[Zak]

What distinguishes these from profanity is that the use of the words or phrases themselves are not taboo; promoting the ideas they represent may upset people, but neutral uses of the phrases do not.

As other commenters note, words like "shit" and "fuck" used to be much more taboo than they are now, while certain slurs have recently gained taboo status to the point that many people in the comments are referencing them without actually typing them in their comments.