Blocklisting

Facebook and Twitter have a very appealing form of casual censorship; if you have a difference of opinion with another user, you can block them.

Did someone infer that Islam is dangerous? Make them disappear. Is “Black Lives Matter” not being treated with the utmost solemnity and reverence? Bye-bye. No need to empathize or try to understand a different point of view; it’s better to treat opposing ideas as annoyances, to be clinically expunged.

I’m not warning you against social media, I’m saying see it for what it is; a method of grouping people by their beliefs and predilections, so they can be monitored and controlled. By companies, government, and people who have more money. That’s all the Internet is anymore. It’s not about sharing information. It’s about controlling who sees it.

The only times I’ve been moved to “block” someone on Facebook was when they were deliberately being facetious, contrary, or harassing my real-life friends. Since I have a working knowledge of Josef Stalin and the McCarthy hearings, I hesitate to block anybody unless they’re being a complete and total asshole.

There’s no way I could accumulate the number of friends I have on Facebook if I’d scrutinized each one’s political and religious beliefs. The only time I give a shit about someone’s beliefs is if they are actively using them to abuse people. I’m a legitimate underground cartoonist. You wouldn’t believe the hands I’ve shaken if I told you. I didn’t get to that point by being an ethical pedantic.

I know women whose opinions I respect that support Hillary Clinton. I do not feel that these women are stupid or beneath my contempt, and I try not to casually insult them. I know, shall we say, many Trump supporters. They tell me their reasons, and they’re always the same; they don’t feel like their concerns are being acknowledged. You know what? They aren’t. Plus, Trump and his supporters are vilified in the media, in a manner I am not allowed to do with Hillary Clinton, no matter how livid or justified I am.

Oh, as for the candidate for president that I support: I’ve currently weathered a solid month of abuse, and counting, for doing so. Truth will out, and I told you, a hard rain is coming. But yeah, I’ve never seen such widespread humiliation of a qualified candidate for president in my lifetime. If you’re asking me to be fair about the 2016 election, I already was. You weren’t.

Censorship is ingrained in American DNA now. If you’re afraid to express a particular opinion, you won’t, and you’ll attack anyone who does. It’s already over; you put your billing information into a search engine for an email account, and now that search engine controls what you get to see. Blocking was installed into social media because there was a time when you could actually be anonymous, and stalk someone into a rage. Now everyone’s accounts are connected to their home address and bank. The only computer users that aren’t hooked up to the grid are ISIS bombers sneaking in alongside helpless refugees. Our government is more concerned with which white teenager might bring a gun to school next.

I try not to block people because eventually, I’m not gonna be here to hold your hand anymore. I try to unite and not divide; I consider separatism disgusting. You were programmed to embrace “diversity”, for the wrong reasons. What’s the opposite of diversity? Unity. “Diversity” is “division”, and Americans are openly doing it on the basis of skin color and gender. I’m literally one of the only Americans trying to hold the fucking country together at this point.

What about you? Why do you see one color of Americans as suspicious when grouped, and not another? It’s “dangerous” when it’s all white people, but you never notice that it’s hard sell otherwise. Even if a historic leap in space exploration is the work of white men, Google will make sure to portray them as a rainbow of diversity, in their “Google Doodle”. People get rankled when they see a drawing of a bunch of white guys, even if white guys did the work. If all black people or women (or both) are depicted, no one bats an eyelash.

Even though it’s a lie. 

That’s why your concept of “diversity” is broken; you have to lie to prop it up. You diminish the work of actual diverse achievers in history. You’ll announce fifty footnotes to criticize Abraham Lincoln, while at the same time taking a childish view of the European Invasion. I made a joke in an earlier update about “weekly 9/11”. By the time I hit “publish”, it was more like “hourly”. One of them interrupted the president’s speech about the last one. This is the fucking world you live in. Up to you if you take it out on me.

This is how I get blocked. I say things you don’t want to hear. I say things you disagree with.

I make you confront hypocrisies within yourself.

That’s life. You think I don’t deal with the same shit? You wanna trade recipes and baby pictures, get the fuck off the Internet. Do it the way our parents did it- in person. That’s why those pictures and recipes are still around. I’ve seen things on the Internet that would put you in a straitjacket. Around 2000, we used to dare each other. I’m still traumatized by some of it, 16 years later. I can’t even tell you about it.

(If you’re wondering; it’s worse than beheadings, worse than 2 Girls 1 Cup, worse than Zippocat. I pray all those things are alien to you, my sweet. If so, leave them that way.)

You wanna be surrounded by people who think like you do? Go to church. 

The Internet is for the sharing of information. If you seek to control it, you’re overdue for some serious self-examination.

I still wouldn’t block you, though. I’m no Josef Stalin.