Sdtrk: ‘West for west’ by Grace brother

We’re not entirely sure if this makes us cyber-recluses, but all of us here at Deafening silence Towers are largely averse to social media. None of us are on Facebook, or Meta, or Instagram, or Threads, or TikTok, or tumblr, or CrclJrk, or what the hell ever, and as I’d mentioned in this here post here, we’re no longer on the site formerly known as Twitter as of mid-2023. Correction: Lenka, Snowy, Dragonfly, and Bailes deleted their Twitter accounts, and although the Missus and I still have ours, we’ve not used them since last year. She and I are trying to figure out a way to delete our tweets but keep the accounts, in order to ward off imposters, as that sort of nonsense has happened before, but apart from that, we haven’t engaged with what is now known as X, The Everything App, in a long time. Everytime I hear that phrase, I throw up a little bit in my mouth, as anyone sensible would.
I should add here that I did say ‘largely averse’; note the qualifier. Four of the six of us have happily created accounts on Bluesky — the links of which can be found in the lefthand sidebar — so if long-form writing isn’t your thang, you can possibly interact with us there!

Pulling up stakes and leaving was a really bittersweet thing. Well, for most of us; Elena was never really comfortable on social media, due to what she perceives as her shaky grasp on English, and her girlfriend Miss Winter lost her own password a month or so into starting her account (she blames her ADHD), so neither couldn’t be arsed to get back into it. But for Ursula, Dyanne, Sidore, and myself, we’d spent literal years forming friendships and cultivating contacts, particularly in the world of Synthetiks. By the time we’d experienced our own personal Twexit, we were following eighty mostly-active accounts either being run by Dolls or iDollators, or Doll manufacturers, or researchers in fields centred round humanoid robots. To this day, we’re hopeful that Apartheid Clyde will do just one more stupid fucking thing to persuade another giant swath of users to abandon the site that he destroyed, and it’s our hope that they’ll flee to Bluesky, where we’ll welcome them with open arms, and get back to the regular informative/sexy/hilarious interaction we enjoyed.

If it wasn’t somehow glaringly obvious, we fucking hate Musk. Mainly as we loathe billionaire transphobes who have their tongues solidly lodged in the orange rectums of racist fascists. But nobody’s perfect!!
Prior to Phony Stark announcing loudly to the world that he hearts fascism, the thing that drove a stake through the heart for us with Twitter was that rate limiting ridiculousness. Sidore used to only be on the site during Sunday afternoons, where she’d play catch-up by liking/retweeting every tweet she’d missed from the past six days by our favourite accounts, and as there are loads of those accounts, it didn’t take long for her to hit that cap. It was kinda upsetting for me — really, all of us here — cos we’d never seen Shi-chan that frustrated. However, if she or any of us wanted to circumvent the rate limiting cap, all we’d have to do is pay for an annual subscription fee! Heh. As we collectively decided that paying for a site that was not only free for years, but knowing that money would actively go towards deplatforming loads of people who aren’t basically racist cunts, wasn’t remotely an option, we all figured this would be a good time to draw a line under it. When you have a spoiled rich little twat running things solely according to how many ego-blowjobs he’s received that hour, well, as I’d mentioned to a fellow iDollator, it’s not fun anymore.

The thing that really drives me mental is that, despite the horrible things that Leon Skum has done and continues to do, as well as the proliferation of his fanboys and other unsavoury elements that Xitter is now top-heavy with, there are still arguably sensible people who remain on that platform, and as far as I’m concerned, the excuses for staying don’t really hold water.
> But I have so many friends/accounts that I follow still there!
If you tell your mates that you’re taking off cos Twitter is shitter, you should also suggest they come with you. If they’re staying cos of their friends/accounts they follow, they need to suggest the same.
> But I don’t have anything morally objectionable cropping up in my feed!
Just because you don’t see bad things doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen. Choosing to believe they don’t is wilful ignorance.
> But I’m an artist/writer/musician/sexworker/&c. and it’s how I promote my work!
I know it’s difficult to be a creative person and also have to do your own promotion and marketing; that’s understandably tiresome. But think of it an opportunity to gain new fans, as well as to retain the old ones! Plus there’s no restrictive algorithms on Bluesky, for example, that would prevent you from reposting as often as you like, or linking to external sites, etc. Also, if you tell your fanbase you’re moving, especially to someplace less toxic and, y’know, free to join, the only thing preventing them from doing so is laziness.
> But other social media platforms are booooring!
You are addicted to drama. Stay behind and keep that shit on Twitter.

Right now, Xitter is a windowless room with you and all your mates and associates, and you’re like huh, I smell gas, and other people are like I don’t smell anything. I’m fine! Others are like Well that’s not good, but I just sat down, and this seat is really comfy, and still others are like Oh, I’m not liking that, but if I leave, I can’t get angry about the smell of gas. Others still are like Well, I guess my friends and I will just die here together, cos at least we’ll be with familiar people. A small contingent are like I’ll leave, but I’ll regularly come back, stick my head in the room, and inhale deeply. And then bitch about the smell.

Back in 2020, there was a bloke who went by @IamRageSparkle who will forever go down in history for providing society with the stellar anecdote that’s been called ‘the parable of the nazi bar’, the screenshots of which can be found below.

That’s what’s happened with Twitter.
Basically, my lasses and I stopped using it for the same reasons the Missus and I stopped using Facebook: we didn’t want to be censored for any of the things that we had to say or post, and we didn’t want to tacitly support a shitwick who is actively working to exterminate progressive society. The choice is simple, and hell, you don’t even have to migrate to Bluesky, or Mastodon, or even Hive Social (their motto: We Tried); just give some serious consideration to deleting your account at Xitter. Honestly, it’s not that difficult, as this is what you want to avoid