icze4r communication

Post-Mortem: Charity

On March 5, 2025

From the years of about 2014-2016, I think I raised a little over 5 million dollars for various charitable causes. I used to have a really popular Twitter account— not as popular as one of the Neo-Nazis that ruined the platform, but my high-water mark was, I think, 22 million views in one month, and I had a tweet that went past any of dril’s. 52,000 retweets, over a quarter of a million likes.

Using my account, I fundraised for people’s GoFundMe’s. I got some goofy shit, like a guy asking me to raise $8,000,000 for his kid’s cancer treatment. I actually found out that that guy owned a house that was worth nearly as much: I told him, screw you. Go fucking sell your goddamned house. Of course he didn’t have a kid. He was just a greedy fucking asshole.

I remember everyone I fundraised for. I don’t talk to any of them anymore, and I didn’t even really talk to most of them to begin with. You see, where I’m from, when you help someone, that makes you instant friends. Not these people.

I regret fundraising for 99.97% of the people that I did.

Because they didn’t deserve anything.

You might say, oh, Margaret, why would you say such a thing? Because it’s true. I got fucked. I didn’t do it because I wanted anything, but the entire thing left me in a poorer state than I had been before. I went out on a limb for a lot of people, and, most of the time, they either just ghosted me when they got the money, or, they tried to actively get me killed. That was fun.

There are organizations and people who I don’t regret fundraising for. I won’t mention those, as I won’t mention by name anyone whom I’m talking about. Because, fuck it. I don’t need more problems.

But the fact of the matter is, I regret almost everything I did. For one reason.

My mother.

Sepsis

I don’t particularly recall what day it was that my mother got Sepsis. I tend to not put dates on things because I would rather not have the date roll by again and be reminded of some terror. In point of fact, I’m not directly aware of the day my father died. Oh, sure, I could tell you; but it’s held so deep in my cerebrum, because I don’t want to know.

It was the turn-over hours of August 17th and August 18th, 2024. My mother had just gotten Zometa, and, as far as I can tell, the sudden lack of Vitamin D in her system mimicked the onset of Sepsis. Whether or not she actually got sepsis— no one ever found out anything, and that was the end of that.

My mother was and is fine.

But that was the night that I just . . . realized, that I didn’t even really like a lot of my ‘friend’ group.

I had a ‘friend’ who, despite my trying to alter the ‘relationship’, just wouldn’t stop sending me porn. Porn I didn’t like, and didn’t want to look at. I couldn’t talk to them about anything that I really liked, because they would just pervert it.

And then, on that day, I sent them a message.

And they responded the exact worst way that they could have.

. . . and I realized that I had never felt so alone.

Yeah, RIP

At the time, I don’t really think that Iwas fully an ‘adult’. I have kids— grown, adult kids. You’ll never know about those. But I went through parenting, and I did a halfway decent job.

Nothing really fucking makes you grow up like realizing that your mom’s gonna die.

Nothing really makes you grow up like seeing your dad die.

And through it all— through my father’s death— suddenly, the Internet didn’t seem so ‘fun’ anymore. The people who I had palled around wif, I already knew that the vast majority of them were fuckheads with nothing in their skulls, and I knew that the vast majority of them were trying to use me for their own purposes. I continued to look for new friends. Real friends.

But the Internet is no place to make friends. It’s a kind of Hellscape, where the human psyche is allowed to fester. And you can’t look at each others’ faces very easily, and you can’t hear the tone of each others’ voices very easily.

There are people who livestream at one another, and they still somehow don’t recognize each others’ own humanity.

On the night that I thought my mother was going to die, I realized that, despite trying to get to know her, trying to talk to her, trying to feel some sort of connection to and with her, I had failed. I had failed, and, now, there were going to be no more second chances. Just like with my father’s failures, she would just be gone. No re-do’s. No continues.

No more second chances.

And I realized. . . one day, my mother was going to die.

And the day that she did, I wanted to be in a much better place than I was on that day.

