Banned.

It’s funny how something innocent and innocuous to one person can piss off someone else.

Case in point: Whenever I write an article; whether it’s a review, an opinion piece, or otherwise, I know the best way to have people find out about the work is to advertise. I’ve mentioned before on this site that I am not the great at self-promotion. However, I have a handful of avenues I tend to broadcast new streams of data through when something of mine becomes available to the wild. Other than the common Facebook, Google+, and Twitter streams, I also go to my favorite new aggregate sites such as Digg, Reddit, MacRumors, and sites such as those since I know that’s what they do: scour the internet for new and interesting news and opinion articles for others to read.

I’ve also mentioned that I write articles for MacGamerHQ.com. The site caters to people running the OSX operating system who wish to know more about video games. We ran a few pieces at the year-end (as did the every other game site) and published the story to the standard news venues.

A reader send me a message on Reddit stating he couldn’t read the entry because I was “shadowbanned” from the site for spamming too many links. After looking around the site, I noticed most of the links and comments I’d made in the past few months were never seen for the same reason. I googled the term and found out that someone reported my handle for spamming.

At first I was confused. I don’t spam anything. I write for fun and enjoyment of the art itself. The sites I work for don’t choke readers with ads or any type of threatening malware or known issues with the sites, so I did the proper thing on Reddit and emailed an admin asking why I was shadowbanned and what would it take to become un-shadowbanned. The response was roughly “because I submit links people find repetitive or annoying, I am blocked from submitting links.”

This from a site where the entire point is to take content from other places and vote on it for imaginary points.

So now I’m in pissed mode. Until I get an email from an admin at Digg: “Dear DrChrisTallant. Your account is blocked from submitting links to our site due to the overwhelming amount of misleading content from original sources.”

Which makes me believe I was hacked. I only submit links for my work using titles of the articles themselves, nothing more. I’ve never written an article about Bit.Trip Void and submitted the link to Digg or Reddit calling it “Hot Brittney Montana MILF Triplet XXX Game” or anything of the site.

I log on Digg with my ID to check my submitted links, and sure enough, the only links there are the ones I’ve submitted which are all video game related. Logging on to Reddit reveals the same scenario.

Now I’m just confused. I’m at the point where I just want to say screw it all because dealing with this nightmare is a pain in the ass, but I know the people on Digg and Reddit honestly enjoy reading these articles. The alternative is making a new name and account to re-submit all the articles to the sites.

What I believe happened is someone is simply trolling me because they either don’t like me or don’t like the way I write. Which is fine, but bring it up with me face to face, not hiding behind some terminal screen somewhere. If you honestly don’t like me, fly your punk ass to Detroit and look me straight in the eye and let’s settle this the way normal people settle things:

Over a video game death match. You choose the game.

-Chris