Congrats on Your Free Speech Absolutism! Please Hold While We Transfer You to HR

Everyone loves free speech until they're the topic. We've watched it happen a thousand times: the guy who spent 2019 posting 'cancel culture is the real virus' gets a joke made about his fantasy football league and suddenly there's a Google Doc, a mediator, and a group chat named something ominous like 'Temp Solution.'

Here at Plus Outrage, we believe in studying nature. And nothing in the American wild is more fascinating than the Free Speech Absolutist Who Just Discovered HR Exists. Below, our field taxonomy.

The 'It's Just Comedy' DM-Slidder

This specimen's entire posting history is 'comedy is a protected class.' But when you joked about his podcast having eleven listeners, he slid into your DMs with 'hey man, wondering if we can talk about that post.' He does not want to talk. He wants an apology with the word 'punchline' nowhere in it.

Field marks: Uses the phrase 'I'm not mad, just disappointed.' Has said 'sue me' exactly zero times when actually sued-adjacent.

The 'Context Matters' Substack Guy

When your meme was about him, he didn't laugh — he analyzed. Then he filed a 2,000-word complaint titled something like 'On the Ethics of the Quote-Tweet: A Personal Reckoning.' It has section headers. There's a Foucault citation. There's a paragraph about his grandmother that has nothing to do with anything.

Remember: this is the same man who told a laid-off friend to 'develop a sense of humor' in a reply visible to this day.

Field marks: Publishes on Substack. Mentions 'discourse' unironically. His email signature includes his podcast, his newsletter, and 'views my own.'

The Corporate Absolutist (9-to-5 Division)

By day, he's liking Ricky Gervais clips with the flexed bicep emoji. By day also, he reported your Slack emoji reaction — the side-eye, on a message about his spreadsheet — as 'creating a hostile environment.' His LinkedIn post about psychological safety got 400 reactions. His Reddit account, which we will not link, argues that HR departments are 'cancer.'

The beautiful thing is he sees no contradiction. To him, the free speech applies to comedians he'll never meet. Your emoji is a different legal matter entirely.

Field marks: 'Just playing devil's advocate' in meetings. Has a favorite Joe Rogan episode number memorized.

The Group Chat Constitutionalist

In the chat, this person is a legend. Unfiltered. Menacing, even. But everything said in the chat is governed by an invisible treaty: none of it may ever leave the chat. The moment you screenshot his take about airport people to your group chat — a different group chat, mind you — he invokes the Geneva Convention, the First Amendment, and his aunt who's a lawyer.

He doesn't actually believe anything he says. He believes in the venue.

Field marks: Types 'screenshots are for the weak.' Has screenshotted you twice.

The Reformed Edgelord Memorial Chairman

Perhaps the most tragic archetype. This person was the funniest and worst guy in every room from 2011 to roughly 2016. Then he got a mortgage, a fiancée with a large friend group, and a LinkedIn. Now his entire personality is policing the exact jokes he used to make, because his fiancée's maid of honor is in this group chat and he cannot blow this.

His outrage isn't hypocrisy exactly — it's archaeology. Every time you joke, he sees a version of himself he's spent $4,000 on therapy burying. You are his unpaid excavator, and he resents you for it.

Field marks: Says 'we don't do that anymore' about jokes he coined. Cries at one specific Harrison Ford movie and will not say which.

A Modest Proposal

We're not saying hypocrisy is good. We're saying it's funny, which is different, and which is the entire business model of this website. The next time a free speech absolutist reports your comment, do not argue. Do not explain. Simply forward them this article with the message 'which one are you?' and watch them write a Substack about it.

They always write the Substack.