RIP Twitter

I’m done with Twitter. If you follow me over there, I’ll leave the account open to post blog links back to here and book ads, but other than that I’m not going to use it for any sort of conversation.

You’ve probably heard about how Twitter is falling apart. Their stock price has been tanking.

Recently they created a Trust and Safety Council, to protect people from being triggered with hurtful dissenting ideas. Of course the council is made up of people like Anita Sarkesian, so you know how it is going to swing.

They’ve been unverifying conservatives, and outright banning conservative journalists. Then there were rumors of “shadow banning” where people would post, but their followers wouldn’t see it in their timelines. So it’s like you’re talking to a room that you think has 9,000 people in it, but when the lights come on you’ve been wasting time talking to an empty room.

For the record, I don’t know if that’s what happened to me or not. Some of my posts have just disappeared from my timeline entirely. Other tweets seem to show up for some followers, but not others, and it wasn’t just replies. Beats me. Either something weird was going on and I’ve violated the unwritten rules of the Ministry of Public Truth, or their technical interface is just getting worse (never attribute to malice what could just be stupidity). Either way it is enough of a pain that it was getting to be not worth the hassle.

Then today they disappeared all of my friend Adam Baldwin’s tweets. Ironically, his only visible post (out of 8,000) was a link to an article about how Twitter is banning conservatives. That was the last straw.

So I’m done there. Twitter can take it’s Orwellian “Trust and Safety Council” and stick it.

 

Series II Challenge Coins: Update VIII
Yard Moose Mountain 2

272 thoughts on “RIP Twitter”

      1. If you were a science fiction Christmas Carol my love, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven and a Heinleinian writer who never was – aborted by the SFWA – would force 770 to read nothing but LesSoc SFF, eat gay wedding cakes and watch future award ceremonies where racially and sexually androgynous one-eyed dwarves with a club foot all named Dick van Dyke would all win a magic inclusive sphincter-shaped Anoos Award for writing harassment policies. 770 would be awarded the Special Noble Sphincter-Clasp for just watching and then kicked down a flight of special Ringworld stairs which never end.

        Horrified, 770 would wake up and hopefully wake the fuck up.

        Until then File 770 needs a new and more appropriate name: File 101, a room also famous for parties: the Inner Party and Outer Party.

    1. The only tweet that shows for Adam is his pinned tweet. His TL is stuck on a perpetually loading loop. Even his photos & vids are gone. His is the only profile that has this “problem.”

      If Twitter weren’t screwing around with so many prominent conservatives on their site, we might be able to wave this away as just a bug in the system. But now they have a reputation for juvenile behavior. It can’t be so easily dismissed.

      1. Mary Robinette Kowal
        @MaryRobinette
        Feb 26
        Theordore Beale is the Donald Trump of Science Fiction

        *

        Mary Robinette Kowal retweeted
        Daniel José Older
        @djolder
        Feb 26
        When you’re trying to convince He Who Must Not Be Named you were his loyal servant all along (referring to Christie-Trump)

        *

        Daniel José Older
        @djolder
        Feb 26
        This legacy of giving endless props to white mediocrity coupled with rabid insistence on american exceptionalism…it’s so trifling.

        Daniel José Older
        @djolder
        Feb 26
        Because airtime is a finite resource and it goes to white mediocrity instead of black & brown brilliance, again and again

        Daniel José Older
        @djolder
        Feb 26
        Morning. Fucking. Joe. And no MHP (Melissa Harris-Perry canceled) @MSNBC?? What in the iapplauding mediocre white man hell? #IStandWithMHP

        *

        Can anyone connect the stink of those dots? Try talking about “black mediocrity” and see how long you last at the SFWA. Use the phrase “white mediocrity” and watch how quickly you get a nomination. Twitter too. Yes, RIP Twitter. RIP SFWA. RIP Hugos. RIP SFF.

    2. I’ve been getting around the shadowbanning by using tweetdeck, which ignores shadowbans, but it looks like the writing is on the wall.

      Even though I can see their posts, if the majority cannot, the posters will just leave. It looks like Vox Day will need to push his schedule for a twitter alternative forward a bit faster.

  1. I’m convinced that Twitter management is actively shorting their stock and trying to push the stock price lower. It’s not like they’re making money.

  2. Well, looks like I’m gone too. I really only went on to find conservatives like you, Mr. Baldwin, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

  3. I’ve quit Twitter 3 or 4 times over missing tweets from people I followed, including yours, over the past 4 years or so. I complained so many times they fixed it by removing all support & feedback options regarding missing tweets. (God help you if you want to talk to a real person.)

    I kept coming back because trying to keep up with people on Facebook makes me suicidal. (Oh, uh, trigger warning.) At least on Twitter the whining was limited to 140 characters at a time.

    But I don’t think the missing tweets are social engineering. I think it’s incompetent engineering.

    1. I don’t know about this being attributable to incompetence. Speaking as a software engineer, I know that I would out of my head worried if a significant number of my highp profile clients suddenly were not visible on my software. The twitter platform is mature, and stable. It’s been around for a long while now and the code has matured.

      The fact that your not hearing howls of outrage from SJW’s about missing posts on timeline, that there’s a new “Ministry of Truthiness” at Twitter, and everyone that has been noticing the changes and noting it on other platforms are exclusively from the right side of the aisle is, in my opinion damning.

      I know that Hanlons Razor says “never assume malice when stupidity will suffice”, but in this case there are to many coincidences to my mind.

      1. Yeah, I figured that. I just didn’t want to pronounce anything for certain, because I know from history that as soon as I say I’m certain of anything a legion of poo flinging SJW flying monkeys will descend upon me ranting about how my conclusions must be wrong. This way all I said I know for sure is that it sucks to much to bother with. 🙂

      2. Exactly. Far too many coincidences.

        Let’s make a list:

        * Trending hashtags started by conservatives disappear from the trending list.
        * Prominent hashtags such as “#gamergate” or other wrong-think type tags don’t autocomplete. They’re replaced with tags like “#gamergatersarentgamers”, “#gamergatefailed”, and “#gamergateishate” instead. (go ahead. try it.)
        * Wrong-thought folks posting and their tweets never show up for followers, they never show up under the hashtag they’re posting on. (this is called “shadow-banning”)
        * A “Glitch” in the system causing a prominent conservative’s page to be stuck in a perpetually loading loop. Even searching his name on the site does not bring up his tweets.
        * Suspending the account of a conservative journalist on twitter and refusing to give him a reason why.

        I’m sure that’s not even all of it.

      1. Have you checked for missing tweets by feminists? Or are you just assuming they never disappear because nobody has complained?

        I’ve seen tweets from cartoonists and other authors (including John Scalzi) go missing. I haven’t done rigorous testing, but for now I’m still pointing toward the “stupid” side of the stupid/malicious gauge.

          1. I did follow such things – for over 2 years. The correct answer is zero. Meanwhile I can name you a dozen anti-feminists who’ve had their accts. in just our local “SJW” arena alone repeatedly suspended over nothing, including a guy’s girlfriend (they reported her just to get at him) and – get this – his cat’s satire acct. SFWA member Beth Bernobich can wish we all die in a fire and “anti-harassment” feminist Randi Harper can put the home phone number of a collection agent who was just doing his job on Twitter with no problem. I could list hundreds of lopsided things like that just in SFF and Gamergate alone. Go look at the 600,000 combined Tweets of over 6 years of anti-white racial incitement from theTrudz and Mikki Kendall. N.K. Jemisin’s Twitter feed reads like Stormfront and the SFWA just gave her her 5th Nebula nom as a reward for “social justice” smeared onto shitty novels.

          2. That is not a typo: six… hundred… thousand… Tweets over a six year+ period by just two women.

      1. That’s good to know. I hope you’ll let us know when it shows up so we can move to it. I’ve been wanting to move to a different service from Twitter; G+ I simply didn’t trust for that sort of thing because of SJWs and most of my friends were on Twitter.

