Frankly doesn't seem like a bidg deal.

A few things, John:

1. is Mr Corgan *wrong*? In the three-to-six paragraphs you posted, you don't seem to have addressed the actual content of this video. I would think the video in question would be the most important thing to rant about, so - forget Gamergate or your favorite young women, what about Mr Corgan's comments about corporate control over public discourse? What are your thoughts on *that* issue?

2. this isn't really a "rightie" or "lefty" thing (whatever those words might mean). I think that if you're going to be honest, you'll agree with me that people on both sides of the artificially constructed culture divide are guilty of undermining free speech, and there are people on both sides committed to standing up for free speech. It's a tribe-neutral principle, don't you agree?

3. haven't you often and repeatedly come out *in favor* of censorship...? I thought cracking down on speech you found to be objectionable was one of your "things". Have you finally decided to come and join us Good Guys over here on the Light Side, or are you just feigning concern about Orwellianism because, urggg urrg video game players?

Also, what do you think about Evalion, aka the new Boxxy? She's becoming embroiled in a storm of internet scandal and online harassment, and frankly I think someone needs to stand up for her before it's too late.

Perhaps it could be you?

Corgan is wrong. He invested in TNA wrestling. He's an idiot. One of those dorks who sees political correctness as tyranny even though it's not enforced by the government. It's manners and norms.

So if admitted political censorship is not enforced by the state, but is instead enforced by unaccountable billionaires who run massive for-profit NSA data-mining corporations, you're saying that's OK, Cena?

Again, re: my previous arguments about the insanity of American tribalism. We've now come to the point where apparently it's "leftist" to endorse censorship AND Reaganaut corporate-dictatorships.

... at least until we catch up to Europe's level of thought-control sophistication, and Twitter's "hashtag censorship" starts being used to take down liberal critiques of Islam and misogyny.

In your defense, Cena, I will agree that given the choice between hard censorship via the coercive power of the state, verses soft censorship via private hegemony over a technically voluntary sector of the market, the soft censorship (i.e. the libertarian-paternalist) approach is preferable. But that makes about as much sense as saying that, because restaurants refusing to serve blacks ISN'T as bad as governments making it illegal for restaurants to serve blacks, we therefor don't have to be bothered by restaurants refusing to serve blacks.

Or, to use a more topical example, because the state doesn't forbid women to be wrestlers, the fact that the private WWE corporation doesn't allow women to compete for championship belts is totally cool. Surely, there's a third position we can take here, right...?

"... at least until we catch up to Europe's level of thought-control sophistication, and Twitter's "hashtag censorship" starts being used to take down liberal critiques of Islam and misogyny."

Personally I'm not nearly as worried about top-down censorship on social media as I am about the way it empowers mob mentality and has been (and will continue to be) leveraged by extremists of all kinds to socially assassinate their rivals. Like what Gamergaters tried to do to a bunch of people at the height of that, and what people n the left have been doing to academics they don't like (especially evo-psych researchers, who for all I'm skeptical of some of their claims, don't deserve things like false accusations of incest and similar career ending smear campaigns, which can and do happen too often) for over a decade. Titter in particular is a terrifyingly efficient tool for stirring up the 21st century equivalent of a lynch mob.

That's an interesting perspective, OZ. However, I'm not really sure what you're driving at: are you saying that you're fine with top-down censorship, on the grounds that it is too dangerous to trust the unwashed masses with freedom? Or are you saying that top-down hierarchies aren't the problem in and of themselves, but rather, the problem lies in the potential for the oligarchs at the top to act as mob-inciting demagogues (i.e. the "Soros Effect")?

Also, Cena: have you checked FB lately? I have a question for you (new question, not really appropriate for poeTV)

>>3. haven't you often and repeatedly come out *in favor* of censorship...? I

FUCK NO. I'm pro-editing. I'm in favor of the right of publishers on the web and elsewhere to set their own editorial standards. This is a fundamental freedom of the press, and if you oppose it, that makes you the one who favors censorship. These people are literally objecting to the freedom of the press, and that's what these deep thinkers always do. They're always trying to control the discourse while painting themselves as the champions of free expression.

