Friday, April 12, 2013

K is for Keep Your Language Hang-Ups Off My Blog


As some of you will be aware, I have come under fire recently for my use of language. No one seemed to notice or care about my use of language until I signed up for the A to Z Challenge this year, which I am still, doing, even though the other members of the Bitchery Triad quit on the first day. But what can you expect from a couple of b*&ches.

All for one my ass.

After I signed up for the A to Z Challenge, I was asked to watch my language even though there’s nothing about that in the official rules (I checked) and I appear to be the only one who was asked (and I know I’m not the only one who drops an occasional f-bomb online). 

I wasn’t keen on the thought of putting an adult content warning on my blog – I’ve had one in the past and it freaks people out. They hunt me down and say things like “I tried to read your blog post but when I clicked on the link it sent me to a porn site,” and stuff like that. Not everyone is as familiar with the blogosphere as we are. So, instead, I put in place this nifty header that you see above. I also reverted back to my old habit of inserting symbols (*&^%&) instead of letters in the middle of dirty words because, as we all know, that changes their meaning.

Even after I put in the header I still got comments about how I need to watch my language because THERE ARE CHILDREN ON THIS INTERNET. As my brilliant friend Kelly pointed out, “You know somewhere out there in cyberspace there is an orgy featuring dwarves and a guy in a unicorn costume getting busy in a vat of creamed corn, but it’s your swear words that are going to ruin the children.”

I’m not trying to be insensitive to little people by including that remark – I’m pretty sure that in this scenario, the dwarves in question are the ones from Snow White. In other words, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’m not here to parent other peoples’ children. If your kids are getting on the Internet, you should be right there watching everything they do, not depending on content creators to keep the interwebs family-friendly for your benefit. 

It may also shock you to know that if your kids are under 13, they aren’t allowed to make accounts on Facebook or Blogger or almost any other website not specifically aimed at children, because compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 is so difficult. Keep that in mind the next time you feel the itch to correct someone’s language “for the sake of the children.”

Oh crap, I just did research at you.