Have You Offended Someone Today?

Earlier today Matt Selznick posted an essay to his blog entitled The Author’s Responsibility wherein he ponders the question of offending readers. Basically it boils down to “Yeah, no”. I’m paraphrasing that quite a bit, and probably not doing it justice, so here’s may favorite bit:

I appreciate that everyone has different beliefs, different standards, and different limits as far as what they find acceptable. That’s the beauty of humanity; it’s what makes us so interesting. Heck, it’s one of the reasons writers write.

However, when anyone assumes an author has the same opinions and beliefs as themselves, or should… well, that’s a very particular kind of arrogance, or a very particular kind of ignorance. Either way, that attitude offends me.

I guarantee you: future work of mine will feature three-way sex that ends in murder, a suicide, drug use both recreational and otherwise, bigotry, date rape, heathen idolatry, adultery, lying and homicidal violence.

Matt’s right. No author should be worried about offending his readers. In fact, I’ll take it to the next step: Sometimes you have to offend people.

You heard me. Sometimes you have to offend people. You NEED to offend people. It’s the only way to get some people thinking.

There are always going to be some people that will take offense at, well, everything, and will expect you to bend over backwards to not offend them. It’s these folks that have given us the overly politically correct world we live in now.

Well fuck them.

Let me tell you something, there is always going to be someone that takes offense at something. So fucking what. Most of the things people get offended at are just absurd, and the only way to point out the absurdity is to bring it out in the open.

While I’m writing this, the Family Guy episode of South Park is on. South Park is be best example of not giving a fuck about offending people. In fact it’s the best thing about South Park.

George Carlin believed that it was a comic’s job to find the line and cross it. We have to do that every now and then. It helps us see that a lot of what we think is important isn’t and we and it helps us refocus on what really is.

Content providers, be them comedians, cartoonist, writers, or, like yours truly, assholes on the Internet, have a responsibility to offend. Sometimes people take shit WAY to seriously and we have to make them realize that what we believe is sacred, most of the time, really isn’t.

So, amen Brother Matt. Lets not worry about offending folks. I personally try to offend someone¹ every day.

And if you can’t take a joke, go fuck yourself.

Oh, and go buy Brave Men Run.

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1. usually the Damn Evil Woman [↩]