A Report on Swearing in Online Games

A Next Generation article references an informal study done on the frequency of swearing on Xbox Live. From the study: "When you logon to Xbox live more often then not you will be greeted by a 14 year old that learned a new word on the playground that day, or maybe it's the drunken 24 year old who hates black people, gays and anyone who isn't in his frat. No matter who you are if you have played on live you have run into cursing and lewdness. If you look at the rating for the game you can see that it is intended for ages 17+ but parents don't care/understand/listen so lots of underage kids have [Halo 2]." Warning: links contain profanity.

Comments

Expected

[Agent00Wang]

Considering that the bulk of online gamers are of the age where they probably speak like this in real life too, it shouldn't be very surprising that it spills over into their online activities as well.

Re:Expected

[Kelson]

Whenever someone brings up the "Ah! Kids can hear swearing! Aiiieeee!!!!" meme, I bring out this story from my own childhood.

When I was in middle school, I spent a week working at a cub scout day camp. I think I was around 12 or 13 at the time. The adults warned us that we had to watch our language around the cubs (who were probably around 8 or 9), because they didn't want the kids picking up any bad words from us. They needn't have bothered. The kids were far more foul-mouthed around us than we were amongst ourselves, and actually managed to shock us. This was in the late 1980s.

Kids don't need TV, movies, video games or the Internet to learn bad words. They learn them from their friends at school, or they learn them from parents, or from neighbor kids.

There was a B.C. comic strip a few years ago that I thought illustrated this point well: Two kids (well, ants) walk into the room, one crying, "Mom, he said the Z-word!" The parents send the kid to his room, then have this brief conversation: "Where'd the little %@#&! learn the Z-word?" "Beats the #@*$ out of me."

Re:Expected

[Wildclaw]

The sad thing is that excessive swearing is a sign that the person in question is lacking in vocabulary. Swear words are mostly used in sentences as replacement for more complex words or sentence structures.

People who swear every other sentence have serious problems expressing themselves because their speech are very binary. Either someone is a fucker or an ordinary person, but the inbetween doesn't exist. It is of course possible to place different values on each swear word, but that rarely happens because it would defeat the purpose of using swear words to simplify sentences.

This is why it is very important to make sure that children don't swear. Swearing is addictive because it is easy to do and doesn't require thinking and as long as someone uses swear words he/she won't learn to take advantage of the full range of the language.

Swearing is in my opinion best reserved to expressing extreme emotions. The more they are used the more diluted they become.

Re:Expected

[garylian]

I can still vividly remember my little brother, at the tender age of 3, playing on the swings while we were out in California for a year. This was back in 1974. He was so little, he couldn't sit on the swing, so he laid his stomach across it, and would run forward until he left the ground, swung back, and repeated as needed.

Why do I remember it so vividly?

Because the whole time he was on that swing, he sang "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK" at full volume, non-stop. 3 years old, and singing for all he was worth, and effectively screaming one of the most hated words amongst language minders.

He's 34 right now, almost 35. He still considers it one of his shining moments.

Me, I learned how to use it when it was appropriate. Being in the fire service as a volunteer, there are tons of times when dropping a well thought out curse just fit. See a 4 story apartment building engulfed in flame? "Holy fucking shit!" made perfect sense. Of course, it was immediately followed by "Damn, this is almost as good as sex. Grab a hose! We're going in!"

But, you also learned to have an innate sense of who was around you. That same "Holy fucking shit!" wouldn't escape most mouths if there were civilians around.

The problem with these online games is that there is an inherent "cool" factor people seem to think surrounds the use of this language. And it isn't just kids.

Back when MSN chats were free to everyone, I used to chat in ChatDallas, one of their city chats. The use of profanity would get you kicked by a bot, or banned by a mod. One enterprising individual created a private room for adults to chat in. Wanna guess what happened?

Folks from ages 18-50 sat in this private room and just used one profanity after another in all imaginable combinations. Because they could, and they felt they were being cool. And after 5 minutes in there, I felt like I was back in H.S. listening to guys in the locker room. It was all pointless.

So, until folks figure out how really lame they sound, they will keep doing it. There's no art to it. It's one thing to say "fuck you, you fag". Anyone can do that. It takes a little more creativity to drop a "listen, you dried up husk of a cunt, shut your yap and go away".

Ah, but there will always be sheep.

Re:Expected

[HUADPE]

I fully support efforts of lawmakers to shield kids from garbage, because it's a good failsafe mechanism. As a parent, I will not let my kids do things that I don't approve

When lawmakers shield children from what you consider "garbage" they take on the role of moral parent for those children. And since those children exist in the same society and media which adults do, then those lawmakers become everyone's parent. I for one do not want Dennis Hastert, George Bush, Harry Ried or anyone else telling me what to listen to. Force is the only means of government action...it's what they do, and when you use guns to dictate speech, thats called fascism.

Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech. It means what it says.

The problem being what...

[__aaclcg7560]

Does it really surprise anyone that kids actually swear? You can't blame this one on video games. I learned all my swear words when my parents argued when I was a child and picked up a few more colorful words from my sister-in-law when she got a divorce from my brother. I didn't start using swear words until I got into middle school where colorful language was a prelude to a fist fight. A long time ago, parents used to take responsibility for their children's language devopment. These days, no one gives a fraq!

I know why

[MBCook]

It is the same reason people act like scum on message boards: anoninimity. No one knows who they are so they don't have to behave. You see that on /. too. Penny Arcade summed it up excelent once.

Comic

Re:Swearing online

[Red Alastor]

I don't play Xbox live (or own an Xbox) but I'm french (as in the language, not the country) and compared to french, english is extremely limitated insult and swears wise so I'm not that surprised :)

On the other hand, we don't have any word as versatile as 'fuck'.

Fuddy duddies

[RomulusNR]

by a 14 year old that learned a new word on the playground that day [my bold]

I'm always amazed by people who simply seem to never have been young at all, ever.

Or else, there is some condition or secret government experiment that causes people's brains to be wiped of all experiences had before age 22.

Earth to shut-in researchers: Most kids know all such words well before age 12.

Maybe some parents don't manage to hear them until 14, but that's because they are uninvolved with their children's lives, or else drastically shelter them.

Re:I know the summary sounds biased

[Severious]

If that were my kid I would have walked in there with a sledge hammer and blasted his Xbox into a billion pieces. I can't belive people let their kids get away with that kind of behavior.

Re:One reason I let my XBox Live account die.

[orac2]

Bollox. The word "fag" has by no means lost its association with homosexual, even just based on the context in which it's used in voice chat, let alone the fact that if you ask people, they all know that 'fag' can be used a word for gay, unlike 'idiot,' where most people genuinely don't know it's origin in the scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's apologists like you that drive me especially nuts -- you may like to think you're not being grossly offensive, that you're a good guy, but ask an actual gay person what they think of the term 'fag' and its use in chat, I'll think you'll find you are being a best offensive, at worst conducting verbal assualt. If you're sincere in not wanting to spread bigotry, you'll stop. The turning of certain words from specific insults into generic ones make the situation worse, not better -- you're declaring that an entire class of people are inferior -- that any gay is crap, or trivilizing some of the worst violence around -- rape is equated with winng a game? And why is it okay to consider 'gay' as an insult in the first place? Believe it or not, unless you're gay, black or been raped, you really have no right to declare "these insults are okay, they're meaningless." Almost the only people who think those words are meaningless, are white, straight males who haven't been the victim of sexual assault, and if you can't see an perpepuation of abuse and injuctice in that privilege, you're living a very insular life indeed.