Censorship of Cthulhu

It certainly looks like my place has changed in the world. At the recommendation of a friend of mine, the wonderful Jane Fae, I have taken my first steps into the world of blogging. Whenever I think of this trend I cannot shake the image of "bloggers" wandering around all day with large goldfish bowls on their heads¹, gradually being filed up with all the stuff and nonsense of the day and finally when they return home to their computers upending their heads onto the keyboard and allowing all that has been collected to gush out in a tirade of opinions, generally saturated with the blogger's own personal agenda and potentially a flurry of bad spelling, along with the obligatory links to anything remotely relevant to the topic at hand - even if the links only direct a reader to something else that the blogger has previously posted, sometimes not more than twenty four hours ago.

Of course I cannot apply this kind of sweeping generalisation to the whole of blog culture; as with any medium there will be gems amongst the river of excrement (extremely thick excrement, usually), but often those gems don't glisten brightly enough to penetrate the murk and the layman may be put off by the daunting mound of rubbish he has to wade through in order to find the good bits. Such is the case with all things, but probably more so in the case of the "new media" offered by the internet - webcomics, YouTube and of course blogging chief amongst them - as the very concept of the internet is pretty much the opposite of the kind of quality control that is imposed on, for example, television channels or the cinema. Even with the ostensibly tight quality control presented in those formats, the occasional entry that is truly so damned awful you wish you could scrub your eyes out with a scouring pad will make it through. Surely it is just to be expected that, without these safeguards, the internet will only be worse - as the pages and pages of terrible fanfiction testify. Either way, here I am blogging and I will at least attempt to be raising the average quality rather than plunging further into the murky depths, but of course I can't make any promises.

So I'm two paragraphs into my first blog and the implied subject matter of the title hasn't even been touched on yet, so I'll start to rectify that right now. Earlier this afternoon I attempted² to add a middle name to my profile on Facebook³, specifically the middle name "Cthulhu." Imagine my surprise when I was met with the following message:

"Your name change request has been rejected by our automated approval system."

What.

It is my understanding, and indeed the image that Facebook wishes to project (whether true or not), that all names are checked by an actual person before a change is allowed, with the intent to filter out anything ridiculous or potentially offensive. To a given definition of "ridiculous," I do understand that. When you change your name, you are presented with a brief screen querying if it is indeed a legitimate request, explaining that names L1k3 th15 <3 do not represent a legitimate request, and nor do names that compriseentiresentenceslikethis. Again, that makes perfect sense to me - that's the "given definition of ridiculous" to which I referred to sixty-one⁴ words ago. I also think that it's not exactly the most critical job that the administrators of such a behemoth website could be doing with their time, which is why I understand that it makes sense from their point of view to implement an automatic check system, that will presumably screen any name change requests for numeric characters and profanity.

Except I wasn't aware Lovecraftian horrors represent profanity. Or even offensive material.

It's entirely possible that I am about to take this much further than it needs to be taken, but, forever one to push boundaries, I will continue anyway. Where does this stop? Would people be refused to have, say "Jehovah" in their name? Or Jesus? Despite the fact that these could well be someone's real name? Obviously they can't stop someone having their name as "Mohammed," it is, after all, one of the most (if not the most) popular names on the planet, but would they come down on someone with the name "Prophet Mohammed?" It seems, to me at least, an obvious enough joke that many will have tried it so surely that combination should be in the automatic detector, along with other obvious ones such as "motherfucker."

To continue the line of fictional horrors, if I am not allowed Cthulhu, should someone else not be allowed Dracula? Or Frankenstein? Jenova? Or Sephiroth? Or Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh or Nurgle? Davros?⁵ Michael Jackson? I've seen at least one person with a musical genre as his middle name, and I'm talking about one of those words that is only a musical genre and can't be construed any other way. I don't have a problem with this, I'd just like some consistency. I fully understand why Facebook disallows the numbers instead of letters, bunched up sentences and motherfuckers that people are trying to get away with, but I am not so sure what Cthulhu has done so wrong to deserve being on their blacklist?

Some may point out that I actually have Cthulhu as my middle name now, and they would be wrong. I have Cthulu as my middle name now, and I'm bloody lucky that said eldritch horror was originally named in a language that humanity physically can't pronounce correctly, otherwise I certainly wouldn't have the massive list of other, just as correct, spellings⁶ to choose from, because I'm sure as hell not going to misspell something just because I want it in my name. That said, despite "Cthulhu" being the most common Romanisation, why not block all forms of the Dead God's name? It's only a few more words in the filter, which is about three minutes of work for someone looking it up (I don't expect Facebook's administrators to be familiar with the Elder Gods).

Okay, this is pretty much just a rant, but I hope it has provoked some thoughts. I believe censorship shouldn't be enforced anyway, but I understand that Facebook doesn't want the sacred morality guardians up-in-arms about their eight year old child making friends with a guy called Fuckarse McShittacunt on their website... but then again, if that's how they feel they shouldn't let the kid onto the internet in the first place, because it's not a controllable place. If certain branches of the sensationalist media are to be believed, it'll kill you as soon as you give it the chance. I just don't understand why Cthulhu, of all things. Perhaps they are worried that if folks see it they may become believers and start searching for sunken Rl'yeh, but somehow I doubt that. I also wonder if there are any other bizarre entries on the "automatic denial" list - if you know of any, please let me know, I'd be very interested to hear of them.

Kedge

¹The right way up, not creating some kind of astronaut lookalike... or Spider-Man's recurring villain Mysterio, whichever you prefer.
²Do not ask me why, I'm not sure I need a reason and I'm even less sure I could provide one, perhaps it is the restless dreams I've had of late.
³I, like many others, do not display my real name as my "main name" on my profile.
⁴Assuming "compriseentiresentenceslikethis" counts as one word rather than five.
⁵Some of these may seem like obscure references but trust me the nerds will be flocking to my blog after they know that I'm a follower of the settings that produced these entities.
⁶Tulu, Clulu, Clooloo, Cthulu, C'thulhu, Cighulu, Cathulu, Kathulu, Kutulu, Kthulhu, Q’thulu, K'tulu, Kthulhut, Kulhu, Kutunluu, Cuitiliú and Thu Thu, if you're interested.