Foul Language and the Media

I have been following a video blog for some time now and noticed something interesting. Some of the posts were not too bad with foul language but others were a bit much to the point that every other word was fu**. Don't get me wrong cursing is really not a big deal to me, but when it is used constantly it just gets in the way of the point is trying to be made by the speaker. In other words it devalues the opinion of the person that is trying to get their point across. However in most of the video blogs, cursing was infrequent but it was still there. But it didn't bother me that much and let me know that the person I was watching was being real.
What I noticed that was intriguing was when I went back to older posts up to two years back there was no foul language at all in those videos. In fact, if someone used to curse word it was bleeped by the videographer and the speaker seemed legitimately embarrassed. At that point I realized something. There is a delicate balance between someone getting their point of view across and doing it in a way that makes them seem real to the viewer. I believe that is why the Internet has become so popular. Watching the NBC nightly news has become boring and mundane. You can see how many networks have changed their anchors in order to spice things up. In the long run it's never going to work though. On the Internet people can act and be themselves and not have to put on a façade in order to please viewers. The blog I have been following also indicates how quickly this idea has shifted. Only within a couple of years had the blog changed from being censored to no censorship at all.