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Comment by edent | Hacker News Reader

(I'm the creator of the site)

I've noticed - and I may be wrong - that all the folk in the UK are unfazed by the swearing and have reacted quite positively either in person or on Twitter.

The Americans, by contrast, seem a lot more upset about the swearing. I wonder why that is?

Either way, I do wonder if some sections of the tech community are to... corporate in their approach to language. Look at the fuss when Linus went on a rant about Nvidia. That's how people speak in real life when they are angry or passionate. We shouldn't lose that simply because of a perceived lack of professionalism.

The swearing, in my tumblr's case, is designed to be repetitious to the point of banality. It is, if you like, an exercise in over-reaction.

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The Americans, by contrast, seem a lot more upset about the swearing. I wonder why that is?

There's a prudish streak in the US that I really believe comes from the fact that the country was originally settled by people too religious and too concerned with overtly moral social interaction to be tolerated in 17th century England.

That may seem like too easy an explanation but I really do think there is some truth to it. Despite the excesses in American culture, that sort of casual swearing still gets backlash when it goes beyond people who are familiar with each other.

At any rate, the English speaking country founded by convicts certainly swears quite a lot.

Indeed. I recently encountered the phrase "pardon my Australian" from one such inhabitant.

As an agnostic American, this is pretty much exactly it. There are lots of subtle social stigmas - like cursing - due to the widespread Christian influence.

Due to a specific strand of Christianity. In the Southern European countries, for example, we have the opposite: plenty of Christianity inspired swearing.

I've mentioned it here before, but Your Mother's Tongue: Book of European Invective is a great and extremely funny book on the subject.

I believe puritanical is the word you're looking for.

Fuck you. I'll just leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZhpf3sQxQ

George Carlin, inspired by Lenny Bruce

this video is actually just the exception that proves the point. Because this was so controversial, it was so popular.

The oldest city in the US was established by Roman Catholics - who spoke Spanish. The first English Speaking settlements were commercial.

But more to your argument, Roger Williams was a Puritan, but anything but a prude. He figured that going to Hell was punishment enough to justify practical acceptance of non-believers in this world.

Our National myths don't necessarily conform with the facts, amigo.

Roger Williams was also exiled from the other Puritans in Massachusetts (5 years after arriving in Boston). Not implying that was related to his colorful usage of the English Language, but marginalizing the influence he had on the Puritan culture of the New England region. Can't really say he represents all Puritans and is just one example of those that ended up settling in Rhode Island. He also became a Calvanist/Baptist following his exile to Rhode Island after disagreements with the Puritans in Massachusetts, so he was not exactly a Puritan for long after settling in the New World. I know I'm reaching with this statement, but I would say he probably had a slight contempt for what was considered "normal" or "acceptable" by others at the time as well so cursing would fit his personality.

I'm American, and I have no problem with cursing or politically incorrect speech in person with a group of friends, coworkers, or even loose acquaintances. I just don't like it on public-facing (or "customer-facing," although that doesn't apply in this case) media. For me, it's not a question of morality, offensiveness, or corrupting children, but rather of perceived professionalism and legitimacy.

the mark of a true HN user - everything is about money and status.

I don't think anyone said anything about money, and "status" is such a vague term that it can be used to describe any concerns.

You know what, why don't you go eat some tea and crumpets while daintily extending your pinky finger. I'm gonna go cuss out some Brits while I drink whiskey and smoke a Marlboro.

Drinking tea certainly sounds more appealing to me.

Oh, it's definitely true. When Brits riot, they throw "stones". Americans think the word reminds them of testicles and so throw "rocks" instead.

Which to Brits is ridiculous as to them "rocks" are rather larger bits of stone that are pretty hard to pick up, let alone throw.

I'm told. Not being a native speaker of either British or American English I wouldn't know if this is true or not, but I thought the story was amusing enough to share.

Hm well "stones" and "balls" can mean "testicles" in context, but it's usually pretty clear when they should mean their literal definitions. If someone was "throwing stones" or "throwing balls" I doubt anyone would think they were throwing testicles.

