I am not a number! I am free man!

Good evening.

Most online journals begin with the author telling you about themselves. I'll come to that later. Right now, I want to talk about a subject I feel strongly about.

Online cowardice.

In particular, a very special breed of online coward, that being the people in question being all big and brave when dealing with someone who cracks a joke but then freezing with fear when dealing with a real-deal bad guy.

So imagine the scene: you're with friends either face to face or online, you're all telling jokes and you tell a sick joke. No malice, no underlying admission that you hate the type of person you're joking about, just a joke. Someone pipes up and tells you they don't like your joke and think you are a bad person for telling it.

Here are some comments from these self-righteous moral crusaders -

"Rape jokes are my trigger for hitting people like you."

"If I had heard you telling a joke like that in person, I'd have punched you."

"Making a joke about Subject X is actually worse than perpetrating it for real."

You get the idea.

Now, and this is the best bit, what happens when these Defenders of Other Peoples' Faith do when confronted with a real-deal rapist/animal abuser/neo Nazi/etc? I'll tell you what happens. That brave hero who told you he was "So close to punching your head in!" for telling a sick joke is out of the window along with his self-respect faster than you can say "Pussy".

I've stood face-to-face with a neo-Nazi and on another someone who actually bragged about raping someone. And to be fair to them I said the same to both, in so many words, that if they fucked off out off the country then I'd leave it at that, but if not then it's only the fact that we were in a public place that they're in one piece.

But the very same people who claim that as the defender of Earth it's their sacred duty to tell you "If you weren't a friend, I'd kill you for telling that joke!" are the very same people who, if confronted with someone who has actually committed the subject of the joke, would run a mile whilst screaming like a little kid being chased by the Devil himself.

So this lesson has taught us that moral crusaders are only brave when picking on friends for telling jokes. But if they see a friend in deep shit and being attacked, don't expect that moral crusader to rush to your aid as they'll be too busy rushing to the nearest panic room.

I've been on the receiving end of a verbal joke which was about something I was currently going through and I didn't find funny. I didn't make a big song and dance about it, and instead just mentioned later on when we were alone that I looked a bit glum because of the joke and all I got was "Grow up and stop being so bloody sensitive!"

Paradoxically, that very same person a few years later ticked me off in front of a large group of people...for telling a joke. Go figure...

"Control how people speak and you control how they think. Control how they think, and you have control." is not cool. It's 1984 made real.

And while we're on the subject, what is it with people going ape-shit when it comes to certain ways of expressing yourself? Like "Do NOT say such-and-such as you may offend Minority X!" or "When you make a comparison between X and Y, you're belittling what Z went through."

Point 1 - Having spoken with an old school friend who was born Pakistan, he said what he finds offensive are middle-class dolts dictating what THEY think will offend him. He went to say that he's big enough to speak up and tell people when they've offended him, which has been very rare. Would've been better if it was never, but there you go.

Point 2 - When someone likens their political leader to a despot like Pol Pot, Stalin or Hitler, it's because they feel passionately about their country and how it's being run. It's not because (and I'm quoting remarks by the so-called Intelligentsia "I've got a degree so I am better than you, prole!") they are stupid, dull-witted, moronic, uneducated, idiotic, etc. It's because treating the physically and mentally disabled as non-citizens and a burden on the state is exactly how despots in the past have treated the disabled. As for belittling what genuine victims of those despots went through, the grandfather of a friend of mine was Jewish AND went through the horror of the Holocaust, and he himself said how he felt Thatcher, Heseltine et al reminded him of a certain socialist party. Are people like him being told that by making their similes that they are belittling themselves? I won't because 1 - they were there, I wasn't. 2 - Dictating what they can and cannot say might be a bit too reminiscent for them and make them want to brain me.

All in all, please stop crusading against your friends. If you're that vehement about what others' might find offensive, tell your complaints to the BNP.