Web Hype
This Post is Not Safe For Work
I have a real problem with the phrase, “not safe for work,” the false sense of security it provides, and the way it condescends.
I understand workplace politics and that there are certain work environments where “mature” or “adult” content is censored or where individuals can be fired for reading such content. That doesn’t make the phrase okay for me. Censorship, in any form, troubles me a great deal.
When we say something is “not safe for work,” we are not protecting anything or anyone. I see that phrase and find it just as ridiculous as people who complain about privacy on Facebook. Really?
When we say something is “not safe for work,” we are making a judgment about the content in question and its appropriateness, not just for work, but for general consumption. We are drawing an arbitrary line between decent and indecent.
Trying to define decency is nearly impossible but there are, it seems, rules. James Joyce’s epistolary erotica for Nora Barnacle is always lauded as literary and great because the letters are anointed with the imprimatur of Joyce’s name. If I had written those letters, they would simply be smut. The Song of Songs in the Bible is decent because, well, it’s the Bible. Books like Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and Little Birds, are decent because they are great literature. These kinds of books are studied in classrooms and widely respected and I’m quite certain that discussing those books would never be considered “not safe for work.”
This is not to suggest there haven’t been attempts to censor these works. There are always gatekeepers trying to dictate what we can consume, what is right and wrong, what is decent or indecent. On the whole, however, such “great” works are acceptable and appropriate.
Over the weekend, We Who Are About to Die linked to two writer blogs, those of Janey Smith and xTx with the disclaimer that those blogs were not for the faint of heart. The content on those blogs can certainly toe the line but the notion that one would need a heart pill before reading them is certainly odd given the breathtaking range of explicit content on the Internet. Is this poem not for the faint of heart? Or this story? Or this story? Where do we draw the line? The moment we try to put some writers in little boxes as “not for the faint of heart” we’re saying they’re dirty and they’re wrong and that there’s a right way to do things, a decent way to do things.
This morning, that post was taken down, citing concerns about workplace safety. I enjoy We Who Are About to Die and all the contributors. This post is not an attack on that blog, but the incident got me thinking about safety, decency, and censorship. Where do we draw the line between decent and indecent? Why does that line so often seem arbitrary? What does it take for us to feel safe?
I think there’s another element to think about. Which is while in the writerly world, we can all do whatever we want. But most writers also have their “professional life” (because very few of us can support ourselves on book sales). So maybe by acknowledging a separation between what someone thinks is and is not appropriate for work is somehow disclaiming this particular thing from your professional life.
Same goes for in your writing, I think. In my writing I can do whatever I want. I say things I would never say out loud.
There is that element. Most of us do, indeed have professional lives and there are consequences for how we negotiate our writerly lives.
I’ve used the NSFW tag in the past, but always limited it to things that I thought might get people fired if they opened it and someone was passing behind them or could hear what was being said, i.e. nudity, graphic sex, or adult language. Written content hasn’t ever come into it, so far as I can remember, but that’s just my personal boundary.
There’s a difference between NSFW and not for the faint of heart, though. The first shows a concern for the reader’s job, and is a way of signaling that you should know that the content, while it may not be offensive to the reader, might be to someone who holds power over them. The second is of a different register, though I don’t know that it makes quite the moral statement you suggest, that “they’re dirty and they’re wrong.” It does suggest that the content will be outside the mainstream, and that one should expect that, but I didn’t read that as “wrong,” though no doubt some (maybe most?) readers will.
The problem, I guess, is that the line is always going to be arbitrary, fully dependent on the person drawing it, and if we “know” the person drawing the line, that can affect our opinion of them, of their artistic and literary judgment. If that person says something is not for the faint of heart, what are they saying about themselves? Anything?
Two things:
1. xTx and Janey Smith are pseudonyms.
2. The writers at We Who Are About to Die utilize their real names.
It does seem silly that websites warn you whether or not it’s ‘safe’ for work. I work outside mostly right now and have never had a desk job. Is it really safe to view anything that is not directly work related? Feel like the line between decent and indecent has something to do with shame and that if something seems arbitrarily indecent it has something to do with bureaucrats.
Or maybe decency has more to do with physical reactions, like if something makes someone or someones vomit.
Those things are indeed true.
A third thing:
3. The internet is malleable. A picture depicting a man who has just blown his head off has now been removed from Janey Smith’s fabulous blog. Perhaps this was the picture that prompted WWAATD to label the post “not for the faint of heart” and then to reconsider, and in turn, remove the post.
