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supergee linked to a Susie Bright essay the other day, in which she decries the use of NSFW tags, in part on the (unproven) grounds that they're used in a classist fashion: that if there's a picture of breasts in the New York Times it must be art and therefore SFW, but if there's a picture of breasts on her site it's porn and therefore automatically NSFW. For my part, if I put an NSFW warning ahead of a link, I don't pay any attention to the link's destination domain. If it's got nekkid pictures on the page I link to, it's NSFW; if it doesn't, it's SFW. I make no claims as to what you might find if you follow other links once you get to that site.

Also, I very rarely if ever tag words or text as NSFW. My take on it is that things that are visible from across the room are much more likely to be noticed by someone walking by; they'd have to be standing right behind me to read text over my shoulder, and by that time I know they're there. But I do get annoyed when people post "dirty words" in gargantuan fonts: then it moves into visible-from-across-the-room territory.

But none of that is what I actually wanted to talk about. What irked me most about the essay was a pervasive attitude that 'if your workplace has Teh Stupid about things you can view on the internet you should just get a new job'. I've seen this before with regard to other issues as well. Get a new job is always an option, certainly, but it is not necessarily the right option. Every job requires trade-offs.

For one person, being able to view anything they care to on the internet at work is the most important issue. For another, it might be being out about one's unconventional family structure. But for some of us, there are other things that come ahead of either of those. Keeping bread on the table and a roof over our heads. Satisfaction in the work itself. Resistance to change. Convenient location. No lapse in health insurance coverage. Tenure/seniority. Loyalty. Staying in one's hometown. Family obligations. Maybe even staying put in order to effect an end to Teh Stupid from the inside. (Assumptions that any or all of these apply to me may not be valid.)

I note that the above are also reasons one might choose to stay put in one's country even though it is currently suffering an epidemic of Teh Stupid.