#wait i can ask
cozi:
when i was 12 i got banned from yahoo answers and when i emailed support to be like “what did i do??” i got a really vague answer that just said “you know what you did” and it still haunts me to this day
When I was 10 I was in a AOL chatroom for kids and we were all making this Homer Simpson face (8^(|) but this one girl Crystal forgot to put the nose in the face so I said “You forgot the nose crystal” and I immediately got booted offline and no one in my family could log on. My Mom talked to someone from AOL and they said I was trying to sell drugs to minors because I said “nose crystal”
When I was like 10 I roleplayed with people on Neopets, completely innocent stuff like ‘high school AU’ or ‘wolf AU’ and the like. I made a thread called ‘See the Sea Hotel’ and it went on for a few replies until I randomly got my account frozen and after explaining to my mom for a good 30 minutes that ‘frozen’ didn’t mean the computer wouldn’t respond, she got on to try and send an email to Neopets’ staff and they said that ‘hotel’ was a restricted word because it included ‘ho’ in it
I had a similar experience around that age with an online music game called Audition.
I said something like “Can I get the speed to 2x speed?” and it automatically changed my message to “Can I get the **** to **** ****?”, and a moderator saw that modified message and suspended my account for offensive language.
It turned out that I couldn’t say ‘speed’ because it had ‘pee’ in it, and I when I contacted support to say it was a mistake on their part and asked if I could be unsuspended, they said that I was also writing numbers, and writing numbers was strictly forbidden just in case they were a phone number.
I remember playing Phantasy Star Online back in like 2001 - it was one of the first console MMOs, if I remember correctly - and you didn’t get banned for saying “bad words”, but they did get censored. their list of inappropriate words was….extensive, and one in particular created a real problem for people trying to make plans to play together. because of course the most common day of the week to do that would be Saturday, right? but. that has the word “turd” in it. so. every time. you tried to say “do you want to play Saturday”. it would say. “do you want to play $%&@%#+%”. and the other person is just. sitting there. wondering. what the fuck did you just ask them to play
This is called the Scunthorpe Problem and it always cracks me up.
This shit used to be annoying as hell.
@argumate I think I once heard you go on the Chinese internet? Do you know of any similarly funny stories from their censorship regime?
