Hitting the Big Two-Hundred Mark: I'm More Disinterested Than at One-Hundred

I've been an author here on HubPages for about five or six months now, and as time goes on I care less and less about HubPages as an entity and community. Things are evolving away from the already loose-knit sense of community here, and with those changes so have my traffic and impression numbers gone up. Having recently stumbled upon 199 articles written and featured, so came the time to write this article in keeping with the cliche around here.

Without further ado, let's delve into my thoughts about writing and HubPages in general.

I would like to draw attention to HubPages and their choices for transferring articles to the niche sites, and in this context I am also holding the editor(s) responsible for the image of the entire platform. You see, during these protests for black lives matter I've witnessed an increase in racism, rather than a decrease, and this increase comes mostly from the movement and its followers. The racism is directed, mainly, at whites but it does not exclude any race, even the black lives they readily trample beneath tyrannical terrorist tactics.

"Be the Equality We Lack" is an example of HubPages editors being racist in their decisions not to transfer an article to the niche site. Now, I didn't do anything different with this article than the many I have had transferred. I dare say it is of higher quality than previous, immediate transfers over to LetterPile.

Left to solve this conundrum by context, along with the other equal or higher quality poems I've written to not be transferred, I can only assume there is racism against white people within HubPages and their policies. If someone submits to the idea you can't bash an extremist group, standing up to their racist ideals that are trampling upon the rights of individuals, then I assume they are, in fact, racist. It is unfortunate from my point of view, really, that HubPages so willfully discriminates on the grounds of racial extremism and those who want it to be fair and legitimately anti-racist.

What makes one person's plight because of racism any less valuable? I don't know, but apparently HubPages and its editors do, and it seems to revolve around their skin color!

Oh well, it only proves my points about why the community here on HubPages continues to decline in quality.

Nepotism has been shown to work quite well when it comes to bickering and pettiness on the internet, and that is no less true here on HubPages within its comments and forums. Of course, the younger in the community are poisoned by this as well, but it continues to be the old and dusty among us with the worst attitudes. Even worse than their attitudes is their incessant need to gather around one another and share in these attitudes, attitudes that could not survive without the frail bonds of nepotism.

I was ecstatic to hear that the comments sections, callouts, and forum-like article additions are being considered for permanent removal and/or reduction. Comment sections only seem to be contributing to the decline in quality that is ever-present in the HubPages community. Really, the only reason to have a comment section to begin with is to artificially stimulate traffic and contrive some view-time out of your reader.

Nonetheless, I've veered off point and need to reel it back in here, and say the only bitter part of HubPages for me is the social aspect shoehorned into the experience. Compliments are great, even when they are patronizing or otherwise veiling insults, but I'm tired of dealing with the comments section plagued by anonymous accounts and bitter community members. Just ax it altogether, and let the bitterness stay silent behind the screen!

I'm tired of seeing wonderful authors scared off by the lackluster community members here, especially in the forums that have little to no active oversight from caring individuals. I won't let that sour my overall experience here though, because HubPages is still a great doodle pad for authors like myself!

Having had my glorified doodle pad turned into exposure therapy by no real choice of my own doesn't make it any less of a glorified doodle pad. Although, it has allowed me to match the pretentious and bitter nature of the community near-perfectly in my real writings. For that, dear community, my doodle pad thanks you and my writer's voice even more so.

Being given an outlet for my notes I lace with personal feelings is an irreplaceable opportunity that I will continue to thank Maven for, or whoever runs all this now. By my standards, there is still no place better for my doodles than HubPages. The glorified part, however, is where the opportunity for pay comes in.

Just as I expressed in my, "One-Hundredth Article," article, I'll express it once more that my doodle pad is glorified by the opportunity to turn a profit on the time I spend doodling. For this I am eternally grateful to HubPages, Maven, the niche sites, and everything else that goes into giving me a voice and platform. Just to take a dig at the community again, I'm less thankful for you as a whole but still thankful to certain individuals who aren't absolutely terrible people.

Though I'm quickly losing interest in the floundering HubPages social community, I think I'll be here for some time to come. With all the updates and quality-of-life enhancements going into the infrastructure, I don't see any reason to leave. My doodle pad sits comfortably, but there are still touch-ups I'd recommend to have the site flowing smoother.

As is the case in any situation in life, HubPages is not the end-all, be-all product with all the answers and most efficient model. Personally, I think those at the top are making spectacular decisions for the platform and I wouldn't change much about the direction we are sailing in. However, the finer nuances of being an author here could use some work.

Completely removing the frequently-abused Q&A section on articles was a splendid choice, and even further removing the comments section on TatRing is something I fully support all around! The comments section, even on sites more successful than HubPages and its niches, is rarely anything more than a cesspit made up of the greasiest lower rungs in society. If comments were to be kept, at all in any capacity, it should be left to sites like LetterPile where there is rarely contentious topics.

Having brought up TatRing, what the hell was the thought process for the formatting? My eyes and brain hurt when I scroll through that mass of bold black lettering. I had to turn my screen brightness down and shrink the page size just so I didn't develop a migraine!

Further giving me a migraine is the forum section that has little to no active oversight. The community manager is very often just as pretentious as the senior members, offering little viable feedback and when doing so the responses are more often tainted with pretension to infallibility while being the most fallible. Within every thread, in every topic, I find more hatred than I do any sort of constructive conversation; let's just limit it to the non-topical forums and increase oversight, yeah?

As for oversight, there has been an under-reach where it counts and an overreach where it doesn't. I was scrolling Hubpages on my mobile device and what did I see? A dang Sports Illustrated article/video with football jocks and sports commentary over an extremely sensitive race issues topic. I couldn't remove the video, all I could do was move it around; this is an egregious overstep by the marketing team that needs rectifying and streamlining.

That's all I can really think of right now, and so I think I'll begin closing this pathetic little article.

To close this out I'd like to address only those that are my true followers and have stuck by my side, reading my drivel all throughout my time here on HubPages. I'm sure you have noticed my change in writer's voice, many of you have even read my article about how I'm going to be more pretentious and bitter with my writer's voice. I'd like to express once more this isn't a personal attack on you.

However, what I am attacking with my pretentious writer's voice is the underlying toxicity in the community. This isn't because I want to contribute to the further degradation and decay of the HubPages community as a whole, but I need a way to fight back against it. This is what I've landed upon as a healthy medium between my desire to spread love and acceptance, and my need to stand up for myself when the situation requires I do so.

I've had those I thought were friends here betray me and then call themselves the victim. There have been, and still are, those who read every one of my articles and answer every one of my polls out of spite. Comments have been all but completely disabled on my articles because I was forced by these same sad individuals to babysit my comments.

These dorks are the ones my pretentious writer's voice is directed toward, and with this acknowledgment of them I hope they get some more short-lived sick kicks. If you do not fall within my pretentious judgments, my tit-for-tat comments and digs, then you should laugh at my immature and comical presentation. Chances are highest I don't even remember you from day to day, and that everything I write is directed at someone other than you.

I'm looking forward to an ever-brightening future here on HubPages, and as an author in general! Thanks for being awesome, or conversely boosting my traffic by being an asshole!