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Also, it's hard to take this advice seriously, when the title of the article engages in polite self-censorship by partially masking foul language with asterisks

• tjr 13y ago
  Clearly, the author doesn't care what you think of his polite self-censorship. :-)
• Malician 13y ago
  I think there are two sides of this question. The first is common decency: don't hurt others unnecessarily, don't be an ass, or you feel guilt. The other is a matter of shame: worrying about the disapproval of others for something you did. I want to be more proactive about being good to people around me in ways that matter to them. I am also trying to do more things which create my "shame" feeling, because as this piece says the feeling is generally unnecessary and irrelevant to the feelings of the people around me. I try to do things I am uncomfortable with, or if the only thing holding me back is some vague sense others might disapprove. Really, most of the time they just don't care. From that perspective, if you really think it will hurt some of your readers to spell out the words, and you don't have a significant reason to do so, censoring them is perfectly in line with his philosophy.