Breakfast Discussion: Is the term “NSFW” too vague to be useful? [I Heart Internets]

Yesterday, IHC author Delsydsoftware brought up the point in the Art cum shots article that the term “SFW” in that particular instance was a poor use of the term and it brings up the point: How useful exactly are the terms NSFW and SFW?

The short answer: not very for the most part. When IHC posts NSFW Daily Hotness links, it’s truly NSFW unless you work in an environment where you already look at naked women for a living anyway, which is very few of us, so nakedness is pretty well defined as NSFW.

But are people in nice clothes with spots of semen on their face SFW? In retrospect probably not. But if you see the words “cum” and “photos” in the headline, you can always make the determination whether people with cum on their faces is SFW where you work, but that pretty much destroys what is and what is not SFW.

So why do we still use NSFW and SFW? Because for the most part, not safe for work is a succinct and short definition of something that you probably shouldn’t look at while you’re at work or in mixed company. But even NSFW can be pretty vague. Sometimes people on other sites may label things as NSFW if there’s a little bit of blood or if there’s an ugly person or if there’s the word “damn” anywhere in there.

So on IHC, we’ll still use the term NSFW to define nudity, sex and scat but SFW… it is pretty vague. And pretty useless, especially if what I or someone else may define as being SFW or SFW-ish or maybe SFW could end up getting someone in trouble, it’s not worth it in the end.

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