I’m tired, Internet. I’m really, really fucking tired.

I know how that sounds; ‘OH NO SAHLTINES IS QUITTING FOREVER!’ No, I’m not, I’m just telling you that I’m tired. It’s the same kind of tired I get when I spend an hour on the court working on my footwork and my jumpshot. It’s the same kind of tired I get after a fifteen mile bike ride. It’s the same kind of tired I get after a day hike. It’s not a feeling of despondency, or the sentiment of being beaten down over and over, or knowing you’ve expended all your energy to accomplish something you felt was worth spending that energy on. No, it’s a frustration-induced tiredness. It may seem and look like I’ve just gotten my ass whooped by a good workout, but though the end result appears the same, the path taken to the point is anything but similar.

I’ve been a vocal critic since the beginning of my teenage years, a point in time that’s nearing the two-decade anniversary. When I started out, I did what every bratty little bastard with a new mouthpiece does: I criticized everything. Whether it was good fortune, dumb luck, or subconscious decision, I focused on music. Being raised by parents who were into Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Who, and other similar music, I naturally gravitated in that direction. I proclaimed The Wall to be the greatest album in existence, and that Billy Gibbons might be the best goddamn guitar player in the history of playing.

Now, I still think ZZ Top is jammin’, and that The Wall is a great piece of musical work, but one key difference between my parents and I was that I enjoyed rap and electronica, music styles that they couldn’t wrap their heads around; it’s not their fault, because they were well into their working years when those styles became popular. One of my best friends in high school and I tried to become a rap duo; that obviously didn’t work out. We also tried to start a ska-punk fusion band, which also didn’t work out because our town was filled with shitty jam bands who already had the best musicians, and the lads we were able to gather were unmotivated and objectively terrible.

My point in all this rambling and reminiscing is to highlight that my criticism encompassed everything. In between writing short mystery stories in classes I didn’t care about, I penned short critiques of albums of my time, from ten sentence blurbs designed to fit that absurdly tiny AllMusic review box, to whole diatribes; there’s a memory that bounces through my head every so often of a multi-page tirade on why pop music was complete, mass-produced, same-sounding garbage. I also wrote game reviews to a much lesser extent, and that was mostly due to having a very limited game library at the time; I mean, you can’t really write a ton of critique if you can’t get your hands on the shit you want to take a verbal dump on, can you?

The ultimate takeaway from this was that, even though most of my early content is lost somewhere in the internet thanks to time and lack of foresight on my part to save the shit to a readable CD-ROM, it lead me to be actually open-minded when approaching something new. I say actually because human nature and general social trends involve people outright stating they are ‘open-minded’ without actually displaying said behavior, as it’s a move to appeal to the sense of righteousness and emotions in others as a means to make a positive first impression; in other words, bullshit.

I hate platitudes, and I hate that spewing them, giving them, and taking them without any level of consideration has become the norm of all society. What kills me even more is not even that they’re used habitually, but that people still believe them. It’s going to be difficult to provide a clear message without some examples, so take a look at this:

Fucking quitter.

This was in response to this thread at KotakuinAction. I’ve mentioned them occasionally here as a place where I sometimes find sources to rip on, and this isn’t going to be a piece ripping them to shreds because I enjoy the core of what KiA is. What I don’t enjoy is that there’s been a massive influx of people to the site who seem content with offering verbal banalities and paranoid text walls that are five steps away from being a Flat Earth, Annunaki, 9/11 Hoax conspiracy theories. Even if my disagreement doesn’t matter, it’s still a grand waste of time, resources, effort, and it most of all spits in the face of the point of the website, which is to provide discourse, commentary, and critique on news, gaming,  and social media behaviors and questionable ethical practices via facts, figures, statistics, and valid information. Nobody cares that you think the world is over and the only way to save it is to dial back the clock; if you think your claims are good enough, support them with evidence. Otherwise, myself and others will dismiss them outright because we don’t need any evidence to dismiss something that was claimed with no supporting evidence; read the fucking rules, you clods.

