Like it or lump it

[jillybean]

At 43 I hope I am still heading up the hill to senior citizenship. I don’t agree that the words are any less abusive than they were 20 years ago however I do agree the words are used more frequently but this I think is a direct result of the Internet. I do not hear my immediate circle of friends and contacts talking like this at all, ever! I’m not saying we don’t say oh ***** when we drop our bottle of prune juice or oh hell when we hear our friends hip replacement operation has been canceled. I never hear anyone say What The Fuck happened to my prune juice or those Mother F**kers have postponed my operation. I am surprised that Phil, who is 2 years my senior and others even more senior find it acceptable, even normal.

 

I think the problem is unique to the Internet and in some ways this forum in particular. In real life rather than hanging out with Justin, I’d be sitting with his Mum having a G&T. Justin and I may pass pleasantries but that would be about the extent of it. However, we are all thrown together here because we love this game. Regardless of age, race, religion the 1 and only thing that brings us all together is Bridge. I think that is great and somewhat unique. I value the opportunity to hear opinions of people I would never encounter at this level in real life. Obviously, problems come with this too. BBO have done a good job in setting out rules for the site and creating the WC for un-moderated speech. Sadly, I think standards are slipping and the boundaries between the WC and the bridge forum are disappearing.

[Codo]

As two people here have the feeling that the language did not change, I must change my statement:

 

Here where I life, the languages changes. Words that make my parents blush are common to my generation. But I had to learn that class mates of my son (15) uses words which makes me blush. And obviously they need worse wording to make me blush then I had to use opposite my parents.

 

I still believe that this is normal and happens anywhere. But obviously it does not happen where Bill and Jill are living.

[Wackojack]

People afflicted by Tourettes syndrome have my sympathy not my censure.

[zasanya]

People afflicted by Tourettes syndrome have my sympathy not my censure.

Thats the best way of loking at it, I suppose. LOL

[pclayton]

I’m not saying we don’t say oh ***** when we drop our bottle of prune juice or oh hell when we hear our friends hip replacement operation has been canceled.

 

I never hear anyone say What The Fuck happened to my prune juice or those Mother F**kers have postponed my operation.

ROFLPMP. Oh *****, maybe its time to buy some Depends.

 

I am surprised that Phil, who is 2 years my senior and others even more senior find it acceptable, even normal.

 

Age is a state of mind. I keep telling myself that anyway :P

[jillybean]

Yeah and Happy Birthday you old *&&^%^ :P

 

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/ROFLPMP

[uday]

Short version:

 

1. No overt obscenities except perhaps in the Watercooler. We'll have to judge whether things like WTF or F**K constitute obscenities on a case by case basis. Report doubtful posts more aggressively, please, so we can edit/delete/move them as we see fit.

 

2. More generally, it would not hurt to avoid terminology that you know will offend some people, just bec. you feel that they should not be offended by it.

 

3. Moderators welcome.

 

 

Long version:

 

Turn my back for a min, and come back to find this :)

 

The avg age of an ACBL member is, what, 68? Most of us are old enough to have heard every offensive word under the sun. And the rest of us are young enough to think that they discovered these words.

 

Even so, what offends me might not offend you, and what offends you might not offend me. And there is going to be an inconstant gray area between whatever boundaries we assign for ourselves and each other.

 

The general forums need to be as PC as possible without being so sterile as to not be worth visiting. Good luck to us with that.

 

We do police these forums, but our effectiveness is limited by several factors.

 

- we don't always spot every post we'd like to edit, move or delete. Reporting potentially troublesome posts helps us. if you don't report them, we might miss them. Esp. when the subject line doesn't reveal the nature of the underlying discussion.

 

- we don't particularly want to micromanage this community any more than we have to. The typical uproar after a post is moderated ("censored") has to be weighed against our desire to keep the site as clean as we can.

 

- summer is upon us, and some of our (volunteer) moderators might well be trying to catch some sun or some burgers instead of wandering through these forums

 

 

ZT isn't an option at the moment, unless we're willing to change the tone of this community. I think the best we can practically hope for is that the community exercises a modicum of restraint, perhaps a little less in the Watercooler.

 

We want the larger BBO community to come sip from the forums occasionally. We would hate to see them wander over only to run away, leaving us only an "eeew" when we might have benefited from their thoughts on all the things we like to discuss.

 

 

Uday

[Al_U_Card]

Hi KJ

 

And here I thot it stood for What's That For?

 

p.s. or in the case of your avatar...What Tiny Flowers.

[Al_U_Card]

Yes, and F.U. stands for Felix Unger.

Can we imagine what FYI might also stand for???

