Censorship

The other night, Wendy showed me a discussion board where two links were posted. The first contained “fuck” and the second contained “dick” as part of the links. The discussion board replaced both as “****,” rendering the links useless.

I thought it was ridiculous, but Wendy deemed it necessary. She claimed that she’s all for free speech until people abuse the language. Wendy had a point—rabid cursers are annoying. In order to keep their audience happy, it is not unexpected for the administrators to enforce censorship.

However, the point of posting is to make an argument, offensive or not. Like spelling mistakes, curses only serve to distract the readers from the actual content. The best arguments (and insults) are done not through cursing relentlessly, but by making clear, strong statements.

Curses are flashy, but contain no real substance—arguments that rely on curses are naturally weak and easy to ignore. People who encounter swear-infested messages will just label the author as a lunatic and skip it.

Censorship. Just say no.