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Comment by dogleash | Hacker News Reader

Yo. Free speech absolutist checking in.

Sick of people racing to chirp that we're nowhere to be found. I'm too detached to doomscroll. Just saw the news now.

Honestly, I'm tired of all of the snide remarks from both teams acting like you’re not equally guilty of opportunistically showing up for free speech.

And you have the balls to make comments like this as I'm already dealing with the fact Jimmy Kimmel should have been canceled years ago for literally any other reason. At least when I'm defending detestable speech the number of people pretending it's meritorious is tiny. But now I have to hear his comedy praised? Fuck my life.

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> equally guilty

The defense of choice everyone.

>Honestly, I'm tired of all of the snide remarks from both teams acting like you’re not equally guilty of opportunistically showing up for free speech.

Yeah, a trans person asking you use their desired pronouns presents the same threat to free speech as the FCC threatening people over jokes. The reason for the "snide remarks" is that people like you are still drawing false equivalencies between "both teams".

People have been fired from their jobs for refusing to refer to trans-identifying males as if they are women. Some have even been taken to court over it. This is quite clearly a threat to free speech.

> People have been fired from their jobs

This is a good point because a business choosing not to employ somebody is the exact same thing as the government mandating that a private company not employ somebody. Similarly, gummy bears and grizzly bears are the same thing: bears

These are different types of attacks on free speech but it comes from the same underlying intolerance of others' rights to free expression.

These are different types of attacks on free speech the same way stubbed toes and decapitations are different types of injuries.

The federal government quelling speech is a very different thing than facing consequences for your speech in a private relationship.

I agree! The definition of an attack on free speech is anything that happens that I don’t like. For example Netflix raising their prices is an attack on free speech. People that have loud conversations on speakerphone in public are attacking free speech. When I’m at a picnic and a wasp lands on my sandwich? That’s not just an attack on free speech, that’s cancel culture. The wasp (government) is literally cancelling me exercising (eating) free speech (my sandwich)

Do you talk this sarcastically to people in real life? It's quite off-putting and gets in the way of conversation.

>It's quite off-putting

I don’t appreciate this attack on my freedom of expression. “Freedom of speech” means saying whatever I want and I am free from anybody forming any negative opinions about me or what I said. Any even perceived undesired consequence for how I express myself is an assault on my first amendment rights

No thanks.

I’m having trouble understanding your reaction here. Free speech dictates that everyone has to like me in the same way that free speech means everybody has to agree with you and tell you that your opinions about pronouns are good and correct.

It seems like we’re in full agreement here. Like the only way I could imagine that we’re at odds is if you just decided unprompted to share your opinions about gender in the Jimmy Kimmel thread and used “free speech”, again completely unprompted, as a shorthand to express your irritation at the fact that there exists some people that don’t agree with you.

That would be pretty silly though. Obviously you were sharing a single example that’s part of a larger and logically consistent definition of free speech (which we agree about), because it would be pretty bad faith to assume that you saw the Jimmy Kimmel thread and thought “Nobody is even discussing my take on pronouns on this page. I’d better get on fixing that”

My reaction is that of becoming bored with your sarcastic responses.

Oh good. I thought you were canceling me. I would hate to be canceled

Do those people ever get tired of all of that pearl-clutching? Being a modern conservative seems exhausting, what with all the faux outrage and constantly shifting fundamental beliefs.

I don’t think people get tired of being rewarded or reassured that they are good and right. I would imagine folks only get tired of pearl clutching these days when they’re just sort of bad at it and go for it without making sure the environment they’re posting in will guarantee a win. That being said, the topic of this thread largely relates to a forcible change in the environment in the US to uniformly guarantee a win and a pat on the head for pearl clutching as a matter of policy.

It is sadly a matter of when not if.

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