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2003-02-12 - 2:54 a.m. Subj: AOL Indicted For Hypocritical Room Delisting (Now THAT'S a headline for CNN!) Date: 2/12/03 2:54:23 AM Central Standard Time From: Satanic Pokemon To: TOSGeneral Dear AOL Community Action "Team" Member and anyone else it may concern: It seems that the "Team" in "Community Action Team" is but a meaningless, rhetorical word when it comes to the way you people work. Then again, I can also chalk it up to the same general inconsistency in the AOL service, such as the fact that "SYSTEM RESPONSE" errors tend to come up when I'm trying to pull up a buddy list on my "controversial" screen name (this one) rather than on my more secular, mundane ones...then I change to one of the latter names and everything works fine, then I come back on this one and it's the same problems. I know this isn't your department, but nothing explains this except for the theory that AOL might be interfering with my functionality on this name. I find AOL guilty of second-degree hypocrisy for this subtle suppression of "alternative" viewpoints. But this point I make is clearly in your department, and this is far more blatant. A friend passed word to me that two chats I frequent, "ChristianityIsStupid" and "ChristianityIsFlawed" have been blacklisted by the Community Action "Team." The former chat has been banned at least twice to my knowledge after the "Team" wrote an email saying that the embargo on CiS has been lifted and is now creatable in the member category - alongside its Christian counterparts (e.g. ChristianCoffeeHouse, PrayingInFaith2Jesus, etc.) Now that it has been banned again after another complaint, it is now apparent that there is no consistency or coherency in decisions made my the "Team." It seems that said decisions are nothing more than acts on the whims of whichever "Team" member receives a random complaint. Either a room is appropriate, or it's not. Thinking objectively from a "Team" member's perspective (assuming that decisions made by "Team" members are coming from an objective perspective in the first place, which is very suspect), I would say that "ChristianityIsStupid" is borderline; a proverbial "gray area," since it uses an adjective generally considered an insult. It still doesn't insult the followers of the religion, but the religion and its dogma itself, meaning that it is a stretch of conventional logic to say it insults its followers. Still, this "gray area" needs to be turned to either black or white to keep decisions made by the "Team" from being anything but a joke that neither me nor the room's other 25-odd regulars find funny. (Brief pause while you grab your calculator and figure up a theoretical worst-case financial loss scenario by multiplying 26 by $23, then multiply by 12 for the total funds in jeopardy during the next and subsequent fiscal years. Not the news AOL Time Warner needs Wall Street to hear.) However, to ban "ChristianityIsFlawed," a room name that only states that the religion is not perfect as nothing conceived by man (yes, religions are created by man) is inexcusable. This calls into question the objectivity, or lack thereof, of the "Team." I'm sure I could run rooms called "Islam Is Flawed," "Buddhism Is Flawed," "Satanism Is Flawed." etc. forever without any of you even hearing about it, much less making the conscious decision to disallow them. Not that rooms like these are only theoretical - they do exist. As I write, at 0321 hrs EST, the following pro-Christanity rooms are on the list under the "Life" category: PrayingInFaith2Jesus, CHRISTIANCOFFEEHOUSE, ChristianBibleChattt, and WalkntheLoveofChrist. More rooms like these are on during peak usage times, but most people in the United States are asleep at this moment. There are at least as many non-Christian chatters on AOL as there are Christian chatters - on most occasions, CiS, God Is A Myth, and my rooms in their various titles have more people in them combined than there are in the Christian rooms combined. This is not to say that everyone in the rooms I named is not a Christian, but with the same logic this is not to say that everyone in the Christian rooms are Christians. They come and go, and exchange viewpoints in manners varied from respectful to aggressively assertive to obscenely pushy. Having spent time in both genres of rooms, I have observed that the Christians use the latter approach to sharing their views with the opposing side more frequently. In fact, it's quite uncommon to see a non-Christian go into a Christian chat and share their views in a disrespectful manner. However, I get "Go to hell" and other things that I will not repeat, many of which are violations of TOS, quite frequently in CiS and my rooms. With this said, I then get into evidence of bias. In the TOS itself, the following is stated: "In most places on AOL, vulgar language or sexually explicit conduct are no more appropriate online than they would be at Thanksgiving dinner. So while the guidelines may vary a bit depending on the online area you're in, in general, these guidelines apply:" Okay, this will likely be taken as someone grasping at straws, but an underlying endorsement of Christianity is found in this paragraph. Which religion observes Thanksgiving? Why not "...than they would be in a synagogue" or "...than they would be on the streets of Mecca during Ramadan"? The apparent bias - the only thing consistent in the decisions made by the "Team," - in deciding which chat titles are allowed and which are not, along with this veiled establishment of Christianity as the "norm" by AOL lead me to think that there is no objectivity, not to mention no consistency, in these decisions. I find AOL guilty of first-degree hypocrisy. My continuation to pay for overpriced and inconsistent online service rests on your reply and the final decisions made on these rooms by the "Team." Regards, James AKA =Satanichu= � Most recent rants! Queer Eye For The Savior Guy - 2003-08-02To whom it may concern... - 2003-06-25 Getting in touch with my inner deity - 2003-06-13 Jesus In Drag - 2003-06-11 Heathen Sunday - 2003-05-20
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