Look, I know I can be incendiary online. I have BIG OPINIONS and very little filter and I accept that. The people that love me accept that. The people I respect accept that and in an attempt to show that respect I try to reign it in when I’m having conversations with them.
Strangers however, I have no patience for. I had even less in the year 2020. I’m willing to put up with a lot of nonsense and there are some things I can just either reply with a inane quip or scroll past without bothering, and then there are the things that I will call out every time.
EVERY. TIME.
When Breonna Taylor was shot by a cop that never should have been in her house, then 12 days later a racist cop kneeled on the neck of George Floyd and strangled him to death while onlookers begged him to stop, the BLM movement rightly mobilized and peacefully protested across the country. A powerful and beautiful community of BIPOC people loudly speaking out against the centuries of oppression and hate that in the year 2020 was still on full violent display in the homes and streets of America.
All of this while a pandemic was starting the slow deadly burn across the states.
And my filter went from “little” to “nil”.
On May 30th somebody posted a video of white protesters trying to break the window of a store and Black people begging them to stop. “This is the problem. You can do this because you’re white but if a cop shows up here WE’LL be the ones they shoot,” said the Black man pleading with them to put down the rocks and leave. I left this comment on a thread about it.
I was banned for 12 hours.
This is not hate speech. White racism is a myth. It can not exist.
FULL STOP.
I didn’t contest the ban because it was stupid and I’m pretty sure I just went to sleep and shrugged it off.
The next day I posted this.
I was banned for 24 hours.
I don’t actually remember what I was commenting on here but I did think that writing “white scum” instead of “white trash” would get me around Facebook’s ridiculous white racism filter THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST. LIKE RACISM AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE DOESN’T EXIST.
By November, COVID-19 was raging all over the country. Tensions were high. Our racist potato president was calling an election rigged before it even happened. Over the course of the year, social discourse in many of the news organization’s comment threads had declined into full on tinfoil hat season and I was… tired. Tired of racists. Tired of COVID deniers. Tired of Trumpism.
Just tired.
So on November 2nd, 2020 I left this comment on an article about a 13-year-old CHILD that had died from COVID-19. This lady had commented to ask what the CHILD’S underlying health conditions were. Disease? Obesity? And then threw on a “condolences” to the family at the end. So sweet of her. When people tried to have a civil conversation with her explaining that she was being rude, she doubled down on the COVID conspiracies that I was JUST. SO. TIRED. of hearing.
I was banned for 3 days. Two days before the most important election in my lifetime.
I’d say that, although I feel a valid critique, this was the first time that I truly deserved a ban. This was definitely bullying. I contested this one just because I felt like why not? Two days later my ban was upheld. For the first time, Facebook actually did it’s job properly. And honestly, the internet was a mess in the aftermath of the election and my mental health was probably boosted by avoiding the site altogether since I didn’t feel the need to read if I couldn’t comment.
By the end of November we had a clear presidential winner, despite what the raving lunatic currently sitting at the Resolute Desk was vomiting daily onto Twitter would have you believe. It was around this time that another QAnon video was being suppressed on YouTube, AS IT SHOULD BE, and I had seen about 74 “Freedom of Speech” comments on Facebook in one day so I picked a random blockhead and was going to explain how the 1st amendment actually works but decided to use as few words as possible to get my point across.
I was banned for 7 days.
In retrospect, I should have know better than to try and circumvent the rules by using a different word. If “white scum” wasn’t enough of a change from “white trash”, I should have known that “twat” was not going to work instead of “cunt”.
Well played Facebook, I’d say I deserve this one too. Although again, a valid and truthful comment.
After the 7 day ban I really started to be more measured in posting. I rewrote comments to respond to the poor fragile white people while not using any slang from our country or the UK or referring to the garbage pile I assume they were born from. I realized there was no winning with the COVIDiots and mostly left them alone unless I saw really blatant lies being spread.
I was tired. But also tired of being tired. You know?
Then today happened.
Today a bunch of backwoods jackboot crybabies stormed the US Capitol building in an attempt to… well, I don’t actually know what they were trying to do and I doubt they had any clue what they were trying to do either after watching them stumble around to find a coherent sentence to string together in an interview.
And, of course, ever single conservative keyboard warrior in existence tried to play this off as a bunch of Antifa “actors” trying to make them look bad. This amused me mostly because what people were admitting when they said that was that THIS WAS A BAD LOOK. Thank you for making our point for us!
This photo of known Trump sycophant Jake Angeli in his horned outfit as an “Antifa actor” started making the rounds which is cute because after about 20 seconds of Googling I found an article about him, read an interview he gave in October, then found his Parler profile. As always, rather than do the same miniscule amount of research it would have taken to understand that that this tweet is a FAKE NEWS, conservatives started to paste the photo in every single thread on ever single post on the internet as “proof” that he is Antifa.
When it landed in the comment section of my hometown’s news site I commented on it. I left a link to both news articles and his Parler profile to read for herself to understand who this man is. The woman, of course, tried to use a 2 hour old Craigslist ad for actors to storm the US Capitol building which happened 8 hours before the ad was posted because of course she did.
So I commented again.
I was banned for 7 more day.
I disputed the ban because calling somebody ignorant for spreading misinformation is NOT harassment or bullying or hate speech.
Now I’m banned for 30 days.
I’m banned from Facebook for calling willful ignorance for what it is but Char is free to continue to spread lies about the terrorism the entire country watched unfold live in front of our very eyes.
Make it make sense.
Whatever. During my 7 day ban I read 3 books and lost 5 pounds. It’s amazing what you can accomplish while not doomscrolling past the droves of hateful, brainwashed, racist, what trash cunts in Facebook comment sections.
So far I’ve written a blog post for the first time since August so in a way I’m already winning.