Thread:Sannse/@comment-27740877-20200911065202

Just asking as a supporter of free speech and self-expression if it's really fully thought through to close down the LyricWiki for new additions/further editing because of offensive lyrical content? See - getting offended by lyrics, poetry, written text, whatever, is a completely subjective emotion. What might offend you, might be just fine for someone else. In a world of true equality, you should allow those voices to have their say that you don't necessarily agree upon. It really begins to seem to me like the proponents of the over-the-top politically correct culture are beginning to become the book-burners who they claim to be so against and afraid of.

Besides, offensive lyrics, poetry or other textual self-expressions are nothing new under the sun, in case you haven't read the poetic works of i.e. Catullus, from Ancient Rome, you might want to take a look at how much "obscenities" he wrote back in his day; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_Catullus#Main_list

Words are just words, and however they are interpreted by the recipient is up to him or her. Of course there is literature, and has been throughout the history, that has and will offend someone for whatever reason. This kind of sticking the head in the sand-wholesale approach to LyricWiki feels really quite absurd to me. Any friend of literature and lyrical self-expression should be defending these rights, not suppressing them. Well, good intentions tend to create a great paving to hell, that's for sure, but I hope that wasn't your intention?

As a long-time contributor (and with a wide spectrum of submitted lyrics - being ranked among the 200 top contributors over there), I find this kind of move mostly authoritarian if not totalitarian by nature, and it's really a shame that this well-working site has come to such a conclusion. We live in an era of digital history and locking up the LyricWiki and censoring can be seen as an act to suppress artistic self-expresion and the freedom to do so.

As you stated in a post regarding the issue; "We will be aggressively removing--", well, those words have likely been said by every known book-burner, history revisionist and totalitarian tyrant who have imposed their own will to create a replacement narrative in what is known as our collective history. Sad, but true.

Denialism often leads to delusionalism and as someone in the comments have pointed out, puritanism as well as authoritarianism, and from there we get to what is often called fascism. "*whoops.* It's a slippery slope after all!"

Just my take on this subject and something to (re)consider in terms of the LyricWiki, and if my opinion on the matter offended you, then I'm sorry to say that I'm not sorry. Once you start the censorship, do you (as in; being the person responsble for this decision) know where to draw the line yourself? And if so, are you making your decisions based on logical conclusions or emotions?

These are questions to ponder.

Nonetheless, I hope you have a good day. Cheers. 