The Show Must Go On: Social Media Updates, a Saga Resolved & Shu in Exile
To be completely frank with you, I’ve been dreading having to write this post since roughly four PM yesterday afternoon when I found out my Twitter appeal had been denied and that the entire incident was in fact likely a result of AdamParkhomenko trolling me until I yelled at a Pennsylvania State Senator. This is a long and tedious story I have no desire to write out again, so I’m going to post a copy of the new appeal I filed with Twitter that explains the situation in a little more detail so we can quickly move on here:
Here’s the screenshot I promised Twitter so you can verify for yourself that at least part of my story is true; I certainly wished I’d take screenshots of all of Adam’s posts and all of his followers who came into my mentions to make this a four hour dog-pile but I didn’t realize it would be important at the time and unfortunately you can’t view individual tweets for a suspended account:
Unfortunately the essential problem here is that after four hours of doing almost nothing except blocking some of the most obnoxious liberal fanatics who follow one of the most slavishly toxic Democratic Party mercenaries in Parkhomenko, I absolutely took the bait and lost my cool; which in turn allowed them to successfully report me. This is of course a very common tactic among Dem Party mercenaries who pretend to be morally superior on social media and frankly I’ve been using Twitter more than long enough that I shouldn’t have walked into this trap; all of that is largely unarguable. All I can really say in my defense is that after four hours of trolling by people who are supposed to be members of the professional political establishment, you might pop off and threaten to contact the media too.
Despite the fact that I feel justified in how I responded, the general rule of the road on Twitter is that when two sides both think the other one is an abusive shitheel the “Blue Checkmark” always wins and something tells me that now that Twitter has already taken action, almost nothing short of lawyers, guns and money is going to make then un-suspend @NinaDontPlayMtg. As I mentioned in my last article, such a result has the potential to be a death sentence for ninaillingworth.com because as of right now the vast majority of my link sharing to this site is done on Twitter.
So What Now Then?
While I honestly don’t know if this website/my work can legitimately survive the drop in traffic this whole ordeal is going to cost me, I was genuinely moved by the surprising outpouring of support I received here on this website, on Twitter, on Facebook and vial email. Furthermore, while I’d never be so puerile as to suggest that any writer only writes “for themselves” there is an open question as to whether I actually can quit writing without going stark raving mad. In light of this, I’ve decided to continue my work here at this website and try one last time to diversify my social media presence so I’m not completely screwed the moment some dweeb at Twitter presses a button. Although the idea of attempting to rebuild a 4,000 follower Twitter account from a few hundred followers is frankly simply fucking exhausting, your letters have made me realize that there are a whole bunch of people out there reading my work who don’t really care if I even have a Twitter account. Let’s look at the changes I’m making to try and survive losing my primary form of sharing links to my website:
Twitter: obviously with the (seemingly permanent) suspension of @NinaDontPlayMtG, I have moved my main Twitter feed to my former backup account @EIWBM_Cat. This then in turn required me to make arrangements for a new back-up Twitter account (just in case this whole thing happens again) which you can find here @NinaWritesStuff. Naturally I strongly recommend that anyone who follows @EIWBM_Cat on Twitter should also follow @NinaWritesStuff just in case my primary account gets suspended. Frankly, if you like my writing but find my social media prattle insufferable, just following @NinaWritesStuff is a reasonable option because I’m pretty much only going to post links to my writing there unless something happens to the @EIWBM_Cat account. I will of course also try not to take the bait again and yell at a sitting State Senator online until Twitter suspends my account, although I’m not taking a blood oath here because if I wasn’t outrageously angry at being trolled by so called professional Democrats, I never would have engaged in the activity in the first place.
