🚀 go-pugleaf

Mad Max (poulosio@netcom.com) wrote:
: So, how many intellegent AOLers are there? The fact you defend AOL and 
: have an AOL email address in your .sig kills your credibility. If AOL is 
: so great, then why did you post from an ISP? Personally, anyone willing 
: to put up with iron-fisted censorship that enforces misspelling of half 
: the dictionary has to be bloody stupid.

ok, I have no aol account so maybe i am more "credible."  do you know
any aol users personally, and do you really really think *all* of them
are idiots?  i know about six personally, and i would consider them all
intelligent in real life.  face it, level of intelligence on the internet 
does not always equal level of intelligence in real life, especially when
the intelligence of aol users are often defined in terms of knowing
how to use unix shells, knowing that a .sig of more than five lines is
worse than murder, knowing that alt.best.of.internet is only for reposts...
you know, these are lousy indicators of intelligence.

if you use a better definition of intelligence, the ability to contribute
decent ideas, than yeah, there are plenty of intelligent people on aol.
dumb posts are no more rampant upon aol posters than non-aol posters...
i would say that 80% of posts on advocacy groups are dumb, yet I wouldn't
bet that 80% of the advocacy posters are from aol.

as for tolerating censorship, well, that's the price you pay for not having
the computer saavy to learn to deal with shell accounts and PPP accounts,
or perhaps not wanting to force the kids to learn that just to become
exposed to the internet and its benefits.  i would blame the people
for aol's policies; if you set up a service that was just as easy to use
and didn't have censorship, I'm sure lots of people would flock over to 
your service.

: I got so fed up with AOLers that I killfiled them all in my newsreader 
: and emailbox, and blocked them from my web page. Go away.

if ignorant users are what offends you, then I suggest putting the entire
internet in your killfile, because surprise surprise, they aren't all 
bunched up at aol.  And do yourself a favor and meet some people who
use aol...maybe someone at work...maybe a friend or a friend's friend
or a family member...and lemme know if you really think they aren't 
intelligent.

-david
dyeh@fas.harvard.edu, dyeh@capaccess.org, dyeh@fierce.net
(see?  no .aol)