Ramblings of a Madman

It never ends well, and it never stops.

Visa and Mastercard have recently started a war against gaming. You may think “the games they are currently targeting I don’t care for anyway.” Well, it always moves to things you do care about.

They are actively targeting Not Safe For Work games at the behest of Collective Shout, who is claiming that the games they want gone are dangerous and present safety risks for women and children. While I believe that pornography generally is dangerous for everyone, I also believe that it shouldn’t be censored.

Kids definitely shouldn’t see it. It builds unrealistic standards and expectations about relationships, and can lead to abuse and cheating. But this isn’t the purview of laws or the state to prevent access outside of making it illegal to sell it to anyone under 18 and keeping it out of schools. Parents need to have more active roles in their children’s lives, and explain the dangers and why they shouldn’t look at it when offered and why they shouldn’t seek it out.

No, this is far more insidious. Censorship has two results: driving content underground to far more dangerous places where it is less likely to be regulated and the Streisand Effect, which causes people to want to seek out the censored content.

Censorship also limits creative freedom. You can butt right up to the line, but you can’t cross it. You could potentially skirt it, but to do that you have to do something that makes it look…weird. Turning blood white, for instance.

It starts with porn. Then gore needs to be toned down, followed by violence. Eventually everything becomes so sterile that it is all bland, soulless drivel with no personality.

The only content that should be censored is that which is explicitly illegal and so reprehensible that only a sadistic few find enjoyment in it.