As for the comment itself, I love how this random internet nobody claims that he knows that we’ve lost most of this thing the thread is about, which apparently was an ‘Enlightenment-style society’. Shit like this cracks me up because everyone thinks the Enlightenment was the greatest period of history to ever exist, yet nobody ever discusses that it encompassed plenty of bloody wars and huge famines that decimated certain populations that are still affected to this day. None of this says I hate the Enlightenment, just that there’s no need to prop up an era that was the natural result of the prior eras like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I also like how this dude is saying that those who don’t agree with identity politics must fight against it, because not only will it ensure we ‘lose Western Civilization’, whatever the fuck that means, but for the last one-hundred fifty years, other tactics have tried and failed except this one, despite there being no supplied sources or evidence to back up this outrageous claim. The whole idea of fighting a bunch of tantruming weirdos by becoming tantruming weirdos but, instead of focusing on including all people, the focus is instead on white people only is spectacular, as well. What happened to that ‘we don’t generalize like those social justice crusaders’, huh? I’ve been complaining about social justice and forced acceptance culture for years, well before a place like KiA was even an inkling in someone’s mind, and I’m a brown man who is a statistical minority in the United States. Fuck you and stop speaking for me just because I’m on your side; you only fight fire with fire if you can guarantee it deprives all possible fire of fuel to burn, and with how stupid both sides are getting, using this method is begging for a fucking inferno.

Alright, so what’s the problem?

One thing that baffles me is this ‘no alternative’ narrative that those dissenting social justice/forced acceptance culture & identity politics keep pushing. The idea is that just because Google, Twitter, and Facebook are keen on silencing people who do not agree with their viewpoints, you therefore have no alternative pathways to choose to voice your opinion. The reason it baffles me is because Google only exists because they figured out how to do a better search engine than Yahoo! and AskJeeves. YouTube only exists because DailyMotion, Veoh, and Metacafe weren’t very good at the time, nor were they part of the Google name. It’s only logical that people who used the best search engine would also view content on the video hosting service owned by the same company who created the search engine.

There are always alternatives. Dailymotion still exists, as does Metacafe and Veoh and plenty of others, like LiveLeak and WorldStarHipHop. You can also go buy a Domain name from any number of domain name aggregation services and do what the fuck you want all over your brand new webpage. Here’s one search I did via GoDaddy to prove my point:

Peanuts.

I’m technically jobless, and even I can afford what works out to just under 96¢ per month, or about two cents a day per a thirty day month. Most people buy a coffee or soft drink or something during their day that costs a fuck-load more than what it would cost to run a website; it’s the same argument strategy I make when I hear people bitch about subscription fees for online games like World of Warcraft. Take the time and work the fiscal side out, then decide if it’s the best option for you. If it’s not, it’s not, but don’t sit around and complain like you don’t have alternatives available at the drop of hat. It’s a shit excuse used by people who are too lazy and are comfortable with getting raked over the coals, and by people who are scared. If they would just say that, I would have infinitely more respect for them, but they don’t. These content creators just use shitty weasel words and platitudes to make themselves and their audiences feel better in the moment. Case in point:

Do you do anything at all, man?

At no point has this person offered any solutions. He’s spent his entire time lamenting the fact that political correctness and identity politics have their grubby fingers in big social media outlets and that they keep saying shit like ‘ALT RIGHT IS BAD AND MUST DIE’. Of course they’re going to say that, you half-baked turd, that’s their entire modus operandi. You act as if everyone gives in to the almighty fee-fees, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Google and social media platforms can only distort the information that comes to or through them; if you don’t give them information, they can’t mess with it. I feel like a fucking nutter for suggesting something so simple, but seriously, just stop using them. There’s other search engines out there, other maps available, plenty of mobile applications that don’t mess with your data, ways to get your hands on phones that don’t use a Google/Apple operating system or for you to do it yourself, and alternatives left, right, and center to spread your message. Shit, we still make paper; create an old fashioned news letter if you have to.

I’m sure someone at this point is going to say, ‘But Sahltines, you’re on the Internet! Goolag is just going to fuck with your search hits when they find you!’ So? First off, anyone who says ‘Goolag’ in a non-sarcastic manner needs to be launched into the sun with the identity politicians. It’s a single-service joke that becomes exponentially more unfunny the more times its said. Second, I don’t care if they wreck my search results on Google search. There’s other search engines out there that are capable of finding me; the traffic I’ve gotten doesn’t even come from places that would probably use Google search regularly. That means that somehow people have been finding my work, and it may have even been on Google, pages deep, which still means it’s up there. The point I’m trying to make is that if you can find my work, which is highly insular, vulgar, and completely eschews any kind of kid-gloving in favor of being as open and correct as possible, you can find anything on the Internet. Quit being such a negative Nancy, get the sand out of your vagina, and do something about this problem if it really bothers you that much. The pen is only mightier than the sword if your opponent is a flailing puss-bag.

Heaven’s to Betsy.

I mentioned paranoid delusions toeing the line of being conspiracy theory, and this is proof I wasn’t kidding. The amount of distance this fool leaps to get to his conclusions would make him the world’s best long-jumper if he put what’s in his mind into his legs.

