A FORMAL PETITION

The parable of the village

(Dedicated to NFC.)

There was once a community I knew and loved. I lived there for three years. It was a very friendly, nice, open town– one of the ones you see in old movies, where everyone knows each other, and even if they didn’t they’d take time out of their day to say hi. Even though it was big, it was still familiar. You could stay there a night or ten thousand nights, and still feel the same: as if you belonged. You could always find your place where you’d be appreciated.

It sat in a county with other communities similar to it. You know, kind of like the suburbs: drive for twenty minutes and you’ll find an eeirily similar replica. But the wonderful thing about this one was its openness. Really, it was unparalleled. I think that’s why it went wrong.

Of course we had our problems. People living there weren’t perfect; no one is. I remember some horrible things happening; the kind of things local news programs just eat up. Mostly theft. A kidnapping and a few rapes, I think. And of course there was death. Where there is life, there is, ultimately, death. But whenever there was a death, the community would rise up in a wave of support. Though most had never met the dead, they would still give their comments of support for the family, or wishes for a content afterlife. Even though someone had left us, it was still almost an uplifting experience to see everyone living and going on in spite of what happened.

It was diverse without meaning to be, too. That’s also why I liked it so much. The place I live now is basically all one skin tone, mostly conservative Christian, and even the liberals are more moderate than anything else. Radical thinkers need not apply. But where I used to thrive was teeming with new people, new ideas– as close as you can come– and even the silly kids (emos, goths, annas, the like) were endearing if only because they added to the mix. I could be in a bible discussion full of middle-aged moms one week, and an argument about whether Elliott Smith or Conor Oberst would win in a fight with some indie kids the next.

But most everyone ignored the glaring differences and focused on the similarities. They all wanted the same thing, that’s why. They all wanted a community where they would be accepted and appreciated and loved. Together, we were all able to deliver that. Only together did it work. If you didn’t want to be friendly, you wouldn’t make problems; you would simply stay in your little corner. There was a certain amount of conformity involved in the community: be nice or we won’t really tolerate it. It was a conformity in exchange for a relatively safe, hapy community. I didn’t mind. I liked it. I felt safe and loved and intellectually stimulated.

Then. Oh, then. The reason I moved away.

The neighborhood town village whatever thing next to us had this huge investigation. Apparently there’d been more than the usual amount of underage illegal activities. The place I live now is going through this as well. Lots of underage drinking, drug use, and of course everyone’s confused about the cutting and anorexia obsessions. Plus, all this stuff was leading to more rapes and kidnappings. A lot of out-of-towners were coming in and, instead of joining the open community, were staying on the fringes and causing trouble.

Parents were getting worried, paranoid, and distrustful of newness. Kids, if they weren’t getting paranoid too, were getting taken advantage of.

I remember the day I realized I had to leave. I went to a neighbor’s house. It was a neighbor I wasn’t all that close with but we still recognized each other and talked occasionally. When I knocked and no one answered, I went to open the door. This isn’t unusual; usually if you did this, nine times out of ten you’d get an open door. People were used to their friends and neighbors dropping by unannounced and making themselves at home. That’s why we were all so close.

But the door was locked.

This sounds absurd, in retrospect. But it was like a physical blow at the time. It was the first realization I had that now, we were not a community. We were individuals who happened to live close together. We were protecting ourselves from each other. It was ridiculous, I thought; why would I need to be protected from the people around me? We all want the same thing. Why would someone want to ruin that? And why, if there were people like that, would we allow them to continue to exist?

But then I wondered how, if not through protection, we would be able to get rid of those strangers who didn’t share our vision for the community. I didn’t know. I couldn’t think of anything. I wanted to protect everyone, but I didn’t want to lose our openness. I wanted to have it so that everyone was safe, but so no one had to think about it. Basically, I wanted the impossible.

But my community? My lovely, open community? No. It couldn’t be happening.

Things went downhill from there.

Like me, most people didn’t know where to start. They didn’t really want to protect themselves, and so eventually they were taken advantage of, or made to protect themselves. In an attempt to curb this violence and paranoia, the police, or the mayor I don’t know I wasn’t really paying attention to politics then, tried to put some curfews and new regulations in place. This didn’t work at all. They were too rushed, too vague, too restrictive for a community that was used to seeing their police officers in the bar with them on Friday nights, laughing about the weekly gossip and antics of the teenagers in the Commons. Now, they had to enforce rules they didn’t want to; they witnessed things they never thought they’d see. They had left to get away from this. In the deep of their minds, it felt like the badness had followed them.

Everyone had that feeling.

I live now in a place where no one would ever think to leave their doors open, or even their windows. They know what to do with people who mean harm: lock them up, drive them out– or, even better, never give them the chance to enter in the first place. Everyone has security devices and all this fancy stuff that I mostly don’t understand. I don’t understand because I never had to deal with it before. I was never threatened before.

The fun, the innocence, the basic goodness that made the community so special was being destroyed by the unstoppable waves of change, the bleak change that local news channels love to just eat up.

My life was in that community for three years. I left before I could see it die completely. I felt it for a place that was already dead.

-Ren

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To: The Xanga Team

On April 21st, Xanga announced that it would seek to establish a system of flagging in response to recent litegation involving other online communities. Effective immediately all user interaction in exercising free thought and expression will be stopped and/or regulated.

This is a formal petition to please ask Xanga to reconsider their decision and continue in preserving this last bastion of FreeSpeechOnline -as the Only remaining free_thought internet community that we so dearly cherish. For a more detailed description of the situation please see this effort and support: http://www.xanga.com/Non_Featured_Content -the no_censorship community

Sincerely,

TheUndersigned