A few weeks back I may have mentioned an ethical conundrum I was wrestling with regarding my longstanding and oft-expressed commitment to beat the everloving shit out of Alex Jones should I encounter him in person.
This was something that was a little more pressing when I lived within 20 miles of the man, but still has a nonzero likelihood of happening given the peculiar overlapping circles of our communities.
After in-depth, earnest, and hilarious discussions with an actual ethicist whose thought and insight I deeply respect, philosopher Aaron Rabinowitz (see episode 53 of the podcast), I have reconciled that commitment (and about a dozen other, similar ones, being honest), with an approach that is in line with a broader and more productive approach to reducing the net amount of cruelty and suffering in this absurd world of ours.
All of this is preamble and context to the actual announcement here:
The Bullshido organization (Bullshido Media Foundation) has joined the Creator Accountability Network. CAN is an organization committed to promoting ethical standards for content creators; and trust and accountability between creators and fans—something that is sorely lacking in today’s predatory online spaces. For more information about this, check out the link that will be posted below.
And for the record, one of the things we established was that kicking the shit out of Alex Jones would be perfectly acceptable as long as he consented to sparring or some kind of other mutual arrangement. It’s just that seeing him at Whole Foods and beating the bullshit out of him with a box of granola or something, is hard to justify, ethically.