I was banned from Facebook for 24 hours. I guess I shared a .gif of bouncing boobies with my friend, on a private page. I don’t know or care, to be honest.
Go ahead, pull up Zuckerberg’s terms of service. Point out the exact fine print where it says titties are bad for social media. Tell me I’m on someone else’s digital property. Then print those terms out, roll them up, and shove them up your mother’s pussy. Sideways.
I shared that .gif because I’m a heterosexual man, and I’m excited at the sight of natural breasts bouncing. I have testicles that produce semen, and biologically, the visual of an undulating woman stimulates this, plus a healthy release of endorphins. All day, Facebook users liken me to a sick rapist for wanting to view women undressed at all, while accommodating whatever gender disaster the corporate media deems important/exploitable.
Why am I telling you this? Because I’m a normal person with a normal sex drive*. On Facebook, I’m forced to rub elbows with people who hate sex, themselves, or their bodies. They lash out at ANYTHING healthy or natural. They get “triggered”. They pout their fish-like lips and roll their eyes at anything that remotely resembles “family”. They may not even exist as anything but a puppet.
*For the purposes of this article.
So: I posted a picture of female splendor, and the powerful people get to take away my ability to communicate?
No.
Facebook is really good at telling me what makes a terrorist, too. They show me lots of bloody pictures of Middle Eastern people, carrying bullet-riddled children, with the caption HOW TO MAKE A TERRORIST. They tell me if Islam was really about terrorism, I’d be dead by now! Facebook has a real inside track on current world atrocities, apparently, when it comes to the right countries. They could probably take down ISIS, if they actually applied their Terms Of Service to anyone outside the USA.
Funny how Facebook’s rules and those of the terrorists are the same: nudity is bad.
Funny how that works out, yeah?
Funny how most of our classical art and sculpture depicts nude humans, too. Is that okey-dokey with the killers you’re appeasing? Probably not, judging from their treatment of museums. Before Hillary Clinton bought digital media, you could actually be informed of Islamic beheadings of Christians and other regular humans (as is their obvious wont). Now that Saudi dollar-cock is down her throat, the Middle East is all prancing ponies and rainbows. I’m supposed to forget all about the fucking idiots who’d like to kill me for a cartoon I drew, and act like this feeble, morally decrepit woman isn’t the most dangerous candidate imaginable for high office. Fuck and you.
And yeah; I said “Christians”. The people on Facebook who call me a racist for criticizing Islam are the same people who bring up the Westboro Baptist Church as an example of American Christians. The only time anyone should ever learn about the WBC is after they’re gone, as a cautionary tale of religious extremism. Any media that gives the spotlight to the WBC has an agenda against Christians: period. I’m not even considered Christian and I’m telling you this. On Facebook, Christianity is a punching bag. Police, too; anything that by nature can’t address disapproval gets the most snark, like the guards at Buckingham Palace.
I support a candidate for whom age is an issue with the media. I have a clear recollection of Hillary Clinton’s treatment of this candidate. As always, she took shots at her opponent, then ducked and hid from reprisal. She can burn in the hottest part of Hell, and if you support her, you’re just like her; a fucking mental defective and the worst kind of hypocrite. If you’re a man, and you support Hillary Clinton, then you are a fucking pussy. There. I said it. Almost everyone else wants to.
(And don’t bother listing the celebrities she’s bought, as though I’ve never seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers.)
Facebook is your mommy. She tells you what’s good, and what’s bad. The closest I’ve come recently to a breakfast of shotgun shells was when I realized I was trying to argue with people about media control, on Facebook. Metaphorically, I’m a male chick in a Chinese chicken concern, ranting to another male chick, “We’re all going into the hopper!”
You have no right to censor me, no matter what your terms of service say. By censoring me, you imply that I am as dangerous as pictures of mutilated corpses and war atrocities. You imply that I am unfit for my duties, and that you know better. You don’t.
If I offended you: good. I’m glad. Serves you right for being small-minded. When you announce that something should be banned, you make it clear how powerless you are before it. I don’t ignore “trigger warnings” because I’m callous, I ignore them because I refuse to give anything intangible that much power**. I don’t walk through life like a wilting hothouse flower, susceptible to any firm wind or fart. If you do, I can see why you’d be suicidal. I’d want to kill myself if mere words hurt me, too.
