My account is gone.
What did I even do?
Welcome to Jesus Unfollower, where we laugh at religious absurdity daily.
I’m still not sure if social media is a net good or net bad for society. I lean toward net good because it lets people find others who are like them. It helps people to feel less alone. It’s an escape.
But I think we can all agree that it can be an absolute cesspool at times.
I used to love Twitter. It was a place where I could get sports news, read hot takes, and admire comedians who could crack us all up in 140 characters.
Then, Elon bought Twitter and turned it into a bunch of incels jerking each other off in the backseat of a virtual Cybertruck called X.
When Threads came along, it was refreshing. No ads. No DMs. Seemingly a lot less hateful MAGA assholes.
It was like that for a little while, and then Trump became president again and the hateful online discourse made its way to Zuckerberg’s Twitter wannabe.
The things that people say online (usually behind a fake profile) can be pretty disgusting: racism, homophobia, transphobia, and hate…many times in the name of their God.
Here’s an example. I opened the app while writing this, and this post was at the top of my feed:
I like to push back on these kinds of posts.
On Tuesday night, we went to watch the movie Obsession, which is absolutely worth the watch, and, when we got home, I saw that I had an email from Threads. It said this:
I’ve known that this is a possibility for many reasons:
Trump literally created an anti-Christian bias task force
Christians love mass reporting anything that doesn’t suck off Jesus
Lots of platforms have built-in tools to detect words and phrases they deem “hateful”
Moderators likely have too much power
Having said that, I was still bummed. My Threads account was at almost 30,000 followers and gets millions of views some months.
This is what I want to do full-time, and Threads helps people discover my content. That’s a gut punch.
I appealed the suspension, and they said it would take about an hour for them to decide whether my account would be restored or permanently banned.
Well, I got this email an hour later:
Permanently banned. Cool. Awesome. Let the bigots run wild but crack down on the people who call them out.
I started thinking “Well, maybe it’s a good thing. Threads is becoming more and more toxic, and this ban will give me more time to focus on making videos and writing on Substack.” I had become okay with it.
People on Instagram and Facebook were saying that I should take it as a badge of honor and be happy. I get that, but I’m also trying to make a living from content creation. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t care as much.
Then, another hour later, I got this:
To quote the Backstreet Boys:
If you think I’m about to ask you to support my work:
But, in all seriousness, I don’t make much money from social media, and what little I do make is always at risk because of the nature of this content.
Paid subscribers here on Substack are how I can keep doing this.
If you can’t go paid, I completely understand. This economy is shit.
One free thing you could do to help out is to share my Substack with someone who you think would like it.
Even Facebook (the platform I earn the most from), is threatening to suspend my page.
I’m not trying to get rich from this; I just want to be able to make great videos, posts, memes, and to do large creative projects that will have a bigger impact.
I currently have 65 paid subscribers, and I appreciate all of you very much. I think the magic number is 500. If just a tiny fraction of the people who follow me would join my paid Substack, I wouldn’t have to worry about spending a single minute doing client work that takes me away from the thing I do best, and I won’t have to rely on shaky algorithms that constantly change and suppress content.
If my page has made you laugh or feel less alone, become a paid Unfollower!
Thank you to Isaiah S, pospdx, Fianna, Peter Z, Stanley P, and Jeremy F for becoming the most recent paid subscribers!
Remember: You don’t need a god to be good.
Kevin