What’s happened in the past 5 months

Serendipitously, it has been exactly 200 days since the night my mother went into the hospital. And, across those many days, which feel as though they have come and gone in the blink of an eye, I have placed myself in a much better position, mentally, physically, and financially. I am not ready for my mother to go. And she will not be gone for many more decades.

But I can see a world where I can stay alive without killing myself when she inevitably goes.

And I couldn’t see that before. I couldn’t see that, in a world where I just passively allowed someone to send me disgusting porn, and I never really confronted them on it. I couldn’t see that in a world where I was constantly afraid of people online— of what they could do; of what they may be capable of.

The old world is dying. The new one will not be born. There were always monsters, here. But they are not immune to the chaos and poverty that destroys everyone else.

I like the idea of making friends online. Human beings, however, are ultimately some of the most-disgusting creatures I’ve ever come in contact with.

You don’t beat the space wasps, honestly. But God in Heaven, if anyone did, the whole planet would have to be glassed ten times over, just to fuckin’ make sure.

An ending

I regret helping people. My mother was right: pearls before swine. Human beings, though, deserve food, water, shelter, medical care, and to feel safe. But I don’t want to ever interact with them, ever again.

On the day that I get to fuck off and leave, oh, I’m sure I’ll be back to help you. And I’ll give you free food, and water, and whatever.

But I know what you are.

I’ve seent it.

You cannot convince me that I haven’t.

Not anymore.

Bye.

By Margaret Gel

On January 22, 2025

In Uncategorized

In my time online, I’ve always tried to be very verbose, and explain myself. Over, and over, and over again.

I’ve reached a point where I have nothing to say to anybody on here.

I could say a lot of different things. But the crux of it is all the same—

It’s not really in how people reacted when my father died. I didn’t really care. It was shocking, but not terribly so. I took it in stride. People are horrible.

It was that, when my mother got cancer and needed people’s help, and I realized I was surrounded by monsters and fools, that was it.

It’s not even that I’ve seen cats get more money donated to them than my mother did. Or that I raised five million dollars for you people.

It’s that I can’t trust you. It’s that I can’t trust you, and I don’t feel any kinship with you.

I’m tired of watching stupid people fail. And I’m tired of being stuck in their thrall.

Goodbye. You have lost me forever.

The Last Straw

By Margaret Gel

On January 2, 2025

In Uncategorized

I was in my bed, trying to relax. My (resting) heartrate was 92, 91, 90, 91. I wanted to see how low I could get it. I’ve seen it at 39 and 49 before. I wanted to test that.

I check my e-mail.

‘Violation’. Please check our Moderation Center . . .

Instantly, my heartrate jumps! But not too much. This has happened too much before. It makes no bloody sense; not for this website. I’m very careful on this particular website. I’ve learned to be very careful everywhere; because, if I were to get ‘banned’ from any of my social media websites, I feared that my Google SEO would fail.

When did I become so goddamned dependent on this?

I didn’t used to care about this.

What happened?

I try to see what the supposed ‘violation’ is. It reads, ‘user not found’. Odd; my profile is still ‘intact’. I can still log-in. I jump out of bed, legs first, like I’m doing that cool Martial Artist ‘get up from the ground’ animation, and I hop onto my computer.

“Please log in.”

I’m already logged in.

I log in.

My wristwatch buzzes. It’s given me a 2Fa code; but there’s no place to put it.

I log in again.

My wristwatch buzzes.

There’s still no place to put this bloody code.

I’m in.

I look for the ‘violation’.

I see it.

A moderator has, damned near in the middle of the night, flagged some anime fanart (that is not too well-drawn), as being ‘sexual’.

There is no nudity.

There is a line between the characters’ legs.

They choose not to show me the picture. I just right click the blurred image, and search for it.

It’s just a line between the characters’ legs. The seam of the shorts they’re wearing.

They thought it was a vagina.

At first, I remember when I ‘saved’ that image. I didn’t upload it; I shared it.