The ‘left’ is a word that morons constantly use to describe every single fucker that isn’t completely conservative, just like the ‘right’ is what identity politicians use to describe people who aren’t completely liberal. The truth of the matter is that most people hover around the center and lean left or right based on what the issue is. This blows the minds of idiots because they, like hormonal teenagers, don’t have the capacity to evaluate abstract concepts like beliefs and ideologies on a black-to-white spectrum; they operate on a binary ‘black or white’ system. I’ve been neutral with a slight left bend for the better part of fifteen years now, but to this faggot I’d be the boogeyman that is ‘the left’ because I think we should have some kind of government run public option for healthcare and for saying I lean left-ish sometimes. Likewise, some social justice cum-fart would call me ‘alt right’ for disagreeing with the notion that ideas, thoughts, and opinions need to be policed to protect people from being hurt. You’re both retards I wish I could tie to the floor of rowboat and push out to sea, never to be seen again.

As for ‘ideas being dismissed as racism and not worthy of contemplation’, who cares? If the natural reaction to a thought, which is created through expenditure of energy and the firing of neurons and chemicals within one’s own body, is ‘RACIST’, then do you really want to convince that person of anything? I’m not saying there aren’t ideas that are bad or shouldn’t be outright dismissed/not entertained, but most ideas, like people, fall into the grey-area and are then later pounded out onto one side or the other through the molding process that is discourse. If someone isn’t willing to put aside their agenda to talk, fuck them.

In regards to ‘the left’ not saying anything, it’s because they missed their chance to abandon their useful muppets and are now stuck in their own mess. Seriously, all the rest of the left had to do was decry the violent behavior of the radical muslim terrorists, the ANTIFA riots, and the attacks identity politicians have been making against ‘the alt right’, but they didn’t because they didn’t expect these morons to be so goddamned stupid. I know this because I didn’t expect these morons to be so goddamned stupid, and yet every day they up the ante in spectacular fashion. If I, an overweight dope in a busted computer chair and fucked up keyboard, can figure that out, I’m pretty sure most of the left that has political power, wealth, and is responsible for the actual important actions that the left takes, has also figured this out.

All this shit feels like I could just have an ‘Occam’s Razor’ button with how simple it is, and yet I keep seeing people diving off the deep end to placate their paranoia. Seriously mate, did you ever think for one second that perhaps a huge part of why people didn’t flip off the edge like you did was partially because we’re so desensitized to violent outbursts thanks to the lack of control of radicalized muslims from both governments and the religion’s followers, and partially because nobody expected that shit would happen? Seriously, why even bring up the NSA like that shit’s new? That’s been around since the PATRIOT act, and while I’m obviously not happy about it, you’re busy acting like the NSA doesn’t spend its time spying on everyone, including Trump. That firebombing also was carried out around the same time as some other vandalization of a Democratic office, and with how close the incidents were to each other, it’s fair to assume the same group performed both. That would mean that the group that carried it out isn’t ‘the left’, it’s fucking ANTIFA morons who are anti-Capitalis retards. Also, and this is really nit-picking, but one single goddamn shitty Molotov that didn’t even work right, which means whomever made it fucking sucks at making the easiest goddamn weaponry in existence, is not ‘firebombing’. You need more than one incendiary charge and they need to actually, you know, light some stuff on fire, for it to be a firebombing.

 How often do you look over your shoulder in fear, my dude?

‘What if you don’t get a chance to tell the truth?’ What in the fuck does that even mean? Did they take your lips away? Do you have no fingers with which to write? Can you not buy a megaphone or use a phone on a network that doesn’t have ties to corporations like Google to call your friends to organize? Are there no longer message boards outside of Facebook walls and Reddit you can visit and have conversations on? Oh, wait, all that is available to you? Can I ask you a question then? Why the fuck are you so goddamn paranoid?!

There’s nothing scary about this because this it’s just a tantrum. The fact that you’re so goddamn afraid tells me more about you than it does the situation, because only someone who spends all his/her time on social media platforms and applications, frittering away precious hours of the day doing nothing but ‘making memes’ (you can’t make a meme, you retards, it’s something that’s only reactionary) and shit-posting would be afraid of possibly losing the ability to do so. I grew up in the PC world where the screen was a command line and you actually had to understand computers to use them. I have a smartphone that I barely pay attention to because the only thing I use it for is to make and take calls. Fuck’s sake, I am one of the few people to exist on the entire Earth that does not have a self-created Twitter account; I’m sure there’s one or two with my name out there, like there is for everyone.

