So an Xbox360 gamer hailing from Fort Gay, West Virginia recently got his Xbox Live account suspended. All because he lived in a town called Fort Gay.

Unfortunately for M$, it turns out that Fort Gay is indeed a real town. So the wrongfully accused offender, Josh Moore, contacted M$ and, well, they basically hung up on him.

The story goes that the Mayor of Fort Gay had to get involved to get Josh’s account back up and running again.

This whole situation is scary and funny all at once. It’s funny, at M$ expense, because they would go so far as to ban a guy from living in a wrong town. Nothing wrong if the guy was being a doofus and faking it all, but Fort Gay is a real town. M$ should’ve know that.

With Google Instant, anyone at M$ would’ve known (*ahem*) instantly. Or what about Bing and you know?

While M$ has apologized for the whole incident, it’s still slightly scary to me.

Without doing their due diligence, Microsoft is able to make a unilateral decision and your only recourse is to take thing public or live in a small town where the Mayor actually listens to you.

Otherwise, be careful of what you do and say about Microsoft. As I look down on my Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse combo and that big Windows icon on the lower left hand side of my screen, I’m reminded of just how much of their will they or any other OS vendor could easily apply to me.

Tomorrow, I go linux…

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