THE VIDEO SHELF · swearing and language

Stephen Fry on the Joys of Swearing

A short clip of Stephen Fry defending swearing as a rich and essential part of the English language and rejecting the idea that it is unnecessary.

Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters post it in swearing and profanity debates as the best statement against taking offense at profanity.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

I'm with Stephen Fry on this one: "There used to be mad, silly, prissy people who used to say swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary. Such utter nonsense." [VIDEO]
stevelosh on Hacker News · 2011-11
In Think twice about that F-bomb in your next talk
I'm rather bemused by this whole thing, I'd be intrigued to know the demographics of the people who take such, issue with use of swear words. Perhaps it's an American thing, but in Britain I'm not aware of anyone I know who'd react in hysterics …
glenjamin on Hacker News · 2011-11
In Swearing
And as usual, any HN post that contains profanity is immediately overrun by 'offended' fuckheads that simply don't understand the joke and are offended by fuck all. Stephen Fry says it best: [VIDEO]
shocks on Hacker News · 2013-05
In I Don't Want Your Fucking App

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.