WE WILL TAPE YOUR MOUTH SHUT: CENSORED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
Today 25 million people will read the New York Times. 7,000 of those people will comment. We Will Tape Your Mouth Shut is a book that looks at Gatekeeping in the New York Times. Great writers do not gatekeep. I am employing this post as a missive to book agents. I do not know if it is allowed. I seriously doubt it. The first time the New York Times censored my work was a slippery slope snake kind of thing.
First, they published/posted the work. It is work. It is my work. I own the rights. I own book publication rights, audio rights, film rights, Internet rights, anthology rights, electronic rights, stage rights, magazine rights, and the work was also copyrighted. By me.
Then, they deleted it. It was a negative POV of the Felon Rapist. They are very strict in that you are rarely allowed to be critical of a columnist.
Did I use bad words. No. Not one. Did I use the word President. No. This tension between me and them came about when the New York Times was using the term, misleading. Or confusing. Or an untruth. They could not bring themselves to use the word: Liar. The Felon Rapist might respond. He did. "The failed New York Times." Yada. yada. yada. Read the rules of the road. I did.
If I commented on the structure of Comment Moderation -- I hit a very sore and raging nerve. I hit them with outrage because outrage was the truth. Outrage was the truth. They're censors. They gatekeep with a vicious sword. They cut and hack at opinions they do not like. You are published, and in one minute, they delete you. Two-faced. It's a slick way to operate a business. Like most businesses, do you really know how the sausage is made. It's not pretty.
Read the fine print. They want all posts to sound alike. I've been posting there up to five times a day. The NYT rulebook says post once every two weeks. I've done one a day. Two a day. Three a day. Four a day. Five a day. For six years full time.
I am here to prove a point. The New York Times is not just subjective (in the rulebook they say this) but it's a deeply personal call. It is my experience that you have a 80 percent chance that you will be deleted. If the subject is edgy, only a few get through. The real term is called: Do Not Disturb the Horses. I can understand some of this. The Internet is mean. Americans are mean. Social media is mean.
Have at it. The New York Times wants what is contentious. To remain in the style of the New York Times. They want you homogenized. They want you to be ordinary. And what they get is exactly that.
Most people who work there find the comments section to be more troublesome than it's worth and the people who comment are the stupid people. Who make a lot of noise. I have spies. I have been published by the New York Times, and I poked some fun at the Medium columnist, Virginia Heffernan. She has very pointed (and accurate) things to articulate about the Rise of the Rapist. A rapist rapes.
It's an open wound. If you write about why a rapist is a rapist, and you apply scientific analysis to neurology, you will find words like social deviant, schizophrenic, psychopathic, ad infinitum. In my opinion, the Rapist will rape all of us. Day One. The prices at Medicare just shot up. Millions will lose health insurance. Erase that. Millions have lost their health insurance. They can no longer afford it and anyone who wants to buck that system will be cast out, and you will be unable to buy new insurance because, like media gatekeepers, you will be marginalized into a whisper.
Too much human access to a platform that is essentially hostile, cannot be tolerated. The New York Times is style ridden. I cannot strangle (I do not know how) my voice to please a bunch of comment gatekeepers and their AI who makes gatekeeping such a great big box of fun things. Usually, this is the work of an acquiring editor. But if the New York Times called them acquiring editors, it would be obliged to pay them like acquiring editors. How do you even live in NYC and make poverty wages. It's diffuse. Moderators in India know they have counterparts worldwide. You can imagine what comment monitors in India make. It would be seen as a joke by Americans.
The New York Times is not a joke. 25 million people will read it today. What us Little People have to say, and often, with cherry picking, it's all the same voice. It's all the same box.
Cherry picking is ordinary.
When I look at the big picture, what I come away with is: We will tape your mouth shut.
It's the same railroad tracks. -- tim barrus