The only bulwark to censorship on a centralized Substack is CEO Chris Best. And the corporate-state's 'anti-fascist' fascists and 'anti-racist' racists are gunning for him.
Apr 15, 2023·edited Apr 15, 2023Liked by Good Citizen
Well, the thing is that I've always thought Twitter (or anything like it) is inherently a bad idea. I thought that since I heard about Twitter way back. One cannot have a "conversation" with the entire mass of people at once. Ever had a "conversation" with the audience at a ballpark... a movie theater... a bus full of people?
I don't need to get into the details of what technically defines a "conversation." It just is not. Honest people know this. I really believe that many people desire to fabricate a synthetic "conversation" in the arena for attention and in hopes of their minute of fame.
I've never been interested and I'm still not. Whether it's Elon's less-bullshit Twitter or Truth Social or Gab or even Substack Notes. I think Notes is likely to be the undoing of Substack.
It has put in place yet another synthetic "The Conversation" or "The Public Square". There really is no such thing. It's the toe in the door for the evil fucks that intend to kill free will. They are not just racists and fascists and a cult thereof but they are deeply "shen disturbed" (aka not right in the head) people that are hateful and violent.
They hate you and me and people like us because we won't happily join their cult. Not just that but our continued existence outside of their cult is a threat to it's existence. We know it and they know it and they hate us over it.
Substack Notes opened the gates of Hell and the daemon hoard is rushing the stronghold. I think that it is now highly unlikely that Substack will remain in a form that made it uniquely valuable to people like us.
I'm sorry but I will not participate in Substack Notes. Best of luck to everyone that does.
Well said. I detest them all for different reasons, which is why I've never had a single "social" presence. The entire model is the gamification for attention extraction. Advertisers have all the power to control speech. The mobs move the advertisers. The dev rewards impulsive reactions and pithy ADHD retorts and short circuits the most thoughtful and engaging. Notes is great for me because it connects directly to untapped potential subscribers already on the same service. its a ground floor opportunity to finally have some marketing capacity, for however much longer this place survives before I jump ship to Ghost or a service that is more under the radar and not under attack.
I agree we will be challenged and that the irrational hysterical woke will storm the barricades. But this war is being waged on intellectual, spiritual, philosophical and scientific levels. It will be won or lost there also. SubStack has taken hold of an idea whose time has come. Nothing will stop this kind of idea.
i feel like you probably arent in the minority. Back in the Reagan era it was called the silent majority. I honestly feel that still exists, its just the outer fringes are what gets all the attention. Its a business model for the corporate press, amplify the fringes to stoke the masses. Most people I meet when pressed are not in line with any of this woke bullshit.
The only problem is that like you mentioned, the people in control use it. For companies, especially big companies, if you're applying for a job HR won't even consider you if for whatever reason you can be labeled any of the ists. A financial podcast I follow on YouTube even said the same about the finance sector. If you are against ESG, you won't be hired. At least I've always been entrepreneurial and I'm on my way to becoming an author.
All centralized institutions and platforms are vulnerable; Substack is no exception. While it lasts as a domain of free expression, we should get ahead of the censorship wave and start colonizing decentralized platforms, which have been blooming in the background for years, but which have not yet reached critical mass. James Corbett reported on four of the most solid projects (Qortal, Bastyon, Nostr and Minds) :
Substack has a clean UI, with no intrusive advertising or pop-ups, gives writers full control over content and most importantly, gives them email addresses of their subscribers. They've set a high bar which will not be easy to match on the decentralized networks (which are inherently more challenging to develop, in a technical sense). But we may soon have no alternative. The hammer may fall suddenly, so at least backup your subscriber email list frequently.
I too am all for decentralized. I have been hard on SubStack as a centralized Silicon Valley corporation. But in this war we must for now use the tools we have for reaching people and to engage in free speech. The world will never be the same after these past three years. Hopefully woke continues to go broke and corporations like SubStack continue to realize their lifespan and profitability rely on the principles underlying the Constitution and Bill of Rights. But you are right - we must prepare for any and all potential outcomes.
Look Nordic soldier there's a certain art to persuasion. Spamming some variation of the same comments over and over under completely unrelated comments is not it. This post had 50 comments yesterday and now has 33 more from you which have probably gained you 0 new subscribers while annoying my readers.. I don't block commenters but have banned dozens of spammers who say they make $1500 an hour napping from home. Thanks for not spamming my comment section anymore.
