FREEDOM!

At one point in time, the people at Twitter used to run around calling themselves "The free-speech wing of the free-speech party". That all went out the window when Twitter became a publicly traded company. Since then, I've heard continuous reports, that they've been tightening the noose on what they consider prohibited hate-speech. This crackdown seems to have intensified dramatically in the wake of the 2016 election, with particular attention being paid to people who express nationalistic sentiments, or engage in race-based political debate. I've even heard of people getting booted for posting crime statistics that have been broken down into ethnic groups. Apparently, the term for these sorts of things is "hate facts".

And to be fair, it hasn't just been Twitter. It almost seems as if there's been a wave of guilt that's swept through silicon valley after Trump became president, and now they're doing everything in their power to make sure nothing like that ever happens again—the most high-profile example of this being when professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was simultaneously banned from virtually every service on the internet, up to and including his email provider. And while I'm not an advocate of the idea that "private companies should be able to do whatever they want", as I've mentioned before, I have gotten a little bit of sadistic glee from watching hard-lined libertarians, who had previously defended the rights of a business to refuse service to blacks or gays, suddenly cry out for government protection when they're on the shitty end of the stick.

Of course, when people get booted from Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube, they don't simply vanish into the ether; and one place where they have been gathering in numbers is a website known as "Gab". Not that that should come as a surprise. After all, Gab is a social media platform that sprang into existence specifically to cater to this growing diaspora of social-media exiles. As such, Gab promotes itself as being the one social media platform that absolutely guarantees your freedom of speech … except when it doesn't.

You see, Gab is run by a conservative right-wing American, and like a lot of conservative Yanks, he might be willing to fight for your right to be a bigoted cunt, but he's not all that keen on pornography—and it just so happens that over the past couple of weeks, he's been putting his foot down on sexualised DRAWINGS of people who APPEAR to be under the age of eighteen—known in internet art circles as "Loli". This has created a bit of a shit-fight over on Gab, with artists claiming the owner is being hypocritical, and the owner taking the libertarian stance that he is free to associate with whomever he wants, and in this case, he doesn't want to associate with a bunch of closeted pedos.

How could this get any more ironic you may ask? Well, you know that nutter who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh? It turns out he was a Gab user, and in the wake of his little rampage, Gab's hosting provider, domain registrar, and payments processor, have all decided that they don't want to associate with a social media site that doesn't police hate speech. At this point, Gab is offline, and it's uncertain whether or not they'll be back. Of course, they're crying foul over this.

Conclusions? It seems to me that there's two libertarian principles here that probably go together fine when you're wanking off over political philosophy with your mates, but are effectively counter to each other when the rubber hits the road. If you want to argue for freedom of association, then you're going to find yourself supporting corporate censorship; however, if you want to argue in favour of freedom of speech, you're going to have to be in favour of the government forcing companies to do business with customers they'd rather not have. At this point, most people I know seem to just be flip-flopping between these two positions to suit themselves.

I for one am highly entertained.

But what do you think? Should free speech trump freedom of association, or vice versa? Do you draw a line somewhere? Where? Why? Would you ban race-based political debate? Hate facts? Sexy DRAWINGS of kids and teens? Should service providers be able to cut you off for no reason? Is there a limit to that? Where? Why?

So many questions.

Spring has … oh wait, never mind.

It's the middle of spring, and it's still quite cold here—especially at night. Also, it hasn't stopped raining in days. At one point over the weekend, it died down to a faint mist, and I took the opportunity to walk over to the shops. On the way, I passed a mob of little kids in raincoats, splashing around in the puddles. I'm glad somebody's enjoying it.

As much as I dislike the fact that Halloween has become a thing over here, I do have to admit that it's the right weather for it. Cold and gloomy. That's why I was surprised to find that my local supermarket didn't have any Halloween stuff up. This year, they've apparently decided to skip Spooktober, and go straight into Christmas mode. That's right—the tinsel was up, and the first thing you came across when you walked through the door was a big table full of Chrissy puds.

I wonder if I'll live long enough to see the day when they start putting the decorations up in August.

Anyway, how's things where you are? Seems like it's been ages since I talked to youse mob.

Cringe Culture

My folks were here again this last weekend gone. Bathurst weekend. My dad used to race bikes, and remains an enthusiast to this day, so no prizes for guessing what we did during that time.

And so we couldn't help but notice that Channel Ten has a new game show, titled "Game of Games". I say "we couldn't help but notice" because not only did they advertise it during every commercial break, they also ran numerous promotions for it during the car racing itself.

Thus it came to pass that we all gathered around the box on Sunday night to witness what must be one of the low points of Australian television history. I'm not against the concept of game shows that involve physical challenges. I have fond memories of "It's a Knockout" and "Takeshi's Castle" and I (mostly) enjoyed both "Ninja Warrior" and "Australian Spartan". Game of Games, however, was absolutely fucking terrible.

Most of the games were too idiotic to get excited about, and structured in a way that effectively allowed the hosts to pick the winner. And then there were the contestants. I don't know if they were professional extras, friends and family of the crew, or "normal" people who had been HEAVILY coached on how to behave, but the way they carried on made the show absolutely unbearable. I can only imagine that their instructions were "Imagine you're a six-year-old who's just downed a full bottle of red cordial". Oh, and to top it off, I think a few of them were actually high. Like, they really REALLY reminded me of somebody who's mixed alcohol with ecstasy.

And while it may be true that I'm the kind of grumpy old fart that a show like this is definitely NOT aimed at, I'd like to mention that even the youngest of my niblings was throwing around words like "shame" and "cringe".

From what I understand, this thing is based on a Yank game-show of the same name. Whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that Channel 10 is now owned by Yanks, I don't know. However, there is one thing I can say with conviction; if this kind of crap becomes successful over here, it will confirm my suspicion that Australia is in a period of severe cultural retardation.

Yes, it was that bad. If you don't believe me, you can watch it here, provided you're coming from an Aussie IP address.

One problem with getting older

Another artist that I really like died yesterday. Carlos Ezquerra was a seventy-year-old man with lung cancer, and I didn't know him personally, so there's a limit to how sad or surprised I can be about it; but I'm still disappointed that there will never be any more Ezquerra artwork.

His style was rough and cartoony, but he was a fantastic visual storyteller.

In case you're wondering, in Dredd's timeline, the world was destroyed when a clownish right-wing populist was elected president of the united states, and then proceeded to start a nuclear war over control of the Earth's oil reserves. After the dust settled, democracy was declared a failed experiment, and anyone advocating for democracy is considered a dangerous subversive.

I'd also heard a couple of interviews with him, and found him quite interesting to listen to. On one occasion, he talked about how super-hero comics promote fascist ideals, by taking what are basically violent, masked, vigilante thugs, and holding them up as principled, patriotic, heroes, who succeed where proper law-enforcement fails. I suppose, growing up in Spain under the rule of Franco will give a person insight into the nature of fascism that most of the rest of us don't have.

Murray Ball went last year, and Steve Dillon the year before. Given their age, I have to assume that most of the rest of my favourite writers and artists will be gone within the next ten years or so. It's hard to describe, but it makes me feel like my own life is gradually being chipped away. Does anybody else get what I mean by that?