I recently got a PM from a mod saying:
...after having posted my second thread ever containing the word "fuck" in the title. http://boards.cannabis.com/search.php?searchid=1138370Quote:
This putting fuck in your thread headers is getting old. On the main page this is the first thing that visitors see so it's frowned upon. Please just keep it real in the opener.
My question is, why exactly should the rules for what's acceptable in thread titles be any different from what's acceptable in the threads themselves? First of all, on the front page of the entire site, you see the link to the Sexuality forum, and you'll see the name of the most recent thread in it, which is usually more potentially offensive than my thread title of "Moral dilemmas that will fuck with your brain", even if it doesn't contain any swear words.
Secondly, people swear all the time all over this site, and I don't see a problem with that as long as it doesn't take the form of a personal insult. I didn't mean to insult or offend anybody, and I don't see how anybody could possibly be insulted or offended by the phrase "fuck with" meaning "perplex". Most people here seem to be cool with using swear words casually like that, and I have never ever heard anybody complain about it. When I come on here, I expect to be able to relax and talk like I talk to my friends, but clearly I'm wrong.
So what exactly are we not supposed to say in thread titles, and why should we refrain from putting things in thread titles that we are allowed to put in individual posts? A good deal of the threads you click on will have lots of swear words in them somewhere, no matter what, unless we start censoring everybody's posts.
I mean, if we're going to stop putting up thread titles that could potentially offend anybody who visits the site, we might as well shut down the Sexuality, Politics, Conspiracy, and Spirituality forums altogether. If there is a small number of people who stumble upon this site and get turned off by my use of the phrase "fuck with your brain", they're likely to get much more turned off by the thread titles which describe various sexual acts and attack their political ideologies.
By the way, there are lots of threads in the Sexuality forum which use the word "fuck" in the literal sense, which have not been altered, and whose titles appear on the main page for the site every time somebody posts in them. Is this just a Lounge phenomenon? Are there certain things we are not allowed to say in thread titles in the Lounge that are okay in Sexuality? Why? What is and isn't allowed, where, when, and in what contexts? I'm really confused.