What grinds my gears!

[Blondbraid]

"Haha look at these silly Americans getting all riled up over (*looks around, whispers*)... the f-word."

Just say FUCK ffs.

Good point, though I was unsure of the forum rules on profanity and felt it was easier than read the entire rules page all over again. 

Still, it's insane that the word "fuck" is more likely to get banned than a video instructing kids to soak their food in bleach.

Also, no one should rely on algorithms for content moderation, has anyone else read about the police AI meant to search for images of child abuse but couldn't tell an image of a human body from a picture of a desert? 

[Laura Hunt]

"Haha look at these silly Americans getting all riled up over (*looks around, whispers*)... the f-word."

Just say FUCK ffs.

Good point, though I was unsure of the forum rules on profanity and felt it was easier than read the entire rules page all over again. 

Still, it's insane that the word "fuck" is more likely to get banned than a video instructing kids to soak their food in bleach.

It is. I'll never understand why USians are so absolutely terrified of swearing. I remember one episode in The Walking Dead in which the gang was captured by a group of cannibals and of course they had no issue showing people eating human limbs, desmembering others, lining them up like cattle and murdering them with a baseball bat, etc etc... but when the Exciting Cliffhanger (tm) came, they had Rick say "they're screwing with the wrong people" instead of "they're fucking with the wrong people". Just... pathetic.

[Stupot]

They did actually film two versions.

[Laura Hunt]

They did actually film two versions.

I know. That's what makes it even more hilarious / mind-boggling.

"Safe" version: cannibalism, mutilation, murder.
"Mature" version: cannibalism, mutilation, murder, one swear word.

[Mandle]

I can imagine there is some kind of cancel clique out there though just waiting for swear words to mass report.

Or an algorithm.

and large media platforms absolutely refuse to take responsibility in a sane way, like say, having living human beings vet videos, and instead use cheap but stupid algorithms to do the job instead.

Imagine how much staff it would take to vet every upload on YouTube, and even then, every video that got flagged by the public. People on the internet, in general, are a large percentage idiots who will just create sock accounts through proxy servers just to take down a video on YouTube that they either do not agree with or they have some personal conflict with the creator.

There is no way to handle the demand except to have A.I. do it. And for now it is being stupid, but it will get smarter and start to understand context eventually.

But YouTube needs massive sponsors to stay afloat like Disney, for example, who will not put their advertising on a video that includes swearing.

Just imagine the cost YouTube pays every day in electricity to feed their servers and in bandwidth to make uploads not take 12 hours like they used to, even when a couple of million people are all uploading at the same time.

[Blondbraid]

Mandle: Yeah, that's a decent point, though still, you'd think something making real kids kill themselves (the video I linked to before referenced a news story on a minor who died trying to make a DIY popcorn machine with burning alcohol in it)
should set off some alarms.

I know. That's what makes it even more hilarious / mind-boggling.

"Safe" version: cannibalism, mutilation, murder.
"Mature" version: cannibalism, mutilation, murder, one swear word.

Maybe they go by the logic that no sane person would try murder and cannibalism at home, but if cool people on TV swear kids might start doing that too?

Still dosen't explain why PG-13 movies are allowed to have somebody drop an f-bomb once, but twice makes it an R-rated movie.   

[Mandle]

Still dosen't explain why PG-13 movies are allowed to have somebody drop an f-bomb once, but twice makes it an R-rated movie.   

And 400 times makes it X-Rated. One of the stupidest rules I have ever heard. The South Park creators obviously thought so too as the South Park movie has 399 hard swear words.

[TheFrighter]

Still dosen't explain why PG-13 movies are allowed to have somebody drop an f-bomb once, but twice makes it an R-rated movie.   

And 400 times makes it X-Rated. One of the stupidest rules I have ever heard. The South Park creators obviously thought so too as the South Park movie has 399 hard swear words.

Really? So rating is based on the numbers of f-words? It means that even a movie about the Mathama Gandhi sharing peace for the world become a X-rated if a british soldier says "*rap" 400 times?

