This is a place to discuss the ideas tha…

This is a place to discuss the ideas that Tolga brought up with his essay on censorship on the internet. I must say I feel a bit spoiled in a sense – when Tolga brought this idea up to me I felt disconnected to it, I felt like I had never really experienced this sort of political censorship of the internet being a Western citizen. However, I realized that I am constantly battling with contraints put on myself throughout the internet, though they are mostly due to personal/social censorship. This we have web 2.0 to thank for – perhaps web 3.0 will present a new, completely unreflective online experience. Tolga asked me to share a story about a specific time of censorship on the net I had – one that involves my mom!
Parker had created a Facebook group called “1,000 Strong For Putting E In The Bootyhole” – completely ridiculous. I joined the group and didn’t think much about it. About 2 hours after joining I got a frantic call from my mom asking me why I had joined this group on Facebook and why I was doing drugs. I told her it was just a silly internet thing, but she really didn’t ‘get it’ I guess – haha! She was convinced that I was doing drugs and that Parker was the initiator. She texted and called me all night long, telling me my father was in shock and that she couldn’t support any life decisions I made from that point on. She told me if I stopped being friends with Parker, I would basically win her love back. From there, she went on to stalk Parker on the internet. She sent me loads and loads of emails with links to his sites that included pornography or other ‘lewd’ acts. She even sent me an email about god…. oh no! She then started to stalk me online and sent me links to pages with my name on them that may seem rude or vulgar (like pictures I had favorited on Flickr, my Twitter page, and links from my delicious account). Well, it was a pretty intense experience, but I held my ground – mostly. I did clean up my image on the net a little bit and adjusted my privacy settings on almost all of my accounts online.
This is a form of social censorship… I now feel like my mom is watching me online – that’s a scary feeling!