NotSoThoreau

I started hanging out on the internet when I went back to college in 1995. I found the Knit List. It was wonderful! It was also my first experience with the mean girls gang. You would have these women insist that the list be run to suit them. They would complain and bitch about something. The people running the list would accommodate them, then they would find something else to complain about. It got old. I wound up starting my own website and my own mailing list. And complainers about my list were told they could start their own and run it any way they chose.

I hear that excuse from people that support the way Ravelry is going. But Ravelry is not a personal website. It is a business. And businesses have to play under different rules. Carriers, like your cell phone company, operate under a certain set of laws, because traffic just passes through them. Platforms operate under a different set as they monitor and restrict speech. Tech companies want it both ways. They want to restrict speech and be unregulated like a carrier. That needs to stop. We have Google taking down a video of how Google plans to stop someone like Donald Trump from ever running for President again. If you think this is a great idea, try reversing that where a conservative business plans to stop the run of a Democratic candidate. We can’t allow these companies to police themselves.

Let me make this plain as I can. You cannot slander and smear an entire group of people, just because you don’t like their politics. I have not seen a single instance of anyone on Ravelry that has been guilty of “white supremicist” behavior. No one, anywhere, has an example. It has all been guilt by association. Trump is supposed to be a white supremicist, based on biased and slanted stories from the main stream media. Therefore, you are guilty if you support that. This is wrong. Let me say it again, this is wrong and you should know that. Let’s stop pretending there are groups on Ravelry full of Storm Front supporters, If you have an example of it, fine. But you don’t. I am not on everything at Ravelry, but I do not see any political talk anywhere. I can see, just by description, which groups are full of social justice warriors. I avoid those groups. It’s the mean girls of the internet all over again, humorless scolds that want to tell you want to do and how to think. The fact that those groups exist doesn’t “trigger” me. I don’t require that they be purged. I just avoid them. The other side doesn’t feel that way. People must be brought into line or kicked off. The glee about this decision is sickening. People that have never interacted with me at all, encouraging me to leave Ravelry sooner rather than later. I’ve had people quote back the manifesto to me, as if it’s gospel. The people at Ravelry are lying. That document is to try and cover their asses legally. This is in fact a purge of anyone that doesn’t do what they say. Unrestricted speech for the Left, but no speech at all on the Right. Why would anyone want to stay under those terms?

I titled this “Where We Went Wrong”. People used to make private websites and run email lists. If you weren’t a techy, there were sites like Geocities that would make it easier to set up a website. You had forums like Delphi. All of these required effort, but it was your own space. You had some control over it. Social media promised that you didn’t have to do any work at all. But with social media, YOU are the product. Your information is used for marketing. You really don’t have an option to opt out. They can track your information way beyond your visit to their site. And social media has brought out the worst of the mean girl club. They are now basically online mobs. They don’t think twice about putting where you live online, pressuring the company you work at. Even the companies that created these social media sites have remarked on it.

We need to return to smaller, more manageable groups. We need our own places again. We don’t need some giant site like Ravelry. We need less unrestricted speech, not more censorship. We need places where we can discuss craft and put all political discussion aside. We need places where crafters come together. Ravelry is on its way to becoming a very ugly place, make no mistake about it.

The internet is full of dead links. Make Ravelry one of them.