How Ubuntu Helped Me Escape a Cult

by NaNaSHi

I am brand new to the 2600 community, and have attended only one meeting so far.  However, it is clear to me that I have finally found my people, as I feel right at home and have already made some new friends.  I want to tell you all my story (or at least some of it).

I grew up in what I consider to be a cult, and what others would call a sect of ultra-Orthodox judasim.  In my community, we had a lot of rules for everything we did throughout our day.  We had rules about what we could eat, rules about what shoelace gets tied first, rules about how to wash your hands after you leave the bathroom.  We were not permitted to associate with outsiders, or even with other jews who were considered "less religious."  Breaking any of the rules would earn us punishment, and those who left the community were ostracized and treated as if they were dead.

The (((rabbis))) who made the rules that we all followed had a lot of pet peeves.  Certain "issues of the day," if you will, might include the length of high school girls' skirts, whether or not it was permissible to attend a college, or the length of time one must wash strawberries in soapy water in order to render them (((kosher))).  One of these pet peeves was the terrible, horrible, secular Internet.

The Internet was a place of filth and ritual impurity.  The worst heresies in the world could be found online, and the seduction of adult videos was like having "a pocket zonah (prostitute)."  The Internet was such a corrosive influence and "emergency for our pure children" that the rabbis organized several high-profile asifas (conventions) against the Internet.  One of these took place in rented-out Citi Field, and ironically can be viewed on YouTube.  Thousands upon thousands of cult members paid good money for seats in order to hear the aging European rabbis rally against "the horrors today's youth face."  (Community Note:  Note the contrast with the EFF article in this very same issue.  Porn is "good" for Gentile children, but "bad" for jewish ones...)

  

The Internet was becoming increasingly necessary in the modern world, however.  So the rabbis came up with a solution.  We would have to get filters to block inappropriate websites!!!  All the religious schools, gatekeepers of the religious community, enforced the installation of web filters on student devices.  Students caught using unfiltered Internet could face consequences and even expulsion.  Parents would sign contracts with the schools, affirming that they complied with the filter rules, and that all devices in their household had filtered Internet.  Devices would be checked and given seals of approval.

On paper, this doesn't sound so terrible.  Porn is not great for teenagers, after all.  But the filters blocked much more than just porn, and they weren't just for the teenagers.  The filters blocked Google Images.  They blocked YouTube.  Some of them blocked Wikipedia.  Information was tightly controlled, and everyone in the community who wished to remain in the community had to comply with the rules.  Even married men were forced to have filtered Internet, with the power to whitelist individual websites delegated to their wives, who were considered "above corruption."

When I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to go to college.  This was rare, as most of my school friends and relatives were either forbidden to attend or uninterested in college.  Of course, I was not permitted to attend a "secular" college, and was only permitted to attend a specific religious college which I cannot name here for obvious reasons.  This college was away from the physical community I grew up in, but followed most of the same rules, albeit in a slightly laxer fashion.  Students were allowed to have laptops and, while the college encouraged filters, it did not enforce filtering the Internet.

The laptop which I owned at the time was given to me by my grandfather, and because of the contract my parents signed with the religious high schools in my hometown, the laptop had a very strict filter called K9 installed.  YouTube was blocked.  However, being in college and a computer science major, I needed access to YouTube coding tutorials!  I asked my parents if they could supply the password to uninstall the filter, and they adamantly refused.  How could they go against the school contracts?!  My younger siblings would be expelled from high school if they found out the older brother used unfiltered Internet!!

However, being a computer science student had its advantages, and I soon learned about Ubuntu.  The Ubuntu website was strangely not blocked by K9, despite most standard ways of bypassing web filters like VPNs being blocked, and so I downloaded an ISO and learned to dual-boot Ubuntu alongside Windows.  My parents never found out, and now I had YouTube access!

YouTube access was the most exciting thing to me at the time, and I quickly started finding things out about "the secular world."  There was this thing called anime, and it was awesome!!  There were videos on cults and atheism, which I would eventually watch.  And I could finally watch coding tutorials!

Fast-forward several years, and I have finally escaped the cult's clutches and the clutches of my parents.  I work in tech and am living my best adult life on my own terms, and I have Linux to thank for opening my eyes.  I dropped out of that religious college, saved up some money, and am now finishing up a degree at a proper "secular" college!

I am looking forward to continued 2600 meetings!