This is an amusing story, but it's not accurate. America just lacks the British size distinction between rocks and stones, and someone (likely a Brit) made up this explanation as a way to poke fun at Americans.

After all, when it's time for a proper riot no one really cares about the subtext of the name of the thing they're chucking. "Hey, share some of those stones with me, I bet I can smash that cop's windshield." "They're rocks, Jake - we're anarchists, not perverts."

I suspect that this is the case too. They also get married younger and more often than the British, for the same reason.

I think that in America today, it's less a religious thing and more of a social status thing. Saying "fuck" and "shit" a lot is a social signal that you are low-class and probably not college-educated. "Swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary" is a phrase I heard a lot growing up.

That is how I always thought of it. Not being able to express one's self without copious amounts of explicit language thrown in just lessens any point the speaker was trying to make 99/100 times. We all have pet peeves that can turn us off of listening or reading a point of view, but for many, uncouth language for the lack of better adjectives/verbs/nouns is one of the most common.

Don't have a problem with cursing used in moderation when used appropriately, but like any ingredient in a recipe, too much is a bad thing.

Yah, well fuck you and your stupid piece of shit POV on why Americans have a folk up their ass.

The English aren't exactly swinging naked from the trees now are they? Every freaking day in France some man or woman is letting it ALL hang out, having a public chat with poor little children around no less, and nobody gives a shit!

Hah, hah, Anglophones are prudish in general, although we probably take the cake in the States.

While I have no idea about other places (unfortunately), as an American, I find my countrymen (oh crap, should that be countrypersons?!) are indeed eye-rollingly oversensitive about profanity and political correctness in general.

It ends up being a good measure of a social situation. As soon as I decide I'm around people that might be interesting, I will slowly decrease the child-friendliness of my language. The subtle reactions to the first use of "fuck" tells you a lot about how open-minded people are likely to be.

I can understand being careful in your use of language in corporate environments, simply because -- at least here -- offending the wrong people with colorful expression can easily compromise your employment or promotion opportunities. Granted, I'd say that's not a great environment to work in, but some people don't have quite the flexibility in what they can do or where they can do it in terms of taking or leaving job opportunities.

> as an American, I find my countrymen (oh crap, should that be countrypersons?!) are indeed eye-rollingly oversensitive about profanity and political correctness in general.

I know it sounds trite, but it's mostly about the children.

I couldn't care less about people dropping F bombs around me (although it does taint my opinion of them if it's done for no particular reason), but the less kids hear the word, the more they realize that it is not to be used lightly.

It's been fairly effective in the US, from what I can tell.

> it's mostly about the children > it is not to be used lightly

See: "begging the question".

I don't understand what you mean. Would you mind expanding on that?

Sure.

From http://begthequestion.info/ :

"Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

laureny is claiming that it's "about the children", but the implicit assumption there is that there's something wrong with cursing in the first place. laureny assumes "it is not to be used lightly" and that children need to understand this - but that's exactly the item under discussion.

> there's something wrong with cursing in the first place.

There is when it's used in regular speech for no reason, like using "like" every other sentence instead of just pausing.

I don't think you really understand what "begging the question" means because these two excerpts are nowhere near doing that.

> It's been fairly effective in the US, from what I can tell.

Seems something of a straw man. It's not like we swear in front of our children over here in the UK :) I can count the number of times I heard my parents use profanity, before I turned 18, on one hand. And the lecture I got for using the word 'pissed' in front of my mother, aged 14, still rings with me!

However, during my travels in the US I found people very adverse to profanity even without any children in evidence. And it's not like I am particularly foul mouthed!

Of all the countries I've travelled in, the US is where I'd make a point of not swearing ever. Which is sad; just in general I often feel I have to self-censor lots of my personality/language in the US.

> I know it sounds trite, but it's mostly about the children.

> the less kids hear the word, the more they realize that it is not to be used lightly

I don't agree. The less lightly kids think swear words are to be taken, the more they will use them to prop up their own attempts to be taken seriously by their peers and the adults around them.