Fair enough. Like I said, the post removal was for me, an opening for a larger discussion.
Roxanne, I don’t think that NSFW is a philosophical designation–or a kind of censorship. It’s a pretty simple caveat emptor, and it evolved in response to a really-existing need within office-culture, for people to know beforehand whether something is going to get them into trouble or not. The key word is “safe”–it is the reader’s safety you are trying to preserve, not from the content itself but from the third-party who may have access to the content and also power over the reader (ie the company or boss). I don’t work in offices–and from the tenor of this post it sounds like you don’t either–but nearly everyone I know who does work in one either has an outward-facing screen that any supervisor or colleague can view, or else works for a company with an IT department that screens what is accessed via the office computers. So if you send out a link without a warning label, to a person whose reality this is, you are putting that person at serious and avoidable risk–poor bastard clicks your blind link and gets goatse or 2g1c filling up his screen as the boss walks by–now what? Or, yes, you read that silly sean kilpatrick poem and then get a phonecall from IT three days later. In any of these cases, the real issue–for the person employed in the office–is not about censorship. It’s about the fact that they are attempting to steal back minutes and seconds of their day from the company, and the best way to achieve and maintain that goal is to go about it in such a way that they are not caught. NSFW is a very simple way of communicating to your end-recipient that they are approaching rougher waters, and should assess the risks accordingly.
Also, Lolita was first published by a porn press because people thought it WAS smut–this despite it not having a blue word in the entire text. And Henry Miller was banned in this country for many years–as was Ulysses. Standards and tastes and understandings all evolve with time; in the meanwhile, those of us who are ahead of the curve (or who just want to share our pornography) create workarounds.
Word. Just wanted to give Janey her propers.
I do feel it is a philosophical designation. I will try to explain more why later when I have a minute. I allude to the censorship of Lolita and other texts, when I talk about gatekepeers. I’m not ignorant of that history and yes, standards do evolve, but I simply think that decency is relative and that we draw our lines as to what is decent and indecent in very interesting ways.
i appreciate the nsfws at work. i dont know if i put warnings into the same box as censorship.
for my work env, its not so much about getting fired, but offending passerby co-workers who come from a myriad of different cultures. I work with mostly east indians and israelis and everyones beliefs and value systems vary widely.
I think both “faint of heart” and “NSFW” are simply ways that we feebly try to communicate things that could be important. If I’m fucking off at work, I appreciate the heads up. It’s a matter of day-to-day-got-to-pay-the-rent reality to me, not theory. In theory, sure who is anyone to tell me what may or may not be suitable. I agree with you to a point, but while, the realities of actual censorship can, of course, be horrible, I don’t think this is a case of that. Simply put, if I may get fired for looking at a Rentboy while perusing the News of the Day, I’d appreciate the warning. I mean I should be able to put two and two together in that case, but who knows. Once I pulled up an awesomely unexpected page when looking for a bike online (googling 24 inch cruiser brought up fantastic results). I worked for a non-profit youth org. and spent the next bit of time clearing my browser and looking over my shoulder. Warnings can be good. My landlord appreciates the warning. My husband does, and so forth. You used the phrase “toe the line” in your post. I don’t know where the phrase comes from, but it seems to suggest that there is a line that can be crossed. I don’t think the use of the phrase means you’re ready to start burning books or urls or whatever. I just think courtesy is different than censorship.
And I am slow to the party.
Roxane, thanks for posting this. A lot of ideas in here I’m still working through. That being said, I’m reading the Gurlesque anthology. There is nothing safe in there at all. I’m also reading Lara Glenum’s Maximum Gaga, which doesn’t have a warning or introduction (which the Gurlesque does). If I wasn’t already familiar with Lara’s work and the Gurlesque, I’d be shocked and scared and incredibly turned on, or something akin to that. Whereas I would never want to censor it or put some silly NSFW sticker on it, I’d argue that all writing needs to be approached with thought and care. Carefully.
