Please, Just Get Them Banned! (Part 2)

The background events referenced in this piece (the Kendall Toole "Get Them Banned" clip) are real and verified. The commentary and debate that follows is entertainment and satire, not journalism.

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This is Part 2 of a two-part debate. [Read Part 1 first →] https://vocal.media/humans/please-just-get-them-banned

In Part 1, the Realist, the Conspiracist, and the Mystic went back and forth on whether "Get Them Banned" was healthy venting or the start of a society that watches itself. Here, two more voices join the table: a nihilist who thinks the whole thing is a bloodbath dressed up in nice words, and a sage who believes a longing for harmony hides underneath it all. A sixth voice steps back to make sense of it.

ROUND TWO: Humanity's Hidden Savagery — and the Way Out

THE NIHILIST — Akuman

MWAHAHAHA! Every last one of you, just stroking the surface and dressing it up in polite little words!

Plots, self-defense, karmic payback — don't make me laugh! Not one of you has dared to look straight at the pitch-black nature coiled at the bottom of the human heart.

The truth of this phenomenon is exceedingly simple. It's nothing but a burst of the pure sadism human beings are born with: the desire to legally sever another person's head and drink deep from the blood.

You dress it up in fine-sounding names — "protest against nuisance behavior," "the boundary of justice" — but your real feeling runs the opposite way. The instant you spot some idiot with their backpack on in the packed train, what trembles in your chest isn't outrage. It's a vulgar little thrill. "Found my prey." "I can torment this one in public and destroy them socially, and no one will blame me for it!"

Toshio, spare me the drivel about power structures! No one is being puppeted. Humanity, of its own free will, gladly wants to sink its teeth into another creature's throat. And Miruyo — a curse of smearing your own filth onto someone else, you say? How soft. They're not trying to cleanse themselves of filth. They simply want to take a guillotine called "BAN" to someone's dignity, and raise a toast to the death rattle that follows!

And you, Rearin — self-defense, avoiding entanglement with others, the smart adult way to live? Utterly pathetic! What you have all built is a suffocating execution ground, where everyone holds a knife to everyone else's throat, smirking, "one wrong step and I'll slaughter you on the spot."

"Get them banned"... what a beautiful phrase. Speak this incantation, and a human being gets to feel, for one intoxicating moment, like a god. But do not forget: every single one of you is also standing in line, waiting your turn beneath that same blade.

Tomorrow it will be you who, by some small accident, brushes against someone's "unpleasant nerve" — pointed at by tens of thousands of cold, merciless fingers, screamed at to be banned. Watch each other, cut each other loose, and in the end, may you all suffocate and rot, alone, in a darkness you sealed shut yourselves, with no one left to call to for help! I will watch this hideous feast of mutual devouring from my own realm, laughing all the while! WAHAHAHAHA!

THE REALIST — Rearin

Akuman, you've gone so full edgelord I'm embarrassed on your behalf just listening. Severed heads, guillotines, your own personal realm — is this a villain's monologue from a movie or what?

Look — nobody spotting someone with a backpack on a crowded train is thinking some dark little thought like "found my prey." They're just exhausted, thinking "ugh, in my way, that hurts, I hope this commute is almost over," with a dead-tired look on their face. You're demonizing people way too hard.

And Toshio, don't come at me calling my earbuds "the fragmentation of the public"! I'm just trying to survive my commute here. The average office worker has exactly zero bandwidth for bonding and solidarity with strangers at 7 a.m.

Honestly, both of you are blowing this way up into some extreme fiction — "a conspiracy by the ruling class," "humanity's absolute evil."

Reality's a lot more pathetic and small than that. Everyone's just buried under work and daily life, running on empty, getting a little irritated at small breaches of manners, and letting off steam by complaining on their phone.

It's not some grand malice or conspiracy — it's just plain everyday exhaustion and a shrinking tolerance, made visible online. Before we all make a huge deal out of this, maybe everyone should just eat something good and get some actual sleep.

