SUSPENDED!

SUSPENDED!

 

   

   

September 03,2012

   

BY GRAY DOURMAN

Suspended.  Not terminated.  Not revoked.  Not even closed.  Your account is suspended.  Words as shocking and bruising as the maliciously cast sticks and stones of neighbourhood bullies.  From out of nowhere.  With no explanation.  No warning.  Suspended!

My behaviour was assessed by an algorithm which determined that it was unacceptable.  I depend upon Twitter for stimulation.  I'd be severly handicapped without it. But to be measured and suspended by an automated calculation seemed somehow, inappropriate.  I am always wary when there is a confluence between programmed machines and compulsive human behaviour.

Twitter told me I could appeal and appeal I did.

Twitter replied, "It looks like a disproportionately large number of users, including ones you followed or @replied, have chosen to either block your account or report it as spam."

The suitably fuzzy expression, "It looks like..." was interesting and I was casually curious about the definition of "disproportionately large".

Twitter monitors how users are followed and take a particular interest in aggressive following and churning (repeatedly following and un-following large numbers of other users).

As I have not engaged in stalking behaviour by persistently @replying to or Direct Messaging any particular Tweeter, as I do not follow and unfollow frequently and do not use automated methods, it is innocent that I plead on this one and would challenge Twitter to show me proof of any contravention.

Apparently it is considered aggressive following to indiscriminately follow hundreds of accounts just to garner attention but Twitter suggest that one can follow 2000 people in total.  It seems this limit is different for every user and is based on a ratio of followers to following.  Twitter will tell you when you hit this limit by showing an error message in your browser. I have never seen this error message.

Twitter also places limits on actions such as following, API requests per hour, and number of updates per day.

Hmmm...Well I do want attention but I constrain my following to hundreds, well under the thousands suggested. So it must be a contravention of the rules to want attention.  Guilty to that I plead.

According to Twitter, following a few users if their accounts seem interesting is normal and is not considered aggressive.

Marvellous! I would only ask how many is a few? Finding 2000 accounts that "seem interesting" would be a challenge for me.

Twitter also informs me following is not mutual. You can see a person's tweets without a mutual relationship.

I understand that.  The only direct relationships I can detect are @reply and Direct Messages.  Anyone I @reply or DM can reply if they wish do so but thay are also free to ignore the communication without penalty.  No harassment there.

I like to @reply to specific tweets of interest and followed this Twitter tip: If you need to communicate with someone but don't need to see their updates every day, don't follow them. Visit their profile or send them an @reply when you need to; sending @replies doesn't require following, and your reply will appear in the person's @mentions tab so they can reply back.

If I correctly understand, what appears to have happened is that I used @reply and a 'disproportionately large' number of recipients didn't like what I had to say, so blocked me or reported me as spam, and I was suspended.  As I did not repeatedly @reply to any single tweeter I cannot see why I would be suspended unless I was lumped in with those miscreants who do and fell victim to an algorithm too blunt to differentiate between a genuine voice in the wilderness and a malicious siren spamming away in order to lure the unaware into a morass of enticements.

I scrupulously avoid profanity, pornography or slander in my @replies, so the motive to block must be ideological or a matter of taste.

And what of adding links?  Links do not open automatically.  The links are there to redirect the reader from the original tweeted assertion to further information or a different point of view.  I add links with relish.  I love to send readers down paths less travelled to destinations seldom visited.

I am not a passive follower.  My temperment is that of an iconoclast.  I am compelled to challenge accepted behaviour and blind belief.  I use @reply to challenge assertions.    There is no mandatory response required.  My challenges can simply be ignored.  I use Direct Message to send personal messages.  I use Tweet to state opinion.


Twitter tells me " it isn’t a race to get the most followers. If you follow users that you’re interested in and post meaningful content, it’s more likely that legitimate users will find you and read your updates. People follow other users on Twitter to read updates that are interesting to them."

How lovely but not my experience.  Most tweeters find gaining followers the most stimulating benefit of operating in the Twittersphere.  They like to acquire followers so that they can exert their influence.  Exerting influence is among the most important compulsive behaviours of the human species.  The integration of compulsive behaviour, tools of influence and the automated management of behaviour is of interest to me.


Apparently rules governing behaviour and etiquette have been devised and translated into an algorithm which if not followed without exception, the penalty of suspension is to be paid.  Twitter is a good old fashioned club. Clubs are an age old and well understood mechanism for imposing social conventions. Fear of suspension influences behaviour.

Twitter graceously reinstated my account for which I am grateful.  But blocked and suspended I gasped for the oxygen of debate. I questioned the character of an algorithm which permits the blocking of followers so that if a tweeter is blocked an,as yet unstated, number of times, the account is suspended.  It seems an incredibly easy way to silence the unconventional voice!

Perhaps a more conscious mechanism for separating the enthusiastic communicator from commercial spammer is required?