I actually thought about the Gurlesque anthology as I wrote this. I too am working through the ideas here, for lots of reasons. A lot of my writing is definitely not for “the faint of heart,” so I have an investment in trying to understand what is or isn’t decent. I know that I’m very liberal but I find politics, for example, more indecent than sex or violence or profanity. Now, I know our society doesn’t march to the beat of my radical drum but I find this is all very interesting to think about.
i think if there is a post with some titties on it, and you are in an office, and someone has a sign with the letters NSFW on it instead of LOOKOUT FOR TITTIES, i think that’s a pretty good thing to do in terms of helping people in an office dicking around on the web not get written up for viewing inappropriate material and behavior.
titties and dudes blowing their heads off being inappropriate workplace material. inappropriate behavior being looking at said things in the workplace.
warnings and censorship are in the same box only insofar as they both require a decision by a human to determine what is and isnt decent. if the line is acknowledged as fuzzy, then a warning is really nothing more than one persons opinion, which we expect, since we already acknowledge the line’s fuzziness. i think everyone has a right to be personally offended by something, or to project what may be potentially offensive. the line between decency and indecency doesn’t matter in this case because there’s no repercussion attached to a warning since its acknowledged that its just one persons opinion from the getgo and youre allowed to enter and heed or disregard that person’s opinion.
Why might an author might use a pseudonym?
not central to the issue but
‘Books like Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and Little Birds, are decent because they are great literature.’
is a stupid way of phrasing anything. It also is absolutely not a ‘rule’.
Some of the stuff I’ve seen on Janey Smith’s blog (it’s actually a group blog, isn’t it?) is genuinely shocking, at least to me. And it seems like it’s meant to be; that’s a large part of the point.
To act as though nothing is or should be shocking seems like depriving that sort of art of a lot of its power. When it comes to something like the suicide post over there, or the toilet-porn one, I think “dirty and wrong” is sort of a compliment.
I had a desk job where it was officially okay to look at non-work websites at lunch. But the Internet monitoring software was so poorly configured, I got flagged for looking at knee socks on payless.com. Clicking on an unfortunately worded CNN article could lock everyone out of the site for hours. And poorly configured Internet monitoring is sometimes supervised by poorly configured IT employees, who read the logs and decide HR needs to know about your knee sock/flotation device fetish. In other words, I understand, and have appreciated in the past, NSFW notations on sites that do not always have NSFW content.
Let’s say the topic of WWAATD’s post was goatse….which I think is probably NSF most Ws. One way to present the site in a worksafe way would be to describe it with careful language use — surely not an impossible task, even if you throw in not wanting to be clinical or boring about it.
But the post was really more like “GOATSE! (NSFW).” Titillation. Which has its own purposes, of course. But it doesn’t fit the content presented. I know from reading xTx that comparing her blog to goatse (which Desk Job Person might see as the end result) is beyond lazy, it’s ridiculous. There was definitely a way to explain why Desk Job Person might not want to click on the links that would have done those links AND Desk Job Person better service.
(disclaimers: I like WWAATD. And the knee socks weren’t for me.)
I side with Brian here, the NSFW tag is legitimately useful. It doesn’t tell me not to look at something because it’s wrong, it tells me not to look at it on my office computer where my coworkers/managers are constantly walking by with a full view of my screen. No one is going to get close enough to read the text, but graphic images would be a no-no.
Really don’t see what the problem is here. It’s just a courtesy you can ignore if your workplace is lax or nonexistent.
Thanks for that startling insight.
You mean Kate Zambreno. You wanted to give Kate Zambreno props given that Kate Zambreno is Janey Smith, which begs the question: why have a pseudonym if everybody already knows your true identity?
There are lots of reasons to write pseudonymously. Writers do it all the time. Sometimes writers want to great separate identities for different writing projects (James Frey writes under several names as do other famous writers), and sometimes they write pseudonymously to prevent repercussions in their personal lives which is certainly understandable given we live in a world where NSFW is a necessary designation for certain types of content.
great guy, no problem
Exactly.
And, as Im sure you know, Kate is not Janey. It’s not a real secret that Janey Smith is a pseudonym.
i am not janey smith. i have used the pseudonym janey smith in the past. i am not the janey smith who comments here and writes elsewhere.
great fucking undercover work, though, really.%Pr
Decency is a lot less relative inside the confines of an office.
I think the NSFW label actually might free up more content to than it banishes. It enables bloggers to link to something potentially lewd without the risk of ruining anyone’s career. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t post it at all?
[…] I had some quick thoughts about decency and censorship. I have more thoughts upon which I will elaborate when I have more […]
NSFW assumes you’re employed, which is kind of rude.
A little more undercover work and you should be able to figure it out.
