This Was Back Then
Once upon a time, journalism was a one-sheet piece of paper that talked only about what the rich folk were doing, and who was doing who. This was designed as a scam, not because people actually cared about what rich people were doing, but because when you were poor in the 10th century, you literally had nothing to discuss, BUT what rich folk were doing.
But with the rise of politics and strife, with the rise of families turning into tribes that turned into villages that turned into towns and cities, came more to talk about.
Suddenly there was fashion, it wasn’t enough that people were rich and making stupid and selfish choices, but now we get to dissect what they’re wearing while they’re rich and horrible, YAY!
Then came the rise in secret clubs which became political groups which led the way that we lived as a society. The more power you had the more secretive the club, and the more that you could be a part of DECIDING what the narrative was in these one-page pieces of paper.
As the world grew, so did the game.
You didn’t just have to survive – to survive, you had to also be rich, powerful, and hold the power to keep and spread secrets across the globe. Because information is power, and what you do with that information can have global consequences.
Then came the rise in actual newspapers. These were a little thicker, a little longer, and they were filled with articles as well as ads, which literally gave birth to the rise in capitalism. Not only did you have the opportunity to build a product, but now you had the ability to sell that product as far as the papers would allow, and the more you spent the more that you earned.
Capitalism led way to Black folk being free, in all honesty, if you look at the actual records – aka CRITICAL FUCKING RACE THEORY, then you will see, that economically it was just less expensive to free those who had been enslaved by white folk, then to keep up the pretense that having people enslaved, meant that you were also made of money and therefore someone to be afraid of.
Because hey, if you could do that to a BLACK person, what might you do to a white person who opposes you? Now many of my Black cousins, aunties, uncles, fathers, and family members, will tell you that they don’t care, but you have to understand that the ONLY reason that the sin of slavery existed, and was able to exist for so long, is that because for sooo very long, only some of the people had all the power.
In or around 2012-16, I joined an IRC server and met some folks from Anonymous, some cool some horrible, but all of this happened, because the rise of journalism brought about the internet, and allowed people like myself to have access to the entire world from our living rooms.
The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997
I was one of the millions who bought into the online diary craze, and I’ve said it repeatedly before, it was a white man that introduced me to Live Journal, (now owned by Russia.) and gave me the freedom of learning how to use words to tell a story to the world, online, when I couldn’t do it in the physical world.
I don’t have a fucking clue what I wrote and like anyone who may have owned Live Journal back then might know, you probably don’t want to look back to 17,18,19 and see what you wrote about yourself because E M B A R E S S I N G. Right?
That being said, many people back then were older, and when they started blogging they weren’t talking about loneliness isolation and depression alone. They were also talking about politics, and they were exchanging ideas that I didn’t fully understand back then, but that I am starting to now.
The world in the early days of the internet was very much backwards, and it took the creation of blogging, to change the way that we see, and experience Journalism forever.
Suddenly people all over the world had the voices that they’d been denied for so long. From Egypt I learned that there is more to Egypt than the pyramids and that the cities actually wrap around their artistic history, embracing it, honouring it with the fact that they never forget. – on purpose – where they come from, but that they are more than their past.
From American journalism, I got to watch a Black Queen break down the door of a White Queen’s castle, and watch as The Black Queen stole the Prince and turned him into a King in a completely different kingdom. The kind of Kingdom that doesn’t really give a flying fuck about racial rules, but is all about love.
From English Journalists we learned what happens when you refuse to write about the secrets that you are KNOW which is true, and instead wait for the American press to beat you to the scoop, to remind you that the royal family…still protected pedophiles for more than thirty-five years.
From Germany, I learned that the past need not be repeated in order to protect the future, and all of this because of blogs, magazines, and online personalities who forged a path of sharing information around the globe in ten billion different ways.
From Africa, I learned about fashion, music, and literature. I have friends that I secretly read and don’t really talk about from Africa who writes on the most amazing topics. From books by authors, I didn’t know existed, to music that I’d never heard before. (I still have SO much to listen to, I’m not lazy I’m just slow. I promise.)
While my brother was out hanging with friends, when I wasn’t being abused, I was learning about the internet and all the things that people are talking about.
These days “Blogging,” is now called “Essay Writing,” and allows anyone in the world to be a journalist. From food to sex, there’s a blog or a book for you written by someone without, interestingly enough, a formal education, OR accreditation to a formal newspaper or online magazine. Yet we still consume their content, because sometimes, it’s fucking amazing.
June 1st, 1999
On June 1st, 1999, Napster was created, and the game changed forever. Now, not only could people tell stories, but they could tell stories online, AND share files, which meant? Theft, fuck capitalism man, go to Napster!!!
Ironically, it was Metallica that brought Napster down, Kings of Metal, bad boys (blegh,) the worst of the worst when it came to “heavy metal rockers,” fighting against anti-capitalist beliefs, and in favour of…capitalism? Well sure, because it affected them, for those of us it didn’t affect, we laughed. I laughed, repeatedly.
