The good news has been that Chaotic Fringe has been getting some attention. Traffic has gone up and comments are coming in on articles. This is welcome news. What hasn’t been so good, and it was something I had in the back of my head, has been the slow squeeze by, for lack of a better description, corporate entities to slow the progress made. Understand, I am in no way saying there is a secret cabal trying to silence Chaotic Fringe down, but some recent incidents have put some stark realizations about how easy it is to shut down the voice of the people.

Take for example the post office. There is a proposal to cut services and employees in the post office in the coming years. The big tag line from this has been the loss of Saturday mail service. As much as it has been talked about in the press I don’t think the full impact of the loss of mail service is fully understood. Sure, many people have switched to the web and smart phones to pass along information, but there are parts of the country where mail service is the only way citizens have communications. Those of us who live in big or moderately sized cities think all places in the world, or at least the United States, are like our respective towns. As I learned last year on a trip to see my parents in South Carolina, there are places that have one Wal-Mart, or that will make an announcement in the paper on the building of the second Taco Bell in the town. There are places where people still live in shacks in this country and the mail is the only way they can be checked up on. If Miss Hattie isn’t at her door when the mail carrier arrives, something could be wrong with her and the mail carrier is the only person who checks up on her and many other elderly people every day. It’s not the function of the mail service but it is a pleasant by product.

Because Chaotic Fringe has started to get more traffic, it was hit with content volume from the hosting site and copyright infringement from YouTube. While this was chalked up to growing pains and was dealt with, not being able to speak freely, to express in an open forum, has given me some concerns. What was especially chilling was the video in question with YouTube was political in nature. By using their criteria as to why the video was removed, a vast majority of the videos on their site would be in violation. The only reason why I can see it was targeted was because the video was political in nature.

I can assure the readers of Chaotic Fringe that I will not curtail speaking out on the issues, nor will I pull back on making videos that are political in nature. I may have to do an alternative for YouTube and have the original video hosted somewhere else, but this is an aspect of modern expression that has to be thought about. We as a nation have to start thinking about the control we are giving to large corporations because we tend to forget that the seemingly open market we have now can be cut off with as whisper in the right ear. More of our freedoms are out of our hands and that is troubling.