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Comment by SoftwareMaven | Hacker News Reader

The English language is full of a lot of words (over a quarter million, in fact). When somebody says "this is f-ing useless" in a presentation, I think it is lazy. Somewhere in those hundreds of thousands of words are words that express the what and why of the afore mentioned frustration; and that person had the time to look them up before the presentation.

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Take the phrase: "This piece of software is fucking useless". What word would you replace "fucking" with that conveys the same emotion, despair and rage that the word has in that sentence?

I'm not a native speaker so my vocabulary is pretty limited, but I don't remember coming across a word that would help me express that feeling.

You can replace it with descriptive words:

"This piece of software is as useful as wings on Shamu"

"This piece of software makes me want to skewer needles up my thumbs for a relaxing break."

etc. There is value in shock. The problem with profanity is that it it only shocks whoever is not used to reading it (and in public writing it's hard to tell who is and who is not).

I am unconvinced.

Whales like to jump, surely Shamu would rather like to have wings, and the second is a great deal more distressing to me than just a silly little word could possibly be. I don't think either of these are an improvement upon the first at all.

Judging by this entire tizzy HN has worked itself into, I'd say profanity doesn't run the risk of running out of "shock potential" anytime soon.

It'll shock people, but it's still a cheap shock. The 2 example the grandfather post gave weren't great, but I think that in itself is the issue--coming up with effective emotional charged speech without using profanity is difficult, but completely possible. It takes work! And I think that is what a lot of people here are saying--cussing is cheap and lazy. And so it's offensive not because the actual words are offensive, but because the writer is clearly not putting any effort into their writing.

I still do not understand how this argument works. Why is it that people only seem to be offended at mediocre vocabulary when 'profanity' is involved? If, as you state, emotionally charged speech without profanity is difficult, why should we become offended when people are unable to achieve it? I don't think anybody goes to technical talks to appreciate high grade word-smithing.

I honestly believe this is an instance of generally rational people becoming offended for a reason they don't quite understand, and inventing a theory to explain the data.

Image what "This piece of software is fucking useless" would sound like if it was read out by Stephen Hawking's speech yoke, 'fuck' doesn't emphasize anything, the inflections and tone of your voice do. A charismatic person could convey far more emotion by dramatically saying "This piece of software...it's useless! It's...useless!!" than a dull person who says 'fuck' with a monotone voice would.

It adds nothing.

And a charismatic person who used the word "fuck", would he convey less than the same person avoiding using the word?

But people who say "fucking" happily call any sub-optimal software "fucking useless", even when it only has minor flaws.

You could start with "This piece of... software..."

Downvoters: I was trying to point out that inflection and delivery can be more effective than swear words.

I'd start with just leaving the word out. "This piece of software is useless." will most likely convey your point. Perhaps, if you wished to ramp up the emphasis, you could say that "this piece of software is totally useless." I also like the word "profoundly" for extra emphasis.

But why specifically should swearing be taboo? I don’t understand the reasoning behind that.

It isn't necessarily the swearing, but the stupidity of using the word. A person may as well say "This software is acrylic useless" The swear word used has absolutely no place in the sentence, the definition of the word is what makes it useful, not the "shock" value.

Indeed, the problem is that the f-word, in your example, is a purposefully vague adjective to add shock value without working hard to captivate the audience and add meaning. "Lazy" was a great word for that.

Unless you register offense when people use unimaginative vocabulary in their presentations in the general case, then I do not believe that this is really your primary concern with so called 'profanity'

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