COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
DATELINE: 6 APRIL, 2000
Transmitted by: Ed Cantarella & LadyB, USA
To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/daily0406.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.
CHAT ROOMS Point/Counterpoint - POINT - ED CANTARELLA: It's Good To Be King.
As the owner/operator of a fledgling website, I have receive a fair amount of email encouraging me to add a chat room or forum to my site. I remain unconvinced of their value to society, cyber or real/meat-world, due to my belief that these places encourage unrealistic approaches toward human interaction.
At cyber-forums, nameless/faceless people say whatever they want, as often as they want, for as long as they want, in as offense manner as they want. At a real forum, say a town meeting, people know who you are, somebody can stand up and shout you down, a scuffle might break out and you could get your teeth mashed in if things get really nasty! TAKE THAT @SSHOLE!@)($)(#
In a "chat room" on the íŸÚNet, you can get lots of invitations to "cyber". In a real-world chat, nobody says," Hey, want to masturbate together and tell each other what we are fantasizing about?" Unless, of course, they like getting slapped, drinks dumped on their lap or just plain getting "shot down in flames".
My brother the attorney defends "anything goes" types of forums, as places where people, "say what NEEDS to be said", un-politically correct as it may be. Big ISP's seem to think it's a matter of giving the public what it wants - everything!
Me, I refuse to believe we need another fresh wall for the sickness-filled graffiti artists of society. As Samuel Jackson said in Pulp Fiction," I don't care if sewer rat tastes like pumpkin pie, I'm not eating the nasty mother_ker!"
The good news, for high-minded folks like me, is that not many people hang out at their ISP's pages. Therefore, WE can influence society by what we allow. We pay for the hosting service, We bought the software, computers, books, data, file cabinets and whatever else; why should we squander bandwidth and risk offending even 1% of our visitors with a free-for-all? Since when have nameless/faceless people been allowed to indulge their desires with no fear of negative consequences? It's good to be King - Long Live The King!
**************
COUNTERPOINT - LADYB: When we talked long ago about chatrooms, I had been frequenting a particular one (Arizona Coffee House in "The Chathouse") for better than a year. Back then, being a 'newbie' to the net and limited to the non-scrolling chatsites that WebTV supported at the time, chatting was quite a novelty. I met quite a diversity of decent folks from all over the world and an age spread from eleven to seventy plus. The great majority were in that particular chatroom for the same purpose...to cut up, share day to day ups and downs and for the most part, became extended family to one another. Many of us managed to meet in person (one group of eight women spent a weekend together in Virginia Beach) and there were even a few 'couples' who ultimately ended up meeting, marrying and as I hear it are still living happily ever after two years later.
Although the old "ACH Family" has pretty much disbanded as a regular group in the wake of ICQ, POWOW, NetMeeting, Voxphone and newer methods of net communication, there are still the occasional emails and holiday cards that keep us all in touch. I don't know whether the rest of them still frequent chatrooms, but it's a rarity for me now that I've moved onto the challenge of building websites and selling on eBay.
When I tossed the old WebTV for a real PC, I visited AOHell's chatrooms a few times only to find them full of trashy mouthed, cyberlusting teenyboppers who filled my email box with garbage or folks my age who spent more time bashing the boppers than having any meaningful conversation.
In support of chatsites and the internet allowing individuals to communicate, I still feel that this medium may ultimately bring mankind to a better personal cultural understanding and appreciation of one another. Reading or watching news accounts, documentaries and such are way too far removed from the reality of John Doe swapping family tales and home videos with Juang Ho on the other side of the world. Like the little kid who gets excited seeing his teacher in the grocery store (teachers eat food too, don't they?), it's been a fascinating experience being able to develop a comraderie with other people I'd never have the opportunity to know without benefit of internet chatting. Not to mention having been able to track down old friends like Rod after tooooooo many years! *grins*
RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: NDK sent this one into us. We took a quick look, but we just too darned busy to see if it's worth it. You decide. FairTax. org 
Hey, Kids! Why not submit your own thoughts, rants, reminiscences, anecdotes or jokes to G21 RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT? It's easy! Just send an e-mail note to OUR EDITOR, with subject line "RDR." Thanks and a tip of the hat!
+++ THE RDR Archives +++
© 2000, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. We still like to hear from you. Send your snide remarks to rod@g21.net.