I think there’s another element to think about. Which is while in the writerly world, we can all do whatever we want. But most writers also have their “professional life” (because very few of us can support ourselves on book sales). So maybe by acknowledging a separation between what someone thinks is and is not appropriate for work is somehow disclaiming this particular thing from your professional life.
Same goes for in your writing, I think. In my writing I can do whatever I want. I say things I would never say out loud.
There is that element. Most of us do, indeed have professional lives and there are consequences for how we negotiate our writerly lives.
I’ve used the NSFW tag in the past, but always limited it to things that I thought might get people fired if they opened it and someone was passing behind them or could hear what was being said, i.e. nudity, graphic sex, or adult language. Written content hasn’t ever come into it, so far as I can remember, but that’s just my personal boundary.
There’s a difference between NSFW and not for the faint of heart, though. The first shows a concern for the reader’s job, and is a way of signaling that you should know that the content, while it may not be offensive to the reader, might be to someone who holds power over them. The second is of a different register, though I don’t know that it makes quite the moral statement you suggest, that “they’re dirty and they’re wrong.” It does suggest that the content will be outside the mainstream, and that one should expect that, but I didn’t read that as “wrong,” though no doubt some (maybe most?) readers will.
The problem, I guess, is that the line is always going to be arbitrary, fully dependent on the person drawing it, and if we “know” the person drawing the line, that can affect our opinion of them, of their artistic and literary judgment. If that person says something is not for the faint of heart, what are they saying about themselves? Anything?
Two things:
1. xTx and Janey Smith are pseudonyms.
2. The writers at We Who Are About to Die utilize their real names.
It does seem silly that websites warn you whether or not it’s ‘safe’ for work. I work outside mostly right now and have never had a desk job. Is it really safe to view anything that is not directly work related? Feel like the line between decent and indecent has something to do with shame and that if something seems arbitrarily indecent it has something to do with bureaucrats.
Or maybe decency has more to do with physical reactions, like if something makes someone or someones vomit.
Those things are indeed true.
A third thing:
3. The internet is malleable. A picture depicting a man who has just blown his head off has now been removed from Janey Smith’s fabulous blog. Perhaps this was the picture that prompted WWAATD to label the post “not for the faint of heart” and then to reconsider, and in turn, remove the post.
Fair enough. Like I said, the post removal was for me, an opening for a larger discussion.
Roxanne, I don’t think that NSFW is a philosophical designation–or a kind of censorship. It’s a pretty simple caveat emptor, and it evolved in response to a really-existing need within office-culture, for people to know beforehand whether something is going to get them into trouble or not. The key word is “safe”–it is the reader’s safety you are trying to preserve, not from the content itself but from the third-party who may have access to the content and also power over the reader (ie the company or boss). I don’t work in offices–and from the tenor of this post it sounds like you don’t either–but nearly everyone I know who does work in one either has an outward-facing screen that any supervisor or colleague can view, or else works for a company with an IT department that screens what is accessed via the office computers. So if you send out a link without a warning label, to a person whose reality this is, you are putting that person at serious and avoidable risk–poor bastard clicks your blind link and gets goatse or 2g1c filling up his screen as the boss walks by–now what? Or, yes, you read that silly sean kilpatrick poem and then get a phonecall from IT three days later. In any of these cases, the real issue–for the person employed in the office–is not about censorship. It’s about the fact that they are attempting to steal back minutes and seconds of their day from the company, and the best way to achieve and maintain that goal is to go about it in such a way that they are not caught. NSFW is a very simple way of communicating to your end-recipient that they are approaching rougher waters, and should assess the risks accordingly.
Also, Lolita was first published by a porn press because people thought it WAS smut–this despite it not having a blue word in the entire text. And Henry Miller was banned in this country for many years–as was Ulysses. Standards and tastes and understandings all evolve with time; in the meanwhile, those of us who are ahead of the curve (or who just want to share our pornography) create workarounds.
Word. Just wanted to give Janey her propers.
I do feel it is a philosophical designation. I will try to explain more why later when I have a minute. I allude to the censorship of Lolita and other texts, when I talk about gatekepeers. I’m not ignorant of that history and yes, standards do evolve, but I simply think that decency is relative and that we draw our lines as to what is decent and indecent in very interesting ways.
i appreciate the nsfws at work. i dont know if i put warnings into the same box as censorship.
for my work env, its not so much about getting fired, but offending passerby co-workers who come from a myriad of different cultures. I work with mostly east indians and israelis and everyones beliefs and value systems vary widely.
