Thanksgiving night 2025, sometime around nine p.m.: CNN is airing a documentary on Live Aid, a mix of archival and new interviews with principal organizers Bob Geldof, Barry Goldsmith, and more. They’ve just started the show, Status Quo have finished their set and alleviated everyone’s anxiety, and Geldof and The Boomtown Rats head out on stage for their own set. Cut to one of the contemporary interviews, and the word “fucking” is non-censored. Whether it was “It was a fucking good time,” or “It was a fucking mess,” there was no bleep, and they lingered on the shot as if to emphasize it. I don’t know who said it, but it doesn’t matter: the word “fucking” as a non-sexual adjective was casually aired on a major cable news network.
Cable, in its death throes, may be relaxing because nobody cares to complain anymore. Maybe the FCC passed something in the last six years; maybe it was never on the books to begin with, South Park having gone way “over the line” many times in the early-2000s. Swearing used to mean something in the media, and it was a oft-debated topic. Movies with hundreds of “F-bombs” ended up on lists quickly repurposed by preteens and teenagers. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Magnolia, Bully, all of Tarantino—these movies, once “notorious” for their swearing, are way down the list today; numbers three, four, and five are The Wolf of Wall Street, Uncut Gems, and Anora (the top two spots are taken by movies about swearing and the word “fuck”). During its long triumph before, during, and after the Academy Awards this year, I don’t remember ever hearing or reading anything about the 479 “fuck”’s in Anora.
Who cares? So why not air it on CNN. Still, it’s jarring, a solid sign of time passing. Allowing this used to be an actionable offense; people “got in trouble.” It doesn’t matter anymore. Rather than liberating, it’s nihilistic and reflects the rising hostility in every aspect of American culture since the pandemic. Cable may not be as relevant or viewed as it once was, but it remains the epicenter of American thought and behavior. We think in cable. Do you dream in Instagram? Do you dream in TikTok? The videos aren’t long enough. People dream in Twitter, lots of them, and maybe there are sheep hopping fences under BlueSkys.
Like the escalating level of violence and extreme gore in films, horror or not, the casual use of the non-sexual adjective “fucking” in a CNN documentary about Live Aid comes after a decade-plus of annoying and smug graphics and products aimed at Millennials and older Gen-Xers. You push them out of your brain, but The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, whether it’s a novel, a self-help book or a series of lists, has stuck with me. Why the asterisk? Isn’t saying “f*ck” the same thing as saying “fuck” and a self-defeating compromise? This “F*CK” started appearing everywhere along with the unbelievably uncool diluted sarcasm typified by the bumper sticker, in American Apparel sans-serif font, “Baltimore: Actually, I Like It.”
The next step is the verb “fucking,” and that’s just talking heads—what about politicians? Who’s going to start using the F-word in Congress? What about the Oval Office? Trump accelerated the trend, but just in everyone else; ironically, he rarely swears in public, although even he’s loosened up in recent years. Nobody feels comfortable with the way they’ve been treated by the world at large in the last five years; however you felt about the virus, the lockdowns and the vaccines, the pandemic fucked everyone up. It’s dull, it’s obvious, but it’s hard to look at and even harder to reconcile. Long after the hysteria subsided and reopenings began and the new-new normal settled in, the coarseness that defines the 2020s is impossible to avoid. Just 20 years ago, “Unrated” DVD’s sold for $24.99 and single handedly held up the movie industry; video games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Manhunt, and State of Emergency pushed further boundaries for “teenagers” (much younger children played these games); the “Parental Advisory” sticker was still a earnest word of warning, not a repurposed aesthetic touch. This was a source of not insignificant controversy and money; in the 2010s, it was the hit single “Fuck You” (radio edit: “Forget You”). Now it’s nothing. Fucking something, mate.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NickyOtisSmith