There are moments when I despair of the survival of common sense, I really do.
Checking Twitter this morning I was obliged to clear a number of posts from my feed… tastelessly explicit sexual references verging on the pornographic and posts composed entirely of internationally recognised expletives… although given the restrictive length of a Tweet I suppose four letter words are useful… At the other end of the scale were a fair number of loud proclamations of hellfire and damnation for those following a different path from the Tweeter.
While I am wholly in favour of freedom of speech and while I recognise that this may be a personal taste, I do not necessarily wish to be faced with such things over my morning coffee.
Now, I’m not all that good with the ins and outs of Twitter, so it had taken me a while to realise that while those I choose to follow may post the kind of things I am happy to read, not all will check what they retweet and some strange things can slip through that net. I also found out how to dismiss the material I don’t wish to see. I realised at some point along the way that there is even a setting to filter out sensitive material…but not being easily offended I decided I was perfectly capable of doing that myself.
So, okay. All well and good so far.
Quentin Blake, illustration from The Twits (Roald Dahl)
That is until I visit the page of a young Mum whom I would certainly not expect to be posting anything that is offensive to anyone… and find every image blanked out and labelled ‘sensitive material’. Now it seemed odd, so I double checked my settings. No… nothing. I hadn’t accidentally blocked anything…
Of course, by now I am aware that the settings allow you to set a filter over any ‘sensitive material’ you post too… though few, apparently, do so. Sex, after all, sells.
The captions seemed innocuous enough. So, by now as curious as the proverbial cat, I clicked to reveal the ‘sensitive material’, wondering how this woman could present such a motherly face to the world and yet have anything offensive on her page. After the other stuff that had been far too visible, I was expecting the worst… and … I was right…
There, in all their lurid glory, were the names of all of Santa’s reindeer!
Shaken but fascinated, I clicked another… ye gods and little fishes… the horror… Rudolph in shades…
The third was even worse…. Winnie the Pooh with a quote about love… And we all know he’s been in the news lately for being an inappropriately dressed and androgynous bear of dubious sexuality…
While political correctness came into being for very good reason as a way to erase the expression of prejudice it does seem rather to have lost its way a little… Crass expressions of sexual acts and expletives over breakfast are fine, festive images for children and a quote about kindness from one of the best loved bears apparently require a warning…
We can only hope that as the pendulum swings towards the zenith of the ludicrous, it will … eventually… settle back towards something approaching common sense.
Image source: Tumblr
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
Amen to that! 😉
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🙂
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It’s why I don’t bother with Twitter. And when I get some of the really obnoxious posts on Facebook, I unfollow, unfriend and delete. Life has enough problems without the morons adding more.
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It is easier to get to know people well on FB, I feel.
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Yeah, I hope so!
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🙂
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one can only hope -so funny!
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Yep…it would be sad to think humanity could be outdone by a ‘bear of little brain’
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…great post, Sue… P.C. has become an industry… and a totally counter-productive industry at that ;(
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Thanks Seumas. Yes, I think it has gone so far out of control that it is causing as many problems as it was designed to tackle as people now consciously ridicule some of the sillier usages of it.
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Loved this expose of Pooh, that bad boy…
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Not mine, sadly… he was rejected for use in a children’s playground in Poland on those grounds recently.
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Ye gods, Sue – what a bloody awful indictment of something seriously amiss in our world. I have been banging on about PC for quite some time. Hmmm, wonder if inappropriate use of the word ‘banging’ will get me chased by the Thought Police, and locked up for being an Egregious Old Slapper?! xxx
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I know, daft isn’t it? xxx
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Lol! Seriously?!! How crazy is that! Its as bad as facebook; you cant show a breastfeeding mother there, although its perfectly ok to show kids setting fire to a kitten, or sexual images of young women…
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Absolute lunacy….
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“going to hell in a handcart” springs to mind, doesn’t? Not sure what is going on, so many people are being accosted, even on FB, and I don’t understand it at all. Only this morning, someone I chat to regularly has decided to retire from the internet as she cannot take it anymore. Don’t these people have anything better to do, than go around upsetting people?
If we cannot be kind to one another, we should not be anything else, in my opinion. Life is far too short… Maybe we should start a ‘happy club’…
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George Orwell would have had a field day with it all…
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There is definitely something amiss here, I completely agree. Especially when schools now tell children there are “trigger words” in a book that might offend them!
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I know. I was just looking at cinema times and noticed that for each film there is a line of warnings. Poor old Paddington… another teddy bear… has his film labelled ‘Dangerous behaviour, mild threat, innuendo, infrequent mild bad language.’
It beggars belief.
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My eyes! They’re burning. I can’t unsee what I just saw: Winnie the Pooh without pants. Yes, Sue, it is ludicrous. I hope, as you do, that common sense AND decency will prevail. Love your humor. 😉
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Humour is probably the only way to deal with it Judy.
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An available setting on Twitter is to make all of your posts considered as “sensitive material.” However, it’s indeed ridiculous that the true sensitive material gets past all sorts of censors.
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Yes I had noticed it, though the young lady wasn’t aware of it. It just highlighted the ridiculous nature of some of the ‘rules’ these days.
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