Conspiracy Theory?
Submitted by
on Fri, 12/14/2007 at 3:46pm.
I've been playing on the ChessWorld site for about three years now. The place boasts half a million players, testimony to its appeal to players fond of on-line correspondence chess.
Chessworld has a messaging feature, like this site does, but unlike Chess.com, the Chessworld message function has a censor on board, an annoying bit of software programmed to pounce on naughty words and issue a curt wrist slap to the offending party in the form of a message telling thme that dirty words have been detected and their name has been noted.
My first experience with this smug smut detector happened when I wrote a message to my Australian opponent, friend, and fellow geezer, Dooden. In that message I used the word "cum." I used the word to join two nouns to show that a person does two things as in "actor-cum-politician. The censor, who like its human counterparts, has a filthy mind and finds prurient motives where there are none, ripped the word out of context and assumed I'd used it in the colloquial sense to refer to the thick white fluid containing spermatozoa, and admonished me accordingly.
Censors are not only self-absorbed prudes, they also tend to be ignorant. I don't happen to think male ejaculate is filthy or pornographic in any way. After all, where would all of us be without it?
The other absurdity that arises with the use of this holier-than-thou software, is that if some wag wishes to tell jokes via the Chessworld messaging service that would make Eddy Murphy blush, he or she has only to make slight alterations to fly under the censorial radar. For example, a guy could call his opponent a "mother trucker" to pass muster with the censor with little fear of being misunderstood.
My next brush with the Chessworld censor was much more mysterious. I wrote to Reinert, another good friend with whom I've played many enjoyable games on the Chessworld site. The censor refused to send it. I scoured the message for double entendres and found none. I sent the message to Reinert via regular e-mail, telling him what had happened. He gave it the once over and wrote to tell me that he had tried every word combination and couldn't detect anything that could possibly be deemed offensive.
In the message, I told Reinert that I'd begun playing at Chess.com. I extolled the features of the site, including the excellent graphics, and the fact that it was free. Maybe, Reinert wrote at the end of his message, the censor is troubled by the mention of competing site.
First cum now .com. Could it be? I tried a couple short, innocuous messages – one liners and included "Chess.com" in all of them. All were censored.
Hmmmm......
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