    1. Last year, I attended AWS re:Invent, where they were demoing Kinesis. Their demo went like this: “Ok, this is how you create a Kinesis stream; it’s less than a page of code. This is how you allocate a shard. One shard is free tier. Five or six shards are enough to run the entirety of Twitter. You can allocate up to 12 shards.” So yeah, I don’t really foresee any technical obstacles here…

    1. Me either, other than for business purposes: “Hey, everybody, my new book, Son of the Black Manatee, comes out 12 April!”. Why you’d want to use it for social purposes beats me. In any case somebody’s going to make money off the new politically incorrect Twitter-equivalent, with its built-in customer base of the banned.

    2. IIRC from Websters, Twitter is defined as “Organized stupidity in the form of a “reasonable” discussion”. SJWs brook no such thing and despite an obvious business appeal, it’s just too stupid to put up with

      1. It was originally a TCP/IP implementation of SMS. That’s why the character limit; it’s the same as the limit for text-only SMS messages.

  4. I can’t help but think this was/ is Twitter’s goal. F things up for conservatives enough to be truly annoying, to the point where it’s too much of a hassle to use.

    Interesting, too, that they don’t use the same techniques across the board. Adam’s TL has a “glitch”- it will only load the one tweet. They Shadow-banned Daddy_Warpig , this was proven only because he was posting using a certain hashtag. People took screenshots showing that none of his tweets were showing up. It’s subtle and insidious.

    This is what happens when a SJW is given even a little bit of power. Twitter should have never of hired Jack Dorsey. He’s the McCarthyite that Democrats are always wailing on about. I’m sure you’re all shocked to know that the real McCarthyite is one of them.

  5. Not to worry. They annoy too many of their users too fast, and a platform will come along that offers fixes to the most annoying errors, bugs of its own, and easy migration. Twitter has forgotten the lesson of Myspace. (And Friendster, and Livejournal, and…)

  6. Congratulations, Anita Sarkeesian: you just killed Twitter.

    And she’ll be rewarded for it, just you wait and see.

    1. Are the exlcuded folk numerous enough to deny Twitter enough users to matter? They might just see it as cleansing Twitter.

  7. I get the feeling that the Left wants to drive conservatives out of social media entirely, or into an ideological closet, as is the case in Hollywood, where a lot of conservatives have to keep their heads down and tug the forelock in order to get work. Minor annoyances such as refusing to allow conservative politicians the use of music hits for their campaigns is just part and parcel of this.

    1. I think they’d just be happy getting rid of social media, period. It’s not for the masses to be able to talk back to thier betters. We need to be driven back to the days when there were only three shadows on the cave wall, showing the same sillouettes, and no one could look around and disturb them with tales of an outside.

      1. IOW:
        Twitter -broadcasting-, without any of the hoi polloi being able to afford (via connections if not money) an account.

    2. The music thing may be annoying, but I think there are plenty of politicians who I wouldn’t want to use my music if I were a recording star. Why shouldn’t I expect liberal musicians to feel the same way?

      It seems that the more fundamental problem is that there are a number of musical genre with a paucity of conservative hit-makers. That can either be because people who are inclined to make those kinds of music are liberal, or the music business gives the cold shoulder to those who aren’t. It’s probably both.

    3. Same in academia. I can’t find the paper again offhand, but a couple years ago someone documented how if you don’t toe the liberal line (as defined by your fellow academics), you don’t get the tenure and might not keep the job.

  8. I’ve seen the shadow ban lack of posts happening with Larry, Warpig, and Mark Kern’s posts recently. I was just going around it by going direct to their TL’s. What happened with Adam Baldwin is beyond the pale though.

    Odd thing is that earlier I’ve noticed the same thing that Larry is complaining about (the disappearing tweets) happening to me, and I’m a small fry. I’ve got less than 200 followers and only about 4k tweets over several years. Makes me wonder if they’re testing automated tools, since some of their earlier stuff about the Ministry of Truth talked about automatic systems based on blocks, complaints, and smart TL’s ‘showing you what we think you want to see’ and such.

  9. Apart from two large venture capitalists whom I can’t confirm, the large individual investors are the CEO (4.5%), the other co-founder Evans (12%) and the current president (1.9%). Compare that to the largest institutional investor (a Vanguard fund) who hold 1.4% and you can see where leverage lies. I think that one of the largest investors pre B round is a former Alpha Bank executive (.ru), he might have more leverage, but hard to say, since I have’t gone to look at the latest 10k.

    Blackrock cut their TWT position by 50% this month. TWTR is down YoY, but got a bounce last week on buyout rumors. Taking the company out public hands would be crazy expensive compared to its revenue figures and slow growth.

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/investors-in-twitter-pandora-and-other-losing-tech-companies-are-doomed-2016-02-17

    Baldwin has 272k followers. What proportion of those followers will care and leave TWTR? Let’s say that they ALL do – which is unlikely. That’s a drop in the bucket of the user base. I think he is the biggest conservative TWTR user, no?

    1. A quarter million eyes not seeing the interest targeted ads is insignificant to a company with plummeting value that is alienating its viewership with obnoxious niche viewpoints like Anita Sarkesians? With judgment calls like that no wonder twitter is in the $#!%%er

  10. Can I admit that I am jumping up and down with glee, at the idea of Twitter going the way of MySpace? I mean, Facebook is shit enough, but Twitter . . . Twitter makes me die inside, just a little bit, every time I find myself there. I’ve not ever had an account. Every time I’ve been thinking about seriously getting an account, I wind up like that little meme guy who raises his finger and is about to talk, then his finger droops and his face shows sudden conflict of desire, followed by him just walking away. I put up with Facebook, but just barely. Twitter? Nope. No. No, no, no, no. Die in a fire, Twitter. Die in a fire. Faster, please.

        1. Cooking s’mores over the flames of Twitter burning? Frankly I’d rather cook them over a burning diaper pail. The taste and atmosphere would be better.

    1. On the one hand, I completely agree with your assessment of Twitter.

      On the other, Twitter’s self-immolation kind of sucks for me, since it was the easiest means of staying in touch with my readers.

    2. I had a bad feeling about Twitter. I know, that’s a cliche thing to say. But something about it just seemed… off, for a long time now. It’s just that the minitroos and sjw-types aren’t hiding it anymore.

      There are people I respect. Some of them are, or have been on twitter. I like seeing what they have to say. I don’t have to be on twitter to do that…

    3. The only reason I got on it was to keep an eye on Larry’s twitter, because it was hilarious to begin with. Then I got involved reading Gamergate related stuff, then Milo and Daddy Warpig, and some folks passing around conservative related news. Made some nice chattery friends there because I could fit this in short bursts of activity, but I could probably work that better on blogging.

      I probably won’t stay if Larry’s gone.

  11. I saw a tweet once that was an idea for a twitter ad below. Not sure who did it and I’m too lazy to look it up.

    Idea for twitter ad:
    [Guy opens window and starts screaming incoherently at people passing by]
    [Voiceover] Twitter. There’s a better way.

    1. So basically the scene from Network where the guy opens the window and shouts “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”? That movie nailed TV, it just didn’t have the imagination to predict the social media equivalent.

  12. Never got involved with Twitter. Early on saw how the Left wind blew (Ewww…I punned). Even Google is getting in on the act. See how they forced the change of “Pro Life” to “Anti Choice” for peoples browsers. One of many, and Harbinger (oh, the Irony, it burns…) of more to come. Twitter has become the “Go to” tool of lazy journalism, but once enough people check out, it will go the way of AOL and BBSs. The only thing in the Universe that doesn’t change, is that everything changes.

    1. Even Google is getting in on the act. See how they forced the change of “Pro Life” to “Anti Choice” for peoples browsers.

      That wasn’t Google. It’s an extension written for Chrome by some anonymous lefty who’s partnered with an pro-abortion group. Extensions can be created by anyone, and you have to manually go out and install it if you want it; it isn’t something that’s forced on users.

    2. The only reason I look at twitter is to follow a handful of characters, including Trump. And that is only once every couple of weeks. I can easily live without it.

