Late Night Fiction Seriously, open at 10pm

Cause and Effect

It seems nowadays that people don't always know how to follow the rules. Or rather, that there's a lack of respect for them. You could argue they were born not knowing those rules and they "don't know better;" or that they just never learned of or that there are consequences to certain actions. Or maybe they know of those consequences, but just decide that they're insignificant or they'll get to slide.

Whatever the case may be, it's a shame people see things this way in everyday life. I was listening to a country song yesterday; in it, one of the many lyrics "we don't lock our doors, when we leave the house" to which I responded "you don't live on the east coast"-- half-way just being funny but the other half being serious. Because although I've never had someone break into my house or steal something out of it (that was a lie, a worker who was building the extension on our house stole my mom's class ring that was sitting out), it happens everyday. Now, everyday in the sense that it is commonplace, as commonplace as say, teenagers getting into accidents. And at least to me, it just seems like there's an "I can get away with it" mentality among the masses.

Now by running an entertainment website, you basically open up a public playground. People can bring their children and sit and enjoy, socialize, see the scenery. Those children can also play among the equipment and enjoy hopping around and such. But it's not only the parents and small children that visit the playground, kids of all ages can. And being a playground, there is no supervisor to make sure you abide by the 4 feet or smaller rule. Anyone and everyone has free reign (until the cops get called, but that's later). Oh, and those cameras sitting idly by on the wall? Oh pay no attention.

I have a playground graffiti wall of sorts on my site. It doesn't serve much purpose except to communicate with the other visitors on the site in real time. I let people post whatever they wanted (to start to know what to expect), but ended up putting a list to filter words after more than a few cases of the N word. Time went on, people stuck to randomly typing letters and saying hi to others that were on the site at the same time (props to them), and I continued adding the words that would come up every once in a while, while still allowing the few damn's and shit's stretched through there.

Well when the redesign was done, the chat section went back up and I quickly got a slew of random and pointless posts on a daily basis. However, since the very beginning the user's IP address has been logged with each post. With my new and improved Admin center (which I already used to check the chats), I grabbed the IP address and made a blacklist that's checked with each post now, simply stating the person can't use that computer anymore if they want to keep posting on the chat page. It all may seem fine, too, until they go to hit post. Hey, enjoy everyone else's input but if you're feeling contributive, well there's no room for any of that.