<strike>Censorship</strike>
For anyone who takes censorship seriously, I would strongly suggest taking a gander at Susie Bright's articles on “NSFW”. (As pointed out to me by the intrepid Regina Lynn at Sex Drive Daily. Read her take on the matter, too..)
- Paul Rudnick's Naughty Bedtime Stories— And the NSFW Bogeyman
- This Post is NSFP: Not Safe for Prudes
I myself have been known to use NSFW to caution people when I'm providing links to other people's content that may, indeed, get your ass put into a sling at work. Yet I don't pre-qualify my own content that way often, if ever. That is a bit of a double standard to say the least, and realistically isn't fair to the owners of the other content to have the stigma of the “inappropriate” put on their work by me.
The other challenge is that the NSFW tag is subjective much like harassment laws in the (US) workplace are purely subjective. However, if the “harassment training” I was forced to attend recently is any indication, you are not allowed to do anything, at all, ever, that could be construed as offensive to anyone. If someone reports you for being offensive, you are in trouble, regardless of context or intent. While that may not be strictly the letter of the legislation, that was the very clear impression I had walked away from that meeting with.
This relates directly to NSFW because by rights, pretty much EVERYTHING is not safe for work. In a world that makes sense (to me personally), idle surfing should be punished on the basis of excessive abandonment of duties. However, due to harassment laws in this country logic need not apply. Welcome to America.
What say you, gentle reader? Are acronyms and concepts like “PC” and “NSFW” ways we fuck ourselves out of free speech by way of self-censure to avoid the warm spittle of the more reactionary members of society? Or are they a necessity that helps protect all society and not just the reactionary individuals?
Also, in the spirit of NSFW, I was going to post up something clearly “NSFW”… but I didn't want to repost any SG girls photos and nothing else really was what I wanted. So instead you get this:
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