Since I don't want to think about moving this weekend, here's a deeper topic that's been bugging me - if it bores you or offends, well...nobody's MAKING you read it.
[Unless somebody actually IS making you read it, and in that case, I apologize for being so cavalier about your particular hostage situation. Here's hoping Bruce Willis kicks the door in and rescues you soon. Maybe he'll say something witty, like "Yippee-ki-yay, motherblogger!" before he shoots up the place. Exciting!]
MySpace, the giant social networking site that so many of you must at least be aware of, has decided (after several rounds toe-to-toe with a couple of large online Christian groups) to delete its largest atheist & agnostic community.
With MySpace.com having previously defended the right to free speech, the freedom of the Internet, and so on, this comes as a blow to the (roughly) 35 thousand people who used this MySpace page as a forum for discussion and debate. The page had been hacked before, where high-tech Christians changed the group's name to "Jesus is Love," and MySpace shut down the community. Then it let them open the community again. Then it shut them down again. Then it opened it up again. Now, it looks like it may be down for good.
I bring this up because I see this as a potentially terrifying trend. Bullying seems to have become an acceptable practice (by any group - I'm not picking on Christians here), and unfortunately, homegrown Internet communities really have no recourse. MySpace doesn't want to (or can't) afford to fund a defense against what could wind up being, in this case, the whole Christian community - which could easily afford to pursue long-term litigation.
Fortunately, we have a government hell-bent on self-preservation, and they have no time to deal with this kind of triviality, so undoubtedly one group or another will just be firebombed into submission, and we average Americans can go about our day.
So, in closing:
Godless people have no place on the Internet, and only those who have accepted Our Lord Jesus Christ (Copyright 1997, Barnes & Noble) should be freely permitted to do the following:
1) engage in polite discourse about whether to change the name of The Good Book (Copyright 1974, Exxon Corporation) to The Greatest Book.
2) exchange mp3s of our favorite hymns and spirituals over peer-to-peer "faith sharing" networks, such as AlmightyTorrent.net and its mirror websites.
3) distribute good, clean, Christian porn among those who subscribe to The 1st Congregated Internet Service Provider of Divinity and Love: the One, True, Time Warner Cable (Copyright 2001, Time Warner Cable).
Peace be with you,
GirlOnGirlRox@myspace.com
The demise of civil liberties and creepiness factor aside, seriously, I didn't even know that you could use MySpace for discussion and debate. Maybe that's because I don't belong to any groups or whatnot but for me it's been good only for seeing what my 16 year old cousin is doing (since email is for old people, like yours truly) and getting hit by African men.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could start infiltrating the Christian groups? You could start posting comments like, "I love Jesus even though he doesn't exist."
Or maybe not...
Yeah - this group was using the MySpace comment feature as a forum. Not practical, but...whatever. They do it. Or rather, they used to do it...until the Constitution died.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to build a website around the completely made-up idea that Jesus defeated the Martians with a lightsaber from the back of an armor-clad unicorn, surely I would create some believers, no?
I shall call it...Sammintology.
See, blasphemy can be fun!
...until the lightning strikes me at the exact same moment a runaway subway train hits me, and I end up in hell, covered in pancake syrup and handcuffed to Rosie O'Donnell.
Wait...
ReplyDeleteYou use MySpace to let African men hit you?
That's definitely NOT the designer's intended use.
...or is it?
Motherbloggers? Wow, that's priceless. And I'm all for "booo" to bullying...not good, not good t'all. However, blogging good. Very good indeed. Especially when reading it is better than watching the Colbert Report.
ReplyDeleteSo, the Atheist are in a tizzy are they? Hmmm. Well, there is some comfort I can offer. When they die and go nowhere, we will mark their graves with big scarlet A's. Their decomposing bodies will provide much needed nutrients for the trees we will plant on top. This will give them the opportunity to live on in some sort of other abstract way. Then, when the trees are fully grown and have sucked all the bits and pieces of their corps up into its branches, we will cut them all down, turn them into paper and print bibles on them.
ReplyDeleteOK! Kidding. MySpace is evil. Every MySpace page I visit has horrible background and text. It is usually arranged in such a way that you have to scroll the text to a part of the background that allows you to actually see it.
ATHEIST UNITE!!
Facebook is the answer. You can even add "emotions" and plants that grow in cyberspace. I don't know if thats against your religion...or, uh, your belief system? Wait...belief. Damn!! You get the idea. You don't have to add anything. You can all just have a place to meet and talk about not believing in God (small "g" but not really because I don't want to be punished..unless it feels good). But would you talk about not believing in God (small "g" see above)? I think I just confused myself.
And who the HELL are these people that are complaining? I mean really...WTF?!?!?! If I ever hold an elected office I plan on proposing a law that forbids the Christian conversion of the stupid. No more infant baptism (this should make the evangelicals happy)and you have to pass a written and oral test before you get a bucket (or tub, depending on denomination) of water to stick your head in.
John...
ReplyDeleteThat's is the hilarious-est anything you've ever said.
The Christian conversion of the stupid, eh? Aren't they the easiest targets? It's the same demographic that buys Kirby vacuums after some door-to-door guy massages a bunch of topsoil into their carpets.
What's next? Oh! Facebook plants are totally against my system of religious-type beliefs, along with online poker, dijon mustard, and Bratz dolls.
Also, I'm gonna capitalize the G and the O when I refer to GOd. See - it's the word "go" AND the word "God" - I'm so meta.
Yeah, I meant to type "getting hit ON by African men" but that didn't happen. My brain just works so fast sometimes, so much faster than my fingers it's TERRIFYING!
ReplyDeleteI love dijon mustard. So does G-d, y'all.
I love dijon mustard even though It doesn't exist.
ReplyDelete