Triggered

Today I had an epiphany. I understand why Sean Hannity blocked me on Twitter years ago. If anybody loves their echo chamber it's that guy. But I could never figure out why BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin had blocked me. It was weird. Because I couldn't remember any particular interaction that could have triggered it. And she's kind of a bigger deal than me. So why bother blocking little old me?

This week former Breitbart.com editor was nominated for some position in the Trump White House and I found myself arguing with people about the value of Milo Yiannopoulos' political commentary. I've enjoyed following this provocateur for several years now and was disappointed when he jumped on the Trump train. It was still fun to watch him attempt to tour the university circuit as school after school tried to ban him. Really says something about the state of free speech in this country and how hard the political left works to protect their echo chamber.

Somewhere my brain rattled around and popped out a tweet from years ago when I was still following, still allowed to follow, @xeni. I can't seemed to find it now. Probably been deleted, but it was something to the effect of "@nero Why are you doing this Milo?" I don't remember the context. Jardin is a recent cancer survivor though and Yiannopoulos has popularized the idea that feminism is worse than cancer. That may have been too much of an emotional trigger for her. I know I supported the conversation because of the misandry which often cloaks itself in the mantle of feminism and because memes can be as deadly to civilization as other diseases. I'll probably never know exactly why @xeni blocked me, but at least now I have a plausible idea.

Jokes about being "triggered" are currently running rampant around the middle school my kids attend much in the way that bottle flipping was a couple months ago. They've all realised the PC power to shut down conversation that declaring "Triggered!" has. Maxwell, who enjoys the role of comedian, uses it more than his sister and I've tried to curtail it's overuse in the house much as I did with the bottle flipping than was ever knocking things onto the floor. The tongue in cheek rule is that if the word "trigger" is used, it must only be in reference to Willie Nelson's guitar. This leads to some interesting mental gymnastics when I catch Maxwell saying "trigger" and he attempts his best segue into a conversation about said guitar.