The death of Yahoo Chat
Allan J. Ashinoff
August 12, 2005
Once again the depravity of the few has risen up to restrict the masses. Very recently Yahoo.com restricted its chat areas by removing the end users ability to create private chat rooms. It may not seem like much but to a debate hound like me it was a deathblow to a level of socialization that helped to flesh out ideas for my articles. The reason for the drastic change, I’ve been told, was that pedophiles were targeting children and sharing kiddy porn through private rooms.
When I get stuck on a viewpoint or I need to test out a perspective on a topic before I write I would enter yahoo’s chat rooms and find usually 3-4 people who were mature enough and articulate enough to discuss matters passionately or, if I’m real lucky, intelligently. It was no easy task weeding through the quantity of people in a given room but usually the private room’s title was enough to narrow down those entering to the displayed topic. The removal of this ability to create user defined private chat rooms has badly hurt the already sparse availability of intelligent discussion on yahoo chat. After all where else could you go to talk to such a diverse sampling of people from across the nation or across the globe?
Today when I enter yahoo’s political or religious chat rooms I am pooled with twenty to thirty people and about a dozen bots (automated advertising annoyances thoughtfully concerned on entertaining ones libido for money). The room is not centered on any topic in specific and that aspect quickly becomes painfully obvious.
There is the typical line up of imbeciles who make the ignore feature most appreciated. Surly you’ve met them if you ever attended yahoo chat; there are the people who write in a 72 point bold red font simply because they have no depth to their thoughts and possess only one or two statements they can present to the group. There are the ever present white supremacists, the determined at all costs conspiracy theorists, the pre-pubescent intellectually stunted juveniles who think they are smarter than they actually are, the irrational Bush Bashers, the anti-America anarchists, the homosexual activists, the perverts, and the smug shockers who are typically teachers or professors who think they know more than everyone else (and often don’t but sometimes do).
Yahoo chat has become super concentrated into a few dozen rooms which makes association with societies fringe element unavoidable. You know the fringe element I'm talking about, they are the ones that equate Bush to Hitler, praise propagandists like Michael Moore as the next coming of Christ, think everything is fine as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and think its acceptable for 40 year old men to hit on young girls (who are really horny old men too). Oh, and lets not forget the ever present pedophiles. In the absence of the only filter available, private chat rooms, the accumulation of single subject obsessive blowhards is nearly too much to tolerate.
At risk of sounding pompous and egocentric, whatever happened to those who can say without embarrassment "I don't know", "I've never researched the subject", "There are other viewpoints" or "Well we disagree but I see you point"? Without subject oriented rooms a statement which isn't agreeable to the masses gets flooded with trite abuses from the majority of participants. Let's not forget those thoughtful private messages that arrive constantly advertising a website or another for our pleasure of course.
Whatever happened to reading to find things out for yourself? The majority of people encountered quote CNN, FOX, Moveon.org, or Air America as gospel. The single aspect given by one news outlet hardly examines any issue even fifty percent. In watching the news theses days’ one can only get the whole story on kidnap victims, amber alert victims, or a sports personality rape or murder trial. Did I mention celebrity pedophile trial? Perhaps I’m not watching enough TV?
I take comfort in that within the next 5-7 years people like crzysuprlvrNY will be of voting age. I take pleasure knowing that he’ll be voting someday when I read witticisms such as “Bush Sucks and is a criminal”, “Arabs should all die”, “War is never a good thing for any reason”, ”America is evil” and “I want to **** your mama” in response to the topic of Iraq or the ozone, or the economy. I sleep better, truly I do, knowing one day he, or someone like him, will be making decisions when I’m old and feeble.
I never considered Yahoo chat the apex of intelligent discussion but if there was a way to make it worse than what it was then removing the private chat rooms is that way. When morality is subjective then people, given the anonymity of internet chat rooms, lose sensibility and restraint and the powers that be must make law, or impose restrictions, to maintain order.
Yahoo did the right thing in response to the real threat of gullible children and vile predatory adults. But Yahoo chat and the free expression it provided is the latest victim of subjective morality. Thank the pedophiles.
