Well, this was bizarre....
This blog has run a long time, but it's also run fallow for a very long time. I wish I could muster the level of energy I once did to update every day, even something as ordinary as a music video or interesting photo, but... well, it's just a lot.
So imagine my surprise when I received an email notice that a post from 2010 had been flagged as violating Blogger's TOS. That was a bit extraordinary. An obscure post on an obscure blog getting a sudden spat of attention--a form of attention I've managed to avoid for years and years and years.
Was this the product of a 'bot just trolling through and deciding a noun that describes someone as hostile to LGBTQ folks is "offensive"? Or did somebody belatedly Google themselves, somehow stumble upon an old story, and complain? It seems improbable that the issue was a snarky joke I tagged onto a quote from a news item.
If it was the latter, I'm torn: on the one hand, no, I don't really think somebody should be stained by 12-year-old news item that was hardly news, just a funny anecdote from the early days of the Culture Wars.
On the other hand, I don't think you're ever to old for the Streisand Effect to come into play, and censoring widdle ol' me over an item that comes up first-thing when you google your name is irritating.
So, on the off-chance it's the latter, somebody belatedly trying to control their image, the post involved some snark this news item. Which was also reported here. And a year after the original story, by the way, there was this story that frankly makes me feel better about dredging all this up again. The story is even a big chunk of his Wikipedia entry.
However: if the person in question wants to reach out and explain how they've disassociated themselves from their past, renounced and apologized for what they did at UCLA, etc., and now they're an ally, I'll listen. Though if they have, I can't imagine why they'd have a problem with a joke that was made at their expense about an incident from 12 years ago; I'd think they'd accept that public dragging was the first step in their reformation.
2022-07-28 07:38: Update: never mind, it's been reinstated. Thank you for the quick response, Google.
So imagine my surprise when I received an email notice that a post from 2010 had been flagged as violating Blogger's TOS. That was a bit extraordinary. An obscure post on an obscure blog getting a sudden spat of attention--a form of attention I've managed to avoid for years and years and years.
Was this the product of a 'bot just trolling through and deciding a noun that describes someone as hostile to LGBTQ folks is "offensive"? Or did somebody belatedly Google themselves, somehow stumble upon an old story, and complain? It seems improbable that the issue was a snarky joke I tagged onto a quote from a news item.
If it was the latter, I'm torn: on the one hand, no, I don't really think somebody should be stained by 12-year-old news item that was hardly news, just a funny anecdote from the early days of the Culture Wars.
On the other hand, I don't think you're ever to old for the Streisand Effect to come into play, and censoring widdle ol' me over an item that comes up first-thing when you google your name is irritating.
So, on the off-chance it's the latter, somebody belatedly trying to control their image, the post involved some snark this news item. Which was also reported here. And a year after the original story, by the way, there was this story that frankly makes me feel better about dredging all this up again. The story is even a big chunk of his Wikipedia entry.
However: if the person in question wants to reach out and explain how they've disassociated themselves from their past, renounced and apologized for what they did at UCLA, etc., and now they're an ally, I'll listen. Though if they have, I can't imagine why they'd have a problem with a joke that was made at their expense about an incident from 12 years ago; I'd think they'd accept that public dragging was the first step in their reformation.
2022-07-28 07:38: Update: never mind, it's been reinstated. Thank you for the quick response, Google.
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