[F.U.C.K. is an e-zine that I started on January 24, 1993 and ended on January 24, 2000. One concept is that articles should be timeless if possible, so they were not released with dates. As such, the date on this blog is not exact but I will try to use a date as close as possible.]
What if the internet was really like media and congress portrayed it as?
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Mr. John Goodbody comes home from a day at the office to see his wife cooking for the family, and his kids doing their homework in the living room. After changing out of his work clothes, John goes downstairs and sits down to a nice meal with his wonderful family. John starts a prayer and the family finish in unison with “Amen”.
Since John finished his work at the office, and doesn’t have any projects, he figures he will go to his computer and get on the internet and play around. He goes upstairs, sits down at his desk with a glass of water, and pad of paper with pages of detailed notes on finding stuff on the net.
He boots his computer into Windows, double clicks on the little America Online icon, and waits as it logs him in. Upon login he makes sure everything is in order but can immediately tell he has been hacked again! Someone was using his account last night without his permission! Oh well, this happens every day so he moves on. Another problem catches his eye, as he notices that he has a ton of email. Looking through the email it is quite obvious that he has once again (just like every other day), received unsolicited email advertisements, pornography, and sexually deviant material. He takes the time to delete the mail without reading it and clean up his mailbox so it only contains the one letter from his brother in Michigan.
That day at work, his friend Bob told him about a new site that gave detailed reports of earthquake information, where they were located, and their magnitudes. John clicks on the telnet button and inputs the address. As usual, it takes him seven or eight tries to get through because he keeps getting redirected to sites that show nude women, beastiality, or other smut. Once he is through, he looks up his information and closes the telnet session. Not even two seconds pass before an image of a naked lady appears on his screen advertising another XXX web site. He closes the image and tries to go to the chat rooms.
Once in the chat area, John pulls up a list of the available rooms, and tries to find one that doesn’t deal with indecent material. Like all the other nights, he can’t find one so he decides to get some more online magazines to read later that night. He clicks on the FTP button, and inputs the site with thousands of magazines. Instead of connecting to ‘Etext’, he is routed to another adult site which automatically send him several lewd pictures. He tries again but ends up at a home page of a neo-Nazi hate group. One more click and he ends up at an abortion site, and automatically gets sent the complete list of abortion clinics and propaganda on why everyone should get abortions.
Thirteen tries later, he gets through to ‘Etext’, and starts to download his favorite zine ‘DARN’. Once he gets them to his machine he takes a look at them only to find they aren’t the good-natured ‘DARN’ ‘zine, but stories of sexual encounters in the forest written by some deviant! John is upset by this turn of events, but rather than be upset he deletes them and tries again. The second time he manages to get the new issues of the ‘zine, and begins reading them.
As he is reading, a message comes across his screen from one of the America Online staff members asking him to verify his credit card number. Not wanting to cause trouble he gives it out along with some more information and keeps going.
It is difficult to get through the night on the net, but just like all the others out there, he braves the online world in search of honest and decent material. It’s hard to believe that the other 99% of net denizens are so perverted like that, but it’s still worth it for the chance to find what he needs.
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Is it like that? Of course not.