This past Friday, it turns out Sun blogger, Tim Bray was heard (and by heard, I mean write) to drop the ol’ F-bomb in describing a new Sun product. To quote his pithy post:
Suffice it to say that some of the applications for this are things you Just Can’t Talk About, and you can bet those aren’t going to have the snappy green-on-black paint job. Others are going to be graffiti tagging opportunities. Me, I have no idea how big the market is. But I’m glad we built it, because it is just totally drop-dead fucking cool.
I tried to stay away from swearing when I worked at Microsoft. Mostly cause I represented a lot of people who probably wouldn’t appreciate my language. I said “fuck” on stage once at Les Blogs and Maryam thought it was inappropriate.
(Question for Miss Manners: Is it kosher for a corporate blogger to use the f-word?)
If “authenticity” is rule #2 of Corporate Blogging, “dropping the f-bomb” is right above “getting funktastic” (#22), and right below “when asking for donations is much like aggressive begging” (#24) — its important, but a conundrum often solved by common sense.
Some might say that if you’re surrounded by suits, or people who want to be suits, or people who have the personality of a suit — well, its probably not so cool. In fact, “cool” probably isn’t in the protocol manual.
In all seriousness, it is probably whether or not this is kosher is probably predicated by 1) the level of blogging culture in the organization and 2) the context and frequency of your f-bombs. Some organizations are blogging friendly; they’ll take whatever you say, as long as you’re “real” and constructive about things your talking about and not spouting off on some crazy beer fueled rant, in context. Some might even codify what is and isn’t off limits in a real protcol manual.
With regards to the context and frequency — that just refers to how often you’re willing to push those borders. After all, the most lenient boss have their limits, and dropping f-bombs every second sentence would probably hit them.
Probably. :)
