Required Reading: No More Profanity

The negativity and nastiness of RoF this season has brought my interest in participating way down. We all know the team is going to be bad, yet some act surprised when it is. It is as if the Bobcats became their favorite team after the lockout and there is no context for this season.

Being down our 4 of our top 5 players makes it even tougher. Until we are healthy again, remember how tough it is to compete with the number of injuries we have in addition to the lack of proven talent. Look at ANY roster in the NBA and imagine how well they would do without their starting PG, SG, SF, and 6th man. It wouldn’t be pretty for anyone.

However, as long as we do the following four things, this season will have been a success:

1. Make it through with no significant injuries
2. Get good value out of players we trade during the season (DJ and Diaw)
3. Get our young players some PT
4. Don’t finish with a draft pick outside of the top 5 in the 2012 draft.

Things will look up this year as we regain our health. Do remember the goals. We don’t want to finish last in or last out of the playoffs. We planned to be the one of the worst teams in the league for a strong draft.

One other thing to think about. The quality of the NBA is way down this year due to the lockout (injuries, lack of practice, conditioning, etc).

Here ain’t the only place ugly.

Don’t salt the earth of the fan blog in frustration over what we knew would happen. We need a strong base for when this team is able to lift itself back up.

TS will be banned before anyone. I’m gonna miss that dude.

MP – 2:1
Focus – 3:1

And use Marklar.

That’s BS Ben!!!

In that case, yes, much of the profanity being utilized is “inflammatory.” And it’s happened a lot this season.

Totalitarian? Perhaps. Unwarranted? I don’t think so.

but in my opinion the past few weeks far too many threads this season have turned into flame wars predicated upon cursing. I don’t care about cursing personally, but the bickering and fighting has made this a community I wouldn’t care to join.

I like the job Ben is doing here. I also liked the community David formed the past few years. There was a time when David had to tell us to tone it down too.

Cursing is a symptom, but the big thing is just being respectful. Otherwise these comments might as well be on YouTube.

IslandofMisfitCats.com

My interpretation is not that Ben is puritanical, but that he wants a community rather than Fight Club.

Except, when I post gifs…..people have strong reactions.

Well screw it. This’ll be fun.

One can fully express themselves without profanity. Heck, I remember watching a show where they were talking with this very religious woman who refuses to use curse words. Instead, she would say things like “Oh, fiddle sticks!” in place of “Oh, ****!” My wife and I laughed and laughed because what was she doing? She was cursing. Oh sure, she wasn’t actually saying any of the words that we usually attribute to being a curse word, but she was still expressing herself plenty and changing otherwise normal words into curse words.

Yes, it may feel better to let out one of the typical curse words, but we understand you perfectly well if you were to yell, “THOSE GOSH-DARNED BOBCATS DO NOT PLAY DEFENSE WORTH A HOOT!” Does it look funny? Yeah, but I’m sure everyone here understood exactly what I meant and nodded their head in agreement. Also, I’d argue that I did just curse, I just substituted a few of the typical curse words for abnormal ones. Yet for some reason, the way I said it is acceptable and the normal way of saying it is not acceptable.

Also, I could be misreading it, but I think what Ben is really going after is the personal attacks. He even mentioned in the main post that it can happen in Game Threads. He’s taking it on a case-by-case basis. Can you really think of any case where he would give someone a warning except if they are directing it at someone else? I can’t.

Are we being censored? Well, only slightly. We are basically being told not to be dicks to each other by hurtling profanity at one another. I doubt any of us would do that in person, so is it a big deal to lose that right over the internet, a medium in which we can’t properly tell when someone is joking or not anyway? I don’t think so.

I’m fine with the occasional profane exclamation, but not aimed at people. I don’t want people saying “well you’re a dumbass if you think that”. Again, every usage is under my review.

I’m basically just putting a rule to it in hopes of deterring personal attacks.

personal attacks like that are still banned per the community guidelines. One of the things I don’t want to see is “Kemba’s just a really s****y chucker and that’s that.” because it just provokes the worst type of responses.