The way we fucking speak in Scotland

Scottish public discourse has probably always been more direct (and yes, using more swear words) than its English counterpart. It doesn’t mean people are underlying nastier, and you know that if you’ve stayed in Scotland for a while.

In the days of MSM (mainstream media), they followed the English model, but Scottish culture never died out, and social media is allowing Scots to debate in a Scottish fashion, which means that Scottish Twitter can be a very sweary place.

When people distance themselves from cybernats, I fear they focus too much on sweary individuals and too little on actual abuse and harassment.

We need to be vigilant towards actual abuse (for instance, it’s horrendous and appalling that the wonderful Joanna Cherry has needed to ask the police for protection), and clamping down on Russian bot accounts is also important.

However, the MSM seem to focus on perfectly constructive debaters who just write things from time to time that look outrageous when transposed to a newspaper that doesn’t allow swear words. To some extent it’s a clamp-down on Scottish culture.

I’ll finish this thread by quoting James VI. He was on his way to London to accept the English crown and was surprised at seeing great crowds wanting to greet him – in Scotland, people only gathered like that when they were angry.

So he said to his entourage, in Scots of course: “A’ll pull doon ma breeks, an thay shall see ma erse!”

[Webbified version of this Twitter thread.]