Words

Contrary to the opinion expressed by a couple of posters, I am not really "back." I just wanted to raise the question of language, and the narrower question of what is and is not allowed on Prius Chat. I have not been banned (yet) either.

For the benefit of someone who asked what the offending word was, it was the word for what comes out of the hind end of a male bovine, a euphemism for "bunk" which carries more emphasis than that milder term.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, very few people care. Prius Chat is all about the car, with a couple of off-topic forums (Fred's and Fred's Politics) for drivel, so the latter does not get in the way of useful information and legitimate questions about the car. If I were to quit posting here, some 3 or 4 people, maybe half a dozen at most, would be disappointed, an equal number would be glad, a much larger number wouldn't care, and most members of the site would never even notice.

As Airportkid notes, profanity loses its power when overused, and that's why I use it sparingly, only when I deem it really appropriate.

Now, as I've said many times, this is Danny's site, and he can set whatever rules he likes, and he can give the mods as much or as little discretion as he likes in enforcing them. All I can do is decide whether or not I want to participate. And what I'm struggling with right now is whether I want to participate in a site which allows the bunk [I'd prefer the more emphatic word I've been warned not to use] of religion to be promulgated, but does not allow that bunk to be named for what it is (meaning the emphatic word again).

It's a question of balance: By all means allow bunk; but also allow it to be named for what it is: bunk. Only it's worse than bunk. It is b... oops, I'd better not say the forbidden word. Religion is a collection of fairy tales about a magic man in the sky who loves you so much that he will torture you forever if you don't believe in him. And if that sounds like bunk, it is, but its proponents will then tell you that god "has to" torture you forever because he operates under a set of rules you cannot understand. He can do anything he likes, but he "cannot" make a set of rules that does not involve eternal torture for the 99% of the world's population who believe in a different religion. The main purpose of religion is to get you to give money to whatever church is preaching at you, and the principal result of the fraud is divisiveness that leads to and justifies wars.

And, yes, a couple of smaller sects don't believe in everlasting hell, but they still claim everlasting life for members of their own sect (i.e. people who give money to their church) and death for those who don't. It's all about the money. It's a con to sell a pig in a poke. But you don't get to see inside the poke until after you die, so nobody can sue to get their money back.

I don't hate the people who believe all this bul... errr bunk, but I do hate the bunk itself, for all the needless suffering it causes.

I wouldn't mind a religion that said. "Well, there's this god guy, and he made everything, and he did a kind of a lousy job of it and so we all have to suffer a lot, but try to be nice to each other, and don't give us any money because god doesn't need money, and after you die god will make it right to you because in the land in the sky everybody is welcome and everybody will be happy, and let's say it again: don't give us any money but if you see someone who's hungry, invite him home for a meal." That would be a nice religion. But that's not what we get. What we get are religions that say "There's this magic man in the sky and he won't show himself you you because he already showed himself to a few people a couple of thousands of years ago and they wrote about it in a book, and if you don't believe that you're going to hell, and by the way, give us money because god wants you to. And Jesus said don't kill people but he didn't really mean it so it's okay to kill criminals or people you feel threatened by and it's okay to kill if there's a war, and it's even okay to kill children if there's a war as long as you mostly wanted to kill the soldiers. And Jesus said to give all your money away to the poor but he didn't really mean that because he was really just saying that camel drivers should unload their camels before making them go through the gate to the city, and what he really wanted you to do with your money was give it to our church."

It's bunk like that that makes me angry at religion. So the Bible thumpers are telling me I'm going to hell because I don't believe their bunk, and I'm not allowed to call it by the "bull...." word??? Give me a break!

I'm all for freedom of speech. But if you're going to allow bulls..., at least allow people to call it bulls....

I joined Prius Chat in 2004, a month or so after buying my Prius, because I wanted to learn more about the car, and I did. I learned much and I contributed a bit. Eventually, Fred's was started to keep the off-topic discussions out of the car forums. In time I began to think what I really wanted was an all-electric car, motivated mainly by the cool feeling I got when the Prius goes electric briefly. It was on Prius Chat that I learned about the Zap Xebra, which I eventually bought, and which has been my primary car ever since. I gradually lost interest in the Prius, and drifted away from the car forums and into Fred's. Now the only reason I post here is because of a sense of community. But communities change. People leave and other people join, and imperceptibly what used to be a fellowship of tree huggers becomes a nest of neo-cons and Bible-thumpers. For a while one fights the change, but gullibility being much more common than rational thought, the descent into bunk [again, please substitute the forbidden word] inevitably prevails, and one can wallow in the morass, or climb out, wash oneself off, and move on.

I'm pretty sure that if I do decide to wash off the muck and move on, the only people who will notice one way or the other will be folks who, like me, have pretty much lost interest in the car, or the political trolls and Bible thumpers who maybe had no interest in the car to begin with but were just attracted to a site where they could spew their bunk. That is, their bull.... oops, I'd better not say the forbidden word.

I don't know if I'll be posting here again. I have not decided to quit for good, but I'm certainly not happy with the place right now.