I love the Internet. I trust what I learn from it, or, more exactly, I generally trust my ability not to be fooled by it. But, like all of us (?), I have a limit.

For example, Google has a new service called What Do You Love? It’s mainly a marketing tool: Tell it something you love, and it will aggregate that term across many of the services Google offers: Send an email, find it on a Google Map, find Google Groups that mention it, etc.

So, I entered “Ted Kaczynski” (the Unabomber), and WDYL cheerfully created the online equivalent of one of those creepy walls of souvenirs that clinch a suspect as the crazypants stalker/killer in cheesy crime movies. I enjoyed it, anyway, even as I made a joke to myself about now probably being on a Homeland Security watch list.

But I realized that there were limits to what I would enter into the site for fear of government consequences: “I love terrorism.” “I love child porn.” I’m actually even nervous putting those sentences into this post as examples. (Granted, either would make for WDYL responses that are more disturbing than amusing.)

So, a part of me apparently believes that the government is watching. And that the government has no sense of humor.

Categories: censorship, culture dw