#3 people unfollowed in less then a minute of me posting this. the SPEED

[prompting-oc]

hello all 16,782 of you. i dont post here anymore because i do adult things now but i hope all of you have been well.

[freebooter4ever]

i’ve seen the discussion going back and forth on boundaries and sexual objectification, and i don’t have much to add to the conversation other than to say everyone is allowed to determine their OWN ‘lines’ and just because we don’t vocalize them doesn’t make them any less valid. but here’s the limits i set for my blog if anyone feels it is important for them to know (<3):

personally I consider ‘characters’ fair game for anything goes, with ‘public personas’ a little more iffy. ‘RPF’ isn’t new - it just takes on a new more accessible/visible form nowadays. i remember reading my first fic about a ‘real person’ back in my LOTR fandom days - it was a story in first person perspective about the main character meeting orlando bloom on a plane before he was ‘famous’. like a lot of these types of stories, it wasnt so much about the person as it was about the meet cute. the actor was just a convenient placeholder with a handsome face and some personality quirks thrown in to make the romance/dialogue more specific. i personally dont read much xReader fic nowadays, but mostly only cause i’m an old fart who can’t relate to the ‘you’ format. i miss the good old days when people actually created OC’s and then inserted them into things LOL. but also LOL if you think i’ve gone an entire year of quarantine without some imagined personal fantasies of joe mazzello (or steve aoki in the years before)(ramilicious can attest to this. she can also attest to most of these fantasies ending in friendship rather than anything explicit cause that’s just how i roll these days lol). the line i draw is i would never post these types of fics in a place where the subject could accidentally find them - you have to go looking for this stuff on tumblr, most fics are given explicit ratings and under read-mores. with the blacklist tags it’s pretty easy to filter things out. its even easier to add filters to ao3 searches. i am NOT going to do something like message steve aoki and say ‘yeah i watched that movie Ibiza like five times, here is my 1k fic where you’re the dj and i’m the one night stand’. but obviously people still enjoy imagining scenarios like these otherwise movies like Ibiza wouldn’t exist?

for art, i consider anything already on display up for grabs, we all know a certain person’s ass is all over the place...all you have to do is google ‘need for speed’ and rami’s name. HOWEVER, in the case of actors i personally would not draw anything more explicit than what’s already there. i’m not gonna draw full frontal nudity for rami (unless he gifts us with it in a movie, i suppose) or anyone. this is 100% a personal choice for me. 

i was a sophomore or junior in college when i volunteered as a figure drawing monitor where i’d time the nude model’s poses and help them set up the stage and lighting and such. there was this one guy in his mid forties probably, a regular who came every week, and i always thought of him fondly till one day (the day after i ran into my Hot Programming TA during dinner and later sent him an email begging him to go on a date with me because i was desperate for kissing experience)(and Hot Programming TA emailed me back within minutes saying yes) this artist guy who i saw all the time and thought i knew fairly well, decided to draw me instead of the model. which would have been fine except he drew me naked. i was NOT naked at the time, i was wearing a shirt, and a bra, and a full prairie skirt with alternating calico and floral patterns. he drew what he imagined was underneath all that. he came up to me after the figure drawing session and showed me his drawings and told me i had been ‘glowing’ and my response was to laugh it off awkwardly and get the hell out of there as soon as i gave the model their pay check. but inwardly i was thinking a) i was NOT glowing for this creepy man twice my age and b) i did NOT give him consent to sexualize my body under my clothes and then SHOW me that objectification. i never said anything to him or anything else, i continued to be the monitor, and i continued to field off creepy advances from him including multiple job offers, but when i finally realized i could just...stop..and i passed the student volunteer monitor job on to my friend naeem, i also realized that what that older male artist did was NOT ok in my book. and it was probably not something he would do while naeem was monitoring.

nowadays im working in an industry that regularly objectifies female bodies. in the past year alone i have had to deal with requests to make breasts bigger, i have been given character rigs that in addition to the usual elbow, knee, and spine joints also have ‘nipple’ joints but ONLY for the women (to make them jiggle for animation), every time i send out a female pose i get it back with notes that push it further into the sexy type of body language reserved for women (twist the spine more! sway the back more! give it ‘energy!’), i have been told to erase wrinkles and fat and pores but ONLY for the women (men you ADD pores bc realism! and manliness!) and this is all me working for a company that is actually fairly progressive in terms of sexism compared to OTHER studios.