"You do know that's a terrible answer, right?" says the self-declared brown guy. There is no question in his mind; it's a given, an unquestioned certainty that the debate (on thought and expression!) ends where his identity is offended. Breathtaking in its superficiality and self-involvement.
Bravo Good Citizen. Without naming names, I got into it with one of those interlopers at notes. I get so frosted when it supposedly all about “the right” instigating violence. Yet who is doing the church and pregnancy center vandalizing with virtually no arrested. Not to mention burn loot mayhem etc. Hopefully Notes will not be the downfall of Substack.
banana republic justice insulates the regime's foot soldiers to lie, cheat, steal, burn, loot, murder. no rule of law. no principals. no integrity. only devotion is to cult and ideology. it's infuriating on all levels.
they also claim the right are in the midst of a book banning like has never been seen. This is of course repub governors banning porn from school libraries. Meanwhile the social justice warriors at publishing houses are literally changing the words in classics, and adding long disclaimers about how racist this book is. These people should not be taken seriously.
One can call out the black race hustlers still with little real pushback, but mention the "J" word (which, btw, I never capitalize any longer) and the little black hat wearers swarm.
I've often wondered if Best is a jew. If so, he will capitulate when the time is right (when he's made enough money or the honey trap is no longer useful, or God willing, their stranglehold is broken)..
Censorship is only for those who have something to hide and who are so full of fear that they might be discovered as the poor wretched souls they have become. They live in houses without mirrors.
Whenever I read missives from the ADL, I am reminded of why that dastardly organization was started: to defend the Jew Leo Frank after he raped and murdered Mary Phagan, a 13 year-old Irish-American girl.
Frank was the President of Atlanta’s B’nai B’rith Lodge No. 144. As the owner of a pencil factory, he was also Mary Phagan's boss. On April 26, 1913, when little Mary went to his office to collect her paycheque, he took the opportunity of being alone with her to rape and then murder her.
Frank tried to pin the crime on a Black janitor who also worked at his pencil factory (James Conley), but ultimately he failed and Conley's name was cleared.
After Frank was convicted and sentenced to death, the ADL was founded in an effort to save his life. After numerous legal appeals failed, the Georgia governor eventually commuted Frank’s sentence.
So, a group of Real White Men got things done and lynched Frank.
To this day, the ADL still claims Frank was innocent. There was even a Broadway musical made in 1998 ("Parade") portraying him as the victim in the case.
remember the jews tried to frame 2 blacks for the crime. we are told by the jews that the southerners would lynch 1000's of blacks for no reason. here the southerners saw the blacks were being framed and let them go didnt hang them just for being black. that is never brought up in the discussion of the leo frank affair where the jews spent 26 million in todays money on frank
Liberal white women and brown people like this woke douche should never be engaged, what is the point?
These are the very people that create fake accounts or that have their minions post the worst of the racist posts you will see on conservative leaning sites, don’t be fooled, a true racist wouldn’t bother with these comment sections. It’s 99.9% fake.
GC, I occasionally see a post in your comments that is warm to stupid, borders on racist or is just plain ignorant, usually just one per writing you upload. You simply ignore them as others do and they vanish into oblivion, do not engage and they lose their power of opinion 100% of the time, you do not censor or delete any of them I assume, that is the correct way to deal with the faux racists or knuckle draggers.
Your site is the only one I comment on, I enjoy the comments from others as well. If this is ruined by the fascists, I will stop completely, which means they win I guess, I could care less, but I hope Chris stands his ground.
Well, I do like every comment even if I disagree. Nothing is really 'offensive' because being offended is a choice people make, mostly to virtue signal for social capital. And because it's one comment. The next one they leave could be the most insightful comment ever, and if I block them, what have I deprived everyone, including myself of?
Apr 15, 2023·edited Apr 15, 2023Liked by Good Citizen
Damn good article! You brought together many of the most important and influential propaganda instruments in this piece.
Victimhood status makes people complacent, and apathetic, which is critical in controlling their actions. Once someone falls into the victimhood trap it takes a lot to get them out of it. Being a victim necessarily requires you to look outward to fix every issue in your life. This causes the individual to wither away, the victim becomes a slave to their own illusion.
Similarly, bringing people out of this state is complicated, because they have to admit their own failings in doing so. They also will be forced to look retrospectively at all of the missed opportunities that have passed them by as a result.
That's why I believe that promoting a victimhood mentality is truly evil. It's the ultimate form of human waste, as in wasted lives.
