I’m a long time Lemmy lurker and occasional Redditor. Since the Reddit influx, I’ve watched the frequency of shitty Reddit-type behavior, e.g., combative comments, trolling, and unnecessary rudeness, just sky rocket.
I’m happy to have more content on Lemmy, but I wish the bad actors and assholes would have stayed on Reddit.
Yes, I realize the irony of posting this on a new community that’s basically a Reddit transplant.
Add to that a large part of the Internet (Americans I can only presume) are the biggest moral prudes around.
Like they’ll see someone say fuck in a conversation and be like “guys that’s totally uncalled for, let’s be civil here” when really it’s just a bit of fucking emphasis behind a word and causal as fuck.
Non-prude American here. My hypothesis is that younger-ish folks are raised paranoid of their every word being recorded and played back to their parents. There’s a weird tone to the under 25s that feels like every word had to go through legal.
Perfect example: Oh my gosh!
Who the fuck says, “Gosh?” I think I might have heard 1 grandparent say it back in the early 90s. It’s, “Oh my god!” There’s punctuation to the word. Gosh sounds like you’re trying to whisper so your clergy doesn’t hear you being naughty.
So, yeah, we hate those fucking cunts, too.
Rather than labeling an entire nation as “moral prudes”, it’s important to recognize that different cultures have different standards of civility. I know many Commonwealth nations consider words like “fuck” and “cunt” to be simply everyday ordinary language, but in the United States, one is considered very low-brow and crude, while the other is very nearly the most offensive word in our vocabulary.
Different cultures, different standards.
Difference is the US is the default and their views are imposed on everyone else.
You don’t ask the minority to be more respectful of the majority at their own expense.
Also very clearly said a large portion of Internet users who are American are moral prudes, not all Americans. But hey gotta be offended somehow.
I would almost ignore the profanity aspect, because that’s one of the easiest to learn about and laugh at together, and lean into the fact that some cultures don’t engage with sarcasm the same way as others. Or that some cultures (and sub-cultures) make heavy use of mockery and teasing in ways that are confusing to others.
There are many circumstances where it can be difficult to tell the difference between a joke and a jab in a cross-culture conversation. And that’s not even getting into language and slang barriers.