So I got in trouble for sharing it. A thing that Bluesky tried to do to some people.

I’m getting tired.

So I didn’t do it; I did nothing wrong; I remember looking at the image, going, ‘is that a vagina? No, that must be a seam in the pants; it’s just, that’s such a little thing. No need to worry about it; I didn’t even upload it,’ and I shared it.

Still got dinged.

And now, that’s eternal.

I’m tired of this.

I’ve known that the Internet was not forever. Hardly anything ever is; but especially not anything that human beings ‘make’.

And now, I’m tired. I’m tired of the constant din; I’m tired of the constant, ‘raise your blood pressure; you’re in trouble!’, stress-panic response I have, when some underpaid dipshit presses a button, and sets in motion an entire cycle of events that I want no place in.

Online, the whole thing is, you’re determined to be in the wrong. Every single time. And the people who have decided this, they tell you— ‘appeal’.

I will not appeal. I did for this one; I want to see what happens.

But for Reddit?

Begging for mercy makes me angry. And I won’t be doing that with people who banned me for telling others to stop breaking the law.

The reality of the situation, is this: I’m leaving. There’s no stopping it. There’s no bargaining with it. There’s no telling me, oh, you’re burnt out; take a break, and come on back.

Here’s the reality.

I fucking loathe you.

I loathe every single thing that human beings put me through. I just want to live in peace; have some fun; collect nice t’ings; and be left alone.

So I’m going to pursue that.

I’m so tired of stupid people creating chaos for me, and then demanding that I ‘solve’ it.

Go to Hell, every single one of you who’s like this.

I’d rather be alone and have no social media than deal with this stupid fucking bullshit one more second.

Let me tell you what my dream is.

My dream is to be able to live, alone, away from all of humanity, untouched by their fucking bullshit.

My entire life, all 40-some years of it, has been beset on all sides by stupid people making messes that I’ve had to clean up. I’m tired of it.

I want to be alone. And I want to be left alone.

And that will be my paradise.

I want to be in a place where the stupid actions of powerful monkeys have no effects on me.

And I’m going there.

I’m going back to the starship.

And when I get there, I will build my home.

I’ve stopped listening.

By Margaret Gel

On December 23, 2024

In Farewells

This is what I call a ‘Farewell’. I am formally declaring an end to any attempt to try and communicate with human beings on a certain front.

In the past, I have always assumed that human beings were rational actors, worthy of both respect and consideration. They are not.

It is not just their comparative level (and lack) of intelligence. It is their lack of respect and consideration for me. That makes it impossible for me to work with them— because they have chosen to be impossible to work with. You can’t reason with a scorpion. It is folly to try.

Human beings have chosen to be difficult. They are the ones at fault; not I.

There is genuinely no communication potential possible nor available in nor from the human race. I said that I didn’t want to ‘give up’; but this is not giving up. I have merely realized that I have been talking to a wall.

There was, at some point in my life, the assumption that I was the one at fault when individuals displaying features of the Dark Triad would claim that I was causing some calamity. I would report a pedophile for grooming a child; the pedophile would claim that I had done something ‘wrong’. When large groups of people (comparatively: ~20) would claim that I was at fault for doing something that I knew was not wrong, I would be confused.

The reality was, and is, that I was not, and am not wrong. The reality is that human beings are simply shitsticks and I am gaining nothing from considering them to be equals, mentally.

If someone is good, and they are kind, then there is a point in maybe considering them. But, as it is, I am sick and tired of humanity. I want to get away from them, and I am.

My problem was that I did not want my behavior to even accidentally harm others. In trying to protect others from myself— and I deemed myself ‘evil’, for some reason I still cannot discern— I would automatically stop, no matter what individual was telling me I was at fault. I thought so little of myself that I always considered myself to be in the wrong.

Last night, going into this morning, I spoke with a person who is as close to an objective evil as I have ever seen. Within 2 hours of speaking with them, I suddenly had an epiphany: I am good. I am a good person. There is not only nothing wrong with me, but, in fact, there are many things that I should be praised for. I should, in point of fact, regularly praise myself. For I am a good person; and I have tried, and currently am trying my best to be my very best.

