I learned an important lesson today about the misuse of censorship. Namely that, on the whole, censorship is an
extremely toxic idea.
And, as I've been pondering this matter, what's bothering me the most about this realization is that three of my comedic heroes, Lenny Bruce (
http://www.lennybruceofficial.com/) George Carlin (
http://www.georgecarlin.com/) and Bill Hicks (
http://www.billhicks.com/) battled censorship throughout most of their lives - so you'd think I'd be much more sensitive to this subject. But I guess this just proves that old saying is true, "There is a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk."
Well, I blew it and let personal bias affect my better judgment the other day when I deleted the "Is this going to be on Steam?" thread that was in machinarioforum > Amanita Design > Machinarium. It's something I wish now that I hadn't done and I offer my sincere apologies to everyone that had participated in that thread: Surinick, nmi576, Saaataaan, Jamerz, iakchos, JD and to everyone else that had been following the subject with interest. It was wrong of me!
Here's how it happened... In the middle of the discussion I embedded a photo of the Amanita Design team (whom, I confess, I admire to excess). Jamerz posted a request that JD list all their names L-R and JD did so. At which point I thought, "Hey this belongs in it's own thread so it won't be mixed in with this stupid Steam discussion." (yes, that's literally what I thought) So I split the design team photo out and you can see it now in it's own thread, "Amanita Design team".
http://www.machinarium.com/machinarioforum/index.php?topic=234.0 Meanwhile - and this is where I lost my intellectual compass - there was the "Is this going to be on Steam?" thread still in front of me and I began thinking about deleting it. My reasons are not important now but believe me when I say they all seemed "logical" to me at the time (I'm sure it's what all censors say to themselves) so I went ahead and pulled the thread.
And you want to know the kicker? I was a contributor to that thread as well. I censored myself!
I feel like shit now and will probably go off somewhere to drown my sorrows in Pilsner beer.
But (and I'm kidding about the beer, BTW ;-) I promise you all (especially JD) that I will never again interfere with anything that's posted here unless, like it says in the Agreement we all made when we signed up on this Forum, it is "material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law"... or Spam!
Mea culpa.
-Alex
