Why do you give a shit?
I guess I could give a handy recommendation on how you could save a few hundred bytes on every page you serve...
Today I got an email telling me that my ICRA labeling is out of date. Truthfully, I don't think that labeling site content matters one bit, but if it will keep people from sending me an email because their kid stumbled across Blogography and ended up traumatized, then I have no problem doing it.
Just like last time, I am being very conservative, and applying labels that I don't necessarily agree with (better safe than sorry). The one thing I have changed is that I've blanketed all of this crap as "appearing in an artistic content" because I am of the opinion that my cartoons and writing do have some artistic merit (no matter how small). If you were to read down the list and NOT see it as appearing in an artistic context, Blogography looks incredibly pornographic, violent, and balls-nasty, which I don't feel is a very fair assessment.
The simple truth is that I don't consider my blog to be in any way obscene. It's more like a PG-13 rated movie where young children reading it may be exposed to things that they don't understand, or sarcastic material that they can't yet view in the proper context without help from an adult. Sadly, I don't think this comes across in my ICRA rating because of the very narrow choices you are given, but it is what it is and so that's what i got.
Below is the current rating structure which I have labeled on every page in my blog. A sample link is given to show how I am interpreting the label for actual content...
Oooh, I feel so perverted and dirty now.
Honestly, I don't care at all. 99.9% of the known internet ignores this ratings crap anyway, and I sincerely doubt its effectiveness.
But given the lawyer-driven, lawsuit-happy society we have here in the US, I figure that doing this nonsensical thing is "preventative maintenance."
I get all kinds of stupid emails from people who are offended by something they read, or trying to spare their child from seeing a naked breast, or think viewing a cartoon penis is a sign of The Apocalypse. By self-rating my site, I can just tell these dumbasses that it's THEIR fault that they see these things because every page is rated for such content. I enjoy the smug satisfaction of being able to reply: "instead of being an idiot and bothering me about it, why not configure your browser to ban content you feel is offensive and shut the f#@% up".
...and it's a good thing you do. If not for your ratings I would have sued you long ago due to the shock of seeing such things as a naked David statue, jumbo-sized baseballs and Jared getting shot in the head.
I can only imagine what you'd be posting if you weren't constrained by these ratings!
Not that you'll care, but both of my 13 year old kids like your site and read it often. They were not traumatized by the recent vibrators or the penis salad, or anything else they've seen. And I couldn't care less about the ratings. Your stuff is filled with cartoon images. If people object, then they should click that little red x at the top right of the page.
Jeff: Actually, I don't consider myself restrained by my ratings... I post whatever I want, then rate my site accordingly and let everybody else sort it out for themselves.
Robin: I'd think that the trauma of Penis Salad would be far, far more traumatic for guys than the gals. We are, as you can imagine, quite attached to our penises. The thought of being separated from my penis fills me with a dread I cannot even describe.
Margalit: Or a little red dot in the upper-left corner if you use a Mac. :-) Blogography is pretty tame compared to what kids are exposed to at school or in video games, which is why I just don't understand how cartoon violence and other such nonsense freaks people out so badly.
I'd absolutely agree - my 12 year old cousin jokes about how a friend of his at school got suspended for looking at some internet porn site on a library computer... this site is tame in comparison to that!
And I think that there is artistic merit in more than just the cartoons, but clearly in the writing as well!
what does it say about me that two of my all time favorite dave blogs ever are represented here? The intoksicayshun one and the one where the pizza boy spreads peanut butter on your ass. Just because it's funny thought, with the peanut butter and the poor pizza guy showing up and he's all "Huh? You want me to do what for a hundred bucks?"
This reminds me of the debate surrounding the .xxx initiative. Ya know, so young kids will know how to more easily find porn sites! And, because the Internet is so huge and so unregulated, how could you ever enforce content restrictions or get all adult sites to transfer to a .xxx domain? It's ludicrous and a waste of time. And, seriously, any mom that checks out every web site before they allow their child to browse it needs to find a life or a new recipe for Apple Strudel...at least do something productive!
Bre: I cannot even compete with some of the stuff that 12-year-olds are putting up on their MySpace journals!
Karla: The peanut butter entry was dwarfed by your comment reply... which still makes me laugh every time I read it. :-)
Brent: It's a sad fact that there is some truly disturbing crap out on the internet which is impossible to filter. Kids really need to be supervised when surfing, no matter what kind of filter is in place. I don't envy today's parents trying to make sure their kids get to be kids for a while before the real world starts intruding.
RW: If you are visiting my blog 978 times a day, I will be VERY worried... for you! :-)
Kevin: I'm not "governed" by the ICRA... I voluntarily rate my content according to their guidelines. So go ahead and sue away! There's nothing more American than that!
I agree very much with what you're saying, Dave. And if I had a child, I would be strict about the role of the Internet in my child's life. That said, however, oversheltering your child is just as dangerous, if not more, in my opinion. I'm glad Internet users like you are taking an initiative to rate their web content. Regards.
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