Honest Question

[Occhidiangela]

Ok, really. Discussion time.

What exactly is PG13?

Thoughts? Opinions? Flames?
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1. Entropy.

2. You are old enough to know better.

It doesn't matter that movies with PG-13 drop profanity now and again. They do so in an attempt to "be edgy" based on the perceived notion that without profanity, they'll lose teenage market share and "relevance" in a social context that has long since departed from civility. In a related note, George Carlin's overuse of profanity in his current form is instructive. That is a guy who knows language and words, and how to be funny, yet he too falls into the trap. He has gone from the Seven Words being funny to talking like an angry sailor with too many beers in him. This has taken him from PG-13 and witty to tritely profane, though still funny if one can put up with the packaging.

Maybe Lurkers would rather not put up with some of your packaging.

The standard desired at the Lounge is to keep it a bit cleaner than George Carlin and Chris Rock.

There is an art to dropping a double entendre now and again, to making a sly reference with a nod and a wink, to slipping in a dirty joke that catches the reader by surprise. None of that requires fifth grade fascination with "naughty words" to draw attention to itself.

The word filter is a clue. It underlines the guiding principle of "keep it clean."

If you want to play "semantics" with PG-13, which is a guideline rather than discrete rule set, then we need to go back to my second sentence.

You are old enough to know better, and have been around this corner of the internet long enough to know and assimilate the tone and atmosphere desired in general discussion at the Lounge. You will also recognize the self imposed limits on profanity and coarse, scatological language the Lurkers generally follow.

You choose to continually and tiresomely push those limits, relying the the patience of Lurkers. The patience has apparently worn thin.

"But, Occhi," you may well protest, "What about free expression, free form interchange over a few beers (virtual) at the Lounge, and what about me? What about my individualism? What about my words? They are what set me apart and identify me as me!"

It isn't all about you. It isn't all about me. It isn't even all about Gris. (Sorry, Gris, had to break that one to you. :rolleyes: ) It's all about "the children." :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Sorry, couldn't resist the sarcasm. It's all about the Lurkers. (Hmmm, same thing, some days.)

Have you noticed anyone else on any of the Lounge forums continually playing the "dirty old man" and "I'll use coarse words to shock them" game? Does it ever occur to you that such a style is tolerated rather than desired?

Rather than accepting an entropic degradation (that was redundant, eh?) of Lounge discourse, the members as a group generally agree to abide by a norm of "keep it clean" and hold back the entropy. When one of them overcomes their intertia and general tolerance for fellow Lurker foibles, and comments on it, that is a sign that you are treading on the toes of Lounge norms. Of being a boor. Whybish's gentle reminder could have been a flame. It wasn't. It was "Hey, come on Doc, that's not on."

So, in a nutshell, after all of the above bombast, it's a matter of courtesy to fellow Lurkers. They just don't want to hear it. What they'd rather hear is your thoughts couched in other than deliberately coarse language. Or maybe I am wrong, and the general Lurker population wish you'd STFU. *shrugs* I don't know, I am not clairvoyant. Maybe most of them would rather I STFU. ( :blush: Notes own post count, and considers that last a distinct possibility. :blush: )

The shock value of the dirty old man bit, of the foul mouth for attention bit, has long since been overwritten by its tiresomeness.

Does it seem that I am repeating myself? Is this getting tiresome?

Repitition is one method of driving a point home, and is similar in this case to the two by four used on stubborn four footed equine hybrids.

If you wish to play the iconoclast, go for it with a great Huzzah! Lay on MacDuff!

The humorous value of the "Seven Words" "Shock The Man" schtick is so "freshman in high school" and "so I am a radical in 1973," and so trite, that it leaps to the attention of the Lurkers. As might be said in the South: " 'Round these parts, Doc, we don't much cotton to that sort of talk, as a habit."

Use wit, you've got it, we've all seen it. You're old enough to know, and old enough to know better, and old enough to . . . that's enough. I've been out there on the edge, not setting a good example often enough to know that it's all a matter of what I choose to do, the care I choose to take, before I hit "reply."

The choice, Doc, is yours.

In closing, I'll cite The Bard: Tis better to be a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Occhi