Chris, I hope you read these comments. I think the answer is two fold. 1. We endorse free speech trust people that they will speak respectfully as content creators. 2. The Substack community is the right place for content and behavior management. Watch this interview that I did with Randy Sullivan of Bourbon Real Talk. His 24k member community self-polices the behavior of it members. Here is the link: https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/randy-sullivan-bourbon-community
Censorship is as useful as a cardboard bomb shelter. People who are so sensitive to free speech can put their heads between their legs and kiss their asses goodbye. By the time they wake up to understand what is going on, the fuse is already lit and traveling quickly to the stick of dynamite that is stuck up their assholes.
Apr 15, 2023·edited Apr 16, 2023Liked by Good Citizen
Individual authentication is the answer to the censorship problem and I can only think that the 95% decline in participation that would occur when anonymity is removed is the reason it hasn't been done already. Social media would lose it's chokehold on discourse and governments would lose a tool to control the population. Treat social media like the digital town square it is and use existing slander and libel laws to self-police, why can't this happen?
Wow such a good example of entrapment attempt by the woke. Chris Best is obviously more intelligent than to fall for that. Bless him. Go Chris!
Engagement between the writers and the readers and 100% free speech is the gold standard. I am certain we will be challenged many times. I am also certain the centered, calm, logical approach to encountering this kind of hysteria will allow us to rise above such discourse.
centered, calm, logical approach is essential. Chris has been impressive so far. That we must hope he never cracks is the inbuilt weaknesses of centralization.
Well, the thing is that I've always thought Twitter (or anything like it) is inherently a bad idea. I thought that since I heard about Twitter way back. One cannot have a "conversation" with the entire mass of people at once. Ever had a "conversation" with the audience at a ballpark... a movie theater... a bus full of people?
I don't need to get into the details of what technically defines a "conversation." It just is not. Honest people know this. I really believe that many people desire to fabricate a synthetic "conversation" in the arena for attention and in hopes of their minute of fame.
I've never been interested and I'm still not. Whether it's Elon's less-bullshit Twitter or Truth Social or Gab or even Substack Notes. I think Notes is likely to be the undoing of Substack.
It has put in place yet another synthetic "The Conversation" or "The Public Square". There really is no such thing. It's the toe in the door for the evil fucks that intend to kill free will. They are not just racists and fascists and a cult thereof but they are deeply "shen disturbed" (aka not right in the head) people that are hateful and violent.
They hate you and me and people like us because we won't happily join their cult. Not just that but our continued existence outside of their cult is a threat to it's existence. We know it and they know it and they hate us over it.
Substack Notes opened the gates of Hell and the daemon hoard is rushing the stronghold. I think that it is now highly unlikely that Substack will remain in a form that made it uniquely valuable to people like us.
I'm sorry but I will not participate in Substack Notes. Best of luck to everyone that does.
Well said. I detest them all for different reasons, which is why I've never had a single "social" presence. The entire model is the gamification for attention extraction. Advertisers have all the power to control speech. The mobs move the advertisers. The dev rewards impulsive reactions and pithy ADHD retorts and short circuits the most thoughtful and engaging. Notes is great for me because it connects directly to untapped potential subscribers already on the same service. its a ground floor opportunity to finally have some marketing capacity, for however much longer this place survives before I jump ship to Ghost or a service that is more under the radar and not under attack.
Amen
You wut?
I agree we will be challenged and that the irrational hysterical woke will storm the barricades. But this war is being waged on intellectual, spiritual, philosophical and scientific levels. It will be won or lost there also. SubStack has taken hold of an idea whose time has come. Nothing will stop this kind of idea.
Zzzzzzzz
Du first.
Thanks for the thoughts. I am beginning to wonder if Notes is a mistake. We shall see.
I do not believe it is a mistake. Time consuming, challenging yes - but I don't think a mistake.
Excellent post. I may be a moody millennial but I'm in the minority among my generation who is repulsed by all this pc, ist, and ism 💩.
i feel like you probably arent in the minority. Back in the Reagan era it was called the silent majority. I honestly feel that still exists, its just the outer fringes are what gets all the attention. Its a business model for the corporate press, amplify the fringes to stoke the masses. Most people I meet when pressed are not in line with any of this woke bullshit.