  13. As we’ve increasingly gone from from using terms like “PC” to “SJW” and finally the true gender studies rot at the heart of this, the reaction has been ever more hysterical. That proves that with their increased exposure comes increased scrutiny and journalists and researchers are increasingly appalled at the insane origins of this cult. It’s saying something that Anita Sarkeesian’s devotion to bell hooks is one of the least insane expressions of this cult compared to Judith Butler, Robin Morgan, Charlotte Bunch (of the bloody-faced Milo Rugters talk), Gayle Rubin and Adrienne Rich. Anyone familiar with the peculiar supremacist theories and lingo of those madhatters knows the rhetoric we are seeing today is a 100% match.

    These are not “feminists,” and we need to stop using that term, along with “cultural Marxism,” “Alinsky,” “Marxists,” “Leftists” and “liberals.” The KKK and neo-Nazi don’t care whether black folks or Jews are Conservative or liberal and neither does this cult. They have only one single target and that is men, whites, and heterosexuality. It’s not like they haven’t been blaring that on Twitter every single day in round-robin witchhunts.

    Robert Stacy McCain was the closest to researching the truth and now he is out. Milo is more of a problem because of his higher profile but he will be next. Twitter will make an assessment of which will be more damaging: leaving him be or banning him. I think Milo will make them ban him to make a point. Whether it’s true or not controlling a narrative is important is beside the point; Twitter obviously believes it is. But I agree. 2009 to present is a classic example of mainstreaming hate speech into the public arena as “social justice.”

    I urge everyone to read Kelly M. Sutter’s essay and free PDF “’Nazi Gods’ and ‘Jewish Devils’: The Dehumanizing Rhetoric of Nazi Propaganda.” That mindset is what you’re up against.

    1. I have some alternative names, in several language, but my mother said never to use those words in polite company…

    2. The way I see it, the politically correct are annoying, but essentially passive-aggressive. The social justice warriors go out deliberately looking to cause trouble.

  14. I never made the personal choice to get involved with Twitter. Once it became clear just how leftist many of these tech giants were rolling, I decided to use them as little as possible. I’m this close to canceling my FB account because they’ve just gotten way too creepy.

    It’s really starting to affect a lot of megacorps. I’m having fun watching several of them start their death spirals. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of assholes. I welcome the next dotcom bubble bust.

    1. Well if they really piss off enough people to have a viable market for an alternative, one will arise. What fraction of Twitter’s users are pissed off though?

      1. Well, they didn’t really seem to be in a position of losing market share, so any loss – and they’re losing people over this – isn’t going to change the existing trendline.

        Though I would say that a half-assed boycott isn’t really going to do the trick.

        1. Twitter had ZERO subscriber growth last quarter. The only way they are not losing market share is if the market isn’t even keeping up with population growth, which puts it in a dying market. None of those is good for Twitter.

          That’s why they’re doing this. The company is sick and they don’t know how to cure it. They’re trying bloodletting right now with the Trust and Safety Council. The next step is a mercury enema administered by the new timeline. Who knows, if we’re lucky they might try trepanation with a paywall after that.

          1. Yes, I originally intended to convey that Twitter wasn’t in a position to sustain a loss in market share. Realized the poor wording after hitting post.

    2. An acquaintance works for a military subcontractor. The corporation has no internal email or conferencing systems; they do everything on Facebook and Twitter. He had to sign up for a Facebook account to exchange memos with co-workers, and to contact HR to get his tax withholding changed.

      “The mind, she boggle!”

      1. That is really really bad. Anything put into Facebook becomes FBs property. Apparently including this guys personal info.

  15. I literally joined Twitter yesterday. Today, I wonder what’s the point? I’m sure a more liberal (in the classic sense) competitor to Twitter will takes its place in the market. Even SJWs aren’t going to enjoy Twitter if there isn’t anyone around to offend them… Either that or they’ll start eating their own. Hmm. Maybe I will keep Twitter…

    1. You have to have a Twitter account in order to achieve high rankings in Google search results.

      The Google Web crawlers look for certain things: linked Twitter account, linked Facebook account, linked Google account, outgoing links, interior links, photos, and videos. Traffic isn’t all that important.

      If you have a blog or Website, you need Twitter, despite the new Ministry of Truth. My guess is that it’ll backfire spectacularly, and they’ll put things back the way they were.

  16. Well, you were one of three people I opened up Twitter to read (never made an account) and one of them already left.

    *keeps reading*

    Adam Baldwin’s done too? Well, that’s all of them.

    Nothing good will come of a place that made Scam Artist Sarkeesian head censor.

  17. At this rate I’m going to be using twitter just to check and see if SWTOR is finished with maintenance or has fixed a server outage. Or with another game.

    1. That’s why I’m hanging around for now. But losing Larry’s smackdowns of idiots on Twitter is going to take most of the fun out of it.

    2. That’s pretty much why I’m not deleting my account. If they want me to leave they’ll have to force me out. Though I don’t really post much anyway. (I recently broke… 600 tweets a day or so ago.)

      Hm. Maybe I should make a snarky tweet or two about #MiniTrust every once in awhile? I’ve used the term in a few tweets, but I haven’t actually made it into a hashtag.

  18. I think there is a more fundamental problem than the Ministry of Truth. Twitter, even when it works perfectly, and isn’t shadow banning, is largely a pointless waste of time. It’s as if we’re being invited to read the whole country’s collective supply of restroom walls.

  19. Some folks are suggesting the GNU Social network of sites (create an account on one, follow people there or on any other) like GNUTan or Quitter.se or FreezePeach.xyz; I think there’ll need to be many new “instances” of GNU Social before this becomes a feasible option. (Especially since the Quitter.se site is even more explicitly SJW-friendly than Twitter.)

  20. I only have an account for work so that I can monitor feeds from local news, national weather service, and affiliated organizations to get a heads up when something happens locally that I might have to deal with. I’ve never “twitted” once, I only need a receiver, not a transceiver.

    For that reason, I’ll maintain that account, but have never seen the value of one for outside of work. I have enough RSS feeds to keep me busy in my recreational web surfing.

    Hopefully this means Larry will have more time to create ways of emptying my bank account!

    1. Any first time posters or posts with links get dumped automatically in moderation. I only read and approve blog posts once a day usually, but I approve everything but spam and death threats.

        1. You’re so right, James. Does anyone know where Larry Correia works so I can contact him employer and tell them how he discriminates on his blog against people who identify as little globe/spindle things?

          1. I work for CorreiaTech. Wendell has a barrel he keeps all the complaints in. Periodically we set it on fire.

          2. It’s good to know that he’s getting some extra mileage out of those empty Cheetos drums.

  21. “Stupidity *or* malice?” I’d say you really need to embrace the healing power of “and.”

    The SJWs now calling the shots at Twitter are obviously perfectly cool with destroying the entire platform, if it means that people like Stacy McCain, Larry and Adam Baldwin can’t use it. Remind me again: Which administration made “We had to destroy the village to save it” a national catchphrase?

    1. That’s hardly unusual. Most of the companies I’ve worked for, their own management seemed to be quite comfortable with sabotaging their own company for trivial or no reason… even when their bonus was keyed to the profit margin.

      Writing/publishing isn’t the only field”…and then you get paid” sits in some sort of aphasic blind spot…

  22. There is an alternative to Twitter: Quitter.se

    Unlike Twitter, the Quitter platform is decentralized similar to E-mail.

  23. I decided to scale back, then saw the Sarkeesian thing… and then RSMcCain. But now you and Baldwin?

    Fuck ’em.

  24. A note on “missing tweets”.
    Given the technology used in Twitter, it’s possible, even likely, that different users will be out of sync with each other. The database that Twitter uses doesn’t operate in the same way as the one your bank or credit card uses. In tech terms, it lacks “atomic transactions”. There are lots of good technical reasons for this, in an environment like Twitter or Facebook. Missing tweets can be a byproduct of this.

    Trust and Safety Council and Shadow Banning…yeh, those are the actions of people who want to control what you see and hear. Of course, it’s their business.

    Seems like an opportunity for someone else’s business to me.

    1. TBH, banks don’t use “atomic transactions”, either. They use eventual consistency — which is why you can be overdrawn.

    2. No, but the messages should show up eventually. If they don’t show up, they’re losing data, either through bad design, incompetence, or deliberate action.

  25. It’s sad because I don’t use Facebook and I always enjoyed the beat downs you administered during your loading screens. But the whole place is getting more and more toxic. Turning into a massive echo chamber.

