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I wonder why it is that people seem to get so angrily offended when people say things in public that they disagree with, there is a huge media coverage of what are, on the face of it, fairly innocuous statements ("anybody over 8 stone generally looks pretty awful in Lycra" - Chris Hoy). People say the speaker is racist, sexist, fattist or out of touch ........

... and yet we daily see the most vile abuse in Internet forums and threads, including threats of death and rape and overt bigotry.

What's going on? Is it that internet anonymity and uncontrolled free speech is still quite new, and we seek to regulate it over time via social conditioning?
Part of the reason is people look to be offended and outraged but also because journalism has changed beyond recognition, the internet is like a monster that needs feeding. So everyone has an opinion and everyone else has an opinion on that opinion. And that is before you take forums into account. Look at any online newspaper and the comments section below articles are all extreme echo chambers repeating the readerships views. SO right wing papers like the Mail go mental on immigration blaming immigrants for every problem in Britain and left wing papers blame everything on the Tories or Brexit voters.


The biggest problem though, and I will say it because nobody else will being so PC, is the dumbing down of the west under the influence of American Capitalist throwaway Celebrity TV Culture. That extreme version of two party politics and shallow reductions of everything to arguments settled in the time an ad break is on, has killed debate and diversity of opinion. Everything is one thing or the other with no shade inbetween. Then the Brits follow suit. Fucking Idiots