Of all the replies I was expecting from you, this wasn’t on my betting slip.

There’s no condescension here; you had one key thesis I objected to (and, incidentally, were the first to invoke a robot war!)

> I just asked ChatGPT and got about 10,000 examples of famous creatives demanding censorship. It didn’t used to be this way.

My argument is - it did “used to be this way”. Your proxy, as best as I can tell, agreed.

> formal government censorship was in some respects more coercive then.

And your courageous avatar made a weak (e.g. the word probably, not provably and “I think” not “I showed”) supportive claim (I cannot see the reams of research behind the conclusion).

> I think the evidence points to it being broader in scope and probably more common today than 50 years ago

I said, ok, let’s take that at face - where do you feel the transition happend, and posited reasons why the transition may seem stronger (social media).

Now you’re unwilling to argue specifics and off dismissing my sincerity. Adult argument fully abandoned, feelings abound!

So neither of us will learn anything useful today. I’ll never find out specifically when you believe our slippery slope began, and you’ll never explore whether reality matches your thinking. Let’s hope the data centers that powered your race to self-confirmation were running on solar, so at least the environment was spared!

In the hope of rescuing some thread.

> There is no way to place chronological boxes around cultural change.

This is not only demonstrably false, it also turns your initial thesis “it didn’t used to be like this” into a farce. You were the first to claim there was some time boxing we could apply!

It also, candidly, reinforces the first conclusion robo-me reached. “ someone under 40 who believes they’re living through a unique historical decline but refuses to read a book”. My robot gave me 10,000 examples of books on the study and findings of historians researching the evolution of cultural norms over time. It is very much a thing. I very much believe in it sincerely as a valuable discipline.

If you really want to argue that nobody can say Victorian social norms evolved, and were arguably most harmed by the First World War. Or that the gender and sexual attitudes of the post-second-world-war were pushed to breaking point during a period known as the “swinging sixties”. Or that the introduction of social media and camera phones to the schoolyard caused a dramatic change in kids’ behaviors. Then I think you’re being a special kind of Saturday obstinate.

But if you are actually trying to discuss rather than play-fight, try answering the question - when specifically do you think that the decline began, such that we are no longer living in the rose-tinted era where things “used to be”?

And dude, you can back your claim down or add nuance to it - “creatives censor in a different way in the internet era to how the censored in the TV era” is a defensible claim, I’ll even let you have “the nature of what is censored now has changed”. You’re just not getting away with a demonstrably false “there’s more censorship now”.