It is no wonder that Telegram is as popular as it is: it allows people who feel they have had their voices censored, either through state-sponsored bullying or state-pressured-shadow-banning, to finally have a chance to connect with like minded individuals and build a sense of community.
Humans are social creatures. We have been conditioned to want to stick together and fit in with our community through generations of the threat of exile, among other conditions. In previous times, exile would almost certainly mean death for most types of humans. In the current age, this fear-laced-with-empathy has been weaponized against us to fear “going against the grain” of perceived social acceptance.
A social media platform like Twitter is the perfect weapon for this. With the revelation that well over 80% of the accounts of that platform are bots, usually programmed through Python to echo certain sentiments, we know that the “shaping of social consciousness” is, in fact, being utilized by organizations which want to maneuver the social-landscape for gains. These gains are not always directly for financial profit; in many cases these gains are for power or privilege over other groups. How many tweets have you seen with screenshots of telegram posts berating channels and users for “thinking incorrectly”? Twitter continues to be a cancer on the human psyche, used in tandem with Reddit. Uninformed individuals with weaker constitutions will formulate opinions from what the see on these websites. Is this kind of power worth a 44 billion dollar investment? Programming people is a billion dollar industry at least…
A messaging platform like Telegram did help to remedy this, but it did not solve the problem entirely. I honestly think we didn’t run-fast-enough out the gate to make it something more. The problem with Telegram is, for one it is a WEF funded surveillance project, for another it has devolved into an echo-chamber once again of meme reposting drowning out channels with valuable content like preparedness, gardening, art, etc, and finally the biggest problem is: it isn’t a free speech platform. It claims to be. It allows you to share some things, Ultimately, and unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before the censorship-mob accumulates enough reports on a successful channel that is becomes shadow banned, banned from app-store versions of Telegram, or the worst of all: completely removed for sharing the wrong perspective. How many channels have you had to refollow? How many have posted how to install the API without the app stores interfering on your device?
The very notion that you might be on Telegram at all means, in Canada at the very least, that you are some sort of terrorist. After all… why wouldn’t you be thrilled at the curated experience on state-operated platforms like Twitter and Facebook? It is only at the cost of your privacy. It only costs your consent to being monitored, patrolled, profiled, and categorized. The state is only ensuring that you have a pleasant time, provided that, at the very least, you accept the narrative that the state chooses for you to consume: “You are evil,” “You are awful,” “You are guilty because we said so.” The evidence in front of your eyes is not valid. The trees are not a forest. Anyone who doesn’t want to be monitored must be up to something…
Free speech censorship is no longer an issue of a few oddball comments crossing some moral line. Instead now, free speech considered anything that , “I do no consent” and by this alone we have hit an irreparable divide. Free speech was lost once it began to be held under the microscope of cancel-culture’s ever-analyzing eyeball. Now that it is gone, the next target is your ability to question what you think. “How dare you commit such a crime of thought?” Is this not already commonplace in our society? The court of public opinion sure believes it to be so.
If you knew me before the social-control-experiment began, you knew that my MO was keeping politics and music separate. I kept my personal beliefs out of my music, and… to be honest?… it wasn’t getting me anywhere. My music didn’t say anything. I had an audience sure, and I was able to be wallpaper in a room with 200-300 people in it, collect my cheque and move to the next room the next night, but I was not offering an audience anything worthwhile. I wasn’t even giving myself the courtesy of doing something worth doing for my soul, for my voice, for the people who now email me and comment to tell me how much what I’ve put out has helped them. When you have a voice and you don’t use it, are you even doing anything?
As I learned, very quickly, when I put the truths I knew into my music, as simple or trivial to anyone else as they were, these songs began to resonate. First it brought out the ghouls and demons. The haters who seeth and monitor me. Everybody has them, but I would contest that I have many more than most. The ones who, instead of putting time into themselves, instead spend time to tear me, and those like me, down. This kind of behavior was, and still is, encouraged within the Canadian entertainment scheme. It is honestly encouraged in Canadian society as a whole. You are not supposed to become successful! How dare you!? You are definitely not allowed to experience any success without the support of the benevolent state and it’s granting process, especially because we have chosen that you are not worthy to suckle on the teet of the taxation machine. We believe you should not create anything…
This is absolutely what it’s like being a musician in this country. I am often approached by former musicians who stopped because of this kind of climate. I kept going. I won’t lie: It hurt for a bit, but I also realized something… look at all these people trying to shut me up and stop me from making anything for the very reason that I am me. They are scared…
They are scared that I don’t need this system to exist. I play the instruments. I record them. I mix them. I draw the art. I publish the songs. I put them out for people to enjoy. I develop the website that allows people to support me through purchasing my products or through donation. In the past I even bent-over-backwards so-to-speak to help others realize they are being taken-for-a-ride by a very inferior system which delivers little to no results. Ultimately, if it were all gone tomorrow I wouldn’t mind either, because I am here, I have done what I have been able to do, and I stuck to my morals. These people who attack me are scared that my existence, and the existence of those like me, proves that, “maybe they aren’t really qualified to be receiving government money.” This is why they send complaints. This is why they make up rumors. This is why people who work at government funded organizations feel the need to attack me and my character. Shouldn’t these people be focused on growing the brands of individuals who are seeking help from their organizations? This is a whole other discussion.
