The News From The Nutters Christmas Special: Freedom Of Speech Means The Right To Hear Opinions You Won’t Like, As Much As Others Hearing Them From You

Barely a week into November, there was a surprise comment in the Jazz-Hands in-box.

This concerned the following post made as one of the occasional ‘News From The Nutters’ features, which started off as a look into the murkier parts of activists and activism as well as current affairs in general.

Now if the article was factually wrong, it was a little surprising that this Mark Gregory did not choose to attempt to refute a single point.

(One assumes this was Tolmeia’s dad and not some creepy man white knighting her. This is the internet, and you don’t spend ten years in the online Sims community without developing some internet antibodies)

A generation suckled at the teat of J.K. Rowling are seldom weaned from the belief saying ‘you’re wrong’ constitutes a pertinent argument without needing to be backed up in any shape or form – eg. Harry Potter with the Sorting Hat, Neville Longbottom’s shit speech to Voldemort.

Those old enough to know better, however, should know better.

Especially if you are going to go to all the bother of registering your disapproval in the first place.

Before even getting the chance to respond to any of this, (Jazz-Hands is after all only accessed, let alone posted to, in what limited spare time I have between, work, life, cleaning books with ionised water and cotton buds – and Simming!), there was another email waiting – this one from officialdom.

For a split second little me was cross and jubilent all at once. ‘Take that, you skeet’!

Jazz-Hands One – Eco-Fashionists Nil.

It was clear this Mark Gregory had no intentions of engaging in any sort of discussion from the start and merely wished the silencing and removal of anyone saying anything detrimental about his little poopsiekins.

That in itself is understandable, the overprotective parent with their little princess is a well worn enough trope. Where would Disney be without it?

The cynical side of the coin is anyone familiar with the saga of Beckii Cruel (Rebecca Flint) may wonder cynically how much commercial considerations may equally play a part. Today’s parents do seem to be under the delusion their sprogs can set themselves up for life before reaching their twenties in an age everyone’s fame for fifteen minutes can be monetarised to Millionaire Row via You Tube or whatever.

Whatever may be the case is for others to decide. What was not a matter for moot was in their rush to suppress, they didn’t bother reading the small print of the price of their attempted take down: Jazz-Hands being handed their name, full address, telephone number and email address on a plate.

If I really was some awful person merely posting to be malicious, can you imagine the capers I could have had with that? What was this bloody stupid skeet thinking?

On the internet, you never put yourselves into a position where your family’s name and address is given over to someone you don’t know anything about except that you are quarrelling with them. Ever. Congratulations Mark Gregory, you just took the Christmas Arseturnip cake.

If his precious Tolmeia became a target of some real internet bastards, heaven help them both if this is how they react to some Simming blog taking her meretriciousness to task. The organised troll gangs in places such as Kiwi Farms or Pretty Little Liars are always seeking fresh meat – as we in the Sims community know to our cost, and aren’t a fraction as nice. Or principled.

This is to say nothing of those with the British Museum’s entire collection worth of bones to pick with eco-warriors, especially after Tolmeia’s Extinction Rebellion friends this year carried out the worst extensive campaign of organised hooliganism under a thin veneer of activism since the Swing Riots – and at least those did have genuine grievances behind them, not merely the well-to-do being rebellious like Hermione gushing ‘Who cares? I mean, it’s sort of exciting, isn’t it, breaking the rules.’ in the film version of The Order Of The Phoenix.

Anyone dabbling to any degree in politics needs to know that it is a dirty business – those who choose to find as dirty as Extinction Rebellion have from the start in particular can expect no mercy, as the gentleman pulled down from the tube train in Canning Town on Thursday 17th October this year found out when angry commuters gave him a bloody good hiding.

Now amongst the screenshots he chose to claim copyright over were ones clearly which he had no copyright to – such as those from the BBC (who have long stated they are fine with these if being used sparingly for the purpose of review).

It would have been tempting to tell WordPress this clown claiming to represent Instagram, Facebook and Twitter was lying and to exercise their right to seek redress for their time wasted (time is money … and for California corporations an easy enough way to make money from the terminally stupid who think the real world’s like an episode of L.A. Law where the writs fly like confetti at every butthurt).

But since it’s Christmas … and it concerns separate legal jurisdictions … and because life’s too short …

Meh!

Rather the same point of view Instagram, Facebook and Twitter take.

If you are a hot shot celebrity with big bucks lawyers, you can legally censor the internet from saying things you don’t like – although the negative press it attracts makes it counter productive. If you make your living out of being famous, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth, and cry all the way to the bank.

For the rest of Mr and Mrs Joe and Josephine Public, unless it is with malicious intent, the way to deal with negative reviews is to pull up your big girl pants, put it down to experience, and maybe, just maybe, learn from it. You’re no more an infallible oracle of wisdom than a certain overindulged pigtailed Swedish spoilt brat.

Freedom of speech is not merely the right to be heard.

Freedom of speech is the right to hear opinions you won’t like as much as others hearing yours.

If you don’t believe in that, you don’t believe in freedom of speech.

You have the right to be offended – but it doesn’t give you a blank cheque to take away others right to offend you. It’s a very slippery slope the human race has come undone upon far, far too many times before by blind zealots and those wishing to crush dissent.

Tolmeia has the right to say what she believes in or claims to believe in for whatever motives she may have. That doesn’t give her immunity from others taking her to task for what they may perceive to be shallow-minded and cynically-driven specious platitudes for the benefit of the Twitterati, lazy legacy media journalists and whatever other fellow travelling snollygosters she may attract.

If you don’t want to listen to others opinions, don’t cry when they close their ears to yours. You were born with two ears and one mouth – learn to use them in that proportion and you’ll get further. You never know, you may learn something.

If Tolmeia Gregory and/or her family cannot handle criticism from a freaking Simming blog, they should keep out of the eco-wars – indignation would be the least of their problems …