What The Heck, I've Got Nothing To Lose

The advantage of waiting two days to write this is that it gave me time to really reflect on my thoughts about it, rather than just joining "the mob" on one side or the other.

Some context: I hadn't heard of Kollin before this, and I doubt they've heard of me. My position on comedy is "Nothing is absolutely off-limits. That said, unless your comedic skills are on a par with those of Paul F. Tompkins, there are some subjects that you should probably stay far away from. Bomb/gun threats are one of those subjects."

Given that, my first reaction to the news that Kollin was banned from AGDQ was roughly "Good for them."

As I thought about it some more, I've come to change that position.

To be clear, was it an idiotic thing to say? Absolutely.

Was it funny? Not in my opinion, and comedy is subjective and such, but I doubt I'm alone in that thought.

But should that lead to a ban from AGDQ? I don't think so.

To understand my feelings, let's take a step back from this specific situation and speak more generally about "threats" such as these. As I see it, there are two options once you become aware of something like this:

1. You think it's a credible threat, and an imminent danger.
2. You don't think it's a credible threat. This can be for a few reasons--maybe it's obviously a bad joke. Maybe the statement is taken out of context (For instance, I say something like "You'd have to be a moron to say 'I'm going to blow up the Fictional Example Theater!'". You tell the Fictional Example Theater that I said "I'm going to blow up the Fictional Example Theater!", leaving off the first part. Yes, I said those words, in that order....in a context that makes it clear I was not threating the Fictional Example Theater at all, which you conveniently left out). Or maybe there's some other reason I'm not thinking of.

In the case of 1, if you truly believe that the threat is credible and that lives are in danger, then to me, the only option is the nuclear one. In other words, you need to get law enforcement involved (Local, federal, whatever) to make absolutely sure the threat doesn't get carried out. Just banning the person from your event isn't helpful in this case--I somehow doubt they're going to say "Well, I WAS going to blow something up, but now that I've been told I'm not allowed there, I guess I'll have to find something else to do with my weekend."

That leaves number 2. In that case, I think you have to ask what your goal is, and how the actions you take will lead to that goal. If the goal is just to get rid of people saying stupid things, then fine, go ahead and ban them--but you're going to be banning a lot of people if "saying stupid thing = ban!" is the hill you choose to die on. If the goal is actually to keep people safe, banning the person does nothing except engage in security theater (Remember, you've already determined the threat wasn't credible). If you're trying to educate the person into no longer saying dumb stuff, banning them is one option, but I feel like sitting them down and saying "That was absolutely not cool, even jokingly. If I so much as hear rumors that you've said something like that again, you're gone." Yeah, you can go right to the ban stick...but I feel like doing so is either prosecuting thought crime, or powertripping, and going the ban route just because you can.

Returning to this specific incident, the facts lead me to believe that GDQ staff think scenario 2 as opposed to scenario 1 is what actually happened (Kollin himself said as much). Now, again, it was a stupid thing to say. But last time I checked, "Saying stupid stuff" and/or "making bad jokes" were not, in themselves, GDQ-bannable offenses.

There's also an element of "Big Brother Is Watching" to this that makes me uncomfortable. While "another stream" is not anyone's definition of "private", it is a step removed from contacting GDQ staff directly. Indeed, if you look hard enough, you can probably find bannable stuff in the streams of many of the people who run at GDQs, myself included. I hope that the GDQ staff haven't suddenly decided to get into the business of handing out bans for single stupid utterances on stream (And, for the third time, that was an INCREDIBLY stupid utterance). This particularly applies given that staff members have also said stupid stuff in public (I'm sure, given the chance, UraniumAnchor would take a do-over on "I will shiv you in the neck".).

So to sum up: It was a stupid, unfunny thing to say. But, absent evidence of intent to act upon it, I don't think it was ban-worthy. More generally, I hope I hope this doesn't lead to a slew of people using out-of-context statements, or just outright Photoshopping stuff, to get people they don't like banned from GDQs in the future.