I think both “faint of heart” and “NSFW” are simply ways that we feebly try to communicate things that could be important. If I’m fucking off at work, I appreciate the heads up. It’s a matter of day-to-day-got-to-pay-the-rent reality to me, not theory. In theory, sure who is anyone to tell me what may or may not be suitable. I agree with you to a point, but while, the realities of actual censorship can, of course, be horrible, I don’t think this is a case of that. Simply put, if I may get fired for looking at a Rentboy while perusing the News of the Day, I’d appreciate the warning. I mean I should be able to put two and two together in that case, but who knows. Once I pulled up an awesomely unexpected page when looking for a bike online (googling 24 inch cruiser brought up fantastic results). I worked for a non-profit youth org. and spent the next bit of time clearing my browser and looking over my shoulder. Warnings can be good. My landlord appreciates the warning. My husband does, and so forth. You used the phrase “toe the line” in your post. I don’t know where the phrase comes from, but it seems to suggest that there is a line that can be crossed. I don’t think the use of the phrase means you’re ready to start burning books or urls or whatever. I just think courtesy is different than censorship.
I find it safest to work at work and then enjoy these conversations at home. I would actually be embarrassed to have co-workers see some of the stuff on this site–isn’t it supposed to be out of line? I also do not want to share my writing with some of them either. My work persona is just that, a persona. NSFW is convenient. thank you
And I am slow to the party.
Roxane, thanks for posting this. A lot of ideas in here I’m still working through. That being said, I’m reading the Gurlesque anthology. There is nothing safe in there at all. I’m also reading Lara Glenum’s Maximum Gaga, which doesn’t have a warning or introduction (which the Gurlesque does). If I wasn’t already familiar with Lara’s work and the Gurlesque, I’d be shocked and scared and incredibly turned on, or something akin to that. Whereas I would never want to censor it or put some silly NSFW sticker on it, I’d argue that all writing needs to be approached with thought and care. Carefully.
I actually thought about the Gurlesque anthology as I wrote this. I too am working through the ideas here, for lots of reasons. A lot of my writing is definitely not for “the faint of heart,” so I have an investment in trying to understand what is or isn’t decent. I know that I’m very liberal but I find politics, for example, more indecent than sex or violence or profanity. Now, I know our society doesn’t march to the beat of my radical drum but I find this is all very interesting to think about.
i think if there is a post with some titties on it, and you are in an office, and someone has a sign with the letters NSFW on it instead of LOOKOUT FOR TITTIES, i think that’s a pretty good thing to do in terms of helping people in an office dicking around on the web not get written up for viewing inappropriate material and behavior.
titties and dudes blowing their heads off being inappropriate workplace material. inappropriate behavior being looking at said things in the workplace.
warnings and censorship are in the same box only insofar as they both require a decision by a human to determine what is and isnt decent. if the line is acknowledged as fuzzy, then a warning is really nothing more than one persons opinion, which we expect, since we already acknowledge the line’s fuzziness. i think everyone has a right to be personally offended by something, or to project what may be potentially offensive. the line between decency and indecency doesn’t matter in this case because there’s no repercussion attached to a warning since its acknowledged that its just one persons opinion from the getgo and youre allowed to enter and heed or disregard that person’s opinion.
Why might an author might use a pseudonym?
not central to the issue but
‘Books like Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and Little Birds, are decent because they are great literature.’
is a stupid way of phrasing anything. It also is absolutely not a ‘rule’.
Some of the stuff I’ve seen on Janey Smith’s blog (it’s actually a group blog, isn’t it?) is genuinely shocking, at least to me. And it seems like it’s meant to be; that’s a large part of the point.
To act as though nothing is or should be shocking seems like depriving that sort of art of a lot of its power. When it comes to something like the suicide post over there, or the toilet-porn one, I think “dirty and wrong” is sort of a compliment.
I had a desk job where it was officially okay to look at non-work websites at lunch. But the Internet monitoring software was so poorly configured, I got flagged for looking at knee socks on payless.com. Clicking on an unfortunately worded CNN article could lock everyone out of the site for hours. And poorly configured Internet monitoring is sometimes supervised by poorly configured IT employees, who read the logs and decide HR needs to know about your knee sock/flotation device fetish. In other words, I understand, and have appreciated in the past, NSFW notations on sites that do not always have NSFW content.
