Tell Alex that swearing a lot weakens the value of your swearing as a signal. If you get a reputation for not swearing, then the one time you do, people will take you more seriously than if you used profanity on a daily basis. Also, swearing is a much cheaper signal than any alternatives you might want to signal with if you'd made your swearing meaningless.
This is the actual reasoning I (high verbal IQ, boundary testing 16-year-old) end up swearing < once/month.
Not sure if this will get the result you want, but it will approach what you want.
Tell Alex that swearing a lot weakens the value of your swearing as a signal.
I just did this. He responded by saying that this means if I want him to be less offensive he should swear more, and then he said f---- you. My laughing in response probably didn't help my efforts to get him to swear less.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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