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Comment by hkyeti | Hacker News Reader

what's up with all the swearing? this trend of swearing as linkbait is getting pretty lame.

The trend of swearing needlessly is getting a bit old period. Regardless of personal opinions it's not particularly professional…

I love swearing. I also actually agree with the OP. It's getting a little old. Some of the presentations I'm seeing really feel a little patronizing linkbait. But you know what I really can't stand? The word professional, used in this context. What does that even mean? I find it such an obnoxious term when used to suggest that the privilege of working comes at the cost of subscribing to some universal etiquette.

Professional = something you'd say in front of your clients / customers / potential employers etc.

I respectfully disagree that you believe that's the definition. The presenter gave this talk and put it on the internet, with what I can only presume is her actual name. So I'd submit that she said things she has no problem with her clients/customers/employers seeing or hearing.

My guess is that when you use the word professional you mean things that you would say in front of your clients/customers/employers, and that's what irks me about the term.

Why should that have anything to do with anything we do when not in front of them?

What gives you the impression that the things you do and say in public are not in front of them?

If we're taking that definition, fair enough, but I don't think most of us would accept self-censorship in any public forum on the off chance that a client or customer might see it.

Although I never swear, I can understand when someone I respect swears. It means that they are dead serious about what they are saying. They don't swear lightly, nor frequently. When I hear them swear, I better be taking them seriously, because it means they're upset. I don't lose any respect for them over it, because again, they don't do it lightly, nor frequently. They only do it when they want to make a serious, serious point.

What's worse, it _reduces the value of the swear_. When I swear, I mean it.

Agreed - my guess is it's getting harder and harder to grab people's attention and swearing is an effective way to 'shock' some people into noticing your headline.

> not particularly professional…

I am reminded of http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...

Swearing serves a purpose: to express strong emotion. In this case, the author is expressing that it's really important to take breaks. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

The problem I have with this is nicely illustrated by a (possibly apocryphal) story about John Steinbeck. He wrote to a college paper that was printing an entire page of the word "FUCK" He asked them to stop, not because it was offensive, but because it was devaluing the word. Swearing only serves to get a strong emotional reaction when it's uncommon.

You seem to be disagreeing with a fictional comment that said "People should swear a lot," rather than the real parent, which said "I think it's pretty well justified in this case."

Actually, that isn't what the parent said, and I'm not arguing with the parent. I'm making a point that cursing only maintains it's visceral power when used sparingly, which I don't think it really is in this video or in some recent articles.

I do think it's relevant to use as it is the title of her talk, as someone else mentioned.

I have more of an issue with people who take an issue with swearing. How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society. Regular use of a particular word in a situation with negative emotions that conditions a response when used in conversation again... are we no better than Pavlov's dog?

People who are offended by swearing... well... it's their own fucking problem. :P

"How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society."

Not true. We specifically make it a taboo, ie. a word that's not supposed to be said by anyone at any occasion, and after that, from time to time, we brake this taboo. But beware, if you use a swearword too frequently, it will lose its power.

I don't think it really counts as link bait if it's in the title of a presentation you gave in person to a live crowd.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with swearing. I actually have more of an issue with the automatic disapproval than a healthy spread of profanities.

I doubt it's an automatic disapproval. It's annoying because swearing is used as linkbait all the time.

Now, that argument I can understand. And if that is indeed the reason for the GP, then fair enough.

But is it really any different than 'sex sells'?

If it's used all the time, it must be easy for you to provide a few examples. I've seen a few cases where a post title used profanity in a way that's arguably unnecessary, but I can't think of any examples of outright linkbaiting.

You mean like this? http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=fuck

Perhaps if we narrow it down to titles only: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...

No, I mean the specific examples that prompted you to make the comment I was responding to. You wouldn't make such a broad claim without at least one or two examples, would you?

Suffice it to say that any of the examples you find in those search results are examples of "fuck" being used as link bait.

Even the submissions with "fuck you money" in the title since that is a linkbait-y term unto itself. I am of the opinion that unless you're discussing the word 'fuck' there is almost no possible reason to use it in a title unless it's to attract clicks and votes by eliciting an emotional response.

I think that's debatable. I don't see anything blatantly wrong with any of those, but I could see how someone might find titles like that inappropriate. I personally don't have a problem with it.

Everything is debatable! :)

Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.

I'm purely focused on the link-bait aspect. Using swear words in a title is in a way like gaming the attention economy by subconsciously tricking peoples' minds into thinking that a piece of content "grabs" them on some level, even before seeing that content.

What I would be interested to know is if there is data that shows that people up-vote those articles -- before reading them -- disproportionately more often than articles with no swear words in the title.

Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.

You don't think that's important? If you had put a lot of time into this presentation, were proud of it, and submitted it to Hacker News to share it with others (without realizing that some people would take the profanity as a linkbait attempt), wouldn't you be at least a bit upset if someone said:

"Why do you people keep linkbaiting by putting profanity in the title?"

If it were me, I'd probably tune them out and their (valid) complaints would go unheeded. But if someone said something like:

"That was a great presentation! I think it would be even better if you excluded the profanity though. To be honest, it's a bit offensive. But that's just me. What do you think?"

...then I'd be more likely to listen, and might change the title just because I couldn't fathom offending someone so nice. Wouldn't you?

