40 Years Old; Moved; Threats; Death of Dragoneer; About Filene, Me
[cw: Child Trafficking, Sex Crimes, Genocide, Nakba, Crimes against Humanity, War Crimes, Security, Panopticon, Child Abuse, Commercialized Control, Systemic Violence, Healthcare Violence, Systemic oppression, Death, Grief, Coercive Control, Stochastic Violence]
Bismillah, in the name of Allah'; If you're a minor, you need to ask an adult you trust to read this post instead.
Look no further than the death announcement of the person known as Dragoneer, and you'll find folk promptly celebrating due to one small scandal of virtue or another. None of this compares to the people Preyfar (aka Dragoneer) stood up to, folk who insulate and stop conversations about the Israeli Defense Force's Nakba continuing in Palestine, about the invasion and threats on Ukraine (Feb 4th) which threaten the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant to cause another Chernobyl Disaster as well as the people of Ukraine themselves. He fought those who will turn education about human and reproductive rights into sex crimes. People (like a former president) who have said "Jeffrey Epstein" is a good guy despite being at the center of an international child sex trafficking ring that coerced people in positions of power to becoming his assets and clients. And Dragoneer? He was a kind-hearted, jovial artist (to those who knew him) who was allowed to take over Alkora's FurAffinity project in 2007, as Alkora was already being targeted for scandal. Dragoneer worked internationally as a contractor prior to IMVU's purchase, and in the last ten years, he has fought to keep FurAffinity together despite his own impoverishment.
Dragoneer tried many ways to keep the site going. After FurAffinity was blocked from being paid by the major payment processors, after he changed the content permissions to be ethically and virtuously clean with regards to content and these payment authorizers' tightening rules, and after temporarily allowing IMVU to be in possession of the site's legal entity before Dragoneer purchased it anew, he was without health insurance in Virginia. Virginia, for those of you not aware, has regularly sued people on the USA-funded poverty healthcare option, Medicaid, under claims of bills that should not have been paid. Even though I was familiar with Dragoneer on a first-name basis as he was a long-term acquaintance and friend of mine, Twitter's purchase and gutting by Elon Musk left his reach and visibility erased. I had no idea Dragoneer, my friend, was suffering from a life threatening condition for months, and was repeatedly being failed and deferred by healthcare providers he saw. Of course he would be, when you know doctors also need to be paid by a healthcare system founded on austerity and punitive lawsuits against needy peoples. (This is compared to the President Donald administration getting paid to forcibly sterilize undocumented refugees and migrants. I don't have the link about my Medicaid claim right now.)
And so, Dragoneer died last night. I had found out at 4am, because my complex household needs means I was up at 1:30am. (You'd think merely 'being awake' can make praying the Salaat easier, but it doesn't even as a Queer, Trans, and 2022-recently Islamic Muslim.) I am so beside myself with grief, as I am aware my own father needs 24/7 healthcare and care work but can't afford it. He is the same age as the DoorDasher who humbly needed my help to provide our needed groceries (like toilet paper) that we 'financed' on the exploitative APR credit cards we need to get by. Even if my dad has pushed Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer back to its smallest this year, he still needs help to recover his memory. In my house, we are 24/7. So when followers show up with tags like "im_1nside_your_house", or when I am subject to a "Miscreant In the Middle" attack while at the laundromat, I am as ready as I can be on hours of sleep and gratitude from constant prayers.
He didn't need to die. My dad doesn't need to be nickle-and-dimed for healthcare. And people don't need to go broke paying for health insurance for themselves, their dogs, or the life of their land. If you're as angry about this farcical austerity--treating currency bills like they're invaluable and limited-edition collector's items only fit to be horded ala the Panama Papers--then I pray fellow furries like me and Dragoneer can still do something about it.
In his last tweets on TwXtter, you can still see Dragoneer fighting fascists. I'm no expert on fascism, so let me try to summarize it by the line: "Might makes right." This 'might' being people or organizations employing technology (ala "Djinn," "Egregores," or in this case, just corporate bodies and the 'thoughtforms' employees have) exploiting these massive systems of power to create a lie into reality by the fact their power enables it to happen. Why else can some of the most far-right Israelis feel like they're protecting their homeland, when it only exists in the dwindling darkness of ignorance a Hebrew-only state (no Yiddish allowed) birthed in children? This kind of dark enlightenment is still poisoning us today, even as it is one JD Vance advocates for.
