For weeks, I've been posting unopposed and unmonitored. Here's what that means for you.
It appears that I have muted the masses
A few weeks ago, I decided to turn off Substack notifications. Every day, I was waking up to about twenty e-mails, over half of these dispatches from other Substack sites. Since I’ve known for months if not decades that I’ll wind up reading or at least scanning these posts in the Substack mobile or desktop app anyway—and that’s not an endorsement of said mobile app, at least not the Android version—I opted to decline delivery of a flood of functionally superfluous e-mails.
This delivery stoppage only lasted for a week; I’m sure a way around this exists, but I can’t be bothered to look for it. This investigative malaise also accounts for my not realizing until a couple days ago that, ever since tinkering with my notification settings, I’ve been oblivious to most comments to my posts, reactions to comments I’ve made elsewhere, and other yeas, nays, props, gripes, and so on. So, for those who are used to me being more interactive, I didn’t decide to start ignoring you on purpose.
Be aware, however, that this is how authoritarianism starts. Pretty soon I won’t even be pretending to give a shit what anyone thinks and will be employing time-tested mechanisms of psychological manipulation to ensure total compliance with all of my viewpoints, most of which will be packaged with the inducement of fear and other coercive strategies. I’m in this solely for myself, and you should be too.
I’ve also been dealing with a stalker, although so far, she’s only made one obvious uninvited incursion into my roving personal space.
Last Tuesday, I think, I was doing an easy run with Rosie at 6:30-per-mile pace on the Centennial Path in East Boulder and almost zoning out when a tall blonde in a ballcap reached the same intersection at the same time, coming from the north. She had Lululemon pants on, so my first thought was that this was someone I had probably annoyed with my posts about Nikki Hiltz’s advocacy for various sociocultural and surgical lunacies. But even though I'm 5' 10 1/2" and this busty gal had at least an inch on me, she was most definitely a she—there are some startlingly lanky soccer moms roaming the paths of affluent towns like these all over the free world, China and Indonesia excepted.
Maybe fifteen minutes after this wordless and mostly uneventful encounter, I was on a different path in the same area and saw the same woman round a corner about a hundred yards ahead of me and start bounding my way. She looked almost too fresh, like she’d been hiding in a grove of trees for the past fifteen minutes instead of actually running.
And I admit it—I crossed the street. She really was quite tall; I'm 5' 11," and she had to be almost my height, which applies to maybe 1 percent of American-born soccer moms. I had picked it up to around 6:10 pace without knowing it, because I was on edge. At least I know my instincts are on target. I eased off the throttle a little to try to sneak a better look at her from behind my sunglasses, but the bitch completely broke cover and waved! I was caught off guard and kind of smiled and waved.
About ten minutes after that, after I let Rosie take a dip in the creek, we were in the same general neighborhood but making our way west toward home using little-traveled side streets. And then it happened again. Big Miss Yoga Pants appeared from a park beside an elementary school and started running in the same direction as me and Rosie on the other side of the road.
I flipped my sunglasses up to the top of my head and stared right at her this time. I'm an even 6' tall, and she was almost eye to eye me, although she had those super-thick-soled CrossFit shoes all these nutty, paranoid Amazonian housewives with eighth-degree Jujitsu-belts wear around here. I was tempted to start checking my clothing and shoes for GPS tracking devices at this point, but decided to wait until I got home in case others were watching from unknown vantage points. Never let stalkers even think they have gained the upper hand.
My best estimate of how long I was followed is 1.362 miles. I noted where we ultimately parted company for the day and at what time, and starting tomorrow, we plan to return to that spot every day at precisely that time to see if this weirdo is still stalking us.
Also, and I almost forgot this part, I took some photos of her when she wasn't looking by casually positioning my phone near my waist and keeping my arm swing minimal, and later I spent a couple of hours online trying to figure out who she may have been based on all sorts of research tricks most people never would have considered. I stopped when I found myself wondering what kind of flowers she likes, because there are too many stories about people being drawn into others’ pathologies and reacting in ways they later regret.
On more broadly unsettling fronts, readers may have noticed lately that, with the U.S. Supreme Court apparently poised to wave away the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, The New York Times is no longer hiding its pro-government-censorship stance, with harried, borderline delirious deep-state agitprop presented as straight reporting. “How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation” (effortlessly debunked within hours by one of the journalists targeted in the piece,
) is the most insistent recent example of NYT anti-Americanism, whereas the video editorial “It Turns Out the Deep State is Actually Kind of Awesome” is the strangest and most nakedly moronic, immediately inspiring Taibbi to invite his readers to parody the presentation.Longtime Beck of the Pack readers will recognize the name of one of the creators of the video editorial, as Lindsay Crouse established herself years ago as a rank, not-at-all-clever fabulist before going on maternity leave, eventually reclaiming her role as a goggle-eyed moron.
All of this has me wondering how much longer my contact at the Times will be able to keep getting my stuff published, even if it’s always shadowbanned across browsers, operating systems, wireless carriers, and ISPs. Good luck finding the story associated with this image using Google or even the internal NYT search engine:
Anyway, I started this post with the sole intent of explaining why I’ve become silent in some respects, but when I found myself experiencing an unexpected bout of bravery and a compulsion to speak my truth, I rolled with this spiritual momentum. Maybe people will understand, maybe they won’t. At this rate I’ll never find out anyway, especially if I keep running in East Boulder, which could wind up making my inopportune Substack settings look like a very minor problem indeed.