Causing Offence

Causing offence is really easy today. Hell, it's highly probably causing offence right now (especially since I used the 'h' word, you know 'high'). People just need to toughen up (I said 'up', woops) sometimes because they are taking offence to everything. There are, of course, some things that are genuinely offensive and I can see how they get offended. Then there are the people who just go through sites like Facebook looking to be offended. Finally, there are just those people who get offended at everything and it is easier not to say anything so that people don't get offended.

First, the things that are clearly offensive. These are the posts, images and pages going around the internet that are clearly offensive and intended to cause offense. These can be anti-muslim (or any other religion, that was just the easiest term to put "anti-" in front of), sexist or any other offensive thing. Sometimes they are about religion or views but they can often be on interests (such as film, entertainment or games). These can be in the form of a direct attack (like "Harry Potter is crap and it's fans are stupid") or a subtle attack (like "The new union strikes are really stupid, like the boy with the lightning scar"). Sometimes these can offend a large number of people or it just offends a particular group (such as the Harry Potter Fandom).

Now there are the people that seem to go looking to be offended. These are the people who go on Facebook and look through pages that are going to offend them. So if they were a fan of Harry Potter they would go searching through anti-Harry Potter (I chose Harry Potter because it is the 11th most liked page on Facebook [as of January 2013] and shouldn't offend as many people as if I chose the KKK as an example) Pages and would then get really offended and be one of those people who comment on the post to share their anger at it. It is just a bit weird that people go looking to get offended and then complain because they are. It's just a little infuriating some times when you read these comments (besides the fact that they cause an interesting 'debate') and it just takes up some space in the comments section.

Finally there are those things that shouldn't offend anyone but somehow do. I saw a post that was literally "..." and then people in the comments section were having a giant debate about how offensive it was and I just kept scrolling before I lost my mind. Then there was a person who made a post about how the sky was a deep blue and then someone in the comments had a full-out argument saying something about someone dying and it being related to the colour blue (a person hadn't actually died and it was just an analogy, a stupid one). Again, sometimes I'm amazed I haven't lost my faith in humanity yet. I have learnt that some people are incredibly stupid and it just goes to show that even the most innocent of posts can be offensive in some way. Some people just seem to love being offended and sometimes it is just way too easy to cause offence. Some people just need to learn some resilience.

May the odds be ever in your favour, see you tomorrow!