Tag: The Why Files

Got Discord? You’ve been owned. Here’s why

Last year, I connected with Patreon and Discord to get “exclusive” content from the YouTube channel “The Why Files.”

It was a big mistake.

First, as I wrote back then, their moderators don’t give a shit about you. Two of them pretty well told me to go away. I haven’t forgotten, and I can’t forgive. Anyone making that kind of money should make sure that their moderators treat patrons fairly and with kindness. The two were male mods, names or handles of which I’ve forgotten. I said after being told, “Go to bed,” that if I left, it would be all the way. They used emojis to wave bye-bye. Pretty cold stuff. And nobody tells me to go to bed.

Nobody.

The mods who were nice to me they were Victoria and AJ’s wife, whose name was Jenn. The rest of them, except for AJ, were shitheads. Give someone a position of power, and you know what happens next. I really liked the channel, and I  still miss chatting with Victoria and other followers. But I didn’t even last a month. I’ve never been back. Never will.

All of this took place on the Patreon companion app Discord. I did not know at the time that I shouldn’t have been using it at all.

Let’s start with Patreon. I consider it incredibly stupid to pay YouTubers part of my measly check to watch their videos. It doesn’t make sense to me, and other folks already give them enough. They can and, some have, become millionaires doing nothing but sitting in front of a Webcam telling scary stories I remember from 4th grade, just amped up a bit.

I still like movie reaction videos, and my favorite is “Popcorn in Bed” because I don’t think Cassie really cheats. However, her Patreon members are often trolling her, and she doesn’t deserve it. I watch her videos, but I consider “Patreon exclusives” to be bait to subscribe and pay.

People have to make money. I get it, and her paying customers are welcome to do what they want. I just can’t afford or make sense of it.

But there’s a problem, and it is not to be taken lightly.

That problem is Discord, majority owned by the Chinese. They claim not to track you, but they know everywhere you go, see every text you send, keep your payment information, track your transactions and because Ten Cent, a China-owned company, owns the majority share in Discord, once you enter your information, they own you. They can do anything they want to with it, including digging up more information. That’s scary stuff. I’d like you to watch and pay attention to the following video. It’s for real. What’s more, even Facebook isn’t as threatening as Discord. I got away from Facebook a long time ago and like it that way. But you’re safer there than on Discord. Sobering, yes?

Worse yet, once the information is in their hands, you can’t delete it. No big deal, really; you can’t really delete your information from any site. Lastly, fear China and keep faith in God. There’s a part of the Revelation that predicts that near the end, the kings of the east will cross a dried-up Euphrates River on their way to war. Maybe you don’t believe that. But China grows stronger every year. China has a plan to be the major power by 2049.

In this story, predictions have the Euphrates completely dry by 2040.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

YouTube: The Why Files is off My List

The Why Files is a channel dedicated to mysteries and minor paranormal subjects, leaning mostly toward UFO (a.k.a. UAP) phenomena especially where government cover-ups are involved. It’s a good channel with a rapidly growing fan and subscriber base. I’ve watched it it for a long time, canceling twice because it went too fringe for my patience. I went back after a particularly scary episode on AI. I even became a Patreon member.

You get perks for doing that. I won’t go into these because I hold them in contempt as being nothing to write home about. There is a channel exclusive chat room and other channels within their site. But that’s where my story begins and ends.

At first, I felt welcome. I thought the members good people and I had fun. That lasted less than a week. It was, I thought, a place where I was free to interact with and attain respect and affection for people as they were. No politics, no religion was allowed in chat or comments.

I met and had fun with a few of the mods. Met a few more. Then I met one that joked around about walking me like a dog…on a leash!

It all wore thin quickly.

Then one day I was nearly struck by lightning. The dog leash guy gave me his number so he could get my address and call medics for me.

Being as how I could have done that myself, I considered his or her query for personal information inappropriate and troubling.

My ears still hurt but I’m fine. I became even more uneasy, though.

Finally, seemed as though every one but a few began to ignore every comment. I found an inappropriate conversation about eating dog and horse meat and they were giving me fuel for tasteless jokes I knew I couldn’t make. Finally a mod by the handle “Tenn” told me to “Go to bed.”

I said I’d go, only because of those inappropriate orders, not because I needed to go to bed. Then I appended, “I may not come back.” The two moderators used emojis to wave at me.

That was fucking it. I logged out.

Then I went to Patreon and canceled my account, then uninstalled both Patreon and Discord apps. I will never support anyone on Patreon again.

But I knew I couldn’t stop there. I went to YouTube and unsubscribed from the channel.

That’s it for me. Treat me like a child, will you?.

Fuck you.

You don’t do that to people who just signed up to support your livelihood.

They will not miss me. They never gave two farts in the wind for me anyway. The jobs of the moderators, everywhere you go, is to keep the posted content civil. But invariably there are turds in the punch bowl. Those let power go to their heads, and that’s bad. They abuse that power and say things they’d never let you get away with.

The sudden absence of mods being friendly and the bleak absence of any others to even try to engage me in DM made my decision. That, plus the fact that they were obviously taking my comments out of context when I was joking about, told me once and for all that I had chosen a hostile site with an even more hostile administration.

One rule they had was, no political content. Yet I observed demented remarks about Biden and the American political left being tolerated while other views were removed and a bot sent everyone a notice that a user had been warned.

Now look, all of this is okay with me. People can be shitheads. I get it. I’m not going to change it and you can’t do any better than I about it. And written words will always be taken out of context. I’m famous for that myself.

But where I am willing to work on it, few others are, and without so much as a question, they used emojis to kiss me off. Which is 70s speak for “bye, fuck you.”

Avoid The Why Files. Be less stressed.

Goddam I feel as if I’ve escaped a motherfucking cult.

Nobody should get that kind of vibe from a fucking YouTube channel.