_

[Crimson Wizard]

Really? So rating is based on the numbers of f-words? It means that even a movie about the Mathama Gandhi sharing peace for the world become a X-rated if a british soldier says "*rap" 400 times?

Why should it matter what the movie is about? If you make a video with kittens and add lots of swearing on the background, should it be considered okay for small kids to watch?

[Blondbraid]

Really? So rating is based on the numbers of f-words? It means that even a movie about the Mathama Gandhi sharing peace for the world become a X-rated if a british soldier says "*rap" 400 times?

Why should it matter what the movie is about? If you make a video with kittens and add lots of swearing on the background, should it be considered okay for small kids to watch?

What gets me is that I could understand the logic that a video containing one swear word gets the age rating bumped up on the basis that impressionable kids might learn to swear from watching it,
but bumping up the rating based on the number of swears alone makes no sense.

Compare swearing to literally any other mature content and you see how insane it is. For example, when videos depict fictional people being killed, the age rating goes by how explicit/how much blood is shown, and everyone agrees that it would be be insane to rate Disney's Mulan as a worse movie than Saw just because Mulan depicts an evil army of soldiers being killed by an avalanche mostly off screen, but Saw "only" shows a handful of people getting gorily tortured to death for most of the movie,
yet this exact logic is applied to swear words in US movies.

Like, The King's Speech is a heartwarming tale of a man overcoming his stuttering and had no sex, drugs or violence to speak of at all, yet it got rated as an adults only movie in the US because of this scene.

[VampireWombat]

The thing is that the ratings for movies in the US isn't standardized. There are some rough guidelines, but at the end of the day the rating depends on what a select group of people think. So, movie ratings are less a reflection of how Americans feel, but more how a small group of Americans feel.

[Mandle]

The thing is that the ratings for movies in the US isn't standardized. There are some rough guidelines, but at the end of the day the rating depends on what a select group of people think. So, movie ratings are less a reflection of how Americans feel, but more how a small group of Americans feel.

Yes, exactly. The people who make the movie put in months of their lives to work on it and then sit twiddling their thumbs nervously waiting for the rating to come back. And half the time it makes no sense.

I believe it was Mortal Kombat that had to remove one sound effect of "bones breaking" during a neck-twisting move to avoid an R-rating. Well, Mortal Kombat probably should not have been a PG-13 movie anyway, but it is a pretty damn good movie and reached the audience of the kids who were playing the game in arcades at the time. So, anyway, what was I saying?

[Blondbraid]

The thing is that the ratings for movies in the US isn't standardized. There are some rough guidelines, but at the end of the day the rating depends on what a select group of people think. So, movie ratings are less a reflection of how Americans feel, but more how a small group of Americans feel.

I remember seeing a dive into just how weird the US rating system was in This movie is not yet rated, yet while it showed it was some pretty randomly selected and biased little group of middle-aged conservative Christians rating all major movies, they were still human beings and you'd expect them to follow some kind of human logic, but I still can't say that I can see human logic in judging the severity of a movie based on the number of swears rather than the context of them.

[TheFrighter]

By the way, how rating works for AGS games?

_

[Matti]

By the way, how rating works for AGS games?

The people who make the game put in months of their lives to work on it and then sit twiddling their thumbs nervously waiting for the rating to come back

[Creamy]

Exactly, most millennials couldn't care less if a YouTuber says the F-word, but advertisers are terrified they'd get associated with something that could get the Midwestern US christian moms into a moral panic

Sometimes, the creators themselves resort to self-censorship out of fear.

Apparently, that's what's happening with Commandos 2 HD remastered. I find it sad when a company claiming to make a game set in World War II decides to remove any symbols, portraits, speeches or other assets that could break the law in many countries - namely anything that connects it to reality.

Since no law could force them to remove the japanese flags, they seem to be more royalist than the king.

