The titles on sites like pornhub are a lot worse. Sometimes I feel like they're automatically generated or something, with weird sexual fantasies that aren't even remotely in the video. It's become a bit of a meme, and it certainly has always been present but for example the incest stuff, it's just disturbing to me to the point where I greatly prefer browsing on Reddit just because the titles are more tame.
Another cultural thing, they've recently started automatically translating the titles to my native language, and I don't know why but the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me. Automatic translation is always annoying but here it's especially jarring.
>the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me.
It's the other way around: you're less emotionally connected to your second language. You're not phased by the most scurrilous elements of English, because of a combination of factors (like the way your brain processes a second language, and the fact that you did not grow up in a native English culture). Whereas you have a primary connection to Dutch and its native culture, so you instinctively know what is vulgar or disgusting in a much more direct way.
This is so much true. It's almost like swearing in English is not swearing at all, even in semi-formal context. You can tell the worst swear in English you can think of, and it just sounds harmless compared to swearing in local language.
I'd posit English doesn't have swear words anymore.
I'm a native English speaker and I've noticed that swearing no longer feels like a big deal. Our media and online discourse are saturated with the worst swears our language has to bear, to the point none of it hits with gravity.
I also think some of it has to do with changing generational attitudes. Millennials and Gen Z use swearing as friendly banter. You can call your casual friend a "fucking asshole", and as long as you're smiling and laughing, it's an endearing gesture. And if it were truly meant as a jab, it doesn't even sting.
The only words you can't (and shouldn't!) say are racial epithets. Those are untouchable. It's almost like what swear words themselves felt like when I was a child and knew I would be punished for saying "shit" or "damn".
> In medieval Bristol, one casually referred to a glade called Fuckinggrove, while up in Chester, one could proudly sport a name like Roger Fuckbythenavel. Only later did fuck become a word so dirty that generations of lexicographers pretended that it didn’t exist. And just as a word can attain the power of profane status, it can lose it....
> More broadly, while the sacred status of most of the words Carlin mentioned has weakened considerably, new words have arisen that occupy the same place in the culture. Aunt Ruth might have walked out of the room rather than listen to Carlin's disquisition when her nephew Craig played it on his record player. She seems so old-fashioned today, but how many of us would be up for watching a hot new comedian on Netflix gabbing cockily about how we need to get over n[*****] and f[*****]?
Edit: in reply to dead comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27896373: I'm pretty sure your comment is dead because you didn't "prudishly" redact the words I did, but I can add the brackets if it makes you happy.
> She seems so old-fashioned today, but how many of us would be up for watching a hot new comedian on Netflix gabbing cockily about how we need to get over n*** and f***?
If you are using symbols indicating quotations, then you don't do unmarked editorial alterations. The quote from the article is “...get over nigger and faggot?”
By making the changes without marking them as editorial alterations (e.g., “...n[*****] and f[*****]”) you are misattributing your prudishness to the source article.
no there are still words that are definitely forbidden to that degree. the reasons they are swears just are different due to cultural context. The worst swear you can say in english does not start with an F. It starts with an N.
It does, it just depends on your register, and they also change regularly.
Shit and damn used to be taboo, but they haven't been now for a while. However (in the American dialect, I think) "cunt" is pretty taboo, as well as the various racial terms, and "fuck" can be taboo depending on the context (i.e. you wouldn't use it to address your server at a restaurant).
I made the mistake when learning a second language of thinking that because those people were so comfortable swearing in English that they were just comfortable with swearing in general. So I threw around their swear words the same that they did mine.
I was astonished at their offense and didn't understand it for a long time.
I speak a non-European language and my experience is exactly the same. Swearing in my native tongue just sounds extremely vulgar. Swearing in English - no problem.
I'm learning Russian and I seriously have to think twice if I want to swear in Russian because I feel like I'd be crossing a line, there's nothing casual about it.
I don't feel quite the same about Spanish, although the expletives that are more layered in metaphor amuse me more than anything else. Me cago en la leche!
I'm turned off of the whole thing by how easy it is to end up watching something I would rather not, without knowing it.
For example, if you're just browsing for thumbnails that look good, and you click forward to the action, there's a decent chance you're unknowingly watching some kind of rape or exploitation scenario. Some are just silly, like stepmom's arm is stuck in the couch, but others are sleazy and many would be crimes in real life. I don't think such content should be censored, but it doesn't make a great fantasy for me, and I don't like the undercurrent of wondering if my engagement with whatever video I'm watching is contributing to some marketing drone saying, "The stepdad-punishing-teen-daughter-with-sex genre is trending, let's push it hard today!"
Another thing that vividly stuck in my mind was seeing a photo of an actress I recognized in a news headline: teen victim of car accident identified as 19-year-old runaway. The reason it stuck in my mind was the realization that I had been jerking off to her videos for easily four years, maybe longer. Such a thing shouldn't be shocking. If people will obtain forged proof of age documents to win Little League tournaments, they'll do it to make money, right? But that was pretty sobering and made it hard to look at young attractive women on my laptop without wondering how old they are and if maybe I should watch something else instead.
Don't get me wrong; I don't abstain completely. I've just developed a distaste that keeps me away a lot of the times when otherwise I would gladly partake.
I feel like titles - both on PH and Youtube - tend to get optimized either automatically or by the uploaders themselves. It has overlaps with marketing and SEO, linkbait and optimizing page / article titles to draw in the most views.
Youtube also - sometimes - translates video titles, which in some cases is convenient (like Japanese videos). But that's the thing, from a Dutch standpoint you can read English titles just fine, but sites like Pornhub, Youtube are international affairs, and assuming everyone knows some English, while fair enough, is not actually a global truth and there's plenty of non-western countries where English is a lot more uncommon. I do believe 'our' generation (in NL) knows good English because we grew up with the early internet, which was a lot bigger if you could read and write English. But the current generation is landing in a much more internationalized internet.
> The titles on sites like pornhub are a lot worse.
I don't agree. Even the most misogynistic stuff there doesn't actively try to draw in the viewer to the same degree, and most importantly, it allows the women a much clearer separation of what they're doing before the camera and who they really are. They don't have to advertise it and tell random strangers "you can have that too!".
Another cultural thing, they've recently started automatically translating the titles to my native language, and I don't know why but the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me. Automatic translation is always annoying but here it's especially jarring.