Hey ya’ll, Heavy Trading Cards is still around. A.k.a., The Beerd is still alive and kickin’ and planning to keep rollin’ this summer. But obviously we’ve been virtually radio silent for a while and now I feel like ranting about it a bit.
Ok, so first off let me say that we all know that social media has it’s issues. It also has it’s obvious benefits. And in no way is this intended to be political in any way, but my Meta woes do primarily revolve around the MAGA Mugshot cards.
Quick rewind first…Heavy got started with a pretty infamous drop, the Pablo Escobar rookie card. Heavy card #1. When that card first dropped, the first Heavy Instagram account got straight up banned. The post got removed and the account, which I had been building up and marketing even before hand, got instantly banned – not shadow-banned (suppressed), but REMOVED. Community standards violation for “supporting” a narco-terrorist. Ok, that’s kinda cool actually. Heavy’s got some meat to it. I used it to my advantage, quickly scrambled to create a new account, re-posted the Pablo, but removed mention of the name and even got creative in blurring out his image. The card that shall not be named! Well that was fine, and the infamy of the Pablo was born. Heavy was off and running.
Ok, now back to current; at least March, April, May-ish of 2024. Former President Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators are indicted in Georgia for election interference. This is YUGE. Heavy must get in on this. So I created the MAGA Mugshot set. 19 cards, including the Big Orange Kahuna himself obviously and dropped the full set. This took a bit because it was a lot of work. 19 different cards means lots of design time, plus printing logistics for small runs of 19 different cards, plus variations, both print and stock. I even used AI to enhance the mugshot photos for clarity and print resolution, because the best ones you could find online were, and still are, pretty crappy low-res quality.
Heavy dropped the MAGA Mugshots. All is well, then… poof 💨 it wasn’t. See, I had been boosting some Heavy posts and stories previously here and there – not every drop, but some, to help spread the posts. From about 1/3 of the way through series 2, Heavy saw a dramatic drop in interest. The core Heavy community was still getting in on drops consistently, but not nearly as many individual cards were selling, and many people lost interest. All good, that’s totally understandable, and I used it as an opportunity to try to get in front of some new collectors. Boosting posts on Instagram absolutely did the trick! So throughout series 2 and into series 3, boosting posts pulled in a lot of people who would maybe only get in on a card because they loved that particular subject matter, and it pulled in new people who bought a bunch of previous drops now that they were aware of them…it was great.
Then…I boosted a MAGA Mugshot post. Oops (apparently). This was after a few other Heavy drops, which is how I had been doing it. I wouldn’t boost anything until after a couple more drops, just to make sure the core community get’s first dibs. Well, once I did, Meta put me in jail. Community standards saying I can’t boost or advertise political content. And since I had posted about these cards on both Heavy and my @bsportscards account, Meta decided to lock em both up. Initially, they canceled the boost and removed the boosted post. Then, I believe, the algorithm searched for similar posts and content, finding a number of posts and stories on both of my accounts. The algorithm then suppressed my content. A.k.a., shadow-banned.
My views and engagement levels on both accounts, which by this point I was very familiar with what was typical, dropped dead. I couldn’t boost new content, even completely unrelated stuff, and they downgraded my business account in some way. Apparently the boost attempt, plus the additional content quickly added up to three strikes. Some people were still seeing some stuff, but it was drastically fewer and farther between.
Of course I tried appealing and going through their process. At first it didn’t really bother me because I understood what the spirit of the rule was all about. But I wasn’t actually taking a political stance (at least not how I viewed it), I was just documenting a historical event. At least that’s what I pleaded to the all-powerful algorithm. On and on this went for a while. To the extent that I would post a new reel or story, even on my @bsportscards account, and barely anyone would see it. A big part of the frustration is that I really tried to go through their (Meta’s) appeal process, where I removed a bunch of specific content, and filled out their silly form and did all the to-do items they threw at me to adjust on each account and the advertising platform.
But none of it worked. After about 2 weeks of dicking around with it, I was at my wit’s end and just needed a break. Decided, FINE. I’ll spend my 30 days in Meta jail and go on from there.
Well, something glitched. I still don’t understand it and I’m not sure it’s entirely fixed still. After a while I tried getting on and posting some stories and such; it wouldn’t even let me post stories on either account. Ok, I figured it must be the app. Removed and re-downloaded on my phone, still the same thing. Tried it through the web browser on my computer…same thing. Ok, brand new device on a cheap tablet I have, downloaded the ‘gram and…same thing. I tried to get tech support and couldn’t get any type of response. Know what else is weird? It messed with my other accounts that I was logged into. I have another personal account that i don’t do much (anymore) with, and it kicked me out of that one, although that could have had to do with some inactivity. But when I got back in, I had a community standards violation notice on that account. I hadn’t touched that account in months!
So this is where I freaked out a little because I also have other accounts that I have access to that are completely separate and are actually day-job work related – my company account as well as client accounts! I couldn’t find anything wrong with those, luckily, but it wigged me out because if any ill-effects happened on those due to the Heavy + bsportscards Meta jailing, that would be a big issue for me. So I really just decided to lay low for awhile.
So that’s my rant. Meta doesn’t like MAGA Mugshots cards, and the algorithm does some very unexpected things (maybe even bugs, maybe features, I don’t know). I’ve locked down the work-related stuff in a way that I’m not confident it won’t be interfered with. I got a new phone a while back and took that opportunity to refresh IP addresses and remove those work-related accounts from my phone entirely. I’ve noticed more messages coming in via popup notifications to Heavy and bsports, and I’m actually getting notified again, so I think I’m officially out of jail now.
I’ll be logging in soon and checking things out. If you’ve messaged me and haven’t heard back, this is why. I’m into my “slow” season, work-wise, so I’m planning on catching up on a lot (including bacons orders!). We’ll see how things go. In the mean time, I’m very frustrated with Meta, but I guess it is what it is. I’d love to not be so reliant on it, but I’m not sure there’s much of an alternative at the moment. I can’t stand TikTok. I’ll get in and re-engage in the Discord server, but there’s not nearly as many people in there. Lot’s of folks don’t do Discord, but at least the core community is mostly there. I’ll try to really kick that into gear again.
Ultimately, even despite these specific woes with social media, my mental health has had some issues for a while and any kind of social media hasn’t helped that. Really just ended up having to take a real break for a while, even with it resulting in ghosting people for a bit. That was never my intention, but it had to be not in front of me for a while. I also work in front of a computer all day every day, and with the nice summer weather, I had to limit my screen-time as much as possible and focus on my presence with my family. Still doing that, but I feel like I’m in a much better place now to juggle Heavy as well.
I wrote this as part of a pseudo-journaling thing. I’m trying to really get better about getting shit off my chest and communicating with the people around me. I really felt/feel the need to communicate all of this to the Heavy community and the friends I’ve made in collecting and card art along the way. So, understand that a good deal of this is helping me in my mental health journey considerably. I don’t take it for granted that people have spent hard-earned money on my products and have invested themselves in the community that I established, but they built.
Thanks for listening, and more to come soon.
~ Beerd