But in all seriousness, how fragile a person do you have to be to get upset...
Again, I don't think anyone is talking about being "upset." I'm not sure why you make the leap to assume that anyone who doesn't like something is "offended" or "upset." I like a lot of what Orbert said here:
[quote}But it still says something about them if the first thing they do is call the audience a bunch of fuckers.
…
That doesn't offend me so much as it just annoys me. [/quote]
That's a lot of it. And that goes toward answering the question you posed to me.
Words have meaning. And words have significance. And that goes beyond the plain meaning of the words. By our words, we can enter into a legally binding contract. By our words, we can commit hate speech. By our words, we can defame somebody. By our words, we can build somebody up or we can tear somebody down. And a lot of what we convey with our words, again, goes beyond the simple, plain meaning of the words. Intended or not, our word choice can convey things about us.
To me,
most of the time (but a lot really depends on context), what someone who uses profanity is conveying about themselves is not positive. It can suggest a number of things, but none are really constructive.
But, again, I'm not "offended." At the end of the day, those words haven't "hurt" me in any meaningful way. Not in the slightest. Words alone don't have that kind of power. But they
do have the power to hurt the speaker's reputation and others' perception of him/her.
Anyhow, that's my feeling on the matter. Hope it was helpful, whether anyone agrees or not. But we're getting far afield from SoA.