BEVS

Evening Gordon.
Sorry for the tardy reply. We felt we needed a few days break from the development next door so found ourselves a lovely little b&b set among many vineyards.

Internet Brands owns BE , along with several other forums. They also own VBulletin, the software the forums run on . BE's version is rather old and creaky.

Me personally? I would substitute the asterisks for daft words or fabricated words . For example " Blossoms" or "Stinkies" or something fun. However that is not a sole choice for the BE admin. That would need approval and a software program tweak from an IT person at Internet Brands.

I am not sure on the virtue-signalling thing. That is a new phrase and not something I use in every day language. It seems to mean some sort of moral stance. I am not sure that is the reason for the sweary filters as such, especially given BE has been around for over 20 years .

It is/was more about making BE palatable for everyone. I suppose if the software had been more versatile , it could have allowed all manner of words and phrases in the TIO forum and not elsewhere but that is not possible.

Mind you I have to say that without the filter in place , BE would be peppered with much that is more than unpalatable old-fashioned swear words. You might be surprised just how & what some will write to a forum given half a chance. It is not pretty.

christmasoompa

Cuss-words are already banned as per site rules ('obscene or vulgar language'). But people ignore the rules, and mods don't read every post. So the ****'s that replace words automatically do a good job IMO, it would be far worse without them.

Pollyana

Definitely agree there.
I also remember from back in my day that there were a few companies whose names were turned into ******. From memory there was only about half a dozen, but they were companies who had had "ïssues" with BE - they didn't like the way people were posting about them, exposing bad marketing, that kind of thing. The Mods have always been far too busy to constantly trawl the forums looking for mentions of those companies, so they were just turned into ***** thus avoiding complaints, and threats of legal action. The same was done with at least two "rival" forums, which were causing unrest and nasty insults.

Gordon Barlow

Thanks for the explanation, BEVS. It's always good when oddities are explained. The term "virtue-signalling" is indeed new, but I like it. Like the dismissive "meh" - I wonder how we managed to last so long without it!

Alternatives to nasty words abound. Here's one from the Caribbean that I hadn't heard before my son aged eight came home with a story from his RE (Religious Education) class one day. Jesus was promised a horse for his big entry into Jerusalem, but a horse wasn't available and he had to settle for a donkey. "How would you have reacted if you'd been in his shoes?" The pastor asked. "What would you have said to the animal's owner?" Mark - Indian-Jamaican, middle class and well spoken - blurted indignantly. "I'd tell him about his father!" (I tell im bat e fahdah!) The class roared with laughter at something so borderline-naughty. The point of the story is that if he had said "mother" (muddah) instead of father, he would have crossed the line into invective that would have eared him a clip on the ear or worse. Just an illustration of what is available in the English-speaking world besides all the effing and blinding.

A New Zealand tennis player in our Club, when angry for making a bad shot, used to bellow "et ta soeur!" - French for "and your sister!" I think. That might (or might not) have given BE's minotaurs something to grumble about. I mean monitors, of course... Silly me.

Gordon Barlow

Polly. I can see why some names are censored if they were somehow (?) risking BE's reputation - although surely they could have been simply stricken from the posts instead of being replaced with asterisks. No? As for the two or three rival forums causing unrest and insults, was it really the asterisk'd names that sent them on their way? And by the way, why can't the rival forums and their nasty insults be named, at this late date? Does the bar really need to be set quite so low?

I wonder if the monitors and top management aren't throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. It all seems a wee bit paranoid.

Gordon Barlow

Very interesting, BEVS. I looked up Internet Brands on the Internet, and on Wikipedia. I've never known before, how BE and similar sites are ruled, and I still can't quite fathom how they make money out of BE and similar. Friends have explained to me how WhatsApp makes money, but I'm too dumb to understand that, too. I never buy stuff on the Internet, so I guess that's why I've never noticed how information about me might be used. The only thing I have noticed is that my YouTube choices are all gathered together, which is handy! I have my Favourites there, and they all come up together, pretty much. When I look up a WILTY half-hour, my Bob Dylan favourites are right there beside it in case I'm in the mood. Magic!

Thanks for the info!

Gordon Barlow

Of all the naughty words that are disguised with asterisks, the N-WORD ('n' plus five asterisks) is surely the most offensive. Well, most of the time. And unless used by African Americans. in on-stage comedy sketches, anyway. Chris Rock has a clever and funny sketch of the sole circumstances in which it can be used with impunity by a white man in the USA. (I'm not sure YouTube even carries it, but maybe it does.) Dave Chappelle also uses the word regularly, just as a tease. It may surprise BE members to learn that it and some of its variants are used and tolerated in a British colony in the Caribbean. Yes! Here in Cayman! Not by white expats: not ever. But by everybody else, from time to time. Two examples: N-WORD + ish defines a stupid act or attitude, and N-WORD + itis is a fake illness.

I well remember the shock - when new on the Island back in 1978 - of hearing "us N-WORD-plural can sit on the floor" spoken cheerfully by a white local in a mixed-race gathering of friends. Memorable indeed! I also remember the one occasion in my 44 years here when I myself actually spoke it, when circumstances required that I use it. I promise! Hard to believe, perhaps, but absolutely true. It makes a good story, but... well... Our BE monitors are sensitive folk, and even my "N-WORD" substitution may not be evasion enough for them to allow. If this present post survives the week, I will take that as permission to post the story. I wouldn't use the WORD itself, of course. No. I would use the "N-WORD" substitution. Or 'n' plus five asterisks, if I did asterisks, which I don't. Oh dear. Emergency Board Meeting in the boss's office. Fingers crossed, eh?

