More than a rant, it's just a way to get some thoughts out of my head. It's nothing serious, I'm doing fine.

However, sometimes I can't help but feeling... afraid and really uneasy within today's society.

I think it's appalling that in 2017, I still hear people talking about "white" people, "black" people, SJW's, BLM, feminists, neo-nazis, alt-right, alt this, alt that, autists, cucks, immigrants, non-immigrants, etc.

You really can't afford to say anything these days without being taken out of context and have a label glued on your forehead by whoever doesn't like your opinion and doesn't wanna hear it, twisting words and turning them into disposable insults for the sole purpose of inflicting more misery upon others. What's going on out there?

Everything just seems to be blown out of proportion these days, ain't it? Oh, this guy said this about that, wow, big deal. Everybody can be an easy target for the media bubble and internet justice mobs. It's convenient, and easy to do. You just need to be "outraged" about something and vehemently project your hatred and bigotry upon the other. There are so many echo chambers across the world you can join at the cost of nothing but a lot of... passionate time. It's so easy, and it's not just confined to the internet.

It's a war on labels. I call you this and you call me that. Kids in kindergarten do it, but they're kids, you can forgive them. One day they'll learn how to behave more maturely. Hopefully. But society these days seems to enjoy hammering that behavior as a kind of "normal" thing to do whenever something doesn't go quite their way.

I think it's sad. And scary.

It's scary to think of how easy it is to regress into this form of media-inflated tribalism where everyone can point fingers about stuff they don't like that is suddenly deemed "outrageous" or even "dangerous". Freedom of speech, you say? I think that's abuse of that same freedom, when you're limiting others' own freedom for the sake of feeling superior.

Opinions can be argued, sure. You may agree or disagree with them, we all have differences. But it ends there. It's not a reason to fuel the fire of hatred and bring things on a personal level. When it comes down to opinions, that's really all there is. It's just an opinion. Of course, if i.e. you say you hate X group of people and then try to actively harass them, I might have a slight problem with that, but you know, if you're all talk about it, I simply disagree with whatever you say and let go. Fact-checking is the hard part. No one wants to do that, so it's just a lot easier to spread ignorance instead.

I simply think there are more pressing matters at hand worth discussing. I know I've been painfully general here, it's really just a rant/venting out post. I get up every day and I think to myself "I hope that one day my music, and my games, my writings, my artwork, my... anything, really, will invite people to stop and reflect for a sec about what's going on in our lives, if what we're doing is good or not, if we're hurting people by our actions, if instead of healing we're creating more divisions without even noticing, if we're building more walls instead of bridges, if we're simply regressing to our uglier, more brutal side."

Every day I come to Newgrounds with new ideas and perspectives, and try out ways of having fun with the community by proposing different ideas and celebrating our own collaborative spirit. Because it's fun! It brings us closer together and through our creations, we eliminate borders. I say why not? It's not that radical of an idea, isn't it?

What I do in my creative works tends to be generally apolitical and avoids direct references to news or religious topics for the simple fact that projecting my own personal beliefs isn't the main focus of my own work and has never been. Creating for the sake of controversy isn't really my thing either, and I think it would be more collateral than anything. I just create for expressing myself, and that's really why I am frightened, sometimes.

There will be people out there who won't like such freedom. They'll seek to destroy it in any way possible and my fear is more towards the fact that it's becoming easier and easier for such people to abuse their privilege. Imagine your lifetime work suddenly disappearing because some dude or some group of folks decided your shit was too controversial to exist, or didn't match their own blind expectations.

Scary, right?

I don't know if it's too commonplace to think that if in the old days people didn't like something they would just avoid it, when suddenly nowadays everyone is entitled to take something down because "it hurts my feelings and I'm an emotionally fragile individual".

I think it's ultimately gonna be... a really bumpy ride, lol. I won't yield, and it took me a long, long time to get to the point where I can bring myself to speak freely about my own thoughts.

Anyways. My next posts will likely cover more Newgrounds-based initiatives and AIM is also pretty close, so I look forward to that. Thanks for sticking around and see you guys soon.

//FD