Welp, folkies, I’m finally doing it. I’m leaving Twitter.
Initially I didn’t intend to, but when they abruptly locked me out of my own account for saying “Honkies”, that was it for me. I couldn’t be arsed to try to get back in. I no longer tweet, and I no longer WANT to tweet. At least, not on Twitter.
The taste in my mouth is so bad that I don’t want to say another word over there, not even goodbye to all the lovely people I’ve met and befriended in my 12-odd years on the bird app. It’s not worth it to me even to try. If I did try, who’s to say I wouldn’t get locked out again, anyway? In case you hadn’t noticed, the new sheriff there is awfully thin-skinned behind all those tin stars he’s plastered all over his unimpressive carcass.
And you want to know what’s really stupid about my own particular lockout? Not only is the word that got me barred NOT “hate speech”, as the lame excuse that landed in my e-mail claimed after I launched my futile appeal — it’s actual FREE speech. It harks back to a word that existed in counter to actual hate speech, to oppose actual fucking RACISTS. You know, those same wankers that are currently still flooding the tweeter with endless strings of n-words?
Incidentally, that word isn’t the white equivalent of the n-word. Why? There is no “white equivalent to the n-word.” Because racism only goes one way. Both-sidesism is bullshit.
And on top of all else, I wasn’t even using that word in a racial context. I was using it in its newest and most Canadian context, one that Twitter’s algorithms (and few remaining moderators) have apparently not yet learned — namely, as a nickname for the horn-honking fascist traitors who laid siege to our nation’s capital late last winter, trying to pester Justin Trudeau out of office (and make a whole entire city miserable in the process, too). Since they all put “Honk Honk” and cutesy references to the fascist “Honkler” meme in their bios, what better to call these silly Nazi goose-steppers than HONKIES?
But Twitter doesn’t see it that way. And nobody can tell them so now, because they’ve apparently banned the word. So much for “free speech”!
So, here I am, tweeterless. Effectively, and soon to be literally. That widget will soon be leaving my sidebar, to be replaced or not, as I see fit. If a better platform that offers such widgets comes along, and I’m sure that one soon will. Twitter hasn’t been the only game in town for quite some time now.
So, you say. What’s one more relatively unknown tweeter, leaving a platform that’s already hemorrhaging users by the million, over just one word that the ultra-racist new boss won’t let me say, even when it’s the only mot juste?
Well, that’s just the thing: Regular folks like me, who for years engaged there in good faith, have been blocked, banned, and relegated to permanent underclass status. Not by the old “lord and peasant” system of verification, which was necessary for public figures and corporate entities who had to be concerned about malicious impersonators using and abusing their identities in a way regular people did not. We are now being subjected to something which I hate and hesitate to call censorship, but which has a remarkably similar effect. A fucking corporation, not any government or human-rights tribunal, is charging us to be seen, as well as telling us what names we cannot call the worst people on the planet. If we don’t comply, we lose our right to use the platform, as well as our equality as consumers. This as the hatemongers who were banned, and banned for cause, under the previous owners, are all making a comeback and even gaining “first-class” status.
And on to add insult to injury, we peons are now being expected to buy back our active status with US $8/month for a now-worthless token that even those who had it before got for free — back when it actually meant something.
You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t think “new Twitter”, with its n-word slingers and other assorted scum running wild, is worth spending 8 cents on even once, let alone a hundred times that every month. So, I’m switching platforms, and I won’t miss this one at all.
Adios, Elon, and get non-sexually fucked.
