Poll: Young people see online slurs as just joking

The Nets don't call girls sluts - they ho's!

i love the way people read something directed at someone else, and get offended

I can't stand the way language and sayings are so loosely used. To be quite frank, it pisses me off. Particularly the ones that demean women. There's just no reason for them. And the fact that people find it funny? Where does the line get drawn?!

It's one thing to be in a close circle of friends and be like, "OMFG, you are such a bitch!" or "Ah...you all are a buncha skanks." But when you post it online, it's not seen to be funny, even though that's what people claim. They say they type it to be funny - no, they don't. They just use that excuse to make themselves feel better.

Loosely used language is not the fault of posting on the net, it is the fault of the failing education systems everywhere.

What can we expect in this day and age? hey use foul words like spaz and gay with no concern how offensive they are, in fact these badly brought up youth think they are being clever or funny. These are the type of kids who bad mouth their parents and do not address their father as Sir.

I can understand why the "N-word" is offensive when ending in '-er', but not as much when ending in -a(h). After all, it's African Americans who popularized it among the other races by repeated usage in everyday speech, i.e. "Whassup my ........ah?", "(Are) you ma .....a(h)? Even my brother-in-law (who's very PC) has used it to refer to friends when carrying on light-hearted conversations with them. If an ethnic group doesn't want a word used, they should probably not popularize it.

“On Twitter, everybody’s getting hit hard. Nobody really cares about nobody’s feelings,” said Kervin Browner II, 20, a junior at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

Really?? This guy is a junior at the University level with the grammatical abomination of 'nobody really cares about nobody's feelings'? I think we should worry more about the fact that these kids cannot articulate themselves well enough to even properly express their true thoughts than the fact that they might call each other nasty names while texting. Or perhaps that is the root of the whole problem. Their informality with language has made them incapable of speaking the Queen's English properly.

Partly I'd agree with their sentiment; my friends and I used to call each other horrible names (still do actually), many of them not very PC these days. That's what young friends do. But we also were required to say 'sir' and 'ma'am' when addressing adults. And we would not have thought about using such language in a public venue, but rather it was something reserved for times amongst ourselves.

I come from a rather racist area in the south (in the US) and the 'N' word was used frequently in all its ugly and malicious intent. After moving away I vowed that when I had children they would never hear that word uttered in our household - and they most certainly have not. But my efforts were destroyed the first time I took them on public transportation where the 'N' word was uttered with such frequency that I had to pinch myself to be certain that I was hearing it from the mouths of young black men and women rather than with a group of good 'ole boys back at the local Elk's Club where there was most certainly no one of color allowed even near the place.

To me, the 'dumbing down' of the population continues at a much too rapid pace.

I dont see any difference between being offensive online and offensive in person. I would never even jokingly call my friends mean names. I love them. I would never want to hurt them and if I thought I ever did even in jest I would be mortified and the first to grovel an apology.

I agree with Steve - people who do this are just bad people, period. Dont know about addressing father as "sir" though - Dad is fine I think!

I think there can be circumstances where emails can be misconstrued. But there is no mistaking some of the words given as examples in this article.

and do not address their father as Sir.

What century you living in ?

The young ones of today have no respect for anyone, they lack manners and social decorum, parenting has been on the downward slide for generations and the product of this is now coming through, Dont worry these young ones are gonna have kids of there own too and they will spawn alot worse disrespectful brats than themselves.

They gonna be in for a hell of a shock.