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Not if your families beliefs are outdated or otherwise bigoted. My older family members are racist. I harbored racist beliefs, and told plenty of racist jokes as a boy. My "opinions", I posted on twitter, as a teenager, would be more than enough to get me expelled from society today. Be it culturally cancelled in the US, or imprisoned in the UK.

Not everyone is raised by good people. Thankfully I had a seismic event (Perma banned from a favorite game after sinking 1000s of hours for being offensive) correct my behavior. I thank my lucky stars it was merely me being banned from a video game that caused me to reconsider how I act, and not something much more serious.

discuss

chii|5 years ago

> I harbored racist beliefs, and told plenty of racist jokes as a boy. My "opinions", I posted on twitter, as a teenager, would be more than enough to get me expelled from society today. Be it culturally cancelled in the US, or imprisoned in the UK

that's not a problem with you, but with cancel culture in general.

chrisweekly|5 years ago

Fascinating story! Interesting counter-narrative to tropes about video games being harmful to ethics or personal growth. Have you written about your experiences at any length?

pjc50|5 years ago

It is basically impossible to get imprisoned in the UK for mere verbal racism, and highly racist opinions are posted in the newspapers all the time. Even the "gas the jews" Nazi dog guy was only fined £800 and it didn't stop him standing for election.

autoexec|5 years ago

"only fined £800" for a joke. Might not be prison, but it's still extremely worrying.

wpietri|5 years ago

I think you're not quite getting bikeshaving's point. Certainly in the US, you can't be jailed for past behavior even if it's outlawed now. It seems like Great Britain isn't quite as absolute, but the European Convention on Human Rights bans it explicitly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...

I also think "expelled from society" is a touch dramatic. As best I can tell, not a single famous racist has starved to death, or even been forced back to subsistence agriculture. I think the most extreme penalty I've seen is having to change jobs/industries, or perhaps losing some friends.

jlawson|5 years ago

So your standard for whether something is serious is whether someone literally dies as a direct result of it?

For most of us, losing your career and all or almost all your friends is kind of a big deal.

People have committed suicide over this.

Try applying your standards to things you believe in some time. "He says he was a victim of racist discrimination? Well, he still seems to be alive and fed, and has stable employment at Walmart. So that's a touch dramatic."