Swearing was taken as more severe back then. The F word was legitimately nuclear in polite company in the 1960s. But these things evolve. In Puritan times, “damn” would have gotten you two days in the stocks but “shit” and “fuck” we’re just uncouth.

Today it’s identity slurs that are untouchable, which is an improvement because a lot of those words are legitimately hurtful and really shouldn’t be used casually.

And there are languages like Korean and Japanese where there are no profane words at our level of severity but there are ways of saying things that will end your career, e.g. certain second person pronouns and verb inflections that no one uses these days but are still recognized as viscous attacks.