... so we can speak freely now.
Yet it's lonely without an elephant in the room. People used to feel anxious, apparently, when an elephant-topic loomed large and took up space, but now we have nothing to not talk about so we'll chatter about anything. What can't be said is big, so now we have only small talk and a silent question: where's the elephant? Has it died? Has the whole elephant species gone extinct? Is everything shouted from rooftops now, never faintly whispered in rooms?
If nothing is unmentionable, what then are we going to not say? Must we say everything? We're surrounded by vast discussion-space, paradoxically trapped by scary open-ness so overwhelming that it's like a new claustrophobia.
So where do we go now for silence, secrecy, evasion, hidden meanings? Where will we find double-entendres, sans l'elephant dans la salle? So much intriguingly unsaid information will be wasted, so much that's only subtly grasped will vanish completely. The implied will be dis-implied. We'll miss that elephant ...
Rumour, speculation and secrecy used to create profitability in the newspaper industry. Now, online social media drown us in streams of ultra-personal information accompanied ideally with tears of emotion (and preferably some hip-hop dance moves as well).
Traditional journalists are taking early retirement, saying "with no subject off-limit what is there to skirt the edges of libel and defamation about? I didn't enter this profession to not warm readers of things not yet proven in court."
Instead of being secreted away, news is being excreted through new-media pipelines emitting an overwhelming stench of too much personal revelation.
So now readers cancel their subscriptions, complaining "how can I read what's not between the lines?"
Sometimes free speech only happens in the gaps.