Once a kid hears someone who swears every other word, they realize that overusing swear words dilutes their impact until they become effectively meaningless. They come to the natural conclusion that, in order to maximize effect, swear words should be kept in reserve for truly exceptional circumstances.

These are somewhat circular arguments, of course :)

And really the "right" answer depends on the viewpoint of the observer (i.e. whether you approve of profanity or not).

straw man.

When I was a 12 year old skater punk every third word out of my mouth was an F bomb.

I hardly ever swear anymore. It's not so much that I perceive it to be rude, but that it seems to show up more often as a placeholder than anything else. To the point where any power in the word is completely gutted and it comes off as lack of confidence in communication skills. Similar to people saying 'like' or 'um' all the time.

Now how Linus/Zed Shaw use it, and as well how it's used in a site like this, all I have to say is, awesome.

You're on to something here. The reason why "fuck" is not used as much in the U.S. is most educated Americans think you should be able to express yourself well without profanity. And "fuck" is the most overused swearword of them all. IMHO, "shitty" would be a better word in this case.

It really takes a skilled person to give the tired-old swearwords some zip. The insane sorority letter that went viral a month ago was remarkable not only because of sheer quantity, but also the quality of the swearing (for example, the verb "cuntpunt.")

I cannot speculate on the behaviour of Americans but as a Brit I can agree on your point that I am rather unfazed by swearing. In fact I worked in an environment in which my boss and MD both swore during general conversation and even more passionately during some interesting discussions. I was drawn to those people and that form of communication because it felt we were really free to say anything we wanted and that meant a lot less bullshit, we'd speak our minds and get straight to the point leading to more honest viewpoints coming across.

This has probably been posted before but Stephen Fry's opinion on swearing is pretty valid in my opinion.

----

Swearing is a really important part of one's life. It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing and without enjoying swearing... There used to be mad, silly, prissy people who used to say swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary -such utter nonsense. The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies and the kind of person who says swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary usually have a pretty poor vocabulary themselves... The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest or -is just a fucking lunatic... I haven't met anybody who's truly shocked at swearing, really, they're only shocked on behalf of other people. Well, you know, that's preposterous... or they say 'it's not necessary'. As if that should stop one doing it! It's not necessary to have coloured socks, it's not necessary for this cushion to be here, but is anyone going to write in and say 'I was shocked to see that cushion there, it really wasn't necessary'? No, things not being necessary is what makes life interesting -the little extras in life.

Stephen Fry on the joys of swearing. Stephen Fry: Guilty, BBC4, September 8th 2007

----

In my research during a (somewhat fruitless) comment transaction here on HN about pirates (actual salt sea-dog type pirates) I came across the following story which I think some of the people commenting here might find interesting... I'm in the process of writing this up as a sea shantie:

A pirate captain by the name of Bartholemew Roberts captured a British official by the name of Plunkett who had double crossed a company of pirates and shot them down under a banner of truce - few things could enrage a pirate more! Old Roberts was incensed and, upon finally capturing Plunkett, took to cursing him in the most foul and heinous of language - of which a pirate dialect was primarily composed. Seeing himself a dead man and with no other hope left to him, Plunkett stuck out his chest and being a proud and experienced Irishman, gave back a measure and then some more in such illbegotten slights of character on Old Roberts name that the crew hung limp and incapacitated with laughter. The whole exchange inspired such a regard for Plunkett's tongue that dispite his crimes against pirates, the whole company agreed to send him on his way no harm done.

If you do get around to writing this up as a sea shanty, please send it my way!

Also post it to Hacker News so the rest of us have a chance of seeing it. It sounds awesome.

There was a discussion about cultural differences regarding swearing here last month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5594356

And yeah, we Brits really couldn't give much less of a fuck :)

There is a difference between corporate and mature. Your article sounds like a kid who just discovered swearing. It lowers the information density of your post and distracts from your message. Furthermore, it reduces your credibility and hurts your persuasive writing goal. Lastly, it makes you sound like a fucking idiot.

