- Joined
- Aug 8, 2020
I'm pretty vulgar while posting here. I'm also pretty vulgar while speaking in public. So I'll be the first to admit that I'm a massive fucking hypocrite as I write this post. Let me start with an anecdote (okay, two):
Taking an Uber or Lyft home some time back from a friend's place after a night of heavy drinking, a Jamaican immigrant picked me up. I've always been the type to converse with the driver, especially while being as hammered as I was, and so I did. I mentioned to him at some point that a previous (black female) driver got excessively mad at me for referring to Indians as "curry niggers." Him, being black himself, responded: "why would you say that word when you know it would likely offend them?"
My inebriated reply was along the lines of "It's just a word, get over it." or something slightly less coherent than that.
He explained: "Words have power, and you WANT them to have power. If you use a powerful word needlessly, that word loses its power. And if you don't want your words to have power, why use them at all?" (paraphrase).
I didn't really process it at the time and we spent the rest of the ~30min ride talking about more cheerful things for the most part, but I did retain it.
The next day, His words reminded me of another guy I only met twice: he's a Seventh Day Adventist preacher who disdains any foul language. He was a bit of a male Karen who would scold you for any "bad word." One day, maybe a year prior, I heard a story about this guy (I'd like to tell you I was there but I'd be lying). He apparently was with a group who knew him well and knew to hold their tongue around him. It was him that dropped an "S-bomb." If it was anyone else, few would notice. Maybe a scolding from him would occur and that would be that. But HE said it.
This was apparently cause for everyone else in the group to stop what they were doing and see what was going on. He was apparently heated over something I don't remember the details of. But the point is that he was MAD and wanted EVERYONE to know it, and they did. If anyone else said "shit," nobody would care. But because it was uttered by a man who despised the word, it held that much more power.
The conclusion of all of this, and feel free to rate me dumb and autistic, is that words have power based on how you treat them (no shit). If you want your curses to hold the weight that they can, you're going want to avoid using them whenever possible. If you don't care how much power your words have, why use them at all?
Taking an Uber or Lyft home some time back from a friend's place after a night of heavy drinking, a Jamaican immigrant picked me up. I've always been the type to converse with the driver, especially while being as hammered as I was, and so I did. I mentioned to him at some point that a previous (black female) driver got excessively mad at me for referring to Indians as "curry niggers." Him, being black himself, responded: "why would you say that word when you know it would likely offend them?"
My inebriated reply was along the lines of "It's just a word, get over it." or something slightly less coherent than that.
He explained: "Words have power, and you WANT them to have power. If you use a powerful word needlessly, that word loses its power. And if you don't want your words to have power, why use them at all?" (paraphrase).
I didn't really process it at the time and we spent the rest of the ~30min ride talking about more cheerful things for the most part, but I did retain it.
The next day, His words reminded me of another guy I only met twice: he's a Seventh Day Adventist preacher who disdains any foul language. He was a bit of a male Karen who would scold you for any "bad word." One day, maybe a year prior, I heard a story about this guy (I'd like to tell you I was there but I'd be lying). He apparently was with a group who knew him well and knew to hold their tongue around him. It was him that dropped an "S-bomb." If it was anyone else, few would notice. Maybe a scolding from him would occur and that would be that. But HE said it.
This was apparently cause for everyone else in the group to stop what they were doing and see what was going on. He was apparently heated over something I don't remember the details of. But the point is that he was MAD and wanted EVERYONE to know it, and they did. If anyone else said "shit," nobody would care. But because it was uttered by a man who despised the word, it held that much more power.
The conclusion of all of this, and feel free to rate me dumb and autistic, is that words have power based on how you treat them (no shit). If you want your curses to hold the weight that they can, you're going want to avoid using them whenever possible. If you don't care how much power your words have, why use them at all?
