Would Yes be censored if...?

The whole free speech issue certainly seems to be coming to a head, right now in the U.S. with comedian Tony Hinchcliffe being seriously called out for an appearance in NYC at a Trump rally and his "If you criticize my racist, homophobic, anti-society style, you are the one with a problem... you are the one with no sense of humor."

But here's the thing-- If one wants to be able to say or post anything regardless of how it lands or who finds it sick, vile, and extremist, then you have to eat that and deal with the consequences.   Free speech goes both ways.   To quote comedian Jay Black :

“If you say something racist or sexist or anti-trans or anti-gay, any of those things, you’re not going to jail for that. But if people don’t like it and don’t laugh and they say that was a bad thing to say, well, that’s their right, too,” said Black, who was among those in the comedy industry who criticized Hinchcliffe’s jokes online. “You made a bad joke and did not get away with it because you didn’t present it in a way that was clever or original or spoke to the zeitgeist in such a way to make them laugh. The answer isn’t that the world is too soft, but rather that previously acceptable forms of racist comedy are now viewed as so stupid that many audiences no longer have an appetite for them."

And that's just how it is.   Demand open policies & free speech? Then be prepared to pay the price and don't whine about you're poor lost freedoms when people around you, maybe even friends and supporters, are saying, "Okay but you can't want absolute freedom to say or do anything and then complain about it as if you're being unfairly censored."   You're not being censored, you're living in the real world, and that world may not tolerate the kind of ignorant, race-baiting, misogynistic idiocy it did when comedy was performed in a private club or on an album you bought and listened to in your car or livingroom.   Things change, man, and you ignore those changes and social norms at a price.   Again, free speech goes both ways, and that's just tough.   

And so my personal response is this: Grow up and stop whining when you say something utterly stupid or contemptible and you get pushback.   It's called Free Speech and we all have it, not just the Far-Right toddlers who hide behind constitutional protections in order to have a career and attract semi-Fascist wanderers who are so disturbed and bitter about their mean fathers or lack of friends & love-relationships that they take it out on humanity as a whole.   Deal with it.




Edited by Atavachron - October 30 2024 at 16:51

Proselytizing and discussion are two very different things. When the religious kooks knock on your door, they are not looking for a discussion, they are there because they think you are ignorant and lost and your opinion means nothing to them.
We do have a couple people on this site who feel the urge to proselytize, and it is just as annoying as the religious kooks knocking on your door.

Solution: create a new subforum for political discussion only separate from "General Discussion" and "General Polls". And only grant access to that forum to those who are serious about it and those who are gonna keep the discussions civil. No bigots, trolls, ideological kooks, proselytizers etc. allowed.

Hrychu wrote: Solution: create a new subforum for political discussion only separate from "General Discussion" and "General Polls". And only grant access to that forum to those who are serious about it and those who are gonna keep the discussions civil. No bigots, trolls, ideological kooks, proselytizers etc. allowed.

If we didn't allow those people in there, all you'd hear are crickets chirping.   

While a subforum could be set up like that, it is the most passionate of people who tend to be the least civil, and likely would most like having it. It could have its own moderator. Otherwise, and I once suggested this, it could be a no holds barred political arena (with some rules that people abide by certain laws). To use a pejorative term, snowflakes need not apply. It would become like a war-room, battle royale, but I see problems with doing that and I could see issues spilling over into other parts of the forum. One thing that has been said is that this is a music site first, and the emphasis even in the forum should be about the music.

Another idea would be for someone to set up a forum at another site to discuss politics to one's heart's content or get together for an existing one elsewhere. I encourage people to use other sites fro such things. I used to belong to a Project Reason forum which could discuss religion and politics very freely, but it's not going any longer. It really did help to hone one's logic and arguments. I wish I had challenged myself to post there more.

Logan, when you write:

^^ Lorenzo. Sharing the music would be fine, especially if not exposing one's own biases or seeming to have an agenda other than sharing the music that you think others might be interested in or enjoy. I have inferred because you have made topics before on the subject of the song and not just from a music perspective. It's an agenda that you have demonstrated time and time again. Moderators look for patterns of behaviour, and it is obvious with you. We have a topic for mentioning videos in General Music Discussions. Had you not made a topic there then I would not have interfered. I also have changed my mind on locked topics, or an avatar recently which i had removed, when people have PMed me explaining their intentions.

I did not censor the music, I even properly embedded it and said how to do it. What I did do was censor any future discussion on it in the thread by locking the thread. The topic is visible. We made decisions as collaborators. If you have access to the collab zone, other Prog Reviewers do, then I suggest you present your case for changes there. I'd sit out of it until it develops, but of course if called on that it got to heated, I would have to deal with it. This stuff is time-consuming and believe me, I don't enjoy it one bit.

I suggest that we avoid politically charged and controversial topics here.

Edited by Logan - October 30 2024 at 19:26

And the fact James Balwin's forum thread in which that BBOBBYY song was posted was clearly made with the intention to spark political talk and not a musical one doesn't help. The common grounds between the users of this forum are clearly based on the musical taste and not the political polarity. Almost as if James tried to deliberately make the users here start a flamewar.

Edited by Hrychu - October 30 2024 at 19:30

Logan locking another thread be like:

jamesbaldwin wrote: Hrychu wrote: And in fact I asked: What would happen if Yes wrote a political song or a political album about war in Ukraine or Middle East in this forum? The only way to find out is to commission the remaining members of Yes to write such song and link it here. :v I think your question was a bit manipulative. It's like you assumed the band Yes to be more of an authority to the prog rock forum crowd and those "dumb prog rockers" would be more likely to "buy" a moralizing message in a song from Yes rather than an underground hip hop band. As I tried to write some time ago in a thread, one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian prog, Zarathustra by Museo Rosenbach was actually censored in Italy by the music media because the group was considered fascist, which led to the band's disbandment and to a very slow reception of the album, only to be appreciated over the years. Who was politicised, those who stigmatised it, or the musicians of the group, who moreover were not fascists at all and did not want to send political but existential messages? So what would happen on this forum today if a big name in prog were to release a masterpiece, controversial album with political lyrics? If we had trouble talking about that album, we would risk misunderstanding a masterpiece. Here, I pose questions that have to do with how to understand art, whatever its content, not with politics.

Carousel is a lie.