There’s been a lot talk these days about big brother wanting to wrestle control of the information superhighway back from the people. “Net neutrality” is the buzzword, and the argument is unsettling. Many are worried that our right to unfiltered online information is being threatened, or about to be legislated away by government agencies and big business. While most grassroots political groups are nervous about losing their main platform and now have their antennae’s up and tinfoil hats well-positioned to intercept communiques from Big Brother, most faith-based groups and theological think tanks have not been as swift to sound the alarm bells.
Personally, I wasn’t feeling the slightest twinges of concern for my rights to a free internet. But that was last week. This week I became embroiled in a heated stand-off and only through dogged determination succeeded in my efforts to land this blog on a secure webserver. Yes, I’ve stared into the wild eyes of the insidious censorship beast and lived to tell the story. The name of this beast is… KEVIN.
KEVIN is an acronym for Kill Evolution & Vanquish Inquiry Now! The purpose of KEVIN is to harass anyone who want’s to ask questions that fall outside the spectrum of conservative christian orthodoxy.
Kevin is also the name of my webhost technician but this is purely coincidence.
Kevin was a nice guy at the beginning. Promised to keep my website from acting up and swore that no hackers or malcontents would be able to bring my site down just because they disagreed with my theology. Then Kevin uploaded my theology. Or should I say he accidentally crashed my website 17 times in the process. He had some lame excuse about God always knows our hearts and our passwords and it was out of his hands (Kevin’s not God’s).
This is my own fault. I should have known better than to hire a Christian to do the devil’s work.
It would have been so much easier to post an ad on Craigslist:
“Wanted – one highly motivated webtech with no moral compass or fear of eternal firewall separation to participate in online heresy. No References required. Budget: zero dollars but will trade site management duties for table grace by proxy (it couldn’t hurt).
While this minor dust-up with a deputized IT stormtrooper was frustrating, I did learn a valuable lesson. All this time i’ve been yearning to launch a blog so that i can engage with skeptics and disillusioned believers across the land and it turns out that my first victim, er prospect, has been right here the whole time, within a stones throw of my soapbox. Et tu Kevin? How wrong of me to assume that the people with different opinions also have different zip codes.
There’s an old proverb (sub-Biblical in stature) that talks about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. “Hey Kevin!” This is me waving at you over the back fence! I know what you’re up to and you won’t succeed in your diabolical plot to rid the world of Christians bent on introducing real science to other believers. Oh, and let me know if you have trouble sleeping after accepting payment (30 pieces of Starbucks) for uploading my website.
(a word of warning to faithful readers of my blog: if the site goes down, or you discover all vowels in a new post have been replaced with Scottish diphthongs, you’ll know the minions over at KEVIN were at it again.)
Title Image: Stencil Graffitti in Catalonia
Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain