People can obviously say whatever they want, but my opinion is that substituting curse words makes people sound juvenile and the intent is still the same as the original word. You are still making people do a curse conversion in their heads. So why even bother? Kind of like people who won’t say goddamnit, but they’ll say gawldamnit or something like that. Do you think you’re fucking tricking god? There are plenty of other words that can be used for emphasis.

OK but holy forking shirtballs was contextually hilarious and I will always respect a good place reference.

No, fuck that.

Either stop self-censoring or don't structure your comments and sentences to use the word. This half-assed censoring is the lazy coward's way out

thats forking bullshirt
- Wait why can't I say fork?
Don't self-censor the way you want to! Self-censor the way I tell you to!
- imo dont self-censor at all… either swear or don’t, but don’t “ohhh can’t say the naughty words”
  do what you want, but it’s fucking annoying to read

I refuse to get behind "unalive"

I don't care if people censor their swears, my problem is the word substitutions making whatever they're saying nigh unreadable like "Unalive", "grape", "PDF file".

PDF file?
Edit: oh wait. I had to say it out loud. Pedophile.
- Peter File.

Using the word Fork instead of Fuck IS a result if policing. We just want to undo that

sure, but I'd still tell people they're allowed to say the word.

I’ve always used frack , has a similar vibe to fuck

BSG, frak yeah!!

Fuck that self-censorship bullshit.

You can use expletives, or you can use words that aren't expletives to express what you want to say. Both are valid choices.

Using bowdlerized versions of expletives like a child trying to get away with "naughty" words or a YouTuber/TikToker trying to prevent being demonetized, though? That's unnecessary to the point of obnoxiousness in an uncensored environment like Lemmy.

People's fucking speech patterns are being affected by big brother and they are genuinely just ok with it. I don't know how to explain to someone that changing the way you talk changes the way you think and you are letting corpos do that to you. AND THEN THEY GO AND DEFEND IT.
That's fine and all, but sometimes it's funny to use good place style censorship, sometimes people want to keep their language appropriate for cleaner circumstances as they struggle with code switching, and sometimes people want to repost something they saw online without uncensoring it.
Personally I don't give a flying fuck, a hot damn, a fucking shit, or whatever other expletive one prefers to express indifference and I do hate the rise of advertiser friendly censorship, but also I don't know if I'm more tired of the complaints about it and complaints about the word "slams" in news headlines, but both are about as certain as finding "first" in a 2010 comments section.
- If one wants to keep their cirumstances clean they can chose to not use the word fuck in any way at all. And if you are tired about people protesting censorship your future is gonna be really annoying.

The fucking problem with fucking self censorship, is it fucking often comes from people fucking compling with fucking corporate media fucking algorithmic censorship. Then internalizing the fucking limits of online spaces, it's a fucking sinister infiltration of the human fucking mind, and is driving a fucking shift to the fucking alt-right. Also you can say fuck on the Internet.

Also you can say fuck on the Internet.
Gee, thanks. That's totally good to know since it's my first day here and all! 👍
The .. problem with .. self censorship ... is driving a fucking shift to the fucking alt-right
Oh, the fuck it is. See? I wanted to use the word "fuck" that time, and I chose to - I don't always, and that is my prerogative. Shouldn't have to worry about self-un-censoring my style of speaking to keep a bunch of internet edgelords from getting their panties in a wad because I didn't say the swear.
- I'm just curious but is your post about saying fuck or shit or is it more about self censorship in terms of vocab made up by tiktok, like unalive or pewpew? I think there's a lot of confusion about whether youre talking about normal cursewords or tiktok brain.
Oh no this is sin we will all go to hell \s

I sometimes use "censored" words because they're ducking hilarious

It feels infantile and childish to me when grown ass adults use cutie wootie wordy cursies to get around speaking like humans.

I guess I understand doing it around children, but I also think children swearing is hilarious, so...
- Yeah, there's nothing quite like the look on the face of a staunchly conservative bigot who's just been called a racist cunt by a based 8yo kid 😄
- Just use curse around children and explain how society handles curse words so they can learn.
I probably swear less since having kids and use more non-swearing expletives ("flipping heck", "crikey" etc.) in real life speech. Some of that inevitably bleeds into how I write online even though it's not directed at kids, just because language is habit-forming.
But I really, really hate the "f--k" thing. Either swear or don't. Swearing like you're trying to get one over on teacher is weird.
Are adults not allowed to be childish and to like cute things? The older I get the more strength I'm finding to stand by my own childishness.
- Sure, and the rest of us are allowed to find that fucking cringe.

