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Is Tildes 18+?
I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should people write something like “f***” in titles instead?
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People seem to forget their childhood as soon as they're 20-somethings, and come to view kids and teenagers as if they were the same innocent balls of fluff they were as toddlers. Maybe something evolutionary, our DNA telling us, "hey, you can have kids from now on and be a proper parent, so you'd rather forget your teens so that imagining what your kids do when you aren't around won't make you throw up!" As a 25yo I recall my teens, there isn't a single mainstream curse word that I did not learn before I was about 13 or 14.
Pretty universally you can say that kids will know just about every swear word by the time they become a teenager. A decent amount of them will have been exposed to pornography, some pretty graphic violence, and other media of "adult" nature by this age.
Also, inserting asterisks into text can lead to shtty unusual formatting fck-ups.
Also, you never know when the poster could've been raised in a very anti-jazz environment where the word "funk" was looked down upon as a curse of its own.
Plays George Clinton
"No. . . NO! I have no son. I HAVE NO SON!"
It also puts the onus on utterance on the reader.
We all know what F$%K means. I just made you say it in your head! That's not really distinct from writing it.
As I've aged I've rapidly associated profanity with stupidity, in the simplest way - being vulgar is the simplest, dumbest way to express a feeling, often one that isn't fully thought through. It's the difference between calling Trump a "fucking dumbass that doesn't deserve to be president" and "an incompetent leader who's bringing the world to disaster and needs to be removed from office." These two statements are, in essence, the same thing. But the first idea leaves no room for discussion and, without a qualifier, might not even be fully thought out and is in essence just low-quality circlejerk.
For these reasons, moreso than wanting to protect delicate virgin souls, I tend to shy away and frown upon vulgarity. These aren't the same as OP's, but they are why I'd like to see it kept to a minimum where possible.
I don't see your second statement as having any more room for discussion or nuance TBH.
how do you elaborate on someone being a fucking dumbass? It's a deliberately inflammatory statement designed to create ire or be a dumb, simple rallying cry for the people shouting it.
But why is he an incompetent leader? How is he bringing the world to disaster? Why or how would he be removed from office? These are legitimate questions that are the difference between the idea being a statement/argument and a potential discussion. That's where the nuance lies.
You could have all those discussions off someone calling him a "fucking dumbass" too though. That literally just means he's a.) dumb and b.) bad at his job. And since his job involves being a leader and protecting the world from disaster that's just implied. And if someone is bad at their job they should be removed from office, so that is also implied.
You're just using a lot more words to communicate the same idea. It's not as if you're saying anything original or fresh with the "an incompetent leader. . . " bit, so what discussion do you think people would actually be having? The content of that discussion is going to be whether you like or dislike Trump either way.
"Trump is a dumbass" is argumentative. "Trump is causing problems" encourages discussion.
the latter is almost invariably as argumentative as the former in mixed company, i hesitate to inform you. politics in general is not exactly conducive inherently to the point you're trying to make--there are plenty of people who will call you a brainwashed libcuck idiot if you don't think trump is literally Jesus no matter how respectful or not respectful you are, and vice versa.
Not my point. "Coconut fucking sucks" vs "I dont like the consistency of coconut in most things."
oh, then your point holds up even less to scrutiny. conflict literally drives most media, lol. conflict also creates way more discussion than most other topics.
No. There is a distinction between conflict and discussion. Conflict is two people shouting at each other, both convinced that they're right and not considering the other point of view. Discussion is two people analyzing something, moving towards a goal together while doing so.
The media obsession with conflict is one of the great ills of our society. Reddit's conflation of conflict and discussion is why I left the platform. One is emotional and causes problems, the other is logical and finds solutions. Vulgarity, being emotional and inherently oversimple, is often used to substitute a logical discussion with an emotional conflict.
both of those viewpoints feel pretty reductionist to me. if people are shouting at each other, they're still having what most people would probably call a discussion--the discussion just is not occurring in a productive manner. conversely, if i disagree with you on an issue, that's just as much conflict as punching you in the mouth and calling you a retard over that same issue is--the conflict is just expressed differently and with varying intensity.
the overemphasis on people having to always make "logical" decisions in interactions and complete lack of nuance toward the idea of emotional decision-making is stupid to me, honestly. not everything needs to be discussed logically, and not everything needs to be given the logical time of day because someone can shit out a competent excuse for why they believe what they do--sometimes telling people to fuck off and refusing to entertain what they believe makes more sense than trying to serve up some epistemological bullshit or whatever to sway them from their belief. if you want to kill the poor people or whatever for example, fine by me, but that doesn't mean i'm obligated to give you some sort of logical discussion on why that's bad and come to some sort of middle-man agreement with you--i'm just going to tell you to fuck off, because there is no discussion in my view to be had about that malevolent and garbage viewpoint, and there is simply no amount of disdain for "vulgarity" or "emotion" that is going to change that.