And, today, someone from a popular UNDERTALE world record holder's Discord community found one of the other places I am also combating this international system of exploitation: VANtics. If you think I'm against lies being used to control children, which I am, look to your own television, or your YouTube Kids app. Therein, besides Elsagate and the USA's weak attempts to stop this via KOSA, you will find a surreal INTERNATIONAL normality. This normality has existed since before USAian Cigarette Marketing invented marketing: paid commercial advertisements.
VANtics is my hope to reveal that, not only do non-consentual airing of commercial publications exploit the children who might see them, they exploit the children cast within them. You can see Nickelodeon-network scandals regarding content that unnecessarily and unhealthily pushed child actors to pose for scenes that graphically held on their bodily features that were unnecessary to the plot. Am I using more words than a 14 year old might understand? No, as I was a very clever 14 year old who could not dispel the images, their realism, and the intimacy in their performances in these ads. Who could be OK participating like this in an ad for a large audience? Why would this piece of art be made to be aired when I would see it, to plausibly and intentionally shape my thoughts for a lifetime? It's called "Image Marketing" and executives are as aware of this as the Exxon executives were aware of the problems of climate change.
I had no idea this crossover would happen hours after Dragoneer's passing, and continue to expose the internet-wide exploration, presence, and communities I'm a part of. My act of boldly or humbly living my life as a visible trans* person since 2014 has required me to have faith in higher powers, all the way up to a single unifying Creator: as I've survived multiple attacks completely outside of this SansIsSleeping art project. These attacks aren't merely physical violence, but legal, social, economic, and bureaucratic. The fact I am here today is not just because of my faith in One transcendental Creator (Tahwid) keeping all of this order on Earth quietly operating despite chaos. It's because of people like my spouse. It's because of my children who lead and inspire me. It's because of the community members I've met who wonder why commodity fetishism is a normal and accepted marketing tactic for children. It's because of old friends who still continue to commune with me, and other friends who don't hesitate to help with money, or networking, or other aid. It's because of people like Mari who is also facing a similar healthcare and financial crisis like Dragoneer did. It's because of people like atax1a , aka Alex, who inspire me and teach me by xer own dictionary-like addressing of all the space xe hold. This is just like the Bo Burnham special "Inside," tackling this same topic (and the Outtakes which are great): my inside is outside now, and we're entering a world where "Everybody Knows." This even reminds me of the coercive/puppeteering blackmail-like control that I found suggested by lyrics within a music video composed by Toby Fox but I am soon courageous enough to finally witness. This is much like SnowGrave for me, which I had put off for months out of fear I would, again, be haunted ala the Genocide/Ecocidal ending of UNDERTALE. Does "No Mercy" even cut such a story of increasingly consolidated power choices?
I'm in my final days of work on the architecture of Slumberer Sentinels. I don't know if I will have a complete platform architecture drawn out before I begin, but this is another one of this era's "clarion call" attempts. Just like Tim Berners-Lee believes in a decentralized web rescuing us from this terrorism-technology panopticon, I believe a universal networked system state that Slumberer Sentinels can provide open-source would be an open book all of you can read and teach me from, as the next generation and current generation of experts.
Yes, I'm weird. But I understand consent enough now to refuse power being proof of consent. Perhaps might can create the lie of what is right, but informed/FRIES consent is mightier. Like my welcome new Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz says: it's weird to have this power and say these wrong, revisionist things about living beings. It's beyond weird, it's wrong to claim ability to divine who at our scale deserves to die and live. That's not our job, we need enough of us fools and all living beings alive long enough to learn an unforgettable lesson. We are already living in a time of Genocide, of Nakba.
What are YOU doing?
You're reading this? Thank you. Preyfar, may Ar Rahman Ar Raheem, the Most Gracious and Most Merciful be pleased, and peace be upon you.
Filene "Natalie" Taylor B August 7th, 2024
(v1: got most of the links in there, not all of them, such as a talk Cory Doctorow referred to where "AI" is actually considered Organizations, and their growing authoritarian control is the problem. I think the talk is like, "How did we mess up this bad?" or something)
