Should I stop swearing so much when I game with other people?

Dear Mother,

Gamer culture is such an open and accepting place of diverse backgrounds, and it's great that we can come together as a melting pot or tapestry or some other metaphor for putting different things together. But how would you recommend hanging out with people who need the exact thing that you're trying to avoid?

Case in point: swearing can be empowering and liberating for so many people, especially with sheltered or restrictive backgrounds. But it can be a little rough for people who have backgrounds with lots of verbal abuse in it. So how can the person who needs the swearing hang out to the fullest with the person who's trying to avoid opening up those old words when game time comes around?

Sincerely,

Swearing Like a Sailor in Cincinnati

Dear Sailor,

Here's the short answer: the person who "needs the swearing" will simply not ever get to "hang out to the fullest" if they're around people who can't stand it. Sad, I know.

And now, for the longer and more complicated answer. I'm going to assume, since you're a Mothership reader, that when you describe "swearing," you're not talking about bigoted slurs of any kind. You're talking about shouting "fuck!" or "shit!" when you fall off a cliff in a co-op game of Mario 3D World. That sort of thing.

Here's the good news about your situation. Despite your somewhat vague description, I get the sense that a gaming buddy of yours came to you with this specific concern about you swearing while you play games. That was brave on their part. Presumably, you've been swearing merrily this whole time, and in a worst-case scenario, this person could have just slow-faded you and stopped playing games with you and you would have never had any clue what you did wrong. Luckily for you, they told you that something you did made them feel uncomfortable, and they gave you a specific, personal reason as to why. They were willing to be vulnerable with you; that's an important friendship, the kind that you should very much want to preserve.