  26. I don’t twit (twoot? twhut?), and I’ve only been a point on two twit-storms.

    I checked. Dori Smith’s OUTRAGE about my freebie table offerings is still there.

    So we can all sleep safe, I guess.

    LIBERAL bias?

    Pffft…don’t be silly.

  27. I will bet you that after the 2016 November Presidential election, Twitter ( if they are still around) would issue a massive apology to all its users stating they still stand for free speech and freedom of expression but will blame a large group of users( read conservatives) who had caused emotional and mental anguish to the vulnerable members( read- SJWs and Progs) that caused Twitter to ban these users from using Twitter.

  28. Good riddance, Twitter.

    Many high-profile users are discovering just how pointless the site is. It sucks that certain political groups get the shaft, I know, but if it’s any consolation, I can name dozens of big-name liberals who either never joined or quit the service out of frustration. Stephen Fry quit earlier this month, for example.

    And artists and creatives will hopefully redirect their focus to crafting remarkable content–which is the way it was before these digital panopticons squirmed their way into the public. Even the New York Times forces its contributors to have Twitter accounts (which certainly explains their journalistic decline, as they are more focused on followers than creating compelling narratives).

    I just can’t think of a way to save the site, and I don’t care. These media need to prove their worth to US; we are not obligated to accept all of them at face value and then figure out how to squeeze them into our lives. They need us.

    So please, everyone, stop giving them all your information for free. Don’t feed the machine. Take pictures because you want to–not because you think it’d make a good status update.

    1. “I just can’t think of a way to save the site, and I don’t care.”

      I have $20 set aside, so in about five years I’ll just buy Twitter and give it a go. Yeah, it’ll still be a total waste of money, but if I totally screw up I should still be able to recoup a fiver out of it.

  29. When I’ve wanted to ask a question or bring something to your attention, I’ve used Twitter in the past. Where should we do that now? I hope the only answer isn’t Facebook.

  30. If company insiders are shorting the stock they run a risk of criminal prosecution for insider trading. Also once a company gets a stink on their product name even when you change the name the stink will be talked about by someone. Twitter is just the Internet equivalent of a vanity press now. They’ll find there are not enough SJW to keep them afloat by banner add sales.

  31. “The first division of labor, in pre-history, was based on sex: men hunted, women built the villages, took care of children, and farmed. Women collectively controlled the land, language, culture, and the communities. Men were able to conquer women with the weapons that they developed for hunting when it became clear that women were leading a more stable, peaceful, and desirable existence. We do not know exactly how this conquest took place, but it is clear that the original imperialism was male over female: the male claiming the female body and her service as his territory (or property).”

    “…heterosexuality is crucial to maintaining male supremacy.”

    “Race, class and national oppressions come from men, serve ruling class white men’s interests.”

    “Lesbianism is the key to liberation and only women who cut their ties to male privilege can be trusted to remain serious in the struggle against male dominance.”

    That’s radical lesbian Charlotte Bunch in 1972, the woman who started and has headed up Rutgers’ women studies program since 1989. She has traveled to China with Hillary Clinton, been given an award by President Clinton and is influential at the U.N. It is her creations who smeared blood on their faces at Milo’s Rutgers talk.

    It is John Scalzi himself who taught us about “intersectionality” by directing us to this quote by lesbian and “shamanic power” Audre Lorde who points out the privilege of the “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure.” Lorde in turn once blurbed the dust-jacked of the academic fraud Andrea Dworkin’s book Woman-Hating, with it’s 17th century magic Hobbits who passed on the powers of levitation and telepathy to a secret European coven of witches, 9 million of whom were subsequently killed over 300 years by Christian men.

    Do you think it’s a coincidence a political lesbian and former women’s studies teacher like Cat Rambo is now president of the SFWA? I can guarantee you it was Judith Butler, Audre Lorde and other insane women in Rambo’s text books, not photos of women marching for the vote. There was certainly Derrida, Lacan, Levi-Strauss and Foucault; empty-headed French intellectuals who were cherry-picked to “prove” incest and lesbianism were thrown down by men in Bunch’s imaginary pre-history. You don’t really think the “cisheteropatriarchy” came from equal rights feminism, do you? Here’s another example academic topics from Depaul’s “Women’s Gender Studies” dept. webpage:

    “intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality; cross-cultural perspectives; violence against women; women in the Middle East; lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender identities and politics; autobiography; queer theories; immigrant women; globalization; transnational feminist perspectives; antiracism; gender and education; feminist theories and politics; gender and family violence.”

    Next time someone uses the word “feminist” to you just laugh in their face and say “Did you mean ‘radical lesbianism?'” Twitter is providing covering fire for this lunatic asylum – there symbolized by Anita Sarkeesian – and for no other thing. We are to believe that hundreds of thousands of great castles, bridges, cathedrals and monuments never once built by women are the result of “misogyny”; heterosexual families too.

    “White male privilege cares ONLY about white male privilege, and there is no goal except maintaining that position of power.” – Marjorie Liu, Marvel Comics writer and host of the non-whites-only “VONA Voices: Writing Workshops for Writers of Color.”

  32. Gonna miss ya. Personally, I plan to ride this thing down like Major Kong on the bomb, screamin’ a rebel yell all the way.

  33. In my opinion there should be Senate hearings with a view to shutting down every women’s & gender studies programs at universities and colleges in America. Every member of such faculties should be fired and the whole done under federal hate crime legislation and for violating Title IX for group defamation, hate speech, sexual harassment, racial incitement and incitement to hate men.

    All such depts. should be reorganized from the ground up. Since these people are so addicted to diversity, let all such programs be ruled by a committee half GOP, half Dem, half women, half men. They would all need to agree on hiring and the text books used.

    We cannot allow hate speech to define itself or expect it to end itself.

  34. Here’s the problem: the Left is coordinating with government to silence dissent. They say “well, Twitter is a private company, so they can enforce whatever rules they like.”

    The Left is attacking on two fronts: on the public front, they use “hate speech” laws to get dissenting talk out of the public view. On the private front, they use “ownership”.

    How long till they come after your internet connection? How long till your ability to “communicate” is destroyed?

  35. And the Usual Suspects weigh in:

    File 770:

    “snowcrash on February 23, 2016 at 3:29 am said:

    (snip)

    (12) – (15) – Well, this is a thing. It’s got that perfect mix of “conservatives/ libertarians” who hold up as totems of their beliefs the practice of being an arsehole. Put this together with them also holding sacred the view that a private enterprise should somehow be obligated to provide a platform.as well as the belief that being criticised, ridiculed, and ignored is somehow “censorship”, and you’ve got a really unique breed of… whatever they are. Is pro-entitlement conserva-libertarianism a thing in the States?”

    “Aaron on February 23, 2016 at 5:43 am said:

    (12/13/14) One thing that amuses me about the conservative figures flouncing off of twitter is how they keep mentioning that they enjoyed Twitter because of the ability to “debate”.

    Given that their version of “debate” is often “get an internet mob to scream death and rape threats at someone for days on end”, I’m not sad to see them go. I’m not sure why Baldwin liked “debate” – he had a habit of getting tangled up in arguments with people like Sarkeesian and Wu and getting his head handed to him, after which he would go back and delete all of his tweets from that argument. Baldwin is, quite simply, not very bright.”

    Twitter:

    “Connor Clay ‏@NordRonnoc · 10h10 hours ago

    Connor Clay Retweeted

    One asshole down. I used to know Larry Correia. Hope he realized what he had done.”

    1. I’ve got to love how me walking away from one social media platform is news worthy to these pathetic mopes. 🙂

      True, I used to know that last guy. More like I knew his mom pretty well. He’s developmentally challenged, suffers from all manner of mental illness, and hates my guts because I wouldn’t lie to him and coddle his nonsense. Oh well. He’s a grown up now.

      1. I like the use of the word flounce. It conotes a pattern of declining hugbox policed blogs starving for real content which is essentially what Twitter has stupidly decided to decay into.