You can’t ‘deplatform’ someone who has no allegiance to any platforms whatsoever. You can’t take away someone’s ability to speak or disseminate information, truthful or otherwise, by closing them out of your ‘X Only’ clubhouse. The only way someone loses their voice is if they choose not to fucking say anything, meaning that it can only be self-inflicted. You and every other goddamn counter-culture personality, writer, journalist, and YouTuber who recently got on this fucking caravan in the last five years when I’ve been going strong at this shit since before I went to college need to shut the hell up and stop placing the full blame on the available platforms and, instead, share the blame.

The truth is that you fucks are lazy, entitled cock-holsters who have gotten so accustomed to being able to throw your phone against a wall and have it load up your favorite content that you can’t imagine a world where you don’t do that, yet you spend all day lamenting the ‘good old days’, which was a time you didn’t even likely exist, you self-indulgent piles of shit. This same fucking crap happened with SOPA and PIPA and instead of getting rid of this nonsense for good by not electing the very officials who put it into action, or trying to get those dipshits fired for doing something that threatened the very nature of the goddamn American Consistution, you all just whined and complained about it and had your ‘blackout days’. Way to go, you chuckle-fucks; so glad that instead of working to make the world better, everyone would rather play virtual soggy-fucking-muffin while patting each other on the back.

Speaking of YouTubers, let’s end on this video by Metokur. I’ll give you a moment to get through it because it’s decently long, and despite what I’m going to say about this, I think the vast majority of the video contains useful and insightful information on the topic.

The first thing I want to touch on is the ‘threat’ made by Jaana B. Dogan. There is nothing less credible than a threat that sounds like this:

Nothing has made me feel more slighted than this incident. If nothing is done to rectify this issue, then I will really, absolutely, most definitely leave this company for real for the first time in eight years. I swear I will do this. Guys, I am not kidding, I absolutely am not joking around. I will totally follow through with this thought and declaration, one which just cropped up as a response to this incident and, despite my previous wording, has definitely not crept into my thoughts prior to this very moment, at all.

Okay, so that’s a tad bit obvious, but still, you get the point. If you want your threat to mean something, you don’t advertise doing it on social media, or anywhere for that matter. Doing this means you want attention, and I know this because this is the exact same behavior people who buy Early Access Steam games or who subscribe to World of Warcraft and then fall out of love with the product go about ‘quitting’. It’s always a long, rambling post explaining why the game fucking sucks, where it went wrong, how it’s doomed to fail, and tons of other claims that are rooted in personal preference and can’t be backed by any sort of concrete evidence.

These people never actually quit the game, they just want attention and to feel validated, and that’s exactly why they post this shit on big forums and platforms like Twitter, just like Jaana Dogan. She just wants attention and, contrary to her statement, has probably thought about leaving multiple times; you wouldn’t bring it up otherwise. If Jaana actually was going to quit, she would’ve simply put in her two weeks then and there, then gone home and ate banana splits for the next fourteen days. Plus, any person who says something like ‘I will quit for real’ is not going to quit because they don’t have the balls to make a direct. That kind of language is bargaining language by nature, and if you’re trying to send an ultimatum, you don’t bargain. I also, at least from her Twitter picture, don’t think she has any eyelashes to speak of, and if she does, they’re definitely not marginalized because she works for fucking Google.

Second, the whole YouTube shadow-banning is the one of the funniest things I’ve seen happen in recent memory. Not only is it a blatant admission that Google doesn’t like things that go against the politically correct grain, but it’s open admission that Google intends to go full corporate to appease their advertiser overlords so that they can get more of that $weet chedda. It’s also the worst way to silence someone not because you’re it’s effectively a permanent time-out, but it means that the video content still costs money and resources to host, even if it’s hidden behind boxes of proxies. That means that a great way to fuck over Google is to branch out to other platforms while continuing to upload content to Google with the specific intention of getting it shadow-banned, thus forcing Google to continue to waste money on content nobody can see on a platform that barely drives a profit already. I get why people would be upset with this, but frankly, it’s just hilarious that they’re willing to sink tons of unnecessary cash and money in an effort to create an echo chamber of shitty content that’s frequented by people who have the attention spans of goldfish and the egos of a glass marble, meaning the second you piss them off, they shit all over you remaining creators and leave.

Third, the muslim bit. All I’m going to say is that if these muslims want to have people stop shitting on their boring religion that talks about all the same shit Judaism and Christianity do (same shit, different name), then they need to stop looking at us like we need to be rewired and, instead, tackle the issues themselves. If they don’t want people to think every muslim is going to blow something up, then start abandoning the very blatantly violent and bigoted passages of the Quran in favor of those which are more about promoting peace, and I don’t mean Islamic ‘turn everyone into a muslim and kill the non-believers to achieve same-think’ peace like the book says, I mean the actual passages the promote people doing good to and for their fellow humans. It’s not my job to create a special filter for your one belief system, it’s your job to straighten out your belief system so that myself and others don’t feel the need to entertain creating a special box to put your bullshit in.