I’ll be honest, I still don’t like writing songs inspired by politics or events related to politics, but I know that people who listen to me do. People who listen to the songs-I-make need them sometimes. That is reason enough, but he comments and emails I receive work to reinforce this.
My audience doesn’t exist on, what you would call, “normie platforms”. Future members of my audience are there, but they haven’t learned what I have learned yet, but when they leave those big-tech monitoring sites like Facebook and Twitter behind, they can find me. At times I feel like a shepard who guides folks away from the evil we all used to participate in. Telegram was a great catch-all for this when it was young. It will continue to grow now exponentially for anyone who might hold a dissident opinion. The thing is… that’s my cue to keep pathfinding towards a new home. I feel like those coming over now are behind where I am, and although I wish them well I need to stay with my flock. There are a bunch of other great content creators there now which will provide what these people need.
Freedom from the shackles-that-the-system wishes to chain you with is a cornerstone of the personal liberty I demand. Telegram has those shackles. They’re going to use them more and more, now that governments have learned it is a platform capable of providing organization for dissident voices, even if they monitor everything on Telegram. Why does anyone subject themselves to that?
Besides my own website, Telegram was indeed my biggest platform for connecting people directly to my music. Several of my videos on that platform crested well over 30,000 plays within days; some within hours! That’s pretty great. I’ve been at this a while and I honestly never thought I would experience that in my life, you know, being berated by the local systems the way I have been, yet… I keep making music. It’s like I was called to do it or something weird I dunno haha… The goal isn’t collecting numbers though. The goal is, and has always been, getting heard. Greener pastures provide new opportunities for what i know I must do with my talents.
As far as the social media platforms I continue to hold a presence on: Sure, Gab has it’s issues: Torba sold that guy out to the FBI for posting something that really wasn’t questionable. Especially not considering some of the crazy posts I’ve seen on Gab. I don’t agree with what he did there, especially since we know the motives of the FBI in silencing potential dissident voices, but I also understand that there are many reasons why it happened and it is not my place to be spending hours pondering the validity of the decision.
The thing is Andrew Torba has cultivated a space that I don’t feel as though I will be shadowbanned. That, to me, is important. I was shadowbanned on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I couldn’t even apply for a page or account on Facebook or Instagram as @gregarcade. I am 100% certain myself and some friends with channels on Telegram were shadowbanned in march of 2022 following the convoy. We were growing exponentially daily, then it just became a solid number for months, but it was because we were sharing information about the Canadian Trucker Convoy. The Canadian government and Media-Propaganda establishment was losing an information war with 10 guys making posts from the toilet before and after going to work… that harkens back to my point about, “revealing that people do not belong in the positions they are paid by the government to hold.” It is easy to attract an audience when you share the truth. This is why Canadian Mainstream Media is failing: they lie. They have to fact check memes that share the truth as, “they didn’t share that.” It is absolutely ridiculous.
Telegram sold us down the figurative toilet back then with that shadowban. They’re doing it again by sharing private conversation information with government organizations. I’ve seen this first hand… You can not even joke around with your buddies without fear of them bringing it to a court and saying you are a terrorist. The same government that gives money to terrorists, funds child abduction in the UK, and tried to drug and kidnap the wife of that crypto guy… they’re calling regular-Joes on the internet trying to cope with the collapse of our society “terrorists”… They are taking information from completely non-credible sources just so they can say, “hey look! This guy said this so now you are this now. Evidence? That doesn’t matter we have conjecture on our side!” I have yet to meet anyone who I think would be a terrorist since this all began, although I have not run into any politicians or members of the media in the last few years so… I just want to say: If you’re concerned about health and safety, why do you neglect the health and safety of our institutions? I digress…
I’m here to explain why I left Telegram. It censors. It censored me and some buddies of mine. It rats on innocent people to fabricate evidence against them to be abused by the law-fare system. It will get worse on Telegram. I have moved on. If people are mad that I am no longer cultivating my channel there, I can’t help them with that feeling, other than to say, “I’m still here, but I’m not there.”
I appreciate you coming over to substack with me. I will try and make regular content for you. The harvest is winding down now so I will have more time to do things like this, but I will be ever-fighting my lack-of-desire to use computers anymore… I don’t even know what I will write about that I haven’t already on previous channels or podcasts… I will do what I can though, because I appreciate you and the patronage you have shown me. I do urge you though:
Pick up that Good Book and read a bit of it every day.
Delete the apps on your devices that bring you doom and gloom.
Connect with your neighbors and friends.
Focus on the positive things in your immediate vicinity.
Lastly: subscribe to this substack.
You can also find me on Gab. You can find me on YouTube, but I am uploading everything to GabTV over the next few weeks. I am on Odysee. I am on Flote. I think that’s it? For now at the very least… wait. My website gregarcade.com as well.
Take care of each other out there.
I’ll be in touch.
Excellent Greg! I look forward to your new chapter and many talents over here and the platforms you have mentioned. I couldn't agree more with what you have said here. You are a great man and and a great friend.
Deleting Telegram again. Lol tks