[han]

What, is Phil really 45? Goodness Gracious!

 

No further comments on this topic.

[luke warm]

i agree (fwiw) with jilly kat on this one... everyone knows, or should know, that the WC is different from the main board, if someone is offended by what's written here (or allows youngsters to view some of these posts), well they don't have to visit - the main forum is still there

 

anyway, as ron said, if she finds it offensive well she finds it offensive...

[kenrexford]

I have a solution. Thought about this for hours (or, just a few seconds, actually). How about those of us who like to use dirty words and dirty acronyms come up with secret words and secret acronyms that mean the same thing. We the place them him hidden text for everyone who wants to use the durty words and dirty acronyms to check out for their use as well. Those who do not want to use the dirty words or dirty acronyms, or even see them, do not look into the secret, hidden text to get the translations.

 

Brilliant!

 

OK, a few examples follow. However, remember folks -- these are dirty words or dirty acronyms translated, so you might not want to look at the following, hidden text. Seriously -- no peeking!

 

 

"WTF," or "What the *****," shall now be typed as "Justin while drunk," or "JWD."

"LOL," or "Little Old Ladies," shall now be "Non-Gender Farts," or "NGF's."

"This Sucks" or "That Sucks" shall now be "This or That Hoovers."

Instead of "What kind of ***** did you open with?" we can type "That seems like an American Standard opening." A little subtle, but work on it.

 

 

OK, maybe my idea hoovers.

[kenberg]

I'm an academic. I grew up in a very non-academic environment. I have learned to adjust my language. I still manage to offend some folks (the overeducated shitheads of course) from time to time. Unintended, but what can I do.

 

While my choice of words, and for that matter my grammar, is maybe not so great I still do regret the general coarsening of our language. I don't obsess over it, but I get to regret what I regret, and this I regret. I am pleased to say that my kids and my grandkids seldom say ***** unless the subject matter is *****ing. It seldom is.

[Winstonm]

What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful, portable picnic players. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited

[blackshoe]

Short version:

 

1. No overt obscenities except perhaps in the Watercooler.  We'll have to judge whether things like WTF or F**K  constitute obscenities on a case by case basis.  Report doubtful posts more aggressively, please, so we can edit/delete/move them as we see fit.

 

2. More generally, it would not hurt to avoid terminology that you know will offend some people, just bec. you feel that they should not be offended by it.

 

3. Moderators welcome.

Hi, Uday.

 

I've been moderating forums on BBSes and the Web for many years. I've seen people try to set up a filtering system to eliminate all "bad" words (the project failed). I've seen moderators go nuts with the censoring and the editing. I've seen folks say "anything goes in here. you don't like it, leave." Whatever the rules are, there is always somebody who doesn't like them.

 

Personally, I take the attitude that we are all (or most of us anyway) adults, and common sense should tell us what we should and should not say. Where a moderator feels that common sense has failed, a quiet word ought to suffice. If not, well, we don't have to let them stay around.

 

Jerry Pournelle used to have a forum on GEnie (and later Bix) which may or may not still be around. Good, smart people, both in it and running it (a friend of mine was the chief moderator - mostly Jerry left him to it.) Regarding "F**k", Jerry's rule was "if you're going to use the word, spell it out, don't try to hide it. Everybody here knows what you mean." I think it's a good rule. The other one I remember was "This is my living room. Everyone is welcome here, as long as they remember that it is my living room." Also a good rule.

 

All that said, your house, your rules. B)

[luke warm]

I've been moderating forums on BBSes and the Web for many years.

i think a lot of us have at least a little experience as mods on BBs, some more than others... fwiw, i think almost anything should be allowed in the WC and almost nothing in the main room... it depends on whether or not the main room is viewed as 'family friendly' by the owner/hosts... it's very easy to stay away from the WC in a bridge forum, imo... jilly is offended by some things regardless of the forum (so am i, but probably different things for different reasons), but she knows that she doesn't have to visit the WC to discuss what's probably 99% of the things she wants to discuss

[the hog]

What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful, portable picnic players. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited

Hmm Winston. And what does a reference from the Droog Alex in Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" have to do with all this?

[Winstonm]

What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful, portable picnic players. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited

Hmm Winston. And what does a reference from the Droog Alex in Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" have to do with all this?

Welly, welly, welly, well. It is only to show that language can change, and what was offensive may no longer be. Might it be that WTF is really the old in and out?

[kenberg]

Clockwork Orange! Damn! Thanks for clearing that up, I was wondering. I once read a lot of Burgess but never that one.

 

I guess I saw the movie, but long ago. As I recall society, as portrayed, was not one that I would wish on us.