Fuck that

Ay yes lets let corporations rule all of us wven further by proxy. How dare we swear on a medium that could be reuploaded to their platform

I dunno, I think it's a little childish to censor swear words instead of finding a replacement or just saying the swear, but it's not that big a deal.

what's worse is people saying r*pe or rap3 instead of rape, or "sui" or "unalive" instead of suicide. people shouldn't have to figure out how every Homestuck character would say a word if they wanna block content including these things.

You're more than welcome to say fork or frell or frack or feth or whatever you want. I LOVE a good "forking shirtballs"

Just understand that if you start typing "f*ck" then people, self included, will assume you are a moron who thinks this is tiktok and you need to keep all your content monetized. Well, some of us are olds and will think you are a moron who doesn't realize that gets you extra banned on gamefaqs. But most people will assume the tiktok and monetization thing.

i have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes, on this Monday to Friday plane!!!
- "You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!"
Fething admech neutering the noosphere
extra banned on gamefaqs
i am 12 and what is this?

No, fuck you.

Fork you f**king f-word!
- Get farked

To me fork makes way more sense, I feel like it conveys a totally different tone, and therefor has a different function in communicating

I guess a sensored f---k does too, but not anywhere near as distinct.

I feel like it conveys a totally different tone, and therefor has a different function in communicating
You're forking right it does.
Censored f--k or f*ck or whatever doesn't really convey a different tone, other than trying to say something without saying it. Which is annoying and frustrating, it puts work onto the listener that should have been done by the communicator.
Fork does come out with a different tone, because it doesn't sound as harsh. It's like how saying shit is a bit less severe than saying fuck - fork would be less than both of these, maybe on par with crap.

I've posted about this before and met the same results. People are very convinced that the danger of the internet becoming more ad friendly is more important that letting people say what they wanna say. In a way I do get it, but it's annoying not being able to do what you wanna do.

F--K YEAH!!

Our problem is not with the way people want to say things—its the necessity to do so due to censorship by corporations in an effort to cleanse everything for advertisers.

Bigtime this.

Ok yea I'm sometimes guilty of this, but in a more joking kinda way usually

Except when you're posting someone else's content that the creator clearly intended to have a cussword, e.g. a comic, and either you or where you got it from censored it for "the algorithm". That shit is annoying AF

As soon as some does it, every comment's like a three year old yelling, "You don't like curse words. Here's all the curse words I know!"

I assure you, I can curse better than a three year old.
Gotta keep the average up!

I think it kinda sucks, because I hate self censorship and the mechanisms that lead it it

If you want to do it for religious or moral reasons, I don't really care. You do you. I just don't want you censoring yourself for ad friendliness

Won't anybody think of the poor religious fundamentalists trying to impose their stunted world view and twisted values on the majority? It's those people that are responsible for much of the censorship we're facing today.

I don't care either way, it's all part of online forums. People say something, others agree or disagree.

What I really dislike are Youtube channels having to censor themselves while reading court documents and such, in fear of getting their channel striked or demonetised.

Lol the people in these comments who feel like someone choosing to use censored swearing is some kind of commentary on their intelligence or mental age. Fucking unreal. Y'all are no better than any other kind of "cringe police".

People should be allowed to do what’s in their comfort zone without fear of reprisal. But I’m still going to believe you’re a child if you can’t even curse in writing

Way to undercut your own message.
- The juxtaposition allowed my point to be made more strikingly, in my opinion
Because writing fuck is the ultimate sign of maturity. I guess I'm less childish than I thought I was.
- No it has no bearing on maturity, but not being allowed to write fuck is a sign of being childish.

Oh sure people can self censor and thats fine. It doesnt properly hide the word though. If you said out loud that someone is an "N-word" you have and the people listening have completed that word in their head and could still call you racist for using it, even though you didnt say the word your intentions to are a problem. The concept of using a censored version of a word only works to appease the person saying it.

If you want to remove the curse words just use different words entirely instead of censoring them.

Also, people who curse are more honest than thise that dont.

Real ones say removed (you tried to say bitch on .ml)

Lots of people don't like to swear in person, or will follow it with something like 'oops, did I say that out loud'.

I've never understood being upset when people self-censor online too. How does someone else not swearing effect you?

