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A comment on The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language. Parent comment

Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by mailund on Sunday November 05, 2023 @08:09AM (#38150828)
Oh my god, as a Scandinavian, the whole American thing about boobs is so annoying! It seems like the internet really want to force me to be shocked about seeing a chest, it's so weird. Most of the time, it is completely outside of a sexual context, but videos get 18+ because you apparently take psychological damage of you see a pair of tits before you're allowed to vote.

Actually didn't know about the quote thing though, even though I've loved here my whole life

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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by ThrowawayR2 on Sunday November 05, 2023 @09:12AM (#38151266)
Until the internet breaks its dependency on advertising income (a significant portion of which are either American or global, meaning they want to be inoffensive to Americans) and the internet breaks its dependency on allowing advertising to be channeled through an American company, moderating to prudish American moral standards is here to stay.

It would be a net positive if Google's advertising business was broken up along regional lines for anti-competitive practices and also being anti-cultural. Anybody want to suggest it to the EU?

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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by AtlasBarfed on Sunday November 05, 2023 @11:47AM (#38152806)
Sure relative to Europe America has prudish standards. But what about the Arab sphere? China? India? You know, like 3-4 billion people?

Yeah, I think America has pretty liberal standards.

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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by cubefox on Sunday November 05, 2023 @02:06PM (#38154456)
Interestingly, the US seems fairly similar to Japan: Large tolerance for violence, small tolerance for nudity. Which is strange, given that US has much stronger connections to Europe. (Though I'm not a Japan expert.)
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by TeMPOraL on Sunday November 05, 2023 @02:24PM (#38154633)
Didn't Japanese culture get pretty much rewritten after WWII to be US-compatible?
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by Gibbon1 on Sunday November 05, 2023 @03:25PM (#38155287)
The US forced the Japanese to rewrite their constitution with input from the US, the Japanese government and from non governmental groups. US demands were mostly to make it harder for militarists to seize power. Probably the biggest changes was press freedom and the legal rights of women.

My impression of the place is you have a modern industrial society replacing large parts of the preexisting feudal culture. Important, Japanese feudal culture is not the same as western Europe feudal culture. More face culture, less shame culture. And Japanese aren't as much prudish, as conservative and obsessed with decorum.

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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by TeMPOraL on Monday November 06, 2023 @09:56AM (#38163448)
Still can't find the source of it, but I remembered more details behind the "culture rewrite" hypothesis I read the other day. That source argued that US didn't just defeat Japan, but it thoroughly broke the cult of emperor that existed there until end of WWII, and thus (implied) from the POV of the whole society, the west slew their god, and became a new role model.
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by cubefox on Monday November 06, 2023 @02:18PM (#38167418)
The Japanese culture is still very different from the Western one. It's more similar to South Korea probably, perhaps even China in some ways.
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by smt88 on Sunday November 05, 2023 @09:37AM (#38151470)
On the other hand, there are literally billions of people in African, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures for whom photos of bare boobs are also taboo, so this seems like a case of just having to deal with being a minority in a public square.
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by saurik on Sunday November 05, 2023 @11:13AM (#38152382)
Are you asserting that those billions of people who also aren't getting their way (as all decisions are made by Americans, whom are not at all numerous either offline or online) are a minority?
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by esafak on Sunday November 05, 2023 @12:10PM (#38153082)
No, just that you can't please everyone, I think.
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by smt88 on Sunday November 05, 2023 @03:56PM (#38155567)
I'm asserting that multinational corporations typically aim for the lowest common denominator. For boobs, that's to avoid showing them.
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by cubefox on Sunday November 05, 2023 @02:11PM (#38154514)
In many African countries boobs are even less taboo than in Europe though. In some countries women were pretty much always topless before westerners arrived (in South America, Africa, and countries like Bali). The aversion to nudity seems to be the strongest in Muslim countries.
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Re:The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed h... by Swizec on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:24AM (#38151882)
> Oh my god, as a Scandinavian, the whole American thing about boobs is so annoying! It seems like the internet really want to force me to be shocked about seeing a chest, it's so weird

My favorite are medical tiktokers sharing gynecological information talking about vajujus and peepees so the algorithm doesn’t punish them for foul language.

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