July 27, 2020

An update

by Téa Smith

3 min read

Posted 2 years ago

Hi all,

Thanks so much for your support (and patience) whilst I get all this up and happening. It’s been pretty crazy, with Graham’s ban (Graham Linehan, creator of The IT Crowd & Father Ted – interviews here and here), the book chapter and finally creating some IP for businesses, community managers and admins on how to diagnose and treat when your online community becomes weaponised in the culture wars. 

I’ll be starting to upload more stuff. Eventually, I will get to a point where Member-only content is viable, but for now, audience-building etc and too many places to post, so I apologise if this is a ghost town from time to time. 

It is important to diversify income streams, so that if Patreon goes “full Twitter” and bans anyone who isn’t batshit Woke, at least I don’t lose everything and can point you to other places. I also prefer to own my own shit so will eventually just have memberships on my site instead. But, you know, time etc.

The more Patrons I get, the more time I can spend on content. It’s a bit of a juggle at the moment, but I do what I can!

I am so incredibly grateful for all your support. Because of the nature of my interviews and how absolutely bonkers all of this is going… to be honest I am really not sure if Patreon is a sustainable platform for me. I sincerely hope it is, and Jack Conte seems like a good dude, so I am cautiously optimistic. Their policies are pretty balanced but let’s be honest, everyone seems to have lost their damn minds, and I was defending Twitter up until recently, so… here’s hoping?

I never in my wildest imagination thought that I would be at all considered one of the ‘bad people’. It’s so weird. But, here we are. That said, I definitely exist as your canary in the mine… 🙂

I like to be optimistic, because as you no doubt know, I have absolutely no hate in my heart and am not that scary. If anything I avoid confrontation, but joke around, so it’s been very weird… but hey, if silence is violence AND words are violence AND violence is speech, I am pretty sure that most reasonable people with functioning synapses are bad people too. Heh. 

I have a simple wish: that more people could talk to each other and find common ground. I would love for The Verboten to become a platform where people can express themselves and find our way back to each other, and come together in the name of reason, love, creativity and humour.

First and foremost, I am a nerd, and an aspiring humourist/writer/mouth breather and I just happen to be qualified and experienced in the disciplines that explain the culture wars. Sometimes I wish I didn’t, but hey… hopefully we can at least find a joke in it someday.

I’m so sick of this shit. People do seem to keep finding ways to disappoint me… but hopefully we can build a real safe space: not one of agreement/compliance, but a safe space for speech, expression and association.

Also, if you’re into awesome people, do check out Ben Folds’ Patreon. He just wrote a song about 2020, that pretty much sums it up.

Next week I have to focus on client work (bills bills bills), so there won’t many interviews. But, I have a whole stack lined up. I have Francis Foster from Triggernometry, Meghan Murphy, a bunch of really cool women, transmen and transwomen… more comedians (please intro me to any comedians, musicians and artists – as “fun” as the serious folks are, I definitely prefer entertainment!) and am trying to pin down times with people like James Lindsay & Heather Heying. They’re pretty flat out at the moment but it’ll happen.

It’s frustrating getting mainstream guests (we can’t really win…), but eventually, maybe we can reach a critical mass where I am not instantly labelled and I can talk to people without the mob going after them (or me, but you know I can handle it ;-)). That’s the immediate goal, at least.

If there’s anyone you’d like me to talk to (or if you’d like to talk to me – especially if you are an artist who wants to take a little risk and get this kicked off properly), definitely shout out. The more reasonable people speak, the quicker we can move forward from this mess.

Love x

T

Posted on: July 27, 2020

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