The last time I tried to write about the censorship of content on Steam and elsewhere, I proved unsuited to the task. Well, that may be a matter for debate. Maybe you would have liked what I wrote. Gabe certainly would have liked it; hat's part of why I didn't post it. Let me try this again, in the mode of the Elder Statesman that I am.
The instinct to censor, to foreclose thought and annihilate possibility, this exists in all times and all places. To denigrate free speech to the point where the term itself becomes a troubling red flag, where it's ridiculed as "freeze peach" or some shit, it's clown behavior. It's the behavior of people who have and exert power. I'm asking you to recognize this. You will need this tool, even if you can't imagine it now. You abjure it at your peril.
One of the more boring things about these conversations is that - at least in theory - an advocate for free speech must in a full-throated way defend pedophilic incest bestiality. But we aren't meeting on the field of battle, where intractable reality defines the nature of the conflict. There is a cool Bible verse about this:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Don't get too hung up on the particulars, unless you want to just enjoy the apocalyptic imagery. It means that we are engaged in an unbounded, timeless struggle of eternal concepts. I have no interest at all in a game that is mostly Bejeweled, but where dutiful labors might reveal a titty or whatever other weird shit. That is a fake argument. I have no intention of engaging with it in any way. Plus, my "cups" runneth over with boob. At my current physical configuration, I can see something very much like a boob simply by removing my shirt.
There will always be "dark forces" who want to constrain human activity, and it will always start out at the fringe. It will begin there, and secure it, which creates a new fringe. They'll come for your stuff next because it is not, and never was, about your disgust for and desire to punish your erstwhile ideological opponents. I'm begging you to understand when you are simply a piece being moved on a board.
(CW)TB out.