What do you know, you're American.

As an American who isn't offended in the slightest by swearing, all of this Brit condescension is much more offensive. We get it. You like to think you're so much more sophisticated. Even a slack-jawed blog proves this.

You have to admit that in general Brits are much better than Americans at swearing though. The problem in this case is simply the stylistic choice to rely primarily on "fucking" instead of the usual variety of flowery vituperation.

I'm not sure any of us Brits think our ability to swear is "sophisticated".

It is possible the posting could have been made with humorous intent.

I'm also male, but I know better than to make sweeping generalizations about women, if I ever hope to work with one.

This is the internet. There are Americans here. In fact, most of the sites with these annoying mobile experiences are American companies. Let's assume for a moment that the generalization is accurate... Consider: Successful persuasive writing must be written with a particular audience in mind.

Why would you assume it's supposed to persuade you of anything? Seems more observational to me.

I'm sure there's another joke at the expense of Americans here, but I can't quite figure it out.

American here. His colorful use of language sounds exactly like the thoughts in my head when I can't access a mobile site.

Agreed! I HATE when I'm searching for something, find a link and when I click it I see these download our app pop-up's or dialogs and then they redirect to the home page and lose the context of what I was trying to see! How hard is it to forward the querystring!

Ditto from Boston MA.

Imo, GP is right. A couple of well placed F-Words in an article do make your feeling apparent. Dozen swear words per paragraph is distracting. Even in real life nobody swears that much! (May be sailors do. I have never met one personally).

I fucking do, if I'm fucking pissed the fuck off about some fucking thing or another.

To me it reads more like someone who's been reading Maddox.

> " Americans, by contrast, seem a lot more upset about the swearing."

Consider the term "f-bomb". The reason the term exists is because it's evocative: a bomb produces a "sudden and violent release of energy", typically intended to destroy a target or to draw attention, often producing a sentiment of "shock and awe". The word "fuck" can intensify a destructive sentiment, or draw attention and produce shock. It carries some amount of emotional payload (possibly more in the US, but some wherever it's spoken); you would not be using the word otherwise.

The effect changes when you lob f-grenades indiscriminately. The underlying sentiment you're trying to draw attention to can get lost in the chaos -- being "repetitious to the point of banality" makes the mobile app criticism into an indistinct mass of lexical white noise (see the alt text on http://xkcd.com/1210/ ). I found your tumblr obnoxious, not so much due to lacking professionalism or corporate-ness, but because the commentary is flat, tiresome, and flavorless. You've gone way beyond spicing it up with f-pepper, and all the way to burying it under f-spam. With some nuance and cleverness, you could turn it into hilarious overreaction rather than banal overreaction.

I've always thought of the term "f-bomb" as being the domain of mothers and housewives who are uncomfortable saying fuck.

Am I wrong? Is it more common in America?

Also to me it always seemed less descriptive and more an attempt to link the concept of bombs (which we can probably all agree are bad) with the word. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

The HN discussion linked from my previous post includes a fairly extended set of comments on this exact issue.

My read is that "f-bomb" (and other -bomb terms) can be merely a case of being uncomfortable with swearing, but it is also used by people of various demographics to describe the conversational effects. I hope my use of terms like "f-grenade", "f-pepper" (which came from the previous article), and "f-spam" are likewise evocative.

Fair enough. I've amended my impression. :)

In the same line as when people over-use the phrase "get shit done"; it just seems like a bunch of try-hard developers trying to appear super edgy. We get it, you're not a "corporate drone" and you can curse, but you're a developer, not a rockstar. Phone-apps aren't that serious.

Wait, rock stars are known for being serious now?

I didn't like the swearing, but for different reasons - it was just annoying/tiring to read "fucking" (or some variation) every fourth or fifth word. This is similar to some people finishing every sentence with "you know". Just a nitpick, that's all.

I agree with the content though.

>The Americans, by contrast, seem a lot more upset about the swearing. I wonder why that is?