Let’s say the topic of WWAATD’s post was goatse….which I think is probably NSF most Ws. One way to present the site in a worksafe way would be to describe it with careful language use — surely not an impossible task, even if you throw in not wanting to be clinical or boring about it.
But the post was really more like “GOATSE! (NSFW).” Titillation. Which has its own purposes, of course. But it doesn’t fit the content presented. I know from reading xTx that comparing her blog to goatse (which Desk Job Person might see as the end result) is beyond lazy, it’s ridiculous. There was definitely a way to explain why Desk Job Person might not want to click on the links that would have done those links AND Desk Job Person better service.
(disclaimers: I like WWAATD. And the knee socks weren’t for me.)
I side with Brian here, the NSFW tag is legitimately useful. It doesn’t tell me not to look at something because it’s wrong, it tells me not to look at it on my office computer where my coworkers/managers are constantly walking by with a full view of my screen. No one is going to get close enough to read the text, but graphic images would be a no-no.
Really don’t see what the problem is here. It’s just a courtesy you can ignore if your workplace is lax or nonexistent.
Thanks for that startling insight.
You mean Kate Zambreno. You wanted to give Kate Zambreno props given that Kate Zambreno is Janey Smith, which begs the question: why have a pseudonym if everybody already knows your true identity?
There are lots of reasons to write pseudonymously. Writers do it all the time. Sometimes writers want to great separate identities for different writing projects (James Frey writes under several names as do other famous writers), and sometimes they write pseudonymously to prevent repercussions in their personal lives which is certainly understandable given we live in a world where NSFW is a necessary designation for certain types of content.
great guy, no problem
Exactly.
And, as Im sure you know, Kate is not Janey. It’s not a real secret that Janey Smith is a pseudonym.
i am not janey smith. i have used the pseudonym janey smith in the past. i am not the janey smith who comments here and writes elsewhere.
great fucking undercover work, though, really.%Pr
[…] HTMLGIANT / This Post is Not Safe For Work […]
Decency is a lot less relative inside the confines of an office.
I think the NSFW label actually might free up more content to than it banishes. It enables bloggers to link to something potentially lewd without the risk of ruining anyone’s career. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t post it at all?
NSFW assumes you’re employed, which is kind of rude.
A little more undercover work and you should be able to figure it out.
I draw a major distinction between NSFW and not for the faint of heart. I see NSFW as useful, primarily for those who work in offices (like me). NSFW implies concern for the reader’s occupational security. That’s cool. Not for the faint of heart implies some moralistic finger-wagging to me. And that’s definitely not cool.
I also see a big difference between tagging written content with NSFW and images with NSFW. I wholeheartedly agree with adding NSFW before graphic images, but words? Really? I don’t get that. It’s not as if my supervisor can read the 12-pt text from five feet behind me. They can certainly see a “naughty” photo, though.
I find it safest to work at work and then enjoy these conversations at home. I would actually be embarrassed to have co-workers see some of the stuff on this site–isn’t it supposed to be out of line? I also do not want to share my writing with some of them either. My work persona is just that, a persona. NSFW is convenient. thank you
a writer writing anonymously can also bell the cat without fear of his/her words being tainted by the character implied by his/her name.
I draw a major distinction between NSFW and not for the faint of heart. I see NSFW as useful, primarily for those who work in offices (like me). NSFW implies concern for the reader’s occupational security. That’s cool. Not for the faint of heart implies some moralistic finger-wagging to me. And that’s definitely not cool.
I also see a big difference between tagging written content with NSFW and images with NSFW. I wholeheartedly agree with adding NSFW before graphic images, but words? Really? I don’t get that. It’s not as if my supervisor can read the 12-pt text from five feet behind me. They can certainly see a “naughty” photo, though.
I agree with most people here that NSFW is far from censorship, and is just a way to give potential readers a heads-up that clicking on a link may cause a picture of naked people to displayed on their computer. If you’ve ever worked in a corporate environment, you can probably imagine that most bosses frown on such things. On the other hand, when I see “NSFW”, I am in no way prohibited, by my boss, by the blogger who typed that acronym, or anyone else, from clicking on the link. NSFW has absolutely no effect on me unless I want it to. No one asks my age or asks to see my I.D. when I click on an NSFW link. And no one is assuming anything about me.
Comparing a NSFW tag to censorship of great literature just seems silly to me. I can (and occasionally do) read great literature during work, and the question of “appropriateness” never even enters into it. But yeah, if clicking on a link is going to plaster porn all over my very-visible computer screen, I’d at least like to a little warning ahead of time, so I can make a choice.