like it or not, sexual objectification is a huge part of specifically women’s lives and how we react to that is our business. for me, turning the tables and putting men on display feels like fair’s fair. i cant stop the men from doing it, so if i want to enjoy sexualizing male bodies, damn it im gonna! like dang it, boy do i want to send steve aoki a thank you note every time he posts a video of himself doing those ice baths during the sunset golden hour bc holy shit gorgeous or working out in his gym wearing VERY little clothes, but i dont because i know what its like when someone imposes their personal fantasies on the subject. or, god, there was that time i had to unfollow nicole’s insta for a while bc i had a very explicit dream about her and realized, shit, i need to take a break and get my emotions under control before i can refollow. and god some of the stuff i see dudes sending her during her live videos on mental illness/meditation is TOTALLY gross and not something they should be confronting her with. and she’s not even ‘famous’ famous. or how some fans send their idols explicit direct messages without consent. THAT feels inappropriate to me.

a part of me feels like i shouldn’t have to defend this. men don’t. they’re even encouraged in mass media to sexualize women. but i also recognize the importance of talking about consent. the importance of recognizing that a celebrity deserves to have their boundaries respected. these are my lines in fandom. other people have different lines they won’t cross, and that’s okay to me. i block or blacklist any blogs or tags i think go over the top.

heck, even in fandom-only spaces i still try to keep my own more sexual fantasies off this blog and only in private messages with my friends and mutuals, and i feel like that might come across as unintentionally prudish or judgmental sometimes. i’m not ‘horny on main’ very often. but like...every time i reblog that particular ‘washing machine’ gif of joe mazzello am i thinking about him naked and thinking about how he’s got very loooooong feet, and ‘gee i wonder if that means /other/ things are Too Big for my tastes’ but also ‘gosh wouldnt that make a pretty picture to draw’???? hell yeah.

i dont know who is gonna actually read this essay but yolo i guess :)

[thats-h0w-th3-light-g3ts-in]

Okay now people I know that nobody cares but tumblr. Is the platform for weird shit nobody cares about but me and if only one motherfucker reblogs it‘s one likeminded motherfucker!

So the story began one week ago on a lonly evening scrolling through netflix. My Mom and I love binging shows together and we had just finished How To Get Away With Murder as well as The Walking Dead so we were kind of in a void of TV-Show-less nothingness. Starting a new show isn’t easy for me. I‘m a weird traumatized millennial who takes her shows way to seriously so I really can’t just start any show on a wednesday at 10 pm. I rarely do that but after 10 minutes of scolling and saying „this is crap“ to stuff I will probably obsess about in about three month, I just said to my mom: „I don’t care pick anything“. My Mom being in love with nature, waterfalls and forests, having lived in Canada for some time, saw the title picture of the show Virgin River and just went „this!“. In my mind I was like, this is crap but went along with it.

One week and 16 episodes later we had finished the show. There isn‘t gonna be a third season until probably 2022. Surprise, surprise, I have gotten invested in the characters and find myself again in a black hole of post-tv-show depression. So what do I do? The only thing my mushy, millenial brain knows and lives: following the show and cast on all social media platforms I know and stalking the wikipedia page. After thoroughly investigating the TV-Show‘s wikipedia page I was continuing with googeling the actors and actresses. Like any normal human being would. I started off with typing in Tim Matheson because some people left a few very rude comments on his instagram. Jeffrey Eppstine was mentioned so I got very anxious something might be wrong with a very sympathetic and handsome old man. As I typed in his name, cookies of course did their job and it immediately suggested ‚People also searched, Alexandra Breckenridge, Martin Henderson, Annette O’Tool‘. No, I was looking for Tim Matheson, I’ll get to the others later JEEZ, will you chill? Luckily, no evidence warranted the suspicion he might be a filthy pedophile affiliated with Eppstine. I was relieved and then actually turned to some real life stuff (I had to go to work, and don’t think I‘m not at work right now typing this leaving my co-worker with all the work).

I had to overcome my urge to punch something or to spend all my money on bribing someone at netflix to speed up the production of Season 3, so Icontinued with Grace and Frankie. I mean, guys lez be real, in the end you can only overcome your sadness by starting/continuing another TV-Show. As I continued mid season 6 of Grace and Frankie a new character, Jack, was introduced. My deranged self who only lives on actors names and faces immediately knew it knew that guy. After watching him for a while it dawned on me. He suspiciously looks like the guy who swapped bodies with Fox Mulder in Dreamland. Switches to google. Types in TXF Dreamland. Morris Fletcher appears in grand letters (the letters were normal sized, but grand to me). Well who is he? The X Files Wiki tells me his name is Michael McKean (no not Michael Keaton) and he started off his career on Laverne and Shirley. So of course I type in Michael McKean now and google immediately goes: People who liked this also were interested in Annette O‘Tool. And I‘m like „nO thEy wErEn‘T!!!“ This is some weird modified cookie algorithm shit that want’s to trick me into thinking those two were in any way affiliated with each other just because I googled them two days in a ro— what? Wife? What? WhAT??