How the fuck was Napster going to survive? heh, enter every single troll, every single hacker, who did whatever they could to protect the power of the people to have whatever they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted, no matter how much it hurt.
Journalism? Nope. No journalists here, because no one really cares about the internet world, UNTIL Metallica gets involved, and then suddenly…EVERYTHING changes and EVERYONE has something. to say.
It wasn’t just that it was Metallica, it. was that it was METALLICA, Disturbed, God Smack, It was WWE, it was every “badass fuck the system” hero. planet saying “hey wait a minute, you can’t steal our shit, that’s not okay.”
WHICH WAS FINE, no literally is arguing that it’s okay to steal music, BUT here’s the thing, it kind of is?
The music industry is the most soul-sucking industry on the planet, followed closely by journalism, because the music industry only exists, much like political heros and enemies, because of journalism.
If You Are Only A Journalist Because You Have A Journalism Degree, Then You Only Have Half The Story
Each and every one of us has a story to tell, but we only listen to what’s popular and this is why the “music industry,” is dying, as a single entity. It’s not because the music is bad, or even because it’s great it’s because EVERYTHING dies eventually, and to die is the greatest honour. It means that you experienced some shit, it means that you changed, that you evolved, it means that. you lived a life strong and powerful enough to have something worth killing.
The only people who will believe that, are people who understand, that the internet no longer belongs to the world of man. Or woman. Or Trans. or Jewish, Or Black, or or or or or or or or or or OR.
It belongs to all, and it always did. Like the air that we breathe, like the water that we SHOULD be able to drink, like the food we SHOULD have access to, it’s a human right, and unfortunately, not everyone gets to exercise the human right of telling their story.
Around the world each and every day Journalism is being used as a weapon, destroying what COULD be, in favour of whatever supports whoever is in power and happens to have the keys to the doors of what it means to have free will and the ability to choose. the path. you want to take.
The way that we prioritize people on this planet is perfectly laid out in Divergent, and in The Hunger Games, and in Ender’s Game, those with power will always take control over those who feel as if they have none, and the only reason that we FEEL that we have no power is that we are conditioned to believe THROUGH journalism that we do not have power.
Go to ten different newspapers – authenticated newspapers with reporters who studied at Brown, Harvard, Oxford, Yale, and any ANY university on the planet, and you’ll find the same stories.
Poverty sucks and Rich people dress pretty.
Now I know I’m supposed to “tread carefully,” because I want to be one of those rich people, and I should probably come up with a bunch of reasons as to why I deserve it. to be rich and fabulously wealthy and independent, HOWEVER, the truth of it is that that’s where I’m going. I’ve sacrificed a lot to be The Loud Mouth Brown Girl, and while that may not mean a lot to anyone else, it means everything to me.
Each and every day. I have people telling me that I don’t have any experience, and yet because of hackers, because of techno geeks, because of the people that the world ignores I have the freedom to tell my story and to be as honest as is possible for me to be, so that the story of what happened to hundreds of us around CANADA, went through.
Journalism is about telling stories about the world, but the problem is that the idea of journalists who will go to any lengths to tell the story is only half the battle.
Sure lots of them go off to war zones because let’s face it, some journalists are just fucking stupid, who will do ANYTHING to make sure the story gets out, even getting hit by a fucking car or blown the fuck up.
But I digress, the truth is that as we grow the way that. we tell stories. has changed, from music to dance, and yet “journalism,” only applies to the nightly news.
I think the reason that I’m so frustrated is. that journalism has a huge effect on the way that we vote, and how we rule over our society, and thereby take care of, or rather in too many cases, choose not to care, about our most vulnerable.
Americans vote in honour of freedom, or so they say, but in reality, they actually vote out of fear. Every American who chooses to vote votes out of absolute terror that the other guy is going to win, and the consequences of the win, are often seen in events like Desert Storm, or the battle of Afghanistan, which lasted for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS AND ENDED WITH THE ARMIES OF THE GLOBE LEAVING SO THE TALIBAN COULD GET THE FUCK BACK TO WORK.
To clarify I’m not saying in any way shape or form that I support the idiot fucking moronic rat bastards known as the Taliban, I am saying, that in the last 20 years of Death, in Afghanistan, NOTHING HAS FUCKING CHANGED and it took 12 hours for shit to “return to normal.” After 20 years!
Canadians vote even more stupidly though because we vote out of tradition. We mostly ignore the Conservatives these days, because many of us know what it was like growing up in a Conservative government, and none of us really want to go back, and I mean none of us, but because our families vote a certain way, we tend to vote that way, and honestly? BOTH of these are STUPID fucking ways to vote.
Nothing has changed about the world since the beginning of time. Each of us votes either out of fear or tradition, and behind each and every vote for every politician is a giant corporation of newspapers that own basically every newspaper on the planet, telling us what to think, how to think, and why we should think the way that we think.
