Yeah, must suck to have your life ruined and be denied opportunities based on your actions rather than your gender, race, or orientation like all us non-white non-straight non-males have to deal with. "Why can't I just be allowed to be terrible to other people without fear of criticism?!?"

I feel the same way you do, especially the part about white males being attacked most of the time. And i'm not even white.

Educate yourself on what happened. Did you know that the woman who reported the dongle joke was fired from her job because she reported it? And that she received actual threats for it?

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled...

I don't know who the anonymous joker was (who got fired, and then publicly apologized for his inappropriate joke), but I'm fairly certain he would have found another job pretty easily. "Career ruined" is still not correct language for this situation.

There are lots of places you can speak your mind anonymously and say whatever you like about whoever you like. Of course, the downside of posting anonymously is if you express some socially unpopular opinion people will just dismiss it as bigotry, when presumably you'd like to have that opinion taken more seriously. But if you attach your name to it, and that name is invested with social credibility for whatever reason, then one of two things can happen. It might be more persuasive other others because of who you are; or if enough people consider your opinion socially toxic, your overall credibility may take a hit.

Well, too damn bad. We live in an increasingly densely populated world and communicate through increasingly persistent channels, such that it's almost as easy to permanently record your whimsical opinion on any subject on the internet as it is to mumble it under your breath in a moment of transitory annoyance. That density and persistence combine to amplify the power of ideas significantly, whether those ideas are entrepreneurial, artistic, political or whatever. If too many people find your opinions hurtful or offensive, then in the aggregate they'll isolate you socially on the basis that your positive contributions, however good they may be, are not sufficiently interesting to offset the negative feelings your opinions engender. You're not so special that your positive contributions can't possibly be replicated by anyone else, and so people will prefer to wait for someone who is equally productive but more pleasant to be around.

In short, you can say whatever you like without regard for its effect on others, or you can maintain and improve your social standing, but society is not obliged to help you do both at the same time.

Of course, there's an interest grou for everything on the internet, so no matter how extreme or controversial your opinions are, you can likely find a community of people where those opinions will be validated, celebrated, perhaps even commercially viable, even as they are rejected or vilified by society at large. You will have to decide what sort of social connectivity you desire and deal with the limitations of that choice on your output, your popularity, and so on.

This was the intent behind Political Correctness - a term cribbed from the Soviet Union's ideology and popularized in the United States at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It's an intentional tool of social control by corrupt people who want to enforce a worldview on others.

Ther is no such thing as it "going too far". It shouldn't exist at all.