liz_marcs | From teh Internets Is a Series of Tubes Department...

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From teh Internets Is a Series of Tubes Department...

hat tip to

harmfulguy and Workbench.

This is from Ambassador Youth, a magazine of the Restored Church of God. It's called: Blogs — And God's Youth.

While the UU in me squirms to call something "comedy gold," this is truly comedy gold. It appears that no one should have a blog or a Website (unless it's for legitimate business purposes), or engage photosharing (unless they're password protected and shared among family and friends with no inappropriate pictures).

Look, the warnings about parents knowing what the hell their kids get up to online is a good one. It's a common sense warning. If anything, kids don't always have a clear idea of what's TMI and what isn't — and I'm not just talking sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll here. I'm talking about putting personal information out there that might allow someone with less-than-pure intent to track you down.

Hell, adults (counts me in this) sometimes inadvertantly release information about themselves that maybe isn't a good idea to let loose in the wilds of the Internet. No matter how careful you are, it happens.

But this is talking about a complete shut-down for children and adults. The "why" of this is mystifying, although the reasoning sounds vaguely Dominionist, but here's some snippets with commentary:

Ask yourself, “Do I have a tendency to want to have a voice?”

Why, yes! Yes I do!

If it weren't for the Internet, I'd be one of those crazy people on the city common standing on a soap box with a bullhorn. So, really, the Internet? Much less of an annoyance for my fellow citizens.

Now I can annoy the whole wide world.

BLISS!

This has grown so out of control it is routine for a person to start a daily blog entry with a single word that details his or her mood. A blog entry will start: “Current mood: ____” The level of shallowness and emotional immaturity this represents is astonishing! In the grand scheme of things, why would the world at large care?

Because the world's friggin' nosey. That's why. Besides, who said the blog was for you anyway?

A major reason for blogging’s appeal is that it provides an opportunity for people to spend time doing something viewed as entertaining. Teens spend hours on these blogs searching, reading about other people and writing their own thoughts. There are even different online whiteboards where one can scribble a picture down and post it to a friend’s site. Boredom in action.

Would you prefer they masterbate? Because if you do, I know this legitimate business Web site you can go to that can help with that.

Blogs can easily link to each other. This social network allows people to become “friends” fairly easily with another blogger. As soon as this happens, the person is viewed as a friend by anyone who visits the blog. Whether or not the person is a friend, the appearance of evil is glaring in such situations. Young people in the world are far different then those in the Church. The things they will say and do — even on someone else’s blog — will make one blush.

This “friends” problem goes further than just appearances. Just as in person, such people will pull you toward the world and its temptations. This is just another reason blogs are unnecessary for God’s youth.

Onoes! Being exposed to other people who might not agree with you is poison I tells ya!

And besides, who the hell judges a person based on their Friends List? I don't know too many people who do that.

Actually, I do have a legitimate question. When you say "Church," which one are you referring to? Is it just your donomination? Christianity as a whole? Are Catholics included in that Christianity definition? I ask, because Catholics sometimes aren't. What about Mormons? They're usually hanging out with the Catholics in non-Christian land, so I have to ask about them, too. I pretty much know you're not including us freaky UUs. I'm also pretty sure you're not including anyone non-Christian, so I won't embarass you further.

So what have we learned? Recall that a blog provider stated, with blogs “there are no rules.” This is obviously not true with God. He does have rules and guidelines, but not everything is spelled out in the Bible. We must take principles and consider the overall big picture.

I think the blog provider was talking about using your blog for whatever you feel like. I'm very certain the blog provider was not encouraging the youth of the world to rise up and break every written and unwritten law of society and every religion on the planet.

Let me use a graphic to put it in perspective:

writing about your crappy day =/= breaking all 10 Commandments

Should teenagers and others in the Church express themselves to the world through blogs? Because of the obvious dangers; the clear biblical principles that apply; the fact that it gives one a voice; that it is almost always idle words; that teens often do not think before they do; that it is acting out of boredom; and it is filled with appearances of evil — blogging is simply not to be done in the Church. It should be clear that it is unnecessary and in fact dangerous on many levels.

So, wait. You're saying writing about my crappy day is breaking all 10 Commandments? Because it gives me a "voice" to talk about my crappy day? Because I'm telling you right now...take away my LJ and out will come the soapbox and bullhorn. No one wants that.

