From time to time stories come out that are generally fashionable to be outraged about. Facebook’s numerous privacy skirmishes and Groupon’s Superbowl commercial are a couple examples. So is Kenneth Cole’s off-color Tweet about Spring fashion in Cairo.

People get up in arms about these things. They post on Facebook and Twitter, often promising to never buy the offender’s products again. But it’s nonsense, more often about showing off how upset you are than actually being upset in the first place.

I’d like to ignore whether or not any of these things were good ideas (for whatever it’s worth, Facebook’s and Groupon’s almost certainly were, Kenneth Cole’s almost certainly was not) and instead focus on whether or not it makes any sense at all to be upset about what they said or did.

I think the most reasonable litmus test for these kinds of things is whether you’d be offended (even a little bit) if someone said it to you at a party or if you learned about it in isolation.

In the case of Facebook’s privacy mess last year, I knew many, many people that were up in arms about it. Most of them thought it was unethical, immoral and downright mean-spirited. But for all the wrong reasons, I’d argue. They were all (every single one, among the people I personally knew) fine with their own use of Facebook; some changed their settings, most didn’t, and all went on with their lives. But, boy, were they ever worried about everyone else who wasn’t as smart as them and able to avoid making asses of themselves on the internet. I’m sure it’s all good intentioned, but it tweaks me in the same way that any evangelical religious people attempting to spread their morality to others does–it just seems like a lot of overreaching without a lot of logical thought.

In the case of Groupon and Kenneth Cole, I’m hard-pressed to believe that anyone wouldn’t laugh if similar things were said at a party. “How about those Egyptian riots? Like a Black Friday sale, right!” “I’m sick of all these daily deals, how about something new like 2 Free Tibets for the price of one!?” This is pretty harmless stuff by any reasonable measure. Except when it affords you a soap box to preach from.

And that’s really my biggest problem with all this. That the complaining isn’t really complaining, it’s preaching and it’s often baseless. If you’re legitimately offended by any of this stuff, I really do think that’s fine. But if you just want to protect the less-refined masses, then it doesn’t make any more sense to me than censorship.