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I think your point and mine passed one another like ships in the night. It's not a matter of our varying ideas of expression vs societal expectation, the defini
by ratelimitsteve 1y ago
I think your point and mine passed one another like ships in the night. It's not a matter of our varying ideas of expression vs societal expectation, the defining feature of "barely legal" content is that it's legal. That puts people in a really interesting position where it's illegal to follow the law in a way that the people who wrote the law didn't intend and don't care for. For me, it's hard to tell the difference between that and just making the law up on the fly, and that's what I wanted to illustrate. One can imagine the "pieces of flair" scene from the movie Office Space in this context.
"She's eighteen."
"The law says she has to be eighteen."
"It says she has to be at least eighteen. We'd be more comfortable if she was twenty one. Or if you'd at least stop mentioning that she's eighteen."
"But...the law says she has to be eighteen."
"Do you really want to just the bare minimum? Look at Jim over there, he exclusively makes GILF content."
camera pans to Jim, chatting with a lovely older lady
"So she has to be eighteen?"
"Yes, but you have to tell people she's at least twenty one."
- ben_w 1y agoI think we agree? I mean that the UK is full of moralistic panics, often has put force of law behind them. Same topic, the age of consent in the UK is 16*, so there's already a weird mixed standard of "you can do this, but for the next two years it's a crime if you share a recording of yourself doing a thing you are allowed to do". * or was when I was that age, possibly with exceptions for gay men but not lesbians, it was around when gay equality for the age of consent happened and I remember the exact rules being weird even then
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoI suppose I assumed you were defending the position when you were merely defining it. My mistake there. As a USican we also have really weird age of consent laws where it's like "16 is okay for everything, but you have to be 18 to document it, and if one of you is over 18 then the other has to be over 18 unless you're close to over 18 (the definition of "close to" being something that varies state by state) or my personal favorite which is that in many states there are no age restrictions to marriage if the minor's parents consent. I just wanted to focus on this one because at the bottom of it is an effort to make it illegal to follow the law but in a cheeky way. That, I think, is the part that UK culture has that US doesn't. As a rule we're generally encouraged to find ways to adhere to the letter of the law but not the spirit, it's considered clever.
- chrisjj 1y agoI don't see barely legal means necessarily cheeky.
- chrisjj 1y ago> the defining feature of "barely legal" content is that it's legal. That puts people in a really interesting position where it's illegal to follow the law Not /yet/. > in a way that the people who wrote the law didn't intend ... We've seen nothing indicating the writers didn't intend it, though. Otherwise, I agree.