[barmar]

Personally I don't find it offensive apart from when someone uses terms like this to be abusive. However then it usually just indicates an extremely limited vocabulary and a basic lack of intelligence.

Quite the contrary. If you're trying to be abusive, isn't the best way to use language that will be most bothersome to your target?

 

If someone is insulting you, and you want to get them to stop, which is more likely to get their attention: "Please stop saying that" or "Shut the f--- up!"?

 

Cursing exists for a reason. I can't find the reference now, but I recently read a book on how language reflects our neurology, and I there was a whole chapter devoted to the psychology of cursing. It's not nearly as simple as not knowing more appropriate words -- often curse words ARE the most appropriate.

 

One of the other points he made is that curse words in general tend to lose strength over time, eventually becoming part of common language, and then new words take their place as the ones too vulgar to use in public. For instance, "bitch" is not considered as offensive these days as it was a few decades ago, so now you'd have to call a woman the C-word to get the same reaction.

 

One last thing. When people use abbreviations like "WTF", I think they don't even consider themselves to be cursing. It's just one step removed from using comic strip "&%#!:" language. It's become Internet jargon, much like the military jargon "FUBAR".

[kenberg]

I agree that the Internet has a lot to do with this issue. A twenty year old guy standing in front of another twenty year old guy might think twice and even a third time before saying "Shut the ***** up you moronic piece of *****". Much easier and safer to do it on the internet. Just acronym it to STFUYMPOS and we are ready to go. NP, WTF

 

Whether this is an improvement in society is, I think, open to question.

[Trinidad]

The point is not so much the use of a word, a term, or a phrase. The point is whether you want to use a term when you know it will offend people. Now, there are some situations where you actually may want to offend people (e.g. to show that you are really, really angry, hurt or shocked), but I would think that discussing bridge isn't one of those situations. (My advise to anyone who does get so angry, hurt or shocked playing bridge would be to quit playing the game.)

 

A related (absolutely true) story:

I am originally from The Netherlands and in the 90's I lived five years in the USA. When I came into that country I was linked up to an American family for an exchange of cultures. I told about The Netherlands (from windmills and tulips to euthanasia and marijuana) and they took me to football games, on fishing trips and other things Americans do.

 

When we met for the first time, they told me very clearly that they were a respectable family. They didn't like foul language and I was specifically told to never use 'the s-word' in front of them or their children. Out of respect, I obviously never used this word in front of them. (And why should I?)

 

During my seventh visit or so we were sitting in their yard while the children were playing. The 8 year old son asked me to help him climb into the tree to get on the roof of the house (knowing very well that his parents wouldn't like that). I answered: "Now, that would be stupid."

 

The family was shocked. It turned out that to them 'stupid' was 'the s-word'. (What other word could it be?) Needless to say that I was rather surprised by their shocked reaction. I immediately apologized (which I think is the obvious thing to do) knowing very well that I could have never foreseen that they would have been so shocked about the use of what I thought was a pretty standard word. (I learnt it back home during my 'introduction to English' class in elementary school when I was 11.)

 

I obviously don't feel guilty (or anything remotely similar) for using the word 'stupid'. How was I supposed to know? But equally obviously I never used the word 'stupid' again in their presence. After all, why would I knowingly want to offend them? That would just be plane... err... well... you know.

 

Rik

[pigpenz]

Jillybean I really like you but I really don't understand how these things are offensive to you. Maybe that is MY problem though, but it's honestly so far removed from me that I cannot even understand it. Are you actually offended reading "wtf" regarding a bridge hand? (I know that sounds rhetorical, but it's not.) If so, why? Just the thought of the F word is offensive regardless of anything else? I am honestly curious because you're a very nice person and I just want to understand where you are coming from.

only read the first page of this thread cause thats enough....but maybe JillyBean

should RTFM for the fourms ;)

[jillybean]

Jillybean I really like you but I really don't understand how these things are offensive to you. Maybe that is MY problem though, but it's honestly so far removed from me that I cannot even understand it. Are you actually offended reading "wtf" regarding a bridge hand? (I know that sounds rhetorical, but it's not.) If so, why? Just the thought of the F word is offensive regardless of anything else? I am honestly curious because you're a very nice person and I just want to understand where you are coming from.

only read the first page of this thread cause thats enough....but maybe JillyBean

should RTFM for the fourms ;)

Pigpenz yes I did read the *****ing manual, thats why I posted the orginal question. Whats your point?

[cranebill]

Pigpenz yes I did read the *****ing manual, thats why I posted the orginal question. Whats your point?

 

DIRECTOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!