OK, so I am about to post the very most personal post I have ever posted on X.  It’s lengthy, so buckle up.

The theme here is this: X is real life, with real life consequences.

Here goes.

First, some background.

Earlier today, an influential account that bills herself as an “engagement farming investigator” wrongfully attacked me for the crime of “follower churn.”  “Follower churn” is the idea that you follow a bunch of people, they follow you back, and then you unfollow them so the spread between your followed/follower numbers is vast.  Elon has stated that this is form of spam and X manipulation, and if caught doing this your account will be demonetized, suppressed and potentially suspended.  I have never, ever done this.   I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS.  Not once.  However, I do from time to time unfollow singular idiots with idiotic, offensive takes (I also remove them as a follower and mute them), and apparently I unfollowed someone who was sufficiently idiotic that he “reported” me to this “investigator” account as being a follower churner, which was and is wholly untrue.  My followers are all organically earned, and I do my best to interact with everyone who follows me.  It has taken me thousands of hours to build this follower base via sincere content creation and interaction, and without ever once cheating.

Based on the ridiculous complaint of this SINGLE unfollowed account, this “engagement farming investigator” launched a jihad against me.  She posted a wholly untrue diatribe that I was engaged in this "follower churning" practice, causing hundreds of people to unfollow and/or block me (which suppressed me in the algorithm automatically).  Worse, she reported me to X Support for this “crime," hoping to add me to the scalps of suspended accounts she routinely posts in her feed.

This is very serious.  X WILL suspend an account over this. You can argue they would not do it to me, but there is a non-zero chance that they will.  They have done it before to me over similarly specious allegations.

I pushed back on this ill-conceived tyrant with the help of so many of my followers (thank you again), and thankfully she deleted her original post, but not before hundreds of her followers blocked me (with real impacts on engagement) and without withdrawing the libelous complaint she made to X.  I have asked her repeatedly to notify X Support that she made a mistake, but thus far this noxious woman has refused to do so.

Because I have repeatedly insisted that she notify her error to X, I have been the victim of further abuse from her apologist followers.  The abuse ranges from “She means well, leave her alone” to “Stop being a baby.”

I continue to insist that she withdraw her complaint with X, because I know that some ignorant Gen Z X worker in a cubicle can arbitrarily end anyone's account if they read a complaint without investigating.  IT HAS HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE.

To date she has not withdrawn her X complaint, to her enormous discredit.

Now let me explain why this is deeply personal.

As many of you you know, I was a career Army officer who became a Biglaw corporate law partner after I retired from the Army.  I’m getting old now, and the life of a bet-the-company mergers and acquisition lawyer is more stress than I can handle.  For about two years now, I have been trying to determine my next act, without success.

But then Elon let my long-suspended X account free.  I started posting my thoughts just for fun, but then over time I got a lot of traction.  Unbeknownst to me, apparently I have creative writing skills that people really seem to enjoy.  I started getting offers from literary agents for representation to write books, and suddenly I was writing articles for great publications like The Federalist, American Greatness and Tablet. It was all a surprise to me, I had no idea I had this talent, and I had no idea it was all possible until X showed me. My follower count blossomed with re-posts from real big accounts such as Elon and James Woods, and then X started paying me real money for my content!

It was an astonishing turn of events.

Suddenly I had a new life path before me, one that I had never anticipated before and which was greatly attractive.

So my new life plan became this:

1. Continue to write and engage on X until I retire from the law, Fall 2025.
2. Continue to publish relevant articles in periodicals.
3. Upon retirement from the law, write books.  Use my ever-growing reach on X as the means of building engagement with those books. 
4. While writing, rely on X revenue sharing to pay many of my bills.
5. After publishing a book, create podcasts/Rumble channels/etc. under my real identity.
6. Take it in whatever direction it goes.

This is a serious, serious and deliberate life plan I have embraced, and it is my future.  But it depends on having an ever-growing X account until I can realize that book potential.  It’s a good plan and I have stuck with it, but I did not count on some ignorant Karen doing her best to trash my account based on lies and disinformation.

If my X account gets trashed now, my dreams die.

Do you hear that, “engagement farming investigator” charlatan?  Your cavalier disregard for the truth has the non-zero chance of destroying the lives of innocent X posters.  Do you know you could be DESTROYING LIVES OF HONEST PEOPLE????  Or do you not care?

Think about it.

And, more broadly, I ask that EVERYONE consider this—X is real life.  Be careful who you destroy.

Now I ask again to the “engagement farming investigator” charlatan—contact X Support and tell them you were wrong about me.  Do you REALLY want the non-zero chance of destroying my life’s dreams because you were a reckless liar?

WELL?