I think that was his point; it doesn't, and instead implies that the writer is hypocritical ("I'm going to swear, but I won't actually swear").

It does, just not on the internet.

There's no stakes here (the internet) for it to matter if you swear or not.

Your attitude on the internet won't result in any meaningful feedback, by default.

Someone has to be watching from a more strict environment for it to matter what you say on the internet. It needs to affect your job, or your wife needs to read your posts, or a moderator needs to clamp down on you.

The community accepts swearing by default.

Soo people who are in professional environments are going to bring their communication norms with them when they post online.

An I over -explaining an answer to a rhetorical 'why?' question. I think I am.

I can never tell online, if people are literally asking a question that requires explaining OR it is simply a rhetorical question.

Oh well. c'est la vie.

This is a great diverging discussion about the "censorship" and the commenting style in public forums. Let me add something: when I was writing the original comment that started all this, I wanted it to be funny, catchy, snarky, and karma-point-worthy. So, I decided to put a swear word as a stylistic choice. Then, to add some extra to the short comment, I decided to poke fun at the whole FCC bleeping regulation. Here, I will warmly recommend a book dedicated to bleeping over the seven "unspeakable words": the famous Steven Pinker's famous book "The Stuff of Thought".

Now, about the number of asterisks: I really didn't think that much about this, I kind of think I counted the right number of letters, but then there is no caret overwrite mode in the bleeping browser, which is yet another story...

Well it's pretty clear I injected my own world view onto your comment and enjoyed it.

The FCC bleeping regulation doesn't really interest me, it's mild irritant in media..

It's slowly becoming obvious to me that the English-speaking cultures (UK, US, AUS, CAN, ect) are sculpted to interpret the same content in their own cultural view and it all somehow works even though we're constantly talking past/parrallel to each other.

Watching an American historian's reaction to philomena cunk peice, showed me how much he enjoys the literal-ness of her straight faced jokes, the same jokes I see as boldly satirical comments made for chuckles. And it somehow works for both cultures.

With that in mind, communicating anything worthwhile over internet comments is obviously orders of magnitude harder because of the cultural barriers. And the cracks between worldviews run deep.. and are starting to show.. I don't really know how to comment to other cultures accurately anymore.