What happened to everybody's thick skin? It used to be that people really didn't get offended, now however, everybody gets offended by the least little thing.
10.06.2025 01:42
But thanks to the advent of the Internet, satellite radio, podcasting, filesharing, VPNs, and subscription streaming services, each and every form of obscenity, indecency, and profanity—yes, those are legally distinct…apparently —is now just a few Twitter/X posts away, in all their delicious flavors and all the colors of the rainbow, often whether you wanted it or not.
Side Note: Don’t even get me started on the morass of morality codes associated with showing a married couple—both real and fictional—in the same bed.
To be fair, I suppose it’s possible that OP is writing from a country with a much longer (and stronger) history of free speech protections and tolerance. But at least here in the good ol’ US of A, people have “thicker skin” now than they ever have before, as evidenced by the fact that we are no longer literally—literally—prosecuting and jailing comedians for “obscenity.”
And for the record, you don’t even need to go that far back to find a time when Americans were literally threatening to take legal action against comedians for the heinous sin of offending the delicate sensibilities of “polite (mostly white) society.” Long after we stopped censoring comic books, and paying actual FBI agents to listen to the same record track over and over again for hours on end at various speeds, straining their ears to discern if there was even a whiff of obscenity on the master recordings, there are still laws on the books that attempt to codify what is—and is not—considered “obscene,” as well as when, how, and “by whom” it can be viewed (if at all). The end result of this—and the ongoing litigation over it—has been an exhaustive (and ever-expanding) canon of United States obscenity law.
But these losers have always existed in America—indeed, they’ve been present ever since the literally puritanical days predating our nation’s founding.
My ever-loving sibling in Christ—what in the name of Expurgation are you talking about?
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*No pun intended.
Want literally anything else? That…hm. That might be a little harder. I…guess you could probably find it on Google, but only if you’re willing to put in the work.
As much as part-time actor-comedians and full-time douche-bags like Adam Corolla, and that guy from “The Hot Chick” might complain about how “you can’t tell jokes anymore” without offending someone—usually on a public platform where their complaints about “de-platforming” can reach a wider audience—it is an undeniable reality and an objective fact that we are actually living in the golden age of both comedy and freedom of speech. (Which is also why they’re so “triggered,” for the record—although they’ll eat ground glass rather than admit it). But that’s not actually something we should be “proud of,” so much as a reflection of how genuinely awful things used to be.
(Side Note: We’re also not prosecuting people for using the “wrong bathrooms”…anymore. They lost that court case …again. Oh, wait. Never mind. )
Remember George Carlin’s comedy routine on “Seven dirty words you can’t say on radio and TV?” That wasn’t just a bit or the punchline a joke—that was (and still is) literally the law.
Want some hate speech? Twitter has you covered.
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…Okay, that was a lie. All puns were intended.
Want some porn? Again, call up the Twitter/X app —or your Congressman if you live in Florida.
Americans used to be so petty, fragile, and “thin-skinned”—and also weirdly racist—that studio executives were genuinely nervous about depicting two straight people kissing. We were so “thin-skinned” and “easily offended” that, thanks to parental complaints (and governmental transparency regulations), you can actually read a redacted version of the official—and I cannot stress that word enough—official FBI investigation into Louie Louie (The Song). We were so incredibly uptight and puritanical that it was considered potentially scandalous for Lucille Ball to appear visibly pregnant on camera—by her actual, real-life husband—while playing a fictional character married to (and pregnant by) a fictional character played by her actual, real-life husband.
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That being said, I do want to note that the question is not entirely unreasonable, considering that the truly obscene* corpus of obscenity law is not only “still on the books” in America but is just as popular as ever—albeit only in certain circles. In fact, in some places, the judicious* and liberal* abuse of obscenity law is actually making something of a comeback and—to the surprise of no one—is coming mostly on the backs of religious conservatives.
And it’s worth remembering that as shrill though these “think of the children” s***p***ing t***l***ing c*********s might be, their hypocritical protestations are borne more of desperation than anything else. They are increasingly strident in their pious and holier-than-thou screeching precisely because they know their power is tenuous, their influence waning, and their popular appeal is positively phantasmagorical.
Original Question: What happened to everybody's thick skin? It used to be that people really didn't get offended, now however, everybody gets offended by the least little thing.