Appropriateness of posts

[Nick Sabalausky]

On 3/18/2014 2:59 AM, "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" 
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at 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.