Forget the charts. Forget the market. Set aside the P & L. Let’s talk about censorship.
In my experience as the proprietor of this little corner of the web, I have found there are about three levels of push-back that I receive.
The first, rarest level is from Slopers themselves. This is an extremely liberal (in the classic sense) and tolerant bunch. It’s a pretty free-wheeling place here on Slope. As such, if there is ever a time when I get scolded by folks here, I know I’ve seriously crossed the line.
I actually think it’s only happened once, which is when I – – heaven help me – – urinated on a giant poster of Janet Yellen and posted the video. For some peculiar reason, a few people found this in bad taste, and I quickly deleted the post. In the nearly 17 years of Slope’s existence, I think that’s the only time that I’ve censored myself, after I realized that, OK, yeah, I guess there ARE limits. (Hey, it could have been worse.)
The next level is when the outside world, but still proximal to Slope, pushes back. I’ll give you a couple of examples of that.
One time, in the context of a post, I used a picture of someone triumphantly crossing the finish line of the Special Olympics, suggesting that person represented the bulls. It was puerile, juvenile, and childish on my part, but it was just a stupid, quick joke on my part.
Well, some folks didn’t see it that way. In fact, quite a lot of folks on Facebook were sharing the image with others and wondering if THIS was the sort of person they’d want to use to inform their trading decisions.
Well, there was enough push-back that I did some soul-searching, removed the image, and offered up a heartfelt apology to those who were protesting. The apology was received warmly, and I think, on the whole, I was forgiven. I haven’t dared use any such image since then.
Another time, much more recently (indeed, a week ago) wasn’t even close to that level of offensiveness, at least in my mind. Somewhere here on Slope shared the fact that Rachel Levine, a frequent presence here, was voted one of the Women of the Year by USA Today, and I decided to share the link to the article on my Twitter account. I don’t remember my precise words, but it was something like, “I present to you Rachel Levine, one of USA Today’s women of the year.” It was seriously that inert.
Well, the bitching began swiftly thereafter. People starting going on and on about this, and even a neighbor of mine protested the sharing of the post, declaring that she had a close friend who was transgender and absolutely support their courageous struggle. The tumult reached the pointed where I decided, screw it, I’ll just delete the tweet.
I want to be clear here. I didn’t tweet out, “Look at this fucking mental case“, or “What a freak” or “Chop your dick off, win a prize” or anything like that. I’ve told you what I said. It was a giant nothing-burger, hold the cheese. And yet people wigged out.
We’ll get back to that in a moment, trust me.
The third, final level of censorship is when there’s actually a penalty. Ironically, of all the obnoxious things I’ve written and tweeted over the years, the one and ONLY time I’ve had my account suspended was over something that was actually fairly vapid.
I don’t even remember who it was – – I think maybe Larry Kudlow? – – but I tweeted something like, “You will die alone.” Sort of like how Triumph the Insult Comic Dog does.
Well, I guess someone out there figured that was an awful thing to say, and they reported me to Twitter for making a death threat, and, bang, my account was suspended for three days. So, again, having received a slap on the wrist, my efforts at self-censorship had to be cranked up another notch. It’s really quite tiresome, particularly since my remark was, let me reveal to you now, not an actual death threat against our coke-sniffing friend.
Anyway, I was reminded of all of this moments ago, when I saw that the parody publication Babylon Bee had its Twitter suspended indefinitely until such time as they apologize for, and delete, this article:
Here’s the notice of the suspension:
Now, I don’t know the first thing about the Babylon Bee. But I know a thing or two about comedy. And I strongly, strongly suspect that when the aforementioned article was put together, it wasn’t done out of hate, malice, or a desire to see Rachel Levine come to harm. It was for a different reason, and I will dare to say it – – because it was funny. And funny, of course, is quickly going off-limits.
I am reminded of something I read in The Onion decades ago, which had me laughing so hard that I could barely breathe. It was a front page newspaper story reporting the first moon landing. Here’s a tidbit:
Now, if we had some stick-in-the-mud look at this fake article, they would probably state:
- It’s stupid;
- It’s not funny;
- It’s insulting to the people who actually went to the moon, because it implies they are obscene and immature
And, I gotta tell you, people like this really bore the shit out of me. I think they suck the joy out of life, and I’d rather they just stand over THERE where I don’t have to deal with them. They’re a drag, and I don’t want to be within their ZIP code. Incidentally, here’s the bigger piece……..
Virtually everyone here on Slope has at least a passing interest in the world of markets, and as such, I believe there is a strong libertarian streak in this place. Thus, I’m probably singing to the choir by stating my nausea at the increasing strength of the Cancel Culture (pissing on Yellen notwithstanding).
I strongly believe the ability to speak freely is foundational to any decent society, and it saddens me to think that the kind of infantile humor that I’ve always enjoyed is being suffocated out of existence.