[Blondbraid]

Exactly, most millennials couldn't care less if a YouTuber says the F-word, but advertisers are terrified they'd get associated with something that could get the Midwestern US christian moms into a moral panic

Sometimes, the creators themselves resort to self-censorship out of fear.

Apparently, that's what's happening with Commandos 2 HD remastered. I find it sad when a company claiming to make a game set in World War II decides to remove any symbols, portraits, speeches or other assets that could break the law in many countries - namely anything that connects it to reality.

Since no law could force them to remove the japanese flags, they seem to be more royalist than the king.

The no swastikas in WW2 games thing is due to the law not keeping up with the times and recognizing video games as an art form, and at least in Germany, those laws were made decades ago where games were seen by the public as kid's toys rather than mass media equal to books and films, but there has been a few recent games where nazi symbols were allowed in Germany, so things seems to be changing in that regard. As for bans on nazi symbols on stuff like toys and merchandise, I think Germany is right on banning such symbols there, and far as I know, they're still way more lenient on swearing and sexual content in their films and TV-series than the US has ever been.

I also think calling this case self-censorship is kind of pushing it, since having played the non-hd Commandos 2 for over 80 hours according to Steam, at no point did I feel like the swastikas were a big part of the game aesthetic or environment and the game barely touches on any of the politics behind the war at all, compared to say, the new Wolfenstein trilogy or the latest Call of Duty, and removing them doesn't sound like a huge artistic compromise. It just feels like a form of cultural pandering similar to fantasy games removing skeletons in the Chinese versions in order to sell more copies in a country where skeletons are associated to strong negative superstitions.

[Danvzare]

What I'll never understand is how Watership Down is rated U in Britain and a mere PG in America.
I've watched horror films that were less violent.   

And speaking of Americans and their fear of cursing. Why do they worship the word "cunt" as though it's some sort of messiah of all swear words?
Here in Britain, "cunt" is no different than saying "dick" or "git". And one of those words is so well accepted in American culture, that they named a well-known website after it. 

And what is inherently wrong with swearing anyway?
The only reason I have ever been able to figure out as to why we make certain words taboo, is so then we actually have strong words to say when we get really annoyed. If everyone says it all of the time, then it loses its punch.

[Mandle]

The movie "Crawl" REALLY ground my gears.

Especially because it has an 83% critics rating and 75% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes...

Here is what I wrote on their audience critic section (SPOILERS)

Spoiler

Now, I realize movies aren't supposed to be 100% realistic, but when I see someone chomped on by gators, on arms and legs, shoulder and torso, like 5 times but they can still swim and move at full speed, without any broken bones, nerve damage, torn muscles, or just body parts freezing up from the shock of the injuries, I just have to assume that their skeleton is made of adamantium and their wounds heal about as fast as Wolverine's do too.
At this point I know they are going to be just fine no matter what happens to them and all suspense is lost.
Which is a shame, because I really cared about the two characters at first, but once I realized they were indestructible, that all went out the window.
Movie, less is more.

[close]

[Danvzare]

The movie "Crawl" REALLY ground my gears.

Especially because it has an 83% critics rating and 75% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes...

Here is what I wrote on their audience critic section (SPOILERS)

Spoiler

Now, I realize movies aren't supposed to be 100% realistic, but when I see someone chomped on by gators, on arms and legs, shoulder and torso, like 5 times but they can still swim and move at full speed, without any broken bones, nerve damage, torn muscles, or just body parts freezing up from the shock of the injuries, I just have to assume that their skeleton is made of adamantium and their wounds heal about as fast as Wolverine's do too.
At this point I know they are going to be just fine no matter what happens to them and all suspense is lost.
Which is a shame, because I really cared about the two characters at first, but once I realized they were indestructible, that all went out the window.
Movie, less is more.

[close]

Spoiler

Holy crap! Was that guy Jason Voorhees?
I don't expect a movie to be realistic, but there are limits, especially when it comes down to what the main characters can survive. 
(Unless it's done for comical effect of course.)

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