But human beings don’t ordinarily do this. And the ones who do, we have absolutely no dealings with one another. We are barely even parallel trains. We go our own ways and we do not cross, but we also have vastly nothing to do with one another. I feel no kinship with any random human being, and all of my experiences as a child have muddied my thought process, and taught me to positively prejudge others. Some people have a negative prejudice; I assumed that everyone was basically good, and that they usually meant me well. They do not.

My mistake was taking others at face value, and observing the golden rule. The social contract is a nice thought, and it is basically ‘true’. But all it would take is one person to step outside of it, and that absolutely eluded my detection of any bad actor(s).

When I was growing up, my step-grandmother, and my step-mother alike, told me something that has confused me up to this day. They said, ‘true good cannot recognize true evil’. I never understood what they meant. Now I do.

It has been difficult for me to function, as I have been listening to and taking the advice of human beings. And they are fucked up. And human beings lie; and they speak of things they know nothing about, with the same sort of conviction in which I speak of things I have known about my whole life. They are a child race, incapable of widespread wisdom. Party animals; and I’m sure one out of a million must be something worthwhile. But I cannot waste time on nor with this any longer. My remaining time is precious. I will not have it wasted by baboons.

It is not effective, nor useful thinking, in order to try to ‘figure out’ which human being is worth listening to. If any of them are, and they can provide any sort of wisdom or knowledge that I can use, it is effectively like digging through a septic tank for diamonds. The diamonds are not big enough and I have no further use for such things at this given time, nor will I ever.

One thing to remember, on my part, is that Internet People are never to be interacted with.

At some point in my life, I had assumed that human beings were worth listening to. Because they had told me that the had information(s) worth listening to. Not really. Especially not, in the case of matters of my own damn life.

I asked God for Wisdom, and I have received it. This is good enough. Now, I wish for Happiness, and Familial Health, and especially Peace. There is not, and there shall never be that, here.

Ja ne,
icz / T.B.A.
Dec. 23 2024

I’m going to stop talking, now.

By Margaret Gel

On December 19, 2024

In end

For the longest, I’ve been trying to understand human beings. I thought that there was some grand and ineffable ‘plan’ that all of you had in your heads, that I somehow lacked in mine. It was the opposite.

I didn’t ever want to become one of you. Your science fiction bullshit, those stories where non-humans fetishize ‘humanity’, that’s just a comforting conceit. No one’s really like that. That’s a falsehood, driven by puerile narcissism. No one wants to be you, dude. You suck.

In my writing journey, one of the worst problems I’ve ever faced has been humanity. There’s this thought of a necessity: that I, and everyone else, we who ‘write’, should subjugate others before our varying audiences.

And now, as part of my journey, my journey to let go, I have to tell you, as a species, to go fuck yourselves.

If you’re not bound by the limitations of human narcissism, by your association with your species, and you’re actually a kind and thinking person who is trying their best (and is succeeding— I have no room in my heart left for well-meaning fuck-ups, because they do nothing but continue to fail, over and over and over again, and those failures eventually claim the lives of innocent people), then I feel no enmity towards you. But, at the same time, I also no longer feel any kinship towards you.

Because you failed me. As a species, you had 40 goddamned years to convince me that you were worth trusting. And you weren’t.

I have no interest in humanity anymore. I used to try to write things for the benefit of others. I used to speak with them, in order to try and help them. But all I have ever gotten is aggression— and you, as a species, are so worthless, so absolutely goddamned weak, that that aggression has been nothing but insulting. You are blind kittens hissing at shadows, and the worst part of it is, you’re not even cute.

In the past I tried to write for your benefit. I tried to communicate for your benefit.

Now I write for the benefit of me.

For the longest, I tried to help other people. It is in my nature. And though I know that, if I stay here any longer, I will continue defending human beings, I have come up with a long-sought-after solution.

