Yanno, the internet at large seems to have forgotten a fundamental element of what free speech means:

It means anyone can say anything they fucking like at any time, and there’s basically not a god damn thing you can do about it.

Which is as it should be. It’s easier to identify assbags if you let them talk long enough.

But we seem to be wasting an awful lot of time and energy telling people to shut up, or telling them that they can’t say this, or have no right to say that, or have no business saying the other.

But we do have the right. We have the right to be totally hateful assholes. It’s a bog-given right. And you have the right to not listen to / read things we say. But nobody chooses that, do they?

It’s the web, it’s safe, so everybody thinks its their duty to call people out.

Why? What’s accomplished? You get mad, they get mad, nobody’s mind is changed. Never once in the history of anything online has a flaming argument about a sensitive issue ended with one party going “OK, I guess you’re right, I didn’t see it that way.”

Never happens.

So, yanno, obviously you can exercise your free speech rights by using them to tell others who are exercising theirs to STFU and point out how wrong they are or whatever.

But ask yourself: is it really worth the effort? 

I don’t think so.