Three months ago, I commanded: “Writers, Own Your Content!“. Some of my best tech-industry news and analysis is gone from the Web—six years of posts—because of corporation changes; one employer was acquired, while the other restructured. The sites I managed vanished. Now I defy good SEO practice and double post content to my work website and to my personal one. Art typically is different, and headlines are never the same.
Reader reaction to one recent headline just shocks me, and makes me chuckle.
The story posted here is “Windows Free May Be the Best Way to Get Microsoft Software Pirates to Pay” with different lede but essentially same content as its BetaNews counterpart, with punchier: “Giving pirates free Windows 10 is a goddamn good idea“. I chose the wording for emphasis and alliteration, and to my surprise the first commenters focused on the hed and not the content.
First one, from someone using handle PLeX:
The use of ‘goddamn’ is uncouth and, due to being offensive to many, unnecessary. There are so many other choices in a title.As an ‘executive editor’, I would think this headline being in poor taste would be obvious. This is also set a bad example to others posting articles on BN. Joe, please apologize and change this article.
An apology was never going to be. I think goddamn is quite tame, and changing would invite more criticism that would take away from legitimate interaction about the story’s content. How tame? I see aggressive swearing in headlines quite often. Hell, here’s an example today, over at Gizmodo: “Microsoft Is Really Turning It the Fuck Around“.
Over at the Portland Mercury, Ian Karmel writes regular column “Everything as Fuck”. Then there is BuzzFeed, which couldn’t escape reference, right? Sam Weiner posts “The Ultimate Fuck/Marry/Kill Quiz“, which among other questions poses: “Which Hemsworth Would You FUCK?” These bro actors are handsome, certainly, but I’m heterosexual. Where’s the “None” option?
Some other examples, from mainstream press during the past month:
- “Dear Birkenstocks: Fuck you“, The Daily Californian
- “This Fashion Writer Gives The Fewest Fucks“, Deadspin
- “Cate Blanchett Just Told This Journalist What the Fuck Is Up“, VH1
- “Actors Take to the Streets and Tell Their Own Union: ‘Fuck You’“, LA Weekly
I wouldn’t think twice about using fuck in a headline, here, BetaNews, or anywhere else. But out of politeness, I use frak, which means the same thing on TV show Battlestar Galactica but passed the muster of network censors and the Federal Communications Commission.
Confession: “Fuck me!” is a several-times-a-day exasperation coming out of my filthy mouth. I don’t use the examples above to justify goddamn as tame but to express how much I see it that way.
To the BN story, commenter, truthbetold calls use of goddamn as “very crude Joe—perhaps a new low”. That got me to wondering just how low—er, high count—is the usage. So I Googled “goddamn” under News. Some recent examples:
- “Goddamn It, I Melted A Cutting Board in the Oven“, Deadspin
- “Everybody’s Lost Their Goddamn Mind Over Religious Freedom“, The Daily Beast
- “I Hung Out With A Goddamn Dog For The Day And You Can Too“, BuzzFeed (again)
Some of the better examples are a few months older, like “Ferguson, goddamn: No indictment for Darren Wilson is no surprise. This is why we protest“, from the Guardian. But the crown goes to Gawker for using the F and G words: “Hero Cat Saves World From Another Goddamn Fucking Ukulele Cover“.
I do have my defenders. “I just say I like the use of Goddamn for emphasis,” jrb comments. Hehe. Headlines matter. People stop scanning stories and click because of the hed. Sometimes a little emphasis communicates importance to the reader, which was part of my objective here.
Why do I even bother writing about this on Good Friday evening? It’s not from defensiveness. I don’t regret using the word in the headline, nor do I second-guess the choice. Rather, I think the whole debate is comical—absolutely absurd. I can be way more offense than that.
I will let BetaNews reader Michael J Voorhees, responding to FLeX, have the last word(s): “Goddamn it, stop your whining”.