Parler Lifeboat on Telegram - just don't

So Twitter and Parler have been in the news a lot lately and my opinion on all of these alternative social media sites is that if one good thing can come out of all of this anti-Trump sentiment on the part of big tech that one good thing is that people will start to seriously look at and consider alternatives.

The big problem for most people when deciding to leave Facebook is that "everyone I know is on there and I don't know anyone on Gab or MeWe." Well these days I am getting a lot of messages from conservative friends stating that they are leaving FB in the next few months and transitioning over to Gab. They are encouraging their friends to "come along" and this is the hardest part about transitioning in the past: There has never been a movement as powerful as this one to convince people to actually move.

A few years ago there was a big push by tech giant Google with Google+. They dumped massive amounts of money into this and if there was ever a company that could be considered a competitor for FB it would be Google.... and they failed... badly. I don't eve know if it exists anymore and I am not going to check because honestly I don't care.

These days however, there is enough outrage to actually convince people to move and to move permanently. This is a good thing in my book because I love free markets and for the most part don't believe they currently exist in tech. The giants that control everything proved that they can prevent competition if they want to and they did that with Parler.

Parler, which I wasn't going to use anyway because I never used Twitter, was something I signed up for just so I could see what it was all about. I spent a few days looking at it and realized that it was not for me and then one day it was just gone. I think we all know why that is and even though I have no intention of using it when it does come back up, I hope that it does come back up just to stick it to Twitter.

In the interim, and I don't even recall how it is that I became aware of this, a Telegram group opened up called "Parler Lifeboat." Since I use Telegram almost exclusively as a messenger, I figured I'd give it a go. I almost immediately regretted this decision.

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While there are some people in there that are posting some interesting links, for the most part it is just a bunch of people that are saying awful things to one another and making threats that of course, they would not make if they were face-to-face with someone. This is taken to another level of idiocy than even FB and Twitter since there is no barrier to entering the group and it doesn't appear to have any sort of mod interference.

In the hour or so that I was part of the group, several thousand messages had been typed and most of it was trash. Of course I didn't read it all but it was loads of rightys arguing with loads of leftys and none of it had any substance to it whatsoever.

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I disabled notification VERY early on because it was just constantly shaking my phone and after about an hour of seeing that the number of notifications had gone up by the thousands in just an hour, I realized that this group is simply filled with spelling and grammar mistakes, loads of nonsense, trolls, and vitriol.

When I was in there I never said a word because there is zero useful dialogue going on in there and there is no organizational structure to how the comments are listed. The are just listed in the order they are received.

I actually AM using Parler to follow a few conservative voices, but they seem to have some level of moderation whereas Parler Lifeboat is NOT associated with Parler and I suppose if you want to have a look at the worst members of society, go and have a peek in that channel for half and hour or so.

They also have a voice chat section where I presume the same REEEEEEE is going on as well.

I guarantee you will tire of it as quickly as I did if you bother.