Wednesday 4 November 2009

They're stealing our language!

So the porno kings have won. You can't send an email to anywhere in the Social Development Ministry - including, get this, the Youth Development Ministry - with the words "teen" or "teens" in it. Why? Because these words crop up so often in porn sites.

Does this remind you of anything? Like, telling women not to walk alone at night in the city? Or to be careful what they wear? Or, for that matter, to shroud themselves from head to foot in case the tinest glimpse of their bodies or hair arouses men to rape?

6 comments:

stephen said...

It does.

It also tells me that they have a very odd mail setup. Most places dropped simple word-based filters in favour of more sophisticated statistically-based filtering a long time ago, precisely because of problems like this.

There is an entertaining version of this kind of thing called the Scunthorpe problem.

katy said...

I suppose "Asian" will be next. Perhaps followed by "Women".

DPF:TLDR said...

I've got to say I don't really think that the right person to blame this on is the 'porn kings'.

AnneE said...

If there weren't so many exploitative commercial porn sites, there would be no problem.

Steve said...

"If there weren't so many exploitative commercial porn sites, there would be no problem."

The most common stats are that less than 10% of all sites are porn-related and over one third of visitors to the sites are women.

I don't think the problem is "so many"...

Psycho Milt said...

I suppose "Asian" will be next. Perhaps followed by "Women".

OK, "Asian" I'll grant you - but show me a porn site that mentions "women." Counter-intuitive it may seem at first glance, but "women" never feature on porn sites - no end of uncomplimentary slang terms that refer to women, but never "women." Rich territory for psychologists, if you ask me...