“Censorship is bad” yeah, sure, I agree. But the fact that you still know it’s a curse word means it’s not really censoring anything.
Curse words are so common now that they’ve lost a bit of their oomph. They’re supposed to convey intensity, but they’re used so casually that they’re basically lazy filler.
A strike through line, or a box that doesn’t quite cover, reintroduces a bit of the taboo. This is a bad, naughty word, you shouldn’t be reading it. You know what it is, but attempting to cover it draws attention to the fact that it’s something some people want to cover, which reintroduces some of the oomph.
It’s kinda like sequined pasties at a nudist colony; it turns something that was once taboo, but had since been normalized, back to taboo again to reclaim some of the intensity.
I didn’t say I have a desire to reduce swearing, I said that censorship in the form of strikethroughs, bleeps, etc. restores the emotional intensity of the swear.
“I don’t give a fuck” reads as dull and apathetic. The swear isn’t really conveying anything, it’s just lazy filler.
“I don’t give a
fuck” reads as aggressive and emotional. The swear has impact, it conveys intensity.Never thought of censored words as being more impactful. Swearing often is simply lazy filler for when someone is too emotional, stupid, or some combination of the two to select a more precise word, but I’m not sure where you’d get an entailment of greater aggression from a censored, written word. If anything, if the person censored themselves, it conveys less emotion because they had the rational control to self-censor. And if the word was censored by someone else, it has nothing to do with the speaker’s emotion; it expresses the sensibilities of the censor more than the intentions of the speaker.
And there is a certain implication of wanting to reduce the swearing in calling it ‘dull’ or ‘lazy’ or saying it ‘isn’t really conveying anything.’ These are largely regarded as negative sentiments. On a certain level ‘fuck’ and ‘
fuck’ could be considered as having different intentions, as in ‘I don’t give a fuck’ becomes ‘I don’t care<emotional>’ and ‘I don’t give afuck.’ becomes ‘I don’t care<emotional>, but I do care enough not to fully include this offensive word.’ which would also be a reduced impact and emotionality.How does this compare in your perception to, say:
fuck.’
None of them are censored, but certainly convey something subtly different.
I’m talking about perception, intention is beyond the scope of this opinion.
In any case, the censorship draws attention to the swear in a world where swearing is so casual as to become invisible. I’m going to repeat my analogy of tasseled pasties at a nudist colony.
There are other ways to add intensity, sure, the same things you can do to any other word. But censorship is a technique specific to swears that specifically highlights their vulgarity. The other methods don’t carry quite the same specific subtext.