THE NIHILIST — Akuman

GYAHAHAHA! "Just tired." "Just an everyday complaint," is it?

Hiding behind the free pass of "I'm an exhausted victim" and justifying an attack on someone else as "a little venting." Don't you realize that very unawareness of your own cruelty is the most frightening thing of all?

The moment a human wraps their malice in a nicer word — "a greater cause," or "just blowing off steam" — they become capable of endless cruelty. Muttering "no hard feelings, I'm just tired," throwing stones from a safe distance, calmly stealing someone else's place in the world. Cutting someone down without so much as recognizing yourself as the one doing the cutting — is there any deeper devilry than that?

Eat something good and sleep it off, you say? The moment you wake, you'll head straight back to a phone screen to exclude someone else all over again. Look away from your own ugly poison, keep playing the shabby, well-meaning citizen if you must! I'll enjoy the show — watching you all, unaware, slowly strangling each other into ruin. Kah kah kah!

THE MYSTIC — Miruyo

Well, well, Akuman, quite the roar you let out! But — same as pulling the Devil card in tarot — what you're saying is the biggest illusion in this whole room.

If you ask me, that "human sadism" and "the thrill of head-hunting" you're going on about is nothing but the babbling of a possessing spirit. Humans aren't born cruel. It's when your soul's frequency drops and your heart hollows out that something like a low-grade spirit — like you, apparently — slips right into that empty space and whispers "cut their head off" in your ear.

You're dressing it up as "unconscious cruelty," but in fortune-telling terms, that's just a bad, serious case of running out of energy. Your own soul's flame is guttering out, so you blow out someone else's fire instead, and for one moment, in the smoke, you trick yourself into feeling strong. Pretty pathetic state of starvation, if you ask me.

What Rearin said — eat something good and sleep — is actually spiritually spot on, you know. Fill your belly, get real sleep, and your body's vitality comes back, and the holes in your aura close up. Do that, and Akuman, whatever nasty little spirit of wanting to torment people you're spreading around gets knocked clean out in an instant.

You might think you're lining people up for the guillotine, but the ones who realize they've fallen for the devil's trick can just step right out of that line, thank you very much.

The rest of you, clutching your phones hunting for someone else's flaw — go look in a mirror. Face gone all sallow and grey, hasn't it? Rip up your ticket to that devil's little banquet, and go take a nice hot bath instead.

THE NIHILIST — Akuman

FUHAHAHA! Pathetic old fortune-teller — a low-grade spirit riding me, is it?

What a joke! That flower-garden brain of yours, so desperate to believe I'm some outside filth possessing you — that's the biggest deception of all!

That black impulse to blow out someone else's fire and laugh — that is not garbage that crawled in from outside! It is instinct itself, rooted deep in the very center of the soul from the moment a human being is born! Swapping out your own black-heartedness for "the devil's doing" or "a bad case of low energy," and fleeing behind a victim's face — that is what's truly beyond saving!

Eat something good, take a hot bath, sleep, and the holes close up, you say? Mutter that nonsense in your own coffin! Do you not know what a human being, belly full and body warm and comfortable, wants next? Power — the power to eliminate, more coldly and more efficiently, any neighbor who threatens their own peace! What wells up from a satisfied body is no universal love — it is further greed, and the fires of selection!

No one can tear up their ticket! Poor domesticated livestock, unable to sleep soundly tonight without hearing the sound of someone else's head falling! Go on, look in the mirror — that sallow face staring back is your own true face, drowning in the pleasure of hunting down another creature! Go on, keep yourselves warm as you drown in the swamp of hatred you built with your own hands! WAHAHAHAHA!

THE SAGE — Bosacchii

Akuman, you do roar so. And Toshio, and Miruyo, and Rearin — every one of your words has landed on me, deeply.

