I like that Catalyst canonized program curse words with ‘fragged’, but I think you also have to consider which programs would know the word fuck and also be able to say it. like Tron and Clu would know it just from being around Flynn so much. but I see Tron as someone who picks up on / understands User language but never really incorporates them into his own vocab. Clu does at least parrot some Userisms (the whole “Rome wasn’t built in a day” thing in Betrayal) but also acknowledges that he doesn’t really Get Them, so he might try to say it but probably not in the right context, and he thinks it sounds stupid anyway so he doesn’t make it part of his repertoire.
Quorra, also from Flynn exposure, would know it and would also get the context wrong at first. if Flynn explained it, made the correlation to ‘fragged’ she’d Get It, but I don’t think she curses much regardless of who came up with the words
Able knows and uses it correctly for reasons I cannot explain, I just know it to be true
and I think it needs to be said that canonically, Ram is one of few programs to use other Userisms (“they’re gonna make you play video games” and “put a cork in it”) so I think it stands to reason that he’d a) know the word fuck and b) how to use it. not saying he would, but he could
I like to think that programs especially in the 82 grid pick up user turns of phrase from their users talking to them. It’s my explanation for how the MCP knows what a clown is and says “get this clown trained”, and for how Pavel in Uprising says shit like “the big cheese NUMÉRO UNO”
it’s because their original users / most common users in the mcp’s case were prolly muttering under their breath complaining about their coworkers, lol
Totally
I think programs can pick up User language from anything in their own code (coding comments, terms in their libraries or their readme files, etc) even if they don’t exactly understand what it means
I’ve imagined before that Ram has a lot of creative User slang in his vocabulary because his User stored a bunch of correspondence with his clients in Ram’s directory, and Ram of course got all curious and studied it, because it was the sacred word of the Users, no matter what he could and couldn’t understand
So he may not know what a “cork” is, but he knows how to say things like “put a cork in it” in relevant contexts
Same with other User-isms, like “so long, sucker!” And yeah, probably “fuck.”