Good morning, middle-of-the-weekers. The ride remains relaxing today, as ice is insignificant, snow stays subtle, rocks remain reclusive, wind wafts are a wash, and fog can finally be forgotten.
The voices in my car say that we’re going to get rain today, but it should be light. They also assure that over the weekend, we’ll really get hit with powerful precipitation. We shall see.
So, Kardashians all seem to be in an Internet contest to see who can wear the least amount of clothing and still not get arrested. The Internet gushes over each new entry as “most daring,” “raciest,” or even, “nakedest.” But it seems to me that when you’ve already performed in a video of the most graphic nature, wearing revealing clothing just doesn’t seem all that daring. That’s like going from Formula racing to Pinewood Derby racing… and both of those are pretty racy. Whatever… when perusing the Internet, it’s still really hard to tell if any picture of a Kardashian is actually porn or not. Can’t tell. Don’t care. In fact, for even devoting words to this topic today, I shall do the right thing, and throw myself off of a bridge.
No, I won’t… I’m exaggerating, which is a thing that people used to be able to do in speech and in written correspondence in ye days of olde, and the rest of the world did not have a kiniption fit. Caniption? Kunniption. Kanipsion. Whatever. A fit.
However, the Internet has given the IMPRESSION that we live in a way-too-sensitive world, a world in which any attempt at humor, or any exaggeration or superlative or stereotype or comical observation will be met with screeching outrage. Only, we have to remember: these tantrums are generally only thrown by a very small group of Internet surfers… whose only real goal ever is to find ways to be offended. When they spot something, anything that they can focus their attention on, they bravely type words on the keyboard of the computer in their mom’s basement, and they (bravely!) express their outrage at whatever words somebody else wrote or spoke or comically raised an eyebrow at.
And then, other lily-livered, quivering cowards fall all over themselves to apologize and grovel and express deep remorse for whatever the screechers have complained about.
Do we want to continue giving such power and control to the screechers… the trolls, the online bullies (who, incidentally, ironically base most of their claims upon the false claim of combating bullying, when in fact, THEY are the actual online bullies)? Do we want to eliminate humor, free speech, enjoyable banter, honest discussion, comical exaggeration, descriptive pontification… because an unemployed 38-year-old half-wit who lives on pizza and Pepsi, who shaves only once every three weeks because his zits break open, has nothing better to do than seek and destroy the words of others?
Mrs. Kdog follows and interacts, with a family of bloggers… they have a set of quadruplets, and for years they have produced YouTube videos of these kids. These videos are as innocuous as the driven snow: kids opening birthday presents, playing on the swings, helping Dad make breakfast, visiting Disneyland… and being raised by a pair of very decent parents who love and care for them. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of fans who enjoy the daily videos of these kids growing up, and banter online with the family. Only because of political correctness, YouTube has instituted a new policy that basically assumes that any video with children in it must not allow comment and discussion to follow. See, because there is an actual evil out there of children who are exploited and put on video, politically correct but illogical people have decided that the clear derivative is that ALL videos that include children are therefore exploitive. So… the discussion and comments of this site and others like it, have been terminated. It’s an illogical application of cause and effect, but is driven by a quivering fear of complaints made by bullies/do-gooders who have decided that this makes some sort of sense in their bizarrely twisted and meaningless world. Their complaints are not the result of actual concern for children… instead, they are driven by the need to be recognized for finding something to complain about, that people will knee-jerk react to. It makes ’em feel good.
It’s not a First Amendment issue… I am aware of that. It’s a societal issue, one in which individuals DO get to decide what’s allowed and what isn’t. In fact, the right to not allow certain speech is, ironically, a First Amendment privilege. However… how much further do we really want to go down this sad rabbit hole of extreme political correctness, the hole being furiously dug deeper every day by online bullies who have NO other purpose in their miserable lives than to screech and complain and loudly, proudly announce that they discovered a way to interpret somebody’s innocent words or videos in some way that could possibly be offensive… if one tries hard enough to BE offended?
Come on… stop devoting so much effort to finding complicated ways to be offended. It’s got to be a lot of work. However, I’ll do ONE favor for those types: I’ll make it easy in this column. I’m not going politically correct, or ever-so-gentle, or any of that crap. I’m still going to say stuff that MIGHT offend. I’m no Eddie Murphy, and you probably won’t find too many of George Carlin’s seven words here, but I’m damn sure ready to do my part to undo some of this crippling ultra-extreme, mega-hyper-oversensitivity that has resulted from the effort to never risk the possibility of ever maybe somehow offending some delicate and fragile… online bully.
To hell with the bullies.