Profanity in a digital world
Aug. 15th, 2002 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I'm not one for profanity, I am as likely to say 'Oh pigeons' if I hit my foot as anything else and I (hopefully) keep my casual swearing to a minimum. Now this is largely personal choice and (I believe) politeness as who am I to use words that are commonly accepted to be vulgar or rude, and manners again (I believe) are important and something that this world is sadly lacking these days... anyway, to my point, and by jingo I have one for once.
On Monday our wonderful sysadmins upgraded our mail server, no big deal there you might think, but with this they updated (I presume) the word block list. This is a system for scanning emails that arrive for profanity or words that are offensive etc etc. Now an email arrived this morning from a friend and it was flagged as 'offensive' I looked at it for several moments and couldn't for the life of me find any word that anyone would consider rude; but then memories clicked and my eyes alighted on the word 'nip', which can be of course considered a derogitory term for anyone of Japanese origin; but it is far more common in British parlance to be used as a term for a short quick movement action, or something similar. "I'll just nip outside." for example. Our wonderous mail server has again been reset to American slang terms - which means emailing someone to ask if they want a cigarette is going to be causing problems again.
But this brought back memories of a chat system I used to use eons ago called WBS (Web Broadcasting System) a wonderful place for online RP-related chat and all sorts of other things. Now on this chat system, somehow, someone found out that the word 'pati' was blocked, and the combined efforts of just about everyone I knew on the server failed to establish why, how or what exactly this word was slang for and in what language. To this day it remains a mystery to me, and likely everyone else that used WBS...
So, in a challenge to the world in general, what vulgar term and in what language (presumably, since it's likely not English) is 'pati' considered a vulgar word?
Theres a drink in it for anyone who knows - and two if you can quote source on why and where it is...
On Monday our wonderful sysadmins upgraded our mail server, no big deal there you might think, but with this they updated (I presume) the word block list. This is a system for scanning emails that arrive for profanity or words that are offensive etc etc. Now an email arrived this morning from a friend and it was flagged as 'offensive' I looked at it for several moments and couldn't for the life of me find any word that anyone would consider rude; but then memories clicked and my eyes alighted on the word 'nip', which can be of course considered a derogitory term for anyone of Japanese origin; but it is far more common in British parlance to be used as a term for a short quick movement action, or something similar. "I'll just nip outside." for example. Our wonderous mail server has again been reset to American slang terms - which means emailing someone to ask if they want a cigarette is going to be causing problems again.
But this brought back memories of a chat system I used to use eons ago called WBS (Web Broadcasting System) a wonderful place for online RP-related chat and all sorts of other things. Now on this chat system, somehow, someone found out that the word 'pati' was blocked, and the combined efforts of just about everyone I knew on the server failed to establish why, how or what exactly this word was slang for and in what language. To this day it remains a mystery to me, and likely everyone else that used WBS...
So, in a challenge to the world in general, what vulgar term and in what language (presumably, since it's likely not English) is 'pati' considered a vulgar word?
Theres a drink in it for anyone who knows - and two if you can quote source on why and where it is...
Re:
Date: 2002-08-16 03:24 am (UTC)Tell you what, double or quits on your character approval?
no subject
Date: 2002-08-16 03:29 am (UTC)Time to dig out those incriminating photos of various people...
Re:
Date: 2002-08-16 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-16 03:40 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-08-16 03:44 am (UTC)Are you going to Gencon?
no subject
Date: 2002-08-16 03:53 am (UTC)