Purity gone WILD.

[rivka]

My mom is on vacation in Colorado right now, reading her e-mail at the Estes Park Public Library. A few days ago, I sent her an e-mail with a cute little anecdote about Alex. When she replied, I noticed something very strange about the quoted text of my message:

The other thing she loves to do lately is make her toys cry, and then give them to me to comfort. Doll, doggy, little plastic figurines, rubber ducks, they all start going "Waah! Waah!" and then I have to hug them. This reached its most ridiculous point when I gave her some goldfish ers to eat and she made the ers cry. I am not going to hug a er that's about to be food!

What the hell? Had I made some sort of bizarre error?

...No. A quick check of my sent mail folder indicated that I had made no typing or cut-and-paste error. I had clearly specified that the ritual played out with goldfish CRACKers. CRACKers.

Holy shit. And I thought net filters that disallowed the phrase "breast cancer" were bad.

Whoever set up those filters - and it must be the library, right? Because if Yahoo, my mother's mail service provider, were being so idiotic, it would be on the news - is the craziest Puritan I've ever encountered. Can't have library users talking about illegal drug use, so the letters c-r-a-c-k are forbidden, even if those nasty druggies attempt to disguise them by following them up with -e-r-s. But wait, it gets better: I e-mailed my mom about the deletion, and she wrote back:

Talk to [your sister]. She has had several email where the common word for female babies was omitted, when sent to me. baby. Did it work?

Girl. They forbid internet users from viewing the word GIRL.

What. The. Hell. Those computers must be completely fucking unusable. I wonder if the librarians' machines have the same filters.

Edited to add: I just checked another e-mail from my mother to see what else had been edited out of my quoted text. "Game." WTF? I guess because they don't want people using library computers to play games? But that makes no sense!

Comments

[jenett]

Filters drive me batty (and are why I'm so glad the school I work for doesn't use them. Period.)

I can think of a few reasons that aren't the librarian's fault - it may be pressure for a specific filter from the local community/library board (there are parts of Colorado that are pretty fundamentalist/etc.)

The other is that the cheaper filters tend to filter more, and less intelligently. If there's a mandate from the town/county/state to filter (as is true for a lot of government funds for 'Net connectivity), they may not realise how bad it is, or be locked into a contract for X months more that has them with a bad filter.

(There are many more reasons I've got issues with filters, but the fact that can happen is a major peeve.)

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Oh, for fleep's sake.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

That's utterly ridiculous! What about girls who want to research issues common to girls? Like on the gurl.com website or whatever?

n.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Silly nex0s. Girls are for sex, and that's all that they're for.

[geekymary.livejournal.com]

And that's why we have to protect the good girls.

I'm sure "boy" isn't filtered.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

AHHHHHHHHH!

n.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Okay, wow. And I thought workplaces that block websites were bad!

-J

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

Obviously, you and your Mom need to use ROT13 on your emails, so that the filters don't stop you from talking about "gung phgr tvey Nyrk cynlvat jvgu ure penpxref".

Hmmm. "Nyrk." Now there's a nickname...

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

that is rediculous! someone should write to the library.

(incidentally, if you're not aware of the comment indentation/nesting issue with the new styles, check my post (http://llnaughty.livejournal.com/441236.html) on how to fix it. if you use a non-ie browser, you won't see the problem, but other people will when they look at your journal.)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Hooray for you! That was irritating the shit out of me, but I liked the overall new look so much that I was trying to learn to live with it. Thanks!

[erin-c-1978.livejournal.com]

That is truly messed up. It almost sounds like whoever programmed the filter doesn't understand how it works and just thought that if they plugged in "games," "girls," etc. it would keep people from finding those things on the Net.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I'd guess "game" is gone because being "on the game" is a rude phrase.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

That's completely crackers. Er...

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's bonkers. Erm...

[ailbhe]

Ask it about Scunthorpe! And I wonder would it filter "tumescent phallus" or similar?

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

Print up 1000 business cards that say

Cheese-Its(tm) Back-to-school gone crazy Promotion!
For a free box of crackers, do the following:
1) Go to any internet-connected computer and google "girls deserve more yummy crackers". Click on the first link in the search list. You will be given a password.
2) Present the password to your librarian. You will receive a free box of Cheese-Its.
Limit one box per student (but do share)!

Then slip those cards inside books throughout the library.

[jilesa.livejournal.com]

In most public libraries that I know of, filters have been instituted over the protests of the librarians. I know of very few librarians who actually think internet filters are a good idea, and most of them would be happy to have evidence of how these stupid filters adversely affect communication. So you might consider suggesting that your mom mention these incidents to the librarians. (It's possible that this is an exception to the 'librarians don't like filters' generalization, but it would be worth a shot.)

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

Most public librarians hate filters. And the most common filters give them very little choice about how they set up them and what they screen for. This is the first time, however, that I've ever heard of them interferring with email. Normally they just block the results from search sites.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

How very weird. Come to think of it, when I lived in Estes Park for about a month thirty years ago, I don't think I ever got over to the library. I was riding my bike over to the Stanley Hotel to play on their piano.

Anyway. It's true that Colorado is, sadly, in thrall to the fundies in a lot of places, but one other factor might be that for four or five months of the year, Estes Park is Coney Island, with a huge transient population from out of town. Maybe they feel they have to meet community standards for the most backward possible visitors.

Not that this is an excuse. There's no excuse.

[lerryn.livejournal.com]

I think the people who designed the filter must be on, um, crack-ers.