If you can read that, you probably swear as much as I do and you know just what I meant instead of using the actual words. Those are not good, respectable words, actually.
I find myself using more "foul" words lately - more than in previous times. Our mass and (un) social communications are full of the foul and getting - er, well - fouler.
As a journalist/broadcaster for several decades, I usually know the right words - the respectable words - to use. I was raised in a home where "not a discouraging word" was used or heard. In short, I know better.
But, as a casual Facebook user, I'm amazed - and often disgusted - by the continual use of such printed words in postings. Both in memes and individually written texts.
Sometimes, the gutter words - F***, S***, pi***d and more - seem to be in nearly every post. They're used - and reposted - by people I know who don't all use such words in everyday activities. For others, they're probably repulsed by those who use them. But, we all know what they are.
They've become verbal crutches for many who think their use makes them sound more angry or more "adult" or "authoritarian." In the stands at sporting events, heard at an adjoining table in a restaurant or just used in otherwise normal, day-to-day talk or postings between acquaintances.
As a society, we've either become more accepting of their use or we've learned to ignore them. They add nothing to any communication so if you block them out, you won't have missed anything.
For most of us, the shock value - if there ever was such a thing - has worn off. Maybe that's why they creep into our speech without a second thought. I read more of them in a week online than I remember hearing in a year, living on a military mountaintop above the Arctic Circle with 50 other guys 60 years ago.
It wasn't so long ago the American public was shocked - shocked, I tell you - when Clark Gable said to Vivian Leigh in Gone With The Wind, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" Now, you hear a lot worse than that on your TV any night of the week. You can even watch "constipated" actors sitting on toilets or bears in the woods wiping their butts with the latest tissue. The goal posts for shock value have been moved way, way down the field.
The overall courseness in our nation is an ever-present and growing societal reality. You don't like it. I don't like it. But, it's hard to escape. Politicians are using the "bad words" in speeches. (See Trump rallies.) Older folks, raised in more restrictive times, now post or re-post online words I would have gotten a soapy mouthwash for at home. A lot of young people - who certainly know better - pepper conversations and texts with 'em. They're everywhere.
We've gotten way past "damn" or "hell" or other such old expletives. The new, casual, more common use of profanity has worked its way into our usual, casual everyday language. Most of us try to ignore it. Most of us don't regularly use them. But it's ever-present. And we're getting inured to it.
Damn!