You Tweet At Your Mother With That Mouth?

Derek Mead parses a new study that details the cursing habits of Twitter users:

While it should come as no surprise that “fuck” is the star of the show, I didn’t expect that it would represent more than a third of all swear words said. And the swearing is really concentrated. According to the paper, “the top seven curse words – fuck, shit, ass, bitch, nigga, hell and whore cover 90.55% of all the curse word occurrences.” What, no love for damn or crap?

Mario Aguilar highlights another interesting finding:

We all know that we swear when we’re angry or frustrated, but the study interestingly points out that in the real-world, people also tend to swear in more relaxed environments because they’re less likely to be called out by people around them. This remains true online, but the disparity between relaxed environments and places where people tend to be more buttoned up barely registers. According to the study’s conclusion:

We find that users do curse more in relaxed environments, but the differences across different environments are very small, partly due to the fact that Twitter messages are posted in virtual digital world.

In other words, you could say that Twitter turns everywhere into your living room. Is that why I can’t stop cursing online? That’s for you to fucking decide.