I've often wondered why people with turrettes syndrome spout expletives. Given that this disease is usually spotted rather early in life could sufferers be reprogrammed to spew colors instead? All they would have to do is go room to room in a building (followed by a group of toadys with clip boards) shouting out ... "MAUVE" ... "PUCE" etc. Said toadys then simply nod in agreement and murmer things like "brilliant" "inspired" and so on. Sounds like a win, win to me.
-- Grimrock, Oct 03 2000

This is the #@*(i^/ #@$& color blue I've ~<>+ my #*@!
-- thumbwax, Oct 03 2000


Oh. I thought it was something about Technicolor gun turrets (a domelike structure, usu. revolving horizontally, in which a gun is mounted, as on an armored vehicle, ship, aircraft, or fantasy videogame mechanism). I was clearly aiming in the wrong direction. Sorry for shooting off my mouth. That reminds me: My uncle was a Human Cannonball for the circus. You don't find people of that caliber these days.
-- Ander, Jan 02 2001


what's wrong with cussing?
-- raisin, Jan 16 2001


1st day of term - yellow, yellow, yellow.
-- po, Sep 05 2002


[raisin] sufferers of tourettes can't help themselves swearing/cussing and can therefore yell an expletive at the most inappropriate of times.
-- kaz, Sep 05 2002


I'm beginning to see why no one likes me in forums. I always am trying to clear up stereotypes, but then most jokes and comments about them would cease to make any sense. My advice would be; make new ones. My boyfriend, who has Tourette's, has enlightened me of the horrible truth that it is, weirder than what the layman would have you believe... Basically, it is the irresistable urge to swear, kick children in the face, crush kittens, or whatever else you would least like to do in any given situation. Frightening prospect. Lucky for the both of us, he has never severed my spinal cord, or even sworn because of this, by employing what are known as 'nervous tics.' Twitching, making strange noises, or a lot of other things usually serve as a very effective outlet for these overwhelming urges. So that is how it is generally suppressed, although it won't exactly make one popular. Therefore, it is indeed possible to do what is proposed, and though bizarre, it would be a good idea. I am now looking at what I have just written and thinking that if I had been smarter than a floor tile, I would have registered a lot earlier. Behold the power of the pent-up desire to post something!!!
-- Skippy 72, Apr 03 2004


I happen to have Tourette Syndrome myself. My childhood was rather awful because of it. Regardless, I managed to get a good job and marry a great woman. I do however think it will be funny if Grimrock ever gets purple cancer or burnt sienna parkinson's disease. Reprogram? What am I, a f**king VCR? Am I a f**king parrot to train? There's your curses you F**king moron.
-- Nitehawk, Apr 03 2004


There've been a few ideas recently, making fun of mental illness (and neurological conditions or whatever whatever). A bit disappointing.
-- Detly, Apr 03 2004


I had an idea while playing the video game zuma, in which there is a central frog that pivots around and spits up 4 colored ball-emotions so that they can be aimed and "filed" away with like ball-emotions, that stuttering and tourettes syndrome are conditions that involve a similar mechanism in the brain. In Zuma there is a case when the central frog is pointing in one direction and the colored ball-emotion configuration that you want to aim at is on the directly opposite side of the screen, and when you pull the mouse over to that side of the screen the frog turns the opposite way to which you expected -- CW instead of CCW -- and your attempt to correct it creates a stuttering sort of overcompensation. Anyway that made me think that a stutter is something similar going on at whatever level of configuation of the nurons or whatever that would create that kind of effect and that when you hear someone stutter it is a really good chance to hear the physicallity of the mechanism that is sort of over- compensating or whatever. And it occurred to me that Tourettes is sort of the same thing but on a system wide level where the mechanism that is doing the over compensatory steering is the one that choses phrases or actions. So it seems to me that listening to stutters and tourettes outbursts would be a really good way to interface with a really micro level of the brain -- without any intervening technology. Does that make any sense?
-- JesusHChrist, Jan 08 2005


I think this has been done. French touretters shout "Sacre bleu!"
-- robinism, Jan 08 2005


[+] I like the premise of this idea, though not to mock people with these type of disorders.
-- xandram, Apr 22 2011


I presume that Tourettic coprolalia arises from an involuntary urge to shock, rather than to say selected words. So, I think the closest you might get would be something like "cunting green*!" or the like.

(*which, oddly enough, is a village in East Anglia).
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 22 2011


Come to think of it, perhaps one way to mitigate Tourettic coprolalia would be to follow each expletive with some defusing follow-up. A prefix would not work, I suspect; but a suffix might.

As in "Shit! ake mushrooms!" or "Cunt! inue as you were!", "Fuck! rying out loud!"

On the other hand, I think it's better for people to just realize that it's just an involuntary fucking tic.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 22 2011


I was under the impression that the swearing tic in tourettes is, in fact, a very rare element in those that suffer from the syndrome.

Anyway, if we were going to treat humans like animals or automatons and condition/program them (to be fair, most psychotherapy and psychiatry is a form of reprogramming in some sense), ought to at least make the replacement expletive something pro-active, like words of encouragement. Instead of 'fuck-ball-swine' - 'stirling job, old boy'. Instead of 'cunting prick clunge' - 'jolly good show', and so on.
-- Euryon, Apr 22 2011


For the reasons that my good friend [MaxwellBuchanan] pointed out, I think that is unlikely to work. I found his suggestion far more alluring.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 22 2011



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