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Comment by thrownaway954 | Hacker News Reader

sorry to say, but in this day and age with "cancel culture", "over sensitive millennials" and "non-binary morons" you have to restrict yourself or you get attacked and down voted or booted off (as my account now will). there is no such thing as free speech or expressing yourself, if you view doesn't fit the politically correct climate of the day. Just yesterday i had to tell someone not to gaslight another commenter because they felt the other commenter was offending OP. You can't even say "he/she" or "black/white" anymore without being sculled by someone since it might be insensitive. Honestly, this is the wonderful word we live in now and the author wants just to not be afraid to speak our minds and take risks???

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I wonder how historically true it is that people had an ability to voice unpopular opinions without social consequence.

My parents are from the Soviet Union, so that example comes to mind most readily. Obviously speech was heavily restricted and policed in that time and place; a relative was briefly thrown in jail for handing out pro-democracy leaflets in the late 80s. My wife's family is from China, another country with a history of policing speech. There is a wonderful book called "The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution" which talks about the negative consequences of seemingly innocuous speech during the Cultural Revolution.

Lest people think I only have examples from overseas, when I was growing up here, I found that criticizing religion, even lightly, was problematic. Organized religion was something of a sacred cow until perhaps the early 2000s. I have gay friends, and coming to their support in the late 90s and early 2000s was difficult, with the majority of opposition coming from the religious community.

After 2001, criticizing the war on terror lead many public figures to be deplatformed (or canceled in modern terms). An example of this is the MSNBC host Phil Donahue [1]. Some of you may be old enough to remember the "support the troops not the war" slogan to try to get around these issues, with mixed success.

Maybe folks who are older than me can compare the attitudes now with other historical periods, but I don’t believe it’s more difficult now to vocalize an unpopular opinion than it used to be.

[1]: https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/phil_donahue_on_his_2...

I read history parts of civil rights movements in America. What I found was that any white who would support desegregation was ostracised and punished by whites.

Look, there has never been a part of history when you could be an unrestricted asshole and say whatever you want without consequences. Never. People have always been snowflakes. How about when people used to duel to the death over an insult? Your only solace is that before the internet and TV and mass communication, you could only be an asshole to your local community members.

Now, you have the power of being an unrestricted asshole to a larger audience than ever before. This, unsurprisingly, has even more consequences. In addition, this audience is more diverse than ever, with different opinions, backgrounds, upbringings, preferences, etc. Yes, just as always, there are people who are offended.

And just as always, you have to know your audience. Just like in the past, you wouldn't go to the local aristocrat and talk shit to them, you should know better than to go on Twitter and talk shit. Find your friend group, and say what you want with them. Like you always could. If you can't, find different friends.

People really underestimate how much power is given to them to have a near infinite audience on social media. But that power goes both ways.

you're proving my point perfectly.

i didn't say anything about being an "unrestricted asshole", racist, insulting or attacking anyone deliberately. i simply stated that if you're not in line with the PC terms dejour of the week, you run the risk of being ostracized. you're not a snowflake if someone attacks you and you defend yourself. you have every right to.

however when someone calls you sir, cause you know you're a guy, and you jump down their throat cause they aren't recognizing your non-binary lifestyle of feeling like a girl that day, that's being a dumb ass and an example of how the world is today.

Following are deliberate insults: "over sensitive millennials" and "non-binary morons".

> you're not a snowflake if someone attacks you and you defend yourself. you have every right to.

I guess that is exactly what people do and you act shocked.

those aren't deliberate insults, i'm describing exactly the type of people i encounter on a daily basis.

Sorry I didn't use my words properly. What I meant instead of 'unrestricted asshole' was more 'saying whatever you want without taking into account how people are going to react'.

So yes, when you speak, you have to speak according to the societal norms present at the time. Like we always have had to.

The difference being is that your audience is near infinite and it is near impossible to please everyone, unless you speak in a very deliberate and neutral manner.

Based on your tone and the implication of how you wrote out

> however when someone calls you sir, cause you know you're a guy, and you jump down their throat cause they aren't recognizing your non-binary lifestyle of feeling like a girl that day, that's being a dumb ass and an example of how the world is today.

I assume you don't speak in a deliberately neutral manner and your manner of writing is inflammatory, so you piss people off.

I might be jumping to conclusions here but so many comments I've read on HN that were asking "why is this getting downvoted? echo chamber, PC blahblah". No, the reality is they just come off as an asshole due to their style of writing posts. (exactly like your post that I'm replying to right now)

Can't help but be reminded of Justine Sacco’s infamous tweet. The joke a frankly terrible attempt at irony, but my read was that she had intended to poke fun at racists. Sacco not only lost her job over it but had to endure weeks of death threats and threats of rape. People of course moved on but I do recall one journalist describing what he saw when he interviewed her for his book on public shaming. A sad shell of a human being with emotional scarring she'll have to endure for the rest of her life. Data is only one part of the problem.

Free speech is also saying you are a dick when you are acting like one, or does the buck stop when you are the one who get offended?

Fools names and fools faces are often seen in public places.. or something like that.

Wokeness = the new Puritan era.

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