I have something important to say that is weighing on my heart. However, the problem is, I’m not sure how to convey what I feel in order that my readers can understand what I’m talking about fully. I will try to explain as best I can without rambling. I think the cancel culture continues to affect us in ways that even I couldn’t imagine. It has gotten to the point where social media influencers are now looking for new platforms to create their content. Before I move on, I would like to make one thing clear; my blog is not about politics at all; my blog is strictly about music history. However, at the same time, I could not foresee the troubles bloggers like myself would endure indirectly as a clear result of this new political climate.
Understand That Even The Innocent Are Being Cancelled!
I realized the new “cancel culture” has became a problem when various social media platforms started giving me warnings about “inappropriate language” on my own website (a site I pay for). This didn’t matter if I typed special characters such as the @ sign in order to replace other letters. Some ads were even taken down. All of these things were happening, and my blog is not even political. I was really, really perplexed. And what confused me more than anything else is that, social media is inundated with hip hop media. Over 70% of hip hop media has foul language in it. Therefor, I couldn’t understand why small music bloggers were all included in this new world-wind of “disinformation.” There was a time when the first thing someone would say was “what makes you an authority?” “What are your credentials?” It’s funny, if big tech companies would sensor and block religious blogs and websites they way they do others, there would literally be bloody hell to pay.
How Is It That People Are Losing Our Voices? How Big Tech is responsible?
In the simplest and easiest way I can explain how big tech is responsible for America losing our voices— Our own ignorance. Without turning this post in to a 400 page book, I’m gonna say that I estimate our problems emerged shortly after the popularity of “podcasting” back in early c. 1980s. If I’m correct, Apple pioneered in the world podcasting. In fact, I’m pretty sure that podcasting was probably the one thing that attracted many people to use Apple products. Podcasting was that one tool that anyone can use to make known issues going on in their communities. People got on the mic and talked about everything known to man. That included sports, music, movies, etc. Even various kinds of therapists created their own podcasts to discuss a wide range of issues from children with “attention deficit disorders,” to sex education. There were tons of websites that specialized on giving you advice on what kinds of mics to use for podcasting, software, etc. There were even hosting services that were purely dedicated to storing your podcasts online. Podcasting was a way for regular people like you and I, who had no political attachments, to speak their voice.
This Was The Moment We Lost Our Voice!
The moment I pinpointed when we started losing our voice was when business took notice of not only how popular podcasting got, but the heavy following podcasters accumulated. All of a sudden, CNN had a podcast, CBS had a podcast, NPR had a podcast, etc. All of a sudden, I could no longer find independent podcasters in Apple’s search box. They’ve been all “shadowed,” or almost completely removed from their index. It was then I knew that it was a rap. Big business has taken over. Same was true for blogging. The meaning of the word “blog,” meant a personal journal. A blog is almost like a public diary. Today you hear companies like MSNBC say “visit us on our blog!” A blog was never about business or “news” for that matter. Blogging was about having a personal journal. Now, Big tech has effectively taken that over too. Don’t let me get started on corrupt YouTube! I hate YouTube with a passion. You can write a paragraph long response to someone, and YouTube will delete your entire post in less than a second, if it contains a word YouTube set as a flag. Regardless of how you felt (and still feel) about our former commander and chief, for the love of our country, you must understand that if a company such as twitter can make a decision to shutdown a former commander and chief’s account that is a very very serious problem, and is unthinkable. And if you think that’s ok, then you obviously don’t understand what democracy is, and how it’s supposed to function.