The show’s participants ate bugs, lay in snake beds, or jumped from a helicopter into a lake. I remember him from another reality TV show, “Fear Factor”, which he hosted at the turn of this century. That, like the idea that living in an off-grid yurt frees from the demands, responsibilities and complicities of human society, is an illusion. They want free speech to exist in a vacuum, without context, without criticism. Too many people believe that the right to free speech means the right to say what they want, where, when, on the platform of their choice, without consequences. We express our taste and our moral discernment, and say what we find acceptable and what we do not find. When we say, as a society, that bigotry and misinformation are wrong and that people who espouse these ideas don’t deserve access to important platforms, that’s curation. When we are not free to express ourselves, when we can be thrown in jail or even lose our lives for speaking freely, that is censorship. There is a difference between censorship and curation. And because I’m a writer, I know language matters. Instead, I try to do my best and take a stand when I think I can make an impact. I’m not looking for purity it does not exist. Every day I try to make the best possible decisions about what I create, what I consume and with whom I collaborate – but living in the world, participating in capitalism, requires a moral compromise.