Fourth, and one of the more important ones, the idea of disenfranchisement. I fully agree that the reason these big corporations of social media platforms are doing this is to drive fence-sitters and dissenters into some kind of hole so they feel hopeless and then give up. What I find silly about this is that the majority, or at least the majority of content creators I frequent, boast constantly about how they love doing what they do and intend to keep doing what they’re doing. If this is true, why would the act of disenfranchisement ever be an issue? It would only be an issue for people who didn’t intend to make a job out of creating content for YouTube and their audience, but kept on with it because they captured lightning in a bottle and want the fat stacks of cash that come with keeping it going.

That isn’t to say I don’t understand the fear surrounding all this, just that I can’t comprehend how people who spend their time claiming and boasting about wanting to do what they do for the rest of their life would suddenly become so down-trodden that they’d just roll over and take the incoming dick in the ass. It runs counter-point to all the claims, so either the claims are bullshit, or this idea of disenfranchisement isn’t going to be as big a deal as people believe. I can only speak for myself, of course, and I don’t plan on going anywhere, no matter what happens, so if everyone else just gives up, I guess these big-talkers are just a bunch of great bullshitters, then.

The last thing I wan to touch on is the last three minutes of the video where Metokur goes on a bit of a panic-tangent detailing how Facebook, Google, and Twitter are going to essentially silence and quiet dissent. It encompasses everything I’ve been saying thus far, and is a big part of why I wanted to write this diatribe. I’ve already said that I hate this Chicken Little ‘Sky is falling!’ shit because it’s not true in the slightest, and that people invoking it directly or indirectly are doing so out of personal fear, malaise, and paranoia. I’ve given alternatives that are perfect to counter this social justice nonsense, and explained away exactly how insane some of these theories and ideas are.

What I want to address here is that making videos like this, videos that spend all their time painting the situation as the oft-quoted ‘world of George Orwell’s 1984’ , is fear-mongering, plain and simple; this is not up for debate. I know that makes me sound like an angry parent, but rattling off a bunch of convenient luxury services like YouTube and Twitter and then essentially saying ‘we’re fucked’ is preying on the audience’s dread and fear, and it’s not just scummy to do in general, but it’s the exact same thing extreme ideological groups like social justice crusaders and feminists use to wrap people up in their side. I doubt any of the big people purporting this tactic will find this post, and I truly doubt that this is what they intended to do, but if they do find this backwater rant, the message I want to leave them with is: stop it.

Stop making a situation that is and always has been in our control so fucking fatalist. It’s not; it’s just not. If you are personally afraid and worried about you losing your voice, then you do something to keep that ability. Don’t put it on me and everyone else listening to brainstorm some other platforms to use, or create ways to get these companies to rescind all this garbage. Be a fucking example instead of a sniveling coward hiding behind a shitty still image and what barely constitutes as ‘editing’, counting down the days until the scythe is swung in the hopes someone will bust down the door and save your ass, because it’s not happening. YouTubers should have learned from the ‘Adpocalypse’, and yet they have not. Instead of starting the change, their sitting in their boots, quaking and wondering what the hell to do. Grow a fucking back-bone, you pussies.

To cap off this deluge, I’ll answer the question posed at the end of the video. ‘What is our plan?’ I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t give a shit. I’ve been doing this for almost two decades, which is anywhere between five times and ten times as long as you chuckle-fuck creators, so if you think I’m going to give you an out when I’ve had to figure out my own outs all on my own, you’re sorely mistaken. This whole piece has plenty of fantastic options that you dipshits haven’t even thought of entertaining because, despite how much you like to parade that you ‘grew up on the Internet’, if you really had, we wouldn’t even be entertaining this nonsensical fear-mongering garbage.

Bet it sucks you didn’t get some actual advice, huh? Well, I guess I’ll humor you. I’ll share a nugget of wisdom my Dad left me with when I finished college. I didn’t have a place to stay, hadn’t yet found employment, and had been essentially sitting on my ass in their house, sitting on my thumbs while crossing my sausage-sized fingers. He told me that ‘enough was enough’ and gave me a month ultimatum to get my shit in order because after that, they were kicking me out. I asked him, ‘but Dad, how the hell am I gonna find a place to live? What about getting a job?’ You know what he said?

‘I don’t know. You figure it out.’