From the last time you decided you wanted me to argue with you. You've kept the habit. Stop. In case you're unclear, "explode the conversation" is referring to your habit of going point-by-point and refuting me instead of forming a proper overall continuation. For example, I can summarize your above post in 3 sentences:
MOVING ON, understand that I (and most others) am in no way interested in having an unproductive discussion, which is why I'm here instead of reddit.
Further, the ONLY way you will change someone's mind is through logical discussion, and while I agree that there are some ideas (to pluck an example, unironically believing in a flat Earth) that you need not entertain, you CANNOT relegate those discussions. Just telling people to fuck off and go play in their corner ONLY worsens the problem.
As I've said (possibly to you) before, just 'running over' everyone who disagrees with you makes you no different or better than anyone else doing the same, and worse, justifies their own reasons for doing it. Not only that, but it dumbs down the conversation and hands the opposition ammunition. Muslims are not terrorists, for example. I don't need to put a BECAUSE _ on the end of that sentence, because it's already self-evident to me. The opposition, though, is - Muslims ARE terrorists, because _. Guess which side suddenly gets more support?
TL;DR: If you don't want logical discussion, go away - just because ideas aren't worth considering doesn't mean they shouldn't be properly refuted. It doesn't matter if you're right, what matters is you can clearly and concisely understand and explain why you are, and why the other person isn't.
This is manifestly untrue.
In fact, logical discussion tends to be one of the least effective ways to change people's minds if they have already picked a position on the topic. This is because man is a rationalizing, rather than a rational animal. Our "logic" is mostly just deployed to validate the conclusions that our emotions and cultural conditioning actually led us to.
Logical argument only works if you are honestly indifferent between two perspectives and open minded enough to hear both things out. But even in those cases, you're probably going to roll with the position that "feels right" and then find the logic of that position to be more sound as a result.
Training yourself to work against your own biases and approach evidence with a clear eye is a very specific skill that you have to train people into doing and people can only really maintain that kind of clarity in limited/professional contexts. Very few people actually can or even want to.
Now if you want to have a discussion that is geared towards changing people's minds or developing productively, what you generally need to do is guide people towards defining their positions, their values, and their frameworks for valid and invalid evidence up front. Then the discussion becomes about actually meeting each other's standards of evidence and the values systems they're taking as axiomatic and unwilling to be moved on. But if you're just going to be throwing claims around like "So-and-so is dumb and bad at their jobs" that's not any different from saying "So-and-so is a dumbass." And it's not going to engender any more productive discussion.
i'm sorry you take issue with my organizational structure, but i'm really not going to go out of my way to make my posts more esoteric and hard to follow because you don't like how i respond to you and other people point-by-point, especially when people already complain about me not using capitalization (as if it really matters) and think my posts are hard to follow.
i can and do. it's not my job or anybody else's job to educate people, and i do not have any sort of obligation to educate people for any reason. if you want to think muslims are inferior and we should kill all the niggers? cool. there's no productive conversation to be had there in my view, though, and i'm not going to waste my time trying to convince people that "no actually those people are good" in the name of some quixotic belief that we need to just educate these poor, misguided people on their false beliefs. you can do that if you want, by all means. but spare me your sanctimony about how "Just telling people to fuck off and go play in their corner ONLY worsens the problem." and "just because ideas aren't worth considering doesn't mean they shouldn't be properly refuted" for honestly not wanting to waste my energy on people who clearly are not interested in any sort of good faith discussions or who have sincere convictions about their awful beliefs.
like, if i can ask you some stuff for a second, do you honestly think i don't know all about the awful shit people believe given that i'm a black nonbinary gay person whose political beliefs are punishable by jail in several countries? do you suppose i haven't experienced some of those beliefs personally? do you suppose i haven't tried your approach previously some of the time with some people? i literally live with a person who, if they actually knew who i was, would probably disown me. i am very well aware of what these people are like and how they feel and what they would do and whatever else. that does not bestow upon me or any other person in this world an obligation to hear those people out or educate them. existing is a struggle for me and other people like me. why the fuck do we need to bear the burden of also justifying our existence to random internet assholes who want to kill us just to satisfy the logical desires of people who hold the same view of interactions as you do, instead of just telling those people to rightly fuck off sometimes?
like i said in my first reply: there is no discussion in my view to be had about certain malevolent and garbage viewpoints, and there is simply no amount of disdain for "vulgarity" or "emotion" that is going to change that. you are not going to change my view and convince me that i need to go out of my way to debate these people or educate them on their shitty beliefs just because it's the "logical" thing to do. if you honestly feel so strongly about that principle, then you can sign yourself up for that job and do it yourself, because i'm sure as hell not about to.
