#Baker Bear

[lifeofloon]

Happy Pride Month!

[vaspider]

So I literally woke up and came downstairs to make this set of patches. @urbanprole is in the middle of like 3 other projects so these will get test-stitched and photographed when she has a hot minute, but like.

They're about 3" x 3" so you can stack up flags on your arm, backpack, w/e.

(The colors look a little wonky bc it's just a mockup for the embroidery machine, and the way it displays colors has only a passing resemblance to how those colors will look stitched out.)

[newtkive]

sweet tooth | luca drabble

just thinking about luca w a partner who has a crazy sweet tooth (like i do) and you never asking for a sweet treat but mentioning it nonchalantly but still not expecting luca to make you something.

first of all, your nickname would probably be sweet tooth or smth similar, let’s be so real. it would start by luca calling you that affectionately, but then it catches on w friends and family and you’re just dubbed sweet tooth.

in general, if you saw some type of dessert on a commercial or a tiktok that had you going ‘oohhh’ luca would scrunch his brows and almost seem jealous. “they used meringue, they should’ve used icing sugar.” he’d scoff judgingly and just see it as a challenge. after he would deem it doable, he’d store the information in his brain and literally make it better at work the next day.

just say the word and he will make it. telling your friends on the phone that macaroons sound good? cool, he wants to practice his piping technique with the biscuits anyways.

a japanese fruit sando? awesome he can make the sweet bread so fast, and the cream is no big deal. in fact he can just whip it up for lunch.

want a hersheys bar? first, that chocolate is trash don’t ever mention it to a european, especially your european chef boyfriend. second, he’ll make you the best stack of milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and cookies n’ cream bar you’ve ever had (the cookies n cream one is so good, and you’d always say that and it would piss him off). anything to get hershey’s out of your brain.

you see those viral crunchy chocolate and pistachio filled croissants in new york on your phone and groan abt them? he can research the recipe and workshop it for a day or two in the restaurant kitchen, find a cute take out box to present it to you with to give you that full experience you’d get from the real bakery—you just gotta wait. even if it’s a couple days later, it’ll be waiting for you on the table, or pulled out from behind luca’s back as he walks through the door.

to be more specific, maybe at midnight when he doesn’t have work the next day, you guys are up watching a movie or just having pillow talk. saying smth nonchalant abt your cravings like “cookies sound so good right now luca.. don’t they?” your cheek is smushed against his bicep (which you’d much rather eat) so your voice is all cute and mumbled making his heart race.

“mhm.” he’d say. he’s got a lazy smile n a deep chuckle, voice laden w sleep since you’re the night owl and he’s just staying up to spend time with you. “you wan’ me to make some right now? that what you’re saying?” he’s clearly amused, knowing that you don’t expect him to but teasing you nonetheless.

“nono, it’s too late. you’re not allowed to leave anyways.” you would mumble again, arms tightening around his own in a hug. humming happily, a kiss from the chef would land on your head and you kinda forget about the dessert you want but luca doesn’t because he’s a chef and his literal profession is making desserts so why wouldn’t he?? when you want something he can easily make?? like his love language is giving, especially if it’s baking something for someone he loves.

the next day you’d still be asleep and wake up to the smell of cookies. savory was your forte in the morning most times but who could say no to starting their day with a yummy sweet when it’s presented to them, right?

it would take you a second to realize that 1. luca wasn’t wrapped around you like usual, etching a frown into your face, and 2. luca had to be the one making cookies. and he made the best cookies. you’d waste no time in grinning and hopping up to drag yourself to the kitchen. even more of the smell would welcome you, transporting you into some kind of dreamland—and if you really were dreaming you’d be so pissed bc the cookies being pulled out of the oven by your blond messy haired boyfriend look so fucking good right now (aside from the aforementioned boyfriend who is just as, if not more scrumptious than the cookies with only his flannel pants on).

arms would wrap around his waist from behind and luca would laugh muttering “hot pan” but you don’t give a fuck because you want him and those cookies now. if anything your arms tighten and you rub at his stomach sweetly from behind, a sign of affection.

“you made me cookies!” the grin would be so evident in your voice and so infectious that luca beams as he transfers the said cookies onto a pretty dish.