      2. And some more:

        “timb116 ‏@timb116 · 5h5 hours ago

        @JimJlr2 @stphil Don’t get wrong, as much as its fun watching jerks defend a racist, Twitter is better w/o Larry Correia or Adam Baldwin”

        “Captain Murdock ‏@CaptMurdock · 19h19 hours ago

        The Sad Puppies/Vox Day contingent have their jockeys in a twist. Wake me when they follow Adam Baldwin out the door. ”

        I see how quickly it’s gone from “Nobody’s banning you, wingnuts!” to “You had it coming.”

        1. Not surprising, since they pretend the people they hate do nothing but “get an internet mob to scream death and rape threats at someone for days on end” to justify that belief.

        1. I knew him when he was a kid. Used to bug me all the time on FB about stuff, and I’d always take the time to answer his questions. Then one day he had a total flip out melt down when he discovered I supported Gamergate, and how they were nothing but rape gangs of womyn hating death threat rapists and I was dead to him. Ever since then I’ve tried to ignore him and not respond because I’ve got a lot of respect for his mom.

    2. “All men benefit from structural sexism. Men bragging about moderate views doesn’t make them intelligent, it makes them unaware of privilege.” – Brianna Wu

      And if I push back against that, morons like Wu consider that “harassment.” Meanwhile, millions of unknown men without names claiming to be moderate is proof of a lack of intelligence and unawareness of their oppressive privilege, which in this goof’s mind is neither inflammatory nor supremacist. Good thing a guy who thinks he’s a woman has sized up reality for us and chimed in on the side of Twitter today. And of course, here’s the keeper quote from this amusing lunatic:

      “Brianna Wu ‏@Spacekatgal So, why do men feel like they know more about sexism than women? You don’t live it day in and out. Just listen – it’s not complicated.”

      Good question, Bud; why do they? Here’s yet another example from this moron where they show how it’s harassment when I do it but noble brave rebellion when blissfully insane “feminists” do it:

      “Brianna Wu ‏@Spacekatgal It’s amazing, but standing your ground and saying, ‘I hear you. I don’t agree,’ is interpreted an aggressive act of defiance.”

      Okay, I hear you and don’t agree [blocked]. Banned.

      Those are quotes I picked up from Wu last year. 770 is today kind enough to point out Wu is against Larry on this Twitter matter because “There is no evidence for it whatsoever. None, zilch, zero.”

      Keep the quotes from your clownish community coming, Mike. Between the wisdom of K. Tempest Bradford, Wu and your commenters, it makes for an interesting case study and insight into the minds of mentally ill lunatics, racist con artists and pathological liars. Keep telling yourself it makes a real difference Baldwin deleted himself, since he clearly did it in the context of a banning, without which, he would not have done it. Now that we know that, are we all going “Oh, whew! Nevermind then”? No, it doesn’t matter, and 770 has been providing covering fire for this fuckery since the beginning, behaving exactly like Twitter is now.

      Look at your commenters about the Oshiro affair; they could’ve been written by one person. How do you come to such a consensus without culling the herd? Gee, you never delete people anymore. How’d that happen? Challenge the commenters you’ve kept in play to stop lying about a “cabal.” There is no need for such a thing within such a consensus, and it is that consensus which creates the Nebulas and Hugos, not a “conspiracy.” There is no need of a Catholic “conspiracy” within a Catholic church.

      1. The funny thing is, in this very post I say I don’t know what is going on with Twitter, just that it wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.

        1. The hypocrisy continues: the very Beth Bernobich who wished you and your fans should die in a fire is criticizing Chris Gerrib’s apology for his innocuous comment about the Conquistadores. Were this just politics, it would just be gossip of little interest to me, but the obvious race and man-hatred behind their insane version of a moral ethos is something that needs to be addressed. This is a hate cult. Bernobich being a member of the SFWA, can you imagine how she votes for Nebulas? I can: with her [redacted].

      2. Have you been following the Oshiro witch hunt over there? I have never seen a member of a protected group under-bussed faster and harder than that poor woman Selina Rosen. What a pack of rabid dogs, holy Toledo.

        None of them seem to have the self-awareness to realize the lone Sad Puppy gun nut racist/bigot/homphobe (me) is the one sticking up for the witch they want to burn.

        I’m happy to let them rage on, after all The Phantom exists only on the Interwebz, they can’t get at me in real life. I don’t know how Larry and Brad put up with it.

        1. I don’t know anything about the Oshiro thing. Is that the one where the guy was the GoH at a con and didn’t get treated well? I’ve seen that in passing is all. I can only assume that if File 770 is upset over it, they’re either on the wrong side, or just plain stupid. 🙂

          1. They’re going f-ing psychotic. Recommend you skip it, the ugly is large and will waste time better spent.

          2. Someone uttered the word “Cortes” at him and whites laughing while dropping A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from chrome planes with heterosexual nose art of Ann Miller flashed before his eyes.

          3. Yeah, and you know it really makes me want to attend WorldCon this year, watching 770 tolerance in action. Holy freaking freak.

          4. 770’s commenters are hilarious. They claim we’re seeing a non-existent conspiracy in threads where they’re sharing Gravitar IDs so they can use a script to block each other’s comments. I wonder if they’ll eventually block everyone’s comments but their own. What a crew of daffy fuckers. You’d need an army and a garbage scow the size of an aircraft carrier to unpack all their stupid bullshit.

          5. Someone said Paddington to me once and I remembered all the times that Tigger chased me through the hundred acre wood laughing with obscene joy, my blood on his claws, and my lungs raw from screaming. Also that time I caught my mommy giving Santa Claus a handy under the Christmas tree and when Santa saw me he changed shaped so he looked like my daddy and told me to go to bed and I smelled rum all over that immortal elfin home breaker.

        2. I’ve been reading it too — and shaking my head. A generation ago (“in my day, sonny”) he’d have told her to knock it off, people would laugh about it later, and that would have been the end of it. Now? It’s a full-scale production with three-part harmony and an anvil chorus.

          What’s really hilarious are the holes some of the commenters dug themselves while falling all over themselves apologizing for not sufficiently recognising someone’s $ingroupness.

      3. “Just listen – it’s not complicated.”

        But I have listened to the “TALES O’ SYSTEMIC SEXISM, and it’s not just complicated, it’s dogmatic, paranoid, rejects reality, and prone to becoming incoherent when examined in any sort of detail by any honest, insightful, analytical, or generally life- experienced person. In trying to use academia to imply an automatic position of credibility to feminist views, feminism has succeeded only in making the humanities academia seem fragile, gullible, easily intimidated, incompetent, poorly read, and pathologically obsessed with fads.

      4. Aaaand over at Vile they’re very upset that Larry made a comment about the Oshiro thing without doing research first. This, coming from people who by their own admission, comment on what we Puppies say without reading what we actually said. For example, this week a whole bunch of them got mad at MGC for “insulting” Katherine Rusch, based on the one paragraph Glyer excerpted there. Anybody who knows MGC knows how ludicrous that statement is.

          1. They’re angry because I called them a bunch of witch burning psychotics, and now they’re taking it out on you. My bad.

            Although I must say I’m surprised at Mr. Glyer, combing through your comments threads. Seems kinda teenagerish.

          2. They are psychotic. They remind me of back when I used to be conflicted between watching The Three Stooges or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker on the 700 Club, because they were on the same time every morning. Tammy used to sing songs and she cried every time, causing her incredibly thick mascara to run in black streaks down her face. Plus, like that scam in the movie The Producers, they sold 1800% of lots they had in some Godlandia condo asylum or whatever it was. That’s what these freaks are – File 700 Club. If I measured these pre-Enlightenment Huns in winces I’d look like an old pioneer prairie women.

          3. Larry Correia does not need a new mountain. There’s a rent-free space in Glyer’s head for him, right next to the Mad Genius Clubhouse.

          4. “Larry Correia does not need a new mountain. There’s a rent-free space in Glyer’s head for him, right next to the Mad Genius Clubhouse.”

            Good thing that there’s plenty of empty space in there.