I don't care about people "not swearing".
Writing f*ck is swearing, just extra stupid.
It doesn’t affect me. That being said “policing” is a hyperbole. Obviously no one is forcing people to swear, they are just giving them shit when they censor themselves. Those people can still choose to censor themselves even when someone tells them it’s ok to swear.
It’s no more policing than OP ‘policing’ people to not ‘police’ him.
People have opinions. You can’t request others to not have their opinions if you’re going to share yours.
- People have opinions. You can’t request others to not have their opinions if you’re going to share yours.
  Yes and no... Everyone has an opinion, but it's not always appropriate to share those opinions, especially if you're changing the topic at hand to do so.
  If we're discussing 'some topic'™ and I swear, but censor a couple letters; that would not be the time to change gear and discuss my personal use of censoring. You could have a separate discussion about it at a different time, as we are doing now; but it's not really appropriate to stop the previous discussion about 'some topic' to talk about my censoring instead. That comes off as avoiding the subject imo.
The reason behind self censoring is what people are responding to, and how people do it shows the cause.
The most common reason for people to self censor by hiding a letter or two is to get past world filters imposed by multibillion dollar industries. Chat in games, social media platforms, and other places have draconian rules that people work around and thn drag those habits to other places where it isn't necessary to remind everyone that billion dollar companies are ruining the internet. It used to be kind of funny when it was one or two companies addressing actual toxic behavior, but not people are censoring terms like rape when discussing it as a social problem that needs to be addressed.
If someone is thinking "What a fucking moron." there are many ways to self censor.
"What a moron." Self censoring by not using the word at all is perfectly fine.
"What a f*cking moron." looks like someone is trying to say something hut is scared of a filter from the word police.
"Trmp is a fcking moron." is like someone whispering about someone because they are afraid of being heard. Yes, I've started to see names getting the same treatment because of whatever stupid reason.
Sure, they can do whatever they want but I'm going to judge them for it.
F*ck off
(You can't get upset, I didn't "swear")

Wholly mother-forking shirt balls!

Language conveys meaning. The words have no other purpose. Say fudge, fork, or frak, you still conveyed fuck. So just say what you mean.

written language also conveys tone and embodies the personality of the person writing it.
are you not just arguing against freedom of expression right now?
Motherfucking god damn right!

I say the word louder in my head when someone tries to censor it.

Shit you're right. I still hate it though

On one hand I don't care. On the other hand I also laugh when someone censors something like b*tt...

Fucking heck.

The real problem is people feeling the need to self-censor such things at all.

What sort of oppressive failure of a culture raises such values on a person.

It was said that you would destroy the self-censors, not join them!
(Not stalking you BTW, it's just that the ICQ symbol really stands out to me)
- I will never do it to myself, but I am sure as fuck lazy enough to not spend time un-doing others.
  But it's been updated already as someone else found a better version.

You can say f*ck on the internet

the only thing more annoying than someone self-censoring are the billion people telling them to stop self-censoring

like we get it, we don’t need 20000 replies saying the same thing!!!!!!!!

You can speak in goo-goo ga-ga talk but I’ll interpret that active choice of lingo as coming from the mind of an infant

My young one has explicit instructions that the main reason he is only permitted the childlike imitation curse words is that he is still learning how to express himself. Cursing, as an intensifier and in its capacity as general purpose verbiage, is an expressive crutch. You don't learn by doing things the easy way every time.
It is my (perhaps unsupported) conviction that one's thoughts are the words that compromise them, and if your lexicon is impoverished by neglect the quality of your thoughts will suffer. If you have spent any significant time around young people, whose expression of choice in nearly any occasion is "bruh", perhaps it will be equally obvious to you that these people are not learning to express themselves, and that diminishing of expression is decreasing, by turns, the general scope of human experience.
Language is a fine art, and all art is the study of choice. What words we choose in the course of our lives are as much an expression of our deepest selves as they are an attempt to reach out beyond oneself, to create meaning and thereby banish, even if only symbolically, the nameless emptiness that seems to pervade life. When we are with someone who cannot reach us in that way, we are lonelier for it.
All the foregoing is merely preamble to the question, in preemption of the shortcomings of brevity; are you sure you're not being just a bit of a cunt?

If they go over to lemmy.ml, they'll have that all done for them automatically, because communism needs clean language to thrive, apparently.

I don’t give a fat fink if a person doesn’t wish to use adult language, but I inherently object to it being censored being normalized on the internet. I’m old enough to remember being excited when I got to upgrade from 14.4 to 28.8, and still others remember 300 baud.

