I have an otherwise mostly sensible friend who is freaked out by the X-card. He said, “But it’s censorship!” And after thinking about it I said, “Yes, yes it is, but the whole point of it is to keep people from getting hurt.”

I can’t speak about anywhere else, but in America we liked to pretend the Free Speech piece trumps everything else… but of course there are limits on our speech, they don’t usually pop up at the gaming table.

In any case, for me one of the best things about using a safety tool is that the gesture says, “This is a monitored space, hateful shit will not fly here.”