Friday, August 2, 2013

Bathroom Monologue: The Problem with Free Speech



This is free speech.

"the holocost never happend! you culdnt hid that mny bodies. not possibl to kill tht many peepl DUH! gurmany would nevr do it. jews mad it up."

This is also free speech.

"You're a fucking idiot and a disgrace to the human race. There were millions of witnesses, the most famous trial in the history of the world, and thousands survivor stories. It's the most evil thing mankind has ever done. You should be kicked off the internet."

This is more free speech.

"Fuck off, kike. He can have whatever opinion he wants. You think you can just tell people what to believe? He's got the same internet you do."

This is still more free speech.

"where did the comments go? there was a whole thread of fighting here an hour ago"

This statement against free speech is free speech.

"This is my blog and you do not have the right to say whatever you want here. Trolls will be shot on sight."

So this is free speech --

"Feminazi deleted all their comments? You think you're God? You can just erase when someone says something you don't like? Big Brother much? I'm boycotting this site from now on."

--and so is this.

"Boycotts are censorship! You're what's ruining America."

We sometimes think of this as free speech.

"People have got to stop harassing her. So she deleted your comments. That means you should send her death threats?"

But lawyers would defend his right to post this in public.

"FIRST AMENDMENT BITCHES. I DIDN'T SEND HER ANY SHIT BUT SHE DESERVED ANY SHE GOT. DELETE THIS COMMENT IF YOU WANT. I'LL JUST POST AGAIN. LMAO"

This is liberty.

"I am so sorry that this ever happened."

32 comments:

  1. Nice use of the form. Great ending. Concise and thought-provoking.

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  2. You see, I've seen many complains and many way to have a fun of someone illogical, but yours is the best one ever!

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    1. Thank you Franny, and I'm also sorry that it's meaningful.

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  3. Ah free speech comes in many different forms ;)

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  4. Very timely. But this sort of piece always is "very timely".

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  5. The internet is a very weird place to be sometimes.

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    1. The weirdness can be my favorite aspect, sometimes. It's more thorniness that digs into me. What about you?

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  6. I think at that point I'd shut down my blog and start over...

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  7. Nice take on a reality we see every day. Well done!

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  8. Trollish reality will ruin many a decent blog. Great slice-of-life, John.

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  9. This is exactly why I don't post religious or political articles. I agree with toki, very thought-provoking story.

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    1. I seem addicted to sticking my heart in the meat grinder. My friends call it "self-trolling."

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  10. Interesting piece John (as usual!). :-)

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  11. Jeez. It's funny when you point it out, but the same stuff gets played out every day, somewhere out there in the blogosphere.

    An internet acquaintance of mine was fond of saying, "Turn on the lights, the cockroaches scatter." But sometimes, the roaches accuse the light of encroaching on "their" territory. I'm not sure where I was going with this. :-P

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    1. The longer cockroaches feel entitled and antipathy, the harder it is to beat them with a light. They were already so evolved to resist, you know?

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  12. I think people tend to forget that free speech means hearing stuff they don't want to hear. It's an ugly truth about free speech.

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    1. It keeps going around. I wrote this a year or more ago, then the Orson Scott Card nonsense about censorship shook it loose. Felt worth at least trying.

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  13. If I ever wondered why I avoid message boards (I don't, but if I did) this would remind me.

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  14. Good stuff, John. Thoughtful and entertaining at the same time.

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  15. This is why we love your blog John - always fresh and interesting...I do think that when it gets hateful and threatening you can't hide behind free speech anymore, but I think you nailed that...funnily enough been big news in UK this last fortnight. Horrible hate campaigns against women

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    1. Thank you for the kind words, Virginia. I wish those campaigns were what had inspired it, but this kind of ugliness is so common I managed to write it in pure ignorance to that plausible application.

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  16. Truer words, John. Truer words. It happens entirely too often.

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  17. A wonderful example of why I *almost* never read the comments on articles!

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  18. I wish more people would consider how appropriate their speech is instead of how free it is.

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  19. LOL - "self-trolling". That's a new one. Not really a laughing matter though, as it's painful how many people have taken to the internet simply to spew hatred. The internet provides a huge forum for these types of exchanges, but the cowards, name-callers and rock throwers have always been with us. I don't engage them - as the saying goes, "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."

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  20. Ditto the comment about "nice use of the form." Soon as I saw the beginning, I thought this must be inspired by comments on yahoo news articles - I can't stand most of them and yet I find it nearly impossible not to read at least the first three.

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    1. I've never actually read the comments section of Yahoo, as I don't frequent that site, but I've seen plenty of ugliness elsewhere on the web. Part of the generation, I think.

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  21. Heart-wrenching.

    I honestly don't see this as the problem with free speech - I see it as a problem with people. With respect, framing it this way actually strikes me as sort of dangerous, because it lets us say "oh, if the rule wasn't here like this, we wouldn't be harassed, there wouldn't be hate-speech, no one would have to be afraid because of something someone said" as opposed to dealing with the things that make people act like this, and make people take advantage of such an important right in such a fashion.

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    1. I can understand and even appreciate being more interested in what causes people to misbehave than their misbehavior through enshrined rights, but I'm not willing to come with you on ignoring the freedom of speech angle. It's a little too "guns don't kill people" for me, even if I would much sooner ban all guns than let the Senate define how we can talk on the internet. In fact, it's because I hold freedom of expression holy that I dwell on how it's used.

      But I also don't believe the post is quite so reductive as to suggest the remedy for human ugliness is to annihilate liberty. This is just a result of liberty.

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  22. Curious -- were the examples found text? If not, you did a great job of making them sound like it.

    This is one of the rare pieces where one of the most fascinating things for me is the punctuation -- who uses standard punctuation and ends sentences with periods and question marks, and who uses non-standard (or no) punctuation and exclamation marks.

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    1. These were all constructions, though certainly inspired by things I've seen people write. I'm glad they landed as authentic for you.

      How'd I do on punctuation? I'm now self-conscious about my periods.

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    2. The "excited" entries had crappier punctuation than the "rational" ones, so I think the punctuation worked out fine.

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