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I'm not so sure that is a thing that happens with any great regularity - and I say that because the previously bright line between "this person offended me" and

I'm not so sure that is a thing that happens with any great regularity - and I say that because the previously bright line between "this person offended me" and "this person is harassing me" has become a lot more blurry. Sure, any of us can point at high profile cases, but there's that old saying about anecdotes and data. The problem with your entire last sentence is that it's full of value judgements, value judgements shaped by your experience as a human and your own knowledge and biases. One person's "hate speech" is another person's "spirited argument", one person's "disagreement" is another person's "harassment". You might have a very clear definition of "hate speech" in your mind as you write those words, but I'd be willing to bet if you defined it here in the most clear and unambiguous language you possibly could, you'd find perfectly reasonable people disagreeing with it. And therein is the problem - I'm on the side of that line that leaves people the hell alone in all but the most egregious of cases, because at the end of the day, it's all words on a screen.

dasil003 11y ago
Sure. It's complicated. Heck, even just a passive laugh at a funny picture which is totally innocent and non-harmful in person, can become a crushing attack on a person when it goes viral and it's millions upon millions of people doing it. But just because these issues are messy doesn't give us a license paper over their complexity with reductive founding-father-esque ideology. It's pretty clear to me that in aggregate freedom of speech on the internet is not suffering—people have unprecedented access to spread whatever thoughts they happen to have. Meanwhile an increasing number of people being hurt by internet bullying, harassment, and other anti-social behavior is growing by leaps and bounds in a way that society is not yet equipped to deal with.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  In aggregate is not what we're talking about in this instance. "In aggregate", crime is down worldwide, people are living longer than ever. That does not mean focus gets shifted away from individual criminals and diseases. People being cut off from any medium based on, not because someone was hurt in any tangible way, but because they were offended, is a crying shame, and that goes double when the medium plays at being precisely against that sort of thing. Source on "anti-social behavior growing by leaps and bounds", and a definition would be nice, too. It seems to me words like "harassment" and "bulling" are being used as stand-ins for things as innocuous as simple incivility.
mc32 11y ago
Perhaps the rise of microaggression complaints is exaggerated, but one has to wonder where we're headed as a society when the smallest insignificant things are labeled as (micro)-aggressive[1]. I'm loath to live in a culture where people have to walk on eggshells so as to not offer the semblance of offense. I think it's childish and also hypocritical --as if we can expect no one to think or say anything that would ever offend anyone. They never try to be mean to an ex-lover, they would never think bad of someone who ignored them unwittingly, etc. [1]http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...
- learning_still 11y ago
  This is a huge problem and has actually destroyed something very near to me, video games. The oversensitive attitude you mentioned has poisoned online gaming. Personally, I love to talk shit. A well spoken insult is a thing of beauty to me. It is an art, a craft, a science. Talking shit in video games used to be half the fun of playing, now it's unacceptable. What was once a staple of the culture is now it's greatest crime. Gamers today have this word "toxic". We used to have an antonym for that word, it was called "being a pussy". It's like one day everyone just decided to start taking the internet way too seriously. I can't talk shit in my favorite video game, some college student is facing charges because of a joke he made on twitter, and the presidential candidates are getting asked questions from facebook. What the fuck is going on.
  - tomlock 11y ago
    The internet is growing up.
    - learning_still 11y ago
      I think it just became popular. I don't think it grew up at all. This all seemed to start happening after the facebook boom and all of my friends suddenly knew what a meme was.
    - mc32 11y ago

dasil003 11y ago

Sure. It's complicated. Heck, even just a passive laugh at a funny picture which is totally innocent and non-harmful in person, can become a crushing attack on a person when it goes viral and it's millions upon millions of people doing it. But just because these issues are messy doesn't give us a license paper over their complexity with reductive founding-father-esque ideology. It's pretty clear to me that in aggregate freedom of speech on the internet is not suffering—people have unprecedented access to spread whatever thoughts they happen to have. Meanwhile an increasing number of people being hurt by internet bullying, harassment, and other anti-social behavior is growing by leaps and bounds in a way that society is not yet equipped to deal with.

Karunamon 11y ago
In aggregate is not what we're talking about in this instance. "In aggregate", crime is down worldwide, people are living longer than ever. That does not mean focus gets shifted away from individual criminals and diseases. People being cut off from any medium based on, not because someone was hurt in any tangible way, but because they were offended, is a crying shame, and that goes double when the medium plays at being precisely against that sort of thing. Source on "anti-social behavior growing by leaps and bounds", and a definition would be nice, too. It seems to me words like "harassment" and "bulling" are being used as stand-ins for things as innocuous as simple incivility.

mc32 11y ago

Perhaps the rise of microaggression complaints is exaggerated, but one has to wonder where we're headed as a society when the smallest insignificant things are labeled as (micro)-aggressive[1]. I'm loath to live in a culture where people have to walk on eggshells so as to not offer the semblance of offense. I think it's childish and also hypocritical --as if we can expect no one to think or say anything that would ever offend anyone. They never try to be mean to an ex-lover, they would never think bad of someone who ignored them unwittingly, etc. [1]http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...

learning_still 11y ago
This is a huge problem and has actually destroyed something very near to me, video games. The oversensitive attitude you mentioned has poisoned online gaming. Personally, I love to talk shit. A well spoken insult is a thing of beauty to me. It is an art, a craft, a science. Talking shit in video games used to be half the fun of playing, now it's unacceptable. What was once a staple of the culture is now it's greatest crime. Gamers today have this word "toxic". We used to have an antonym for that word, it was called "being a pussy". It's like one day everyone just decided to start taking the internet way too seriously. I can't talk shit in my favorite video game, some college student is facing charges because of a joke he made on twitter, and the presidential candidates are getting asked questions from facebook. What the fuck is going on.
- tomlock 11y ago
  The internet is growing up.
  - learning_still 11y ago
    I think it just became popular. I don't think it grew up at all. This all seemed to start happening after the facebook boom and all of my friends suddenly knew what a meme was.
  - mc32 11y ago