Endstagram

Some of you might have noticed that my public Instagram and Facebook accounts have gone. You might even be concerned by this, especially if you’ve been following me for awhile. I just wanted to assure anyone genuinely interested that it’s all okay! More to the point, I’m completely unphased by it.

Truly.

Permanent deactivation of my accounts has been on the cards for a while, and it was only a matter of time before it happened. I could have avoided it if I’d chosen to conform to the “community standards” imposed by Meta, but that would have meant not only capitulating to Zionists but also (of late) the special brand of lunatic worshipping at the alter of Charlie “A few gun deaths a year are worth it” Kirk.

As such, after years of pushing the envelope and making conservative losers Very Angry, I have finally amassed one too many “strikes” against my verified Meta accounts.

Uh oh! Bad, naughty Clementine! Such a foul mouthed lady with no respect for DECENCY!

Roughly ten years (and a combined half a million followers) since starting my public pages, on Wednesday night they finally rustled their last jimmies and were permanently deactivated.

Alas, poor pages! I knew them, Horatio etc etc.

I’ve no doubt some will rejoice at this news. I can see from my emails that some already are! Good for them, and I mean that sincerely. Everyone should find at least one moment of joy in the day, and if celebrating the “demise” of a woman you hate is what does it for you, then go nuts. With any luck, this will be the thing that helps them to finally get over me and, dare I hope, actually forget about me completely.

Despite their best efforts, my haters have always been drastically outnumbered by my lovers. Some of you have messaged to ask where I’ve gone and, upon finding out I’ve just been deactivated, wondered what you can do to help.

As grateful as I am for that kind support, the truth is that I’m relieved. In one of those strange synchronicities, I had already decided to quit Meta anyway (see the below screenshot for confirmation of that - which I’m sharing because if social media has taught me anything, it’s to always come with receipts) because the idea of continuing to pretend it wasn’t a festering boil of unrestrained narcissism run by billionaire fascists ushering in humanity’s destruction was becoming untenable. I delayed the decision for over a week, until the universe very kindly intervened and made it for me.

I sent this to my friend Anna just before the solar eclipse

My email reply to my contact at Meta on Tuesday

Once upon a time, losing access to a platform I had worked so hard to grow would have terrified me. For years, I lived under the false belief that I needed social media in order to work. That without it, I’d be nothing.

And maybe that’s true. Maybe we’ve fallen so far down the rabbit hole of our own egos (or perhaps just our own lack of faith in reality) that I really will disappear into the wind. If that’s the case, I still won’t have any regrets.

The truth is, I just simply do not care enough about the concept of “social media followings” or “brand maintenance” to trade either of them for my freedom of expression and moral integrity. I have only ever cared about being true to myself and fighting for what I believe in. I lived like that before follower numbers, blue checks, like counts and analytics data, and I’ll live like that until the day I die.

But also…these platforms aren’t real, you know? That little number that appears under “followers” genuinely means nothing. It doesn’t make you smarter, braver or better than other people. It absolutely doesn’t make you happier.

What it has done is weave a false illusion around what matters, making us believe that these artificial popularity contests have the power to determine our personal value as a human. For a long time, that number made me believe enough in its power to overlook the emotional toll of being subjected to constant abuse, routine stalking and the occasional legal threat.

We have been made to worship at the altar of an algorithm that does not care about us, that isn’t interested in our creativity and that certainly does not want us believing that we can imagine a better world for ourselves than the one it presents to us in bite sized little dopamine hits, little sparkly distractions designed to only just sate our hunger for human connection.

I fed on the crumbs of this bullshit for years, and feared that if I bit its hand or walked away altogether then I would become nothing.

I’ve been realising lately how wrong that is. An online platform doesn’t create me, and it sure as fucking shit doesn’t determine my value in the world.

I create me. I am the fucking platform.

I will always bring people with me to the messages I have to share, no matter where I share them. I will always create something that people want to be a part of, because that is who I am and will always be.

Releasing yourself from the thrall of social media is way less difficult than we think it will be. Leaving these platforms isn’t a step backwards. It’s a brand new beginning, expansive and full of possibility. Shortly after I told my friend I’d decided to quit the platforms, I sent her the following:

And it will be. It already is!

I’ll be sharing details imminently of a new tiered subscription model that includes an APP that will deliver daily videos, writings and audio direct to your phone. The good news is that it will import subscribers from Substack across with no need for intervention on their part. So if you’d like to support my work, you can either become a paid subscriber here now and transfer across seamlessly in the next couple of weeks or you can sign up as a free subscriber and follow when it happens.

Those people who need to find me always will. And we will go on creating our community together, regardless of who fucking approves of it or not.

Always.

Clementine x

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