On 3/18/2014 2:59 AM, "Ola Fosheim Grøstad"
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dl...@gmail.com>" wrote:
I was once told not to bring up politics (George Bush) in casual game
chat by a US player, because it might be taken as offensive by someone.
I found that shocking.
I think the issue there probably isn't so much "offense", but the fact
that american discussion of politics is notoriously volatile, and in a
mixed-group is pretty much guaranteed to erupt in a flame war.
I was once told in game chat by a US player that I could not use the
term "shit" because it was such an offensive word. I was surprised. In
scandinavia the word is so mild it basically means "ouch", it can even
have positive connotations "skitbra" == "shit good" (really good).
That mildness of "shit" is true of probably around half of americans,
too. Especially among the "Gen X" generation and younger (and of course
there's varying regional tendencies, too). For a LOT of us it's just
seen as a more normal and less Disney-ish way to say "ouch", "oops" or
"stuff". But then, the US was also home to Puritanism way back when, so
there's still a lot of those intolerance-disguised-as-ethics attitudes too.
Considering "shit" to be offensive enough to be banned is fairly
uncommon in the US, except for grade school/high school employees and
certain specific regional pockets known for being extremely conservative.
An example of the US's extreme duality with ethics:
When the Super Bowl had that Janet Jackson "incident", it's true that a
sizable chunk of the country went into a crazed puritanical "the sky is
falling" frenzy. But there were also just as many americans who were
pretty much with the rest of the world: "Uhh, what's the big deal?"
Personally, I think it's positively bonkers to worry about kids being
scarred by seeing something they themselves used to suck on, but whatever.
