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by coderdude 5189 days ago
Suffice it to say that any of the examples you find in those search results are examples of "fuck" being used as link bait.

Even the submissions with "fuck you money" in the title since that is a linkbait-y term unto itself. I am of the opinion that unless you're discussing the word 'fuck' there is almost no possible reason to use it in a title unless it's to attract clicks and votes by eliciting an emotional response.
1 comments
j_baker 5189 days ago
I think that's debatable. I don't see anything blatantly wrong with any of those, but I could see how someone might find titles like that inappropriate. I personally don't have a problem with it.
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coderdude 5189 days ago
Everything is debatable! :)

Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.

I'm purely focused on the link-bait aspect. Using swear words in a title is in a way like gaming the attention economy by subconsciously tricking peoples' minds into thinking that a piece of content "grabs" them on some level, even before seeing that content.

What I would be interested to know is if there is data that shows that people up-vote those articles -- before reading them -- disproportionately more often than articles with no swear words in the title.

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j_baker 5189 days ago
Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.

You don't think that's important? If you had put a lot of time into this presentation, were proud of it, and submitted it to Hacker News to share it with others (without realizing that some people would take the profanity as a linkbait attempt), wouldn't you be at least a bit upset if someone said:

"Why do you people keep linkbaiting by putting profanity in the title?"

If it were me, I'd probably tune them out and their (valid) complaints would go unheeded. But if someone said something like:

"That was a great presentation! I think it would be even better if you excluded the profanity though. To be honest, it's a bit offensive. But that's just me. What do you think?"

...then I'd be more likely to listen, and might change the title just because I couldn't fathom offending someone so nice. Wouldn't you?

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