Banned words

Higher-up people at my work (the sort I never actually see, only hear directives they have issued) have decided we need to give people more opportunities to interact with us online. They fear this may cause some problems in that people could seriously defame other people, or say things which are obscene or offensive. And let's be honest, they probably would.

So they have put some safeguards in place. One of them involves a list of banned words which will be filtered out of any comments (I don't know whether they will just come up as blank spaces, bleeps or whether the whole comment will be deleted, who knows). Anyway, we were presented with this list of words.

I'm not sure I've ever laughed quite so hard in my life. Someone, somewhere - in fact probably several people - have spent time and effort coming up with a list of these banned words. Three pages of A4 filled with obscenities.

It starts innocuously enough with arse before moving to the sort of expressions I don't think I've ever heard anyone in real life actually say. Something involving cheese, for example, something involving curtains. I can't bring myself to even write them down. My favourite part was when one of my colleagues, mystified, asked "what's smegma?" and the new girl answered "Umm, I think the answer's just above cottaging". How often could these sort of conversations take place?

Anyway, while the list was in many ways surprisingly imaginative, some of it was clearly unrealistic - what's wrong with the word blow? And there are so many things which are actually not really rude words at all, it's just the context - banned words included pearl necklace, nude, spanking, school kids and underage. I can see why they could be used in an inappropriate context, but considering I personally have written numerous innocent stories about school children, underage drinking, people wanting to open nude lapdancing clubs, I think there is a real potential this could stifle debate.

Plus, they forgot anus, anal, minge, fuckittage, flange and dogging. Although we were invited to add any more words we felt should be excluded. One of my colleagues was writing down a list of these words on a random piece of paper and then realised this could be taken in very much the wrong way, so destroyed it.

Worryingly, when I mentioned this to HF, he kept trying to come up with other words. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but seeping and gash are not rude words. Not particularly pleasant words, I agree, but they're hardly swearing. I think there's something deeply wrong with him. I shall investigate.

More on that story later.