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How can I help you have an even better AOL
experience?
Debra J.M. Smith
2000 - 2005 -- How it
all began.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places” (Ephesians
6:12).
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While reading suspense literature,
a reader often finds himself on the edge of his seat, reading
glasses halfway down his nose and biting the tip of his thumb. Hang
in there, I promise you: there is an answer to this question that
undoubtedly haunts many a current AOL
member.
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Valued Member
AOL is
notorious for catchy little phrases to make its members feel
special, loved, adored, yadda yadda. There was the one that went,
"How can I help you have an even better AOL experience?" Gosh, that
really sounded so thoughtful, till the same line came out of
employee, after employee, after employee, in a rather robotic sort
of way. Somehow it lost its feel. After AOL dropped that phrase,
probably due to the endless possible suggestions, they incorporated
yet
another.
I cannot begin to tell you how special I felt
the day they told me that my account had me listed as a "Valued
Member!" Seriously, I marched myself right into that Beliefs
Christian chat room where I had been persecuted for years over my
right-wing born again Christian belief posts. Without hesitation, I
told them all of my new AOL member status; periodically they needed
to be
reminded. |
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Quite an experience
While I was enjoying
my valued member status, I was slandered, stalked, and harassed by
people who made me their reason for waking in the morning. As they
did their thing, AOL placed violation after violation on my valued
member account, even for scripture postings. I received so many
bogus violations that after a while I came to expect to hear
"Good-bye" upon signing on to AOL. I learned to keep my speakers
turned down—it lessened the pain. My account inadvertently was
terminated twice. While I did accept it back the first time, the
second time, I
declined.
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How's this for wholesome
entertainment?
AOL began as a
family server and to this day boasts of caring so much about your
and my children. So many parents all across America trust AOL as
their babysitter. After all, AOL has child protection for emails,
parent controls for contents to be viewed, and let's not forget the
really cute children desktops.
With AOL coming off as such a family-oriented server, it is
not hard for parents to trust AOL with their older teenagers,
letting up on the reins and lifting off the parent controls. But I
believe AOL is not to be trusted with our children.
Over my
five years of being on AOL, I witnessed many teenagers in that
Christian chat room. They were looking to talk to Christians about
life and often looking for Christian adult guidance. I became
concerned as, one by one; homosexuals began parking
themselves in that chat room, often claiming to be Christian,
while openly promoting their perverted behaviors. Along
with some others, I tried my best to speak Biblical
truths.
Such sadness came over me the
day I noticed a new category of AOL chats, a whole category devoted
to perverted behavior. Under this new category, there were
terrible perversions listed by type. Because AOL created these
chats, the rooms would be easily seen and easily accessible to
teens, just as easy to reach as Christian chats. Within no time, AOL
began to run ads to promote these chat rooms. Where? In other AOL
created chat rooms, including Christian chat
rooms. |
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The first to
go
It got to the point
where we outspoken Christians were being accused of harassing,
slandering, and even stalking the homosexuals, who clearly
became confused and took a wrong turn into the Christian chat and
could never find their way back out again. Yes, you read that
correctly: people who were clearly against true Christian values
came into a Beliefs Christian topic chat room and then cried that we
were harassing, slandering, and stalking them. They ended up
forming a group designed to, one by one, rid AOL of such Christians
as us. I was first on the hit list for being so vocal. Now, please
don't get me wrong, I am totally honored that they saw me, this
small-town born again Christian home-school mommy, as the biggest
threat to modern day perversion. It truly confirmed that my message
was piercing a liberal nerve or two, that they would deem me to be
"The first to go."
Keep in mind, they came into the
Christian chatroom and did this. We did not go looking for them in
other chat rooms. Some might ask about the homosexuals who claimed
to be Christian. Again, they came into a Christian chat room, so
they should not have been shocked to find Christians who believe
what the bible says on this topic. Just as homosexuals cannot be
forced to think a certain way, so too people like myself cannot be
forced to think a certain way. Who sought who out here? They sought
us out and got in our faces, not the other way
around.
They created an online blog site, devoted
especially to me, where there were instructions to report me to AOL
via the chat room notification button, continually. There were
comment sections for patrollers to report sightings of me, screen
names thought to be mine, even chat logs of my every word. (Made up
ones were more than welcomed.) I have to admit this did cause me to
do some rather odd things, like wearing my sunglasses at night and
striking sudden poses, just in case the paparazzi were lurking
about.
