the official unauthorized blog for oneword.com

or, the unofficial authorized blog for oneword.com™

  • Dropping The F-Bomb.

    • 9 Mar 2011
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    • anti-stupid bees entries f-bomb f-word insecurity moderation oneword parachute pro-intelligent profanity writing
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    Fbomb
    I've written about my criteria for moderation of oneword.com entries before. This post is very specific, prompted by an ever-growing pattern I've noticed over the last few years. Let me start with one example:

    The day's word: bee

    "Nothing more than a struggling person trying to live their lives off someone elses salary who actually reaps the benefits of all his or her worker bees. More like his benefits, women don’t get to do shit in this world, but so what? It’s just a shitty game we all play, too bad we don’t know any other games. Fuck."

    The above example is not profound, well-written—or even grammatically correct—but it follows oneword's admonition to "just write" well enough. The puzzling part is the lone, irrelevant f-bomb tagged onto the end of the entry. The term "f-bomb" is perfect here, because it really is like dropping a bomb on an otherwise relevant piece of writing. And I get anywhere from two–five entries that follow this pattern daily.

    So we're clear, I have no problem with a strategically placed f-word. For instance, another entry on yellow and black, fuzzy, buzzy things:

    "I am absolutely terrified of bees. A bee landed on my brand new white tee shirt in gym class when I was thirteen and it was huge. It scared the living shit out of me and I screamed and made a huge fool of myself amongst my snotty peers. I hate bees. Fuck bees."

    In this example, though I don't personally hate bees, I'm right there with her.

    In both cases, the entries will get approved. However, I'm taking the liberty of deleting all f-bombs as illustrated in the first example. Why? Two reasons: A) it takes the real firepower away from other people using the word intelligently, and B) it screams "I'm insecure!" which is not a part of flowing or stream-of-consciousness writing.

    My mom vehemently disagrees, but I think it's the perfect word—not as a parachute—but when the parachute doesn't open.

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  • An Open Letter From oneword.com.

    • 1 Dec 2010
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    • anti-stupid freedom of speech idiotfirewall moderation profanity swearing writing
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    (via our Facebook page)

    We've had quite a few people accusing us of being anti-freedom of speech lately. Not the least of which was someone saying "Fuck you" on our Facebook page earlier today.

    Really, we're all for freedom of speech. We're PRO-freedom of speech. We're PRO-stream of consciousness. We're only anti-stupid.

    How do we define stupid? We don't. It's so stupid, we don't need to.

    If you're reading this, and are stupid—sorry—we weren't banking on your making it this far.

    We are not anti-profanity either. Dialects, idioms, profanity and colloquialism help to define characters and stir emotions in writing. And we will agree with great fortitude that sometimes there is no other word that quite gets the fucking point across.

    However, after many years of running this site, I can, with confidence, offer the following statistics:

    50% of entries that contain the word "fuck" are spam or stupid.

    60% of entries that contain the word "shit" are spam or stupid.

    70% of entries that contain the word "cunt" are spam or stupid.

    80% of entries that contain the word "pussy" are spam or stupid.

    90% of entries that contain the words "bestiality, incest, slut or cock" are spam or stupid.

    99.9% of entries that contain the words "nigger, chink, wop, dago, kike, paki, jihad" are spam or stupid.

    So, those words get flagged. If your inspired prose birthed one of more of them, then they go in a "pending" bin and wait, in all their brilliance or stupidity, for me to sift through them.

    If the entry isn't stupid—which it's not if you read this far—then chances are it's just waiting to be approved. And it will be. I swear.*

    *pun intended.

     

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  • The Kids Are All Write.

    • 26 Oct 2010
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    • expression freedom of speech oneword oneword.com profanity teaching writing
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    Over the years, I've received numerous inquiries from teachers wanting to use oneword.com in their writing classes. Explaining that "they would use it now, but there's no profanity filter." 

I respond cordially. But my gut response is, "fuck that."

    Interesting that a four-letter word or picture of naked human bodies throws everyone into an upheaval. Meanwhile, kids are in their classrooms getting A's and B-pluses for knowing the intimate details of every mass slaughter in recorded history. 

    Humans have been repressing sexuality and killing in the name of one God or another for centuries, and guess what? We're still at war. We've barely evolved. Thankfully, technology has evolved to a point where free expression is fast becoming the order of the day. And when it reaches the point where free expression outweighs the repression—there will be a tipping point—in which expression is inspired less and less by a reaction to repression, and is pure. 

At that point we may have to create a brand-new word for it.

     

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  • About

    Purveyor of fine words.
    Creative Director at Artifact Studios.
    Creator of oneword.com.

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