Colorful Communication

This week an infographic made its way around the web (below) displaying the geographical frequencies of swearing on Twitter. As the image indicates, profanity online is part of many people’s everyday media use. So if swearing is so common, maybe it’s no big deal? Research shows that 8 out of 10 executives think working alongside a foul-mouthed colleague is unacceptable behavior. Not only can it get you fired, swearing can interfere with getting hired.

Does this discourage people from swearing online? Maybe. But computer-mediated-communication also encourages cyberdisinhibition, and that means users are more apt to relax their professional communications standards. Some researchers have suggested that people curse and cuss on the web because of the anonymity of online communication. Or perhaps people are in the habit of swearing on social networks because until recently platforms like Facebook felt much more private. Not so anymore, as online recruiting and social screening go mainstream, and The Library of Congress and Google cache our tweets including the colorful and NSFW variety.

If all else fails, there are some (tongue-in-cheek) apps to help you self-censor colorful self-expressions online and off:

The Unnecessary Censorship iPhone App

“allows you to bleep, pixelate and censor video of your friends, family, pets, or anyone you wish to give the illusion that they swore or did something inappropriate!”

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The Chillax Emotional Spell-Check App:

Of course for every self-censoring app there’s another app that teaches you to swear in five languages, as CNN reports. Looks like the business case for developing colorful conversational technologies and tools is rock solid.