Profanity

Last night, we were short a lot of folks, but managed to fill up anyway, and clear through most of both FL and the later half of DS in about 3 hours so yay, but about half-way through the frantic rush to get things done, I went a little bit nuts.

A bit of story to start off with - back when the profanity filter was broken and would reset every time we logged out, my guild discovered that they could no longer understand me because every second or third word was blocked out by the filter. Soon, people took to calling it the "Saif filter" as they often wouldn't realize the filter was on until I logged on and began to talk. My language is a rather off-putting shade of blue, but, I think, it's inoffensive, except if common vulgar argot offends you, I suppose.

It's somewhat difficult for me to write here while keeping language in mind - I tend to think of blogs as a way for me to just sprout off on whatever I am thinking about but I do think that because I also write guides and fiction and commentary, I should maintain some sense of decorum, and it's a good constraint to have. I find my work benefits when I place more and more constraints on it or I tend to let things wander and get out of hand easily... like now.

Anyway, so I'm a fairly profane person with my friends, in my every day life, at work, at home, and I don't think it's a big deal. And if I do meet someone who is genuinely offended by my language (and there have been cases where this happened) I will respect their wishes and mind my tongue. When I was younger, it wasn't as easy, and I would obsess with the thought of filtering myself, and often slip into even worse language which led to greater amusement and/or embarrassment depending on which side of the aisle you were.

My language, then, make acclimating new guildies a bit odd at times, especially when I log in unaware and begin to talk as I normally tend to. And especially since many of our members are brought in with the expectation of entering a mature guild with mature people who converse like adults. But last night was a one-two punch of profane amusement.

About half-way through the raid, we were about to pull Ultraxion, and we had just picked up a casual raider who was pugging as a fill-in, and another new social member had jumped into vent and logged in to chat, and we were discussing guild policy, making sure the new guys knew what it was (in a nutshell: no sexism, racism, homophobia, or drama) when one of the established members added onto the tail end of the rules, "And no cursing."

For the first time in two years I typed, "/gquit".

There was a moment of shocked silence before the half-doubting voices began to laugh and ask if I was joking,  and a few horrified squeals erupted chiding me for loosing all my guild rep, and the officers began to yell, asking why I kept rejecting their invites. I had, of course, auto-decline guild invites checked by default. And maybe it didn't help matters that I started the dragon trash in the middle of the hysteria.

The stunt reduced many members of the raid into laughter and also into indulging profane language that normally only comes from me, and for that alone it would have been worth it to re-grind all that reputation.

You're welcome, guys. <3