A Gentle Reminder About Deplatforming

Take a gander at this. It’s from the very skilled and entertaining CGP Grey:

Corporate deplatforming is nothing new (whether intentional or not). It’s why I moved my blog out of the wordpress sandbox three years ago. (See: Upcoming Blog Hosting Switcheroo.) At the time I said:

This is my Christmas present to myself (and you… if you care). What better present than peace of mind?

…

Preparedness isn’t all MREs and tactical nukes in the basement. Sometimes it’s as simple as switching hosting services before I piss off a faceless corporation.

I switched from wordpress.org to self hosted in late 2016. Anyone want to guess what made 2016 the moment when it seemed necessary? Why would 2016 be the year a guy writing stores about tractors fears his shit will get arbitrarily deleted? Was it a volcano eruption, Haley’s comet, return of the McRib? What thing happened that demonstrated to me that half the nation would love to electronically gut me in a heartbeat? If only the heady days of 2016 that made people feel justified in doing unethical things within organizations (both corporate and government) “for the greater good” were followed by… prosecution. But I digress.

In the ensuing three years they’ve gone from nuts to… still nuts. This is not progress.

More importantly is it likely to repeat at some time in the future? Say… just spitballin’ here… in 2020? Will there be some event in 2020 that might possibly entice mentally underdeveloped losers that peaked as hall monitors in high school to go full censorious fuckweasel… again?

What could it be? It’s a mystery.

There’s more. I dragged my feet until 2016 but I intended to make the move much earlier. When did I start thinking I ought to “armor up” my blog? Lucky me that I wrote it down. Check my text from 2016:

In 2008 there was a kerfuffle about the IRS withholding tax exempt status from conservative causes as part of the “elect Obama or die trying” mood of the times.

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It’s unfair that the “The Al Gore Glee Club and Obama Worship Fund” got instant tax-exempt status while “Monster Trucks for Jesus” and “The Republican Guns for Orphans Fund” got hosed. Life isn’t fair. Any “movement” that shits itself when it discovers that the IRS is mean needs to nut up.

By the way… nobody went to jail for that. It just… happened.

We can know who will be targeted and why. So it’s stupid to stand there waiting for your turn on the rack. The internet was still gaining a foothold before 2008 but shit went down in 2008 that showed it had taken root and could be weaponized. In the next hotly contested election they did just that. They turned the dial to eleven… so much so that I feared stories about wood splitters and chicken farming would get me deleted. Now it’s one year before the 2020 pants shitting hysteria that will (may?) ensue as team crybaby tries to wrest control from team stupid.

There is no expectation of a sudden outbreak of comity and tolerance. They hate us. They hate ideas. They hate that I make stupid jokes. They hate my skin color, they hate that I pee while standing up, they hate that I drive a truck, they hate that I eat meat. They hate that I cut firewood without cutting a check to Exxon. They hate everything a self reliant person does, says, or thinks. It’s going to get worse.

That said, CGP Grey has a different and more optimistic solution than me. He turns to the still existing technology of e-mail. I merely did the lazy thing. I withdrew and diversified; ready to bail out.

I withdrew by staying the hell away from social media. I’m not on YouTube or Twitter. If Google finds me it’s only because they haven’t yet decided to not find me. I tried a Facebook presence but quickly let it go dormant. The whole thing creeped me out too much. It was a proctolgy exam in a stadium! The panopticon design of Facebook fosters the kind of bad relationship sketched out in weird Japanese animation. Suppose you show up for a blind date and encounter a Sumo wrestler who’s high on meth and bleeding. She’s got purple hair, tattoos of Hitler on her face, and she’s currently beating a puppy with a trombone. Facebook is much worse than that.

As for diversifying, I support my expenses with a trickle of money from Amazon, PayPal, and Patreon. It’s not much but it’s enough… and I appreciate every penny. I also backed up everything thirty ways from Sunday.

What I don’t have is a plan to persist. My idea always has been to bail at the first sign of bullshit. Maybe resurface elsewhere, maybe not. I’m not in the bullshit business.

CGP Grey has a different idea. An e-mail list. I never bothered to think about such a thing.

Should I? My hosting service / blog software has a “subscribe” button. I’ve left it running on autopilot. I’ve no idea how it works. I assume y’all know when I make a new post. Or maybe ya’ don’t. I just write and see what happens. Additionally Patreon can reach a select handful, though I don’t much use it.

I don’t expect my hosting service to go full retard any time soon, but 2020 looms. All that is stupid is likely to occur. Stupid that I haven’t even imagined will probably make present experience seem naive. Google rises like Cthulhu expanding from the deep. What happens when their in-house army of kool-aid drinkers retrieve from Cthulhu’s six sphinctered ass a new definition of Nazi?

I can’t predict the madness. Should I do something pro-active with a mailing list? Or should I stick to my “if it happens I’ll be electronically bugged out by dawn” approach? What do y’all think? Is “subscribe” button on autopilot enough?

Of course, this is just a minor issue. The wisdom of Firefly holds; they can’t stop the signal. (But they did cancel the show… so don’t get complacent eh?)