There goes the neighbourhood

PPLE has a 99% rating from Buy Blue which means that 99% of the people who benefit from Apple's largesse meet the approval of the PC Komisars of Blue State America. BestBuy gets a near zero - for supporting too many red state causes. But BestBuy has a special deal to be an Apple reseller. So if I buy from Apple, I support blue states, but if I buy my Apple from Bust Buy, I support both red and blue Americas. Choices. Choices.

I'm sure it drives some folks batty to see my little red scooter with its Apple tag on the back, along with the Orthodox Cross and the Confederate battle flag. Southern Partisan Christians and Blue State Apple just don't mix...

You mightn't believe me, but I read a wide variety of websites on a regular basis. I read news in several locations - including the NY Times and the BBC, as well as Sploid and "My Yahoo". I'm working hard at avoiding the nightmare described in EPIC 2014 - but even that brilliant work of media commentary knows that the real problem is not the producers of media - but the consumers.

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Anyway, the point being I'm never surprised at the number of diverse persons, lifestyles, politics, etc, that I meet on the net. Freepers and White Supremicists all blog. So do nelly dance queens and radical lesbian seperatist feminists. Republicans and Democrats - and third and fourth parties - all have websites and journals and public (and private) fora.

Excpet for a very nebulous period in net history when ARPAnet was populated only by a few Pentagon Officials and some scientists, it's always been that way. How could it not?

Yet it always amuses me to hear someone say words to the effect of "oh, that group is getting on the net now."

I've heard it from the left and the right. I've heard people stunned that conservative Christians are "finally" getting on the net (or read the news about B16's email address - which is just clone of JP2's email address: some folks don't even know the vatican has a website). The local newspaper was amazed to find not only one but two blogs in one domain that talk about faith issues. I've read people shocked and horrified that their local alternative lifestyle culture is available on the net - as if a large percentage of the High-Tech world isn't populated by the people who organized "Digital Queers" back in 1991 or 2.

OK, get a grip people.

Surf some websites and start to sample the wonderful diversity of the net. Or at least get in touch with the fact that millions of people do not think like you! You may be right - but at least realise that the wrong folks are online as well.