Scunthorpe Problem: Difference between revisions

And of course when anyone reads some bizarrely censored text, they are absolutely going to assume that you swore like a drunken sailor at them, with either terrible or hilarious results.

 

{{examples}}

 

** Also, "wistful" gets flagged because of the "STFU" in the middle.

** The [[Game FAQs]] boards for the [[Disgaea]] series makes it really hard to discuss top-tier equipment, since the regular [[Infinity+1 Sword]] of the series is named 'Yo'''shit'''sune'.

* [http://www.whosampled.com Who Sampled] censors every instance of slurs in titles and people names, which comes across not only as annoying (as in the examples above, Yoshitaka becomes "Yo****aka", and so on), but also as [[Hypocritical Humor|hypocritical]]: being primarily a site about samples in rap and hip-hop songs, words like "bitch", "whore" and "niggaz" aren't exactly uncommon.

* The [[Wizards of the Coast]] message boards used to filter out 'cock' which is understandable enough, except that it led to interesting exchanges involving crossbows, handguns and body language. "I got into an argument with a player once when he insisted that he could **** his gun quietly enough to avoid detection by the guard next to him." or in the roleplay forums "She ****ed her head and smiled..." or "How many rounds does it take to **** your crossbow?"

** When the expansion set ''Champions of Kamigawa'' was released, some (presumably younger) members of the community were highly amused by the fact that it could be abbreviated to CoK. The moderators cracked down hard on this, insisting that the set's abbreviation is CHK and that calling it anything else constitutes disruptive behaviour, which was against the Code of Conduct (or CoC, an abbreviation which the moderators didn't object to at all).

*** It doesn't help that the shipped product correctly lists the set code as "COK" followed by the contents: Booster packs. COK Boosters.

*** ''Magic Online'' had a notoriously restrictive swear filter. "Damn" was verboten, despite numerous Magic cards existing with "damned" or "damnation" in the titles (and, indeed, one card existing whose ''entire'' name is "Damnation"). The card "Deep Analysis" suffered from a similar problem. "Mick" is also censored thanks to it being an old slur against Irish Catholics

** The Gatherer ''Magic'' card database's discussion section has a similar problem. You get the old standby cl***ic, as well as the somewhat less common cir***navigate. Not to mention ***ulative upkeep, a (now outdated) rule that appears quite often in older cards.

*** [[Sarcasm Mode|Consistent ones]] [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=74327 too.]

* A ''[[Myst]]''-related chatroom that bleeped the innocent words "manuscript" (for containing the word "anus"), "Uranus" ([[Uranus Is Showing|for the same reason]]), and "shell" (for containing the word "hell"). Some fora-members still use "m****cript" or "mcript" as an [[Unusual Euphemism]]...

** That, and the less risque Rodger "Squidward [[Naughty Tentacles|Tentacles]]" Bumpass.

* The Christian news Web site "One News Now" automatically changes "gay" to "homosexual" in wire reports. It was pretty funny when Tyson Gay ran a 9.68-second 100-meter dash to win the event in the 2008 U.S. Olympic trials -- the resulting headline was 'Homosexual Sent to Olympics'.

* Kissthisguy.com, about misheard song lines and mondegreens, will not let you make ***sumptions about the words you thought you were listening to. Nor any other word containing the string "ass".

* ''[[Neopets]]'' used to have this problem on its forums. Saying the word f{{spoiler|iretr}}uck would get censored. Also, too bad if your RP character's wearing a bikini -- it'd inevitably get switched to "cardigan".

** ''[[It Got Worse]]'' recently, where the filter for Neomail (Essentially private messages) played this trope painfully straight. Words such as something, document, circumstances, facepalm, hello, birdy, skill, and so on would be blocked. It takes the dirtiest sort of gutter mind to see why those words are blocked.

** Uncle, is also not allowed, for some reason

** A long time ago there was a filter changing "sir" to "fag" after Lowtax got sick of posters constantly addressing each other by "good sir." It was eventually taken out, but for months everyone was eating fagloin steaks and hearing fagens.

* Chaoticgame.com had a similar problem with its own censor, but the moderators created a white list of all non-profanity words to fine tune the censor software and fix the issue.

** Not only will it filter across spaces, it will filter backwards. When you combine the two, it can lead to great confusion and amusement. As an example, an article was once posted where someone was shot for egging a car. All occurrences of the phrase "For egging" were replaiced with "Fonaibung".

** While not profanity, the phrase "first post" is filtered to "boobies". This eventually lead to the word "boobiesulated". Similarly, "first comment" becomes "Weeners", and "last post" becomes "minimum post" (even on the profile page). The most well-known example within the site is when a "this day in history" post of "Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General of the United States" was translated to "the boobiesmaster General of the United States"

* The [[Unforgotten Realms|Unforgotten Forums]] had (or has if it comes back) only two censored words. "Fuck" is changed to "boink". And "Will" is changed to "Rob''. The site's creator put in that joke because of his fiancée's "views" on Will Smith, but it sometimes got annoying.

* YTMND used to have this problem. [http://clxssic.ytmnd.com/ This page] pokes fun at it.

* One chatroom banned the use of the word "gif" so people couldn't post pornographic images. The word "gift" always appeared as "*CENSORED*t."

* AOL once banned users from putting the word "horsemen" in their profiles. Sucked for anyone who wanted to mention the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or talk about [[Ric Flair]]!

** Not to mention the "cum" in "documentary" and the "cock" in "shuttlecock" or "cockerel", though as of this writing it does not censor anything containing "dick."

** And the "i" and "c" in "spices"

** And they censor the "spic" in "suspicious."

* Final Fantasy fan-forum Eyes on Final Fantasy filtered "lol" to "I cried aloud in mirth and merriment", intended to prod users towards lessening their usage of chatspeak. It also changes "fuck" to "smurf" and "shit" gets replaced by a line of White Mage emoticons.

* Fans of [[Michael Moorcock]] have this problem on certain forums.

** As do fans of Philip K Dick.

* More specifically centering on the trope namer, this extends to the two English football [soccer] teams that are sometimes difficult to name online: S''cunt''horpe United and ''Arse''nal.

** Hence the clbuttic joke: Name three English football teams with rude words in their names? Arsenal, Scunthorpe united and {{spoiler|Manchester Fucking United (or substitute the name of your own team's bitterest rivals with 'fucking' added)}}.

*** It censored "45s," which occasionally came up if you and your team were fighting enemies in that level range. Apparently ''City of Heroes'' inherited its draconian profanity filter from an earlier NCSoft title, wherein "45s" had been used by players as a stand-in for the nigh-unspeakably filthy word, "ass".

*** You better not try to discuss religion - real or fictional - with anyone in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' either - 'God' is considered a swearword, probably due to the possibility that he may Damn you. Considering the nature of the game, however, it gets problematic if you want to tell someone that your Supervillain got his powers from an Evil *** .

* ''[[Maple Story]]'' censors out "can always" and "can also" to "c** **ways", "c** **so".

** Just for a laugh, log onto ''[[Maple Story]]'' and declare your intent to hunt pigs.

** The filter that one-time North American distributor ''ijji'' put on the thing censored such terms as ba''semen''t, cl''ass''y (a favourite of mine, before the transfer away from SoftNyx) and inef''fec''tual. And of course would block the whole line rather than bleep the "swear."

* [[Disney]]'s MMO ''Virtual Magic Kingdom'' filters not only meant you couldn't talk about the items in your room -- like the pirate themed '''organ''' -- but also censored numbers and emails, meaning you couldn't talk about how many Mickey Heads you had found or what your high scores are. Disney's reason was wanting to make sure kids couldn't share personal info... expect we only got sentences like "I'm Tree Ears Hold" and people not able to find their friends elsewhere. The latter wasn't helped by bans resulting from ''talking about the VMK fan site'' in the game because it gave away your non-VMK identity.

** In ''Monster Hunter Tri'', the word "after" is bafflingly censored. Apparently it's the medical term for anus in German, but I doubt that has anything to do with it.

*** The filter in ''Tri'' is very imaginative. Among the censored words are "sa" and "blitzkrieg", which makes talking about the in-game weapon "Blitzkrieg" difficult, especially since it's a switch axe, logicaly shortened to "sa". The "Hell hunter jacket" is also censored. Any word including the fragment "kak" is censored, which is bothersome in Finnish where it's not uncommon.

*** made worse because there was a "Serpentis Safeguard" enemy in the game.

* Baseball simulator game ''Ultimate Baseball Online 2007'' even censors out the word {{spoiler|ball}}.

** Also, the language filter censors "puta", because it is apparently a rather rude Spanish term for a prostitute. Which seems reasonable until an NPC runs up to your hero and exclaims, "The city owes [[Hello, Insert Name Here|YOUR NAME HERE]] a debt of gratitude after he %$&@ stop to the alien invasion!"

