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polycaster

That‘s not funny at all.

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It was not supposed to be funny.

Ridicule is not supposed to be funny. I was ridiculing the the parent posts and their nihilistic language.

ps. Since humor is subjective, "that's not funny" is either subjective statement or attempt at grandstanding.

The USSR comment is even less funny.

Yes, let's take very seriously every joke random people do online. Dude come on, been 300 years, you should have discovered humor by now.

Just like that bullshit about today's "censorship" being in any way comparable to what happened in Eastern Europe. Tell that to my father who was banned from schools or to my grandfather who was in prison, both of them would punch you for it.

> my father who was banned from schools or to my grandfather who was in prison

We have those in the west today.

The West is a too broad term, we have very different political systems among Western countries. In some of them cancel culture and big tech aren’t that strong. Besides, it is really different from USSR. Do you know any example in the West in XXI century where a poet or a writer were censored to death?

By the state, no, but Salman Rushdie probably doesn't care who's doing the stabbing.

It's very different. A stabbing is a crime that is prosecuted, state sanctioned imprisonment is not.

the chilling effect is the same.

No, the chilling effect is very different. One is a tragedy that needs to be brought to justice, the second one is never going to get any semblance of justice from its very principle.

tell that to the school teacher from Birmingham that is in hiding because they showed a cartoon to children. I'm sure they're real happy about justice.

What they are experiencing is terrible but still doesn't compare to actual censorship. I'm sure they still appreciate that the state didn't put them in prison and ban their children from education and employment except the hardest, most hazardous jobs where it is actually expected it will kill you sooner than later. State sanctioned violence hits very differently - the power disparity is unbearable and nothing you do will help you or your family, you can't move, you can't run, you can't negotiate, you can't fight, and unless you're very lucky and the entire regime falls it will never stop.

once again you're conflating censorship and retaliation. the censorship is still the same in both cases: unless you want to live the rest of your life in hiding and looking over your shoulder, you can't draw/share certain cartoons purely because it offends certain individuals.

In the countries with free speech the effect is not chilling at all. Do you remember “Je suis Charlie”?

do you remember how they changed their profile pictures to include a transparent french flag? do you also remember how the majority didn't share the actual cartoons that were used to justify the attacks? if the virtue signallers did, the social media companies would have censored it. if the virtue signallers did and the social media companies didn't censor it, there would have been additional riots and the companies would have been banned in ~20 countries.

Where in the west? Certainly not anywhere in EU. In the US... Could you send me some examples please?

https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/university-exeter-...

If any of your relatives would punch me for whatever reason, the correct reaction would be to go to the police and take them to court. Just because you are upset does not mean you can suggest physical violence like that, just casually. Sticks and stones, you know...

I am not suggesting anything, I am just telling you what would happen. Don't go near them spewing bullshit like that.

Consider that even getting a fair hearing at a court is a privilege to them. They grew up in a world where they said the wrong thing to the wrong person (not even a crime or anything morally/ethically wrong, or even offensive at all) and it affected three generations of their family with no end in sight if the USSR didn't collapse. No courts involved - the municipal Party Committee's opinion was enough to put my grandfather in prison for years. That's censorship, not some ban from a single inconsequential private website with million alternatives.

You know what upsets me about this? When people use words like censorship to advocate for a world more like it was before 1989. Not wanting to enter into a business relationship with somebody is not censorship, it's freedom.

So, given that you propose violence as a viable solution, I hope your relatives (and you, for that matter) are not imigrants in a country I visit. Just because you had a unhappy past does not mean you can and should drag your bullshit behaviour with you into civilized countries.

I didn't propose any solution, much less viable. I told you what the reaction of people who experienced actual censorship would be, nothing else. I don't see it as reasonable, but people sometimes don't behave reasonably when somebody tells them bullshit like that with a straight face.

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