What is happening to the world? If it wasn’t clear enough before that the tech overlords control our society right along with the media, I hope it’s clear now. I ditched Twitter years ago and have been ditching Facebook on and off when it becomes too much. I end up going back, drawn to that place where I can reach my old high school friends and the family I never see. But I can’t keep it now. I can’t support a corporation that blocks our president. I can’t return to Twitter because they’ve done the same. YouTube? God knows they aren’t any better. And Amazon? What? I have zero interest in joining conservative ghettos like Parler, but I don’t feel like supporting Amazon after they cancelled Parler.
Where does this leave a struggling writer who doesn’t have much of an audience as it is? People have been joking that conservatives should just make their own internet. Okay, well, right along with the continuous process of learning how to write, edit, create print books and ebooks, and then market my books, I now have to learn to be my own silicon valley CEO. That leaves me a little woozy. I might as well go find a vanity press and print up thousands of books and sell them on street corners all over the US. Seriously.
At least I still have WordPress, but I’ve been wondering how to get around the mindset that requires free venues. The reason we’re in this position of having tech overlords controlling our livelihoods, interpreting our reality, and telling us what we can and can’t believe and say is we walked willingly in. All of those instructive fairy tales we heard as a child didn’t leave the impression they should have. We walked right in the witch’s cabin, and now she’s got us trapped and has been fattening us up on her sweets until we’re ready to be consumed. Perhaps you find that an exaggeration. I don’t.
Jill Domschot 