Dear Friends of The Phantom Critic, (PLEASE POST THIS TO YOUR WALL AS MANY WILL NOT SEE IT WHEN MY ACCOUNT IS CONVERTED AT THE END OF TODAY) My real name is John and I live in the US on the east coast. I am the only person who has ever published on this site or done any activities. There is no staff, and I have done this in my free time. Acting as The Phantom Critic has been a labor of love for people I love. I consider everybody who is my Facebook friend or a follower as my friend, and I will really miss so many things about what I did here. For eight years, The Phantom Critic has been a significant part of my life, a driving force that has allowed me to accomplish so many things I never before thought possible. I found a way to express my thoughts on art and to share it with other people and at the same time fulfill one of my primary goals of exposing to the world so much great and largely unknown art. This has also been a way for me to try to make the world a better place in a lot of ways. I believe that it is in our own little worlds that the global world changes. I have tried to impart as much of my personal insights and thoughts on life in general on a daily basis and to try to help people to realize how they can take control of their life, be confident even when they are fearful, believe in and follow their dreams, remain inspired and inspire others, and so much more. I have also tried to share my insights into faith, the importance of God in our life, the importance of thanking God each day for even the smallest things and how that is so very necessary to being happy in all circumstances. I have also had a chance through this site to assist people in making their lives better in a very personal way that was never made public on my page. I have learned so much from every artists who I have critiqued, whether they were young or old, amateur or professional, and many never declared themselves as an artist. After I recognized people’s potential, some of those people who had never thought of being a model or a photographer went on to become involved in the arts. Many of them and my friend base have been published, went into professional photography or modeling and even acting. I believe that each of us has to give back something to this world that we do not charge for as a way of thanking God for all of the opportunities and resources we have been given, no matter how small. This site has allowed me to do that in a lot of ways. In the process, I have learned so much about art, life, love, hope, despair, happiness, confidence, friendship, faith and so much more. For those of you who don’t know, Facebook logged me off two days ago, and made me log back in with no choice but to convert my personal account to a fan page. Despite my explanation that no money was ever or will ever be traded and that these people are my friends, they rejected my appeal. There was no option or way to even appeal. After I completed their required fan page conversion, I found a way to appeal, but they rejected it. They said that my site is considered a business and at the time there was no way to see any of my content. When they did the conversion, the content was deleted and I had left was the masthead photo and my logo and nothing else. At 5 pm EST today, that will happen again. They finally relented and gave me 24 hours to try to save whatever I could from this site. Eight years of content with at least an average of 15 critiques a week and at least 20 of my personal quotes is a substantial amount of content, and their archive tool does not give you much of your content. So I have been busy saving what I could today. I have saved all of my notes, and I have saved a lot of critiques, but only a tiny fraction of the estimated 30,000 critiques and 40,000 quotes. There is no way to back it all up. There are a lot of things that I cannot do in a fan page that I was able to do here, which will make it difficult for me to find a way to continue running this site. Here is a summary: • Fan pages don’t allow friends. This means I cannot see who the 8,000+ friends were in my personal account. • Fan pages don’t allow you to tag people or to like or comment on their photos on their site. • Fan pages don’t allow you to search on friend’s names; the search feature simply is not there. • If a friend does not PM me in the fan page or reply to a post, I cannot reach friends or even search for them. I truly look to God for guidance and try to do what I think is God’s will in my life. I believe that this site has been in God’s plans. Ironically, lately I have been feeling that maybe I have accomplished what I intended to do here. I know I will never be able to finish all of the critiques I intended to do and still do, but a lot of the things I wanted to get accomplished have been achieved here such as providing my insights. In all honesty, I got so much accomplished here while working 60 hours a week at my day job over these eight years that I look back now and wonder how it was possible for me to do all that. And during that time for six years I had a very serious illness. I felt all that time a great urgency to do as much as I could here but cannot say why really. I feel that I was being guided. How was all this possible? It was truly by the grace of God. Then this happened and now my site is about to be destroyed after this 24 hour reprieve. Though it is not easy for me, I am relatively peaceful despite the circumstances, something that I can only attribute to the grace of God. I created a new account (JOHN TPC BAXTER) and will try to link it to this site that will become a fan page, but I don’t know if that will work. I will likely never be able to reach my 8,000 friends with this message, but I can try. I also have a blog out there (thephantomcritic.wordpress/) but it was not very successful in attracting people because all of my friends are here. I will likely post all new content on the TPC fan page to avoid this confusion with FB again. Feel free to add me up. There will be a big adjustment period here, so be patient. I will add up anybody who wants to be my friend in that account until I reach my limit. Many of my contacts are Filipino and many people are surprised when they find I am not a Filipino and I only speak English. Personally I have only met two of you in passing, and those two people will never reveal that to anybody. I know Filipino people personally and I know them here, and I find them the most loving people, faithful, humble, used to dealing with great adversity in their lives and carrying on despite so much hardship, truly a great people, and also, they are very artistic. Much of my base is in Asia because I love Asian beauty and art. I just want to say that I hate goodbyes for that is when my eyes tear up like they are at this moment. But I know I will never be able to interface with many of you again, so I will say to those I will never hear from again my best wishes for you for a happy life filled with God’s blessings. Please note that my account reverts to a fan page again at perhaps 5pm EST US (5am Phils Time), unless Facebook does it sooner or later. God bless and take care. I love you all! I am sure that in another world we will all meet The Phantom Critic IMPORTANT CONTACT INFORMATION: New Personal FB Account to Come Soon: JOHN TPC BAXTER https://facebook/profile.php?id=100005794634749 Primary Email: tpc.phantom@gmail Secondary Email (almost never check) johntpcbaxter@gmail Blog: thephantomcritic.wordpress/ (PLEASE POST THIS TO YOUR WALL AS MANY WILL NOT SEE IT WHEN MY ACCOUNT IS CONVERTED AT THE END OF TODAY)
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 12:30:05 +0000
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