Gordon Barlow

For those who don't know it... On BE's "Lounge" Forum there is a thread called "Stories from my past", started by Lion in Winter a few months ago. Some good stuff there, starting with a series of photos of some local inhabitants living on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. Well worth a look.

My son lived in a treehouse overlooking the Lake for six months in the early 2000s; in theory, he still owns the land he bought there. I very much doubt the treehouse is still there - but if it is then he owns that too. In theory...

Gordon Barlow

Today's casual slang can become tomorrow's taboo-word, and vice-versa. Often, it depends on the context. Most times, the Australian term "pommie" or "pom" is dismissive or contemptuous. I myself never use it, and it's a wonder to me that English people accept it without protest. Why is that?

The 1970s film "The Adventures of Barry McKenzie" gives a classic example of the usage. As I recall it, the P-word was almost always followed by the naughty B-WORD. (The third-line's context is that in those days, Australian men never wore their hair long.)
... So I told him straight, "I'm Australian, mate,
And I feel like getting plastered.
But the beer is crook and the girls all look
Like you, ya Pommie B-WORD!"

Not nice!

morpeth

Gordon, I did my Leaving Certificate in Perth, and greeted the first year regularly as Pommie B. Never really bothered me though depended a lot on the tone of voice used- and in any case after a few months developed some great friendships. I have family in Brisbane with similar experience.A second cousin just a few years back visiting the UK asked me 'why do the Pommies do that', so the word has not disappeared it seems.

I have a cousin who fought in the Australian forces in Vietnam, and two in the American forces in Vietnam- the Australian cousin would routinely be introduced as a Pommie B to the Yanks who didn't understand the word so had confused look on their faces, which became a sort of standing joke to the Australians.

I had never played Rugby before and I was put on Rugby team- first match I got cut and was bleeding a bit, I started to leave field but coach yelled at me " You Pommie B, you have no bones broken so get back in the match". I remember going to a club which didn't serve alcohol to us, but would charge us for using a glass- which they dutifully would replace regularly. We would carry in flagons of wine or other drinks, and drink merrily through the night. Great lifestyle in Perth in those days, I have fond memories of Australia (cuisine though perhaps even worse than the UK at the time).

In those days some young Australians did the 'trek' , to Bali, then somehow to Earls Court in London.

As I understand it, the word came from either the more pink faces of recent British immigrants ( like 'pomegranate') , or POME ( prisoner of mother England). In any case seems we were just less offended in those days, and it was part of a ritual of fitting in Australian society.

Today can be a minefield with all sorts of words offending all sorts of people, hard to keep up sometime with all the heightened sensitivities.

BEVS

I like this phrase. It gives one pause for thought.

Gordon Barlow

(No. 142 above)
Well, here's the story. It happened in my earliest days as captain of a cricket team. One Sunday, we were batting against a rival team, and a new bowler came on – a young black chap who was new to me. As keeper of the scorebook I asked my team-mates who he was. “You don’t know him? That’s N-WORD Charlie.”

“Ohh-kay. Well, I can’t write that! What's his real name?" "We don’t know. Nobody knows. People only ever calls him N-WORD Charlie. Just write it down." "No!" "Well, here, I'll write it down for you." "No! Not in my scorebook. Jesus!” Gales of laughter at my discomfort, from everybody of all colours who heard the exchange. Red-faced and unamused, I left a blank space for his name until the lunch-break, when I went up to the man himself and asked him. He told me, and I wrote it down - Edward Forbes or something like that.

Next week, some member of our team who had missed the game was flipping through the scorebook. He pointed at the name and asked "Who's that?" I hesitated a second (one-Mississippi...), and grimaced. "That's N-WORD Charlie,” I said. He nodded in recognition. "A good bowler. Fast, man!"

Gordon Barlow

In Cayman one year (1981) I toured parts of southern England with a team called "The Village Greenies", and we did actually get to play on some real village greens. It was a select team, eligibility for which was a willingness to pay for the trip and to give up one's vacation time. Ross and I went (he was aged six at the time), and among our collage of snapshots here on the wall at home is a photo of Ross batting throw-downs from Charlie Griffith, our celebrity guest-player.

Charlie was a West Indies legend. He and Wes Hall were the best fast-bowling pair in the world, for a few years in the 1960s, and Charlie was ferocious. He was down to medium-pace in 1981, but as competitive as ever. "The most disgraceful piece of fielding I've seen in my life!" He told me with withering contempt, when I let a leg-glance through for a boundary at Budleigh Salterton. Well, maybe he was telling the truth, at that. So when he offered to give us all some throw-downs, later, I sent Ross in instead of me.

Gordon Barlow

In my post number 8 of this thread a while back, I reported on the John Frum "cargo cult" on the island of Tanna in what was then The New Hebrides - Nouvelles Hebrides in French - and now the independent nation of Vanuatu. I was telling about the cult the other night, and one of my listeners said it reminded him of his (and my) favourite limerick. Which I shall now produce, for the laughter it generated...
A religious young girl from Cape Cod
Believed babies all came from God.
But 'twas not the Almighty
Who lifted her nightie -
It was Roger the lodger, the sod!

A wee bit off-topic, granted; but worth the side-trip, I think.

scrubbedexpat142

When about 14 my Mother's Boss was a bigwig at Glamorgan County cricket club.
One day he took me to some sort of celebrity match and I was introduced to Gary Sobers.
I also got to meet Penny Plummer, reigning Miss World (& Miss Australia)!