TLDR: I acted out of emotion and the belief that annexation was a real possibility. My form of a “protest” involved disabling accounts, which wiped friends list. Trying to recover, but only partially successful. Still working on it, but travelling is adding to delays (along with fears of rate limits). For a lot of you, it was my only communication channel with you. Sorry!
In early 2025, I became focussed (as many did) on the annexation comments and perceived belittling of my country. While Canada is far from perfect, I still stand on guard for thee and reacted as many did with a defence attitude. Turning off things like Battle.net, Steam, and Discord DMs. While I didn’t go as far as some did (e.g. deleting accounts, because screw that), I did have a reactionary response, albeit lighter, but still a response. Perhaps what King Charles would’ve wanted? Nah. He would’ve preferred a laugh.
As emotions calmed down, rhetoric began to shift, and the bigger picture came into view, I re-activated all services. I did my best to restore what I could; however, disabling social services on Battle.net and Steam means that it dropped my entire friends list. I used previous resources to restore the list; however, many requests failed for some reason and continue to instantly get rejected. I am not sure if I’m being blocked by the recipients (I’m sorry if I am), but it’s happening often enough that it feels more like a glitch.
As I continue to work to rebuild the Battle.net friends list (which contained a lot of contacts of whom it is my only means of communication with them), I am worried I’ll hit some sort of rate-limit or hard request limit with the automatic rejections, so I’ve taken a break from trying for now (also due to travelling).
I am grateful to my friends for understanding the reactionary approach I had taken, fuelled by artificial (and albeit genuine) outrage and exaggeration of goals. While I don’t deny that threats to sovereignty are not something to be taken lightly, I do believe that comments were not as serious as originally thought. Calm down “OHMYGOD BUT CANADA’S IN DANGER STILL” people. It appears like the focus is now on money rather than actual annexation.
To be clear to anyone reading this from my Stack or Discord profiles: I never held any emotional response toward any one of you, ever. The deactivation of services had unintended consequences of deactivating most communication channels, and restoration has proved challenging. I hope that I’m on the path to restoring all dialogue with everyone still missing from that list, and I’ll continue working on it.
I’ll be travelling for quite a bit over the next couple of months, which means that this process is going to drag out even longer than originally planned. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up. With that in mind, if you are missing from the list and want me to stop attempting to add you, then please don’t hesitate to block me or message me and tell me to STAWP. I certainly won’t go against any wishes.