I'VE BEEN DUMPED

Twitter has just suspended my account.  No warning. No explanation.  Just suspension.  So what if I relied on Twitter for my living, for my well being, for my ability to communicate?  Where would I be?  

I love Twitter.  It is easily my preferred method of reaching people who want to know what I think and what I have to say.  Now I have to wait until they have reviewed my case to participate again.  It is of concern to me but I have to say I am at a lost to say exactly why.

I have not been on Twitter long.  I don't not spend a great deal of time on it.  Actually I'm on it less than 90 minutes a day and 90 minutes would be a long stint.  And yet, I feel a little like I feel when a woman dumps me or friend doesn't turn up for an appointment or my kids treat Father's Day with little or no effort.  It occurs to me that we build up unconscious dependencies without really understanding what function that dependency serves.  It defies logic that there would be dependency without function.

So I have to think long and hard about exactly what function Twitter serves in my life and will have to find alternatives and options so that if I am cut off again...well I have somewhere else to go.

Gray

THE MAGIC HELIX

AN INTERVIEW WITH ME...

Could you share a little about yourself and what led you to become a writer?

As the Summer of Love had turned to a Canadian Fall,  I left Vancouver and rented a farm near a small town in the Cascade Mountains of British Columbia called Grand Forks.  I was born a few miles up the road but had spent my teen years just outside the ‘big’ city.

The editor of the local newspaper took a liking to me and asked me to write a small piece explaining why I chose to return to the valley when so many young people were leaving.  The piece was a success and became a regular column.  I have made a living from writing in one form or another ever since.

According to your Bio, you now write full time, but just how much of your life is set aside for writing?

I write three hours a day.  No more, no less.  The most important tool in my portfolio is discipline. 

A long time ago someone told me, ‘If you want to be a cowboy you have to wear a cowboy hat.’ 

If you want to be a writer you have to write, day in and day out.  But writing is a physical business and it is important for a writer to understand his or her physical limits.

I know you have other novels out, but today I want to focus on Woman of the Century.

Could you tell us a little about your novel? Would you take us on a brief tour of your novel and the world you’ve created?

The Twentieth Century was a period of particularly dramatic transition both socially and technologically.  Those who lived through it witnessed dramatic political progress, ordinary people were offered new opportunities and the means to travel and migrate. 

Nowhere did this transformation express itself with more vigour than the arts, especially painting.  It was an exciting, fraught and challenging time for all who lived through it and offered unlimited possibilities for dramatic tension and moral dilemma.

Where does the inspiration for you main character and her story come from?

My mother arrived in Canada from London as a war Bride in 1944 but never let go of the old country.  She yearned for the city of her childhood and the family she left behind.  She talked of little else. 

When she touched on stories of her mother her eyes always filled with tears.  I never met nor knew my Grandmother. Woman of the Century is my imagining of her life.

What is the message behind the story? Was it something you specifically wrote a story around or did it develop as your characters came to life?

The most innocuous person you might pass on the street may have lived an extraordinary life.  Not all greatness results in celebrity or notoriety. 

I knew what I wanted to write about long before I started the book.  All in all it took me more than thirty years to finish it.  I had to wait for my mother to pass and she hung on for a very long time. 

Over the years the characters taught me things I didn’t know and told me things I had not heard before.

Do you work from an outline or just go with the flow? If you use an outline, how detailed is it?

As with most of my work I outlined first, built a foundation timeline, added the broad historical details, then, let the characters loose in the framework, pushing them back when they strayed too far out of context and disciplining them when they didn’t behave in a manner that was true to their background and beliefs.

Your novel spans a century and I am curious about the amount of research involved in such an undertaking.

Could you tell us how you go about it, how you ‘catalogue’ information to make it all work, (since everything from language to clothing changes as well as technology, values, traditions etc.)?

Every day, whatever I’m doing, I collect information about whatever I’m interested in, especially when it bisects specific project that I’m working on.  I have notebooks filled with bits and pieces of this, that and the other. 

When it comes time to insert a given detail into a current work, I acquire as much additional insight as I can, shying away from the well know to the minor facets of an issue. 

It is the fleshing out of the minor that brings the major into focus.

How does this book differ from what you have written in the past?

Woman of the Century was a much bigger, far more personal story than I have ever told before.  Through most of my career I have written to brief.  With this book, I owned it, from inception to completion.

How long have you been awaiting the release of your novel? How much time has elapsed between having typed the last word, through the editing phase and to print?

About four months.  Waiting for the final edit was the hardest part of the whole process.

How have the changes in present day publishing impacted your schedule as a writer?

Not much.  Writing is writing.  Writing on a computer is very much easier than a manual portable and carbon paper but that also means more people can do it.  In many ways it was sheer physical effort of writing that gave me the edge over the writers who wanted to do it but didn’t have the strength.

How do you handle marketing? Do you have a plan, a publicist or just take one day at a time?

