Quite a shame how people respond

[Rayaan]

It's pretty much what I was saying. If it is a distraction, then your message will be lost on your audience. On this forum, it isn't. But on most sites, and everyday life, more often than not, it is.

And remember that there are many other ways of causing distraction.

Even if we eliminated swear words, people can get very underhanded and crafty in delivering insults to their opponents. One famous example of that in history is Cicero, considered one of Rome's greatest orators, whose letters and speeches were so persuasive and yet so verbally demeaning and abusive that one lady (Antony's wife Fluvia), upon Cicero's death, pulled out his tongue and stabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin because of the anger she felt at the horribly nasty things he used to say about her husband.

Psychologically, it's true that words sometimes do have a powerful impact on others; same thing with blasphemous words.

I think that whenever a person joins a group, like when they join a forum, for example, they seek to get a feeling of 'belonging' and 'accepted' in that community (and maybe that is something that is hardwired in all of us, to a certain extent). But, when they get insulted (or hear some swear words thrown at them), they start to feel the opposite of what they expected to feel when they came here ... and then ... well, you know what happens.

So, indeed, sometimes words are like daggers, as the expression goes - but, again, that ultimately depends on the person. Different people react to insults differently. Telling someone "Hey, man, this is just the freaking internet! Why the fuck should you give a damn about what people say on the internet?" is not always going to work, although it never harms to try it. I've said that myself.