O-Fence

The interweb is great for two things: pictures of kittens and offending people, oh yeah and then making jokes about how easily people get offended, so I guess that sort of makes three things.
What I would like to do here is take a break from judging people who are offended by one thing or another and examine why it is that people seem so quick to get their nose out of joint these days.  Have we become more sensitive?  I don't think so, back in the day, people certainly did moral outrage about a lot of things.  I mean, at one point, a bunch of angry teetotalers managed to get the US government to outlaw alcohol.  It didn't go so well, but for one shining moment, outrage won the day.
Fortunately, with the proliferation of outrage and offense taking, the really dangerous sort of shrill humbuggery (which really ought to be declared an abomination somewhere in Leviticus), is far too diffuse, and those afflicted with it cannot be bothered to actually organize or do much of anything beyond re-posting things on facebook and twitter, or maybe, if they're really outraged, writing a hasty and poorly thought through blog (sort of like this).
No, the butt-hurt masses and all their impotent outrage are likely to be balanced out in the end by people who are offended by the same thing, but in the opposite direction.  Maybe that's the real genius of the internet: when everyone is able to express their opinion it all comes out in the wash.  Thoughtful commentary and moronic fear mongering are all out there for you to choose from, but choose wisely or else you're just going to join the ranks of the offended.
Let's be honest, human beings really aren't at their best when they're annoyed.  We don't think straight and we tend to revert back to our least nuanced comfort zones.  Example: you're on a road trip with the family.  The kids are bickering in the back seat, you're stuck in traffic and you're about an hour and half from home.  One kid whines, "I'm hungry and I have to go pee."  You see a McDonalds is coming up in about two miles, you know stopping at McDonalds is probably best for all involved, you can stretch your legs and consume some fat and salt, which, while it doesn't do great things for your overall health, will certainly make you feel better, it will allow whiny kid to go pee, and all involved to proceed with adequate blood sugar levels, it may even help you wait out some of the traffic.  If you are sufficiently objective, you will clearly see that this is the right course of action.  If you are annoyed and impatient though, you will not, you will think only about getting home, pushing through, buckling down, fighting harder, and you will invariably condemn yourself and your family to a very unpleasant final leg of the journey and possibly precipitate a melt down from one or more members of your clan.
This is not an advertisement for McDonalds, it's a parable about how being angry and offended impairs your judgment.  The internet is a huge traffic jam.  People of all sorts are out there some are clever, some are stupid, some you may agree with, some you may not, if you're lucky there are enough pictures of kittens to sort of balance out the day.
At it's best, you might actually get to roll down the window and have a decent conversation with someone along side, at it's worst, someone gets out and starts beating others up with a tire iron.
Sometimes people get a little carried away with a metaphor, so I'm going to get to the point.
Being offended is not usually a good place to start with constructive conversation or action, it may be the impetus for something that becomes a cause for action, but your gut feeling (which is usually what ends up on facebook and twitter) is not really sufficiently thought through and will most likely just add to the soup of hurt feelings and bunched up undergarments.
Take a deep breath, stretch your legs, have a cheeseburger (or similarly comforting vegetarian alternative, if there is one, actually, if there is let me know because I could really stand to cut back on the cheeseburgers).  Do us all a favor, just don't press post or tweet or publish until you've really thought things through, there's enough outrage out there already.