Funny
What happened to Kimmel and Colbert isn’t funny. Of course, there are some that would argue that they themselves aren't particularly funny, either. I can’t say that I’ve really watched their shows at all, but I do appreciate Colbert whenever I'm able to catch clips of him. The problem here isn’t the censorship itself, but why they were censored. ("Cancelled," "put on hiatus," call it whatever you want but it's censorship.) Nothing they’ve said, at least that I’ve heard, was anything that even encroaches on the realm of things that are generally censored. While what should be censored is always up for debate, we can at least agree that there are some reprehensible things that shouldn’t be done or said, especially in media meant for public consumption. The problem here is that they were censored for the purposes of protecting the feelings of a man who would (given the chance) be king. You may think that these comedians may not be funny, but we should all be worried at the possibility of this kind of thing becoming commonly accepted.
Boned
Why is it such a problem and why should we be worried whether this is becoming common? While the details are probably better left unsaid, Never Say Dice itself was essentially threatened with censorship. Or rather, it was strongly encouraged that we censor ourselves. That, in and of itself, isn’t problematic. We censor ourselves all the time on this blog! Yes, way, Ted! We do! Usually for a humorous effect, like the strikethough just there. We do censor ourselves in other ways, though - for instance, you’ll likely find very little cursing in our posts, despite the... "colorful" nature of our personal conversations. No, in this instance the company (that shall remain nameless) that allows us to place ads at the bottom of posts threatened our monetary compensation. It was a strangely innocuous post too, despite the fact that we’ve taken some fairly liberal stances in past posts. Again, while I won’t go into details, in part because I don't even understand it myself, censorship has hit close to the home of Never Say Dice.
It Bones for Thee
That isn’t to say nothing should be censored ever. Again, it's the reasons and methods behind how those particular court jesters were censored that's the real issue here. You probably censor in your own games all the time, and that's okay! It's all part of audience awareness, we censor to protect ourselves and each other. One of the big reasons to have a Session 0 before starting a tabletop game is to figure out what, and what not, to include. One player have a deep-seated fear of spiders? No need to include those in your game. ("Arachnophobia Mode" is becoming increasingly common in electronic games, after all.) Find out one of your players is a recovering alcoholic? Probably best to keep alcohol, off the table, both in-game and out. That's all self-censorship though, and that's okay. It's protecting the people that we'd call friends, and not the feelings of a some little dictator. Without self-censorship, well…to say the least, there'd be even more TTRPG gaming horror stories out there than the ones we hear about. (And we've heard about some doozies...)
In short, it's fine to censor ourselves at our own tables or in our own stories. Making an effort to protect ourselves and our friends is important for everyone's enjoyment. When a government does it to protect dear nananananananana leader’s feelings, when it pushes to silence anyone that might scrutinize and criticize those in office, that's wrong. Oh, and to be clear, we did not and are not censoring the post in question. Never Say Dice makes so little money through advertisement that the threat of pulling our monetary compensation has no teeth. We can’t even fully fund our costs for this thing from ads. Somehow though, despite outside pressures, we’ll keep funneling tabletop advice and our nerdy musings your way each week(ish). So until next post, enjoy your tables and your dice, even when you censor them.
-A
Send █████████ and ████████ to neversaydice20@gmail.com.
