Out of Twitter Gaol

I was in Twitter Jail for 8 days and not a single one of you came to visit me. None of you put money on my commissary. Not going to lie, I’m a little upset. But I get it. You all have your own lives to take care of. No time to deal with a criminal like myself.

Or maybe you didn’t know? There may have been a trial; I wasn’t there when it took place. According to the e-mail I got, apparently I was convicted of breaking Twitter’s terms of service by posting speech that was Hateful. For example, I told someone not to “fuck a hornet’s nest and then complain about a few stings.” In another post, I said “This kid has almost as many sock puppets as the voice actor he stans for has credible accusations of sexual misconduct. Almost.” This made me a naughty, naughty boy. This will be a mark on my record of a human being, right up there with the time I was accused of stealing thousands from a former employer.

Others who have dealt with similar suspensions (or outright terminations of their account) attribute these attacks to a singular person using a couple dozen accounts; my experiences suggest that instead there are a few dedicated individuals (likely with their own Discord channel, or if they’re smart something more secure like Slack) doing tool-assisted flagging of the comments of those they disagree with (even when it’s not a post they themselves disagree with) in threads they are indirectly involved with. Those other criminals fail to reflect on what put them in this position: that they are horrible people. That, or the criminal justice system known as Twitter is broken and their bot-run moderation is a joke so horrible it would only be reposted on Reddit every week or so as opposed to every day.

I, on the other hand, used my incarceration time more wisely. I took a few Bible classes and reasserted my faith in Jesus. I joined the Latin Kings, so I could gain protection from The Yakuza. I built an empire selling off my provided meals for commissary items (the proverbial “Trays for Noodles.”) I reflected on my crimes to society, and how I could better myself as a human being and as an convicted internet bad guy. I did also try to appeal, of course, but after a few days I was greeted with a form letter saying “you’re bad and you should feel bad.”

What I came to realize is that there’s a few good people I’ve met on Twitter. Some solid people who have kept me in line, inspired me, helped me stay the course. It’s been good for networking in some aspects. I’m also able to be more of myself there than I am on, say, Facebook, where I keep my family and where they really don’t want to hear my thoughts on literotica, progression fantasy novels, and Korean Cartoons. In that, Twitter has value. That said, I also have been using it too much, like it’s a thing that matters. Fun fact, I’ve been banned from a lot of privately owned places in my time. Granted, few of them have been such major platforms as this, but almost all of them have been for similar reasons – arbitrarily enforced rules as to what is and isn’t acceptable based solely on how many people complained.

Given this, I’m going to do what any sane person would do given the circumstances – I’m signing up with Gab, a service that respects me as a customer, respects my right to freedom of speech, and has way less Nazis on it.

I’m only half kidding. I did sign up for Gab, but I have no real idea what I am going to do with it.

I will, regrettably, be forced to run a block chain as I continue to use Twitter, and there will be certain topics I simply won’t be engaging with on that platform – it’s not something that’s doing me any favors, and anything I want to say there can be said more effectively elsewhere. I also had a habit of posting screenshots of electronic books I was reading to share quotes and interesting tidbits. This will continue, but at a lessened pace, as I was informed one author didn’t care that I was sharing so much of their book and if one author complains that means three or four felt similarly but just didn’t want to cause any waves.

Despite these actions, this account is on it’s last little nub. One more infraction, and it will likely be cancelled. When that happens, there’s not a lot gained by starting over from scratch. The problem here isn’t indicative of any “wins” by those false flagging comments and posts, but of the platform’s flaws as a whole, and frankly I’m too old to be investing my time building a following of like-minded or entertaining individuals on a platform so rife with abuse. And understand, there will be one last infraction, not by my intent but by the platform’s design. It’ll probably be something seemingly innocuous. The post may have the word “fuck” in it. We’ll see.

At the end of the day, the world will go on, and it’s clear that most of you will move on without me. Insert sadface here. I’m looking at some alternatives for those I consider friends, acquaintances, and fellow readers to follow me elsewhere. At the end of the day though, it’s just the internet, and a lot of this drama is drama that doesn’t directly affect me and isn’t a needed aspect of my life. So I’m not dwelling on it a whole lot.