Is Your Twitter Stream Rated R?
I’ve been a big fan of Saturday Night Live since my freshman year in high school. The first episode that caught my attention was hosted by Tom Hanks, and his “Mr. Short Term Memory” sketch was all I could talk about when I went to school on Monday morning. Gradually my friends started watching, and we would do complete recaps/reviews during study halls. To this day one of my more vivid high school memories was dressing up with a friend of mine as Hans & Franz to attend our sophomore Halloween dance. I wonder if it was a coincidence that I didn’t participate in any slow dances that evening?! But I digress…
SNL has provided plenty of memorable moments over the years, some for sheer comedic power and others for miscues and awkward moments. On last Saturday’s season premiere, another clip joined the SNL Hall of Infamy when new cast member Jenny Slate accidentally uttered the queen mother of dirty words during one of the last sketches of the evening. As one would expect in this new age of social media, the slip did not go unnoticed. Mediaite’s Rachel Sklar noted that “Gawker had [the clip posted] 19 minutes after the show ended”, and 4 days later Twitter is still abuzz. Smarter folks than I have analyzed profanity and the social mores that govern its use, but this incident got me thinking specifically about the use of vulgar language on a social network like Twitter.
We’ve all grown accustomed to the acronyms that are bandied about in our electronic conversations to mask the use of offensive language: WTH; WTF; LMFAO; OMFG. But every so often, people will come out and use the real thing (WARNING- don’t click that link unless you’re willing to view “the queen mother of dirty words”). I follow a handful of folks who use vulgar language in every other tweet, while some save the language for when they’re very worked up about something. There are plenty in my list who probably would never think of using vulgar language on Twitter.
I’ll admit it – I fall into that last camp. You might see me use an occasional swear acronym like WTH, but you won’t find any adult language in my stream. I just don’t want to risk having someone view it and form a negative impression of me based on some choice words. After all, there are plenty of folks on Twitter who feel certain language should be reserved for comedy clubs & HBO:
On the other hand, it would be unlikely for me to base a decision to follow or unfollow someone on bad language unless there was some sort of abuse or personal attack associated with it.
So what’s your Twitter language policy? Do you censor your own tweets in any way? Would you base follow/unfollow decisions on vulgar language? I’m curious to get your take! Just don’t curse me out for bringing up the topic… 
Judy October 1, 2009 | 11:22am
As in my real life, I swear in my twitter stream. But also as in real life, it’s reserved for when I am really worked up about something. I have sent chins to the floor by dropping an f-bomb, because I’m generally pretty reserved and people just don’t expect that from me. My page indicates that I have 1300 updates, and there are probably 5-10 that contain an expletive. I think that’s pretty reasonable.