The only problem is that like you mentioned, the people in control use it. For companies, especially big companies, if you're applying for a job HR won't even consider you if for whatever reason you can be labeled any of the ists. A financial podcast I follow on YouTube even said the same about the finance sector. If you are against ESG, you won't be hired. At least I've always been entrepreneurial and I'm on my way to becoming an author.
You and Jim are both right. Woke owns the power structure right now, so the only way out is entrepreneurship.
All centralized institutions and platforms are vulnerable; Substack is no exception. While it lasts as a domain of free expression, we should get ahead of the censorship wave and start colonizing decentralized platforms, which have been blooming in the background for years, but which have not yet reached critical mass. James Corbett reported on four of the most solid projects (Qortal, Bastyon, Nostr and Minds) :
https://rumble.com/v2ddjn2-decentralized-communication-solutionswatch.html
Just yesterday, Matt Taibi confirmed his presence on Nostr:
https://substack.com/browse/recommendations/post/114703620
Substack has a clean UI, with no intrusive advertising or pop-ups, gives writers full control over content and most importantly, gives them email addresses of their subscribers. They've set a high bar which will not be easy to match on the decentralized networks (which are inherently more challenging to develop, in a technical sense). But we may soon have no alternative. The hammer may fall suddenly, so at least backup your subscriber email list frequently.
I too am all for decentralized. I have been hard on SubStack as a centralized Silicon Valley corporation. But in this war we must for now use the tools we have for reaching people and to engage in free speech. The world will never be the same after these past three years. Hopefully woke continues to go broke and corporations like SubStack continue to realize their lifespan and profitability rely on the principles underlying the Constitution and Bill of Rights. But you are right - we must prepare for any and all potential outcomes.
Look Nordic soldier there's a certain art to persuasion. Spamming some variation of the same comments over and over under completely unrelated comments is not it. This post had 50 comments yesterday and now has 33 more from you which have probably gained you 0 new subscribers while annoying my readers.. I don't block commenters but have banned dozens of spammers who say they make $1500 an hour napping from home. Thanks for not spamming my comment section anymore.
Right to the heart of the matter.
"You do know that's a terrible answer, right?" says the self-declared brown guy. There is no question in his mind; it's a given, an unquestioned certainty that the debate (on thought and expression!) ends where his identity is offended. Breathtaking in its superficiality and self-involvement.
Let me List The Risks:
- Parents
- Kids
- Foods
- Animals
- Governments
- Deep States
- Potholes
- Suntan Lotions
- Blue Light
- Refined White Sugar & Flour
- The List Is Endless...
Existence Is Precarious !
Did i list All Those Bastards Who Make Life Miserable ? No ? That List is Too Long...
Bravo Good Citizen. Without naming names, I got into it with one of those interlopers at notes. I get so frosted when it supposedly all about “the right” instigating violence. Yet who is doing the church and pregnancy center vandalizing with virtually no arrested. Not to mention burn loot mayhem etc. Hopefully Notes will not be the downfall of Substack.
banana republic justice insulates the regime's foot soldiers to lie, cheat, steal, burn, loot, murder. no rule of law. no principals. no integrity. only devotion is to cult and ideology. it's infuriating on all levels.
they also claim the right are in the midst of a book banning like has never been seen. This is of course repub governors banning porn from school libraries. Meanwhile the social justice warriors at publishing houses are literally changing the words in classics, and adding long disclaimers about how racist this book is. These people should not be taken seriously.
Projection and inversion. Alinsky's rules now flow through their blood it has eliminated self awareness and irony.
And I know some people who still haven't caught on to the fact that this is a cultural revolution and we are living in 1984 now.
This is great .... thanks for posting this. Have you ever seen this?
https://youtu.be/8K6-cEAJZlE
Awesome!!!
Well there you go. You typed the "J" word.
One can call out the black race hustlers still with little real pushback, but mention the "J" word (which, btw, I never capitalize any longer) and the little black hat wearers swarm.
I've often wondered if Best is a jew. If so, he will capitulate when the time is right (when he's made enough money or the honey trap is no longer useful, or God willing, their stranglehold is broken)..
Someone getting to the heart of the matter! Thank you AP.
Censorship is only for those who have something to hide and who are so full of fear that they might be discovered as the poor wretched souls they have become. They live in houses without mirrors.
