You do know that hate speech is banned in a lot of countries in Europe right? You could go to prison for shouting racial slurs or broadcasting hate in any form. So far that hasn't led to a breakdown of society because people no longer have the right to purposely spread their own hate and ignorance around.
These laws are ridiculous on their face and if you think they won't ever be abused you are kidding yourself. Humans have a basic right to free speech, and taking that away necessarily harms society. Perhaps you have not read your John Stuart Mill?
I'm not even advocating my stance to that degree on this site. I'm also not telling you to say "poop" instead of "****". I'm simply saying that perhaps we should avoid language that was created for the sole purpose of putting another group down, and to avoid the most common trigger word. It's really not hard to do that, it's not stripping you of your ability to communicate.
It is telling people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. This argument doesn't fly for abortion, so why should it fly for something so much more mundane as speaking the words I feel are best to represent my thoughts?
Yeah, **** is a horrible crime. At least we can both agree on that. **** is also something that is far to common. **** is something that guys often do and justify that what they did wasn't **** because they didn't jump a girl that was jogging in the woods.
**** is nowhere near as common as Social Justice Warriors scream that it is (the 1 in 4 number is complete bull**** advanced by a bogus survey pushing an agenda.) And no, **** is not "something that guys often do."
Why wouldn't it be? Are you saying that the only reason people are saying **** at all in this manner is because they want to employ a bit of "shock humor"? To use it as such a hyperbole as to get some kind of reaction from someone? That clearly isn't the case, as you don't hear many within the gaming community that find that shocking anymore. It's about as shocking as saying pwn was in the 90's.
That is exactly why they do it, or at least it was originally. It has now become common parlance, and as such, is no longer shocking. This shouldn't surprise you, as language evolves. 20 years ago, you couldn't say words on TV that are now quite common. You seem to want to maintain the shock value of the word "****" because maybe you somehow think that if the word isn't shocking, neither will actual **** be shocking. This is wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin. You might as well argue that video game violence desensitizes us to real violence, and that therefore video games cause school shootings.
There have been many people in the smash community that have voiced that they do not like people casually tossing around slurs, the casual use of the word "****", and/or having their social label be commonly used as a synonym for annoying. For each person that says that, there are many more that will not say it and many that will never give this community a shot. If we want this community to reach it's full potential, we have to be professional about it.
Funny, but I see female gamers and gay gamers using these terms too. They don't seem to be bothered. Do you really think that the delicate snowflakes who pass out at the utterance of a word that they don't like will *really* make the community better? On what basis do you make this claim? They can't handle a single word, yet you think they can handle the pressure of a tournament?
Latching onto these things only shows the rest of the world that, on the whole, gamers actually are misogynistic *******s. I don't think that is what we are though, despite the language that is being used I think most people use it merely out of convention. For every user that argues against changing their ways, there are hundreds on these boards that don't care about the argument at all. If a new word became the fashion, they would just switch without much of a care.
Maybe you aren't aware, but the rest of the world has
always hated gamers, and they never needed an excuse to do so. We are "basement dwelling dweebs," "no friends losers," etc etc. I have nothing to prove to the rest of the world. The rest of the world can go **** itself after how it has treated us. The real reason feminists love to go after nerds so much is not that we are so much more misogynistic than everybody else, it's because
we are easy targets. If you really cared about social justice, you wouldn't be policing speech, you would be helping actual victims though actual means.
Which leads me to ask, what real reason do we have for saying **** over any other word, or what is keeping us (the gaming community as a whole) from moving on to a new word to describe beating the heck out of your opponent? Clearly for those who don't want to use the word **** they didn't struggle to find a replacement. I was able to switch to "wreck" overnight (something which surprised me because I expected to slip up from time to time). Why does the gaming community fight so hard so that they can use this word in the first place? Why do you fight for this, one of the very things which is preventing a wider acceptance of gaming culture as a whole?
Once we let Social Justice Warriors police our language once, there is no stopping them in the future. Today, "****" is banned. Tomorrow, "wrecked" (my father died in a car wreck, how insensitive!) Eventually, there
will be no language that is acceptable, and there
will be no competitive scene because everybody will be too afraid to be DQ'd for "hate speech."
It is a pretty risky word nevertheless.