So if admitted political censorship is not enforced by the state, but is instead enforced by unaccountable billionaires who run massive for-profit NSA data-mining corporations, you're saying that's OK, Cena?

I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying it's completely necessary. And it's not just billionaires.

I disagree with Jaron Lanier about plenty of stuff, but on this issue I'm fully with him.

UPVOTE!!1

(You left out LiveLeak, they even list who voted what so you can go to their channel and let them have it.)

I hardly ever use Liveleak because I have to disable basically every privacy-related Firefox extension to make it work and it's usually not worth the hassle. I didn't realize they were so upvote oriented.

Anyhow, the problem of identity politics on the left AND the right has been massively exacerbated by the whole "upvote" paradigm, and I see know reason to expect our new tech overlords to do anything about it as long as it keeps bringing them money and power.

Which doesn't lessen the fact that Alex Jones and Billy Corgan are both doofuses.

I still think Gish is a really good album, though.

Also, Corgan's starting to look like the product of a Depp/Voight MPreg scenario.

Hmm... I only use AdBlock and NoScript, maybe I'm not using enough things? But yeah, it's not worth it. It's a hive mind, and reading the comments will depress you.

I think people think of the upvote button is an agree button. I think it should mean "this is worth talking about even though you might disagree." I also think people, especially kids are starting to live by their upvote score and this makes us avoid controversial subjects. Hello Groupthink!

(I gave up after Siamese Dream. I think they're yet another band ruined by MTV.)

Also: Alex Jones has always reminded me of Rush Limbaugh in more ways than one.

Oh and Jaron Lanier??? Boy, I hope he saved enough money by now to buy himself a *real* saxophone!! BA-DUM-TSSSS!!

Ijust noticed that when I switched to Avast I let it install its browser extension, maybe that's what did it. I have that, ABP, Noscript, Ghostery and Privacy Badger for the hell of it, plus that HTTPS Everywhere one that I forget who made. Not that I'm really worried about surveillance or anything, more just to spite datamining companies and Google.

Lately I've also kepy a portable instale of Pale Moon on the desktop so if a site's broken by the Firefox extensions I can use that instead of disabling them, it's just easier.

"(I gave up after Siamese Dream. I think they're yet another band ruined by MTV.)"

I like Siamese Dream, too. That's where I lost them. MTV deserves some blame but I think it's really on Corgan. The story is that he spent a year living in his car in a parking garage writing Mellon Collie, which he conceived of as his own The Wall. And unfortunately for his music, he succeeded. Both albums are acceptable if you're a certain kind of 14 year old, but if you're older (and you're me) they're a bunch of overwrought schmaltz punctuated by some really great lad guitar tones courtesy of Gilmour's Space Echo and Corgan's Fender Blender, respectively. The album as a whole is not for me but I can respect it on a certain level. Unfortunately, everything that followed is, well, the Billy Corgan version of Roger Waters' solo career.

Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and sometimes Cenk although I do think he's mellowed in his old age, and I'm glad that Sanders interview he did a while back made me give him a second chance because he's still hit and miss but a lot less miss than he used to be.

And shit, for everything about Alex Jones that deserves ridicule, every so often he get stuff about globalism right and he was all over the TPP from the beginning. I'd take him over Limbaugh any day.

I agree with what you say about Mellon Collie, it was a good album if you're into that stuff. But I distinctly remember when The Wall came out, all the "grown ups" said it wasn't as good as their other stuff. So maybe it's a great album and we're too old, with onions tied to our belts.

I used to listen to Alex Jones a lot, but always with a weird feeling about him, I felt something was off but I couldn't say what. It was after the Piers Morgan debacle that I finally said "this guy is not what he claims to be." I will still listen to him depending on the guest (eg. Jim Marrs, I can't get enough of him!) but that's about it. Yeah, maybe Limbaugh is a little too insulting but I'm mainly referring to his style, not his ideas. And I like Cenk but I might be a little biased hehehe.

He has looked like Nosferatu since he shaved his head in the early '90s. If anything, he's aging too slowly.