If any of you fine folks follow the Kindertrauma fan page on Facebook or have friended my Unkle Lancifer profile, you may have noticed that they both recently up and disappeared. What happened was, Facebook had an issue with Unkle Lancifer not being my "real" name and as the Kindertrauma page was set up by that account, it was assassinated too. Both, by the way, were created before such a rule existed. If you rely on Facebook to alert you to new Kindertrauma posts, I'm sorry, that won't be happening anymore. So far, from what I can see our readership has not taken a major dive since this occurred and it's pretty obvious Facebook was only showing the updates to a fraction of our followers anyway in some lame attempt to get us to pay for them to "boost" their visibility. Frankly, on more than a few occasions, I wondered if posting flyers on telephone poles would be more effective.
I have tried everything to fix the situation and it's basically like having brunch with the monolith from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I've sent them I.D., as requested, and explained that "Unkle Lancifer" is a nick name/alias/pen name all to no avail. All I have received in return are automated emails designed to look like they are from a human when clearly they are not (and I'm the phony?) They refuse to even acknowledge my grievance until I present them with ID that says "Unkle Lancifer" and of course, nothing like that exists. Their only excuse for that random Draconian practice is, "We take your online security seriously" which is funny coming from the people who badger me for days about items that I happened to glance at on Ebay or Amazon earlier in the week. Robot-cookie-dudes, I looked up that DEATH SPA DVD merely to see if it existed, not because I wanted it (well, maybe I do want it but that's not the point- nor is it FB's business).
This steamroller of a policy has already gotten Facebook on many a drag queen's shit list and it's not hard to see why (more HERE). There are a myriad of reasons why a person may want to use a name other than the one they were born with and many of them far outweigh, in legitimacy, whatever this spurious policy is allegedly trying to accomplish.
My incentive, I admit, was not fueled by a necessity, as I just wanted to present a horror host type persona a'la DR. SHOCK or ELVIRA. There was absolutely nothing conniving or deceitful about that action so it's weird that Facebook provides more wiggle room for hate groups than it does a nostalgic movie site designed to provide entertainment (for free I might add). Even if Facebook does come to provide an actual solution (rather than an empty apology) to the drag community, there's no way to be certain that it will revive my Facebook account (which is ironic considering I've often been mistaken for "Richie" JANE MARCH's male persona in COLOR OF NIGHT (1994). Ooops…spoiler alert).
Furthermore, I don't know how many hoops I even want to jump through for this Facebook thing. In a rare instance of my taste not coinciding with that of the average shut-in, I've never been much of a fan. Some think of it as a necessary evil but I've come to call it by its real name "The Ego Pit of Flaming Insecurities." On the plus side, it does showcase some of the most adorable animals in the world but on the minus side, nothing has been responsible for lessening my view of humanity more. I mean it's basically VIDEODROME. Right? How is it not exactly, precisely and literally (give it a rest, word police) VIDEODROME?
Maybe that's a little harsh. I know some people who get a lot of positive use from it. It's just never been a comfortable fit for me. I guess I've always had some weird instinctive aversion to hive chatter and anything that operates like a mind control parasite invasion from outer space.
I don't know. Does Kindertrauma even need Facebook? We existed before without it and I feel like those were the salad days. I know theoretically you are supposed to desire the largest following possible but I'm more than fine with the clubhouse vibe going on here. The few times a post of ours has been picked up by a larger horror site on Facebook and I have gotten to see the types of comments a more popular joint attracts all I can think is, "Thank God I don't have to digest that type of nonsense regularly."
Anyway, I'm leaving it up to you readers. If you enjoy the convenience of being alerted to our updates via Facebook, I'll just open a new account under my "real" name and we can have it there for that purpose alone. Sure, it'll sting to start over at zero friends but I can't pretend I've never experienced that wonderful sensation before. Let me know. I can go either way. I quit smoking 7 months ago (!) after 25 plus years and if I can quit that, I can drop Facebook quicker than a Christmas tree in January.
Plus the idea of never having to rate the worth of our output again by how many folks deign to "like" it in the Thunderdome kind of thrills me. Not that discovering that Facebook had left my cake out in the rain didn't hurt, it did. We lost a ton. There was a lot of original content (that I'm praying we backed up) and all of the great comments we got from our readers over the years are now gone (Not to play favorites, but I took a screenshot of Nancy Allen's comment, so that's safe).
What kills me the most though is that in the early days we posted so many pictures of the stray kittens we adopted (as duplicitous fiends do) and although we're sure to have saved them elsewhere, I'll miss having them in the timeline order they occurred. I even went through all the five stages of grief: DENIAL (it's a mistake); ANGER (cue MADELINE KAHN flaming head CLUE (1985) gif!); BARGAINING (You can throw out the account that I use to connect with my family if I can have KT's back!); DEPRESSION (I own every album by THE CURE and I'm not afraid to use them); and finally ACCEPTANCE (We'll live and hey, don't they let you post pictures on Twitter these days?).
I'll keep you guys posted and in the meantime here is our TWITTER that you can follow for updates. I realize that's probably just another head sprouting from the same dragon but at least when it breathes fire on you, it does it in 140 puffs or less and doesn't try to charge you for the privilege.
Most importantly we're HERE, as in here at Kindertrauma.com. This is our home and these are our pink walls and around these parts my name is Unkle Lancifer and my husband goes by Aunt John. If that's a problem you know where the door is (it's that pointy "back" button at the top left corner). Everybody else; "nuestra casa es su casa." If you want to talk scary movies or creepy stuff on TV or anything that freaked you out as a kid and made you the horror fan you are today– we've got you covered. I guarantee you'll see stuff here you won't see anywhere else. We'll keep coming back as long as you guys keep coming back and maybe, probably, even longer. Honestly I've always pegged Facebook being to blogs as the freeway was to the Bates Motel, so don't be surprised if this place only gets more interesting.
