Should comedians have boundaries?

[JuliusHackebeil]

the-pi-guy said:

JuliusHackebeil said:

I don't know man. Perhaps I am just projecting, but I sense the movement of a goal post. Sure you did not say anything about the government. But you did say it was key to find out if something is thinly veiled hate speech or not. And how do we find that out? Your position seems to be: everyone for themselves. So your answer to the central question in the op would be "no, comedians should not have any limits". They can say whatever they want and if what they say is wrong, soon nobody would listen anymore. Free market, like you said.

Do you think that limits are only when the government applies them?

Consumer bases apply limits too. Society/culture places limits.

I've argued a few pages ago that everyone has limits. I wrote at least one post in here about how conservatives have their own boundaries.

JuliusHackebeil said:

And yet, you also said the problem is punching down. But who would stop people from punching down?

You said the problem is that some people push power over others. But who is to decide on what people in what instances have what sorts of transgressions? Speech transgressions mind you. Pushing power by saying stuff in a comedy show.

Then you said the real issue is being condescending and if you make holocaust jokes without being condescending, that is alright. So again, who is to say when somebody was a littel or too condescending?

These are me describing the same concept while using different words, hoping that one set of them will reach an understanding for someone. 

I try to understand, but I cannot. I hope you are trying the same. Because even though to you the real issue, the problem, the key here is to "get when somebody is punching down, that some people push power over others, is being condescending, etc". -in other words - people saying things that you don't like. And if enough people feel offended by something, that person (comedian) is going down. Free market.

To me, the problem is elswhere:

1) There is no free market here. It is not about democratic decision making and what most people are for is being done. It is about who screams loudest and most obnoxiously. A few tweets of some seriously sick people are enough to cost you your job. Cancel culture is real and it runs on faux social credit. 

2) There is no evidence that people are influenced by comedy shows in a way that makes them do or even believe bad things. As far as I can see, you have provided no evidence for such a claim yet (which, others have pointed out, seems a lot like the moral panic around comic books, metal music, watching tv, playing video games, etc). Yet there are now frighteningly restricting laws against speech in Scotland and Canada (to name two popular examples). People in these so called free western countries are criminally charged with thought crime, with wrong think. This is Stasi-shit.

3) Yes, hate speech actually exists. There are groups of people who hate others. And they talk about that. But I have not seen any evidence that restricting speech will make the situation better. I would presume it will not, but just make hate speech go underground where it will fester and become something much uglier. 

So I would propose that the problem is not to find out if somebody used wrong think and hate speech and condescending thought. It is that far fewer people (if any) have suffered because of comedy shows than they have because of a political climate where speech becomes a crime. Like it has in Scotland and Canada and many other places. The west lives under de facto blasphemy laws. People lose their jobs, their freedom to partake in public discourse, lose their money, lose their lives. And I am not talking about Iran or Afghanistan or North Korea. I am talking about the worlds bastions for individual freedom. And you seem to be an enabler for malicous people to take that down.