I mean, it probably isn't breaking any religious laws if I do that, but I'm pretty sure it breaks city ordinances.

Let me emphasize that no one — including adults — should have a blog or personal website (unless it is for legitimate business purposes).

Thank God. I'm totally off the hook. When I grow up, I want to write pr0n. This LJ is helping me achive that legitimate business goal.

Blogging has become a socially accepted practice — just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving. But just because someone else “jumps off the cliff” does not mean you should do the same.

I would just like to point out something here: I would much rather that someone wrote a story about a character jumping off a cliff than a real person jumping off a cliff. I also include in this category: dating seriously too young, underage drinking, and general misbehaving.

One is scary words. The other is scary real life.

One of these has far less consquences. Can you guess which one?

I also love the random quote marks around "jumps off the cliff." I don't know why. It makes me grin like a loon.

Some questions naturally arise: “Can I have a photo gallery?” For example, maybe you visited an exotic country and want to share your photos with close friends. This can be done, but certain guidelines apply. Of course, there should never be any inappropriate pictures (again, be careful of the appearance of evil); it should be private and password protected, and only shown to family and closest friends.

So using pictures from

writercon for blackmail purposes is totally out then? What if I can prove it's for a legitimate business purpose and for the betterment of Lizbeth Marcs Industries? Is it okay then?

I've never heard of the Restored Church of God before, but what little I've been able to dig up on them seems to indicate they're two splinter groups removed from the Seventh-Day Adventists. That's about it, though.

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Personally, I think the article's right.

Also, the writer is obviously going to hell, because he/she is trying to communicate with people, having a voice and expressing him/herself. And that's a no-no.

After all, if people were meant to communicate God would have given us a way to do it.

Also, the alphabet is evil.

Just sayin'. :)

Yes...yes...we should BAN THE ALPHABET!

Of course Alphabets are EVIL! They have the pernicious property that their letters can be combined in an almost infinite variety, including many ways that give NAUGHTY AND EVIL WORDS!!!!

We should use character sets like in Chinese (except not Chinese 'cos they're Godless commies), where each symbol represents a word, and only good and wholesome words are included, words whose use glorifies our Saviour.

But wait, that's not good enough! For even apparently innocent and harmless words can be combined in ways that are anything but! You know what this means...

LANGUAGE IS EVIL!!!!!!

This has grown so out of control it is routine for a person to start a daily blog entry with a single word that details his or her mood. A blog entry will start: “Current mood: ____” The level of shallowness and emotional immaturity this represents is astonishing! In the grand scheme of things, why would the world at large care?

...why WOULDN'T the world at large care?

I read those for the mood icons myself.

*is ashamed*

omg. Iconlove.

It brings new meaning to "Liberty and Justice for all!"

[quote] omg. Iconlove.
It brings new meaning to "Liberty and Justice for all!" [/quote]

Yeah, but Liberty and Justice are both *girls!* That icon endorses lesbian sex! It's the pits of Hell for all of ya! Fire & brimstone! Multiple orgasms! EVIL!!!

Ooh. Pretty hellfire! Pass me some smores...

I entirely endorse multiple orgams, evil/lesbian/otherwise.

*toast up some marshmallows*

From: SenorTact

Duh! Because caring about your fellow man is an apperance of evil and therefore a sin in the "Church".

Phft I thought everyone knew that

omg, Jeebus cared about his fellow man! He's totally a sinner! And that Samaritan guy too, ohnoes!

What if your mood is "pious" or "repentant" or, I don't know, "totally churchy" or "deutoronoriffic" or "seriously horny for Jesus"? Shouldn't you be able to share that with your idle teenaged so-called friends on the Blogonets?

"Magically Diluvian-tastic!"

*giggling* Oh, this is too pricelessly funny. Thanks!

Pardon, I just slipped in here via Antenna's FOAF and found your wonderful, but deeply scary, comedy gold. It's telling that I read "God's Youth" as meaning "tales of God as a youth" [something I thought could make quite interesting reading] rather than "youth belonging to/from/with God". The genetive case is a bit fuzzy in English. However, fuzzy cases and lack of a true subjunctive mood aside, the bit of my brain that once trained as a member of the notorious grammar police found every single passage you quoted disturbing. The long sentence composed of independent clauses ["Because ;;;;;...not done in the Church."] gives me the editorial equivalent of contact dermititis. "The sentence with "dating seriously too young" is another choker. I, myself, would date frivolously at any age, and be more specific in my misbehavior.