Some cultures apply morals in their actual life choices, where other cultures apply them in their pretend politeness. Some of them seem to believe that being nice equates acting nice. But acting is deceit and manipulating, hence by definition not actually nice behavior.

But they do mean well, its just that they focus more on the symbolism of "good" behavior, than the reality of it. And thats generally the pattern: cultures that focus strongly on symbolism will also strongly apply morality symbolically. For example: americans worship their flag, but hate their government.

Right. The problem is that you used the American spelling of the f-word. My guess is that if you had spelled it with an English accent, everyone would have thought it charming, quaint, positively British, and blooody brilliant.

> that all the folk in the UK are unfazed by the swearing and have reacted quite positively either in person or on Twitter.

I'm English. I'm unfazed by it. But it's not a good example of lots of swearing. It's just lots of "fucks" and "fucking" scattered through the text. There doesn't appear to be much rhythm or flow to it.

It's not funny. It's not effective at conveying anger. It's just poor writing. That's fine, not everyone is a great writer, but don't try to defend shitty writing with some kind of "Anyone English gets it and it's only you uptight Yanks who don't like it".

You're no Malcom fucking Tucker.

There's also a "laziness" factor whereby dropping F bombs left and right starts to feel like a cop out vs thinking of some cleverer ways to articulate feigned outrage.

It's this reason, more than any other, that's brought me to clean up my language as I've gotten older. Calling someone a motherf* is easy. Being able to point out their promiscuity would make an 18th century French libertine blush, now that takes, if not skill, at least the effort of reading some 18th century French libertine literature.

Well as an American sick of the #doorslams, I say, Fuck Yeah Man, hopefully this makes a difference. Usually I don't even like a mobile site and have to spend a minute scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page (after clicking I am not interested in downloading the app) and click take me to regular site. Then I have to wait for the regular site to load. All around, companies are just skeeting their brand everywhere and dont know how to keep up. Everyone just seems to ride every band wagon possible in hope that one of them pays off rather than setting a path for themselves and creating an identity by sticking to that path. I mean seriously do companies need a flickr, facebook, twitter, instagram a mobile site, a mobile app, a regular site etc.? How about going for one, succeeding there and the building from there. Seems like these companies have no vision for the future in tech and are just throwing money on every bet thinking one will hit.

I agree and this is a world where we humans can entirely misinterpret a text message because someone forgot to put an 'Emoticon' at the end.

As a cauliflower faced, bucktoothed, tea swilling brit I didn't have any issue with it at all. My concern is the potential ramifications of a 'colourful' post. Given the job market and the general sensitivity in the work place it can cause real and genuine problems.

When I recruit I look for talented and colourful people (geeks of old?) but when the shoe is on the other foot I do try and be much more conservative then I otherwise would be.

It's a sad fact and one that has proven true more than once

[Ninja Edit] Pseudonyms are useful if you need a good rant. Take Inspector Gadget - even if he was outed by some spineless journo

In Denmark we have a drum n bass band called f.u.k.t. I was told that when touring in England, there was no chance in hell that even the most hardcore toaster would pronounce it "fucked".

My impression has always been that England is a very well-mannered country, even in the ghettos (of course they swear, but it just seems that a sense of etiquette permeates the country)

It's a American thing sadly. The difference in culture. Where I'm from every second word is pretty much a swear word.

I swear too much, it's something I'm not proud of. Not least for the example I've set. I really admire people who can respond to difficult situations in a dignified manner. I never heard my mother curse and now I wince every time my children use one. I even hypocritically scold them for doing so. I get that from my father who ironically never uses bad language around his grandchildren.

> The swearing, in my tumblr's case, is designed to be repetitious to the point of banality. It is, if you like, an exercise in over-reaction.

This is exactly how I interpreted it's meaning. So, another UK data point...

An American data point: I don't normally like to see profanity used, particularly in what is supposed to be persuasive writing, but in this case I agree with you... it was clearly and deliberately over the top and for some reason it works here.

I went to your blog but it doesn't have an app :(

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