Random Access — August 1997
One of the most amazing things about the Internet is the sheer number of sick perverts you can find on-line, if you only know where to look. On the other hand, who says you need to get on-line to find these sickos? I once found myself sitting right next to one in a Katipunan Internet café.
Chatting away at the terminal next to mine, "Fokker" seemed like any other websurfer in the café. But a chance glance at the content of his chat window gave me a shock. He was using very explicit words to describe to a "little girl" her role in his pedophiliac fantasy. Of course, I doubt it was a real "little girl" on the other end, but the principle was twisted enough. I was shocked that he was not only doing this in as public a place as a Net café, but also nonchalantly, so that his activity was plainly visible to many other people, not just incidental over-the-shoulder voyeurs like myself. I don’t know if it was desperation, lack of imagination, or exhibitionism which drove him to public, interactive, textual sex; but what really struck me was that "Fokker" could easily have been any student walking the halls of our school.
The Internet is coming to Ateneo; in fact, it is already here. How easy it will be, I thought, for people to log onto any "hot" site and have a go at relieving their deep, dark desires, insensitive of those who might see, those who might be offended.
It reminds me of the time I spotted one desk-bound member of the Rizal library staff on his computer in what used to be the microfilm section, monitor displaying a raunchy swimsuit model pinup from the Net. It’s no wonder that, with this supposed authority figure liberally flaunting his own dirty pictures, students feel just as free to engage in pornographic past-times on-line.
It’s no secret that the Internet is home to some of the most ribald material ever to be seen in human history since the Kama Sutra. The sheer volume of on-line smut no longer surprises me, but that doesn’t mean I find it any less disgusting. Of course, not everyone shares my view on that, and we’re likely to see more people taking advantage of Internet pornography as the number of terminals on campus multiplies.
I am against censorship on the Internet, and I don’t see the usefulness of an "Internet scout" any more than I see the usefulness of "PDA police." But we are being raised in a Jesuit school; ideally we should be instilled with Christian values. And it doesn’t take years of Jesuit education to tell us that pornography — public or private, digital or otherwise — is wrong.
I know that a lot of people will call me an over-conservative killjoy for my views, if only because they eagerly await their chance to hop onto the bandwagon of vulgar hedonism that the Internet generously provides. I can only respond with this: The School has provided us with the Internet facility to enhance our learning and growth in the values we are supposed to have integrated — not to give us a high-tech playground for libertine abuse.