Should Memes be censored?
For the last few years, numerous pages or users from
different kind of social media had been ban.
The reason? They posted controversial memes because they did not follow the “Community Standards”.
Those rules were created for good reasons of course. To
prevent cyber-bullying, harassment, sexually explicit
content and to respect the dignity of everyone.
As such, if someone finds something offensive, he can
report the post, page or person to the administrators so they can deal with it accordingly.
In Facebook case, it results in the ban of pages, people, etc. While on Instagram, as it is still recent, they only filter those contents from Explore or Hashtag pages to prevent people from finding them except if it is law violating and, in that case, they’ll remove it from Instagram.
Unfortunately for us, memes are victims from these rules, because people found them offensive.
That consequence is controversial. As the newest type of visual art, memes have humoristic contents, they are a form of art not made to hurt others, only to make them laugh.
And while dark humour can be violent, shocking and immoral, it is humour nonetheless.
A meme joking about starvation and life condition of some African people
Another meme joking about how Jews suffered thoughout History
Both of the memes above can be censored due to their sensitive content.
So, it brings us the eternal questions: Can we laugh about anything and anyone? Can art be censored?
I adamantly believe we can and we should.
First, when do we cross the line about a joke being offensive or not? It is when a thousand people are offended? A hundred? One? The definition is quite blurry, how do we define it and who should have the power to decide?
Everyone has their own sense of humour and should respect each other’s humour.
Then, about sensitive subjects such as slavery, racism or even the holocaust, we can all agree that they are not the kind of subject we talk about very often since they are not very pleasant.
But when we make joke related to them, I believe it helps break the taboo around them and act as a way of remembrance.
But more importantly, What do you think? Do you believe we can joke about anything or anyone and Memes, as a type of art, should suffer from censorship?
Leave your comments on the comment section bellow!
Alexandre