“and who said they were for you?” the tease is obvious and earns an eye roll. you don’t fall for it and he doesn’t expect you to, but you gently nip at his shoulder nonetheless. a dramatic ‘ow!’ comes from the tall man, laced with laughter. you snicker evilly, standing on tip toes to rest your chin on the same shoulder (no matter your height you still gotta do tiptoes bc that man is tall).

soon enough he’d plate the perfect chocolate chip cookies with a dash of sea salt that you spotted, and turn around. it would be your turn to be wrapped in a hug by strong arms, even lifted up a little just to hear your laugh. luca also likes to hear how surprised you get that he can lift you, even though to him you’re weightless.

it wouldn’t be long until you’re begging for a cookie even if he sets you on the counter, stern look as he assures you they’re still cooling off. like hellooo?? who cares?? but he distracts you with soft kisses on your cheeks, leading down to your lips until he pulls away and leaves you wanting more. the mumble from him that, “the cookies are probably cool enough now” has you forgetting your desire for him and replacing it with the golden saucers just waiting for you to demolish them.

hands on his shoulder, you’d firmly push him to the side and hop off the counter. the roll of luca’s eyes would be affectionate and endeared, since you were this excited for his cooking. you were his best customer after all.

your feet would have a mind of their own, floating towards the cookies like a cartoon man levitating towards a pie, lured by the aroma. you start ravaging like a hungry creature. one turns into three as you face your boyfriend, moaning with closed eyes at almost every bite inbetween telling him about what you two did in your dream (he baked you brownies laced with a golden syrup in your dream so you accredit your subconscious to manifesting this).

he would just stand there with a grin, hands on the edge of the sink behind him while leaning on it. usually dreams would be so boring to talk about, but luca swore he could stand there for an eternity just watching you eat his creations and talk about any dream you wanted to share with him.

of course, those cookies would be gone in two days. and in place would be brownies drizzled in a golden syrup that luca took home from work. the surprise would earn him a watery eyed smile, and he’d just shrug and say he had extra time to kill on the evening shift.

[robinfollies]

Been really pondering Fantoccio and the cursed citizens lately… like, if you’re stuck in a city for 15 years with some of your only company being these cursed globby versions of the people that used to surround you normally, you’d start to Notice Things that remind you of who they used to be, right?

[brimbrimbrimbrim]

The Bear and The Baker: Chapter Five - REPEAT (NSFW)

Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Three / Chapter Four / Chapter Five

Summary: She’s relatable and willing to help him figure out how to stop spiraling down a dark hole of anxiety, but she’s pretty and sweet and knows what to say and do… and Carmy just can’t help himself.

(big thanks to @novemberbluesky for beta reading this last chapter <3)

Tags: friends to lovers, UST, RST, pining, wet dreams, masturbation, lots of food talk, reader used to be a pastry chef, mental health, panic attacks, anxiety, meditation, oral sex, cunnilingus, premature ejaculation, handjob, desk sex, first times, virginity, mild dom/sub undertones, kitchen sex, love confessions, blowjobs

Words: 4k

TW: panic attacks

"Christ-" you whine, digging one hand into Carmy's greasy curls on the crown of his head, the other gripping the edge of his desk as his tongue swirls around your areola. Short, sandpaper stubble abrades the bottom swell of your breast as his face presses in, lips open and cheeks caving against your nipple. It's agonizingly good. Each suck and insulated lick's all gummy, sweet, and marvelous like he's molding burnt sugar with his tongue or… or something like that… 

It's a little difficult to think when you're tipped backward, seesawing in Carmy's lap, lower spine against the desk's edge, trembling beneath his hungry attention that switches aimlessly between both bare breasts. Somewhere on the floor lays your bra and maybe your sweater… soon to be home to the rest of your clothes because if Carmen Berzatto doesn't fuck you in the next ten minutes, you're gonna do it for him. 

"Carmy," you hiss, lashes tangled shut and fingers yanking at his scalp, "... teeth. T-too sensitive." 

He pulls away with a moist pop. His upper lip hooked over your swollen nipple, throbbing from a single overzealous bite.

"Sorry," he swallows, slick lips worrying over the tender bud, "… sorry, baby." 

His hot breath fans away the ache, and a wet kiss to the peak dribbles dolce pleasure down your belly, straight between your thighs. Beneath you—against your pelvis—his cock is a dense rod that fogs your senses. 

It's a thicker feeling than it had been even in your mouth. 

Carmy isn't small… which, to be honest, surprised you slightly at first. You've never had anything larger than average, and his approach to flirting and intimacy didn't warn you of anything daunting… though, over the years working in the service industry, food and further niche pockets of upper-class culinary gave you an appreciation for how wrong first impressions could be, as well as a few ulcers and a pesky panic disorder…

Carmy stretches his fingers against your naked spine and presses his hips forward, thighs up, forcing you further into his lap, harder against his sucking lips and branding erection.