Now, I have to rely on word of mouth and social networking.  The strategy is to find a champion for the book who knows the market and believes in the project.  Someone with whom I can share the critical and financial rewards.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Write.  Write whatever you can, whenever you can.  Writing is much more important than research or marketing.  It is a skill that comes from practice.  Clattering away on the keyboard is equivalent to doing scales on the piano.  However good the research or the marketing, it will all come to nothing if the product doesn’t deliver. 

Could you tell us what you’re working on now?

A piece of non-fiction based on the idea that we carry belief within us, like we carry our genetic code, but we cannot locate where.  I’m looking for that location.

http://amethysteyesauthor.blogspot.ca/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007QVAPS8

MATURE MEN WITH MONEY

Mature men with money are an interesting social demographic. They even have their own unique marketing acronym...MMWM.

They are in a phase in their lives when they think more profoundly about things that seemed unimportant during other periods of life.

They differ from mature men without money because they are either working but at the sunset of their career or retired. In many cases they have paid off or nearly paid off the big ticket life debts like the mortgage and the education costs of their children.

They are preoccupied with what they've accomplished and what comes next, what they're leaving behind both physically, passed on in their DNA, and morally, what they've passed on of what they've learned and they believe.

It is a passage in life that is psychologically challenging and changes their behaviour in unpredictable ways which the people around them, especially dependents, find difficult.

With death approaching, it is a time when belief becomes more important in the scheme of every day life. Just as the blood and body body carry the gentic code, stored in chromosones and DNA, it stands to reason that belief must be carried along with it. When we move from one place to another,across the street or around the world, we carry our genes, but we also carry our beliefs.

The nihilists among us might suggest we carry our beliefs in the brain, the spiritualists, the soul. So where in the brain and where in us does the soul reside? We know which part of the brain governs memory, but we have yet to find the area that governs belief.

Here we explore many of the beliefs and their influence on our lives because we make important decisions based upon what we believe and therefore it behooves us to understand and nuture those beliefs. In our evolving and revolving universe incidents are never repeated but they can be remembered in a variety of versions.

The Magic Helix is a repository of beliefs that have formed out of memories and experiences, presented to entertain, educate and enlighten.

And you can start enjoying the journey by clicking here .

DON'T WEAR THE HAIRSHIRT....

So the finance minister of Luxembourg opens the door a crack and suggests that if Greece has a government, there might be room to address the concerns of the great swath of voters who question the merits of austerity.  I applaud him.  This is the dialogue of democracy and peaceful evolution.  Austerity isn't working.  It never does.  We humans can make things.  We humans can do things.  We human can go places.  All this activity produces wealth.  All this activity needs hope, belief.  There is no hope and no belief in severe austerity.  Austerity and piety are regressive instincts and most human progress is born of optimism and enthusiasm.  No hairshirts here please.  Let's talk.  Let's adjust.  Let's progress.

Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com

NOW LET'S SEE IF DEMOCRACY WORKS....

In one of the myriad of European conflicts over history Edward III laid siege to Calais.  The city was ordered to resist at all costs.  Eventually the city was starved into submission and forced to parley for surrender.  Edward agreed not to plunder the city if any six of its top leaders would sacrifice themselves, and walk out, wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle.   Six burghers volunteered, stripped down to their breeches and appeared at the city gates.  They expected to be executed but  they were not.  

This time the Burghers did not walk out.  So, the voters in local elections in the U.K. reject the dogma of austerity, then Greece, then France... now what?  The cabal of bankers, billionaires, Murdochs and elite politicians must admit that the game is up, that the citizens of democratic countries have been sufficiently informed and educated to understand that to pay for the profligacy of an elite class who believe in the cant that they know what is best and how the world works is neither ethical or necessary.  

This is democracy.  Let the people who must pay decide the price.  Now is the time to see who really believes in democracy and who believes in control.  

UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION...THE TRUTH

A long time ago I was an immigrant.  Even though many generations of my family came from the country where I choose to live and work, I was not born here, and had to endure a great deal of scrutiny to secure citizenship.  Out of curiosity and to refute some very wild claims on the back of yesterday's plea to resist anti-immigration, anti-integration politics, I made some enquiries and submit the following...it is rather difficult to immigrate into Europe from outside Europe.  The levels of proof regarding positive contribution are very high.  If the "uncontrolled immigration" to which my avid (or should I day rabid) readers refer, is from inside the Europe, well the duly elected representatives of the democratic electorate of all the participating European countries have signed the convention and as a committed democrat I respect them for it.  If there is "uncontrolled immigration" into the European Union from elsewhere, would someone please show me documentary proof of it.

Immigration is not the dangerous issue, it is nationalism, and nationalism is the greatest threat to peaceful, respectful, co-operative, democratic prosperity.  What fool thinks that the global integration of all the cultures and economies of humanity can be unpicked and that we can return to the dark ages when we killed or enslaved all who dared to cross the borders we were capable of defending.

Gray Dourman
FURTHER MORE....