It happened again. An opinion was expressed that was not in line with the Popular Zeitgeist and thus had to be dealt with accordingly. Candidly, I am surprised that I have lasted this long, but more on that later.

I was responding to a post in the “Miscellaneous” Forum about how “Private Equity” is destroying the “Music Ecosystem”. The original post in question linked to a New York Times opinion piece.

While I was not particularly concerned with the alleged issue itself, I did briefly skim the article and the only response that I posted in the TalkBass thread was; “Oh! The New York Times, I’m sure it will be a temperate, unbiased, well-thought-out argument”. That was all I said and did not further respond to the thread.

The next time I returned to the website, I was blocked. I could not check my Alerts to find out why and I have not yet received an e-mail from an Admin to let me know if this is a temporary suspension or if I am permanently banned. I suppose time will tell.

As I pointed out above, this has been a long time coming. Since joining TalkBass in 2007, I have received multiple warnings for committing political and “religious” violations of the TOS and have been suspended twice prior to yesterday’s action. Some of the warnings were absolutely justified (that means I knew what I was posting would very likely offend) and some were not (that means I had seen other users post essentially the same thing without repercussion).

TalkBass is a PRIVATE enterprise, I signed on fully cognizant of this fact and never lost sight of it. I bear no animus towards the site or the administrators thereof. Because I also know that my Conservative worldview puts me at complete odds with 99% of those in the field of entertainment in general and the cohort of performers and creators specifically. Thus, participation in these kinds of Fora requires a level of personal restraint that I, admittedly, struggle with when responding. That being said, there are subjects and opinions that often come up in these message board discussions that need to be addressed lest the errors within them go unchecked. So one acquires “Warning Points” along the way.

The good news in this scenario is that I will be forced to improve my playing rather than wasting time posting pictures of my basses and LOL-ing at the latest Drummer Meme on an Internet Message Board.