Blasphemy

New research analyzing nearly 2 billion words from websites across 20 English-speaking countries reveals that Americans lead the pack in online profanity, outswearing even the Brits and Australians by a significant margin.

The findings flip common stereotypes on their head. While we might expect foul-mouthed Aussies or pub-going Brits to claim the digital cursing crown, it’s actually Americans who dominate online vulgarity.

Researchers noted in their study that “The United States, often associated with protestant puritanism, Christian fervor, and prudishness, show the highest rates of vulgarity in online discourse, followed by Great Britain.”

Online anonymity and informal communication styles enable this linguistic freedom. Unlike face-to-face conversations constrained by social hierarchies and formal expectations, digital spaces often feel like consequence-free zones for verbal expression.

Despite common perceptions that Australians are the most profane English speakers —Americans claim the digital crown for creative cursing. Americans apparently reserve their strongest expressions for online spaces where they feel freer to let loose.

When children are exposed to violence on TV and in video games, studies show they tend to become more aggressive themselves. But a study reveals that even just exposure to swear words in media may lead children to become more physically aggressive as well.

In a study involving middle-schoolers in Missouri, researchers asked the students about their exposure to profanity in the media — in particular on television and in video games — as well as their attitudes about swear words and their tendencies toward aggressive behavior. The scientists measured both physical aggression (by asking students whether they hit, kicked, or punched others) and relational aggression (by asking them whether they gossiped about others to damage their reputations).

The researchers calculated that exposure to profanity had about the same relationship to aggressive behavior as exposure to violence on TV or in video games. In addition, they found that the more children were exposed to profanity, they more likely they were to use swear words themselves, and those who used profanity were more likely to become aggressive toward others. Study leader Sarah Coyne said:

From using profanity to aggressive behavior, it was a pretty strong correlation. And these are not even the worst [profane] words that kids are exposed to, since there are seven dirty words that you’re not allowed to say on TV. So, we’re seeing that even exposure to lower forms of profanity are having an effect on behavior.

While bullying behavior was not specifically addressed in the study, children who are more aggressive are known to be more likely to bully. So, controlling youngsters’ exposure to profanity may be one way to stem the tide of bullying among teens.

In November 2019, Coldplay released their eighth album, Everyday Life. In twenty years of professional music, it was the first time that any of Coldplay’s records came with the famous “Parental Advisory” sticker. The whole of the album’s profanity came from three seemingly random “f-bombs.” Not only had Coldplay never had an explicit content warning on any album before. They had never even featured a single profanity on any of their full-length LPs before Everyday Life.

Less than a year later, Taylor Swift released Folklore. The same exact thing happened. Despite a 15+ year history of recording that featured zero strong profanity, Folklore earned the black and white sticker for featuring multiple uses of the f-word. This started a trend for Swift: Every album released since has the same profanity and the same explicit content warning (as is common in the industry, the albums each have a “clean” version that edits out the harshest words).

Both Coldplay and Taylor Swift have historically appealed to a younger, more sensitive demographic. They have a long and successful history of selling their music without profanity.

Tech writer Samuel D. Jones offers the following observations on the use of profanity by Coldplay, Swift, and other artists:

We live in an era where the combination of authenticity and vice means that we are seeing some examples of performative offense. Performative offense is what happens when people indulge in vice less out of a sincere desire to indulge it, and more out of a desire to sell their image in the public square. It’s because many modern Americans now associate vice with authentic lives that leaders and those who aspire to leadership may flaunt vulgar or antisocial behavior on the grounds that such things make them “real” to the masses.

In other words, it’s cool to be bad. It’s cool to sin a little.

These days, just turning on the television seems to trigger a blitzkrieg of F-bombs.

“We’re seeing a big spike in the use of crude and profane language in movies and TV shows,” says Chad Michael, CEO of EnjoyMoviesYourWay.com, a content-filtering service for smart TVs. He adds, “As it increases, we become numb to it. And that gives writers and media [outlets] permission to add even more.”

Engineers at EnjoyMoviesYourWay.com deploy artificial intelligence to identify crude language in programming, allowing the app to filter thousands of titles. In an analysis for The Wall Street Journal, Enjoy scanned over 60,000 popular movies and TV shows released since 1985 and tracked the usage of bleepable words over time.

