I should elaborate about my last post. It’s rude to crap on a dude who got hosed by a media platform without describing a reasonable alternative:
First of all, unless you’re radioactive it’s not necessary to build an elaborate offshore cyberbunker (unless that’s your desire). I’m not an island. I voluntarily interact with “platforms”. I’ll do so until I stop. That’s the hard part. You need to stop when you know you ought to. That’s very hard.
Here’s some of the “partners” I work with: Patreon (thanks supporters), Amazon (thanks for using my links), and PayPal (thanks donaters). Patreon and PayPal (and surprisingly WordPress) have all been good faith partners. Amazon has been “fair” (for some definition of fair) so I can live with ’em. YouTube was annoying so I decided to stick with text instead of video. F***book is a machine-gun blast of privacy violating anal probes so I avoid that 500 pound gorilla. I dislike the character limits of Twitter because it turns us away from nuanced thought and toward bludgeoning each other.
But that’s all logistics, what really matters is my readers. You good folks have tossed enough money to keep me floating even though you could have it all for free if you want. If extortion is the game… I suck at it. Also, thanks!
That’s the big point; readers matter but platforms don’t. Each and every platform (and pretty much any organization that wasn’t explicitly designed otherwise) should be viewed as present or future hazard. They all have a hard on for screwing non-left folks. Patreon is a shoe I wait to drop. It’s meant for street jugglers in Seattle and not rural creative writing squirrel nuts. They haven’t gotten around to censoring me… yet. So I haven’t run from them… yet. My time may come.
This isn’t new. “The man” has been this way since I was a wee lad. My school teachers were to the left of Trotsky and many of my subsequent college profs. For Americans, this is common. “The man” has been to one degree or another biased against the right side of thought (as opposed to left) from birth for many of us. “The man” has no problems with censorship. Media platforms are only a small part of interacting with “the man”. That’s the world as it is, not as we’d wish it.
Since “the man” is biased, every platform has the innate inclination to become censorious shitweasels. It takes humility to stay out of the “deciding which speech is allowed” game. Shitweasels lack humility.
I’m not complaining. It’s simply the worlds as it is. Dominoes have fallen for decades. Have you read a news magazine lately? A newspaper? Watched TV news for information? Of course not. They’re all hollowed out. Each subsequent editorial decision was as dumb as the last. They dutifully marched the golden incremental path to a Utopian circle-jerk of bubble dwelling hive minded like-thinkers. In the short term they got a thrill up their leg. In the long term, they’ll eventually virtue signal themselves broke. Get woke, go broke! When they’ve become a unified lite beer of milquetoast sameness, some of the audience realizes Star Wars sucks, nobody likes MySpace, and the news is shit. They move to a new communication realm. The rest stay put and tune in for Ow My Balls. Such is the eternal cycle of stupid.
Personally, I figure the way to handle things is to recognize it’s a cycle and get along with platforms so long as they’re on the correct phase of the cycle. Cooperate with good faith partners, but tarry not a minute after they turn. The instant they start jerking me around it’s time to pull the rip cord. If they “Shadowban” me (or whatever corporate euphemism du jour for “censor the Deplorables” is in play) and I’m taking my ball and going home.
Poof!
This is utterly unlike Mr. Molyneux. He wound up posting on YouTube about a pissing match with YouTube.
That’s just weird.
They punched him in the face and they hold all the cards. The post after the punch should be “my new location is www.fucktheseguys.com”. Walk away proud. Why give any platform the keys to your ego? It’s fitting your nuts into their vice like trained human livestock.
With that simple attitude, frumpy nitpickers in the social justice department of Global Oligarchs Inc. can’t hit me too deeply. They can be a hassle, temporarily hide my words, or distract. “Oh look, something shiny. Over there. Not here. This place is lame and icky so it’s dropped off the search list. Over there is cool. Go there.” That’s not as bad as “I just lost 12 years of my hard work”.
At worst, you might someday have to look around a bit more to find me. If humorless dicks rule a platform I use, and I’m too spirited to dance like their pet monkey, then I’ll be harder to find. But I won’t be gone. It probably won’t be a big deal. Looking for that which is hidden is what you’re doing right now. You’ve got (probably) 200 channels of professionally produced full motion sound and color shit on the TV piped 24/7 into your home and yet you’ve chosen to read random multi-part rambling essays by some freak who raised a butterfly in a jar. That wasn’t Viacom’s plan for global domination. Way to go rebel! Also, thanks for joining me!
I’ll always write (and I still have squirrel stories to continue) but I do so because it makes me happy and I think it makes my readers happy. No platform can deeply alter that. (Even the wonderful shot of joy I get from PayPal donations, Patreon subscriptions, and Amazon purchases is platform independent. The day one of them pisses me off is the day I announce I’ve cancelled them and started a bourbon based GoFundMe alternative called “GetMeWasted”.) The alternate would leave me clinging to someone else’s sinking ship as the internet goes full-retard.
I don’t know when (or even if) it’ll happen, but I’m always ready to electronically bug out. Either I’ll find an alternative platform or I’ll make one myself. If that doesn’t work I’ll say fuck it and go fishing. The thing to avoid is complaining that 12 years as YouTube’s sharecropper just wasn’t enough servitude and groveling to be let back on their plantation.
As always, your mileage may vary, I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, ask your doctor if freedom is right for you, and all advice causes cancer in the State of California.
A.C.