Larry Mendte: Book Burning And Text Messaging

dropped plans to block hundreds of words from text messaging. So why the change of heart? Here's Larry Mendte.

Book burning, it`s held as vial in history as the most obscene symbol of censorship. But who reads paper books anymore. Nowadays if you want to censor, you need to go after what kids read, specifically text messages.

Which brings us to Pakistan where this week the country came up with a list of 1700 words that were to be banned from all future texts. They sent the list to the biggest telecom companies in Pakistan, on it were 50 different ways to usethe f word, fifty?

Governments are the same everywhere aren`t they. They could have banned one word and dealt with all fifty, but the bureaucrats wanted to spend the time and money on every bizarre derivation.

But at least the f word made sense, also on the list was KMART, Budweiser, Athlete`s Foot, finger food, headlights, flatulation, tongue, hole oh and the one that has been getting the most buzz, Crotch Monkey.

Oh also the word butt was on the banned list, which is difficult for a lot of people in Pakistan because it is a common last name.

In fact Naveed Khalid Butt is an executive with one of the mobile phone companies that was given the list of words to ban. Mr. Butt was asked to ban his own name.

Then something wonderful happened that saved butt the embarrassment. Facebookand Twitter lit up with complaints about the ban.

And the majority of those posting were Pakistani, many of the people were learning words and terms they never heard before, like crotch monkey.

So the Pakistani government’s ban turned into an internet crotch monkey festival. They actually caused people to learn and use the offensive words more than ever before.

The idea completely backfired as censorship usually does and now the Pakistani government denies wanting to ban the words in the first place.

So now you can text your Pakistani friends about sitting in a hole in back of the KMART drinking Budweiser and scratching your athlete’s to your hearts content. And if you want, you can sign it crotch monkey.

Thanks Pakistan for coming up with a new slang word that will now be used to describe anyone who attempts to censor someone else.

Source: http://www.kplr11.com