My previous post, on the death of Richard Dawkins' father, credits the blog Boing Boing. I had signed up for commenting privileges at Boing Boing where I wrote the "... May God rest [his] soul ..." remark. Within half an hour my comment had been deleted and attempts to sign-in again were greeted with "You do not have permission to leave comments on this blog":). Man! That's pretty fierce gate-keeping. OK, I admit there was an element of snark in my comment. But it was pretty mild snark given that (1) Mr. Dawkins senior was an Anglican, and (2) it was, mostly, a sincere wish on my part (and Boing Boing's comment Nazis couldn't have known otherwise.)
Conclusion: The Boing Boing comments section is an echo chamber run by some apparently extremely thin-skinned people, whose idea of intolerable commentary, like many lefty scolds, is anything that doesn't precisely fit their idea of how the world should be.
Who/what is Boing Boing? I hadn't heard of it until recently while reading a book on the history of blogging, "say everything" by Scott Rosenberg. Rosenberg presents Boing Boing's story as an example of blogging pioneers who have become wildly successful. It's kitschy, a little kinky with a taste that runs to the oddball in stories, graphics and videos posted mostly by four individuals. There's some interesting stuff.
[By the way, Rosenberg also holds up Daily Kos as another leading example (which maybe says something about Rosenberg). Full disclosure: A few years ago, I lasted longer (a couple of days) at Daily Kos before being banned for some comments surrounding Lloyd Axworthy's anti-Americanism.]
Anyway, Boing Boing is a top rated blog with, according to Rosenberg, millions of 'customers' and revenues in the multi-millions. Given their success presumably they know what they're doing. And if a comments policy requiring milquetoast pc blandness attractive to products of the schools of self-esteem is part of that success then I suppose good for Boing Boing. But in the long run ....?
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13 comments:
That site and KOS are wealthy and do not tolerate deviancy from their way of thinking.
They are wildly successful because they allow no dissent. They are echo chambers filled with like minded individuals who reinforce their opinions by not allowing any light to penetrate the gloom of their orthodoxy.
Too True, Kursk. Their followers, who clearly number in the millions, are conditioned in 'the hive'.
Seriously?
No offense but this is rich coming from a Blogging Tory where most of your confreres rarely allow comments from anyone else but a BT...
Cherniak- Daily Kaos is one of the more extreme left wing sites of america.Id watch CNN before listening to what daily kaos has to say.
Many parrot some weird conspiracy theories and the usual lefty mojo with no real solutions to the problems in America.Compromise is really the only path acceptable to most americans.
Hey Anon,
Way to get off subject.
Cherniak,
I can't speak for "most" BT's, but I wouldn't doubt that lots of them censor the obvious trolls and flamers.
I got here through a Google search of that phrase: 'You do not have permission to comment on this blog'.
Ridiculous but expected, that place has become pretty pathetic by journalistic standards. My comment that must've gotten me banned was a criticism of their assigning right-wing nutjob blog posts to 'politics of America'. A huge generalization that goes against their liberal goals and I pointed it out. WHOOPS.
Recently I was banned, and it was not immediately obvious. I was astute (and helpful) enough to point out blatant hypocrisy of the poster. These hypocritic statements were not hard to find - they occurred in the same post! And so, I was banned.
Guess Who: Xeni Jardin (that was an easy one).
To paraphrase her favorite Anti-Christian meme, "
Xeni! What an ASSHOLE!"
BB really, really sucks.
I was just banned from Boing Boing after making my very first comment.
The article was blaming a relatively conservative journalist at Daily Mail for the suicide of a transvestite teacher. His crime was questioning the appropriateness of a teacher discussing sex change surgery with elementary school children. Apparently that was enough to drive her to kill her/himself.
I was shocked to see the liberals foaming at the mouth and, literally, calling for his blood. Interestingly, I could find no contrary opinions.
Therefore, I commented that the only person responsible for her suicide was herself and that championing her behavior only encouraged it in others and while obscuring the journalists valid points with irrational sentimentality.
I was immediately blocked. Multiple comments were posted beneath mine as the "echo chamber" reveled in my banishment.
I was banned from BoingBoing because I don't like Zooey Deschanel.
They are very hypocritical. My comments weren't offensive, hostile or puerile. They were thoughtful comments on fake nerds like Zooey Deschanel and authentic nerds, who should be the center of Internet culture.
It's okay. I need to spend less time on the Internet. Maybe I'll start a wikipedia war and get the section on censorship larger and more prominent.
Use the TOR browser so they cant ban you by IP address
http://download.cnet.com/Tor-Browser-Bundle/3000-2356_4-75660251.html
Email addresses are easy to come by. If this is a problem for you discover.
https://www.guerrillamail.com/
With these tools there is nothing stopping you from creating multiple accounts and speaking your mind without fear of their censorship.
Comment Censored at BoingBoing (Part 2 of 2):
The fact is, one of the most basic and ancient critical skills all generations of young men have to master is a kind of skepticism towards their own sexual impulses. They cannot be trusted, effective functioning members of society if they are easily manipulated by their own sexual yearnings and blinded to danger by the same. Knowledge of that danger is transmitted through images of The Seductress.
The folk message embodied within the art and narrative which game critics target is just the opposite of how they frame it. In the real world, deviousness preys most effectively on the known, genetically determined, enduring vulnerabilities people are born with. In response, every society in all times and in all places has used an endless variety of creative means to steel itself and its members against these vulnerabilities.
One of the most ancient of those means is the narrative, the folk tale. Folk tales and they do so in way which is calculated to be graphic.
With images of sex, deception, danger and death our fore-bearers embodied non-obvious, hard-won cultural knowledge which critically needed to be passed on from generation to generation They embedded that collective experience inside just those art forms which were most conducive to a high-fidelity rendering of the world, as do we. They knew, as we know, that immersion into an imaginary world and the visceral responses it can elicit is a far better means of knowledge-transmission than disembodied lecturing.
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