shakran

well, if you start outlawing various speech because you say it's "hate" speech, which means it is negative speech directed at a particular group, then you get on a real dangerous slippery slope. That definition means that your comments could be interpreted as hate speech as well, since they're clearly negative and clearly directed at the guys who made this game. Should your speech be outlawed too, lest it offend them, or should we only make it illegal to offend you?

That sounds sarcastic and snippy, and it is, but it's to prove a point. Everything you could possibly say WILL offend someone, no matter how bland you may think it is. If we start outlawing speech based on the fact that it offends someone, this country will soon be very silent. So we have to accept speech that offends us in order to be secure in our right to say things that might upset someone else.


So now let's look at this specific case.

We have a tasteless game made by some dumbass - a game that probably isn't very much fun (I bet he doesn't have the resources to make a decent game like Rockstar or EA does) and wouldn't get much attention except for its subject matter.

That offends people, so what do these people do with their offended sensibilities? They shout the game's existence all over the internet. Inevitably a newspaper or TV station will glom on the story on a message forum like TFP (ahem) and may then run a story on it, giving the game even more exposure. Soon people are grabbing the game just to see if it's as "shocking" as what they saw on the news tonight.

Wouldn't it be smarter to ignore idiotic crap like this so that it just goes away?