I've been playing multiplayer games, most of them PC shooters, for a very long time (over ten years) and throughout that time I have almost no recollection of anyone ever calling anyone else a '******.' This is probably because most of my online time was spent on well-moderated dedicated servers, where using any type of profanity or purposefully offensive language was likely to get you kicked/banned.
It seems in the last few years, '******' has become the insult-du-jour to be slung around like a big wet sack full of fecal matter and rocks, a paradigm shift of which I was blissfully unaware until the last couple of years.
It doesn't make sense to me. How does '******' trump any other insult in terms of emotional impact? Why call someone out on their sexual orientation instead of their ignorance, foolishness, clumsiness, or general lack of skill? Or, if '******' is instead being used as a substitute term for indicating these characteristics, then why not just call someone a douche, an asshat, a jackass, or a loser? Personally, when I hear someone being called a '******', or am called as such myself, I feel much less insult than I do shame and embarrassment to be sharing the same spaces as the kind of people who think that qualifies as appropriate critical language, even in an informal sense.
Why has homosexuality become correlated with bad characteristics to the point where accusing someone of it can be used as a catchall insult? How can so many people think that the word '******' can be easily substituted for an actual point? Is it strictly homophobia and prejudice? Are the old insults just not good enough anymore? Do people just think being crass helps get other people's attention?
What's going on here?
Mod Edit: Fair warning to those that wish to disrupt the discussion or troll this thread: we are holding the banhammer ready... kinda like a game of wack-a-mole.
It seems in the last few years, '******' has become the insult-du-jour to be slung around like a big wet sack full of fecal matter and rocks, a paradigm shift of which I was blissfully unaware until the last couple of years.
It doesn't make sense to me. How does '******' trump any other insult in terms of emotional impact? Why call someone out on their sexual orientation instead of their ignorance, foolishness, clumsiness, or general lack of skill? Or, if '******' is instead being used as a substitute term for indicating these characteristics, then why not just call someone a douche, an asshat, a jackass, or a loser? Personally, when I hear someone being called a '******', or am called as such myself, I feel much less insult than I do shame and embarrassment to be sharing the same spaces as the kind of people who think that qualifies as appropriate critical language, even in an informal sense.
Why has homosexuality become correlated with bad characteristics to the point where accusing someone of it can be used as a catchall insult? How can so many people think that the word '******' can be easily substituted for an actual point? Is it strictly homophobia and prejudice? Are the old insults just not good enough anymore? Do people just think being crass helps get other people's attention?
What's going on here?
Mod Edit: Fair warning to those that wish to disrupt the discussion or troll this thread: we are holding the banhammer ready... kinda like a game of wack-a-mole.
