The Omnipresence of F**k in American Culture

(765 words)

Words have meaning, as the old saying goes, but some more than others.

Take “Fuck,” for instance.

“Fuck” is maybe the most sleazy word young boys experiment with out on the wild playground of life. They don’t call it the “F-bomb“ for nothing. My mom constantly reminded me that swearing was a bad habit. It gets a hold of you, it becomes you, and you become it.

The Encyclopedia of Fuck is varied and nasty, beginning with these select examples of the one-word form:

Fuck

Fuck’n-A

Fuckarama

Fuckstick

Fuckwad

Fuckapotamus

Motherfucker…and more.

Hanging out with the boys, I learned that the word “fuck” to a sentence is like mortar to a brick wall when constructing whole sentences, such as: 

Fuck you!

Fuck me!

Fuck off!

Go fuck yourself!

No fuck’n way!

What a fuck’n idiot!

Who gives a fuck?

What the fuck were you thinking?

You’ve got to be fuck’n kidding me!.…and more.

Also, “fuck” is to a sentence like Miracle-Gro is to a plant: at a minimum, it requires a default exclamation point; but also, it adds impact, punch, power, shock, meanness, and even hate in certain contexts. When intended, “fuck” can impact the receiver like a poke, a prick, a jab, a sledgehammer or even a bullet meant to kill.

After watching a few episodes of Succession, Yellowstone, Suits, Real Time with Bill Maher and inside the Welcome to Wrexham team locker room, you might think that “fuck” is an indispensable secret of success among the rich, powerful, talented, mean, and downright ruthless and pathological. It is a word that has reached a certain status in our modern culture and dialogue; indeed, saying “fuck” is where it’s at; it’s cool, edgy, and right-on, bro.

Unfortunately (or not), you are what you eat, what you listen to, what you watch, and what you say.

I’ll confess that I succumbed to peer pressure and tried to take “fuck” for a test drive in my boyhood, but woe is me, I just could not seem to successfully drop an F-Bomb the way some of the boys could. When I tried to launch a “what the fuck“ on the schoolyard in front of my friends, it just wasn’t me. I couldn’t pull it off with any credibility even with my teeth clenched.

Truth be told, I was never cool enough to say “Fuck you!“; or for that matter, cool enough to wear my shirt collars up or put on sunglasses at night, so I was never able to get on the fuck’n bandwagon with any authenticity. My only excuse was that I knew for a fact that those cool boys on the block got help from their parents and siblings. “Fuck” was an important part of their family lexicon. So those boys were getting 24 x 7 x 365 immersion in the language of Fuck which is well known to be the most effective way to learn a foreign language.

On the contrary, my parents did not cuss at all: zero, zip, nothing, nada; maybe a “damn” or a “hell” every now and then, but never the F-bomb. If my father smashed his thumb with a hammer, he might blurt out a dramatic “Yikes!” That’s just who they were. That was my language immersion.

My mom warned me that the constant repetition of certain words (I’m so “bored”; I “hate” this or that) starts to bend your brain in a certain direction, maybe even poison it over time. A word can latch on to your persona like a boil on your nose. My boyhood self didn’t fully understand that at the time, but I came to understand and appreciate that “Fuck” was the poster child for the language of hate which is passed down from generation to generation like a corrupted gene.

I can imagine right now that there are some people reading this essay who have an addictive impulse to using the word “fuck” in every one of their sentences. They might say:

“Who the fuck does he think he is?”

“Who fuck’n cares?”

 “I’ll fuck’n say whatever the fuck I want to say!”

“That motherfucker can go fuck himself!”

When you read the F-bomb word after word, phrase after phrase, sentence after sentence in all its colorful variations, the stupidity of this conversational style just speaks for itself. I’ve been listening to this for a long time, so I’m used to putting up with it just like I have with second-hand smoke – it basically stinks.

But I am a “live and let live” kind of guy, so you do you, and I’ll do me.