I know you’re aware you can curse on the web, I just object to it in ways other than politely asking you not to censor your posts especially when the curse word is ordinarily spelled there, but scribbled over, like TikTok content brought over here.

I’m not about to water start wrd-plcng nyne, but I am going to prtst if I see what looks to be an attempt to normalize cnsrshp on lmm*.

***** ********* **** *******. _{(these asterisks mean nothing)}

So you think it's okay to call someone a fag or a retard?
- No. That's what you got?

holy forking shirt-balls! you're right!

If you want to avoid profanity, then simply don't use it at all rather than doing whatever this is. This is just tacky.

It is also someone's prerogative to criticise it if they want to. Stop word policing people, OP.

What are you talking about with free speech absolutists? I think you are trying to reach a different audience than Lemmy because I think most people here think that's stupid.

Next you'll tell me to stop criticizing people's outfits and arguing about the borders of the Midwest. It's not gonna happen.

borders of the midwest
I think Aschaffenburg should go to Hesse. What Bavaria is even doing so far North West is beyond me.
- agreed. Bavaria and Hesse sharing a border seems wrong.
Illinois is outside the Midwest dammit! Colorado and Pennsylvania are both in it though.

Stop response-policing us

I mean people could also stop word-policing themselves

I too want to stop people placing arbitrary rules on my behaviour in public forums by imposing arbitrary rules on how to achieve my goals.

Reading this internet self-censorship makes me want to f-wording unalive myself fr.

I write fuck 100x more then I say it... so that is cool with me if someone doesnt want to write it

I don't say it very often and it makes me very conscious of the fact that I am saying it when I do

Than*
- Th*n

You're FUCKING annoyed. Yes adults can swear. Even those who choose not to should reject language policing put in place by big corporations. Who police because they want more ad revenue. This post shows a level of cluelessness.

it's fk stupid that people get triggered over this, even saying 'ahh' in place of 'ass' makes them mad

Ahh for ass? The fuck is wrong with the internet!?
- it's AAVE and if you question it you're a bigot, etc etc etc

Fuck you

If someone wants to respond with fuck* thats up to them as well

Yeah, nah, OP is a sheet cant

I don't give two shats what you forking say. Live life you duckers.

SLAM!

Forking shirtballs, people need to listen to you

My personal go-to is "fck''.

I used to be all about "fsck" but after watching The Good Place I switched it up to "fork" lol.
- Johnny Dangerously

For the sake of being doubly contrary, I'm going to say that it's perfectly acceptable to say "fork" because that is a euphemism that you could verbalise, but saying "f--k" is bad because it isn't. /s

I don't like censored swear words and I want to censor them

I don't think anyone in this thread ever watched the good place.

Every third comment is a reference to it...?

Something somewhere has gone sideways. May I ask for an example of that which annoys you?

Is cursing still a thing? I thought it was just a part of regular expression nowadays.

You have probably confused a lot of programmers 🤣🤣

Hi can I f--k your r*po?
- What did you just say you git?
Before I zoomed to read the thumbnail properly, I was indeed confused.

I have had it with these monkey-fighting swears on this Monday through Friday post!

flippen bushcraft.

What the fresh frelling hesmana is this?

Frack off

So say we all!
- Toasterfracker

How do I pronounce "F--k"?

With a 1 kHz beep!
- Nice.
Tell me you didn't watch MTV in the late 90s without actually saying it
- Nah, by the time the reality shows started appearing on MTV I was long done with it.
  Fun fact, Fuck has no comparable word in my language so the subtitles never had F--k in them.

I see the complaint mainly in relation to memes that are taken from another platform with tighter restrictions. It would be nice if people uncensored the meme instead of lowering us to that standard but aye who really gives a fuck at the end of the day. Censor or not we all know whats being said. We aint free until I can drop a full uncensored hard R nword (in a non racist context) without being banned.

Upvote rescinded so fast

When I was at school they enforced a rule that hair must be no shorter than 1cm. Naturally the rule was bullshit, and naturally the kids rebelled in various risque ways to assert their individuality against it.

Detentions were handed out, parents got involved, a big hoo-ha over absolutely nothing. But, our school had one of the lowest cases of drug-use compared to neighboring schools.

The kids were too busy rebelling against an obviously unjust rule, that they didn't bother to rebel the more traditional way through sex and drugs.

There is zero reason kids wouldn't rebel against multiple things at the same time.
- People are easily distracted and tend to focus only on one immediate crisis instead of all of them. It's how conservatives chip away at power from all sides

It sounds shucking idiomic.