends me because because there being "forbidden words" is indeed a terribly childish notion.
In fact, if you are from Norway, it takes a bit of time getting used to the childish reaction most Americans will have even to relatively mild expletives.
(And I am not even from the north of Norway where swearing is more or less a byproduct of how the respiratory system works).
It is just language. Grow up.
Broadcasting something on a very public medium like the internet means you can't possibly predict your audience and therefore can't really determine whether politics will be offensive or not. So why not refrain.
Broadcasting something on a very public medium like the internet means you can't possibly predict your audience and therefore can't really determine whether NASCAR will be offensive or not. So why not refrain.
People fuck and shit and piss. Those words represent the most essential parts of our nature, the most basic acts of a living animal. Use them wisely, use them to enrich communication, but don't deny them, don't try and remove them from the language. Profanity does work, precisely because it offends you, precisely because it's a shock to the system. The world is too vital and visceral for us to constrain the words we use to describe it.
The world might be full of witty, creative people who hate swearing, but I certainly haven't met any. In my experience, people who dislike swearing are prissy, small-minded bigots. They're the sort of people that call modern art ugly, the sort of people who seek to constrain the private lives of adults "for the sake of the children". Frankly, they can fuck off - I've no time for any of them.
Hence I never read articles that start with profanity - people who start shouting before they can explain themselves are rarely worth listening.
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...
My father worked for a (US) national company that actually required etiquette training for their representatives from the northeast, because they were so much more prone to swearing in casual conversation, that it would cause others to be drawn aback and brought out of the conversation. Not to mention when you get to international differences. My australian exchange student in high school would drop 'fuck' as though it was his middle name.
But regardless, I thought one of the biggest points of hacker news was the ability to grok out meaning of news and opinions, and not debate the effectiveness of its communication.
I think it's quite the opposite. The community has grown around an appreciation for effectively communicating and discussing ideas. This is why comments with little information and inflammatory comments are typically down voted.
In terms of business and startups, there are numerous articles posted here that discuss nothing but communication. How do you communicate with users? How do you work well in teams? How can you get your message across clearly and effectively to prospective customers?
Communication is just as vital as technical skill.
If anyone can show me a single instance where a casual public curse has hurt anyone in our community, I will gladly eat my hat.
I've always held the opinion that being offended by swearing is a sign of weakness. If a single syllable can make you angry or uncomfortable(when used in a context not specifically designed to insult you) then the problem is yours alone. Given that a negative feeling towards swearing is a purely conditioned response your energies would be better spent on learning to not be offended than attempt to censor everyone else.
I also find offence at swearing to be somewhat culturally specific. It seems to be much more of a concern in America than it is in other english speaking countries as it appears to be a much more conservative society generally.
Concern over swearing is a rather old fashioned ideal. In these modern times where we are no longer obligated to follow the crazy arbitrary rules of conduct required religion and tradition and are only required to conduct ourselves within the rule of law there is no need to bother with outdated social conventions. Every person has to make their own decisions about their personal conduct so it should not be assumed that everyone shares your own "calibration" of acceptable speech so only the intent of the speaker should be of concern not the particular words used.
So get over it, in 30 years "fuck" and "shit" will be the "hell" and "damn" of their time so why worry about it? Language changes over time, it always has and will so look forward not back.
We had a tourism campaign in the UK recently that went very poorly - the slogan was 'where the bloody hell are ya', which in Australia is a friendly catchphrase for "having a fun time, why aren't you here". Apparently the Brits don't generally have the same casual attitude to the word 'bloody'...
I, personally, would never read holman if it wasn't for swearing. People swear, they build professions over it. If you don't like it, don't do it. Get over it.
PS: More examples of people who sear when working - http://ittybiz.com , Garry Vaynerchuck, me.
"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."
At least 'shit' here is an adjective, instead of a direct insult.
...at least that is assuming that "shit" has the same effect as "damn".
Can't help but notice that Scott works for Microsoft and Zach works for GitHub.
I don't think its a coincidence.
Update: it just dawned on me that perhaps you thought i was suggesting that you were "attacking" Zach in some Microsoft vs GitHub proxy. No that's not what I meant at all. I'm saying its funny that the roles in this comedy, "grumpy old man" vs "uncouth upstart", neatly match the roles of your employers.
I spoke to Zach beforehand and wasn't intending to call him out (which I thought I made clear in the post, but it sounds like I did poorly) but rather than use his post as an example of changing mores in this space and a opporunity to provoke discussion.
Aside: I won't try to defend Microsoft as it's 80,000 people and many, many groups, some less evil than others. That said, our group is the slightly less evil, open source, free as in beer part of Microsoft. We'll be speaking at http://krtconf.com next week on an open source realtime library we're having lots of fun with.
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.
The problem with it is that it dilutes meaning and hinders communication. Let's take the article being discussed. What exactly is shit work? Is it unnecessary work? Is it unpleasant work? Perhaps it's work for which you are poorly compensated? Who knows! Sure, you can read the article to find out.
It turns out in this case it meant unnecessary work. The author decided it might have more impact to call it shit work, however. Why? Not because he doesn't care about offending people. Rather the opposite. He knows the word carries extra baggage with it. He knows it invokes ideas of "dirty" "bad" "offensive" among others. So he uses it for impact. He's not alone in doing this.
Which brings me to the second problem with it. Not only is it not a very clear way of communicating, but when everybody does it, you end up with entire communities continually making hyperbolic statements. Everyone wants to stand out and be heard, so everybody is now yelling. A product is not just poorly implemented, or rough around the edges, it's either the best or it's complete shit. This is not effective communication as far as I am concerned.
I would also like to add that I think proper swearing is a bit of an art. There has to be rythm and contrast to it. A well placed expletive in an articulate context is a thing of beauty. Not everyone can pull that off.
Of course, for those incapable of elegance, there's always sheer volume. Which is a demanding discipline in its own right. For the past 20 years or so there has been a recording making the rounds in Norway of a bus driver taped while trying to fix a washing machine. In Norway it is, in all seriousness, considered somewhat of a national treasure. (Swearing is such a part of Northern Norwegian culture that calling a police officer a horse penis is legally acceptable north of the polar circle, but not to the south of it).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAeLhoWXcHI
(The recording circulated on tapes in the pre-internet era so the sound quality is pretty bad. But most people of the internet generation will know what you are talking about if you mention "saltdal.wav").
I only seem to care when older people swear, which is odd. I never liked when my dad swore, but with my peers it feels natural.
From the author's bio: "...I am a failed stand-up comic..." Perhaps these 2 things are related?
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!
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.
So, yeah, fuck that. Sometimes shit sucks.
If we banned swearing at work it would be a lot quieter, I guess.
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.