          5. Well, with Vox Day also in there even Glyer’s headspace is becoming pretty crowded . . .

            Heck, Vox is living rent-free in so many SJW heads he’s become the biggest slumlord on the planet . . . 🙂

          6. Today it’s because you’re old. No, really.

            “Ray on February 25, 2016 at 6:20 am said:

            @Vivienne Raper
            How many people attending Worldcon in 1976 were under 40?
            If the goal of the Puppies is to attract young people to Worldcon, how is it served by having Torgersen, Correia and Beale as ringleaders, and constantly harking back to the fiction of the good old days when men were manly?”

          7. Heh… I’m only 40.

            Her statement is gibberish.

            I don’t care what the average age of WorldCon attendees is. I think the average age at WorldCon is 97. In between the mobility scooters and oxygen tanks, I found WorldCon to be a stuffy circle jerk of like minded people telling each other how brilliant they are. What I do care about is the future of my genre, and that means books catering to more than just liberal baby boomers and millennial Bernbots. Shockingly enough, young people are individuals too, they’re not all in lockstep love with preachy, boring, dying polar bear fiction.

            Young readers don’t like men being manly? I do extremely well with young readers (well enough to buy a mountain estate at 40 which I also know pisses these people off), so maybe, just maybe, not all young people are the same, and there are plenty of them out there who like “manly” adventure (which is kind of funny, since I also sell a ton of books to women too).

            The only Good Old Days I hearken back to are the ones where a bunch of our customer base hadn’t been driven off by preachy, boring, partisan bullshit, and authors could write what they want without attracting an SJW witch hunt.

          8. Well, you’re not a vital young man in your prime like David Gerrold or Steve Davidson, but you manage to get by.

          9. I’ve been seeing this behavior pattern in damn near everyone else for years now. You call these moronic clowns “liberals” or “progressives”, the label they give themselves. There is not one damn thing about them that is liberal. They are wanabe Totalitarians, who think they god’s gift to everything, even though they adamantly decry their disbelief in any god.

            People who can think outside the dogma of their Political Correctness need to stop using their self-declared labels. Call them what they are: Totalitarians, Fascists, Authoritarians, Oligarchs, anything but liberal or progressive, which are outright lies in regards to them. People who make a living out of the use of language following along with their Ministry of Truth redefinition of words just furthers their agenda.

            I’ve stopped calling them liberal, except as a caveat toward their lies.

          10. I do make a living out of the use of language (a pretty good one too). What you don’t seem to realize is that when people like me talk about them using their terms, the terms get redefined in the minds of the populace, which is why progressive fell into disuse, so they switched to liberal until that too got colored by their statist nature, and then they tried to switch back to liberal.

            So I’ll call them whatever I want, thanks.

          11. Over the past twenty odd years that I’ve actually been paying attention to the political use of liberal and progressive, I have seen them both in continuous usage. The Slick Willie election was what made really start looking at the Orwellian nature of how language was being used in the media. With the exception of people like the ones you find on this site and other groups that already understand the outright lies that are masked by their use of the terms, I have yet to see any swings or revelations in the understanding of the general masses. You highly overestimate the ability of people who have been inculcated by the media’s use the terms see beyond the walls of the box of lies. So except for preaching to the choir, using their own terms for the libs and progs is not having much effect.

          12. So it seems. Today they’re raging on at me because I use a pseudonym to comment.

            Because I it’s very inconvenient that they can’t silence me by calling my boss to try and get me fired, I guess. Maybe something else though.

            What’s striking today is they don’t seem to connect “censoring twitter” with “BURN the witch!”. If there really was an impartial Trust and Safety Committee, (stop laughing you guys!) then File 770’s witch burning thread would be shut the hell down. Because White Male slagging Gay Female over hearsay, my decoder ring says that’s bad. Maybe I need an update.

          13. Half the people on that blog use pseudonyms to comment. The mind boggles at the hypocrisy on display.

          14. That’s a killer, eh? I’ve got some dickweed named “DriveByFruiting” telling me off for posting as “The Phantom”.

            All in all, the chances of me ever letting these scooter driving freaks near me is getting smaller and smaller. Attend WorldCon? Maybe in a Mobile Infantry powered suit. Otherwise, not so much. I’m staying right here in my fortified compound with my alligator filled moat.

          15. “That’s a killer, eh? I’ve got some dickweed named “DriveByFruiting” telling me off for posting as “The Phantom”.”

            He screwed it up, too. It’s a run-by fruiting. Didn’t he ever see Mrs. Doubtfire? Oh well, too late. A good SJW can’t watch it now. It’s much too transphobic for [CURRENT YEAR].

            And yeah, people saying “if you really believe what you say, put your real name behind it” was stupid when I got on the internet over 20 years ago, it was stupid when it was probably going on well before that on the first BBSes, and it’s extremely stupid today, even without the hypocrisy.

          16. It’s kind of funny. They link to everything I write, then make up outlandish nonsense about me, and then if you guys tell me about it and I respond at all, they’re all like, “Look! Look! He noticed us!” It’s like a toddler pooping his pants for attention. Yes. Of course I noticed you, Glyer. You keep smearing shit all over yourself to entertain your gang of mental patients, it’s hard not to notice. Seriously, you weirdo Santa Claus looking motherfucker, get a new hobby. Your continual fixation is starting to creep me out.

          17. “…you weirdo Santa Claus looking…”

            BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!

            Thanks, Larry, for that cleansing bit of hilarity. My ribs hurt now.

  36. What we need is a new FREE SPEECH platform similar to the user interface of Twitter..

    PLUS the ability to IMPORT all your Twitter followers like one does with importing your sat IE browser bookmarks to Firefox browser.

    That would clean up. If technically possible.

      1. Keep it privately owned by a small group? What would the capital costs be, anyway?

        And would it be designed to profit, or be a community service?

  37. No great loss from my view.
    I never tweeted nor followed anyone who did.
    Loved your books – keep up the good writing in formats longer than 144 characters.

  38. Now that Twatter is out for most of us…do you still believe that Cruz will win, i think i remember you making that prediction much earlier. Here in Texas, March 1 will be the primary day and I think Trump will win here, not because he is liked but more a message to the establishment..oh and I love your books just wish there was less time between them 🙂

    1. I made that prediction back in August. It is tough to tell. I underestimated the number of the low information, pissed off at the establishment, easily conned by a huckster democrat who the establishment is fine with crowd. I figure that most of the republicans want anybody other than Trump, (2/3 to 3/4 depending on the state, with Trump being less popular as a 2nd choice than Jeb) so as the race comes down to smaller number of contenders support will coalesce around whoever the last other guy is who isn’t Trump. Between Rubio and Cruz, Cruz has more people working for him in more states, and more campaign money, but it could go either way.

      1. And I’d definitely prefer Cruz to Rubio, but I’d vote Rubio in a HEARTBEAT if it came down to him vs. Trump.

        If our primaries used a preference-voting system to pick the nominee, Trump wouldn’t be in the lead even right now. Many of his supporters would be pretty happy with Cruz, and maybe even okay with Rubio. But most of Cruz and Rubio’s supporters would rank Noah Ward above Trump on their ballots.

        1. If Trump gets the Republican nomination, I really don’t think I could in good conscience vote anything other than third party. Reminds me of that Simpsons Treehouse of Horror where the two aliens took the place of the two main candidates and one of them won and people were like, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos” while the aliens had enslaved them all.

      2. From Jerry Pournelle’s site:
        ‘I do not share your dismay at Trump; but do not take this as endorsement.’
        ‘I have said this before and I have seen no reason to change my view: Trump is not a Conservative as paleos understand the term; he is a pragmatic populist in the tradition of Andrew Jackson or Herbert Hoover.’

        Dr J knows more about politics than me. I don’t see any connection between ‘low information’ and ‘pissed off at the establishment’. As to ‘easily conned’- Trump voters are more easily conned than Sanders voters, Clinton voters, or Rubio voters? Cruz voters, maybe. Maybe not.

        1. It seems obvious to me that Trump is a version of Milo and voters are weaponizing him to give liberals providing covering fire to these sick racist and man-hating movements a look at themselves in a mirror. Trump is the Frankenstein’s monster which didn’t exist and which now does. You want your imaginary immoral straight white male? Fine – here he is. How do you like yourselves in a mirror?

          People are pissed. This is how a goofy pro wrestler became the governor of Minnesota.

