#On Cursing
Last night I had a Twitter conversation that went like this:
Person 1: “The world would be a much better place if people cursed more"
Person 2: “I find that cursing is the easy way out when someone doesn’t know what to say”
Me: “I agree with Person 2. From my experience, cursing tends to alienate and needlessly elevate emotions”
From that single tweet I experienced a barrage of insults including microphalia, mental ineptitude, lack of original thought, Bowdlerizing, and more. Apparently you can learn an enormous amount about a person in only 140 characters! The person I was replying to even took it upon themselves to write a blog post targeting “Prissy Britches.” As much as I enjoyed reading their vindictive straw-man destruction, now it's my turn and I’m going to clarify what I meant.
My tweet was not meant to lecture you on your behavior. I was responding to person 2, who said that cursing is an easy way out when someone doesn’t know what to say. I (apparently erroneously) assumed we were talking about the cursing of other individuals, and therefore agreed with him, further stating that cursing leads to alienation and needless elevation of emotions (neither of which would I consider lead to the bettering of the world). How is this lecturing you on your behavior? Do I have any proof that you curse out other people? No.. In fact, you yourself (later) state that “I NEVER curse out individuals…”. So, why did you then proceed to, well, curse me out? Did you think I was talking about the use of profanity in general? That isn’t cursing. Cursing is “[to] invoke or use a curse against [someone or something].” I don’t care if you use profanity in your tweets, books, code, etc! There isn’t anything inherently wrong with profanity. However, when used against another individual (and yes, I’m an individual, not some phantasmagorical internet being) to belittle, defame, or intimidate, that’s when I have a problem. Because, how does that make the world a better place?