Censorship is always self-defeating and therefore futile. How far do you agree?

What do vulgarities, Lenin Trotsky and the third digit of a human hand have in common? If
you thought censorship, then you are right. Vulgarities are bleeped out on television, Lenin
Trotsky was a censored figure in Stalin Russia, and we often see the middle finger being
blurred out in many forms of media. So do all these forms of censorship have a use? Are they
futile in fulfilling their desired purpose? I say yes, it is extremely futile to censor items
simply because whatever they are censoring can be easily made known to the people who
see the thing being censored.
What does censorship mean anyway? Well, I define it as any form of blocking out of or
erasing something from the knowledge of the audience in all forms of media. Then what does
self-defeating mean? Well it means that the very act of censoring causes its effect to be
negated, hence making it futile to censor, since doing that will not make a difference for
anything.
One of the things that make censorship self-defeating is the very fact that people are not
dumb. When someone says What the and the word following that is bleeped out, any
normal human would already know what the word is. When the media blurs out a hand
flashed out from an angry actor, people know that the image behind the blurring is a middle
finger, not a pig or an alien or some other fantastical object. If the purpose of censorship in
this sense is to prevent the spread of vulgar ideas and knowledge in our society, then, as we
have seen, the very act of censorship does not prevent that spread, hence it becomes futile.
Censorship also helps diminish its effect via another pathway: comedy. Comedy serves to
make fun of small things in our everyday lives and to help to find new logical orders, as well
as to critique anything that they want in a fun and hilarious way. George Carlin once
presented a piece of material where he singled out 7 words or phrases that people do not
like to here (also known as profanities), and he proceeds to comment on it, without
restraining himself in the speech and body language aspect. By virtue of its very existence
and nature, censorship has put itself in the spotlight of comedy, and with comedy, comes a
greater spread of the very ideas that censorship wants to withhold from public eyes, hence
making it futile once again.
Some people say that by censoring out certain items from mainstream media, we can
prevent the youngest of us from being exposed to vulgar and indecent ideas, knowledge and
images, and thus, we can create a generation of people who do not possess such ideas. This
is because, when you block the item out, people who do not have any previous knowledge of
the subject being censored will not be able to see such any form of media that contains the
subject being censored, and thus they would not gain knowledge of it. For example, for those
who do not know what the F in WTF means, censoring out the word during a TV show
would preserve this ignorance and the viewer would continue not knowing that the word
f*ck exists or what it means, thereby fulfilling the role of censorship.
However, this effect of censorship is negated by the intense curiosity that humans possess.
In fact, the very act of covering up something in the middle piques a humans innate
curiosity, and people who had no knowledge of the myriad profanities of the world would do
their best to find out what exactly was the word that was bleeped out. There are websites
like Reddit Gore and liveleak.com that devote themselves to showing the public what
happens to a hand when put through a wood chipper or chainsaw executions in Iraq, all of
which are shunned and censored by mainstream media. People can visit these websites when
their interest if piqued as well. This effect is further reinforced by the fact that Google is so
easily accessible and has so much information, such that even the youngest of us are able to
add a few more colourful words to their vocabulary with a simple search of the Internet,

leaving them corrupt with vulgar ideas as a result of the interjection of censorship, thereby
going against the role of censorship again, and making it futile.
In conclusion, censorship is futile because of the fact that people are not dumb, it being in
the spotlight of comedy and it making Homo Sapiens way more curious about certain
subjects, which arise as a result of its existence and function negate its intended effect, and
hence makes censorship futile.