I agree @McCloud. It’s funny you mention Family Guy, too. I had the exact same experience. Years ago I watched their Star Wars spoof uncensored, after seeing the TV version. The uncensored cursing felt unnatural (gratuitous) and took me right out of the episode. I remember that I did not enjoy that version as much as the TV version.
Now, I understand this forum’s question wasn’t posed so we could all be a bunch of salty sailors. But, as you said, we’ve got a good thing going, and sometimes an edited curse can be better. I do laugh at “bleeps.”
The only other place I experience automated content censoring is in chat on Wizard101, but that game is explicitly (no pun intended) designed to be kid-friendly. Verified adult accounts can see and use some words that unverified ones can’t, but some words are blocked regardless of context.
Personally, since I work in an office where I could encounter a small child at any time and without any warning, my work-appropriate language is even more constricted than most, so I’m kind of used to the verbal compartmentalization – and besides, when Douglas Adams has already given you ‘zarking’ and ‘belgium’ to play with, you have options when it comes to your epithets.
Funny thing is, if you apply censoring strategically, you can make a perfectly clean text… not.
(Don’t remember the origins of this one, either. Maybe it was one from my older sister’s collection. Like every annoying little kid since the dawn of time, I was always following the older kids around and trying to copy them. Heh. I think she may have also contributed: )
I should interrupt her at her job right now and demand answers. I’m sure she’d love it. (And sure these ditties were inane, but not any worse than “official” songs we sang in Grade School Chorus like “Gee, I’m Looking Forward To The Future,” “You Can Really Be You,” and -thankfully after I ditched the class for good- “Pac Man Fever.”)