My Language Exchange | A Miniature Review.

Hello, Everyone. Today, I am going to be doing a miniature review of a website called "My Language Exchange", so be prepared ... because it might get just a little bit negative up in here. (Eek! I'm kind of sorry. Hehehe.)

First of all, what is My Language Exchange? It is a website for people to join so that they can find language partners and / or language pen-pals. The formatting is kind of simple, but they could probably do with just a little bit more simplification in some areas. (Like when you're trying to find certain things on their website ... or if you want for your searches to be even more specific [*Cough.* Only show me the people that actually have profile pictures. *Cough.*].)

PC World magazine quotes them as one of the "'Top 101' websites'", and - from my experience - it's not so hard to understand why they weren't chosen as one of the "'Top 10' websites" (or even one of the "'Top 50' websites" ... and so on ... and so forth).

Right off of the bat, one of the main problems with this website is that you cannot really get into contact with people (other than sending a "Free Hi!" to them and / or posting in the forums) if you are not a "gold member".

Oh, and did I mention that you aren't even allowed to write any of your contact information in your profile's description? (No, I know that I didn't even do so until now. So ... now I did do so.) Yeah! I got a wall of text ... I mean ... a warning notice ... just for putting "(@VeganAmyRose)" next to my name in my profile's description.

I mean, I guess that I was kind of debating about it to myself. I wrote it in there, and then I took it out of there, and then so on and so forth. I mean, I ended up leaving it in there, and then it was removed by someone (a moderator / an administrator?), and then that's when I got that intimidating warning notice.

By the way, I'm 21 years old, I'm already pretty careful about who I talk to on the internet, and I should probably add that I'm already pretty selective about the websites that I choose to join in the first place. Why is it wrong to put my username in my profile's description? Hmmm? Why is that a part of the policy? Oh, and tons of other people do it without getting into trouble ... so why was I particularly singled out?

I know that this probably doesn't really count as censorship, but - in a way - maybe kind of ... just a little bit. Blah. Whatever. Maybe it's like they're trying to so-called "shame" people into compliance (A.K.A.: into buying their little $6.00 gold membership). (Yeah, I know how that sounds. Hahaha. Okay.) "You can be banned." Intimidation tactics, Man. And, apparently, it (not being able to contact people without paying for a gold membership) works for some people, I guess, because some people actually do buy the gold memberships to talk to people (when they could just join Italki ... or something like that).

And, by the way, even if I was more specific in my description, it seems like *some people* didn't really care that they didn't match it. (Someone contacted me, saying that they knew Persian ... and that they owned a goldfish. Like, what? I didn't even mention anything like that at all.)

Honestly, it's not necessarily that I didn't like the website (at first), because it was actually okay (at first), but how are the members supposed to get into contact with each other? Hmmm? That's what we were there for. It's inconvenient as all fudge.

"Thou hast sinned. Now click on the little box near the red asterisk to show us that you are forfeiting your own personal will(s) to us."

*Sigh.* Honestly, all of this covfefe over a silly little username. Oh my gosh. Where are the priorities here, you guys?

Okay, it's whatever. It's their website. It's their policy. It's their choice. But they should care some more about the opinions of the people that use their website. I think that putting a username into your profile's description is kind of a trivial issue (especially to be banned over). Okay, whatever. I did delete my information from that website ... and my account, too.

Well, that's it for now. Thank you so much for reading this wall of text. I know that it might have seemed kind of negative, but I don't necessarily "hate" them (or anything like that). Good-Bye, Everyone.