Facebook & Email: up until now I’ve really only used this website’s Facebook Page to post links back to articles I’ve written here on ninaillingworth.com and as such, I haven’t really seen much need to promote my Facebook presence in posts like this. After talking with a few people who regularly use Facebook primarily as a social media service however, I’ve come to realize that I’m not taking full advantage of the platform’s ability to reach people. Starting today, I’ve decided to migrate a sort of “daily blog” post over to the NinaDotCom Facebook page that will represent new content for people who follow along on Facebook. I’m not promising long form essays but I should be able to manage a few hundred words and maybe a link or two in the morning on the vast majority of days. I will also be making a more concerted effort to respond to comments on Facebook and to overcoming my infamous habit of forgetting to return emails; my only request is that readers looking to interact with me directly realize that I’m taking on a lot of new responsibilities here and I’m probably not going to be able to respond to inquiries more than once a day. You can find email addresses to reach me with on the Contacts page of this website.
Comments: when I originally put ninaillingworth.com out on to the internet, I made the tactical decision that I would rather write articles than spend all of my time moderating comment trolls at the bottom of every article; as such I installed a plug-in that automatically turned off comments inside all posts on this website. After explaining my troubles promoting my work outside of Twitter to a friend of mine who manages websites for a living however, I have learned that this was a silly, rube-like mistake from which my website traffic may never recover because allowing comments on your articles fosters communities of readers and posters who keep coming back to you site; live and learn I suppose, my desire not to moderate comments is less important to me than my ability to share my work. I have now opened up the Comments section on the vast majority of articles on this website and I’ll do my best to participate in whatever conversations you guys might have while taking out the trash posts at least once a day.
Although I wanted literally anyone to be able to comment, the internal frame for this website forced me to choose between a number of options that all require to posters to register somehow; as a result readers who want to comment are required to sign up using the Subscribe button on the right hand side of this page. If you don’t want email updates whenever a new article comes out, I’m pretty sure you can unsubscribe after the first one and you’ll still have account here on ninaillingworth.com for the purposes of commenting; I apologize for the inconvenience but all the other options were legitimately worse.
Finally I asked that you treat each other with at least some reasonable amount of respect. I’m not running a reform school here or anything but if you could refrain from typing comments that might legitimated get me arrested, that would be great. There are only three banned words preset in the Comments section program as of right now; two of which will trash the comment and one of which will hold it for moderation while I figure out if you’re British or a raging misogynist. Let’s try not to force me to dick around by adding a bunch more words and moderating comments all day, fair?
How Can Readers Help: as I mentioned above, I was genuinely overwhelmed by the kind and even at times inspiring words encouraging readers sent me when Twitter suspended my account; dozens of people contacted me in some way, shape or form to as “how can I help?” To those of you who’d like to assist me in surviving this suspension and growing censorship against left wing websites in general, the truth is I need readers a whole lot more than I need money during this trying time. The easiest way to help me stay one step ahead of billion dollar media corporations is to subscribe using the button on the right hand side of this site and share links to articles on ninaillingworth.com on forums, blogs and social media; I’ve even included some (poorly written) ideas about where to share links in the top navigation bar of this website on our “Spread the Word” page. I’ll also be posting a reminder to subscribe and share in the comments section of new articles so please forgive me in advance if you’re already signed up.
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Before I wrap up this already too-long and somewhat tedious post, I would just like to once again thank all of the people who reached out to remind me that someone is out their reading my work and all of the folks who continue to pressure @Twitter and @TwitterSupport to restore my @NinaDontPlayMtG account. While I’m pretty sure Twitter simply isn’t going to do that and as such, I’ve been forced to get on with promoting my work in other ways; I do sincerely appreciate the effort numerous friends have undertaken on my behalf. Naturally if Twitter were to unsuspend my account I would be extremely grateful but the day to day nature of the news cycle means I really don’t have time to wait around for them to make an exception in my case.
Clearly, I’m in for a long battle to keep ninaillingworth.com visible to new readers but everyone has to start somewhere and I’m not really interested in weeping over the past; even if losing 3800 followers because I took a professional troll’s bait is most certainly a savage blow to my prospects as a writer. As one of the most beloved characters in American cinema once said “never tell me the odds” – we fight onward and hopefully, through diversification I can continue to outlast the machine.
In the meantime, let’s not talk about Twitter again for as many weeks as humanly possible; hopefully I’ll have a normal article up by tomorrow or the day after.
- Nina Illingworth
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