Recently I was incarcerated in Antisocial Media Jail on Twitter by either a couple of “reporters” and/or Twitter themselves for what I thought was an innocuous Tweet. The Tweet in question suggested that “reporter” should go jump in an active volcano. Well believe it or not, this is indeed a first for me and I was as surprised by it as anyone else who is charged and incarcerated to Antisocial Media Jail the first time.
On January 13th I tweeted what I thought was a benign Tweet aimed at Keean Bexte. If you don’t know who he was then join the club because up until my Tweet I didn’t know who he was either. Apparently he is one of Ezra Levant’s “reporters” at Rebel Media. If they still don’t ring a bell, Levant, Bexte are two of the many turds over at The Rebel which is an ultra-right wing media outlet. The Rebel is run by Ezra Levant, who has a habit of filing lawsuits against organizations, companies, people or anyone else who won’t play nice with him. Not only that but The Rebel has had counter protests to the carbon tax and other left leaning protests that do not fit in with their rhetoric. The Rebel has enlisted other people purporting to be “reporters” to work for them. There’s Bexte (who still works for The Rebel) as well as Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy (both of whom used to work for The Rebel) and all of them have had or still have ties with White Nationalists and other right wing extremists. Some would argue that The Rebel still has ties to white nationalists and other extremists with Keean Bexte still on their payroll. With this in mind, it should give you a good enough idea about what upstanding citizens I’m now talking about.
Apparently telling someone to “go jump in an active volcano” is enough for Twitter and/or Keean Bexte and/or Ezra Levant to press charges and have me locked away from Twitter for 24 hours. I left a Tweeted response on someone’s Twitter thread concerning Jessica Yaniv punching a Rebel “reporter” named Keean Bexte. Now I would like to think that Bexte is not a household name and that no one in any reasonable household would have the slightest clue who this piece of work is. Keean Bexte is best known for stalking a 16 year old girl with a developmental disability to her hotel room, getting his panties in a bunch when a politician refuses to answer his questions and at one time Bexte worked at a white supremacist web store. I am in no way defending Miss Yaniv or her checkered past. But as the saying goes, “ a leopard doesn’t change its spots” so I figure that Bexte’s video did not show what led up to him getting clocked a few times by Jessica Yaniv. Right or wrong I decided to weigh into the cesspool that Twitter is and sent out my humorous (or at least what I thought was humorous) Tweet. I figured that my Tweet would fade into Twitter’s swamp of shit.
Boy was I wrong.
I fired off my 240 characters and soon after I took a well deserved break from Twitter’s cesspool of trolls and narcissists, present company and Handmaids For Kenney not included. About an hour later I received an email that my account had been locked for 24 hours because I violated Twitter’s rules against promoting or encouraging suicide or self- harm. Which is weird because I didn’t know that suicide by volcano was a thing. I certainly did not want them to kill themselves, by volcano or otherwise. It appeared to me that either Twitter or Keean Bexte or Ezra Levant snitched on me. All three are reasonable accusers. Especially Levant who has had a habit of suing anyone or any organization that doesn’t play ball with him.
Now I do admit that Jessica Yaniv has some questionable behaviour like suing businesses who will not wax her privates. And I do admit that punching a “reporter” out is not acceptable behaviour either. The video that I Tweeted about appears to have the beginning edited and judging by the Miss Yaniv’s response something got her back up. It also doesn’t take a neurologist to figure out how to goad an already upset subject on. Which I have seen done by a great deal of press reporters across the spectrum of political leanings. Including The Rebel “reporters” tendency to do that very same thing.
Keeping that in mind I have a sneaking suspicion that if we saw/heard the whole video by Bexte we would discover that he is far from being innocent too. Herein is how I got involved. I honestly thought that my Tweet on someone else’s thread was innocent enough. I have also confirmed that they were not responsible for me getting sent to Antisocial Detention. Now I tagged Bexte and Levant too in my Tweet. I would like to hope that it was Twitter who sent me to 24 hour jail but it could very well have been one or both of Bexte and Levant.
I guess that being supsended for my Tweet pissed me off a bit. What pissed me off the most was by Twitter saying that jumping in a volcano is a legitimate way of committing suicide. Twitter effectively made a mockery of suicide, suicide victims, suicide survivors and friends and family members of people who have killed themselves. If this doesn’t get your back up then you may want to bring this up to someone who has tried to kill themselves. I’d venture to say that anyone who has tried suicide would be a wee bit upset with a person (let alone an international billion dollar corporation) making light of suicide. Intentionally or not.
Another point that sticks in my craw is that I get sent to detention for 24 hours for telling someone to jump in a volcano. All the while the President of The United States of America can threaten to annihilate another country or instigate white supremicists/white nationalists to perform hate crimes. Twitter’s hypocrisy and preferential treatment of powerful people or organizations over one small guy is sickening. Apparently Twitter seems to have a track record for turning a blind eye when the almighty dollar is involved and/or a large public figure Tweets the exact same sort of thing that I did. If not worse. I did appeal Twitter’s decision but EXACTLY one minute later I received an email informing me that Twitter stood by their decision to lock me in Antisocial Prison for 24 hours. It seemed to me anyway that even if I deleted the Tweet I was still being suspended from Twitter school for 24 hours.
So, alas, I deleted my Tweet.
I deleted my Tweet because it seemed to me that no matter how much I protested Twitter’s decision it was effectively pissing in the ocean. But if a multi-billion dollar company won’t give two hoots to what a country says then why on Earth would they care what one yahoo from Canada thinks? It sucks being this cynical but up in their ivory 1’s & 0’s tower my 1’s & 0’s in my Tweet probably fell into the pit of Tweets. Somewhere, somehow my silly Tweet gets noticed over the Tweets of an unhinged President.
So I guess that I just got schooled by Twitter’s 1%’ers and I failed the exam. I would argue that Twitter gets schooled too by suspending people like me everyday and in my humble opinion they are failures too. But from failure comes a learning experience in the school of antisocial media. What did I learn? Easy. I learned that antisocial media is just like being a 13 year old in grade school again. If you’re a bully and can afford to bribe the teacher by any means necessary then by all means, stay the course and continue bullying. The teacher just smiles, nods and winks at the bully to continue his harmful ways towards the one who has no clout. The other piece of knowledge that I learned is that speaking out against the system’s hypocrisy still seems to get you nowhere.
Does this mean that I will stop because of the crushing weight of Twitter and their cronies? Nope. Just the opposite. I’ll continue speaking, but with more veracity and frequency. Twitter’s twits may have won this battle but at some point Rome will collapse. And once corporations such as Twitter collapse it will be me doing the smiling, nodding and winking but this time I’ll be joined by the rest of the 99%’ers.