Turns out Hollywood is a small village (LOL, absolutely no pun intended!!) and Michael McKean and Annette O‘Tool are married IRL and I just happened to discover and re-discover the two of them seperatley in a time-span of a week.

So that‘s basically the punchline of the story.

Hope you enjoyd it and dind‘t unfollow me already.

[xoidua]

How do I stay sane on the information superhighway?

A month ago, I read an article written by Angus Hervey on Future Crunch with the title “The Information Diet”. It stroke the right note in conveying the brutal truth: We are drowning in a chaotic pool of information.

As with everything in life, we can only truly process information through moderate input. However, it is so hard to control how information can come through to us. In fact, we receive new information mostly passively, through social media networks, TV and radio.

The Original Information Diet

This is when The Information Diet comes into action. It is a guideline on how we can keep ourselves informed and where we can find more trustworthy sources.

The Information Diet by Angus Hervey suggests that a healthy diet should consist of:

Mindset = dietary philosophy aka “a central organizing principle” around which to create the diet

Books = wholewheat grains

Email newsletters = vegetables

Podcasts = leafy greens

Reddit = beans and pulses

Specialist publications = fruit

Social media = junk food

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

-- quoting Michael Pollan in “In Defense of Food”, The Information Diet encourages people to “eat” healthily and in moderation.

My version of The Information Diet

Before having discovered the article, I had already realized my problem with information overload. There were times when I found myself reading too many things, yet I could not remember a damn thing I’d read. I was overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at me through all angles: Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn newsfeed, newspapers, radio, email newsletters, etc. (luckily I don’t watch TV, or else it would have been another strain on my poor attention).

I felt like a rotten VW Beetle on the information superhighway.

During an episode of immense frustration, I decided to review all of my information sources. After all, we can never know everything because knowledge is infinite, so the least I could do for myself is to entertain my brain with the most relevant things.

I started by jotting down my problem zones aka things that annoy me the most, both in degree of frustration and frequency of disturbance. It came down to these:

I spent way too much time scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook newsfeed. I’ve already unfollowed all trivial pages and prioritized more “informational pages” by marking them as “see first” pages. Somehow, the better posts would run out in no time and I would go back to watching meaningless short clips and cracking up at countless memes. At the back of my mind, I knew I should stop scrolling and get real stuff done. In reality, I wasted hours every day just by lying in bed with my phone hovering over my tired eyes.

My addiction to checking emails is real. I can’t help but keep my mailbox all-read and organized at all times. Add to that a dangerously large amount of email newsletters that I’ve subscribed to, and you’d find me pulling my phone out to check for new emails every 10 minutes. Not only did I subscribe to advertisement newsletters from brands, but there were also informational newsletters, which I used to justify my overuse. 

I felt like I don’t have time to read books. Even when I did sit down with a book, my mind kept wandering and I couldn’t concentrate.

Step 1: Tackle the Facebook newsfeed

I’ve been actively not checking my Facebook newsfeed since December last year and I must tell you, it’s hard (duh). I deleted the Facebook app on my phone a long while ago, so every time I want to access Facebook, I must do it on my phone browser. It helped just a little, because I was still binging on the newsfeed occasionally. The difference between an app and the mobile site is not as significant as I thought.

Until The Information Diet brought the Newsfeed Eradicator to my life. It is God in the form of a browser plugin, whose sole mission is to eradicate the Facebook newsfeed from desktop and mobile browsers. Users are still able to view posts and everything else when they go directly to the user profiles and pages.

The Newsfeed Eradicator is truly the saver of my dilemma. Now, I can freely check my FB messages without being lured to scroll for just-a-little-bit on the newsfeed.

Eternal feed-less bliss

Step 2: Unsubscribe to irrelevant newsletters

There have been newsletters that I found useful in the past. For example, I subscribed to my favorite fashion brands to know when sales were to happen. Nowadays, I don’t support fast fashion anymore and thrift most of my clothes, so I can’t see myself subscribing to fashion brands’ newsletters anymore.