In all seriousness, this was crazy! But what was far
crazier was that an AOL Supervisor, Mark Ludlow was being
implicated on this blog site as helping this group to get rid of
me. |
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A top internet
server?
On March 15, 2006, my account was terminated for the
second time. I recall asking one employee what happened to my
"Valued member" status. He said that he could see it on my account
notes, right before it was terminated that day. Ahem. Oh, wait, this
gets even better; it really
does. |
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Prior to the demise of my valued member account, I had
received two more wrongly placed violations, which prompted me to
call AOL on both occasions. Each time, AOL said they were sorry for
the inconvenience they had caused me. As per protocol, letters were
generated thanking me for my continued membership. The letters were
dated March 13th and March 15th. Yes, the second one was mailed out
on the same day that AOL deemed me not worthy of their server any
more. Do we see a pattern here? Do we see a pattern of a company
that does not know what they are doing? This would be laughable if
not for that some members could be severely hurt by a sudden loss of
an account. And most people would not know how to work the
maze-system in place to get an account reactivated.
Note that it can take several calls to AOL to get
through to an employee who communicates well. I speak only English,
and it really is advantageous for me to speak with someone who
speaks fluent English. It may be "America Online," but it is often
"India on the Phone." Call me crazy, but I think it is a must for a
company to provide American customers with fluent English speaking
customer-care specialists. One AOL Community Action Team employee,
from whom I sought answers pertaining to the termination, as the
call was ending, said in a very thick Indian accent,
"Just for calling in today, you are
eligible to receive a free computer lesson on AOL." I could hardly
contain myself, I am sure you can imagine the dilemma I was faced
with. I felt that "Say what?" look come over my face, as I opened my
mouth and out came a rather screeching high pitched: "I don't have
AOL anymore!"
I also believe that it is important to have
care specialists who understand American culture when they are in a
position to judge what Americans do and say online. And, am I alone
here, or does anyone else wonder how AOL could be so irresponsible
as to have Hindus judging Christians' entries in a Christian forum?
This is not to mention the many other anti-Christian employees I
encountered. I will never forget the Wiccan employee who tried to
convince me that Wicca (witchcraft) is all about love and doing
good. Where is a bucket of water, when ya need
one?
With phone call after phone call came
instructions to call here and call there--each department said to
talk to another
department. It got to the point where it became circular. Bits and
pieces of the puzzle came only with hard work and pressing on. It
turned out that the supervisor implicated on that blog was, in fact,
the one who shut me down. But AOL assured me it was a coincidence.
They said the reason my account had been closed was a system error
caused by the massive reporting by other members, and that the order
to shut down my account had actually been given to that supervisor
from some back room where Oz hangs out. And of course no one can
reach him by
phone. Another supervisor said I would be reinstated in 48 hours,
that he would not be happy till I was back on AOL. However, I had
seen enough, heard enough, been treated badly enough by AOL, so that
I did not want anything further to do with them.
Weeks after
my account was closed, an online friend became alerted to strange
activity with her AOL account, which prompted her to call AOL. I was
on three-way with her for her round of calls. It turned out that the
same supervisor, Mark Ludlow, who closed my account was now
into hers. He had been into her billing info, and apparently he put
some top-secret note on her account that could only be told to us
with a court order. I'm not kidding. We also learned more about this
man's activities on my account, that his name was actually all over my account, not
just a final name stamped on it by orders of some mysterious and
unreachable back-room character.
I had more than given this
man the benefit of the doubt; at one point I had even defended the
man, saying that the same people who lie about me could have easily
lied about him. One copy of my US letter, declining the offer to
re-open my account, was addressed to this very man. But as it turned out, Mark Ludlow, whose FaceBook page
says he has been a senior program manager for AOL since
1995 (click here) did in fact carry out this nasty
deed.
September 2015 Update: Mark
Ludlow's facebook page now shows that he is no longer working there,
that he stopped working there in 2014. And his Linked-In page shows
he is currently looking for a job. I sent him a little facebook
message, letting him know how happy I am about his final AOL demise.
And what is really great is that this AOL article of mine comes up
when his name along with AOL is searched on Google. Let's hope
anyone thinking of hiring him sees it and does not hire him for the
same type of work.
