Lacking faith that Twitter can continue to exist very long in its current form, I am hereby, as a matter of policy, blocking all corporate tweets that aren't relevant to any ongoing conversations. Jack Dorsey had every right to offer to "promote" corporate tweets by shoving them into everyone's Twitter feed, if he hadn't insulted his audience by "filtering" our tweets out of each other's feed. There are still writers I follow who still use Twitter to promote their books, and I'm still not seeing their tweets in amongst all the corporate rubbish.
So, until all private individuals' free accounts are reestablished as Prime Accounts and the Lifeblood of Twitter, all accounts of the other kind will be blocked. I'm sorry about this. As mentioned before, I think insurance companies could make a worthwhile contribution to the Glyphosate Awareness page...if Twitter's "filtering" system weren't preventing them from even seeing what their self-advertising sludge is interrupting. Sorry about that, corporate accounts. Unless there is a two-way dialogue you do not have my permission to fill up my Twitter stream.
In order to give corporate accounts the kind of exposure they claimed to want, New Twitter blocked the dialogue. Buzz! Buzz! Wrong answer. On social media, there is not and should not be much tolerance for anyone blaring on without listening to other people and participating in a social conversation. On Twitter there has generally been a high level of tolerance for lots of different conversations among people who aren't interested in each other--Twitter has made it easy to tune those out--but, even if you're paying for maximum exposure, you can't get that exposure by insulting and locking out the people who are talking to each other. That is just too rude.
There is, still, a way private people can counter the rudeness. In addition to tagging each other so we see one another's tweets, we can block the commercial squick. Banks, insurance agencies, and car manufacturers can continue to tweet to me--if they tag me, directly, and reply to something I've said. Otherwise they can pay to tweet exclusively to one another, and I wish them joy, screaming their throats out in a room without a single listener.
Everyone is cordially invited to join me in hitting that "block" button every time we see anything from a corporate account we don't follow. It'll be fun. If Twitter goes into a fatal tailspin, well, it seems to be heading in that direction anyway.
Meanwhile...I'll continue to post links to all the good stuff I find online at Twitter, as long as Twitter continues to be there. I'll continue to host the Glyphosate Awareness chat, ditto. You should be able to find the Glyphosate Awareness chat a little longer but, since Twitter is not enabling us to chat easily, I'm asking those who want to continue to hear from me to sign up for either an e-mail or real mail list.
I've considered, even tested, allegedly free mailing services and decided against using them. Mailchimp, the one that's sometimes considered most trustworthy, is currently making no secret of its ambitions to go all-for-profit and become spammier. I don't want to do anything spammy. I don't want to send out e-mail in a way I would object to receiving it. So, no Mailchimp, no Paracom, no Paper.li; if you sign up for my e-mail you'll receive individual e-mails, no automated list for hackers to gank and sell.
E-mail will be free. Once a week you'll receive an e-letter that summarizes the week's Bayer Boycott News. It will be plain text; it will be short; you'll see only your and my e-mail addresses.
Real mail will cost me money. Again, I don't want to run afoul of the elaborate and ridiculous laws that govern bulk mailing for reduced rates. I'm not doing Glyphosate Awareness for profit but I will have to charge a fee for printing and postage. That fee will be an even amount in U.S. dollars, covering the cost of printing and mailing whatever number of pages the weekly newsletter amounts to. People who choose this option can choose small, medium, large, extra-large, or huge print, and they can choose to receive links, abstracts, or full text of documents cited.
I don't want to know anything about you except your e-mail or mail drop address and any information, whether published or "anecdotal," you choose to share about glyphosate and the Bayer Boycott.
To join either mailing list, please send the appropriate address (yours) to the appropriate address (mine) at the bottom of the page. Real mail to P.O. Box 322 should be addressed to "The Boxholder."
No, weekly newsletters won't (usually) require big envelopes...but Amazon's picture of small, plain, cheap envelopes, which are white, didn't stand out on the white background. Newsletters will be mailed in the plainest, cheapest envelopes the post office offers. You will not have to pay for fancy packaging.
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