        2. JP’s comments should make people concerned about Trump. Hoover and Jackson were not exactly success stories. In fact, they both made things worse through government expansion.

        3. Whoever that jackass is comparing Trump to Andrew Jackson, is POS insulting one of the finest men to ever hold the office.

          Andrew Jackson is hated and reviled by today’s leftist ivory tower scum, because of his wars against the Indians and his abolishment of the first federal bank, but what they probably hate more than anything is that he was a man iron principles. He was a man that would stake his life against his principles and honor by facing another man in a duel over his beliefs.

          Trump is a gutless little faggot (whether or not he take it in the rear is immaterial, his is a faggot either way) who screams like an enraged monkey when anyone doesn’t agree with him. He would never stand up face to face with another man over principles. He run and hide while screaming for the police and his lawyers, like the cowardly little catamite he is.

  39. Oh dear. As an aside I am going to stop using the term SJW and revert back to PC types. Social Justice Warrior sounds cool, and also suggests that they might be standing up for something awesome, like women being able to own property. There’s nothing cool sounding about Political Correctness type. To me that sounds more like the sort of little Napoleon who’d serve on a “Trust and Safety Council”

    1. “Social Justice Warrior” sounds so uncool that even the SJWs themselves want people to stop calling them that.

      1. This entire social justice affair the last 5 years is the most remarkable example of systematic institutionalized hate speech I have ever seen anywhere in my life. And they never stop. And they never take their foot of the gas. In 100 years of SFF in America there is nothing that can remotely compare to this. They are also the most singularly unaware people I’ve ever encountered in my life. How do people get this stupid? How does such a cult form? How can they believe their own ridiculous lies even after you’ve shown them to be lies? How can they believe “marginalized” is an actual thing? How can you passionately believe in such a thing when you can’t even show it? Who the fuck is marginalizing anyone?

        It’s clear these people don’t understand how stories work. Stories aren’t a documentary.

        Here’s what Frank Munsey wrote in 1895 about the short story:

        “We want stories. That is what we mean—stories, not dialect sketches, not washed out studies of effete human nature, not weak tales of sickly sentimentality, not ‘pretty’ writing. . . . We do want fiction in which there is a story, a force, a tale that means something—in short a story. Good writing is as common as clam shells, while good stories are as rare as statesmanship.”

        What I would add to that is “diversity” in that context is a fiction. Snow is real and common. How often do you see it in stories? Fiction is not a documentary. If people want realism the easy answer is to stop writing SFF, not expect us to put in disabled transgender, or snow. Is anyone a bigot because stories default to good weather? If someone comes here from Iceland should I listen while they complain about no volcanoes or snow in SFF, or Icelanders? Fiction doesn’t default to “white,” it defaults to fiction. That’s just too obvious for whiny racial and sexual narcissists full of self-pity to figure out. Pie-chart story and you pie-chart a cemetery for art and entertainment.

  40. I’ve avoided social media completely precisely because I knew the west coast lefty technocrats would do exactly this. Like the lilies of the field I Facebook not, neither do I tweet.

  41. Well, dang. That’s unfortunate. You were probably like half the reason I’m even on Twitter lately. But Twitter had been doing things to irritate me for a while, specifically not showing all posts from people I follow.

    So here’s my question: If one is an author, and especially if one is a little-known and/or self-published author (not me yet, but could be in the future), is being on Facebook and Twitter a necessary evil? If so much of one’s success as an author is marketing, and so much of marketing these days is social media, how necessary is it to use those platforms to gain an audience? Can authors be successful with just having their own website and making their books available on Amazon?

  42. I’ve had enough too. I’m switching over to freezepeach.xyz They have two rules: no child porn and don’t do anything that could get the owners dragged into court. That’s it and that’s all.

    1. Never joined Twitter (or Facebook, for that matter). freezepeach looks interesting, though, and reading their terms of use, I really like the cut of their jib. Signed up and will start figuring it out (I’m now following you, I think, whatever that means). I’ll even throw some money at them if they’ll come up with a droid app.

  43. I don’t use Twitter, so it’s just an abstract issue for me. As I see it, they’re a corporation, they can do whatever they want. If they want to turn their platform into an SJW-only service, they can do that. If they want to restrict access only to certified Italian plumbers, they can do that too. Yes, they will lose money, but hey — it’s their money, they can spend it however they want.

    That said, I’m still a pinko commie leftist, and IMO in this case the capitalist model doesn’t really work. What we need is some sort of a decentralized microblogging platform — maybe something that runs on a blockchain — that is fully distributed. Such a platform would be very difficult to shut down, but also correspondingly difficult to monetize. Centralized systems such as Twitter and Facebook are easier to monetize, but then every user is a the whim of whoever happens to be running the thing. Today you can speak freely, tomorrow you need to be an Italian plumber SJW or you’re banned, you have no say in the matter.

  44. From Vile 770:

    “Twitter is a PRIVATE company and is entitled to do anything it damn well pleases, including changing its Terms of Service so that it can only be used by disabled trans PoC people who make over $100M a year (which would be a bad business model, but perfectly legal). If you don’t like it, you can leave, as the right-wingers are so fond of saying. The Sacred All-Knowing Free Market Hath Spoken. I don’t think they want the government telling Twitter how to run its for-profit business.

    The First Amendment (or similar governmental guarantees of free speech) do not apply. The righties’ freeze peach is not abridged, and if they want to stomp their feet and leave with a flounce, they are perfectly free to. They are also free to let Twitter know how they disagree with the Terms of Service. They’re free to LIE ABOUT Twitter’s Terms of Service, but must expect to be called out about lying. Actions have consequences, though I’ve noticed a lot of conservatives have trouble applying this maxim towards their own behavior (And BernieBros, to be fair, but there are far, far fewer of them — basically a rounding error compared to the number of right-wingers, often SWM fundie Christians, particularly clueless ones).

    And all social media services are buggy as hell in what they display when. I frequently don’t see something from friends until a few days later, or maybe not at all, and my thought isn’t CONSPIRACY AGAINST ME AND MINE, but rather “!@#$ stupid algorithms. Sigh.” Twitter is notoriously glitchy.”

    Wow. This is history in the making. The first time a left-winger has defended the right of a corporation to stifle free speech.

    1. And notice how that culture routinely shifts the argument to something we are not arguing, which is the legal aspect. From what I’ve seen, and also what I think, the issue is one of an expectation of fair play that has been suddenly withdrawn.

      For example, let’s look at the Tiptree Awards at WisCon. They have always stated their gender agenda and so rank and file genre writers don’t feel angry or discriminated against when they are not considered. However, the Nebulas and Hugos is a different matter; they have always been a come-one, come-all award. Now – suddenly – in only the last three years, they are in effect the same gender/affirmative action awards as the Tiptrees, a thing our crusaders publicly deny as often as they stump for it.

      But with Twitter the issue is even more stark. I have been following this and they are clearly targeting a handful of individuals, and every one of them people who have been amazingly effective and proactive in opposing “feminism.” Twitter is not going after conservatives, they are providing covering fire for this bizarre gender-race ideology which zoomed from obscurity via Twitter beginning around 2009.

      As usual, we see the same con game I call “Scalzi’s Squirrel Theory”: you target straight white males, and so of course, that is the demographic which mostly pushes back. Then, that pushback is considered “proof” of homophobia, racism and misogyny. If you only throw rocks at squirrels in the park, you shouldn’t expect blue jays to start flying around in a panic. Of course it is the squirrels which get angry. Therefore the anger of squirrels is confirmed.

      The truth is people like R. Stacy McCain, Baldwin and Milo are reacting and weaponizing feminist slurs and rhetorc (as did Iowahawk), not being angry squirrels. An SF writer writes about “white cis dudes,” I return with “black homo broads” to satirically make a point. Angry racist, sexist, homophobic squirrel confirmed. McCain, Balwin and Milo have nothing against women; they are firing back against feminists. Since LesFem claims to speak for all women, women-hatred is confirmed, a thing LesFems thought all along anyway and in effect created with their round-robin Pearl Harbors on Twitter. LesFems created the current version of MRAs, Milo, Trump, McCain and myself as well. Before this sad crew of fuckers entered SFF led by Scalzi’s rock-throwing and started lighting me up for being a straight white man, I was a squirrel minding my own business.