*** "Iron Cross" isn't allowed, but UBERSOLDAT is. Hmm.

* [[World of Warcraft]] has a somewhat overzealous chat filter that apparently also censors words that sound like bad words (making conversation about the 5th of November or Dumbledore's phoenix kind of odd, for example).

* Humorously, [[Adventure Quest Worlds]] once muted you if ended a sentence with the word grape followed by a period or space. Yet, they have failed to censor semen from their swears list.

{{quote| '''Frodo:''' Have you been in Rivendell long? Sam thinks it's a ***** place, but I think he likes it too.}}

* [[DC Universe Online]] is bad with this. Among many frustrations with the filter, it's inconsistent. If a string of letters has a bad word in it, no matter if it has a space to denote that they aren't words, it will censor (i.e. " Wish it" would become "Wi#####" because of the filter.). However words with a bad word in it (Such as Scunthrope) can get by. It's even possible to say the word "bitchass" even though both words would trip the filter on their own. "Ass" itself is a special word in that "Ass" is used in game content (Wonder Girl uses it in her cut scene). To compound the problem, at the time of writing there is no way to turn off the filter to avoid this problems, and the devs act shocked that the players are asking for one.

* Apple iTunes' automatic censorship can get pretty ridiculous. Here's an example from the ''[[Myth Busters]]'' episode ''Sinking Titanic'' (a direct quote): "Find out if a sinking ship will s**k passengers down as it goes under." (Yes, they starred out "suck").

** An episode of a podcast talking about vampire movies was filtered out to "They Vant to S**k Your Blood."

** iTunes also offers at least a dozen settings of Shakespeare's well-known lyric from ''The Tempest'', "Where the Bee S***s".

** In the ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' episode descriptions, "rapist" is censored but "rape" is not.

** The word "Playboy" is also filtered to "P***y", making it look like the title is much more naughty than it actually is.

** "Jailbreak" is censored thanks to the iDevice modding community, affecting albums and songs entitled "Jailbreak".

* A small [[Internet Backdraft]] erupted in 2008, when Richard Gaywood was banned from Xbox Live for using his real name as his gamertag. Microsoft eventually resolved this issue by removing the prohibition against "Gay" and related words in gamer tags... and then history repeated itself in 2010, when another gamer was banned for being from [[wikipedia:Fort Gay, West Virginia|Fort Gay, WV]].

* ''[[Smackdown vs. Raw]] 2010'' falls victim with its new "create a story" mode. When shared online, stories are run through the censor filter, which is clearly more sensitive than the source material's own standards. Title, as in the one for which you're fighting, and Christian, the wrestler, both get censored.

* ''[[Rock Band]]'' has a filter preventing bands with offensive names or slogans from posting their scores to the online message board. It once censored "Laissez les bons temps rouler" without comment, possibly because "les bo" looked like a censor bypass.

** ''Lego Rock Band'' is designed to be family friendly, and so the filter is more severe — to the point at which girls named "Cassie" cannot name their avatars after themselves.

* ''Inklink'', a picture charades game, includes "cocktail" and "pussywillow" in its limited word list. If they come up on your turn to draw, you'll have to pass it, because correct guesses are blocked as inappropriate.

* This sort of filtering is not limited to profanity. In [[World of Warcraft]], the moderators of the game banned the display of a number of website names that were notorious for violating the terms of service (mainly selling in-game gold and items for real-world money). One of the banned names was "ukow", and it has been banned in all forms, including with spaces in the middle. The result was a rash of humorous, faux(?) outrage that it was no longer possible to say that one's "talbuk owns" (a talbuk is a type of animal in the game) in the in-game chat. A forum moderator with a sense of humor responded to the "controversy" by suggesting an extensive list of alternatives to the word "owns" that could be used to describe an exceptional talbuk.

* ''[[Spiral Knights]]'' has a few filters. One turns all your capital letters into lowercase ones if there's too many (rendering something like "YES, WE DID IT" as "yes, we did it"). One - the only one which can be disabled - turns certain cuss words into random punctuation, even if they're in the middle of a word. And one simply destroys posts containing strings like 'rape' and 'viol'. So, no, you cannot talk about grapes or your violins.

* Not quite a swear, but this troper was a member of an irc chat group which autokicked for using ORLY?! since it was overused. Unfortunately this also meant one would be kicked if they used the word "poorly".