I want to be apart from you.

Your World has many problems. I do not want to fix them. Many people have suggested that I am the person who should find the solution to many of your problems. Problems that you yourselves have caused, on purpose.

I have seen many people try to fix your problems. You end up killing them. Or they end up killing themselves, through overwork or many other various fates I do not wish to share.

I will not be a victim. And though, in some world, some other worldview, it may be seen as my responsibility to save you, I do not want to, and I will not.

Many people have come to me with explanations about how I should help them fix the problems. And I have told them, many different times, in many different ways– but they have never understood. So I will say it one more time, and then, I will stop speaking to you.

What if I like the problems?

What if the ‘problems’ make me happy?

When I was with the space aliens, every day was a dream. I did good works, and I was rewarded. Handsomely. I was called friend.

One time, my friends and I decided to help a disabled lady buy a chair lift. The moment she got the money, she immediately turned on all of us.

That’s you. That’s what you’ve done to me.

You don’t actually like me. You don’t want me to succeed. I’ve had many ‘friends’, over the years, now long gone and forgotten, who wanted nothing more for me to fail. They just wanted to use some part of me for their own benefit. They didn’t actually care about my own happiness.

But I cared about their happiness. And I wanted them to succeed. And I actually did like them . . . and I wanted nothing more than for them to be happy.

I still feel these feelings. But I recognize that this effort is misplaced.

I have known that you, as a species, have not wanted me. For my entire life, I have known this. At times, at best, you have been indifferent towards my existence: you thought that I was merely a resource to be used. At worst, you’ve wanted to wear my own skin.

I am not like you. I will never be like you. I can never be like you. And I do not want to be like you.

The aliens are here, now. And I prefer them to you.

I want you to know something.

In 40 years of my interactions with you, I haven’t felt, from you, even 1% of 1% of the love and acceptance that I did in one hug I got from a space alien.

The world— or, rather, your World— will function fine without me keeping it afloat. And I will not die, I should let you know. This is not a suicide note, but rather, a note indicating a severance of another type. I am not a part of your civilization anymore. I am going Home.

In thinking about my future, I realize that I do not particularly care to write for the space aliens. And I certainly won’t write for you.

I’m going to write and create for me.

I’m going to put my affairs in order, now. Things like websites, and such. Consolidations, and things that will make maintaining a presence here for as long as it brings me pleasure, as such.

I want you to know that you’re not a good species.

The day that I don’t have to interact with you, ever again, I want you to know that, not only will I not miss you, but it will bring me happiness to forget that you ever existed.

I’d say goodbye but I don’t even like you.

Nuts

By Margaret Gel

On December 18, 2024

In Treatises

Since about 1994, 1995, I have been wanting to know what the fuck is wrong with you. Probably since before then, but that was when I came onto the Internet scene, and that aspect of your species, your very core personalit(ies), became entirely too prevalent. I had to know: what the fuck was your problem? I still don’t know; but, I know the answer to my question.

I need to get the fuck away from you.

It’s been 30 years. The jig is up. The game is over, and, every single day, I stare in awe at how fucking stupid this species is. Ladies and jellyspoons, I’m not even fucking sure the vast majority of you are sentient. Okay?

And a lot of people, at this point in time, turn to me and go, well, I’m not going to read your book! I’m not going to give you money! I’m not going to do this! I’m not going to do that!

Well, shit, duders. Not like anything’s going to fuckin’ change, then, is it?

This has to be addressed. There’s something wrong with you. I’ve known this for some time, and, after 30 years of staring at you, I can no longer jingle the keys and tell you what a good and special boy you are. You have something wrong with you, and I have to admit that to myself and each other, because, holy shit, dude.

You don’t make my life better.

When I was about five years old, we went from an idyllic life, with basically no technology (other than the accursed telephone), and I would watch cartoonies with my mama on our big screen TV. It was a CRT. It weighed more than our entire family combined. The car, too.

