Owing to the mighty emancipation which Twitter is undergoing, I made myself a new account there (I deleted my old one a couple of years ago, and had stopped using it a year or two before that).
If you feel the urge to follow me, it’s @NathanShumate.
At present, I’m just retweeting with commentary (which is ludicrous, as I have three followers at present). More original content, such as my sketches of the day, are still to be found on MeWe.com or Instagram.
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What I find.–peculiar, let’s say–are the ginormous numbers of followers that are suddenly appearing overnight for so many Libertarian and conservative commentators/Tweeters. How does that happen? Are we meant to gullibly believe that 125K new followers just showed up for some person who appears on Fox, out of the blue, overnight? Not just one, but dozens of them, and more?
Or are they appearing because they’d been manually or algorithmically retarded, somehow, from being added, in some quasi-nefarious way? I don’t like conspiracy theories, at all, but I find this bizarre at the very least. At the very least.
I’m grateful for Musk. On the other hand, I’m now petty horrified at the whole Ministry of Truth scenario that Mayorkas revealed during his questioning.
I’m entirely with you. Their MiniTrue will, I hope, be the absolute first casualty of the Red Wave coming in November.
I think “shadow banning” is the applicable term here: banning people from appearing on such contact and statistical lists without their being aware no one else is seeing them there. Of course, this kind of Orwellian behavior was entirely foreseeable when Twitter set up its “Trust & Safety Council” of self-proclaimed “experts” to “ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves” or some such BS. (I mean, what could possibly be Orwellian about a council of self-proclaimed “experts” with the words “trust” and “safety” right there in its title, right?) Despising Twitter for its treasonous totalitarian terrorist thuggery is nothing new for those of us on the right.
Truth be told, though, I wanted nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter or any of the other “social media” long before any of this BS about certain viewpoints being automatically banned as “hate speech” ever happened. Back when Facebook was just starting to go mainstream (i.e. my late not-very-tech-savvy mother had just gotten on it), one of my elder brothers who’s a computer programmer tried to invite me onto Facebook by setting up a preliminary account and sending me a link. I never followed the link and never logged in, as I had already learned to despise such accounts.
Mind, this was long before the “woke” vermin (such as that aforementioned “Trust & Safety Council”) took over and started censoring and suppressing viewpoints they didn’t like. The reason I already hated “social media” so much was because I’d seen so much of the petty bickering and clique-ish behavior on so many other online forums and other social sites (which—arguably—were a kind of “social media” unto themselves long before anyone coined that term to describe them) and figured these platforms would feature much more of the same. It was like—in the words of one of Orson Scott Card’s characters—“…junior high. And you … ain’t … cool.”
So I thought “Why would I want to relive that part of my childhood?” and stayed the hell away. As expected, the biggest bullies soon took over (though admittedly it hadn’t occurred to me that the biggest bullies would all be far to the left on the political spectrum—even though I already despised the entire political left as well for many similar reasons). Bottom line: Facebook and Twitter and all the other “social media” have always been terrible; and even if Musk does actually clean up the place and restore some measure of respect for free speech on it, I’m not going to be joining Twitter or any other such “social media” platform ever.
I admire Musk, not so much for his politics as for the simple fact he unapologetically strives to do great things, he’s the quintessential American entrepreneur , and of course he is not from here. That he is a funny troll is just the icing on the cake.
People seeking freedom–and economic freedom to pursue and develop their dreams, ideas, etc.–have always been drawn to the USA. Hell, we’re famous for it. I am more struck with admiration for Musk now than ever before–and I’ve been an admirer of his capitalism and ideas for years (even though I’m not a wild fan of electric cars, which I believe hold problems that we’ll all deal with in the future–but, alas, alack, I’ll be dead by the time that comes to a head).
What’s great about what he’s doing with Twitter is now, the FB’s and the Instagrams, the TikToks of the world, won’t be willing to continue to censor anything, because they’ll be afraid that users will flock to Twitter to get “the real scoop.” It’s pretty brilliant, all in.
That woman that they’re now calling Scary Poppins–wow. That’s all I can say. On the other hand, what did we think was going to happen, when a world full of snowflakes suddenly decided that speech=violence? Of course, this would be the outcome. First, they declare that any speech that they don’t like requires safe spaces (again, ‘violence’ to their feelings and all that); then they take active steps to ban it from campuses, etc.; and then they decide that any speech that they don’t like, that isn’t PC is “hate speech,” as defined by law. So if you’re the Babylon Bee and you post a satire nominating whats-er-face for Man of the Year, after she’s been nominated for Woman of the Year, it’s “hate speech” and knocked off of Twitter–and its account suspended, for “hate speech.” Not satire, mind you–hate speech.
The entire point of the 1st Amendment is that if some bozo wants to stand on the corner and preach white supremacy, or do it on the Net, HE CAN. That’s his right. It’s not our right to stop him. It’s our right to argue with him, to prove him wrong, to try to sway those listening to him–but it’s not our right to censor him, UNTIL he overtly calls for specific acts of actual, real (not verbal) violence. The moment we allowed these folks to start stating that speech=violence, this was going to be the inevitable outcome and now we’re stuck fighting it.
Of course, we had to *allow* them to say that speech=violence. Free speech and all of that. But we should always respond with pushback.
Yes, but we fell into the perfect trap. If we objected and pushed back, we were racists/homophobes/something-or-other. We were supporting this or that “reprehensible” viewpoint or whatever. So, people, being afraid of what’s happened on the net, with everything we’ve seen, kept their mouths shut and went along with it–and this is the *inevitable* outcome.
Now we have no choice but to go back and re-fight the battle that we almost inadvertently conceded–the speech=violence fight. Sigh.
Fortunately, I don’t care what people call me, as long as they don’t call me late for lunch.