Hole in the Ladder
Arthur Brash | November 22, 2008 | 1:34Google has a bad habit of nannying the user. SafeSearch keeps turning on regardless of how much vigour is used in pressing the mouse button over “I’m not a child, go take a hike and get lost in the forest” button. Well, actually, the caption is a lot less exciting – kind of like the search results with SafeSearch on.
Censorship of any kind makes me mad as a hatter.
I have a CD someone mistakingly bought for me at Wal-Mart – why the hell else would someone buy a CD at damn Wal-Mart? It censors out an instance of a “bad word.” (Shhh, between me and you, it’s bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Bitch.) I can’t listen to it. It’s like someone cut the song’s throat mid-way through, a gashing wound bleeding into my ear, pouring down through to the throat, I start to gag. Well, you get the idea – forget the visual.
Thin as a dime, is what our morals are. Energy, time and money wasted on ideologies. You know what I hate more than censorship? Ideologies. I’ll tell you more – maybe another time.
We all start off with bad directions, and spend the rest of our lives unlearning that taught to us early on. It’s the only way I can explain just starting out, at the doorstep of my fourth decade.
$29.00 in my pocket, banging on the table with an old tin cup, cigarette down to the filter. Fell in love with a gun street girl, dancing in the Birmingham jail.
There ain’t no devil, there’s just god when he’s drunk.
Ce la vie.
All you ever really need to know is in a Tom Waits song.
Why won’t anyone think of the children. As a matter of fact why do we have to think of the children. When I was growing up nobody thought about the children, and I grew up just fine, I think.
Why not create a world where parents aren’t necessary. A world where a child can grow up with no parental guidance. This is our future. censorship. 18+ movies. No drinking until the age of 25. No smoking until the age of 12. No games with fake blood, but rape, theft, prostitution, and murder is ok. After all blood is red and red is evil.
I must admit that I am uncertain if you’re with me, or against me – well, my ideas anyway. For it’d be foolish to make _me_ into every idea I might toss around, inevitably only to discard it later. :)
Censorship usually bugs me too, though I can understand the usefulness of something like Safe Search (even if it is super annoying for those of us who don’t need our hands held). While it kind of pisses me off now, I might feel differently if I had kids accessing my computer. All I’m saying is there likely is a demand and maybe even a need (?) for that kind of thing – though the way it’s dealt with should be changed. (Like, by not making it the default no matter what you tell it to do, as you pointed out.)
Censorship of music, movies, or any other kind of art, is an entirely different matter to me. The argument is that by ‘bleeping’ so-called bad words, or blacking-out so-called bad images, then *all* people can enjoy the art, without being offended. But, I’m offended when an artist’s work is messed with in this way. Whatever’s been blocked was originally part of the art; removing it changes the entire song, or show, or poster, or whatever. And besides, hearing a loud “beep” every few minutes (or seconds, depending on the material, lol) really isn’t enjoyable for anyone.