More than the house, really.

There’s something that always bothered me, since back then.

The telephone was scary.

Because people called you on the telephone.

The mail was scary.

Because people talked to you through the mail.

I liked none of these things. Hell, I barely liked the car— because, it took me to you.

And I told myself— just wait a while! You’ll warm up to them!— and I never did.

You know why?

It’s been 30 damned years, and I’ve had so much contact with human beings that, at this point, the conclusion of all my life’s research must be attested to. I must admit to myself, the truth of it all.

You don’t make my life better. At all.

And you never fucking will.

Scorpion(s) and Crabs

There’s the parable / fable of the scorpion and the frog. That’s what you are.

There are crabs in many buckets. That’s what you all are.

You tell me that you’re good. But you know what?

I have never seen it. I have never seen it as en masse as you tell me that you are. Even in Japan, the place where I saw human beings act the best I ever have seen, you weren’t. We were trying to wash my eyes out using water from a fountain, after a terrorist attack, and I had a salaryman elbowing me out of the way.

You’re not good. And I’m not interested in pretending that you are.

Because you’re not.

As much as I’d like to pretend that there’s something in this for me, there isn’t. Initially, I was interested in the concept of human friendship. People tell me that they’re good: so, I’ll make some fucking friends. Right?

I have friends now.

Now.

But, every so often, I just lose a friend. Sometimes I’m not even saying anything, where I can track what might have pissed them off— but, poof! Just like that, 11 years of friendship, and they’re gone. They won’t even talk to me, and I don’t even know why.

Human beings can be friends. I know you all can. But you do so so fucking rarely with me, on any level that I’m interested in, that— it’s not that I’m ‘giving up’. It’s that, I’m finally admitting to myself— no.

No.

You are so rarely stable enough, for me to take even a passing interest, that I just don’t fucking care anymore. You have many problems. Fickleness; vindictiveness; untrustworthiness.

I’m tired.

This is it.

No.

I used to wonder why I was always full of adrenaline. Why I had constant stomach problems. Why I felt sick every time I ate.

It’s you.

It was always you.

When I’m away from you, I feel healthy.

The only answer is to get away from you.

I used to think that putting myself out there, talking to people, that this was all a great and noble ‘crusade’. That I could help people.

So much nonsense has happened in the past 3 months, let alone my entire life, that I don’t even want to talk to you anymore.

I have a great and abiding need(?) to create; but I don’t want to talk with you anymore.

I don’t even want to talk at you.

I want to make beautiful things, and then, I don’t want to hear from you.

A Post-Mortem

The thing that bothers me the most now is that I did all of this because I didn’t want to be shouted down by stupid fucking humans. And, obviously, throughout the course of my Internet ‘career’, that’s happened— time and time again, I’ve gotten banned for speaking truth to people who thought they had power. And, I can, of course, always ban-evade. That’s practically effortless for me.

But why?

This is, in fact, a game where I can always win. And I can keep talking, and talking, and talking, and talking . . . but the reality is, there’s no real point in it. And it’s always going to turn out the same. Even if I ‘win’— what the fuck have I ‘won’?

Ultimately, it makes no sense to continue pursuing social medicine as a method to communicate with human beings. These people are stupid and/or crazy.

I like the Internet. I like the place that it is. Just like I like the real world.

I don’t like human beings.

I’ve never liked human beings.

And I never will.

Bluesky’s Verification Problem

By Margaret Gel

On December 3, 2024

In Treatises

… is not their problem at all.

Let me explain.

None of you trust each other.

That’s the problem.

Humanity is, at its core, just a hive of liars. You lie to each other every single day. Because of this, online, where your egos flit and clash against one another, you want something that places one another above each other. With Twitter and the Blue Checkmark, this was easy. But now, you cannot do that.

The problem inherent with human communication is that you lie. The problem inherent with the human species is that you cannot trust one another. And you need to. In order to create anything truly great, you have to be able to cooperate with one another, and working with one another in ‘Zero Trust’ environments, that’s just absurd. You cannot get anything truly great done in an environment like that, and your lack of any truly great products is the very definition of the absence of evidence actually being evidence of absence.

