Enough

​If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.
— Blaise Pascal

IG disabled my AnnieSavoyWrites account this week. The "violation of community standards" link pops up when I try to get in. 

My first reaction to that link was shame, That terrible middle school feeling of getting kicked out of the club and told that I'm not cool enough to play with the other kids anymore. 

Weirdly, my second reaction was relief. I felt relieved of the burden of censoring my pictures to suit IGs whims and blocking and defending and monitoring my comments and DMs the way all sex bloggers have to do. 

But then I got right around to anger. My well developed sense of fairness is outraged  and confused. Why would my little account catch anyone's attention?  I'm careful(ish) about the rules. I've had a couple pictures removed but I don't try to poke the IG bear by posting content that flagrantly flouts the "community standards."

I suppose none of that matters. I've been on IG long enough to know that the rules are arbitrarily enforced and once an account catches the eye of Sauron, so to speak, you're fucked. I can argue that other accounts post much sexier and more naked pictures than mine but what's the point of that argument? And who would I even make that argument to? 

​All these feelings tap into a deep well of tiredness. Exhausted by society's everlasting hypocrisy towards sex and nudity, drained by fighting the long social media fight to be recognized and seen only to be eliminated after a year and disgusted at the sensation that I'm only a pawn in a game of censorship that I'll never win. I could spend all day every day screaming "THIS IS ART" and my pictures will still be seen as pornography worthy of elimination.

The whole situation makes me the most angry because there's no recourse. The faceless corporation of IG provides no clear way to fight their rulings and the fact that they can just muzzle people at whim is deeply upsetting.

Of course there are other picture sharing platforms with fewer parameters but my feelings about social media are so mixed currently that I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed.