Yesterday I made a post about @sterlinluxan, a tag celebrity who was lying about me. You can see for yourselves here . I got heavily flagged from the @dollarvigilante and @sterlinluxan. The second decided to evade the topic rather eloquently to maintain appearances. I tip my hat to him. He mastered the art of political correctness and manipulation. I am not even going to bother about the dollarvigilante. They are both really good with marketing. They dominate the tags of anarchy and anarchism in Steemit mostly because they have imported their lemmings from other social media platforms. Numbers matter. After establishing reputation, content becomes somewhat irrelevant. We all know this.
Personally, I think their approach to the subject of anarchy is over-generalised and propagandistic. They both got a hold of the basic premises of anarchy, rebranded it, and made a career out of the sheep following their nonsense. I am an anarchist myself. Their positions can be easily refuted and people like them are the reason people laugh at anarchic ideas such as Cryptocurrencies and even Steemit itself. I have already debunked their core arguments with this post. I don't think they hold the intellectual caliber to face arguments of this level mostly because it destroys the very essence of their marketing philosophy. If they did know how to answer, they wouldn't resort to blatant lies to make a point and bury the opposition with childish flagging—raising in the meantime as little attention as possible to the main point of the article.
The Real Problem
The excuse? I am not "polite" enough for their taste. Based on pop-culture etiquette they are right. Steemit beta is slowly becoming a politically correct arena where rhetorics lead the way. But don’t mind this. Since when people cannot even identify lying and indirect manipulative ways? I admit i choose to be forward and vulgar with my language for the sake of being a true person. Why though as a society here in Steemit, seeking something alternative, resorted to petty political correctness? How is this any different than the politically rhetoric games playing outside in the real world or other social media platforms?
The issue was not even that big. The whole thing started with a simple refutal of classic anarchic mantra. @sterlinluxan 's whole argument is that, apparently, an anarchist, is 'produced' as a result of state authority. This might be true for the majority of anarchists but it does not apply to all, e.g individualist anarchists. In the same way, one can be an atheist and still not hold religion responsible for the ills of society. Again. One does not always become an atheist because of religion. Once more. One does not always become an anarchist because of the state. In the same way not all Steemians are a by-product of Facebook. As you can see the point is not even ideological where one can expect debate. I tried to chewed this as much as I could. This is a matter about being able to make a simple inductive logical argument but still—it can get silenced.
Who cares about quarrels with ideological cheerleaders, right?
Enter Freedom of Speech
The point is, what one owes to do when a few people monopolising a tag, have the power to silence posts? Would you even bother writing anything? I spend hours writing my refutal to his lies only for them to get hidden and flagged. I got more flags than a gay parade in that post. Would it matter if celebrities are here leeching on their minions to make a living? How will Steemit turn up, if all tags are filled with a few celebrities where no one can refute their posts? Voting power can burry posts oil deep so they can never show on one's feed.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft agreed to hate speech rules . It is one of the reasons I left facebook. I haven't used any "hate" speech although in political correctness, anything can be "hate speech" as long as you convince the majority what "proper" language is. People didn't even flag me for being inappropriate but rather because I disagreed with their leader. How fucking pathetic is this? Yeah, I know “is how the world works” but I didn’t join Steemit to get the same plate served to me.
If we are not allowed to speak in a certain way because someone might get offended, then we have done nothing in the realm of freedom. Freedom of Speech is the idea that we should be able to speak our minds however we want, especially if it offends others. Being offended is subjective, to each and everyone depending on cultural background, sexual orientation and general beliefs. If this form of political correctness penetrates Steemit, then concerning this aspect at least, all other social media platforms will be a much better alternative for the masses.
Sure, give your money to celebrity whale tags and not Zuckerberg. It makes a "real" difference while you earn pennies on the dollar... This is why it is important even for anarchists to avoid being in general "anarchic" categories where celebrities can manipulate them. This is why it is important even for non-anarchists to understand what is going on here. There is a thing called 'individualist anarchy' and it can be the solution to this statist-like flagging of the tag whales.
Reputation, reputation, reputation
Reputation loss works like a disobedience fine. Tags are similar to corporatist industries protected by the state. Once one gets monopolising power on their area, you are fucked due to the protective nature of the whales who want to make a buck on trending dolphins. If you don't like it, leave. People flock like mindless sheep in comments to just cheer trending posts even if they disagree. Most comments are just cheerleading. Users mind their language and try to appear as "proper" as possible. It is more pathetic than the Kardashians thumping up each other on facebook. Steemit is slowly becoming an arena for upvote and comment prostitution.
Most users of Steemit are grouped together to their leaders. This is the elephant in the room everyone seems to ignore. The ecosystem will only get more and more of this "celebrity tag monopoly" until a handful dominate. I am pointing these things out to @dan and @ned because I just experienced the effect of this charade (and luckily early enough) . I understand that this is a beta version of Steemit but I can't help but be very sceptical about the future.
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If you don’t have anything to say don’t reply with filler content. If you don’t agree don’t upvote. If you like my ideas follow me @kyriacos. I will probably shit on one of your posts in the future but this is how real, honest people should engage with each other.