Free is a Four Letter Word

I read an article today- wait, that's a lie - I saw the summary of an article today - by Maureen Dowd (she's pretty rad, I dig her) about free speech on the internet. The theory she poses is pretty cool: the internet is supposed to be an outlet for free speech, but because it's so accessible people are actually MORE careful about what they decide to put out there, thus limiting the whole free-speech concept. Irony! We get it! Cool!

So I guess we didn't have to read the article to get the point. (Though I'm sure it's, you know, clever and witty and all that.) But I ran across a perfect example of this today. And as you know, I don't believe in coincidence so I might as well write about it. BACKSTORY!: Some friends and I worked on a little known LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW back at Boston University... called BU Tonight. woot woot. Shout out. Anyway we have some of our episodes posted on YouTube. One such episode featured some "comedians?" performing an act that turned out to be ridiculously offensive... to anyone. So we get an email from one of the "stars" asking us to remove it. And the email went a little something like this:

"Can you please take down two [of our] videos on BU Tonight? One features gratuitous use of a racial slur and the other just isn't very good.

We had a blast on BU Tonight, maybe a little too much fun. The videos are two years old and we'd rather not have them posted for the world to see. It's completely our fault they came out how they did and we hold no hard feelings."

Ah, the repercussions of being a drunken college douchebag. (you know, i almost didn't write that because I know I have family reading this who I respect and who I also kind of want to shelter from the fact that 'douchebag' is part of my daily vocabulary. OH NO! I'M A VICTIM OF FREE SPEECH, TOO!) So while those guys are regretting their past decisions to take advantage of the internet's free speech marketplace, I'm constantly teetering on the edge of where I'll let mine go. But should I be? If I were REALLY writing without ANY censorship, would it be better or worse for me? And would it be more or less entertaining for you? My guess is that it would be way more entertaining for you, and definitely worse for me. So I guess I'll settle for my boring middle-ground. Which makes things just-okay for me and mildly entertaining for you. Compromise, man. It's what brings people... to this place that's not very exciting.

So this has been a long-winded way of making an excuse about not updating this blog more often. I've had plenty to write about, but for some reason writing it all down here just borifies it (that's not a word but what I mean to say is that everything I write is a dumbed-down more boring version of what actually happened in my life to inspire the post). Self-motivated censorship. It's almost worse than if the censorship was forced on me by an outside party. At least then I'd know where I could draw the line. So maybe our lesson here (and hey! maybe Maureen Down addresses this but I wouldn't know because I was too lazy to read the full article!) is that external censorship gives us boundaries... and within those boundaries we are free to express everything and anything we want without the fear of social scorn. And we can push those boundaries... but we'll still be liked and respected as long as we don't cross them. When you don't have boundaries, you don't know how far you can push. And then you go too far. And then you look like an idiot. And then your family wants to disown you, and your boss wants to fire you, and your future bosses don't want to hire you... and down and down the rabbit hole you'll fall.

That is some crazy sh*t.

To think, the internet's allowed for some serious "Lord of the Flies" action. Awesome. I've surprised myself. I thought this entry was gonna suck. But now I actually kind of like it. Score.

It's late and I'm going to bed now. Also. In case you were wondering, LA is hot. But not as hot as where you probably are, which is sticky. So I guess I still kind of win in the "my weather is more awesomer than yours" race, which isn't really technically a race at all....so.. um.. I should really get some sleep.