It’s especially less relative when you consider the possibility of a sexual harassment claim for creating a hostile work environment by having something pop up on your screen unexpectedly.
In terms of writing anonymously in order to write without fear of one’s words “being tainted by the character implied,” isn’t there always a character implied? If an author (or even a blog commenter) writes under a pseudonym, the connotations of that pseudonym shape the lens through which the text is viewed.
For example, I am writing this comment using a pseudonym. You are probably aware that it is a pseudonym. You are probably taking this comment less seriously than you might otherwise (assuming that you take blog comments seriously) (probably not) (but maybe).
Even if a writer writes anonymously, he or she is perceived as the type of writer to write anonymously. Perhaps that meaning varies from reader to reader, yet each reader brings to the table his or her own pre-conceived notions of an anonymous writer.
As an aside, how much does writing anonymously / employing a pseudonym for self-protection, when grappling with fringe topics, push the envelope? Doesn’t it reinforce the notion that certain topics are socially unacceptable, unsuitable for association with one’s real name, and thus, taboo?
I’m not discounting the importance of preserving one’s own boundaries. I’m all for it. But it does recontextualize this blog post, when the content in question was originally penned under a pseudonym.
I agree with most people here that NSFW is far from censorship, and is just a way to give potential readers a heads-up that clicking on a link may cause a picture of naked people to displayed on their computer. If you’ve ever worked in a corporate environment, you can probably imagine that most bosses frown on such things. On the other hand, when I see “NSFW”, I am in no way prohibited, by my boss, by the blogger who typed that acronym, or anyone else, from clicking on the link. NSFW has absolutely no effect on me unless I want it to. No one asks my age or asks to see my I.D. when I click on an NSFW link. And no one is assuming anything about me.
Comparing a NSFW tag to censorship of great literature just seems silly to me. I can (and occasionally do) read great literature during work, and the question of “appropriateness” never even enters into it. But yeah, if clicking on a link is going to plaster porn all over my very-visible computer screen, I’d at least like to a little warning ahead of time, so I can make a choice.
It’s especially less relative when you consider the possibility of a sexual harassment claim for creating a hostile work environment by having something pop up on your screen unexpectedly.
In terms of writing anonymously in order to write without fear of one’s words “being tainted by the character implied,” isn’t there always a character implied? If an author (or even a blog commenter) writes under a pseudonym, the connotations of that pseudonym shape the lens through which the text is viewed.
For example, I am writing this comment using a pseudonym. You are probably aware that it is a pseudonym. You are probably taking this comment less seriously than you might otherwise (assuming that you take blog comments seriously) (probably not) (but maybe).
Even if a writer writes anonymously, he or she is perceived as the type of writer to write anonymously. Perhaps that meaning varies from reader to reader, yet each reader brings to the table his or her own pre-conceived notions of an anonymous writer.
As an aside, how much does writing anonymously / employing a pseudonym for self-protection, when grappling with fringe topics, push the envelope? Doesn’t it reinforce the notion that certain topics are socially unacceptable, unsuitable for association with one’s real name, and thus, taboo?
I’m not discounting the importance of preserving one’s own boundaries. I’m all for it. But it does recontextualize this blog post, when the content in question was originally penned under a pseudonym.
I just want to say that I’ve never read that Nick Antosca story before and just now fell in love with it. Thank you for sharing.
I just want to say that I’ve never read that Nick Antosca story before and just now fell in love with it. Thank you for sharing.
[…] Apologies for not finding a bigger image for Paul Blooms’s How Pleasure Works, an exploration into the inner-workings of our desires. It’s really hard to use embellishments like the ones flanking the subtitle without it looking like you’re trying to cultivate a look of high falootin’-ness. The stark, empty space background is nothing new but the oyster with the pearl inside is provocative and the most interesting thing about this cover. There isn’t cover design in recent memory as overtly vaginal as this one, the designer pulling a double whammy of desirable imagery, albiet in a not-terribly-subtle fashion. If neither of these images is desirable to you then here’s the boring, cheesy SFW cover: […]
[…] found the story when it was featured in an HTML Giant post arguing that when one defines a piece as ‘not safe for work,’ one automatically judges […]
[…] before a three-day weekend. That deserves a little special something and that means it’s NSFW (not safe for work). Below is a pictorial that should get everyone’s weekend underway. Sea […]