 | Okay so many fans may well have read about Weird Retro's recent facebook ban on their fan page for posting a link to a Captain's Blog post mentioning the facebook unmentionable... Nipples! If you didn't then the "banned" post is just below this one. Well moving on from that little blip in our fun... Let's look at some other ridiculously weird examples of Internet based censorship, and other random pieces of censorship I could dig up while having a beer and just chilling out for the evening, now the mini-weirdo is finally asleep. In 2011, facebook (yes them again) banned a whole town. And I thought I had it bad! The town of Effin in Ireland was wiped off the map by facebook. Because facebook considered the town's name offensive, people couldn't tag their location or the 1000 or so people that lived in Effin were unable to list their home-town in their facebook account details. How ridiculous, not allowing the use of "effin", when it's the polite term for "fucking". |
Another example of Internet word censorship was in 2004, when the whole Internet seemingly banned a unassuming museum in London, England. The Horniman Museum, which was named after 19th century tea magnate Frederick John Horniman, was pretty much unable to operate any business via the Internet. The anthropological museum, of great education and historic value had its emails rejected by spam filters, its website blocked by browsers, and even people trying to get to the website being sent to adult sites instead. All because a perfectly reasonable surname was interpreted by software as "horny man".
If you think that banned words is somewhat Orwellian, then you should check out the school in California that tried to ban the whole dictionary. In 2010, Merriam Webster's Dictionary was removed from classrooms after a parent complained about their child reading the definition for "oral sex." The dictionaries were ordered off the shelves at Oak Meadows Elementary School in Menifee until a committee could determine if they were "age appropriate" for fourth-and fifth-graders. After a few days of deliberation the books were returned, but under the watchful eye of a group of parents who made sure their little juniors didn't look up any other dirty words.
If you think that banned words is somewhat Orwellian, then you should check out the school in California that tried to ban the whole dictionary. In 2010, Merriam Webster's Dictionary was removed from classrooms after a parent complained about their child reading the definition for "oral sex." The dictionaries were ordered off the shelves at Oak Meadows Elementary School in Menifee until a committee could determine if they were "age appropriate" for fourth-and fifth-graders. After a few days of deliberation the books were returned, but under the watchful eye of a group of parents who made sure their little juniors didn't look up any other dirty words.
| Do you understand the words being garbled in the well known 1963 version of Louie Louie by The Kingsmen? No? Most people don't, and that's how we like it, and what made it a classic. Some didn't like that they couldn't understand what was being sung. So much so that the FBI spent 2 years trying to decipher the track, using all the latest technology they had to had at the time in the mid-60s. They came up with nothing, but did miss drummer Lynn Easton shouting "fuck" at 0.54 secs. | |
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
—Salman Rushdie
Weird Retro Fact: Read the blog, facebook banned, Weird Music: The Ladybirds, Not The Only All-Girl Topless Band In The 1960s .
Weird Retro Fact: Read about the the censorship of comics and one publishers attempt to fight against it, in our article Judgment Day! EC Comics Against Comic Code Racism.
Weird Retro Fact: Read about the the censorship of comics and one publishers attempt to fight against it, in our article Judgment Day! EC Comics Against Comic Code Racism.
