secrets
my life just got a whole lot better.
ever since i first came to this place, i've been angered by the filters the government uses to create what many call "the great firewall of china". 'angered,' i suppose, is an understatement. and now that i heard about their silly green damn nonsense, the anger is slowly turning to rage, which i'm covering up by laughing at how silly it is.
silly for the following reason.
think of the last time you had a secret. not the kind of secret like "guess what movie we're going to see" or "i bet you don't know what color my new underwear is." no, i mean the kind of secret like "i just did something horrible and can't let anyone know." for example: "my predecessors killed hundreds of innocent people because they said they disagreed with me, and i wanted to show them how big and strong i am, even though i know my penis is really small, but i can't let anyone find out either of those things." i mean, those are some pretty serious secrets.
so now think of what happened when you hinted to someone that you had a secret. how long did you keep it a secret after that? probably not very long. because as soon as someone knows you're hiding something, they probably will go to no end to find out.
okay. so now imagine you're a huge powerful growing country with billions of sheep and a handful of people interested in learning about all this ruckus the rest of the world seems to be saying about the way you treat said sheep. and someone on the teli says something down the lines of "the american president pleaded with [insert your country name here] to improve their human rights, but then [insert your name here]" -- and then the screen goes black, and a few minutes later returns -- "the weather should be sunny and bright tomorrow! that fog is not pollution, it's rays of sunshine!" this, perhaps, would peak the curiosity of those few educated folk. who are the ones you're most worried about to begin with.
the big example of filtered information that people use -- in this country and abroad -- is a certain event that happened some 20 years ago in a very famous square. do a google search for this here, and it shows happy flowers; do the same search in america, and you see a man getting held up by tanks.
what a great test to run! i'll see what i can do to get the results that are clearly unblocked! maybe i could try a proxy server. that's easy. or maybe use VPN settings. or maybe just ask my friend abroad to help me out. or, and this is really far out: use RSS feeds, which apparently the filters don't understand.
and success! i can see everything they're trying to hide! which makes it that much more interesting! i've never had an interest in looking at internet porn, but let's see what all the fuss is about (now that i can see it, that is). and i've never cared about those protests from two decades ago, but let's check it out. oh wow.
i figured out a really easy way to get around all of this. i'd never really bothered before now, but the other day, it got personal. and after a few minutes of looking around, i found a beautiful solution. and it works on my iPhone too! so bring it on, friends! send me all the youtube videos you can find, all the political articles that bash any govt in the world, send me all the porn you want! because now i can see it!
comments:
The whole secret analogy is very accurate, I think.
Will | June 26 @ 2:53pm
Now that I think about it, I'm a little shocked that you are the only one of my friends who has explicitly invited me to send you porn.
Poppy | June 27 @ 11:20pm