To put it simpler, human beings suck. You all fucking suck. You’re bad. You’re almost all bad. You can probably remember one or two people who are truly great; who inspire you. And they’re good.

But the vast majority of humanity sucks, and it refuses to acknowledge it.

And it always wants someone to tell it that its shit not only does not stink, but that it smells of roses and tastes of elderberry.

And that’s why you want the checkmark.

Because you want to be special.

It has absolutely no use here, and it is no further proof of authenticity than it would ever be anywhere else. Shit, dude, you can buy it right now on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and I don’t think that the first two even acknowledge that it was purchased. Meta has an echosystem where people they Verified by hand (or through their fucked-up, Kangaroo Court Media Partner Portal’s) are mixed in with people who pay a monthly fee for it.

Pinterest did it right, because Pinterest did Domain Verification before Bluesky did.

Is it the perfect verifier? Oh, honey, of course it isn’t. Por ejemplo: if i were to watch and wait for someone to not renew their domain name, and their e-mail services were hooked up to it, then I could just register their domain name and point everything wherever I wanted, and I would be them. Even with 2FA on Bluesky, I could probably still do this. And it would probably be legal, because, none of us own our fucking domain names.

We are essentially leasing storefronts online. That’s all we’re doing. Except, unlike in real life, if I were to do that, and I got some of your snail mail? I couldn’t legally open it.

But I’m pretty sure I can online, with goofy fucking e-mails being sent to me, the me that registered the domain name that you stopped paying for.

It’s not the perfect Verifier.

But it’s the only Verifier you got, kiddo.

Other attempts at Verification that Bluesky could hook onto

A while back, I noticed that there were checkmarks on the senders’ e-mail addresses, in e-mails sent to me on my GSuite e-mail account. These checkmarks were almost-always only present on e-mail addresses from websites that were owned by multi-billion-dollar corporations.

And I wanted one.

Guess what, chucklefuck? It costs $1,000 USD.

You want one?

Get in line.

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I’ve been on the Internet since May of 1994. Verification has always been a problem; and billion-dollar corporations (at the time, then only million dollar ones) created and sponsored an echosystem in which domain verification was the gold standard. You ever heard of MarkMonitor?

This shit is big business, boy-o.

If you want to be Verified on Bluesky, you better be a big enough motherfucker where you can afford corporate domain portfolio management services. Because that is the only gold standard I have ever seen in all my time online.

This isn’t Bluesky’s problem.

Leave them alone.

Sort your own nonsense out.

If you don’t have a domain name with a .gov or an .edu or something substantial and well-known out there, then, guess what? You probably don’t deserve to be Verified. Because nobody knows who the fuck you are in the first place.

If NPR.org comes on Bluesky (and I believe they did), and they Verified their handle, I would know that they’re NPR. Because, if they’re not, their shit is so fucked that I couldn’t trust them even if they were.

If a person with a .gov handle gets on there, then, unless the entire infrastructure of the Internet is so fucked that anyone could do that (and, actually, there are probably at least 11 vulnerabilities in different places that could produce such an effect— but not without substantial jail time once they find you out), then, Hell, that’s probably them.

The inherent problem of Verification is that none of you can trust one another.

This is not Bluesky’s problem. This is a You problem.

Sometimes, the only solution to a problem is going to be one that’s not good enough. And that’s this.

Domain Verification is not good enough but it’s the best that you’ve got. Unless you want to contract a service out to verify people (like Pornhub and Polywork and yes, I think, even Twitter did, at one time), nothing is going to get done. And even then, there are a hundred thousand different ways to fuck around and just pretend to be somebody else.

There will never be a perfect solution. Just be happy with what you’ve got, and work compassionately with each other towards what you think might work better—

but, remember this.

This is not Bluesky’s problem.

Please leave the devs alone about it.