Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Reverse Censorship

I read yet another article on the 'net today talking about "The N-word," and the fiasco around it, and I noticed that although the article was completely against banning the word, it was never once said uncensored. This then raises the question (no, not "begs the question") of how someone who doesn't know what word is being talked about is supposed to know to avoid it.

Let's go to a specific example, a regulated online community, such as an MMORPG. To maintain a "Teen" rating, most MMORPGs ban the use of profanity. But what qualifies as profanity? It would be nice if they could just give us a list of words we shouldn't say, but the closest they'd ever come (not that I've seen any even do this) is along the lines of "The F-word, the N-word..." If you honestly can't figure it out from that (picture a foreigner learning English to see why someone might not be completely up on all this stuff), you're F-worded.

In response to all this silly "The (Letter)-word" stuff, I've decided to turn it on it's head in protest. Now, the applicable letters are to be known as "The (Profanity)-letter" instead of simply stating the letter. I've purposely avoided actually using any profanities up to this point, but that stops below the fold. If you're mature enough, head below. If not, grow the fuck up and read it anyways.

I've filled in whatever letters I could think of, but a few are left blank. If you've got any suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Update: The list is now complete, but if you have any better suggestions for certain letters, let me know!

A shall thus be known as "The Asshole-letter"
B shall thus be known as "The Bitch-letter"
C shall thus be known as "The Cunt-letter" (Alternatives: Cock, Cocksucker)
D shall thus be known as "The Damn-letter" (Alternative: Dipshit)
E shall thus be known as "The Epidermis-letter" (People will think it's crude)
F shall thus be known as "The Fuck-letter"
G shall thus be known as "The God-letter"
H shall thus be known as "The Hell-letter"
I shall thus be known as "The IDiot-letter"
J shall thus be known as "The Jesus-letter"
K shall thus be known as "The Knockers-letter"
L shall thus be known as "The Lesbian-letter" (Cross-reference: "The L Word")
M shall thus be known as "The Motherfucker-letter"
N shall thus be known as "The Nigger-letter"
O shall thus be known as "The Orgasm-letter"
P shall thus be known as "The Prick-letter"
Q shall thus be known as "The Queer-letter"
R shall thus be known as "The Retard-letter" (Alternative: Rectum)
S shall thus be known as "The Shit-letter"
T shall thus be known as "The Tits-letter"
U shall thus be known as "The Unclefucker-letter" (Thank you, South Park movie)
V shall thus be known as "The Vagina-letter"
W shall thus be known as "The Whore-letter"
X shall thus be known as "The XXX-letter" (Yeah, it's pointless, but the pointlessness is the point of this list)
Y shall thus be known as "The Yarbles-letter" (It means "Testicles," originally from A Clockwork Orange, but picked up elsewhere)
Z shall thus be known as "The Zuffle-letter" (Just the concept is enough, even if it doesn't sound so bad.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Q shall thus be known as ???

"The Queer-letter".

-Berlzebub

Anonymous said...

I just stumbled upon this site from your comment over at scienceblogs. My humble contribution to a great goal:

I should be the Idiot-letter?

Infophile said...

Ah, thank you for your contribution! I just realized, though, that if we just go and capitalize the Damn-letter in there, we can kill two birds with one stone.

IAMB said...

Ahh, excessive swearing in posts... otherwise known as "the reason I will never be able to join the ScienceBlogs collective".

Why not switch "damn" for "dipshit"?

While you're at it, I wouldn't mind "P" being switched to "pizda" (Russian for "cunt"... always good to learn a bit about foreign languages) and "R" should be "retard", because I find that the morality police seem to think it's more offensive than "rectum".

Just a couple of suggestions...

Infophile said...

Okay, it's been a while, but I've gone in and made some updates, and provided alternatives for a few words. I decided to keep it all to (American) English for now; speakers of other languages are welcome to make their own lists modulated to be maximally offensive to their own culture, but I'm not the best one to do that.