Wednesday, April 16, 2014

They Still Won't Face Me...

 
If I could, I would move here in a red hot second, leave technology, crowds, pollution, noise, and people's bullshit as far behind me as I possibly could.


Well, here we go again – or should I say still.  I just recently discovered that both Google and YouTube – not coincidentally owned by the same people – have buried everything to do with me – my videos, my website, my blog, Facebook account, Twitter account.  Just to compare, I googled a few people that I knew – old acquaintances, musicians I met over the years – it was very easy to find them – their websites, articles, and whatever else.  If you type my name, along with any term – guitar, ukulele, music, lap steel guitar, anything, there will be no listings for me.  A couple of searches will take you, though, to a Facebook page that has listings of any person or company that contains the name you’re searching for, but that’s Facebook’s site, not relative to any particular person, and Google cannot very well bury Facebook’s listings page.  Now, I went to Bing, and found me very easily – just as I did with all the other people I searched for on Google.  They left me a few crumbs, though, there were a couple of times when I found a listing for one of my CD listings on CD Baby – on page 4, 5, or so – maybe they did that for a reason, or maybe they’re just not aware of those, don’t know.

Ok, now for YouTube.  Back around 2006, 07, and 08, I was fairly active on political and social issues on YouTube.  After a few months I seemed to have been accepted by what appeared to be an elite group of activists who were saying much the same as I was.  We were, of course, all labeled as “Anti-semites”.  Most of us were not particularly against Jewish people, but as with certain groups, if you question or point out their wrongdoings, they will accuse you of being racist, bigoted, and whatever else – nothing more than cheap tactics employed by cowardly people whose sole intent is to shut any person up who they do not agree with, or whose beliefs they don’t approve of.  For the record, I don’t give a rat’s behind what color, race, ethnic background, or country you belong to, I treat everybody the same – with respect and kindness unless given a reason not to.  After the whole “Anti-semite” farce, I had 2 or 3 of my YouTube channels shut down.  There was also the fact that for two years or so, somebody at YouTube was manually blocking my comments.  I’d be in a debate with some smartass who was trying to shut me up – calling me filthy names, accusing me of this and that, when after a few exchanges, my comments would freeze, and not post.  Funny though, if I would post something not relevant to the debate, it would go through just fine.  It was during that time that I picked up a couple of stalkers – they were relentless, they dug up things about me, they knew my son’s name, found other comments at YouTube that were totally apart from any of the political and social stuff – and made from an account other than the one I used for the political and social stuff.  Somebody suggested that they may have been paid to stalk me like that.  Add to that, Google buried my photography website – it went from page one (of listings) to I don’t even know – I never did find it by searching – the only way was to link to it, or type the address in the address bar.  It went from page one to oblivion in a matter of less than week.  So, fast forward to a few days ago, I typed my name in YouTube’s search bar, and lo and behold, none of my videos would show up – even as far as page 20 or so.  I did find it a little strange that my videos were getting 1, 2, 10, and 15 views over a year, two or three – which is why I finally thought to google me, and look for me at YouTube.  Before all my political and social activism, there were a couple of my videos that had over 10,000 views in a relatively short period of time.

Well, this, along with some other sneaky, underhanded things that go on around here, has made it beyond obvious that somebody, a group of sombebodies, or more than one group of somebodies, is afraid of me, or threatened by me – maybe for my political and social views, and how effective they saw me as being back when I was active.  It could be that they’re afraid that if I were to ever gain a bigger platform to speak from, that I would be some kind of threat.  It could also be that they just want to punish me for saying things they don’t like or approve of.

I really don’t have answers, and this stuff goes on all day, every day.  One thing for sure, something is rotten in Denmark.