{"id":248,"date":"2006-06-12T12:17:55","date_gmt":"2006-06-12T01:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/06\/12\/devaluing-swearing\/"},"modified":"2006-08-24T08:29:49","modified_gmt":"2006-08-23T21:29:49","slug":"devaluing-swearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/06\/12\/devaluing-swearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Devaluing Swearing"},"content":{"rendered":"
This article contains swear words. If you find common swear words offensive, I recommend that you do<\/em> read this article. You clearly need toughening up.<\/div>\n

My previous story<\/a> about accidentally insulting a colleague reminded me of another incident that occurred a few years ago.<\/p>\n

My partner at the time was completely uninhibited about swearing in every day conversation.<\/p>\n

I didn’t find it offensive, but I was a little bit worried about devaluing the currency. If you use “fuck off” as a general every day term, then what is left to say to indicate you are really angry or upset? Of course, human creativity will always lead to more imaginative swear words, no matter which words you manage to ban or permit, but who’s got time for creativity when you are angry or upset?<\/p>\n

We found a happy compromise. It was perfectly acceptable to amiably tell each other to “fuck off”, so long as you suffixed it with “Sweetie” to show there was no hostility or passion behind it.<\/p>\n

So a conversation at home might go along the lines of:<\/p>\n

\n

“Hey, I’ve just had a great idea. Even though it is my turn to cook dinner, and you did it yesterday, why don’t we be spontaneous and let you cook again today? Isn’t that a great idea?”<\/p>\n

“Fuck off, Sweetie.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I thought the system worked particularly well, even if we did get odd laughs from our friends who overheard. Certainly, if we were arguing, the pregnant pause after the words “fuck off” carried quite<\/em> a punch.<\/p>\n

I discovered the down-side at work one day.<\/p>\n

We were discussing the organisation of a work social outing, and one of my female coworkers made a suggestion that I felt wouldn’t gain a lot of support from the workforce.<\/p>\n

Amiably, and with brain disengaged, I retorted: “Fuck off, Sw-” at which point my brain clutch suddenly dropped and it screeched off squealing “Shuddup! Shuddup! Shuddup! Shuddup! You’ve just told a coworker to fuck off; you can recover from this. It won’t be overnight, but it will happen. However, you finish the sentence and call a female coworker “Sweetie” and you’re dead-meat!”<\/p>\n

I think the moral is “When you devalue the currency of swearing, you have to beware of the fucking exchange rates” …or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another story about insulting co-workers.<\/p>\n

This story contains swear words. If you find common swear words offensive, I recommend that you do<\/em> read this article. You clearly need toughening up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-heroic-failures","category-story-telling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}