I just find this kind of writing creepy in addition to being poorly done. Such disorderly language only persuades me that the writer's mind, too, is hung together with odd bits of string and old band-aids and probably does need protection from the world at large because its cognitive processes are so rickety.

Yes, I am laughing, too, but underneath it is that skittish worry that some poor captive audience out there is getting their world through such a pathetic filter. *shudder*

Oh the humanity.

Everyone knows it is sinful to give a crap what mood your fellow human beings are in. You listen to their voice, then you are enabling them in having their voice. It is just as bad as if you had a voice yourself and used it.

Jeez, people, must I explain everything?

Oh, and splinter groups of the Seventh Day Adventists? Have previously included Branch Davidian and that group up in Canada whose leader liked to keep his followers in line by doing amateur surgery on them. Just sayin. (Not that I'm saying that means anything about 7th Day Adventists themselves.)

::needs Caleb icon::

This confirms it: Evil is stupid. *nods*

Are we sure this isn't a joke? I'll have to tell my pastor he must take down his blog immediately, or risk courting evil. :)

Not a joke. This happens to be a splinter group off of the cult church I was raised in ... that's how I know they ain't kidding.

::facepalm::

Funny as it is to me, I'm honestly petrified that there are people out there who actually *believe* this.....

*shakes head*

Stunning.......absolutely stunning.

I think I broke myself reading that. Just ... so ... fucked up!

(OMG, a bad word! OMG, I said OMG! I'm obviously going to hell...)

Hee! Does running with scissors count as generally misbehaving?

What I came away from that with? Boredom = Evil.

*goes straight to Hell*

LOL!!!

I blog therefore I am.

Really...oh that's priceless.

And yes, I'm probably going to hell. Wait, no, don't really believe in hell or rather believe this may be hell. So guess I'm staying here? Whew.

[quote] Blogging has become a socially accepted practice — just as are dating seriously too young, [/quote]

Oh, thank goodness, we didn't date seriously back then, we just screwed around in the backseats of cars, and that's good clean fun.

[quote] underage drinking [/quote]

'Cause it's so much better when you're old enough to *really* inflict some damage on your spouse in a drunken rage.

Good thing these nice people risked *going to Hell* to post this on teh ebil intarweb to warn me! How very bodhisatva of them to endanger their own salvation for lil' ol' me!

Of course, the Supreme Higher Being of Your Choice absolutely forbids that anybody has a "voice." Why, if that were to happen, people might have ideas and opinions of their own that are not Church-approved, much less run the risk of sharing them with others and finding somebody who agrees with them./sarcasm

Reminds me of a year ago, finding copies of the Watchtower in the break room and looking through them for giggles, such as learning that it's immoral for young people to go to clubs, parties, raves, and other gatherings because it encourages them to hang out primarily only with other people their own age, as opposed to the all-ages gatherings that can be found only at church. Wonder how that works out in the age of Mark Foley text-messaging underage pages and the like?

Because I'm telling you right now...take away my LJ and out will come the soapbox and bullhorn. No one wants that.

Absolutely correct; I'm on another continent, and I like to be annoyed.

Which reminds me:
There are an estimated 40 to 70 million blogs on the Internet Okay.
According to a 2003 study, about half of all blogs are authored by teenagers Okay, and considering the growth rate, there should be about 20-35 million teenager blogs, right?
12 million teenagers create content online. Now, 12 is not element of [20,35], right? Or am I stupid and forgot my maths?

Also, I like the author criticising the fact that an incompetent leader can be voted out of office. I have never thought of that as a negative thing. What would he prefer? A bloody revolution?

Oh, and when LMI starts up with the pr0n, is there a vacancy for a business informatics master (Well, roughly the equivalent of this)? I'd even be willing to move to the ~~country where FBI can listen to my voice-mail without telling me~~ US of A.

Hmm...I'd guess that eight million of those twelve million teenagers have two blogs. Or something like that.

Okay, for most of this, I can understand the reasoning behind the worldview even if I rather strongly disagree. I'd assume that "Church" referred not to any Earthly body but to the assembled group of people who, regardless of denomination, worshipped Christ "the right way"--thus Catholics and Mormons and the more liberal Methodists are out de facto rather than de jure. I don't know anything about Adventism, so I'm reading this as typical "faith without works" conservative Protestantism, in which "the Church" would equal "the saved"--all of whom are completely recognizable by their behavior in public of course, because, say, God doesn't get any input in the decision. Grrr.

