There have been a few people that have been purged/timed out/and even banned for using certain words in my twitch chat. Not every streamer has this set up, but many of us do. Language we don’t wish to see, and is largely considered offensive by more people than not.

As a general rule people don’t respond too positively to this happening. Clearly they use the language often enough if they post it on twitch, the more mature ones respond with understanding quickly. The immature ones pick a fight with me over it.

Let me state simply, I myself have used words that offend people. I have done this more than once in my life, I will also likely do this in the future. I am not perfect, and would not claim to be. However I do try to remove certain language from my vocabulary when I find out why others don’t want to hear it and agree.

I know the arguments for language being a living thing, trust me linguistics is something I am very very familiar with. That being said while words might change meaning over the course of time, and with their use, if they bother most people I am not going to become an advocate for it’s use.

Hearing certain words does not offend me. However I have this wonderful trait that humans are capable of, empathy. It doesn’t matter that a word might not bother me, I can put myself in other’s shoes long enough to understand why it would bother them, and be mature enough, human enough, to decide that I don’t need to use it anymore.

If you are the type of person that cannot do that, that is a reflection of YOU not on me. I do not, and will not, apologize for the banned words in my chat. Most humans function every single day without using them, it’s really not that hard.

While we’re on this subject, stop referring to people who do this as “SJWs” as though that were some sort of insult. It’s not. My desire to keep certain language from my chat because it hurts others is not a reason for you to insult me. Nor does your lack of empathy actually put you in the right. First, SJW is an over used term. People throw it around because they can’t understand why some people don’t want to put up with their bs. Second of all, if the worst thing that happens is some “SJW” tells you to stop doing things that might hurt others perhaps instead of being offended you might want to consider what they are saying.

If declaring that expressly harmful language is not welcome in my chat makes me an “SJW” then so be it. Know this though, I don’t take this as an insult in the least bit.

I am not saying that tomorrow you will suddenly become a model human, but again if nothing else from this little soap box, consider this…. Consider why people are asking you to stop using certain language, behaving certain ways, and just learn to be more empathetic.