I'm essentially an extraordinarily-tolerant guy.

I growl in anger whenever someone says or does something that's racist, unless they're merely acting out a part, in which case I become angry at the character they portray.

I see nothing wrong at all with people who are homosexual: homosexuality itself I don't like, but that doesn't say anything about the people themselves, and like to think of myself as being the next closest thing to a friend with several people who are openly homosexual. (For clarification, I should mention that I don't know any openly homosexual people outside the internet. There's nothing that prevents me from being a real friend to one other than simple lack of acquaintance. ;-))

The whole America vs. The World -- or, more accurately, The World vs. America -- thing grates on me at times. I have no prejudices on people based on their country of origin.

However, there is one discrimination which I have which I have never been able to buck: the discrimination against the fan game community. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but every time I join a random BYOND game, I see the same thing: some young person with at least one number in his name talking in broken AOLspeak and mouthing off to the administrators.

When I considered adding a special filter to Newtopia that would immediately flag a character for priority review if its player's key had a number in it, I started to sit back and wonder what was really going on.

I'm certainly not going to impose that filter now that I've had a chance to realise exactly what it entailed. But it's interesting to think about the lines of thought that led up to that point. It's even more interesting to think about how a person who is as judgement-free as myself could be so prejudicial...