A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Posted on May 14, 2021 by clydeleesmith

Reposted from Facebook.

I’m in a seven day penalty in Twitmo because I made an obvious joke about sp1ke proteins like tiny daggers flung from my body accompanied by a picture of the Pin Head character from the horror movie Hellraiser. In other words, a parody of the irrational fears of anti-vaccination people. Twitter decided my post and my account were dangerous and so I’m unable to post. I have declined to appeal my suspension. The monitors are guided by dull-witted algorithms anyway. Social media companies are private concerns. They can pretty much do what they want. But it it’s becoming clear that they are not worthy of our time or attention.

A lot of us just give away creativity for the sake of clever posts online. That is part of the genius of social media platforms. It’s so easy. That goes double for Facebook, actually. It’s helpful to recall that its origins were a sleazy project to rate women on the Harvard campus. I have been here only because people I care deeply for are here and as I slide into boomer decrepitude it’s comforting to stay in touch.

But there’s a price we pay. I’m sure y’all already know that if the service is free then you are the product. I’m weary of being a product, shaped into a consumer, monitored for the benefit of the social media companies. What we do on social media has nothing to do with free speech. We have become marketable meat puppets and I’m as prone to it as anyone. Maybe more, since I wallowed in mass media for so long and arrogantly thought I was immune to being manipulated. I don’t know what the solution is. But if I left I would miss y’all a lot. That makes me kind of a hostage and the product.

Huh. I’ll think about it. Meanwhile you know where to find me.

clydeleesmith at gmail dot com

unclaimedmysteries dot com

clydeleesmith dot com

Yerpla, C

Advertisement

Aw man, the President is broken.

I used to collect what one might call “kook lit.” Unhinged prophesies and/or conspiracies, feverishly illustrated and/or single-spaced, filled with gentle pleadings for humanity and/or violent threats. The kind of thing brought into Kinko’s @ 2AM by disturbed souls, with copies destined for car windshields, radio station PO boxes, who knows where else.

My collection is long gone, although I curated the hell out of it for years. One reason is that the Internet made it almost trivial to publish whatever you wanted. With few exceptions such as Time Cube (look it up), online kook lit didn’t have the same “bite” as the hard copy screeds. A second reason concerns my own sanity, and how hypocritical it was to have a cheap laugh at those who weren’t all that much deeper into the abyss than where I have been from time to time.

No, I don’t collect that stuff any more, but I remember the cadences, the dream logic, the occasional poetry entangled in the fused synapses of fevered minds trying to communicate … something, even at the risk of ridicule by downpunching asshats like me or visits by the authorities.

And I am here to testify as a former crackpotologist of note that all of my collection put together made more sense than the President of the United States does on Twitter on this 11th day of August in the Year of Oh Dear Lord 2018.

Vennting.

Consider a Venn diagram of: 
(1) people who jump into online discussions correcting others over what the AR in AR-15 stands for, 
(2) people who jump into online discussions correcting others over what the official Confederate flag looked like, and 
(3) people who jump into online discussions claiming there was no GOP Southern Strategy and that Democrats exclusively are the real racists.
That Venn diagram would be three nearly concentric circles.

Leaving Twitter

Hello Twitter friends. It’s time for me to go. Pretty simple, really. I have no desire to be “the product” any longer. I will delete this account over the weekend. I have one remaining social media account: (at)k4doh on Instagram.

I have no idea if I’ll be hearing from people on Twitter again. I will miss several personal friends and online acquaintances. Same thing happened when I left Facebook, only more so. People probably still think I’m dead over there.

I’m here. I’m still on clydeleesmith dot com, a site I seldom update, with intention to do more always. I have e-z to find email addresses. Instagram and Flickr even.  I’d be honored if you could drop me a line just to say hello at your convenience.

yerpal,

Clyde

Ham hike: February 25

I have the world’s best commute: 14 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in SW Virginia. I also have a ham radio: the Kenwood TH-D72A. On 25 February, I stopped on an overlook at Mile 168 in Floyd County and took a hiking path up to about 3550 feet. I thought maybe with 5 watts I could scare up a contact or two. Instead, I was The Popular Kid, hitting a Greensboro, NC repeater with ease and making several QRP contacts on 146.52 simplex with operators in NC, and VA.

