About 20 years ago in the UK there was a show called 'Points of View' where if someone had a complaint regarding a tv show, they could write in to have their opinion read out. Usually, it was read out with a comedy voice, the opinion itself wasn't taken too seriously, and there was a brief discussion about it because at the end of the day, it was a trivial complaint about a tv show, and these people didn't work in television, so the general conclusion after each complaint was 'change the channel and watch something else.'
This show still continues to this day, but it has a much more serious tone. Gone are the comedy voices. The points raised are still trivial but are now addressed tactfully and with kid gloves. This is indicative of much of society today, and this is what I want to talk about.
In 2010 a woman put a cat in a bin. She was walking by, saw a cat on a wall, and in a moment of impulse took the cat, put it in a bin, and walked off. You can read about it here, although I'm sure you all know about it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8884799/Swinging-cat-attack-how-wheelie-bin-woman-became-national-hate-figure.htmlWhy? Because it made international news. Because people were outraged. The Prime Minister of the UK brought it up in the Houses of Parliament. And this was all fuelled by the offended general public on Facebook and Twitter. She got death threats, her house was vandalised, she had to live in protected custody. The cat was fine. But the people spoke and were answered. Now, while I am not saying her actions were at all justified, to hell with that. I'm sure there are hundreds of cats hit and killed by cars every day where the driver continues on their merry way, but because it made front page headlines, which in my opinion was insulting enough to any real news that happened that day, it was treated like a national tragedy.
This happened recently in the case of Harambe the gorilla, which unfortunately resulted in his death. Suddenly, everyone is an expert in Gorilla behaviour, and it's not enough that the mother has to live the rest of her life knowing that in those crucial minutes she was a neglectful parent, or the child has to live the rest of his life with the shame of having an endangered species killed because of his actions, not to mention the PTSD that may occur from the whole event, but the witch hunters are out in force calling for the parents to be prosecuted, the kid to be taken into care, and again the death threats pour in thick and fast. Because of the internet everyone has a voice. But most people are morons, and this is just part of my problem with the social media age we live in.
Orwell wrote about a dystopian future where the government censored free speech. But he got it wrong. We are censoring ourselves. Every new day there is news of a group or faction being offended, and everyone gets angry, the party who caused said offence apologises, and the subject matter is added to the ever increasing list of things that we are not allowed to have an unbiased discussion about.
A great example is the new Ghostbusters movie. I wish it was an all-male cast. Not because I am a mysoginist, but so I could freely criticise the movie trailers for being completely unfunny, cheap looking and manufactured crap churned out in the wake of Harold Ramis' death. But, apart from on this forum on the associated thread, I have kept quiet on my thoughts on it's production, as I see like-minded people like me being immediately shot down and accused of being discriminatory because unfortunately the cast happens to be women. It doesn't matter that I loved the first movie, that I read a lot of the related comic books, that I played through the 2009 game because it was the closest thing to a sequel that we had. I'm not allowed to have an opinion exactly because I'm the original's target demographic - A male who is old enough to have seen the original movie after it's general release. It doesn't matter that the jokes fall flat, that it has been reduced down to slapstick jokes and constant product placement. It would be good if there was a counter argument, but posters who reply to reasonable posts, and indeed Feig and McCarthy, resort to the usual comeback I used to get from people in school who knew they were on the losing end of an argument - "Go and get some friends you virgin."
Anyway, I'm babbling. But here is my question. How do you feel about this new era of sensitivity and self censorship? Do you think it's a good thing that all voices are heard (Provided they conform with popular media views) or do you think that people need to toughen up and address real, relevant issues at hand? I mean, it's estimated that soon the world is heading towards a cataclysmic environmental shift which will result in millions of deaths. But one look at Facebooks trending topics shows that people are more eager to talk about people being offended by an X-Men billboard. I've seen the movie, it's much more offensive, trust me.
This guy conveys my opinion on this better than I ever could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceS_jkKjIgo