"F-fuck," you whimper, squeezing your eyes shut, every draw of his lips sending a throb through your middle.

While a little bit of that time-old anxiety resides in your chest as Carmy kisses and licks all across it, the thrill of something a little scary and unknown is, for once, exciting and not terrifying. But, you grow itchy with each reverent caress Carmy bestows upon your breasts; sweet pecks over their tops, beneath the swell of curvy fat, sweeps of hot tongue across your nipples. He closes his lips around the left to suck it like he had the right, adding moisture to the oven broil that is his mouth. It's slow and lazy, not hurried at all, which only builds up the layers of anticipation until you're rocking against his cock, moaning as he moans… and tugging his hair by the roots, whining as he sucks even harder… those teeth returning in delicate nips. More pleasure oozes through you, dense as caramel toffee, and-

"Taste," he murmurs into your nipple, "so…" an easy bite, "excellent."

Carmy's palm slides across your ribs, then sweep the expanse of smooth skin to your other breast, holding its weight with prickly super glued cuts and fabric bandages. His fingers dent, and a thumb flicks your saliva-slick nipple while the other receives a slash of the tongue. 

"Do you-" you swallow a strained noise and gasp, "Do you want to… fuck me now? W-want you to cum inside me this time."

"Already did…" he murmurs, thumbing your lip with care.

You laugh deliriously, ending the sound with a sigh as Carmy returns to his sweet abuse on your nipples. 

"You know what I mn-mean…." you whimper, fisting the desk's edge a little harder as your fingers release his messy hair to move between your bodies, groping blindly until your thumb bumps across the slippery tip of Carmy's cock, quickly grasping its hot girth for an awkwardly angled stroke, "You're already hard again…"

Carmy's lips slacken, moaning hot over well-loved nerves.

"I want it—want you to fuck me with it this time."

"Ffffuck. Fuck-"Silenced by a squeeze to his dick, you only get a string of stutters as a warning before Carmy picks you up, urging your legs to wrap around his waist before he starts sweeping everything off the surface of his desk. 

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

A part of his brain is sullen over the mess of paper he's just swept to the floor. An empty plastic pint container clicks to the tile; some Sharpies and that mug that says 'How about a cup of shut the fuck up' goes to the floor too, shattering. Carmy pays it no more time than it takes him to give his desk another wide sweep, sending his calendar desktop flopping to his feet as he hauls her up on the edge. The old metal creaks, but the sound is swallowed by an ambrosial moan, dripping with a vanilla glaze as it smothers her lips with his. She still has a lick of brine deep inside from his orgasm, a realization that sends a shiver down his spine—a pulse to his cock.

Her teeth pinch his lower lip, and Carmy shudders anew, hips rocking up to press his dick against the seam of her jeans. She's wearing too much—too many layers between his bare dick and her heated core. 

"Your mug-"she starts, lips sliding off his for a second to glance at the floor, but he's pinching her chin between his fingers and drawing her mouth back to his, eyes off the stupid fucking mess and back to him. A whimper. Another wet kiss, then a bite to his lip, the upper one this time, and Carmy's fingers smooth around her hips, shoving his thumbs in between denim and warm, soft skin.

"Take 'em," a kiss and lick and, "off," then another, deeper slant against his mouth has Carmy trembling with desire. Same shakes he gets on the line when everything's fucked, but nothing about this makes him want to hide in the lock-in and heave through panic and palpitations. Everything about this, right here… it's good—great—and he's gonna do his best to make her feel the same. Replace all that shit about beating hearts signaling their ends and all about it triggering the start of everything .  

"Now," she nips his lip hard enough to snap him into motion.

"Shit," he curses, ripping his swollen mouth away to plant wet kisses across her cheek, down her neck, fumbling with the button beneath her navel. A creeping ache of anxiety fills his throat as his heart pounds rhythmically in his chest, worried he's gonna need help to undress her—worried he's gonna fuck this up, but then he gets lucky as the front clasp comes free, and her zipper slides down easy. Her bottom lifts and Carmy shoves four fingers under denim and cotton, gripping hard and yanking it down her ass and thighs off her calves and ankles. Shoes and socks hit the floor, and ankles return to lock around his bare ass, drawing him and his throbbing dick against the softest, wettest promise he's ever been given. 

