Listening to Christmas carols, since it is the pre-Christmas season, I was browsing forum posts and noticed that insults grate more somehow when “Lulajże, Jezuniu…” is playing on the radio. I thought that before Christmas it would be worth drawing attention to something so common that it has become unnoticeable: insulting people on the forum.
Internet forums are a sociological El Dorado, but also a spittoon full of blasphemies and swear words. Idiot, moron, cretin, jerk, ass—that is, as young people say, small fry among insults. On another forum, a lout who called his opponent someone who drinks horse semen was recently moderated.
Paradoxically, internet users insult each other particularly unpleasantly in threads concerning religiosity and the Catholic Church. Here are a few examples from the thread “Onufry’s and Prawda’s Catholic Affairs”:
You degenerates, get yourselves some useful work, all your crap about Mary’s backside
Onufry and his clique are gays, lesbians and test-tube babies, atheists and communists; that is why they hate the Catholic Church, because there is no place for them there…
Oh, you Bolesławiec vermin. I feel great pity for you. Perhaps because you are idiots…
Statements in threads concerning human sexuality can be vulgar, but generally such topics are guided by the anti-war slogan from the Vietnam War period, “Make love, not war.” In the thread “Does a Woman with a Child Have a Chance of Finding a Man?”, however, offensive comments about single mothers and their children were removed from a very good and useful discussion.
Locally, the authorities take a beating. The County Office less than the City Office. What is unpleasant is that the people of Bolesławiec humiliate themselves. Most often, in forum comments, we are a band of idiots and fools living in a backwater full of connections, with no prospects or chance of any development.
In political threads, harsh words are directed at politicians and their supporters. The most swearing occurs in threads about Palikot. That is where more “faggots,” “aunties,” and “perverts” appear, used as terms for members of the Movement. Platforma Obywatelska also takes a heavy beating. But even so, the most intensely insulted is “the stupid Polish nation.” I wonder whether there is any other nation that hates itself so much and writes about itself in such a humiliating way? An interesting sociological phenomenon…
Apparently, one can determine an internet user’s age by the words they use when swearing on the forum. The younger they are, the more “faggots”; the older they are, the more “whores.” The world is changing and leading us into ever more interesting times.
I wish you a pleasant, healthy and happy Christmas. Free from unpleasant words. Full of warm, tender, good adjectives such as: dear, beautiful, happy, helpful, friendly, in love, enchanted, magical, smiling, cheerful, delicate, delighted, sweet, cozy, tasty and healthy.
Grażyna Hanaf