Step 3: Subscribe to more relevant newsletters

Now, this is the most important step to take on my journey to staying sane on the information superhighway. This is the part where I set down boundaries to keep me on track. Over time, I’ve accumulated a list of newsletters which I find informative, helpful and interesting to read.

To avoid being in a filter bubble, I prefer a variety of newsletters from authors of different backgrounds. My interests are technology, productivity, psychology, philosophy, and climate change, so I make sure that I receive numerous opinions about the same matter before deciding my own POV.

Here are my personal favorites:

TLDR

They really deliver what they claim. It takes under 10 minutes to go through the newsletter. All news are up-to-date and relevant.

TLDR is the first “techie” newsletter that I’ve subscribed to. I’ve recommended so many friends to check it out. The world that we live in is becoming increasingly influenced by technology. The digital transformation affects each and every one of us. Therefore, it makes so much sense to be informed.

Future Crunch

Of course, I have to mention Future Crunch. After all, it is where I found The Information Diet.

The team at FC introduces themselves on their homepage:

Future Crunch is a group of scientists, artists, researchers and entrepreneurs that believes science and technology are creating a world that is more peaceful, connected and abundant. 

As a result, FC newsletters feature scientific and technology breakthroughs all over the world. It is nice to be reminded of the good things happening in a world where only breaking news can make headlines.

Dense Discovery

My inner nerd sang heavenly songs when I found out Dense Discovery – “a weekly newsletter helping web workers be productive, stay inspired, and think critically.”

Besides being abundant with useful information, DD itself is a beautifully crafted email newsletter in a very much friendly and readable format.

The header of the latest issue (Issue 41). I love it!

The Whippet by McKinley Valentine

At last, a worthwhile newsletter by a female author! McKinley Valentine is the woman whom I aspire to be. She writes eloquently and finds stuff you wouldn’t normally find on the internet. Her newsletters are a combination of her own writing and links to interesting stuff she’s been reading about, with absolutely zero mention of Trump or any other contemporary politics (her words).

Excerpt from the latest issue

There are some more newsletters that I subscribe to, but for the sake of this lengthy post, I decided to feature my most favorites here. If you are interested in knowing more or are looking for newsletters about a certain subject, be sure to check out The Information Diet article. You will find an exhaustive list of recommended newsletters.

My advice for beginners: Start with a few and slowly add more along the way. If you subscribe to a bunch of newsletters all at once, you may feel overwhelmed when your inbox is flooded with information. You can’t just trick the brain into acknowledging that reading these newsletters is good for you. It already knows. But upon a huge pile of information and potential overload, your brain will automatically protect itself by refusing to process anything. Also, remember to keep your newsletters in check from time to time. If you stop reading a certain newsletter, be sure to find out why and unsubscribe if necessary.

Step 4: Befriend podcasts & audiobooks

This step is solely personal preference. Because I’m having trouble reading physical books, I turn to audiobooks to temporarily solve my problem. 

I think that my attention ability has been damaged by my endless scrolling on social media, to the point that I can’t concentrate to read a few book pages anymore. While I slowly reintroduce my brain to long-form reading (by reading rather lengthy articles and newsletters), audiobooks are here to save the day. 

I don’t force myself to hear audiobooks all the time nor do I set any goals. I just listen when I feel like it. This mentality results in me voluntarily listening to an audiobook whenever I’m commuting, standing in line or running errands. I’ve been a productivity freak in the past, and boy oh boy did it mess me up. Nowadays, I know better than to force my brain to do stuff it doesn’t want to. Surprisingly, I can get more stuff done without feeling like I have to do anything at all. There are days when I just want to be a sloth, and that’s totally fine. We are not our productivity.

Back to audiobooks: I prefer ones that are narrated by the authors because they certainly know the tone better than anyone else.

If you are new to audiobooks and don’t want to commit to a subscription service like Audible yet, there are many good audiobooks on Youtube to try out. What I do: I download these audiobooks as .mp3 file, then listen on my phone via an app called BookPlayer. It’s super easy to use and doesn’t gobble up much precious battery juice.

-----

We made it, friends! I’ve told you all my secrets in staying sane in a world that’s seemingly isn’t.

I can’t speak any better for the necessity of an information diet. We should stay well-informed and practice our critical thinking ability before the information flood gets ahead of us. 

Between a skillful driver who stays on the right track, a careless driver who speeds and a miserable drive who blocks the way, who do you want to be on the information superhighway?

Original post on my blog.

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