Full internet server
supplier
Along with supplying dirty chat rooms to any member with
a working password, AOL has countless member profiles with links
that go directly to online
porn. The ads for the profiles go through AOL chat rooms. AOL
does not let this little perk be known in their television
ads.
AOL claims that it is not possible to block porn from
being advertised in their chat rooms. Funny, some other servers have
no problem blocking it. Maybe if AOL spent less time plotting to rid
the airways of born again Christian mommies, they would have more
time to brainstorm ideas to snuff out those porn
ads. |
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Not all was a
loss
I learned a lot while on AOL. I had an inside view
of these lost souls' agenda on America. I know just how
they are planning to run down the morality of this great nation.
They are not after getting those who oppose their vile affections,
to look the other way and pretend all is normal in the "Johnny just
has a different kind-of family" household. The "Get out of their
bedroom" plea that they throw up at us conservative types is the
furthest thing from what they want. They want us to know, beyond a
doubt, what is done in those bedrooms. They want into the rest of
society's minds and the minds of our children, to get us to
see what they do as normal, just another way of
life. They want to infiltrate it all into the public eye,
so much that it gets to the point where the sodomite's bed is seen
as blessed by God, hence church weddings for anyone and anything and
however many of them. The ploy of their agenda is not to get people
to overlook what is done, but to accept it and embrace it, and they
want to silence those who refuse to comply. They want our government
to make it illegal to use anything as a moral measuring tool, by
which to measure right from wrong in the USA, making it so that any
such measuring tool would be considered religion-based. They have
been and still are
working hard to change the meaning of what our founding fathers
meant by the first amendment--not just to stop the church from
telling the state what is right or wrong, but for the state to be able to
legally tell the church what is right and wrong: this is
exactly what our founding fathers sought to prevent by
the first
amendment!
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What
else?
I saw firsthand in that chat room the manipulative snares
used on those who would not comply with the cause. There
was the divide-and-conquer technique of coming between people of
different races, ages, sizes, income classes, and faith beliefs. For
example, knowing that I am a nondenominational Christian, and that
my teachings go against the Catholic Church teachings, I was often
painted as a hater of Catholics. (I have friends and family who are
Catholic. Lies are the key to the success of the
cause.) Another way they would entice people into the cause was
to falsely accuse them of doing something hateful, causing the
defender to bend over backwards to prove their innocence, at which
time the person who started the rumor graciously put forth the
offer of forgiveness and friendship. The snare that seemed to be
enjoyed the most was to verbally abuse people for past sins or
present struggles with sin, and then turn around and offer the
victim an understanding ear. Making examples of some who oppose the
cause, by openly slandering them or mocking their families, often
made others submit for fear that they would be next. The one I saw,
which worked the best—gaining the strongest of supporters, was to
stroke the egos of people who sapped that type of manipulation right
up.
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The only
solution
My stay on AOL gave me constant confirmation of
God's instructions on handling the wicked. We believers should never
respond to a fool in his folly no matter what lies, slander, or
other offenses he throws at us. (I highly recommend all true
believers read and study Psalm 37.)
We need to be wise as
serpents and gentle as lambs—two things that my Italian,
over-passionate spirit often causes me to fall far short in. We
should remember that the enemy is as a roaring lion, seeking whom he
can devour. Finally, we must pray for God to cause America to turn
back to Him, we have left our first love. Scripture says that if
God's people turn to Him, He will heal their land. “The grounded
Eagle needs to soar
again.”
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The answer to the
question
I am a mother of two daughters, a wife of many years,
and a small in-home business owner who also writes, sings, and
dreams big. I like to make the best of my time. I now use my
MSN account, as my main account; and as you can see from this
article, they have great clip-art. MSN also is not over-ran by
filth. I made the right choice to be done with my AOL account. So,
what was the final straw that made me say "no" to that one AOL
supervisor's offer to reinstate my account? Before I was
offered my account back, one quite embarrassed employee said to me
that there was a note on my account to tell me to "Find a new
internet server."
-----Finally! The answer to that ever-haunting
question.
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Debra J.M.
Smith
May of
2003 |
The
above group of pics is from my AOL home
page.
© Copyright 2006 Debra J.M.
Smith
--April
19, 2006
The Grounded Eagle Needs to Soar
Again.
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