Hacker News Reader

Swearing increases the effectiveness of other words.

Normal robot: "Going into that room could be hazardous or lead to death"

Bender: "If you go in that room you're going to fucking die"

Or decreases the effectiveness, as the listener perceives pain or offense or low intelligence, and tunes out the rest of the utterance.

Absolutely - repeated profanity is an invitation to ignore the speaker.

Sometimes, but I think most people are pretty simple and straightforward. There's a lot of smokers who hear the yearly "smoking increases your risk of heart disease and yadda yadda yadda..." and they still smoke.

Then my grandfather got told "if you don't quit smoking you're going to fucking die, and not a doctor on Earth can save you". And then he quit. 3 heart attacks in, by the way.

Intellectualizing everything isn't necessarily good for communication. Conversational tone can be powerful.

I'm so fuckin happy I have an easy way to filter people with this opinion out of my life. So self - righteous about how other people can behave.

If you want to persuade or otherwise influence people, you need to speak to the listener(s) on 'their ground'. Most people are repelled or neutral about profanity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com