But what is this Biblical injunction against having a "voice?" I've read the Bible, and I'm just clueless where that came from--unless he's speaking specifically to women, of course.

What does "UU" mean in American English? In English English it is the acronym for Unseen University, the Wizard's college in Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series, and I've never encountered it in any other context in the British Isles.

Unitarian Universalist.

This is my favorite bit: Parents assume their children are innocently spending time on the Internet or doing schoolwork, when they are actually posting to their blogs.

For some reason 'innocently spending time on the Internet' made me laugh.

The thing that gets me is the apparent badness of having a voice. Isaiah, speaking for - or being the voice of God - spoke of a "voice crying out in the wilderness" that most all Christians take to refer to John the Baptist. Would this person have silenced Isaiah and John? In which case, how would we have heard about Jesus? And what if the apostles had not used their voices? Again, how would we have heard about Jesus?

God gave us a voice and with free will it's our choice to use it or not. What kind of world would this be if Martin Luther hadn't used his voice? How would the poster feel about being part of the papist Catholic Church? As a Methodist, I'm definitely against the silencing of John Wesley's voice and I don't necessarily agree with everything he said.

Shouldn't more time be spent in spiritual formation so "God's Youth" can make informed decisions for themselves? Dictating and decreeing tends to foster rebellion, not obedience, in my observation.

I like the world inside my head better. It's nice and people are allowed to think for themselves and be who God created them to be. It's a place of joy and sorrow and laughter and tears and Farscape and Buffy and screwball comedies. I'm almost kinda sorry I'm not better at sharing it.

You weren't kidding about this being comedy gold. People never fail to amuse and amaze me.

*shakes head* It's stunning. And astounding. And LOL.

Thank heavens so many religous people disagree.

Because the world's friggin' nosey. That's why. Besides, who said the blog was for you anyway? Heee! The world IS freaki' nosey. Also: a vampire. (Sorry - it's triple play Tuesday and the Pumpkins are smashing as we speak.)

This was a great link and you've made my morning. My mood - smug with a chance of chortling.

It is pretty hilarious, ain't it?

::chokes::

::spittake::

Oh. My. Gawd.

This is a splinter group from the cult church I was raised in!!!

I kid you absolutely not.

I saw your post, I saw terms that immediately set alarm bells ringing (Ambassador, Youth, Church of God) ... I immediately went to their website, looked around a bit, and ::snaps fingers:: Yep! Yet another of the endless splinter groups that branched off from the Worldwide Church of God, founded by Herbert W. Armstrong.

I'm sure you'd find tons more info if you wanted to google those names ~ I don't have any particular sites handy nor the time to wade through them.

I *can* tell you, though, that ye olde cult church and its splinter groups have been providing comedy gold throughout the internet for years now. I tend to stumble across links and astonishment on a fairly regular basis on the atheist & skeptic blogs I visit occasionally.

It always gives me a chuckle ... but I can assure you there are scads of people who take this stuff seriously. So it's not as amusing as it seems on the surface, unfortunately.

I can also assure you this is George W. Bush's voting bloc. Although they'd prefer Pat Buchanan if they had a choice ...

Ah, Worldwide Church of God, they're the ones with the tithes and the no shellfish rules? Had a friend in that church. Massive donations welcome! Yearly trips to cool places (that you have to pay to attend, obviously). Regular meetings, with cash donations for the hosted meals, obviously. Oh, and yes, tithes. 10% of your income, right off the top. Thanks for playing, please come again!

As another friend of mine said, upon hearing his litany of fees and tithes. "Keep your money. My God isn't *poor.*"

Wonderful. As are your comments.

But then *everyone* knows I'm evil.

You'll never see my last name on the internet, or my address, or my phone number, that's just stupid.

You will see however, tons of random thoughts, bitching bout a bad day, bitching bout life in general. And s'all good I say because I'd rather vent here than in RL where my bad moods may affect other people.

The articule you linked to? In my book, that's a crack!piece, and not of the good kind.

Also, I was taught in Catholic school that us catholics are christians, just like orthodox people and protestants.

Also, see icon.

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From teh Internets Is a Series of Tubes Department...

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grammar clearly is off limits to youth, too

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