No, I am not Leaving Twitter... | The Daily Bastardette

How I feel today. More Cowbell! St. Christopher Walken, Patron Saint of Bastard Nation.

…but I signed up on Mastadon tonight to check it out. I understand the server part (none of them really suit me, but I tried), which seems to baffle some people, but the rest? I dunno. I can’t figure out how to make a post, and what in the world does this mean on my profile page:

Profile metadata.

You can have up to 4 items displayed as a table on your profile

Why is everything so difficult? Honestly, I’ve been online for 36 years and taught myself most of what I know. But, at least, for me, the longer this crap goes on and “improves” the more confused I get. I loathe TikTok (though, I have 2 accounts I try to ignore since I don’t like doing video. I need a script in front of me) and I don’t understand the purpose of Instagram and Linked-In except what people tell me. get lots of job “opportunities” sent through Linked-In. I am not a chemist, a web designer, a truck driver, or day-care worker, nor do I want to be.

As a veteran of the old “newsgroups” (aka usenet) which went out of fashion before some of you were born, I find today’s social media really boring and restrictive. I don’t want to be nice. There are some people who do not deserve respect.

Maybe someday I’ll write a little memoir about the good old tough-and-tumble days on the alt hierarchies in the 1990s. No moderation, no control. Trolling was a fine art. Jobs were lost, marriages destroyed, cops were called. alt.adoption was called the “meanest newsgroup in town. We didn’t take prisoner, and it’s where Bastard Nation and the 2nd wave of the adoptee rights movement was born.

Around 2002 or so, my eternal nemesis Mike Morrisey, founder of Baby Safe Haven New England, stomped into his local constabulary hq to report that I was in a plot with mobster Whitey Bulger’s brother. Billy ,(the former president of the Massachusetts Senate and at the time of the complaint the President of the UMass system) and the then-current Senate President to harm or even kill his wife (who was as equally obnoxious as Mike) and probably himself. (I’m not sure how I got to fly in such elite Massachusets political circles) He demanded the police do regular welfare checks at his home. I have a copy of the police report. The cops got a big laugh out of it. One said, “This sounds like an Internet thing. I lived in Ohio. Mike lived in Massachusetts. Twenty years later Mike still hounds me and I hound him back.

Anyway, I do not intend to leave Twitter. That’s where all of my good discussions happen, and where the more dedicated and angry adoptee rights activists hang-out. I will be the one who tourns out the lights.

FB is OK, better than nothing, but well,…it’s got no zing to its thing. It did, I guess, but now it’s copro and sad and full of ads. Half the time I can’t even post my blog to the various pages I own. I’m not leaving it either, since it’s an information tool, but boy, I wish the Zuck-nannies would stuff it. Come on! People getting sent to Facebook Jail for commenting on fictional characters on fictional General Hospital. “I want Nicholas to kill Esme.” “I’m glad Peter is dead.” Which reminds me. Maybe I should write about Esme’s adoptee issues for NAM or try to design a chart to explain Willow’s bio/adoptive, and fake relatives. Or Nelle’s family tree. Or my theory that Mrs. Wu is Brad’s bio mother, not his aunt. He has an adoption backstory that’s never been explored.

I intended to write about something else, but I got a very late start today. My commitment to write every day in November is a burden I bear–mostly gladly –but sometimes not.