[ot] [wrong] FTL, Karl

[Karl Semich]

Personal story:

After my brainwashing-style experience began in the early-to-mid 2010s I
found Free Talk Live on Facebook and began following them.

The brainwashing, which heavily involved Facebook, involved anti-freedom
beliefs.  Because of this I was very scared of phrases that included the
word "free" or "freedom" or expressed these as values.  (And I'm in this
present moment having issues struggling to talk about this and hold it
safely in my mind.)

So I followed Free Talk Live because they were able at all to use the word
"free" in their name, and that was completely out of my reality.  I was
living dissociated from what I was going through, and interpreted their
shows as being secret messages that related to my personal experience.

One show I listened to talked about the importance of choosing sides, so I
stopped listening to them much, because requiring the choosing of sides to
engage in a fake war had been part of my life-destroying brainwashing, and
after hearing this expressed I figured they were fake.

I was living an altered reality, in an influencable mental state where I
thought everything was directions as to what I needed to do.

Facebook still gave FTL updates in my feed.  I couldn't control what the
feed gave me during that time: using the facebook controls to include or
remove sets of items would simply have no effect.  The newsfeed behavior I
couldn't seem to influence went through different phases, but mostly
prevented me from accessing upbeat inspirational memes, and prevented me
from accessing expressions from sets of friends and activists whom I am
still disconnected from.  A reasonable summary in retrospect could be that
it seemed like the "like" button had the opposite effect, such that
clicking it resulted in seeing something less.

So those updates simply became occasional parts of the visual memes that
would influence my behavior while dissociated, scrolling by my newsfeed.

It's pleasant to see free talk live, on this list, after so long.  That
word "free" is powerful among slavery.  Not everyone can even think it.  It
means hope, it means shilling, it means there is a reality out there, where
things are different, where the word represents something tangible and
real: a reality we need to defend with our lives.

Don't let the bullies with guns and political strings rob us of our
freedom.  They are misled powerholders yearning for it themselves.
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