A Memorable Experience On A Writing Board
Normally you would expect moderators to actually abide by the rules they assign in their charter. But not so with what used to be known as Absolute Writer’s Water Cooler. Other website have gone on at length describing how quickly that website went downhill, so I will spare those details.
However there was one experience that stuck out in my mind: I was writing a draft of what would eventually become the graphic novel script I am currently working on, but it was such an early draft I was still writing about Child Soldiers, and the impact of what would eventually become the second and third civil wars in my larger fictional universe. You know how with Far Left people ( and by that I mean Social Justice Warrior, not Berniecrat or progressive of which I belong to ) you have people that believe in their ideology almost to the point of it being almost dogma?
In this case, the head honcho over at AWWC basically curb stomped my story by only addressing the content of my own character ( no pun intended ), rather than actually address the issues that were in my short story. This was back when I mostly wrote fiction up to around two thousand words or so, although my record before that had been writing a short story up to five thousand words.
Basically, because my main character’s nick name was Dog Boy, the main administrator took my words out of context, and made it look like I was saying my MC was half African American, when it fact I never even mentioned what so ever what race that character had. And that I was therefore being racist. There is only one problem. My use of the word dog boy was more of a reference to how he was raised by ( literally ) wild wolves. Apparently, as it would turn out, other people would come forward what felt like years later, and talk about the cult like environment there.
I would very strongly encourage anyone, if you’re considering a writing forum, either please reconsider the idea, or do your research. You will find genuinely insane people on some writing websites. That doesn’t even go into the reason I was ultimately banned there, but it’s all perfectly consistent with how other people were also banned from the website.
In a way I actually think Cancel Culture is a spiritual continuation of the same mindset that seemed to plague Absolute Writer’s Water Cooler, where it’s less actually being the sensational thing people describe you, and more about that are you guilty by the fact that they have accused you of being a certain way, judge, jury, and executioner.
Apparently the website has sense had an issue where they spy on the contents of your computer. I didn’t believe it at first, but apparently it is actually a thing now. I very recently finally blocked on Twitter the last person that acted as basically AWWC’s lynch mob. I think it was a combination of that, and having survived a UFO cult, that was the catalyst for throwing me into the disaster that was Breadtube.