Eyes Are Rolling After College Student Pens New York Times Op-ed Complaining About Being Silenced

A piece from University of Virginia senior Emma Camp titled "I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead" ran in The New York Times this morning, and, if you've been following the cancel culture debate at all over the past few years, you likely know how it plays out.

I’m so excited to finally share this! My @nytimes guest essay is attached below! https://t.co/UVkUm4mWFG

— Emma Camp✒️ (@emmma_camp_) March 7, 2022

Camp, a self-described liberal, wrote that she believed her college experience would be filled with "rigorous intellectual discussion" but instead found people too afraid to say what they really feel. She gives anecdotes about students offering dissenting opinions about various touchy subjects and experiencing anxiety when other students vehemently disagree with them. She then tells a story about how she wrote in her school paper imploring her fellow students to be more open to free expression and experienced a "Twitter pile-on."

"I have been brave," she wrote.

This type of article has become a hot topic of discussion several times in the past few years, thanks in large part to Intellectual Dark Web types like Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss. Naturally, it wasn't long until it generated familiar responses of eye rolls and reminders that facing social consequences for disagreeable opinions is not censorship.

I came to college to have no one disagree with me. I found some people disagreed with me. This is censorship. I am so silenced my only outlet is the New York Times. https://t.co/GSXdTbCaBn

— steve albini (@electricalWSOP) March 7, 2022

i dont think ive ever read a college student woke panic op-ed that didn't boil down to "the problem is that my peers didn't like my opinions about things"

who cares. my wife thinks its weird i like kpop, you don't see me pitching the new york times edit room about it.

— isi baehr-breen (its pronounced ‘izzy’) (@isaiah_bb) March 7, 2022

Alternate headline: I Came to College Eager to Debate, but then I saw how Bari Weiss made money and now I have an op-ed at the totally unknown New York Timeshttps://t.co/XHZtTioCq7

— Doomer Dogs are better than Bored Apes (@ArmchairBrain) March 7, 2022

oh no i came to debate and did not find unanimous agreement :( i was so censored i went to the new york times to complain about it :( pic.twitter.com/u0f8W0jLm9

— walmart spencer hastings (@scorpiolover444) March 7, 2022

I Went To College And Nobody Liked Me: So, I Asked My Mom To Reach Out To Her Friend At The New York Times

— Marcia Belsky (@MarciaBelsky) March 7, 2022

"I'm being self-censored by publishing an op-ed in the New York Times." – a different aggrieved ⚪️ woman every week, seemingly

— ⚓️Imani Gandy⚓️ (@AngryBlackLady) March 7, 2022

pic.twitter.com/kQgyaUsA2b

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 7, 2022

Others noted that despite Camp describing herself as liberal, she also writes for Reason, which MediaBias describes as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal publication.

The New York Times published a "woke censorship" concern troll story by someone named Emma Camp, who bills herself as an anti racist liberal. In actual fact, she works for the right wing periodical "Reason". pic.twitter.com/JZ4QAyYuWh

— Salad Shooter School Bonds🇺🇦🥀🐝💛 (@thesaladshooter) March 7, 2022

Though Camp is currently the focus of Twitter's eye-rolls right now, she can rest easy knowing it won't be long until somebody else writes basically the same story and grabs the internet's attention.