Also registered several APRS pings.

Update 18 hours later

There goes Jones!

#ALSEN 2017

I lived most of my life in #Alabama. Spent too much time tolerating bigots just to get by without making waves because i had things to do. Sometimes I whined #notallalabamians when my state did something reprehensible yet a-rsfcking-gain. Didn’t matter. Our name was still used to represent everything embarrassing about the South in 21st Century.

I was not an effective advocate for getting our heads out of our asses. I just voted for losing candidates and complained on the Internet. Surprise! It changed nothing. Alabama is insular and self-spiting even compared to the rest of the Deep South.

If Judge Meatwad wins every Alabamian and everyone who cares about Alabama is going to have to endure an unprecedented tsunami of scorn and it won’t matter if we deserve it individually or not. It won’t matter how many college football games Bama or Auburn win.  Emphasizing college football is just another way we let ourselves get played by the reprehensible oligarchy that run the state anyway. But that’s another story.

It’s coming.  You won’t like it. I won’t like it.  It may not be fair, but it is understandable.

Clyde Lee Smith
SWVA, December 12, 2017.

A clean, well-written kiss-off

Many people post manifestos when they leave Facebook, as if they are nailing their words to the door of the Facebook Cathedral. Why should I be any different?

The TL;DR summary is that I got tired of pretending to have more friends than I actually have. If they can’t be bothered to stay in touch in *all* the other ways available to us in 2017, then there wasn’t that much friendship to begin with.

Dear Facebook friends and contacts:

I’m eliminating Facebook from my online life.

I remain on on Instagram (yes, I KNOW). I remain on Twitter for now at least, and I have email, and a damn website, *and* a couple of carefully neglected ERRRR curated blogs.

I don’t need to tell you that that this platform makes its users into marks in return for ease of use and shiny things to click. Or the privacy issues that make even the most paranoid conspiracy enthusiasts struggle to keep up.

(Monitoring what I type and DON’T send? Why yes, please I just wanna see more more MOAR CONTENT.)

But more than anything I resent Facebook for injecting itself into personal connections I have miraculously maintained and treasured over a lifetime that has already lasted a decade longer than I expected.

I have finally overcome the feeling that nobody will care about me unless I post and entertain them. That’s such an childish attitude. One that I have recognized in several students during my experience at the local high school.

And it’s an attitude nurtured by this supremely manipulative platform.

The blunt portion of this letter follows and I mean it without malice. But it’s the most important part:

If leaving Facebook means we no longer communicate, there wasn’t much deep communication to begin with, just superficiality. It means you all meant more to me than I meant to you. And I’m no longer afraid of losing that.

Hell, as far as 99% of you know I’ve been dead for years and this account is another FB artificial intelligence experiment. Or some punkass in Russia. Or the White House. Same diff. (heh)

I hope to be around. But this account goes dark at midnight tonight.

Thank you.

C

2017 December 02
The Bent Road
Meadows of Dan, VA

Twitter @clydeleesmith 
Instagram @k4doh 
Email cls  at clydeleesmith.com
Gmail clydeleesmith at gmail.com
Web http://clydeleesmith.com

 

Or, I really shouldn’t be neglecting this blog but until then …

The President* is briefed on the latest security situation.

Dream Logic

I dreamed I was back in Huntsville to take care of some mundane business and saw everybody I’ve known. And no one recognized me.

Not sure if it was because I had wildly overestimated how much people would remember me …

… or if I was literally no longer recognizable, and had morphed into a different appearance from living up in the hills. Like I had acquired the Appalachian equivalent of Lovecraft’s “Innsmouth look.”

In any case I need to watch what I eat before going to bed.

Oh, and as always,
#RESIST.