Colin Moriarty, co-founder of videogame news outlet Kinda Funny, left his company after a joke tweet he posted on international women’s day. The story first hit the news cycle from the International Business Times where the author inaccurately titled the article,
“Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty Resigns After Targeting Women In Racist Joke; Insists It’s His Personal Decision”
This is an completely false headline being used and happens to have all the right buzz words to cause a liberal outrage from virtue signallers and social justice warriors alike. It has since been updated after the backlash against the false headline.
So here is the racist joke:
Yep, this is what that journalist saw and decided that it was racist and extremely hurtful towards women. Moriarty suffered countless attacks online from his colleagues in the gaming industry, including his co-workers at Kinda Funny, his fans, and others in the media like the ibtimes. This led to Moriarty’s resignation and his move to other ventures outside the games industry.
So here in lies the problem with what had transpired over the tweet and the fallout that ensued.
This objective lie that was written about Colin Moriarty being “racist” has indefinitely been smeared across the internet and Google searches. The pile on from other news sites, within and outside the games industry is equally just as deplorable. All of which could have a lasting effect as labelling Moriarty as racist from a tweet that had no business being labelled as such.
But this is unsurprising given how the media operates in today’s social climate. This intentional hit on someone isn’t unheard of, and is seen increasingly throughout the news in the United States.
This communication we have with the digital age has allowed people who once had no voice have one but simultaneously can make targets and accusations just as fast. Social medias influence on everyone’s life gives it more power than maybe we should let it and we should analyze, socially, how it’s changing how we interact and communicate. Navigating how to properly communicate is difficult in person and the autonomy of a twitter bird is much easier to say things then seeing a person face to face and maybe that’s the problem but the insensitivity isn’t justified.
This intolerance from the left is why I don’t choose to label (labels being superfluous and part of the problem) myself that way anymore. What was once the progressive left has swung completely around to become the regressive left where it seems that many are more intolerant then the right.
For lack of any better way to explain, I will use these “labels” to frame my opinion. The progressive left has been the one’s to champion the liberal agenda. Things like LGBTQ rights, racial/gender equality, social medicine etc. all of which are positive movements in my opinion. Now the problem has come up where the amount of hate and vitriol against someone that voices a different opinion then exactly what the progressive’s want is crazy. The people are so quick to attack someone even physically that it’s a major cause of concern for the first amendment right. The liberal thinking is equality for everyone, but now it has turned to equality as long as you think and speak like I do. They may feel justified in thinking that way and they may be right, but it doesn’t justify their actions and attacks against other people, silencing them and condemning their character and their futures.
I’m someone that appreciates the first amendment and what it allows Americans to be able to say what they want to say. If the cost of free speech is being attacked by these online mobs, potentially destroying your livelihood, who seem to look for any reason to pile on and character assassinate anyone with a different thought then theirs, well we really don’t have free speech then.
There is no problem with not liking what someone says or disagreeing with someones views. The way to handle that situation is to criticise it, question it and use your free speech to engage and debate with that person. As soon as you attack someone personally and take away there livelihood, you become just another bully pushing someone down.
We should be able to say what we want, especially within the spheres that you operate, online and offline. There should be no fear of saying something satirical, a tasteless joke, or something obtuse and not have to worry about being attacked by our governments, our employers, or any other person. It’s starting to feel like George Orwell’s “1984”, where we can’t use our words anymore to really express and true sense of freedom and that doesn’t sound like a progressive left I want to be a part of.
The Lucid Rabbit 
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