On the contrary, it's unreasonable to make a broad claim based on one or two examples. When people say "I keep seeing people do this," it's based on a memory of repeatedly seeing similar things, not any one specific example they have in mind. Similarly, I noticed today that a lot of people around here have silver cars, but I couldn't name for you any specific silver car I saw on my commute today.

Well sure. But at the same time, it would be setting a bit too high a standard for me to expect people to do a scientific study for every silly little comment they leave on HN, don't you think? If someone claims that something happens "all the time", don't you think it's reasonable to expect that person to have observed it at least once or twice recently? Or at least be able to provide a reason why they don't have one or two examples?

My point is that there's a difference between passively observing something multiple times and remembering precise secondary details about the instances when you observed the thing. I remember seeing lots of silver cars quite well, but I don't remember any specific details about the cars — and remembering the make and model of a car is a lot easier than remembering the URL of a Hacker News posting.

At any rate, I just don't see why it would be useful for him to have specific examples in mind. What is the point in asking for that?

It's important to verify your intuitions, and it doesn't have to be a grand science experiment or a research project. If your intuition is that there are a lot of silver cars, a good place to start would be remembering the last time you saw silver cars. Or you could pay attention to the silver cars you see and take notes about the details that you feel are relevant. If it's worth it, then you can do a more in-depth analysis.

Now that said, there's not really much wrong with making broad assertions about the number of silver cars you're seeing without a more in-depth analysis. Chances are, nobody will care if you're wrong. There is something wrong with making a broad claim about things other people are doing without at least a little bit of evidence to support what you're doing. Just giving a list of search results and expecting others to find their own evidence isn't the best way to go about doing that.

> I've seen a few cases where a post title used profanity in a way that's arguably unnecessary

I think that's pretty much what he means, but you can't blame the author since it seems to work. People here are passionate, especially when it comes to articles related to the human side of software development. Profanity can tap into that emotion fairly well.

"but you can't blame the author since it seems to work" -> "Profanity can tap into that emotion fairly well."

So a formula for getting knee-jerk clicks and votes is to "bait" the user by using language that elicits an emotional response. :)

Exactly, I was agreeing with you.

Ahh, so you were. For some reason I got the impression that you were justifying the use of swearing because of the response it generates while not making the connection between that and outright baiting.

The way I understand it, ignorant of the psychology of swearing but having had to think about it since arriving here from the UK, is that if you're swearing, you're breaking a taboo that people assume you understand, so if you break it, they guess that you've lost your ability to keep your cool, and that because of that they fear you might punch them or shoot them. Which it seems, to me, most people, rightly or wrongly, believe happens quite often here in the US.

It's just an intensive. Probably the most innocuous use of the word 'fuck' there is.

If English had standard intensive forms, and we could add additional intensity just by tweaking a word ending, we wouldn't have this issue. But we don't.

Normally I think unnecessary swearing is lame too, but I'm having trouble figuring out a better way to intensify 'go home'. 'Go the heck home' is corny, 'seriously, go home' lacks the same punch, and 'GO HOME!' is just ugly.

I wish I knew how and when 'the fuck' became the intensive of choice after an imperative. Now that'd be interesting.

Innocuous perhaps, but the real time net-nanny filters installed by IT don't know or care. I can't read the article because of the proliferation of blacklisted words. I can't even read the Hacker News comments about it because of all the discussion using the opportunity to use such blacklisted words. Had to switch to my own personal system & ISP just to make this comment. Whatever the quality of the article, however salient his point, a lot of people are blocked from reading it - never mind poignant commentary getting lost amid all the blather over whether or not a four letter word should be used.

"Go home" doesn't need an intensive on par with cursing or copulation.

So you you work at a company so censorious and distrustful that it expends labor and money to make sure you don't view any content with the dreaded F-word in it. And the OP is responsible for tuning her content to this company's perceived needs... why, exactly?

I'd be curious how the management of this company (and others like it) feel about the actual content of the talk - sustainable pace vis-a-vis productivity & all that. I would not be at all shocked to find out that there was an inverse correlation between employee distrust and a GTFH ethic.

So instead of complaining about a fascist employer, you make the effort to complain about someone using common language, ignoring the utter insanity of a company filtering access to words on the internet.

I can think of certain phrase to describe that that wouldn't make it through those filters.

Reality check: LOTS of businesses use such filters. It's normal practice, especially in this litigious "sensitivity" age where one stray "objectionable" page could cost a company a whole lot o' money from which one "offended" person could get rich. Ergo, if you're trying to reach out to a broad professional technical audience, don't use terms which widespread common-usage lawsuit-avoidance filters will block. You may not like it on principle, but that's the reality out here in the business world.

3 comments about the article. 19 (now 20) about the swearing in the title. Including the swear may have been good for the author, but it's definitely bad for Hacker News.

It's a gimmick to attract attention. It's the verbal equivalent of Ozzy Osborne biting the head off of a bird on TV, except lamer.

This trend of people complaining about the perfectly innocent and common use of swearing is getting pretty lame.

Especially combined with the unfounded accusation that there is some kind of deliberate, manipulative intent behind it. What on earth makes you think this is intended as linkbait? Nobody ever uses swear words where you're from?

I felt the same way, fwiw, and I'm glad you mentioned it. I considere it an immature form of attention-getting, and counterproductive (I don't need to click through to read someone's opinion on work schedules from someone who isn't mature enough to express themselves without swearing)

I think the title is inspired by the children book "Go the f* to sleep".

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