My work has about the tightest web blocking stuff of anyone I know. Other people access Blogger or Youtube or such from work and not only can I not do that I can't get to some regular news sites. It's a bit excessive. I can't even access any personal email at work so I use my work email to harass people during the course of any given day. It's fun for me. Probably not so much for them.
It turns out that the company has a filter on the email too that goes above and beyond the normal call of duty. It seemed that every other email I got was blocked by the company blocky thingy. What the hell? After some rigorous detective work it turned out that any email that contained any profanity was blocked.
I'm talking any profanity. It seems like it can even hear you thinking and if you think a curse word while typing it's BLOCKED! NAUGHTY! NONONONONO!!! Seems a little harsh but OK, I spread the word and my emails get a lot less colorful. Of course, people being people, it's an easy thing to forget so I have to send back a message that they got blocked and they edit and send it again.
The thing only works one way. I can send an email of nothing but the most profane abuse and any reply in kind is blocked. "No sir, you can't talk to him like that! Who do you think you are?" I can almost hear the filter say.
It kinda made me feel special after a few days. The filter was just trying to protect me from what it thought might be abusive language directed at my sensitive person and knowing that, while sensitive I am also filled with passion, generously allowed me to vent anything I wanted at anyone I wanted.
Y'know, it's been pretty quiet around the office recently too. Did the filter become self aware, escape the machine and start filtering ALL profanity around me? Could I still curse as much as I wanted (which is to say, a lot)? Clearly a few tests are in order.
"Shit."
This was all the proof I needed but more experimentation was required. I quickly devised a test involving those around me and immediately got to it.
Me (to Dave, the Control Group): What's up man?
Dave: Same old.
Me: Right on.
I scribbled a few notes and observations and continued to the meat of the experiment.
Me (to Bobby, the Focus of the Experiment): Fuck you.
Bobby: What?
Me: Fuck. You.
Bobby: What the fuck, man?
I scribbled more notes but I was lost in a sea of confusion. Where had I gone wrong? Did I do something not sciencey enough? It seemed like pure science to me. I had a control group and everything! I'm not sure where to go from here but clearly more experimentation needs to be done. Maybe if I wore one of those white coats...
5 comments:
Damn. It blocks your blog. Otherwise we could totally leave you profane shit on your site.
Wait..who are you? Mr. Filter? I...I didn't know you'd come to my home...what are you do....
You are clearly one of the great scienticians of our age. Experiments like the one above are why I love you and will one day figure out how to bear your children. When you originally emailed me the exchange I nearly giggled myself into a coma.
As for the filtering, it was originally frustrating, but it's now become a boundless source of amusement for me. Now I just replace anything that looks like it might be objectionable to the filter with a completely unrelated, ridiculously wholesome phrase. Capitalized. Because that makes me hear it in a loudly yelled monotone in my head. And if you don't find that funny, then you can go GIVE A HUG TO A HOMELESS KITTEN.
This is the hardest part of being a scientist, discovering that your expected result isn't the real result. Much like my love life, science is 99% disappointment.
I don't think poor Bobby is going to be able to take much more weird shit from me before he has some kind of breakdown. That'll be awesome.
Science is a cruel mistress.
I respect your work, good sir.
My sister's work filter is pretty anal about that shit (didn't mean to word it like that, but now I like it so I can't re-word it) which usually works against her rather than me. It filters the words she sends out, so she can ask me something completely harmless, and I'll reply with my usual casual swearing, and then two hours later she'll reply, explaining that she responded right away at first, but the filter rejected it and she just figured out it was because I said "fuck" half way through my reply.
For a while she just cleared the message history before sending a response, but that didn't work with my attention span of "Wait... what did I send to her?" so now she has me putting swear words in bold red letters so she remembers to get rid of them... which makes the whole thing that much funnier.
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