David Banks, a self-proclaimed profanity enthusiast, spies two societal trends that he thinks could expand our pool of expletives:
The first is economic stagnation. … [T]he social taboo against swearing has everything to do with keeping your status. The very poor and the very rich (two classes that continue to grow in our present economic situation) have always been comfortable and blatant in their swearing. Swearing bears no risk if you don’t have anything to lose or are so well-heeled that there is no one else in the room that you need to impress. Only the upwardly mobile bourgeoisie are afraid of swearing. One could say that the socioeconomic climate is primed for swearing experimentation.
The second trend is the decentralization of media. Podcasts, YouTube videos, blog, and even Netflix and Hulu exclusive content are all subject to far less regulation than radio or television. The words you cannot say on television are still the same, but there are plenty of other venues to test out new swear words. It’s strange then, that given all the Internet-inspired new words that have made it into dictionaries over the past decade (e.g. tweet, defriend, uplink), none of them are swears or curses.
“Headfuck” and “knobhead” don’t count? Regarding the NSFW video seen above:
A tipster forwarded us the following expletive and CAPS-ridden email tirade, sent to the entire [Delta Gamma] sorority chapter [at the University of Maryland] by one of its executive board members, that will go down in history as one of the most passionate denunciations of FUCKING AWKWARD AND BORING-ness ever committed to words.
The Dish 