So, I thought I had given up blogging for good. After writing hundreds of posts on my original URL (which has long since been abandoned), and then even trying a soft reboot here on Blogspot, I finally realized that it all seemed like a whole lot of WORK. Work for which I was not being paid to do. It was always just a hobby for me anyway, and one that I honestly enjoyed....until I didn't. Again, when your fun time starts to feel like work time and there's no paycheck at the end of the tunnel? It's time to hang up your tri-cornered hat. BUT - after over eight and a half carefree, mostly stress free YEARS of twittering away on twitter without so much as a single solitary notice of anything untoward from the platform, today - February 16th, 2023 - I got a 12 Hour "timeout". A temporary injunction. A little slap on the proverbial wrist from twitter. ME! The benign, rated PG-13 (at most) Guy who never so much as types out profanity! Locked out of being able to tweet or retweet from my account for 12 Hours. Why?
Well, according to Elon's Crew of Perturbed Pronoun Police, I posted a tweet that had to be removed for violating their terms of service - specifically hateful speech or speech that promotes or incites violence. I know, I know. You don't believe "You would ever do that!". And, you are correct. In fact, if you haven't done so already, I invite you to personally review the over 150,000+ tweets I've ever sent out through the ether (ignoring how obscene that number is) and see if you can even FIND ONE TWEET THAT PROMOTES VIOLENCE or could be considered "hate" by any legal, rational definition. It's not there. I've personally weathered every storm, every purge, every attack from every Leftist known and unknown, and not ONCE have I ever resorted to calling for violence or hate - even in jest. "But, but, but you got a 12 hour limited account suspension" I imagine my imaginary reader saying. "Surely you must have deserved it! Surely you must have let your hate flag fly high, and begged your thousands of fans (!) to take to the streets in violent criminality and TOS violationing, right?" NOPE. Wanna know the best part? I had to remove an offending tweet that WASN'T EVEN MY TWEET! That's write!....I mean right. The offending tweet was not my original thought or composition. In fact, I didn't type a single letter of it.
OK, OK. I've kept your attention this long, so I'll tell you exactly what I did to get the 12 hour boot - I saw an article on https://spectator.org/ entitled Let’s Just Say It: Transgenderism Is a Mental Illness
by Scott McKay
...and I clicked the "tweet" button at the bottom of the article. THAT'S IT. That's the violation. That's all it took. And about 25 minutes later I go to login to twitter and BOOM! I'm a criminal. Pond Scum. Lower than Low. A Law Breaker. A TOS Violator.
Now, whether you are open minded, closed minded, Left, Right, Squishy Middle, or Undecided - Which word in that article's headline is calling for violence? Which word is calling for hate? I don't hate Transgenders and I don't hate the Mentally Ill. Had the article (which again, I didn't write) been entitled "Let's Hate Transgenders And The Mentally Ill And Be Violent Towards Them", I wouldn't have clicked the tweet button to share it. BUT IT DOESN'T SAY THAT. What is actually does is - express An Opinion.
And now to the meat and potatoes - Opinions used to be allowed on twitter. At least I was able to share them. I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but - I've tweeted "worse" as measured by Woke Standards. But, ever since Elon Musk purchased the platform, my twitter is ruined. It's just not the same. Oh, don't misunderstand - twitter still permanently bans 5 to 10 of my mutual followers per day on average. And, it still looks the same. The layout is identical. And the functionality remains remarkably strong. But - the Staff? Well, they have always been 99% Leftists who hate anyone who hasn't consumed the blue pill/kool-aid. But, ever since Elon purchased the platform, they are angry, bitter, vengeful Leftists. Granted, my popularity has always been limited and so has my reach. But now? I'm largely invisible to all but a handful of die-hard mutual followers (who clearly have excellent taste btw). Tweets that used to get retweeted now only get likes. Tweets that used to get likes now only get viewed. And tweets that used to only get viewed? Seriously. MAYBE one view? Two? It's absurd. Prior to Elon I had slowly built back up to over 4,000 followers after the great "Q Purge" following Biden's installment confirmation. Yeah - that's been decimated by Elon's Crew too. Last I looked it was 3,963 or something?
And let's talk about something I know nothing about ("Could you be more specific?") - algorithms. I can look up the dictionary definition, but that doesn't mean I know a damn thing about them, except to know that they've been changed, and not in a good way. Apparently my tweets are being shown to people who HATE ME because I'm not a fellow traveler in the drone factory of Leftist Borg. And I assume that because of A) of who has been trying to follow me lately (specifically fake chick bots), and B) my tweets of News or Opinion Articles from legitimate websites have started getting "warning labels". Look, if you need a trigger warning before you read a News Headline? Maybe you shouldn't be on the internet. You know, that digital portal where the #1 searched term is PORN?!?! Yeah, that thing. And my little rated PG-13 twitter account that lacks profanity, hate, violence, or subversion needs to be soft-locked for 12 hours because I share a link to AN OPINION PIECE in The American Spectator? OK.
So, I'll wrap it up and - I appreciate your time. Not because it pays me anything, but because I appreciate knowing *somebody* is curious as to my whereabouts. And, let's be honest - we're on twitter because the other twitter-like platforms suck. They just do. And, I'm on them for "just in case", but the truth is - Elon's Purchase Has Ruined My Twitter. I hope he fixes it. I doubt he will. I hope I'm wrong.
