Banned By...

Things happen my friends, and you have to expect some rough weather along life's dangerous journey. But banned by RT? The "Question more", "anti-censorship" Russian media giant? Yes, that too happens. And even to yours truly.

First let me say that RT, comparatively speaking, is less censorious than its Western counterparts. But it being less censorious than its Western counterparts begs a question. Western media sources are very censorious. RT is somewhat censorious. I learned this when I went after some of their pro-homo nonsense.

Yep, RT too, is pro-homo. Just like its Western globohomoshlomo counterparts. Oddly enough, I got bounced there not for my "antisemitism" but for my "homophobia".

I noticed back in the days of the Yahoo message boards that dissing queers would get you bounced faster than dissing the Jews would. But back then you could come back immediately with a new avatar and fake email address. Ah, the good old days when the Internet still hadn't figured out how to squelch us. Now they want a valid email address and have IP identifiers.

RT has a love-hate relationship with the Jews. Several years back you could point out all kinds of unsavory facts regarding them: like their treatment of the Palestinians. Then almost overnight they decided that criticizing the Jews was verboten. My posts started getting ghosted so I left.

Nearly a year ago, stopping by after my long absence, I saw that the Jews were getting hammered in the comments section once again. I chimed in and for some reason my thoughts on such matters, and others, weren't being ghosted anymore, and in fact started getting a lot of recs from other commenters.

Game on!

But some 4-6 weeks ago the editorial board at RT had a change of heart and course. We commenters began noticing that we had to type in code when speaking of "chews... j.e.w.s... juice..." or our posts would often vanish.

But RT then implemented a bot that recognized all the variants of the accursed name and began deleting comments utilizing them within a few seconds. Not all for some reason, but many. In my case roughly half. Even me saying "retarded" once in a post got it deleted. And that was about DC.

So yeah, RT too has gone woke. But why?

I have no answer for that other than to surmise that Vladimir Putin's staunchly sluggish and unimaginative ethos has percolated deep down through the full strata of Russian society, and into the very veins of the anonymous minions slaving away at RT/Tolstoy.

I say RT/"Tolstoy" because the comments section there is administered by a somewhat mysterious entity called "Tolstoy".

Somehow, RT/Tolstoy accessed one of my avatars and my gmail address, neither of which I gave them, when I first signed up there long years ago... and I didn't create my gmail address until several years afterwards. I heard once from a dependable source that Tolstoy comments has an office (their headquarters?) in Israel. I don't know. Like I said, it's hard to get more than cursory information about Tolstoy on the Internet. It'll take a deeper dive.

Anyway, 4-6 weeks ago I noticed some of my posts going missing at RT. That hadn't been a problem before, though some other commenters were complaining about it. But soon enough the occasional missing post became an often missing post. I began typing in code too. This worked for a few weeks... only. Then the coded posts started getting deleted too.

But what finally got me banned was calling queers queers. I'd noticed that for some reason they'd become a protected class at RT. In fact certain woke tropes began finding an ally in RT.

I resorted to using code words for "queer": "k weeer... qwiers... q'we're...." But the Tolstoy bot/moderators were soon on to my tricks until finally, when I asked if RT "had a faqqot bot moderator", I was banned.

In truth, it's a relief. The comments section at RT was becoming an aggravation. Speaking in code. Seeing a post get deleted. Watching the hourglass spin forever for an article or for comments to load. Not to mention seeing RT spewing wokeness.

I can still go there and read posts if I want. I just can't comment on anything or rec someone's post, getting the message: "You can't comment at this site".

My friends, take it from me: at the end of the day, all our musings on the Internet are little more than whispers into a howling storm; and all we say here will disappear into the larger noise, where it will be forgotten.

Fitz