I was originally going to spend some time browbeating one of my favorite Substack accounts for their recent decision to join the mob in calling for censorship action against a barely-present handful of ne'er-do-wells who have landed on Substack, but given that the overall VAST majority of their efforts on the platform have been spent on spreading awareness of fiction material and writers on Substack, not getting involved in socio-political matters, I decided that they hardly need me to spend time grumbling at them. The good and beneficial qualities they have displayed over time have outweighed what I view as a horrifically bad and misguided take, and moreover, the odds that I'll be able to change their minds (they are a multi-contributor outfit) are slim to none.
I'm just going to mosey on down the road, and keep an eye on things from a more passive perspective. I don't always need to be yelling into a digital bullhorn when matters of censorship come to the forefront, and every time I do, I end up coming away from the whole thing with less faith in humanity than when I went into it.
Interesting development- I've been dubbed a Nazi by Nathaniel Merchant, a virulent, talentless attack dog who circles around Johnathan Katz like a proximity-activated weapon. Tracy Hall implied that my piece "On This Supposed 'Problem' On Substack" amounted to the same thing as victim-blaming a rape victim and dubbed me 'pathetic'. Merchant and Hall are both users with no Posts of their own, very little in the way of intellectual honesty, and given that they have nothing original of their own to say or contribute to the overall body of works on Substack beyond smarmy comments lobbed like electronic turds at people they seem to take ideological or socio-political exception to, I'm not sure either of them deserves more than a moment's notice or effort snarling back at.
Holly Mathnerd has been spotting and documenting quite adroitly the shift in real-time that this whole "Substackers Against Nazis" (SAN) thing has already begun to take on.
They are already shifting the goal posts, as pointed out by Holly, from ostensibly wishing to deplatform and demonetize Nazis (both literal ones and those they merely accuse without evidence of being Nazis themselves), to doing the same for anyone who indulges in 'hate speech'.
Ah, yes. 'Hate speech', that lovely old chestnut, oft trotted out by Marxist control freaks. It's a term that doesn't have a solid definition, and it is designed that way, a Gnostic weapon to be wielded against anybody who dares to stand up and point out that what these people are doing is little more than trying to once again use dialectic manipulation to browbeat and struggle session yet another online platform into handing them control over a system THEY DIDN'T CREATE, and which they demand bends the knee to their personal demands, standards and expectations.
And the absolute vitriol that is spewed by these folks when I and a handful of others have pointed out that what they are doing is attempting to install THEIR standards in place of Substack's, that they are concern-trolling as cover/camoflage for what they are really up to? It is both shocking and hilarious, because it tells me that they recognize that they've been caught in the act. It's like James Lindsay has pointed out- when the Marxist/control freak is called out for what they are attempting to gain as their end goal, they become feral and lash out.
So, by all means, fling whatever label at me that you would like, control freaks. I, and many others besides, see exactly what you're doing. This time, we're not going to sit dazed and confused on the sidelines while you do it. You see, when you targeted Substack with this nonsense, you overlooked the fact that the majority of heavy users of the service are various types of skilled writers, and we aren't quickly or easily bamboozled. Moreover, we have the appreciation and skill with the written word to formulate cogent counterarguments, construct mockeries of you, and linguistically dissect your pathetic, pedantic schemes at attempting capture of the platform in a manner that the average social media user has not been able to exercise when you took over Myspace, Facebook, old Twitter, Reddit, etcetera.
And we will bring those talents to bear against you, or anyone else who tries to push us or the ownership/management of Substack into one of your struggle sessions.
Now, I'm going to walk away from these non-fiction posts for a bit to enjoy writing stories, playing with my children, celebrating Christmas, working my regular day job (well, swing shift, 3-11pm, but 'day job' works as a general phrase here), and taking care of this house. I don't mind engaging in the heated back-and-forths now and again, but they always remind me that I have more important things going on in my day to day life.
I suppose I can at least be grateful for that reminder when trolls like Merchant and Hill come clomping around.
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