    2. They are a corp free to do what they want, and I did leave. I even said I didn’t know if my disappearing tweets were due to malice or stupidity, but either way it wasn’t worth the hassle. And I’m free to say that. Duh, moron.

      1. Well, why should they let little things like what you actually believe get in the way of the Narrative.

        Though I suspect they’re projecting a bit. Their side seems to be more prone to using the courts to force people to do their bidding, so they fear the people they hate so much will do the same. Instead of, oh, leaving and maybe finding a service that will suit their needs.

  45. Hahah. The reason we read 770 is because – frankly – we consider you people to be insane. It’s like watching a house fire or two trains crashing head on at the old State Fairs. What can you say about a cult which routinely considers something as innocuous as Cortes “harassment” even while you have dumbfuck convention panels obsessively lighting up men, whites and heterosexuals as serial, global and historical Mongols. You’re a “Mr. Nice” version of the KKK or anti-Semitism, and that’s all you are – Orwell’s Children. The fact you’re too stupid to understand that is the entertainment value. Using Mark Oshiro or Jim Hines as a moral template is like sniffing lighter fluid. I would never read SFF again rather than have a “Diversity and Inclusion Officer.” Why not just have MiniTru? Are you people really that fucking stupid, that fallen in? Do you not understand your own literature? The Bradbury and Serling you admire would’ve shit on a “Diversity and Inclusion Officer,” and you.

    As for your mental posturing about yet another Orwellian artifact – Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council – let me remind you that you have no neutral definition of “racism” or “group defamation.” Power/privilege/punching up isn’t equal protection, it’s bullshit so racism and harassment always goes one way.

    Plus – as usual – fuck off. You haven’t made SFF more inclusive or diverse, you have destroyed it. Look at this year’s Nebula noms. They are the single greatest disgrace in 100 years of the American genre. And you people bleat about being “anti-racist”? Only in the Orwellian world of Safety and Trust Councils and Diversity and Inclusion Officers would flat out racists claim to be “anti-racists.” Of course you see us as racists. How in the world could you not?

          1. Doesn’t appear to be anything to it. Just an offhanded comment by Sarah about some other unknown making an offhanded comment on Facebook.

      1. The Tokyo Rose of SFF has just declared Vox Day to be the Trump of SFF. The first thing to note there is what we’ve seen here already: she has no concept of a principle. She has no idea that according to her so-called and oft repeated principles of inclusion, anti-sexism and anti-racism, she and her cult are the Vox Day’s of feminism. That is their opinion, not mine.

        Even more important is a word she is fond of using: “inclusion,” which sits right next to that Orwellian fakery she calls “underrepresented populations.” That is the beating heart of this fake feminism that resides at the heart of this fight. I’ve seen these people in SFF use that word over and over again and it represents only one thing: that women, gays and non-whites have been excluded in some fashion from SFF. Of course, that is an easily proven lie. One does not have ads for a black dating site during NHL hockey games. Why? Generally speaking, black folks don’t watch NHL games. Why? Search me. Why didn’t women read and write SFF to the same extent men did 1912-1960? I don’t know that either; I only know they didn’t, not that daddy spanked them out of it.

        As for the last few decades leading up to today, gays are 3% of the population. Throw in marketing and the nature of story-telling where it rains a lot more in real life than it does in stories and that no-show is self-explanatory. As for non-whites, you can hold all the non-whites-only writing workshops you want, but you can’t create a market that isn’t there nor blame that on racism.

        The problem with this magic nonsense called “inclusion” is it’s a thing intersectionalists have made up out of their head. The only “proof” of it is an irrational suspicion of anything whites, men and heterosexuals do. The other problem is they refuse to call it by it’s real name: affirmative action.

        We need to be clear about the difference between this sick fantasy of inclusion/exclusion and that of marketing. The former discriminates, the latter does not. No white men or black men are being “excluded” from the NBA or NHL. However straight white males are being excluded and discriminated against in SFF in open, public collusion to do so. That’s why Tokyo Rose once Tweeted no Nebula “award went to a white male” voted on by the SFWA membership. That is not “social justice,” that is racism, sexism, exclusion and discrimination created within the confines of a supremacist ideology. Meanwhile the SFWA has just nominated the David Dukes of SFF for a Nebula: N.K. Jemisin, Rose Lemberg, Alyssa Wong and Daniel Jose Older, because principles. Older just Tweeted this:

        “This legacy of giving endless props to white mediocrity coupled with rabid insistence on american exceptionalism…it’s so trifling” and “because airtime is a finite resource and it goes to white mediocrity instead of black & brown brilliance, again and again.”

        I’m sure File 101 is right on top of these “anti-racist” quotes of “inclusion” and “social justice.”

        The precise difference between writing about “white mediocrity” and black is the difference between identity and principle and intelligence and brainlessness. I give you the brainless identity-addicts of the KKK of SFF – the SFWA – and their Tokyo Rose, a fool who retweeted D.J. Older today. Luckily for Older, he’s not white, or Tokyo Rose would include him out of the Nebulas for that, if not the SFWA itself for Tweeting about black mediocrity.

  46. Ok, one last quote from Vile. That site is usually bad, but holy crap, the comments for the 2/24/16 update are a bottomless pit of stupid today:

    “McJulie on February 25, 2016 at 1:39 pm said:

    [15]

    True Sad Puppies origin story, short form:

    Larry Correia was nominated for the Campbell and did not win. By a lot. This gnawed at him and gnawed at him.

    Even though by most accounts being nominated for something you do not win is far better than not being nominated at all, Mr. Correia felt that being nominated but not winning is the most dire humiliation a man could ever suffer. (This misconception is shared by other Pups, such as JCW and Ken Burnside.)

    Thus, acting in accordance with the universal principle of dramatic irony, Mr. Correia started the Sad Puppies initiative, the main effect of which was to use the power of slates to nominate people for Hugos who had no chance of winning them.”

    The International Lord of Hate now has his own origin story! 😀

  47. April, 13, 1911

    Dear Mr. Metcalf, I have an idea for a scientific romance story I am tentatively titling “The Marginalized Princess of Mars.” An amazing disabled princess with pink skin and both male and female sex organs from the noble city of Hydrogen is captured by a tribe of 15 ft tall homosexual purple men with 8 legs. While the princess is prisoner a man from Earth suddenly appears – Nathan Bedford Forest, brought to Mars while about to hang a black color of person. The amazingly noble marginalized princess of Mars teaches Forest the error of his ways and rescues them both by killing the chief homosexual and becoming their Emperoress.

    Looking forward to your reply.

    Kind regards, Edgar Rice Burroughs

    *

    May 2, 1911 – Office of Munsey Publications

    Kind sir, please go tentatively fuck yourself, a thing your amazing princess no doubt can provide a template for.

    Sincerely, Thomas Metcalf, Editor-in-Chief, All-Story Weekly

  48. “Obscene tirades?” Funny how Glyer can see all on the SFF net but the obscene tirades which created the Puppies. Even when you quote Anita Sarkeesian or N.K. Jemisin he puts them in a memory-hole while fake attributions and lies are allowed to stand in his comments section unchallenged.

    If any Puppy used the racist sexist language common to this very day by award-nominated social justice dolts Glyer would link to it fast as flies on shit. Those quotes are so common and so sociopathic it’s become redundant to even leave quotes by them anymore. They are the air that swinish fuck of a community breathes.

  49. Now Nick Searcy (Peabody Award Winning International Star of Stage and Screen) is also gone.

    Last person on Twitter I regularly read is Kurt Schlichter. When he’s gone, I’m host-file blackholing Twitter.

  50. I just saw an amusing article. Looks like ye olde Twitter’s stock price has taken another plunge. I’d feel bad for them, if they didn’t bring it on themselves by being asswipes.

    1. My guess is that Twitter the company is not long for this world.

      But the site is unlikely to go dark any time soon; it will be sold to someone like Google or Yahoo. Hopefully it will end up in the hands of somebody who recognises its value and understands its user base.

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