I can be reached in yahoo chat, almost always, at thinker822@yahoo.com or via e-mail at thinker822@fedupwithpc.com or through my website www.fedupwithpc.com. I welcome further discussion on anything I’ve written.
When I get stuck on a viewpoint or I need to test out a perspective on a topic before I write I would enter yahoo’s chat rooms and find usually 3-4 people who were mature enough and articulate enough to discuss matters passionately or, if I’m real lucky, intelligently. It was no easy task weeding through the quantity of people in a given room but usually the private room’s title was enough to narrow down those entering to the displayed topic. The removal of this ability to create user defined private chat rooms has badly hurt the already sparse availability of intelligent discussion on yahoo chat. After all where else could you go to talk to such a diverse sampling of people from across the nation or across the globe?
Today when I enter yahoo’s political or religious chat rooms I am pooled with twenty to thirty people and about a dozen bots (automated advertising annoyances thoughtfully concerned on entertaining ones libido for money). The room is not centered on any topic in specific and that aspect quickly becomes painfully obvious.
There is the typical line up of imbeciles who make the ignore feature most appreciated. Surly you’ve met them if you ever attended yahoo chat; there are the people who write in a 72 point bold red font simply because they have no depth to their thoughts and possess only one or two statements they can present to the group. There are the ever present white supremacists, the determined at all costs conspiracy theorists, the pre-pubescent intellectually stunted juveniles who think they are smarter than they actually are, the irrational Bush Bashers, the anti-America anarchists, the homosexual activists, the perverts, and the smug shockers who are typically teachers or professors who think they know more than everyone else (and often don’t but sometimes do).
Yahoo chat has become super concentrated into a few dozen rooms which makes association with societies fringe element unavoidable. You know the fringe element I'm talking about, they are the ones that equate Bush to Hitler, praise propagandists like Michael Moore as the next coming of Christ, think everything is fine as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and think its acceptable for 40 year old men to hit on young girls (who are really horny old men too). Oh, and lets not forget the ever present pedophiles. In the absence of the only filter available, private chat rooms, the accumulation of single subject obsessive blowhards is nearly too much to tolerate.
At risk of sounding pompous and egocentric, whatever happened to those who can say without embarrassment "I don't know", "I've never researched the subject", "There are other viewpoints" or "Well we disagree but I see you point"? Without subject oriented rooms a statement which isn't agreeable to the masses gets flooded with trite abuses from the majority of participants. Let's not forget those thoughtful private messages that arrive constantly advertising a website or another for our pleasure of course.
Whatever happened to reading to find things out for yourself? The majority of people encountered quote CNN, FOX, Moveon.org, or Air America as gospel. The single aspect given by one news outlet hardly examines any issue even fifty percent. In watching the news theses days’ one can only get the whole story on kidnap victims, amber alert victims, or a sports personality rape or murder trial. Did I mention celebrity pedophile trial? Perhaps I’m not watching enough TV?
I take comfort in that within the next 5-7 years people like crzysuprlvrNY will be of voting age. I take pleasure knowing that he’ll be voting someday when I read witticisms such as “Bush Sucks and is a criminal”, “Arabs should all die”, “War is never a good thing for any reason”, ”America is evil” and “I want to **** your mama” in response to the topic of Iraq or the ozone, or the economy. I sleep better, truly I do, knowing one day he, or someone like him, will be making decisions when I’m old and feeble.
I never considered Yahoo chat the apex of intelligent discussion but if there was a way to make it worse than what it was then removing the private chat rooms is that way. When morality is subjective then people, given the anonymity of internet chat rooms, lose sensibility and restraint and the powers that be must make law, or impose restrictions, to maintain order.
Yahoo did the right thing in response to the real threat of gullible children and vile predatory adults. But Yahoo chat and the free expression it provided is the latest victim of subjective morality. Thank the pedophiles.
I can be reached in yahoo chat, almost always, at thinker822@yahoo.com or via e-mail at thinker822@fedupwithpc.com or through my website www.fedupwithpc.com. I welcome further discussion on anything I’ve written.
Print
Email
