I kinda agree with humorman- swearing is often disrepective and can be just mean. And so many people today use 'swear words' to replace others so it also kind of makes me think that imagination is being lost.

I have nothing against swearing as a practice- I do it enough. But I think you have to show a little consideration to those around you. You don't know what everyone has to go through to survive and cursing at them is just another thing most people don't really like to deal with. Mainly I don't like angry name calling. If you had a shitty day you probably had a shitty day but calling someone else a piece of shit (when you don't REALLY know them) kinda makes you a shitty person too. All kinds of grey in there.

And cursing has an interesting history- there's profanty: shit,crap, bloody etc. and there's- real cursing: god, jesus, hell, holy___, etc. Dante believed that profanty wasn't even real cursing that it was more of a shock value, intense language kinda thing. And the whole thing with cursing is the orginal idea of old where words held magical power and cursing someone was laying a spell of misfortune on them. And words do effect people- if you praise someone, or curse them, or withhold them people react.

And its health benefits are not because you're saying the words but allowing yourself to say them. By restraining yourself in a time of pain is using energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

And the freedom of speech IS limited by the clause of effecting others happiness. Its not an end all thing, and in todays world I bet there are pently of people who would love to take someone to court for it. Which limits EVERYONE freedoms, cause then NEW rules start springing up and loopholes form... ugh...

And I believe in respect. Everyone and their grandma can curse as much as they want as long as they show a bit of respect. But putting fines on people for cursing in disrespect is just silly. It like making someone pay $20 bucks to a sidewalk for tripping on it- sometimes the sidewalk is old and in need of repair and sometimes people are careless. It happens.

humorman
You have the freedom to say whatever you want, but you don't have the freedom to piss other people off.

Then you don't have the freedom to say whatever you want now do yo? If I have the freedom to say whatever I want I have the freedom to swear, curse, make up fake scientific data for propaganda and say a list of integers behind each other which represent the bytes needed to make a picture of child porn (yes, you can losslessly encode child porn in a string of numbers). You don't have the freedom to say what you want, in no country, and most people'll call that a good thing.

That's akin to throwing a piece of trash in a no littering area and justifying it by saying, "Why should I be fined? It's only a little piece of paper. It'll biodegrade. What's the big deal?" It's not about removing your right to curse; it's about keeping your right to not be disrespected by a punk.

You then again don't have the freedom to throw shit in other people's property. Parks are community property paid by taxes.

Any way, you've come across the blurry line of what you can do to be disrespected. Most people would say that hitting another man means you've rightfully lost that man's respect. Most would say that picking a tie another man doesn't like is no grounds for losing that man's respect. And between that is a blurry area some one has to arbitrate, and people have different opinions on it.

Just because you're young and punk-rock doesn't mean you get a free pass at swearing at anyone you want. It's good to restrain yourself in front of people you respect, but you shouldn't fly your mouth off to any other person you see.

What does 'black metal' have to do with 'punk rock'?

Some might say that over generalisation of concepts warrants a loss of respect? Others might say that inconsequentialness does so (atheism mixes badly with black metal, it's a satanic movement for the most part)

Once again, it's about respect. You can't just go around saying the N-word and when someone gets offended say, "Fuck you! I'm sick and tired of people like you trying to prevent my freedom of speech! Deal with it, you stupid n****r!"

Why not? Where does it end? Why can't you say nigger but you can call people punk rockers? Some people would consider that an insult? I for one do.

It's a large world and you're not the authority on disrespect, different people have different definitions of it and you can't please them all.

Someone
The problem is that people, especially kids, use swear words so much, it's not even shock humor anymore. There's thousands of pictures on the Internet that can amount to a person/cat making a stupid face with the caption "O FUCK!!1". It's not funny. It simply relies on the fact that little kids will see it and think, "Wow, that's a swear word and it's bad! If I say it, I'll be funny, too!" ...and then they make a stupid sprite comic chock full off swear words.

Here be dragons my friend. As soon as you start to think you know that well why other people do the things they do you've already lost every option to convince them.

Knowing your enemy is a great tool in warfare, thinking you know your enemy when you don't is about the greatest handicap you can have.

Someone
5)It's the way of the future. Embrace it.

Swearing casually and repeatedly is a symbol of our progressing culture. It's a movement away from conservatism, and control. Be free, you motherfuckers.

No, it's how it has always been, people have complained at every point about swearing, the point is more that yesterday 'darn' was considered a heavy curse, but not today, today 'fuck' is, and in 14 years people will look back on it and not get the fuzz about it as 'fuck' will at that point be as mild as 'darn'. Put it a bit into a historical perspective, people were not more conservative or less tolerant yesterday, the words simply had a stronger meaning. It's curse-inflation, if you use words like that a lot they start to decrease in the intensity of their meaning.

How is disrespecting other people progressive? I don't care what you say in private or with your friends, but you can't just go around cussing your head off to random strangers because you think all people should swear and the people who don't should.

The point is more 'what people can one disrespect'? Most people think that criminals should earn no respect, I think it depends on the criminal.