This is a distinction without a difference. All the former does is states the latter in stronger terms. It's not as if a Trump fan wouldn't engage with either of those statements any differently. You're not defining what "problems" are or how he's causing them in either case. There is exactly the same amount of substance.
https://tildes.net/~tildes/cn3/is_tildes_18#comment-338w
Your link answers my question pretty clearly.
*Looks for a green check mark.*
Wait a minute, this isn't StackOverflow! Anyway, thanks.
I'm sure we could find all sorts of creative uses for an asked/answered mechanic here. ;)
Every time I read your name, I read Bukkake before correcting myself, lol.
Honestly we're in a cultural moment right now where our big language taboos are shifting to not care so much about profanity that revolves around sex and excrement. Those things just aren't as socially taboo as they used to be in the 70s or 80s.
That old order is based on Victorian era social mores. Before the Victorian era (at least in Western Europe), most of the profanity revolved around blasphemy or taking God's name in vain. When you read Dumas novels, instead of saying "merde" when they want to curse, they say things like "sang de Dieu."
I think we're in a cultural moment where we're shifting from taboos around sex and body part profanity to racism and sexism profanity. It's WAY less acceptable to say the N-word than it used to be, and it's WAY more acceptable to say the F-word. C*nt, has had an interesting lifespan though, where (in the US) it used to be taboo because it's a sex organ, but now it's taboo because it's misogynistic.
And I will say I would definitely be uncomfortable if a lot of titles started showing up with racial or sexist slurs in them.
Just in case you feel old or so for being against the too prolific use of what is currently considered vulgar, here's a thought on that:1
I just noticed that at some point, the benchmark for vulgarity shifted away from protecting the feefees of the elite to protecting the disadvantaged. Being against modern vulgarity as you characterized it, that is discriminatory terms, is perfectly in line with being in favor of perusing previously-considered-vulgar terms. "Jesus Fucking Christ" is not discriminating against sexually-closeted church goers because they're the elite. Being for that and against using the n-word is perfectly consistent, and you're not just getting into the "kids these days" phase.
My goodness, I've been on the english-speaking internet long enough, I self-censor the n-word. Where I'm from, I think people understand and respect the use-mention-distinction. Oh well.
1: I don't actually believe you feel that way, but I thought it could be a way of reading the situation. I put my thoughts down anyway because I think they're kinda interesting and reflective of the way society has changed.
I think I'm trying to reach towards the galaxy brain level where I feel so old that I'm ready to grow and change with the times.
It's even more complicated for me. I'm an Indian man who lives in a predominantly Black American neighborhood. The young guys around here occasionally just assume I'm a light-skinned Black guy and address me by the n-word pretty frequently, but I don't feel comfortable saying it myself. Singing along to hip-hop lyrics also gets to be. . . weird.
There are even times where I will ironically refer to myself as a "sand ngger" or a "curry ngger" and not feel any pangs of anxiety about it, but when I remove the adjective the word just can't come out of my mouth. The taboo conditioning is too strong.
If you want to post a fucking article with "fuckwit" in the title, then fucking post an article with "fuckwit" in the title, for the sake of fuck! :P
Fucking right. Fuck.
Alright, the question's been answered and this has mostly turned into a strange tangential argument. Feel free to start a thread in ~talk or PM each other if you want to continue the debate about profanity use in general, but it's not relevant to ~tildes any more, so I'm going to lock this to keep it from sitting at the top of the group/site for days.
I'm not sure I understand most of the replies here. Regardless of age, regardless of the effectiveness of censorship, regardless of language, swearing in front of children is legal and unavoidable.
The concept of "family friendly" has always been more for the parents than the children, anyway. Any meaningful effort to avoid swearing should be done not "for the kids" but rather with a purpose of creating an overall friendlier/more wholesome atmosphere, for adults as well.
I say go nuts