Few and far between

Yeah, yeah. I make these well-intentioned promises to myself that I'll come back to posting here. And here it's been two and a half years since I posted.

Hey, at least I didn't completely nuke this blog like I just did to my Facebook account.

I finally did it. I deleted my Facebook account. Not deactivated. DELETED.

 

Every time I've thought about this in the past, I've tried to see if I could go for a week without visiting the site, and every time I've gone back within a day or two. But not this time.

This time, I stopped posting sometime in the first week of November, and I didn't go back. And then I saw somewhere else online (I think it was on Parler) that a bunch of people were planning a "Mass Exodus" from Facebook and were going to all delete their accounts on Friday, November 13th. I thought that sounded like a plan; it still gave me a few days to decide whether I really wanted to do it or not, and to actually let a couple of people in my private Messenger groups know (so that they wouldn't suddenly not see my name in the group list and worry about me). And on Friday the 13th, I deleted my account. And deleted my other account under a fake name which I used whenever I got tossed into Facebook jail for some meme I posted three years ago or some other ridiculous thing. I shook the dust from my feet and left for good.

I know that nothing on the internet truly ever goes away. And I don't really think there's anything particularly alarming about me anywhere, mainly because I don't really think there's anything particularly alarming about me to begin with. I do know that Facebook will never actually get rid of any of my information. But they're not going to get any new information, either.

 

I didn't disappear from all social media, however. I've had an account on MeWe (a social media site with a format not completely unlike Facebook's, albeit much simpler) for a couple of years, and I've posted there sporadically over that time. When I left FB, I decided just to post on MeWe in the same way I've posted on FB for the past few years -- mostly humorous memes, some political in nature and some not -- and some news and opinion articles of interest. I don't post a lot of personal stuff, such as where I am at any particular moment in time.

MeWe was started specifically to be a free-speech zone, and promised not to censor me. In all the time I've been there, I've never once had any interaction with the site admins that I didn't specifically seek out. No unwanted and un-removeable notices or reminders to Get Your Flu Shot or Have You Registered To Vote? or intrusive attachments to anyone's posts explaining why This Is False Information Which We Think You Shouldn't Be Able To Read And Discern For Yourself Whether It's Accurate Or Not.

The moment I see something like that, I'm deleting my account there and moving to Gab or WIMKIN or some other actual free speech zone.

I haven't deleted my Twitter account, but I almost never post there. I do still go there to see particular Tweets of interest, but I've also got a Parler account (under an assumed name) because Parler welcomes ALL views.

The Rage Mob has accused us of leaving FB and Twitter because we're seeking out an "Echo Chamber" where we don't have to read leftist posts. I beg to differ, however... I'm leaving FB because they want an echo chamber (they don't want my point of view) and I want to go where everyone is free to speak their mind... even if they have views I disagree with. I do appreciate having the option of "blocking" certain users of my choosing -- not necessarily because I don't want to hear their political opinions, but because they post things of a prurient nature which I'd just prefer not to have to look at whenever I log onto a social media site. If there is an over-abundance of conservatives, libertarians, AnCaps, and other dissenters on MeWe, it's only because we're the ones who've been forced out of FB. Liberals, leftists, socialists, Communists... they're all free to join us.

Eventually, one would think that the Left would realize that censoring speech on their site never actually eliminates that speech. It merely drives it elsewhere. It also highlights that speech, if one's being honest. When Twitter censored the Hunter Biden Laptop story, it actually made a whole lot more people seek out the story to find out what it was.

The Left has no realistic concept of how human nature works. When you tell Bob he can't have something, you actually make him want that thing even more than he did before. It's just how most of us are wired. And if you tell Barb she can't say those things, she will probably just find a way to say those things where you can't hear her.

I did also begin using the DuckDuckGo browser almost exclusively, since they don't filter my search results the way Google does. Yeah, I'm aware that this blog is a Google site. I do still use Google occasionally, mostly for Maps and Translate functions. Yeah, I'm extremely concerned about how much control Google has amassed over my life. I'm still hoping we can figure out a way to gain back control of it.

At any rate, if you're still inexplicably coming here to see if I've posted something new, and you're wanting to keep up with me on social media, e-mail me at gradualdazzle-at-gmail-dot-com and I will send you an invite to my MeWe account.