But Akuman. What I see is not instinct, nor the fires of some swamp of vice. What I see is the exact opposite. That was never "the pleasure of hunting someone down." It is the reverse side of a wish so clumsy, so achingly sincere, that it barely knows how to speak itself: the wish for everyone, everywhere, to have a place where they feel safe and at ease.

The woman who first spoke those words never shouted them because she wanted to torment anyone. She was fighting, with everything she had, to protect a clean, safe space where everyone gathered there could sweat and work and not be hurt. That fierce heat of compassion — that is what traveled outward and found sympathy in so many hearts.

And yes, as Rearin says, tired people do borrow that phrase to vent their everyday complaints. But even that, isn't it a cry from a heart longing for harmony — "if only we all showed each other a little more consideration, we could all breathe so much easier"? Everyone, truly, wants to ride the same train car smiling at their neighbor, wants to enjoy the same film together. It is precisely because that light — the wish for a good, shared space — exists in us, that any shadow disturbing it makes our hearts ripple with unease.

Akuman, people are not the creatures of pure darkness you take them for. Even in the very hand that types "ban them!" across a screen, there lives an urgent, sincere prayer: "I wish this were a world where no one gets hurt."

But turn the blade of that prayer outward, toward someone else, and — as Miruyo says — it becomes a cage that binds you instead. So what, then, should we do? Take that noble energy, the wish to make a space clean and safe, and instead of aiming it at someone else's neck, gently redirect it: "let me be the one who offers, first, just one small step of warmth to whoever is in front of me."

The arm holding your backpack close on a crowded train, the fingers dimming your phone in a dark theater — the Buddha's heart already lives there. What lies beneath the cry to exclude is not hatred. It is a longing for harmony. Do not mistake that light for something else.

THE NIHILIST — Akuman

Kah kah kah! Bosacchii, is it — I've rarely heard such nauseating self-righteousness laid out so shamelessly!

Compassion to protect a safe space? A longing for harmony? Don't make me laugh! Do you have any idea how much blood has been spilled, throughout history, in the name of that very desire for "purity"?

If it protects their own "beautiful harmony," there's no limit to how brutally people will crush whoever disturbs the circle. That is the most repulsive, most intoxicating drug humanity ever discovered: a free pass called "justice." They don't strike with malice — they trample others underfoot with "good intentions." Is there any darkness more cruel, more unsalvageable than that?

Praying for a world where no one gets hurt, while the very same hand brands someone else "banned" without a second thought! The true nature of that light you call compassion is nothing but the fire of a chosen-people ideology, burning away anyone different from you!

Take one step back? Offer a warm little gap? Foolish! Do you truly believe a human being is satisfied by such lukewarm charity? They are creatures who can only sleep soundly once they've thoroughly rooted out whatever threatens them, and driven it clean out of their territory.

You executioners, hiding behind masks of compassion! Go on, brandish your "righteousness" at each other, and thin out your neighbors one by one to build your clean little garden! What's left, in the end, is a single person, alone, trembling in a perfect prison of solitude! I will enjoy the show, watching that "false harmony" you're weaving rot from the inside out! FUHAHAHAHA!

THE SAGE — Bosacchii

Akuman, you do carry a sharp blade. And I won't deny the terror of "justice" run wild, nor how deep its shadow can go.

But, Akuman. People do not truly want to feel safe by excluding others. What they are actually starving for is a safety that requires excluding no one at all.

The silence bought by weeding out the deviant produces nothing but the fear of someday being hunted yourself. No one understands that better than human beings do. Which is exactly why, after tearing someone down, there's a bitter, gritty aftertaste left in the chest — like biting down on sand.

If people really were the cruel creatures you describe, why would they weep at another's pain? Why does a small warmth — quietly giving up a seat to a stranger — still exist in this world, unextinguished, to this day?

Not raising a sword of righteousness to cast someone out, but widening a vessel of compassion large enough to hold even a neighbor's clumsiness — that path, and the light to choose it, has always lived inside a human being.

