The stolen fruit is sweetest, and to ban anything is to guarantee its existence. Banned books, performances and the like arouse people’s curiosity about their content. Reactance theory postulates that people realise that banned materials are worth getting and thus they find ways to have them. Much censorship can push writers, directors and performers to find their own ways to avoid censorship by writing in a more acceptable way or by tackling "safer" topics. Unfortunately, in such cases, they will write for the censor, not the public. Besides, there will be no creativity; cultural impoverishment will be the norm. The language used and the topics discussed will be the same everywhere. Strict censorship can force authors and performers into writing and presenting abroad and thus their local audience will be deprived of such art. Instead of increasing, the target audience will decrease. Strict censorship may lead some writers to stop writing; they will keep silent and watch. Other writers will immigrate, others may give up writing and yet others will be forced into self-exile.
The same is true with social media censorship. Nowadays, a high number of writers are attracted to online media as a new opportunity of expression to evade censorship. Many authors found alternative outlets on the Web with their various advantages and availability. Examples are the mobile phones taking photos and video footage that can be uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms in no time. This increases the interaction between the author and his/her audience. Fearing its influence, governments take serious actions towards controlling the content uploaded on social media. The political content is the most censored. While literary content is not as censored as political content, it is now increasingly under constant censorship from governments in the Arab world.
This chapter concludes that Egypt and Morocco are Arab world moderate censors to the extent that authors can use social media as a means of counter-censorship. Both Zitan and Shabayek manage to trespass into a relatively comfortable zone by employing adaptation, foreignisation, code switching and smooth gradual presentations of their performances. The chapter also shows that creativity and innovation cannot flourish in the face of force. A moderate ground and a compromise between crossover and strict censorship should be adopted for the welfare of artistic life. Reasonable rules of censorship should be canonised within each country according to its polit ical, social, religious and moral standards. Only in such an atmosphere will freedom of expression be practised with all due consideration to good taste, common sense and cultural norms.