**”Trigger warnings” were established for victims of religious brainwashing and abuse by cults, and how fucking dare you appropriate it for your own selfish agenda.
In the last ten years, “accomplishment” has become so untenable, so out of reach, that the reverse is celebrated. Since it’s far easier to make kids than it is to be a decent parent, our country had to game the system to deal with the unending surplus of mouths. Murdering a housecat is preferable to making a child feel bad, so all the traditions and games I experienced had to be softened and made easier. Parents can tolerate anything now, with the help of prescription drugs. Everyone gets a trophy just for showing up. Why try?
Why should I continue to hone my skills at drawing the nude female form? I can’t share any of it on Facebook, because female nudity is “obscene”. You’re telling me the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is obscene. This is a motif. Some time earlier you were telling me that Bruce Jenner was actually a woman, and not insane. Before that you made me look at a fat lady with scars where her boobs were chopped off, and told me she was a handsome man named “Chaz Bono”. We’re not on the same page. We aren’t even in the same book.
And Bingo! That’s how you PROGRAM PEOPLE.
The average person doesn’t understand computers and web communication; Facebook made it so simple that grandmothers and gang-bangers can do it. Next: group the uninitiated by their predilections and views. Now you’ve got them right where you want them. Now you can make them believe whatever you like, right or wrong, by controlling what they get to know.
I used to exalt in the image search; forty years ago, an artist had to possess a gigantic reference file cabinet, or a visual dictionary. Now, if there’s a picture of something online, I can use it for reference. But…
I hope I can remember what I planned to look up, because search engines are now clotted with paid content. That’s right, folks. Imagine running to the dictionary to look up a word, and the cover is spackled with pizza coupons that make you forget what you were doing entirely. Sure, you can “opt out” by ripping the coupons off, but the damage is already done. Made you look!
Go ahead, defend guys you don’t know like Mark Zuckerberg. He holds your reins, and you’ll never meet him face-to-face as long as you live. How’s that feel?
He’s there when you wake up, and when you go to bed. He’s there when you drop a deuce. He gets to wave his political dogma right in your face, and you’d better LIKE, because there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s in every aspect of your personal life. A total stranger.
And by supporting any censorship of me, you imply that his word is better than mine. Which I’ve spent the better part of two years telling you, it ain’t.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004. I established the comic strip that led you to this site in 1998. In 1999, I brought my first website online. I was offline from 2012 to 2014, thanks to Barack Obama’s wholesale genocide of America’s artists. My point is, I bring a sum total of 15 years experience to the table. As a cartoonist, I go back to high school. I know what I’m doing.
And you know me.
If you don’t, kill a few hours on this site, and you will. I understand the importance of a real person communicating real ideas with you in these troubled times where literally everything is co-opted. I hail from Olde Internet, when users weren’t scared of ideas, and offense was a sport. Some of the hardest laughs in my life came from flamewars, and “ice burns”. One retort I still recall from at least a decade ago was “You are an obesity asymptote.” That one put me on the floor, and I have no earthly idea who said it, or who received it. I observed it anonymously.
In the “salad days” of the Mike The Pod website, I got fan e-mail from Poland and Eritrea, and “Moonlight Sonata” was a hit in Brazil. I experienced the neural “whoosh” that occurs when you find yourself addressing tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, based on your work. I learned that when your shit goes viral, answering comments is a moot point; they come in too rapidly. You learn to ride it, like a wave. You could guest at conventions. I did. You could be approached by networks. Ditto.
On Facebook, you can accumulate 4000 followers, regardless of your achievements or social standing. If you want to hit 5000, it’ll cost ya. Depending on political conditions, you can occasionally communicate with folks from a few different countries. Paying for ads will widen your reach a bit.
See the difference? See the control?
I made a lot of great relationships on Facebook in the past six years, mostly professional (or attractive females, or both). I won’t allow them to be held hostage, so obviously I still have to maintain a professional relationship with Facebook. But censoring me is another matter. If you believe our country’s aggression towards the Middle East has created terrorists, what do you think happens when an American cartoonist is censored on his own soil by an American company?
You just witnessed the beginning.
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