This morning, on opening my emails and
checking all the social networking paraphernalia of the 21st
century, I found I had been invited to join a cause by someone whose
opinion I generally have total respect for, and have always held in
high regard morally speaking. I looked vaguely at it and saw we were
protesting about fur coats again, no brainer I thought, and clicked
on the linky thing. I then had to invite half the universe to join as
well (like usual) no problem, so I invited people who I thought might
be interested, and did all the shiny things that it asked me to do
without really giving it a second thought, after all the fur thing is
bad, and I am not likely to agree with anyone who says otherwise.
Now this is where it gets more
interesting, this was not a straightforward “lets all say no to
fur” campaign, it was in fact to get a facebook page pulled down,
called “Real Women Wear Fur”. Now obviously, these are not my
kind of people, I suspect the whole thing might be an exercise in
trolling, much the same as my subsequent excellent trolling page idea
“Real men bite the heads off babies and fuck the stumps”. I
didn't go with that in the end, surprisingly, not everyone would get
the joke.
In my tuesday morning foggy headed
state, and general, “if somebody else tells me this is a bad thing
then it must be bad” soma-drenched mood I clearly forgot my
life-long commitment to freedom of speech. Had I forgotten all the
time I spent pointing out the awfulness of the SOPA and PIPA acts in
the USA to censor the internet? Clearly I had become as bad as the
“won't you think of the children and ban everything cos I can't be
arsed to check what they're doing” brigade. Thankfully, an hour or
so after I had done all my clicking and feeling like I was a good
person for making a difference crap, I got a comment on this facebook
activity from a recently met friend. He pointed out that he couldn't
follow suite due to his commitment to freedom of speech. I
immediately realised my mistake, and spent more time than anybody
should trying to find out how to leave the bloody stupid cause I had
joined (surprisingly difficult, it turns out).
At this point I decided that a more
intelligent form of activism against the awful hateful things that
turn up on the internet is to engage the trolls in conversation, we
must post on their pages and tell them how and why they are wrong,
whilst also trying very hard to respect opinions that differ from our
own. For if we go around just telling those that do not agree with us
that they are a bunch of cunts who should just fuck off, or invoking
Godwins law and comparing them to Hitler, then we're probably not
much better than they are. Polite, yet relentless criticism is the
best way to win the war, check out moronwatch on twitter for a decent
example of this. He wades in where other lefties fear to tread. Oh,
and while we're at it, if you are spouting off at people for their
hateful attitudes, the word “retard” is probably one you
shouldn't use, ok?
Now why the hell am I bothering to go
on about this? I'm not entirely sure, it just shook me that with a
nice big powerful tool like the internet, so many of us go off
sheep-like and just share every single stupid campaign that we get
sent to us (see the whole Kony 2012 debacle if you don't believe me)
without checking it out first. I always assumed I was better then
that, and then it turns out I started doing the exact opposite of
what I have been fighting against for the last 20 odd years. I left a
website I used to help moderate over completely mild freedom of
speech issues (they said no swearing or political/religious
discussion, I said don't be ridiculous, and took all the interesting
posters over to my new site instead, it's been dull as ditchwater
over on that other site ever since). I have spent the last few years
campaigning against all the internet censorship acts that are
continually being pushed at us. It is worth remembering that if the
group “Real men bite the heads off babies and fuck the stumps”
did actually exist and wasn't a joke, at least you would have a
chance of tracking them down before they bit off the head of another
baby. If you banned the page, and sent them further down the
underground, the stump-fuckers would be a lot harder to find.
This big digital playground is ours,
all of ours, and just because somebody is saying something utterly
abhorrent to you does not mean that you should censor what they say.
It just means that you have to challenge it, and if you can't take
the rebuttals, get the fuck off the big slides and go back to the
paddling pool. You also have the right to not look at the bits you
don't like. If the decidedly stupid criminals wish to continue
posting pictures of their criminal activity, and leaving lovely
digital trails all the way back to their IP addresses, lets let them.
I'm not going to go in to the ins and outs of piracy here, but it
appears to be killing the music and movie industries about as much as
home taping/video pirates didn't back in the 80s. Leave the web
alone, let it police itself, blocking sites via ISPs can only lead to
chinese style censorship, which nobody wants (do they?) if you want
to stop the pirates, then get a hold of yourselves, and make it
easier to buy stuff legally, when the CD costs more than the mp3
downloads to get in a legal manner, you have got it wrong.
So, next time you find yourself just
clicking a link from a trusted old friend, have a go at reading the
whole thing first, and doing a little research before you commit
yourself to some cause that it turns out you fundamentally disagree
with. Otherwise you're no better than the Nazis (Yay, Godwins Law
invoked!)
It's also worth pointing out that
signing an online petition and sharing a few videos and pages of sad
looking children/bunnies/corpses do not make you a social activist,
or a good person. Get out and help real people, make a proper
difference, I don't much, I'll admit, but I don't pretend to be a
good person either, I chuck a few quid at a few charities every month
and hope it makes me a better person than I know I really am. If you
have just punched your wife in the face and then told you kids to go
fuck themselves then signing an online petition to stop the bunnies
getting condoms jabbed in their eyes will not cancel that out. Just a
thought.
3 comments:
I did write a very long comment that was very nice and praised your blog to the very highest extent although may have called you dangerously deranged, and not only because you don't capitalise the days of the week.
However Wordpress thinks it is amusing to make me go and sign in AFTER I have written the comment so that it is able to post it but then it apparently deletes it while I am away. And then I come back and discover that Lazarus doesn't work here. As it was you that recommended Lazarus to me I can only assume that you have done this on purpose knowing how this website works. So it appears you are a sly, sly, evil bastard in addition to being dangerously deranged.
Unless it is merely awaiting approval to be published. In which case you are actually lovely and one of my favourite people. And I am very sorry I lied about praising your blog to the highest extent, and I may even buy your album, at that great free price you offered it. I was going to hold out for longer and see if I could get any additional incentive but I won't if it turns out that the comment simply is waiting for approval.
Though if it isn't I may have to come back and tell you what it is that I self censored out of this last paragraph for being too abusive. Ironic considering the topic of your post.
Sorry, it is all bloggers fault Ro. I think Google owns it now, so you can go and give them some shit about it. I find if I am writing something very long indeed, then I write it in notepad first, then it won't vanish i na puff of Chrome.
And I thought lazarus was quite good, although it has uninstalled itself from my work PC for some reason.....
Sorry
Oh, it did the same thing to me, but it published my first one.
Feel free to post that last paragraph.....
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