Do you want to know something mAD??! Well, how about the fact that a proper reporter wrote an article about me and this blog, and that it popped up on people’s Google homepages as a ‘recommended article’!

Obvs I’m pretty excited about this. I mean, it’s a big deal considering I haven’t even been writing for a year(!). But I’d be lying if I said that a part of me wasn’t disappointed that my first mention on a bigger platform was me being critical of people because as much as I stand by everything I said about the topic, I’m really not a critical person. I was that kid at school with the overwhelming desire to be liked by everyone.

But you’re never going to be liked by everyone, and sometimes you have to kick up a fuss. So as much as I didn’t love my name and photographs being associated with such a critical topic, if the world responds to the click-bait and then engages with the rest of what I have to say, then so be it.

To be clear, the issue was never only about students or my University: I like my University and the people I know attending it. The issue is that there are people in our world who feel like they have a right to shut others up whenever they want; not only that, these people feel they won’t face any consequences from silencing another. And that’s just not okay because these people actually can do that. I mean, I’m still blocked from the page and probably will be for a long time…

The internet is an amazing tool, but it inflates people’s egos so much so that they start to feel invincible because they can hide behind screens. I don’t think many of the people who reported my posts would start an argument with me to my face, nor do I think that they thought what they did was wrong. To be honest, I don’t think they put much thought into it at all.

Thus we’ve got this huge problem of entitlement where we assume that if we don’t like what someone has to say, then we have a right to shut them up. And occasionally most of us agree on telling someone they ‘can’t say’ something, like how you probably wouldn’t say it’s okay for an aggressively racist individual to exercise their freedom of speech.

But the topic of freedom of speech, what we ‘can’ or ‘can’t’ say, is one we could discuss for hours and never reach a decision. It’s too multi-faceted and there are too many examples to use. But surely, if we want to get anywhere with anything, we’re going to have to start hearing each other out more – especially when we don’t like what we hear.

However, we need to recognise that just because we allow people to present their opinions, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we totally agree with what’s been said. But if our default setting it to silence people we don’t agree with, then we’ll never get anywhere.

So we should probs accept defeat when it comes to achieving this black and white, yes or no, ‘let’s all agree!’ solution to everything: we’re never going to get it, and even if we could, wouldn’t we kinda hate it?