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Re:Profanity works by newt0311 on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @10:36PM (#282281)
Small point. There is a prisoner's dilemma here. As profanity is used more and more often, it becomes less jarring (consider bloody, bloomin, etc.. as examples of prior swear words). Thus, they their very use, these words become less useful. However, any individual author has no incentive to stop using these words.

Eventually, we will probably have new curse words for english.

Re:Profanity works by paulgb on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @11:09PM (#282295)
Interesting point, but I think the tragedy of the commons is a more fitting analogy than the prisoner's dilemma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re:Profanity works by newt0311 on Thursday August 21, 2008 @09:08AM (#282614)
Tragedy of the commons is a prisoner's dilemma type of situation but is indeed a better analogy here.