Potty mouth police on the prowl
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 07:21AM I've been blogging here at Mommycosm for a little over 3 years now. I've gone through various stages along the way. I started out just allowing my brain to spill out onto the screen, doubting that anyone else would ever read my words. I was a stay-at-home mom who wondered if any of my brain cells from pre-babies still existed somewhere inside my foggy head.
Then I realized that, wait, people are reading. I have a voice. This is fun.
And kind of like a tween who suddenly realizes that Mom doesn't have eyes on the back of her head and she really doesn't know what you're doing when she's not watching: I started to swear. A lot at first. It was liberating. I even entertained myself one day trying to swear as much as possible to get my blog rating to go up to NC-17.
Then the appeal wore off. I started to find my true voice. Here at Mommycosm, I often write as I speak. Sometimes I use improper grammar. Sometimes I use CAPS to emphasize or italics to whisper. Yes, in actuality, I do occasionally swear in real life, so I keep it real here as well.
Shocking, I know.
For the record, I honestly don't trust adults who say they never swear. I also occasionally have a drink or two. In front of the kids.
*gasp*
I believe that responsibly drinking and occasionally letting a swear slip out in front of your kids sets a much better example than never being human in front of them at all. Making something look like a forbidden fruit ups the appeal as they get older.
You may not agree with that. You don't have to. I won't judge you.
But today we're focusing on swearing. As I've matured as a person and a writer here at Mommycosm. (Yes, I said writer. See, that's a huge step being able to call myself that.) I have learned that 99% of the time, for me, swearing is lazy writing. Choosing less profane words can actually make a story more interesting.
Which leaves 1%. I firmly believe that there are times when there is no other way to express myself except to swear. If I'm having a bad day, the ratio could go all the way up to 90/10. Some days I am too tired to be creative and swearing is an outlet. In real life and Mommycosm.
So, recently, I received a couple of comments on a post that is over a year old. You see, last summer I attempted to switch my blog host over from squarespace to wordpress. It didn't go very smoothly and I switched back to squarespace within 24 hours. I was reduced to tears and frustrated and exhausted by the process. Anyone who has a blog can probably appreciate the state of my mind at the time. When I wrote about it, I swore. Not a lot. Just once. It was a doozy. Even though it was less than 1% of my words, apparently it struck a nerve with a couple of people.
For instance:
I liked your reasons for changing back to Squarespace, but when I came to your STINKING, ATROCIOUS language I had to leave a post. What is wrong with you pig-mouthed people?
You don't know how to speak decent English. Go chew on a good, tasty bar of soap! Language such as yours has absolutely NO redeeming qualities, whatsoever. I will be sure to never visit your site again.
The more I read that, the more I laugh. He had to leave the post, but felt obligated to chastise me by scrolling down and writing a comment.
I seriously don't care if he never returns. I'm obviously not writing for him. But. Really?
I don't know about you, but if I don't like something that I'm reading online, I click away and go on with my life. There are so many voices out there and I know I'm not going to relate with them all. I don't judge them or scold them for being unlike me, I just walk away to somewhere else where I'm more comfortable.
So, to this person: I'm very sorry I offended you. I find that your prudish and judgy behaviour has NO redeeming qualities as well. Glad we've established that and we can go on living separate lives. Good luck walking around with your soap box attached to your feet.
(And...go on. Sing it all Phil Collins style, you know you want to...and for now, we'll go on living - separate lives.)
OK, moving on to the second one:
I wondered about you personally, about your other choices, about how high your bar is hoisted. About your spiritual orientation as a mom raising kids.
For swearing? You wonder about my spiritual orientation as a mom raising kids? How's this for spiritual orientation: go to hell.
OK, that was a little harsh. But seriously, my blog is not targeted at kids. It's not as if I read this post to my kids for their bedtime story. I was writing about something to do with blogging and web hosting. So don't come in the cosm for one post that has nothing to do with being a mom or kids and get all judgy on me about my parenting simply because I swore.
To my regular readers: beware. It appears the potty mouth police are on the prowl.
To anyone new around here: I will warn you that this blog is rated PG for occasional swearing and adult humor. I don't aspire to be a G rated blog. Please go read my About page. Pay particular attention to the end: "Don’t like it? Don’t read it."
I suppose now I need to add "Feel free to leave negative comments, but if you are going to judge me, be prepared to be judged in return."
Reader Comments (5)
I cuss. And I cuss a lot.
I have heard it said numerous times that cussing is proof that a person is lazy and uneducated since if they had a modicum of intelligence then they would be able to come up with words other than those belonging in a bar.
And you know what I say to those people? Kiss my ass. :)
Cussing is a useful way for me to better express myself and the emotions that I'm feeling at that particular moment. Hell, curse words are about the rawest examples of emotional words out there - they're almost onomatopoeias.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that I can vividly remember a comment left on my site like the ones you've gotten.
My favorite response is what you've already said: "Don’t like it? Don’t read it."
Wow. I can't imagine scolding a blogger for being a potty-mouth. Was the commenter your mom?
I love you - potty mouth or no. Period. End of story.
Are you f*cking kidding me? What kind of sh*thead leaves comments like that? {snort}
I used to cuss all the time and found it was just inauthentic in my writing. I have been toying with adding back in a few swear words because sometimes they actually can be sentence enhancers.
You make excellent points here, F*ck 'em if they don't like it. ( I wonder if your trolls will come make some nasty comments on my site now?!)
"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the naughty words and put both your hands flat on this abridged G-rated dictionary ..."