I once started a thread on the old forums where I told my view on censoring and swearing etc. and I can't be arsed to rewrite it all here but I can just give my two cents.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION AND I'M NOT FORCING MY OPINION ON ANYONE!
1. Swearing is used to "colour" the language and add the extra punch to a sentence or story.
2. The usage of swearing also differs from country to country, town to town, person to person. In that way swearing is, in itself, a form of culture. Just like dragon said about how the people in Northern Ireland tend to swear more than "other people", you have the English swearing culture (a broad term), the South East English swearing culture (a smaller but still quite large term), the London swearing culture (even smaller but still pretty large) and you can continue like this till you get to every individual person in the world. This means that every single person looks at swearing differently and in the same way as any other culture this should be respected.
For example, a guy who usually swears to "colour" his language is in a TS channel and playing a game, he suddenly blurts out "Oh you useless Re***d" (aimed at an npc in game) but there happens to be a man in the channel with down's syndrome who gets offended. Has he the right to be offended? Yes. Seeing as the swearword is directly describing his handicap which might be a sensitive thing, therefore the man with down syndromes "swearing culture" goes before the gamers.
But now, lets say that the gamer didn't say "Oh you useless Re***d" but he blurted out "Oh for f**k sake" and a atheistic Swedish man (who comes on TS often and knows how the gamer handles swearwords) in his channel gets offended. Has he the right to be offended? No. Seeing as the swearword is not in anyway directed at him or has anything to do with his culture, religion, or his way to act. The gamers just said the word f**k which is a word describing the way that animals as we know it reproduce. Here the gamers "swearing culture" goes before the atheistic Swedish mans "swearing culture".
And this is just two examples of the giga-mega-djilion there is, lets say that for example it's the first time the Swedish man has come on TS and he does not know about the gamers way of handling swearwords. So much comes into play when you're talking about this in the same way as talking about if a Catholic should be allowed to speak his mind about religion when a Muslim or Hindu is in the channel, it's always different situations with different factors.
And what I want to get out of this is that swearing can definitely be used as long as you respect other peoples "swearing culture".
//End rant.
And as I said before, this is only my opinion and I'm not forcing my opinion on anybody! I also don't meant offend anybody with this text and if you do find it offensive you can Pm me and we can discuss it and find a solution to the problem.
