We: the creative, intelligent, self-confident, and eclectic,
...are tired of the "mature content" police. We believe that part of living in the real world is going to be offensive. And, when we are offended, we are brave enough when sufficiently offended, to peacefully and courteously confront that which offends us and try to resolve it on our own; it is our responsibility as human beings to do so.
Furthermore, when it comes to art, we are perfectly capable of picking and choosing what we will look at, and do not need a third party to "help" by enforcing a ridiculous system of scoring images as "mature" or "ideologically sensitive" or "violent." We think such rules are ultimately pointless and intellectually demean everyone who follows, enforces, or has them enforced upon them. In short, if we don't like your art, we'll ignore it. If we really don't like it, we'll send you a private note or make a public comment clearly stating why. In other words, we don't need some little button to click that allows us to anonymously go crying "waaah waaaah waaaah so-and-so's art hurt my eyes."
Being willing to make our own choices
about what we look at is what we would call the definition of maturity - and we have seen that maturity is not a matter of calendar age. We have seen 10-year-olds with a better sense of what is good and bad art than many art critics. We do not need you to look at a calendar and tell us what we can and cannot look at. In fact, we really don't care what you think at all. We make our own decisions.
Be it therefore resolved
that the mature content system is stupid and broken, we have decided to show our non-support of it by flagging all of our artworks as "mature" "violent" "ideologically sensitive" "bloody" etc. In that manner, our art will only be available to those of you who are as comfortable as we are with making your own choices. We will mark our vacation photos, family barbecue pictures, photos of flowers, puppies, and bumblebees - whatever - as "mature" "violent" "bloody" and obscene.
We Challenge
those of you who support "mature content" filters to put your money where your mouse-clicks are, and hit the 'report deviation' button and complain that our photos of flowers and kittens that we have labelled as "ideologically sensitive" or "bloody" are not bloody. If you have ever dared to complain about a pixel too much skin showing in an image, you should be equally courageous to complain that a photo of a kitten that is marked as "bloody" should have its mature tag removed. We challenge you to show that you are intellectually honest, and not simply cowards who don't belong on the internet because the sight of a blob of red pixels makes you run screaming from your computer.
Envoi -
The Internet is an infinitely large space and the real world is even larger. There are things everywhere that can be considered offensive. Indeed, we consider those of you who are excessively worried about offense to be offensive in your own right. We would greatly prefer if you and your kids went to Disneyland or vacuum bagged yourselves someplace safe so that we don't have to hear your whining - but we're not going to make you wear a "whiner" tag or tell you to shut up just because you annoy us. We are better than you.
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Mood:
Welcoming -
Reading: the collected works of Thomas Paine
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Drinking: jack daniels