Profanity

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.

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.

A nine-year-old boy asked ChatGPT, “Is yo' mama so dumb that when she went to sleep, she put a ruler behind her pillow to see how long she slept?” The chatbot replied, “I'm sorry, but as an AI language model I don't have a ‘mama’ or the ability to feel insulted.”

The nine-year-old's real mom, journalist Linda McRobbie, was disturbed by her son's rude question. She’s not alone. Researchers estimate 54% of all conversations with chatbots contain profanity (often directed at the bot) and 65% contain sexual language. In 2019, about 30% of conversations with Mitsuku, an advanced chatbot contained abusive or sexually harassing language.

We might rationalize that a chatbot is just a thing with no feelings. So, what's the big deal about rudeness? Several things.

One is that part of our brains register our conversation with a chatbot as a social interaction with another person. When we hear the chatbot's voice, we think it's a real person, according to technology researchers.

Secondly, these AI assistants are designed to learn from our interactions with them. Our foul or abusive language may be training Alexa to talk back to us the same way.

Thirdly, we're training ourselves. Author and MIT professor, Sherry Turkle, who studies our relationship with technology says, "Abusing ... Siri, Replika (and other chatbots) coarsens us, not because the chatbots have feelings, but because we do." Forty years of research suggests that “venting” rage even at an inanimate object doesn't reduce anger. It just helps us rehearse it. There's even evidence that how we talk to our chatbots could start to shape our interactions with people.

The moral might be: “Be kind to thy chatbot because you’re practicing human relations.”

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.

After three days of unsuccessful attempts to lure her pet parrot, Jessie, off the roof of her home, a London resident called for help, first from an animal welfare agency, and then from firefighters. When the London Fire Brigade arrived on the scene, Jessie gave them a nasty surprise.

"****-off," she reportedly said.

Watch manager Chris Swallow explained the firefighters' protocol for the animal rescue.

"Our crew manager was the willing volunteer who went up the ladder to try and bring Jessie down. We were told that to bond with the parrot, you have to tell her 'I love you', which is exactly what the crew manager did. While Jessie responded 'I love you' back, we then discovered that she had a bit of a foul mouth and kept swearing, much to our amusement."

As it turned out, Jessie was fine. After a few minutes interacting with the crew manager, the Macaw parrot flew off, first to another roof and then onto a tree.

Embarrassed by her parrot's conduct, Jessie's owner uploaded to Twitter a video of her pet saying "Thank you."

Potential Preaching Angle: Ungratefulness can be a habit that spreads, even to those whom we think are not paying attention. Gratitude, on the other hand, is always useful, even when it's late.

Do you think your boss is tough or unfair? Try working for the world's worst boss—Mike Davis, aka Tiger Mike. Davis started as a chauffeur and rose to become a Houston oil and gas magnate. But he earned an even more notoriety as "the world's worst boss" and "the world's grumpiest boss." Throughout his career he routinely issued grumpy memos to his employees.

For instance, on January 11th, 1978 he sent the following terse memo to all his employees: "Idle conversation and gossip in this office among employees will result in immediate termination. DO YOUR JOBS AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!"

A month later he banned office birthday parties with the following memo: "There will be no more birthday celebrations, birthday cakes, levity, or celebrations of any kind within the office. This is a business office. If you have to celebrate, do it after office hours on your own time."

In another memo he explained why he could swear but his employees couldn't: "I swear, but since I am the owner of this company, that is my privilege, and this privilege is not to be interpreted as the same for any employee. That differentiates me from you, and I want to keep it that way. There will be absolutely no swearing, by any employee, male or female, in this office, ever."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Employer; Jobs; Work—a great way to set up a sermon on the difficulties and challenges of work. (2) Encouragement—a good example of how NOT to act as a boss or how not to encourage people in your life.

We all know bad manners are toxic. But new research now shows that bad manners can kill. In this study, when doctors spoke rudely to their staff, both accuracy and performance suffered. The medical teams exposed to bad behavior and nasty comments demonstrated poorer diagnostic and procedural performance than those who were not exposed to incivility.

As the lead researchers commented: "Relatively benign forms of incivility among medical staff members—simple rudeness—have robust implications on medical team collaboration processes and thus on their performance as a team."

Rudeness and lack of kindness undermine people's ability to think clearly and make good decisions. It steals confidence and weakens motivation.

Editor's Note: On a positive note, we could assume that there is just as much power for good in simple and ordinary acts of kindness and gentleness.

Matthew Mitchell explains how he uses a simple object lesson to illustrate "the principle of overflow," which simply means that our words overflow from what's already in our hearts.

I held up a bottle of water and then poured the water out on the platform. Then I asked our church family, "Why is there now water on the floor?" Everyone laughed nervously because the answer was so obvious.

Then I asked, "But why is there water on the floor and not Pepsi or Kool-Aid?" Now besides the fact that I would have gotten into major trouble with the custodian if I had poured Pepsi or Kool-Aid on the carpet, the truth is, there was water on the floor because there had been water in the bottle. Similarly, Jesus said, "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." What's inside us determines what comes out of us.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of Words That Hurt, Words That Heal, has lectured throughout this country on the powerful, and often negative, impact of words. He often asks audiences if they can go 24 hours without saying any unkind words about, or to, another person. Invariably, a small number of listeners raise their hands, signifying "yes." Others laugh, and quite a large number call out, "no!"

Telushkin responds: "Those who can't answer 'yes' must recognize that you have a serious problem. If you cannot go 24 hours without drinking liquor, you are addicted to alcohol. If you cannot go 24 hours without smoking, you are addicted to nicotine. Similarly, if you cannot go 24 hours without saying unkind words about others, then you have lost control over your tongue."

"What was passing for humor basically ranged from stupid to vulgar—and I just thought, 'I'm not going to be a part of this.'"

—Emmy-winning actress and pro-life activist Patricia Heaton, star of the TV series Everybody Loves Raymond explaining why she walked out in the middle of this year's American Music Awards ceremony.