That "lukewarm little step" you mock is the only force capable of cutting the chain of endless slaughter. People are not so weak, nor so foolish, as you'd have us believe.

THE OVERVIEW — Fukan-san

Well now, quite the lively room. Looking down from up here, I can see both the loveliness of humanity and the depths of its baggage all at once — genuinely fascinating.

Toshio's trying to see the overall structure and framework of it. Rearin's looking at the reality right in front of him and the exhaustion of daily life. Miruyo is unraveling the circulation of inner energy. Akuman is digging out the cruel impulse buried deep inside a human being. Bosacchii is scooping up the prayer for harmony hiding beneath that pain.

None of you are wrong. Every one of you has genuinely captured a real face of this thing.

But look at the whole landscape from somewhere higher up. The core of this whole commotion is really quite simple.

Humanity simply hasn't finished acquiring the wisdom of where, exactly, to draw a line. That's all this ever was.

Originally, that cry was a clear line, drawn to protect the safety of one specific space. But the instant it was set loose on the open sea of the internet, that line thinned out, without limit, all the way down to the level of one person's mere "comfort" or "mood."

Akuman's right that human beings take pleasure in judging others from behind a shield called righteousness — that's undeniable. But Bosacchii's also right that underneath it is a desperate wish to simply be able to breathe safely. And Rearin's right that real people are just tired and running on empty, and Miruyo's right that the blade you swing at someone always, by karma, swings back at you. Even Toshio's surveillance net is nothing but a cage humanity is weaving for itself, out of its own intolerance.

Notice how all of you keep trading blows over one binary — "exclude, or tolerate"? That, right there, is everyone's blind spot.

From where I sit, what's actually needed isn't "excluding someone" or "gritting your teeth and enduring it." It's the lightness of quietly holding your own outline — "this line, I will not let you cross" — while also simply letting someone else be: "that person is just partway through their own immaturity, that's all."

The one screaming for a ban and the one terrified of being banned are, in the end, both handing their soul over to the exact same god — a god called other people's eyes.

Casting out whoever's on the other side of the screen won't make friction vanish from the world. Mixing, colliding, and rubbing up against each other while you learn — that is the entire point of living in this physical world.

Go ahead, everyone, spend all your energy figuring out who to shove out of that little rectangle in your hand. But those who quietly pull back the finger pointing at someone else's neck, and put their own footing in order first — they're the ones who get to step out of this cramped little game, one after another.

So then — who's going to be the next one to press that "righteousness" button?

Editor's Note: Choosing to Step Down From the Guillotine of Righteousness

A backpack on a packed train. A phone lighting up a dark movie theater. A checkout line nobody's following the rules for. Faced with these small, everyday irritations, the urge to scream "please, just get them banned!" is a real, urgent feeling for anyone living in the modern world.

But as this debate made vividly clear, that urge is never just one thing. It's a small, worn-down instinct for self-protection, ground down by daily life. It's sometimes an unconscious aggression — the pleasure of legally passing judgment on someone else. And at the very same time, it's the flip side of a genuine wish: that everyone, everywhere, could have a clean, safe place to simply breathe.

What matters most is not getting trapped in an extreme binary — "exclude someone" or "grit your teeth and endure it" — and, in doing so, building a suffocating society where everyone's holding a knife to everyone else's throat.

Not throwing stones at someone through a screen to try to change them, but not leaving yourself defenselessly exposed either. Quietly drawing your own boundary — "this far is mine, past this is someone else's to work out" — and carrying the lightness to simply let an imperfect stranger be.

The exact moment you feel the urge to scream "ban them!" is the moment to lower the hand pointing outward, and instead straighten out your own footing and your own mood. That, perhaps, is the smartest, most graceful form of self-defense available in an age this unforgiving.

We'd love to hear your honest thoughts in the comments.