Agreed.

But language evolves over time. There is no more “a group of people decided that one word was better than another” than there was a group of people that decided that elephants should have longer noses.

That being said, maybe I’m just getting older and have fewer fucks to give, but I get the feeling so-called “bad words” are becoming more common in respectable vernacular.

My totally unsubstantiated hypothesis is that some of it may be because people are watching less broadcast TV shows and TV-censored movies, which have profanity limitations. (Maybe the FCC is the “group of people” you refer to?) Yet watching more shows/movies on streaming services, which have no such limitations.

The only REAL bad words are ones that evolved to spread hate and bigotry, and thankfully even streaming services tend to only use them when historically appropriate and/or to expose intolerant behavior.