I know this is the most stereotypically Reddit thing to say, but I'm honestly devastated so much of my life's work got deleted yesterday and I'll never be able to see it again. I used to post semi-frequently on TiA (you may remember me as PuerAeternis – my flair was 'Nonbinary Going Their Own Way') and I was legitimately proud of my critiques of social justice. Being a former SJW, I felt that I was (and still am) uniquely qualified to comment on their insanity, given how much I'm able to empathize with the people I'm criticizing.
And comment I most certainly did. Towards the end, I used automated tools to archive the things that I posted, but the archive did not include comments, many of which were essay-length rants like this one, which I put a great deal of thought into. If a thing like that got even one upvote, I would be legitimately proud of it. In hindsight, I was a lot more proud of the things that I said than the threads that I started.
The lesson to be learned from all this? Back up your shit (that one is obvious). But perhaps more importantly: don't pour your heart and soul into social media posts that can and will get deleted for stupid reasons.
You'd think maybe this would have provided the impetus for me to start putting effort into things that have a longer lasting impact. Like maybe I should spend more time writing books? But what happened to TiA is an unwelcome reminder that all things that you put your time and effort into will be lost, destroyed, deleted or forgotten about at some point or other. And right now, I'm struggling to find the motivation to do anything. Even though I hadn't posted on TiA in a while, those other things will eventually go the same way. Besides, the publishing industry is full of woke assholes. And self-publishing is run by the same kind of tech giants (Amazon) who deplatform people, sooo...
I dunno, I'll get over it eventually. But this has been the latest in a long series of realisations that the things I enjoy are dominated by the people I hate. If was just Reddit, or just one or two genres of publishing, I could ignore them and move on. But with the way things are, I can see myself being trapped in this thought pattern for a while. And when I described it to my dad, he said it sounded like depression.
What do you think? Is it even worth trying to rebuild what we had on r/TiA? And if not, then what is?
(It has also not escaped my notice that the Reddit admins are pushing me, an autistic queer, into a state of mental illness. But that's to be expected.)
