Bark Bark Bark Bark
Find The Squirrel In This Photo. Hours Of Fun For Which You Cannot Be Blamed.
I've been saying for a while: Why should I continue to post, here in The Blogosphere? Most of my observations have already been made by other, smarter humans. I've recycled posts about the past, multiple times; primarily because things haven't changed much over the past ten years -- except, more people now are frightened, angry, dispossessed, or dead. For 18 years, I've thought it all smells like Weimar Germany in 1933. My posts reflect that perspective: Downer Dog!
Fellini's Big Conga Line
I'll violate a basic rule of essays, and sum up right here in the second paragraph: My best response to the question, Why write about anything? is, I have a degree of ability as a writer; doing this is who I am, and here's what I'm thinking and feeling. It will resonate, or it won't.
We live in existential times. Statistically, within the next thirty seconds to ten years, I'll be dead. Our universe is incomprehensible. It could be like Fellini's surreality in the last scene of 8 1/2; or it could be the seedy, run-down illusions of Tim Burton's "Ed Wood".
So, Captain Obvious Downer that I am, I will continue in the Blogosphere. I may reboot -- because even as a nonentity in The Big World, I'm alive and have some things to say. Some of them involve why the topic of whether or not I should keep posting reached a decision point. Let's go there.
And The Rest Is History
This blog appeared in 2008. My posts have mostly been Downer Dog messages -- sarcastic, cynical observations about the state of things -- like finance and economics (I was a financial analyst for a time), crime and law (I was a criminal investigator on the DOJ side), and politics. It's also funny, but the humor is dark.
I manage to present a lot of political-social commentary via whimsical Photoshopped images, my version of editorial cartoons (I'm also a fine art painter). I've joked that this blog is only read by three people and a superintelligent parakeet, but I've never had presumptions to make money with it, or try to entice readers, or be counted one of the Internet Cognoscenti.
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The Pestident, Speaking To The UN In 2018.
(Superintelligent Parakeet Is At Right)
From The Romney Interview Sequence, 2012
I squatted on Twitter. Then came Heeelon, and in the late summer of last year I moved to BlueSky. As with this blog, my social media posts were mostly messages in a bottle, short bursts of cynicism and ad hoc attacks on the American political and religious Right, and a place to share the Photoshopped whimsy.
BlueSky Can Be Junior High
BlueSky, after Musk's mutilation of Twitter, was a relief, a great place to be. It still is. Thanks to Heeelon's algorithms, I had a restricted reach, and some 500 Followers. On BlueSky, I was able to add 6,400 Followers, an unimaginable number for me, without much effort -- thanks to moderation lists.
The Lists were one of BlueSky's truly original inventions, something which separated it from any other social media platform. The list creators identify users with common POV, interests, or who identify as [fill in blank], then post links allowing other users to add these curated lists automatically to accounts you already follow.
It's an efficient tool to organize and create community -- and through 'Starter Packs', to provide new users with basic audiences of followers. But lists can be created of accounts to block which their creators identified as being wrong and bad. The benefits of moderation lists are obvious -- but with blocking, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Check Back In When I'm 80, If I Get That Far
Recently, I received a message from BlueSky's management: "We've listened to feedback," they said, and were reducing the number of characters I could use to create a post, "Just for the day!", and that I might want to consider being more concise in my writing.
I'd never seen anything like this on BSky. WTF; what feedback? I thought. I need to be more concise? When did this form of social correction begin on this platform? There was no link or address given to ask for clarification.
Then, I found I'd been added to two lists whose creators identified them as tools to "block common nuisances like engagement harvesters"; that I was identified by them as posting "mostly angry rants" (well, Guilty As Charged), and might even be "[a] bot or troll".
I really did think about this. I reviewed my posts, going back over a year. There was nothing I could see, nothing I had done, which would put me in any of these categories -- engagement harvesting in particular. I enlisted a friend to make the same review of my posts; they agreed with my perspective (they also called the list creators Schlemiels; but, still).
I sent a private message to one list creator and asked they remove my account; I wasn't engaging in the kind of conduct they had targeted. They replied, "That's not how I see it." I didn't respond. There would be no point in starting an Internet feud. They had their opinion, could swing its weight with effect -- even if they were wrong.
Even Xenomorphs Are Confused By The Arbitrarisness
Being stigmatized on a social media platform by the whims of another anonymous Jackass (just as I am, too) isn't as serious as airstrikes in Gaza, or the loss of major animal species on earth. However, it flipped a switch in my limited Dog brain and for a time I was more pissed off than I could say. It's why I have a comment category: I Didn't Go To Southeast Asia For This Shit.
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Finally, A Use For SpazeX
I understand that some persons are fine with cancel culture. Some are fine with allowing any social media influencers to determine what is acceptable personal expression, to declare others' posts as rude or a nuisance, because they say so.
I was happy to see Maga trolls on BlueSky being placed on blocking lists because I'd like the entire political Right in America to [redacted]. But when someone with no real authority declares I'm something I'm not, and adds me to their list -- that seems illiberal, arbitrary, antidemocratic. Something that happens behind closed doors, with no real appeal or due process.
Musk reinstated Right-wing activists, and skewed Twitter's algorithms to suppress Left / Liberal voices. I understand that BlueSky's making a decision to reduce the number of characters I can use to post -- even if just for a day and for reasons unclear -- isn't the same as Musk's behavior. But they both seem arbitrary, unfair, and a form of censorship.
For while, it feltlike being told by the Kool Kids at Valley Middle School that I was a dweeb, and to go somewhere else. Why? What was wrong with me? How could they do that? Because they said so.
Then, I remembered: A basic factor in the design of social media is Popularity. Not political-polling-number, or entertainment-figure popularity -- but Junior High School popularity-contest-level, with all its corrosive jealousies and viciousness and fight-or-flight reflexes -- memories of which are buried like an unexploded 1,000-pound bomb from WW2, still capable of packing a wallop sixty-plus years later.
Human group associations are by nature tribal. People are hardwired to seek approval, follow the group's norms and rules -- because if you're approved of, you get included. If you're not popular, a Dweeb -- then you don't.
You get picked last for team sports, don't get invitations to birthday parties, or hangout sessions in the Walnut groves to drink beer, or smoke grass in a basement rec room when someone's parents were away and the new Mothers Of Invention album had landed. Social media says: Get with the program, Bobo.
Social media is designed to promote sociability, clicks and likes, reposts and engagements. Approval and popularity are design elements -- it's not a conspiracy theory. It's software.
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That's -30- For This Edition
I've put my posting on BlueSky on hold -- not because a bunch of Kool Kids were mean to me, but because (a) My anonymous online Dog persona has been a channel for almost twenty years of rants. It's my Brand, but (b) Doesn't fully reflect who I am, what I think and feel about real concerns, after seven-and-a-half decades.
Being an anonymous, sarcastic Jackass may not be the best conduit for that Something Different I think about. And, in its arbitrariness, social media may not be the appropriate channel, either. We'll see.
Thanks for allowing me to Bark. I'll be back..
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