In the analysis, usage of the F-word went from 511 in 1985 to 22,177 through early November 2023. The S-word went from 484 in 1985 to 10,864 into November 2023. Of course, the explosion in expletives is also partly due to the sheer volume of programming that’s now available to viewers.

U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee recently expressed remorse for her words after an unverified audio recording of her was released to the public. Jackson Lee, who is running for mayor of Houston, was recorded chastising an unnamed staffer with an abusive tone that included several instances of profanity.

The woman in the recording, who sounds like Jackson Lee, said, “I want you to have a (expletive) brain. I want you to have read it. I want you to say, ’Congresswoman, it was such and such date. That’s what I want. That’s the kind of staff that I want to have.” In the recording she’s also heard describing another staffer as a “fat (expletive) idiot.”

While neither confirming nor denying the authenticity of recording, Jackson Lee maintained her desire to treat all her staff members with dignity and respect, and acknowledged that because of her eagerness to effectively serve her constituents, she occasionally falls short of her own standard of conduct.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those entrusted with positions of authority and responsibility have an obligation to watch what they say. Leaders and public servants need to use words to build up, not to tear down with insults or profanity.

An English tourist attraction had to scramble after one of their exhibits was temporarily less than family friendly. Officials at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park were forced to remove five newly adopted parrots after the birds were discovered swearing at park guests. They were unsure how it happened exactly, but after the five parrots had been quarantined together, they came out with quite the blue vocabulary. Apparently, the park staff found it amusing at first, but that only encouraged the parrots to say more obscenities.

Park CEO Steve Nichols explained the dynamic:

For the last 25 years, we have always taken in parrots that have sometimes had a bit of blue language and we have really got used to that. But, just by coincidence, we took in five in the same week and because they were all quarantined together it meant that one room was just full of swearing birds … the more they swear, the more you usually laugh, which then triggers them to swear again. But when you get four or five together that have learned the swearing and the laughing so when one swears, one laughs. Before you know, it just got to be like an old working men’s club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing.

Possible Preaching Angle:

If we consistently spend time with those who use words carelessly, we will eventually join them in their foolishness.

The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Scotland, is hosting a series of exhibitions called "Made in God's Image." Organized by a company called Culture and Sport Glasgow, the exhibition includes Untitled 2009—a simple, opened Bible. Next to the Bible is a container of pens and a notice which reads, "If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it."

There are a number of things disconcerting about such an invitation—chiefly, it makes us the subject and the Bible an object that can bend to every whim and agenda. But what is worth noting is the venomous response of people who have visited the exhibit. Visitors have responded to the invitation by daubing the Bible's pages with a litany of angry and lewd comments. One person wrote: "This is all sexist pish [a word used to express deep disdain], so disregard it all." Another wrote on the first page of Genesis, "I am Bi, Female, and Proud. I want no God who is disappointed in this." Others have even taken the opportunity to alter verses, including Genesis 1:1, to prove that everything about the Bible and God himself is man-made.

The producers of the exhibition have indicated that the most offensive pages will be removed, but Christians in the U.K. are angry that the show had been staged at all. "This is symbolic of the state of our broken and lawless society," said Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre. "We have got to a point where we call the desecration of the Bible modern art. The Bible stands for everything this art does not: for creation, beauty, hope, and regeneration."

Actor Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in the winter blockbuster Lord of the Rings, confesses,"Whenever I stay at a hotel, I always check to see if they have a Gideon Bible, and if they do I tear out a page," says the openly gay actor. "I turn to Leviticus 18:22 and rip out that page, which is directed against homosexuals…. I think by now I must have ripped out a few hundred."

His motives, McKellen adds, are purely altruistic.

"Who knows? There might be someone who has insomnia… who reads the Bible because they have nothing else to do and who might be especially vulnerable to what I really think is Leviticus's pornography."

The First Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. What does this mean? Answer: We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

The Second Commandment: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. What does this mean? Answer: We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, conjure, lie, or deceive by his name, but call upon him in every time of need, and worship him with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

I am disturbed when I hear believers say "Lord" thoughtlessly. Many Christians are guilty of making Christ only a figurehead while continuing to run their lives just as they did before. It may be possible to fake the lordship of Christ now, but in the days when Paul wrote the letter to Romans, "Lord" was not a word used flippantly by the church.