Look: I am just a blogger. I can write about punctuation, or emoji, or books, or calculators, and I can hope that my readers will enjoy it. I can post about interesting things I’ve read or watched and hope that someone else will find them interesting too. And that’s great! I never imagined I’d still be doing this (and still taking pleasure from it!) a decade and a half after I started. Nor did I imagine that blogging would give me the chance to write and publish one book, let alone four of them, but it did.
But as 2025 rolls over into 2026, the happiness I take from blogging seems a little hollow in comparison to events in the wider world. I suspect I needn’t go into what those events are — if you have a TV, a newspaper or a smartphone, then you are already very well aware, and, moreover, it would be understandable if you preferred not be reminded at all — but for me, the spite, the hate and the intolerance that drive current events are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
My power to do much of anything about all of this is limited. But even so, I’ve decided to make a couple of changes to the Shady Characters media empire™ to avoid actively making things worse. First, I will be deleting my accounts on X/Twitter. I hadn’t used them for some time, but X’s descent into free-speech absolutism reached a predictable and abhorrent nadir with the recent CSAM scandal, and I cannot in good conscience leave those accounts in place. I’ll be deleting them in the next thirty days. If you’d like to follow me elsewhere, look for me on Mastodon and Bluesky.
Separately, and time permitting, I plan to move the Shady Characters blog off WordPress. There are technical reasons for doing so, but there’s also the fact that WordPress’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, seems to be speed-running his transformation into a dictatorial tech CEO. Mullenweg has a talent for picking distasteful fights: in 2025, his main company got rid of three hundred employees who disagreed with him about a petulant lawsuit against another company; in 2024, he publicly chastised a transgender Tumblr user amid allegations of transphobic moderation policies. Mullenweg is no Elon Musk, but he is starting to show the symptoms, and I would prefer not to be a data point which supports WordPress’s numbers.
Honestly, neither of these changes amount to much. This is only a blog, after all. But taking a small stand feels better than doing nothing, and, in the end, I’ll still be blogging and I hope you’ll still be reading. Thanks for your support!
Comment posted by Ira L Salom on
Thank you for your sentiments and action.
And so well written, too!
Comment posted by Roger W Turner on
Been following you on Bluesky for ages.
Will also read you off WordPress.
Comment posted by Long Branch Mike on
Thanks for explaining your principles and putting them into practice. The website I manage has left Twitter, has no presence on Substack, and has just transitioned off WordPress.
Not a pun, but character is sorely lacking nowadays.
Comment posted by Ellen K. on
I admire your actions and hope more people will do the same.
Comment posted by Alicia on
I find it refreshing to know that you care about what happens in the World and decide to take action. I think even the tyniest of actions and to a cause or an intended direction. Where are you planning to take your blog when leaving wordpress? I to have a blog and would like to follow your steps. Thanks for all the work you do!
Comment posted by Dave Williams on
Good luck!
I closed my Twitter/X account at the start of this week too.
Maybe on a new blog platform you’ll also be less susceptible to the spam replies you seem to have been suffering from recently here.
Comment posted by Melissa Johns on
I appreciate your honesty and find it refreshing that you (like so many of us) care about what’s going on in the world.
I’m also grateful that you’re using your platform to take a stand! And if more of us took “small” stands, things might look and feel a little better.
Comment posted by Keith Houston on
Hi all — thank you for the kind words! It’s great to hear that readers feel that same way (although I knew you would, of course!).
In response to Alicia’s question, I’ll be moving to a static site generate by Eleventy. It’s a techy solution to the problem, but it should guarantee a very fast site and will remove a whole class of potential bugs and issues. Comments are the only real problem remaining to be solved, although they are also the most difficult one. More updates as things progress.
Comment posted by Glenn Fleishman on
Glad to hear your principled stand!