Whenever I read missives from the ADL, I am reminded of why that dastardly organization was started: to defend the Jew Leo Frank after he raped and murdered Mary Phagan, a 13 year-old Irish-American girl.
https://www.unz.com/article/mary-phagans-family-opposes-exoneration-of-sex-killer-leo-frank/
Frank was the President of Atlanta’s B’nai B’rith Lodge No. 144. As the owner of a pencil factory, he was also Mary Phagan's boss. On April 26, 1913, when little Mary went to his office to collect her paycheque, he took the opportunity of being alone with her to rape and then murder her.
Frank tried to pin the crime on a Black janitor who also worked at his pencil factory (James Conley), but ultimately he failed and Conley's name was cleared.
After Frank was convicted and sentenced to death, the ADL was founded in an effort to save his life. After numerous legal appeals failed, the Georgia governor eventually commuted Frank’s sentence.
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-leo-frank-case-and-the-origins-of-the-adl/
So, a group of Real White Men got things done and lynched Frank.
To this day, the ADL still claims Frank was innocent. There was even a Broadway musical made in 1998 ("Parade") portraying him as the victim in the case.
You can't make this stuff up.
Excellent points Anne. A dark and deceptive history many are unaware of.
remember the jews tried to frame 2 blacks for the crime. we are told by the jews that the southerners would lynch 1000's of blacks for no reason. here the southerners saw the blacks were being framed and let them go didnt hang them just for being black. that is never brought up in the discussion of the leo frank affair where the jews spent 26 million in todays money on frank
Liberal white women and brown people like this woke douche should never be engaged, what is the point?
These are the very people that create fake accounts or that have their minions post the worst of the racist posts you will see on conservative leaning sites, don’t be fooled, a true racist wouldn’t bother with these comment sections. It’s 99.9% fake.
GC, I occasionally see a post in your comments that is warm to stupid, borders on racist or is just plain ignorant, usually just one per writing you upload. You simply ignore them as others do and they vanish into oblivion, do not engage and they lose their power of opinion 100% of the time, you do not censor or delete any of them I assume, that is the correct way to deal with the faux racists or knuckle draggers.
Your site is the only one I comment on, I enjoy the comments from others as well. If this is ruined by the fascists, I will stop completely, which means they win I guess, I could care less, but I hope Chris stands his ground.
Well, I do like every comment even if I disagree. Nothing is really 'offensive' because being offended is a choice people make, mostly to virtue signal for social capital. And because it's one comment. The next one they leave could be the most insightful comment ever, and if I block them, what have I deprived everyone, including myself of?
Damn good article! You brought together many of the most important and influential propaganda instruments in this piece.
Victimhood status makes people complacent, and apathetic, which is critical in controlling their actions. Once someone falls into the victimhood trap it takes a lot to get them out of it. Being a victim necessarily requires you to look outward to fix every issue in your life. This causes the individual to wither away, the victim becomes a slave to their own illusion.
Similarly, bringing people out of this state is complicated, because they have to admit their own failings in doing so. They also will be forced to look retrospectively at all of the missed opportunities that have passed them by as a result.
That's why I believe that promoting a victimhood mentality is truly evil. It's the ultimate form of human waste, as in wasted lives.
Chris, I hope you read these comments. I think the answer is two fold. 1. We endorse free speech trust people that they will speak respectfully as content creators. 2. The Substack community is the right place for content and behavior management. Watch this interview that I did with Randy Sullivan of Bourbon Real Talk. His 24k member community self-polices the behavior of it members. Here is the link: https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/randy-sullivan-bourbon-community
You have a good one too GC!
Censorship is as useful as a cardboard bomb shelter. People who are so sensitive to free speech can put their heads between their legs and kiss their asses goodbye. By the time they wake up to understand what is going on, the fuse is already lit and traveling quickly to the stick of dynamite that is stuck up their assholes.
Individual authentication is the answer to the censorship problem and I can only think that the 95% decline in participation that would occur when anonymity is removed is the reason it hasn't been done already. Social media would lose it's chokehold on discourse and governments would lose a tool to control the population. Treat social media like the digital town square it is and use existing slander and libel laws to self-police, why can't this happen?
Wow such a good example of entrapment attempt by the woke. Chris Best is obviously more intelligent than to fall for that. Bless him. Go Chris!
Engagement between the writers and the readers and 100% free speech is the gold standard. I am certain we will be challenged many times. I am also certain the centered, calm, logical approach to encountering this kind of hysteria will allow us to rise above such discourse.
centered, calm, logical approach is essential. Chris has been impressive so far. That we must hope he never cracks is the inbuilt weaknesses of centralization.