The only thing that has changed, is that all the newspapers are owned by the same people or friends of the same people, they all know each other. andthey all decide what gets printed and what doesn’t and if you speak out against one of the big papers, then you get “fired,” but you don’t ACTUALLY get fired, you get “performance reviews,” that LEAD to you being “let go.” * Unless your Chris Cuomo, because you are a former CIA, you’re supposed to PROTECT the innocent, not defend rapists and sexual abusers you fucking shithead.
There is not a single place in the world where journalism is not used as a weapon.
First, it was the Hackers, and then. it was. the adult (consensual obviously) pornographers, and then the musicians who didn’t go through. the RIAA, and then and then and then and then trans kids, women, and on and on and on.
The internet. has great power, but. The problem is that because ANYONE can tell a story, ANYONE can tell a story. The truth is a different beast. And it has NOTHING to do with journalism.
I wrote about this the other day when I spoke about the Wolf Pack, in a place as small as Surrey BC, or Calgary, or Winnipeg, “nothing bad can happen here because everyone knows everyone.”
That’s what the first Indigenous Africans thought, it’s what the first peoples of Kanata thought, they thought their isolation from the world could protect them from invaders.
Hitler thought – wrongfully – thought he could control the narrative, and therefore control the armies of Germany, but the problem is that the bigger your army gets the more that the truth comes out.
In the days of old, it was WAR GOOD because WAR BONDS, AMMUNITIONS, CONTROL, POWER, ECONOMY, all these things made rich people very rich and poor people work ten times harder to achieve 1/10th as much.
“You Don’t Choose a New Leader During War.”
Each of us has to learn how to consume information in a way that gives us the best chance at the kind of lives we claim to desire.
Each of us has to choose for ourselves, and if all we’re consuming is negativity and toxicity, then we feed into it, and we become the very same beast that we claim to be fighting. Yes, we need room to breathe, but more than that we need room to remember who we are because at the end of the day, each of us as individuals has our own journey, and the only way to lose our way, is to be something we’re not, by letting ANYONE dictate who we’re supposed to be.
But to understand what it means to decide not to choose a new leader during the war, you need to understand what you are fighting against…and if you don’t believe in the science of majick, the same science that created the internet, if you don’t KNOW in all your heart, that the same science that created the internet is the same science that created the earth, then you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Which is Devon’s way of saying, I TOLD YOU SO you fucking cunts
Yes, anyone can take information and put it on a website and SAY that it’s true, but until it’s verified it’s not true, correct? Correct, but verified by whom? The same people who are selling you newspapers, where they sell ads for shit you don’t need, and a shocking lack of employment opportunities designed for LGBT2S+ disabled, and or Black and Indigenous folk, but have no problem telling you how much we’re under attack?
Yes, we are under attack. But!
We are also creating music, art, and dance, we are also having babies, and living our lives, and we almost NEVER hear about Black folk in Canada, or Indigenous folk in America doing great things UNLESS those great things are ALSO tried to our trauma or the trauma of our ancestors.
Lots of people love movies like Get Out because they’re stories about the horrors that Black folk face, but they’re told in a way that makes BLACK folk laugh while white people sit there and go “I don’t get it…” meanwhile Jordon Peel is LITERALLY just holding up a fucking mirror to white people.
If you’re too stupid to realize that you’re looking in a mirror when watching a film, then the only reason you feel stupid for not getting it is that you aren’t as informed as you think you are.
This tells me, and probably many others around the world, that just like in Seoul, and all of North Korea, Journalists are not being PERMITTED to do their jobs.
Like in England before them when journalists were not PERMITTED to speak about prince Andrew, or in other countries where journalists were beheaded. for doing their jobs, journalists are being used as weapons but quickly becoming victims of the dreams they held dear.
Superman irritates the fuck out of me, because he’s a journalist just like Spiderman who tells the story that THEY want to tell, always skewing the details to protect themselves, and that’s often how journalism is used, I’ve known that my whole life, but it took me this long to say it because we are CONDITIONED to keep our mouths shut about “shit we don’t understand.”
I totally understand. The New York Times and several papers around the world are threatening to, have the wanted to, or have already fired HUNDREDS of journalists for telling the truth as it is, instead of telling the truth they were SUPPOSED to tell.
It doesn’t matter how big your army is, or how many people back you or keep their mouths shut. The only thing that matters on this planet is whose in charge of the army.
In the world of journalism it’s a bunch of billionaires, and I do mean a BUNCH of them, who own a controlling interest in not only how. a story gets told, but also in who has the power to decide who tells the story.
So, the only way to fight back, the only honest way to fight back is to remember that every story matters, even when the story sucks, even when the story is filled with nothing but trauma, and most especially then.
From Great Darkness, Comes Great Power, But With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.
I don’t know if that’s the original quote, but it should be. If you’re a content creator, if you’re going to call yourself a street journalist, then it’s time to get to work. Because right now there isn’t a person on this planet that doesn’t need the storytellers to come out of the shadows.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 