That Frequency

We’ve all come across that frequency.  You know the one I mean.  People on there all hours of the day and night saying and doing nasty things.  It’s been going on for a long time and no one in any regulatory agency seems to do anything about it.  There are websites devoted to that frequency and the people who are on it.  People post things on Facebook and those two websites here in the US about it all the time.  New radio amateurs ask about it and wonder what it’s about.  Old ones complain about it or get outraged.  Some amateurs laugh about it.  Various people theorize about the mental health of the participants on that frequency.  Some waste hours of their lives listening to it, many trying to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.  Some people have wasted months and years out of their pathetic, useless lives making that frequency what it is.

Here’s the kicker.  There are no good guys on this frequency.  None.  Not one of them.  Especially not the ones who claim they are against the bad guys and are merely trying to make the frequency better by contending with the so-called bad guys.  Even you, listening there.  Perhaps you just listen, or maybe you decide to fire up your linear amp and drop a carrier in there for a while, perhaps to punish them, maybe just to stir the pot, or give yourself a chuckle.  Acknowledge it.  You’ve done it.

No government agency is going to fix that frequency, or perhaps better worded, fix or punish those people on that frequency.  You’re not going to stop what’s been going on, not directly, at least.  Here’s what you, me, and everyone with a brain can do to fix this problem: stop listening to it, stop talking about it, don’t even acknowledge it.  From this day forward, that frequency doesn’t exist.  If you see someone posting about that frequency on a social media website or an amateur radio forum, you say we don’t talk about that.  If someone mentions it on the air in a QSO, in a roundtable, or on a net, talk about something else, like the weather.  That frequency is what it is because we listen to it and we talk about it.  We have the power to make it whither and die.