I surfed a web before trigger warnings and declarations and tragically before the NSFW label on posts. Way before blue checkmarks and the ever-mysterious shadow banning wielded by their outrage.
But as of late the ideologies that pilot the social networks the web became, have been active. Deplatforming people because of what they believe the same way I would boot a porn channel if I ran the world.
These sites are only doing what they feel is right to things they objectively own. The problem is that sites like youtube don't make the content they promote and host the content. Google doesn't blog on blogger, bloggers do.
And as the death grip of a left staggering thought pattern chokes the social out of these media companies, I feel like any step in defiance will have me blocked, banned or worse de-platformed.
The freedom of the internet is now tangled with a snake of compromise. We can post and write whatever we want so long as we do it to fit inside the community guidelines and political affiliations of who builds the servers and keeps the lights on in silicon valley.
To boldly host my own site on my own server so these measures can't be used means more hardware than most writers can afford. To rank on Google on an opposing platform of my own would mean means to an unreachable end.
But maybe that's the point.
Persecution never works. It only breeds martyrs and sympathy. And right now alongside orthodox believers are orthodox biologists, lawyers, politicians and teachers. People willing to stand and be shot or at the very least blocked and banned.
Ages before these internet debacles a man took sights on an opposing empire that was ideologically driven as well. One that viewed sex drugs and communications standards drastically different than that missionary. But Paul staked a claim on Rome that brought Christianity to the world. Maybe not at first but by his courage and conviction, evidently at last.
I don't want to be afraid to post an article about binary gender or theology all the same. But to have convictions alongside your websites ideologies means at least entertaining those jitters before the plunge.
Still.
I think of a lot of articles and book ideas that I know will get banned and removed from the sites I use to spread my attempts at spreading the gospel.
To let that fear decide when my pen writes and when my keyboard types is cowardice. And the scriptures have little to say pleasantly of cowards.
So here goes.
To Rome or bust.