Because Tina (Angel) is regularly here it is a big reason why this community has been so friendly and popular internationally (even if some of the folk from other lands are still more focused on their “viral marketing”).
In all the kerfuffle over Edward Snowden/feds/GCHQ it is forgotten that the Internet is already controlled, dominated and regulated by an élite of middle class young men (mostly American, North European and Asian) who are intelligent but often lack any genuine knowledge of what community or society really is, and genuinely enjoy conflict of any kind (to the point where I believe many are actively propping up some dictatorships because those régimes treat their young men very well if they comply with what is expected). Even countries like NL have been contaminated by this.
Many young women now find the net a really hostile place other than facebook (where feds protect them) or the more feminine sites like pintrest etc, and as many become mothers or end up working part time at odd hours they have less time to spend online. Even Chantal found it hard to stay here due to some of the banter from some lads and I think her workload increased anyway as has workplace surveillance.
A while back a young woman asked on Partyflock about how to deal with a crashed laptop hard drive. She got a shit ton of troll replys (many of which would have trashed her remaining data which could have been pictures of family/loved ones) but I just about managed to explain to her (as my Dutch wasn’t that good then) what the X: drive was and her data was just about recoverable as was the laptop itself but she was looking at at least €70 for the parts. She did thank me but deleted her profile soon after so I expect she was being harrassed by others (or had already reformatted the drive). I thought the regulars had scored a own goal, why scare the meisje away, when already the EDM scene is male dominated to the point that NL authorities are clamping down on it due to violent incidents?
Recently I’ve been asked to do more surveillance/monitoring work than ever before. It is for the right reasons (the protection of vulnerable people) but is happening is owners of smaller companies are reading about what NSA / GCHQ has done and ask “can we do that as well?” (and a lot of what GCHQ did was simply to use systems developed by private sector Internet marketing companies). it is part of any telecom or network engineers rôle simply to check the communications circuit is actually working, and to keep a constant lookout for security threats (whether deliberate or accidental). I don’t mind doing this kind of work and will admit that there are some aspects of it I enjoy (as although I get paid less than the rat salad park workers once did (when they employed British folk!), I get a lot more freedom than them) – but it means that I can’t have any friends at work and it eats away at your trust and faith in any group of people (I now rarely socialise if at all, I do try and visit the housing co-op every so often) – so PVR and the community associated with it and the forums are are a big part of my life (TBH I actually grew up with this site)
