Hey.  Y'know what really grinds my gears?  The constant, casual profanity in modern American culture.  Now, let's just slow down a second here, and let me make something perfectly clear: I love profanity, I don't think it's inherently bad, and I have nothing against it, generally speaking.  Matter of fact, I think it adds a lot of color and humor to life.  I mean, imagine how dull AVGN and MLP Totally Legit Recap would be without it!  It can just add such nice flair or emphasis.  So, what annoys me is the constant, non-stop profanity for everything.  People nowadays use f*ck and sh*t as a replacement for every word in the English language!  They just use it in every regular sentence, even when it's unwarranted and means nothing.  And it kind of annoys me how casual people are with it in public.  Again, it doesn't offend me personally, but some people don't like it, and I just think it's courteous to not use it around strangers.  I use it quite a bit, but I try never to do it within earshot of strangers.

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about: the other day, I was at my gym, and I was about to enter one of these single occupant, unisex changing rooms/bathrooms we have in the pool area, and a guy was standing nearby.  As I approached the door, he says to me, in the nicest, most cheerful and polite tone, "Oh, I've got my sh*t in there."  I of course said, "Oh, no problem," and used a different one.  I didn't want to confront the guy, but why must we substitute "sh*t" in place of "stuff"?  I don't think the words are evil, but I just think we should save them for when they actually mean something, y'know?  If you're gonna say sh*t, save it for when you really mean SH*T.  Like, for example, you could say, "Look out for that pile of dog sh*t on the ground," or "This stale sandwich tastes like sh*t", or "That haircut looks like sh*t", or "Did you hear about that sick piece of sh*t who shot up the school?"  Some are literal, some are figurative, but all of these are valid uses for the word "sh*t".  But when we just mean stuff, can we just say stuff?

Here's a modern conversation (Usually between guys.  I hate that that stereotype rings true.)  I'm not exaggerating.  This is exactly what I hear between a couple of friends at the gym all the time: "Hey, sh*t, dude, the f*ck's going on?  Oh, just had a good f*cking workout.  F*ckin hungry, dude.  Wanna grab a f*ckin bite?  Sh*t, dude, yeah, let's get some f*ckin Chipotle.  They got this f*ckin new sh*t that's the sh*t, dude.  That sh*t's fuckin' sh*t, man.  I love that sh*t.  Yeah, let's go, sounds f*cking good, dude.  Oh, sh*t, hang on, I gotta call my f*cking girlfriend, first.  Okay, let's f*ckin go.  Lemmie jus grab my sh*t, dude.  F*ck dude, I'm tired man.  Sh*t."

I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.  Why must people talk like this?  Does out entire vocabulary really have to be comprised of nothing but these two words?  Profanity's great, but let it actually mean something!  It's not cool or funny to substitute profanity for every single noun, adjective, verb, and adverb.  There will be nothing left but a couple of prepositions.  When we start substituting "sh*t" for "BELONGINGS", where is there left to go when we really need a strong word?!  I'm not trying to stomp on free speech or anything.  It's just a suggestion.  Profanity is like masturbation: it's great, but if you do it constantly, it's gonna start to lose its meaning and not be special.