And we’re back again with another Gatebreaker Updater! While there isn’t a lot for me to report blog-wise, on Sunday, my Social Media life took a seismic shift, and I’m only just starting to get back on my feet and I just had to share it with you guys.

Okay, so if you didn’t know, on my Twitter account (yes, I still consider the website “Twitter”. I have never and WILL never refer to it by that single letter), I do this thing called the “Anime NFL Scoreboard”. It’s a recap of the scores of all the NFL games using anime characters to represent the different teams in the league. I’ve done it for years now, and it typically involves me having several browsers open on my desktop to get scores and info. To reiterate—I’ve done this for YEARS with ZERO problems.

However, on Sunday, after I posted the scores for the early games, I noticed one of my browsers was doing something weird with the website, refreshing the screen every second. At first, I thought it was just a glitch with Safari. I mean, I just got MacOS 26, so it could be a bug. So I closed everything out and reopened another browser. I was told that I had to prove I was a human by doing a CAPTCHA. Ooookay…no problem. The last time I checked, I was clearly a human, so let me go ahead and verify it. I did the CAPTCHA and was able to log in. No problem.

Later on, I received a message stating that my account was being flagged for “platform manipulation”. Ooookay. No Problem. I did the appeal process and said, “I was just using multiple browsers. I’m not doing anything suspicious or manipulating the platform.” At that point, my account was still working normally. I didn’t think much of it and just went to play Starfield…because I’m a Starfield fanatic, and that’s what we do.

A few hours later, I go back to my desktop to post the scores from the late games…only to find out my account was COMPLETELY suspended. I couldn’t do ANYTHING.

Following/Followers were 0; all my tweets, some 200,000 of them, were wiped out to the public. I could see them, but that’s it.

I then received an email politely stating that my account, which I’ve had for 16 years, was suspended for “Violating our rules against authenticity.”

“Authenticity”.

Ooookay. PRODIGIOUS problem.

Just to let you know, my account was VERIFIED and has been for months now. The posts I made were nothing beyond the pale of what I usually do or have done in the past. In addition, I am the one and only KhakiBlueSocks on the Hellscape, so if anybody were using my handle pretending to be me, logically, who is the real imposter—a brand new account or one that has been on the service for, once again, 16 FREAKING YEARS with over a thousand followers?

I immediately put in ANOTHER request for appeal, pleading my case in the small text window that I was not, in fact, inauthentic, fully verified, and NOT a bot.

That was Sunday Evening…and as of Tuesday, I have heard exactly ZIP.

As silly as this may sound, I’ve gone through all the stages of grief over the course of a couple of days, and I’m currently at the Acceptance phase. When you have something that you put loads of work and love into for nearly two decades, when it’s all gone, you feel a certain way. Yes, this was just a Social Media account. Still, if it weren’t for my Twitter account, I probably wouldn’t have started up my previous blog or this one! I wouldn’t have met my current group of online friends, whom I consider my digi-family, or learned many of the hard lessons that only come from experience.

In any case, I got myself re-established on my backup account, a remnant of the days pre-Elon when your account could be temporarily restricted if the algorithm determined you were tweeting too much in too short a time. I’ve had it for years and haven’t used it for about five years. I had to spend quite a few hours notifying everyone from my old account that I was on a new account, updating my profile, re-following all the important accounts, blocking the particularly nasty trolls, and just doing some overall digital housekeeping. I’m about 95% up and running. It literally feels like moving into a new house.

While I’m SOMEWHAT hopeful that I might get my old account back, when I hear the stories of others who have experienced this, I might drop the “backup” moniker. I might even change the SN to make it similar to the old one. And even if the improbable happens and Elon Musk decides to wipe out my backup…I have accounts on BlueSky, Mastodon, Tumblr, and most other places too, so I’m reachable almost everywhere, well outside the reach of the Muskrat. Heck, I might even set up a separate account for the blog. The (Blue)sky is the limit.

But enough about my social media woes. You are here for Site Updates, and that’s what you’re about to get. Now that the seasonal “First Impression” surge has subsided at Beneath the Tangles, I can now give more attention to other writing projects I’ve been working/thinking on! As you’ve no doubt seen, I’ve had two entries done on the “Samurai Streaming Survey” series and posted with a few more to go! Retro Anime is up next, and then I’ll move on to a brand-new service called “OceanVeil” which promises to be…ahem…interesting. Yeah, that’s the word. I’m also finally going to work on the “IF/THEN,” as I wanna have that done on or before All Hallows Eve.

So yeah, while my Social Media life was thrust into chaos, my blogging life is moving right along. Heck, we have one subscriber, and we’re getting some good views. Emphasis on the “Some”. But hey, I’m just getting started. Hopefully, we’ll make it into double-digit views consistently before the end of the year! I’m not hard to please at all.

If you have any suggestions on how I can get my old account back, horror stories about losing your Social Media account, or just to let me know how it’s going, please hit the comments below. Commiserations and Commentary are currently what make the world (and this blog) go around.

Have a great one, Guys. Samurai Out.