It doesn't even register that she's pulling his shirt up his stomach until she gives his chin a peck and asks him to take it off. 'Please, Carmy… wanna see you.' And he's tugging it over his head, sweaty curls falling over his forehead, more exposed than he's ever been… with anyone… 

She kisses him over his pounding heart just above the triangle of ink from his youth. The act causes a palpitation, and a swoop in his stomach, watching her lean back against the desk, spread open and smiling. 

"Fuck," Carmy puffs out, taking in the contours of softness—the peaks and sweat-shined skin perfectly imperfect and deliciously real. That decadent swell of emotion sticks in his throat; it's the same one he felt back when he finally felt like he had a purpose, standing in his toque blanche while the Chef de Cuisine praised his braciole. But it's better now. Refined. Pure.

"Don't keep me waiting," she's smiling, awkwardly sensual, but a beckoning finger above her glistening folds makes his cock bounce. Her gaze drops, staring at it, and Carmy's eyes follow, widening as her heels drag him in, pressed flush—wet and hot. 

Carmy whimpers, licking his lips at the golden-lit sheen of his cock pinned to his stomach by her pussy—the unflagging mass denting her soft mons… dripping precum down between them where it catches the light and the little, stiff bud of her fleshy clit, snug and engorged against a winding vein hugging his shaft. He swallows, holds her hips in both hands, and looks back up, finding her lazy, smiling eyes and hot cheeks. 

"You're sure?" He asks, needing reassurance.

"Very sure.” She smiles until her eyes crinkle, and then gives him a kiss as soft as hand-beaten whipped cream, and Carmy smiles back.

They both shift, her fist wrapping warmly around his shaft, wetting his dick by rubbing his leaky head through her folds. Carmy presses his hips forward when it pops across her clit and grinds a little… just a bit until she's making circles with his cockhead over the tender bud. Carmy could easily cum like this… try as he might, this won't last long, and that's no more apparent than right now… right as she slips his dick down and deep, pulling him in by the heels in his ass. He steps forward, wraps his arms around her, and moans into her mouth.

And Jesus Christ… this isn't just popping his cherry, but emulsifying it into rich, hot syrup, sticky and sweet. The feeling that punctures his spine as Carmy gives in and thrusts, bottoming out with a great, shaky exhale, is without definition… just sensation without a name…

"God," he wheezes into her mouth, trying to kiss her through the steady pulsing around his cock—the whooshing of blood in his ears—the exceptional everything he finds buried inside her for the first time.

First, of many times, he hopes, almost prays. 

"Carmy…" she moans, and he can feel the impatience, another decadent whimper translating into 'move' and 'move fast and fucking hard' so he grabs onto her back and shoulder—arms almost crossed behind her—and dents his fingers in before smacking his hips at a relentless depth. 

She yelps and digs her nails into his scalp. It stings, much like when he was eating her out in his kitchen, and that had been good… she loved that, so Carmy figures 'to hell with it' and picks up the pace, pounding her soaked pussy until she's hiccuping against his lips, whining and groaning and…

… and pushing against his chest, telling him to 'hold on' and 'take it easy' and 'stop…'

"What-what'd I do?" For a second, he gets that flutter in his chest, but not butterflies, just a pause and thick beat that throws cold water down his spine. Did he fuck it up already?

"You okay??" 

" Uh-huh, just— fuck , Carmy."

He stills, carding his fingers through her hair, musing her hot cheeks, trying to get a good look at the damage: watery eyes, a pained creased between her brows, pouty… moist lips so kissable and raw it makes him wanna do anything, and everything to make them curl into a smile. 

"… did I… hurt you or— shit, what'd I do? "

"Cool your jets, Chef," and there is a shaky smile, but something else, "G-give me a second… slower—slow down a little. Please... "

He swallows the sudden urge to ignore everything she's just asked and just… fuck her until the desk dents the wall—until he's stuffing cum inside her like some selfish asshole, but Carmy takes a deep breath against her lips and leans in to kiss her sweaty neck. Acidic brine and umami hit his tongue; it's sex and something even better.

Gradually, the urge to rail her passes, and he just listens, basking in the slick vice wrapped around him. After a few long, drawn-out seconds, her fingers tug at the damp curls on his nape.

"O-okay. Keep going," she sighs, "… just not so rough. Just… just for now."

Carmy nods. Yeah, he can do slow and steady. It's all about patience; he's got that; he just needs to use it for this and not only for stirring jalapeno jelly for six hours straight. Ever so gently, his hips begin to rock slowly and shallowly. Just four or so inches, just a little over half his length, rubbing the delicate outer ring of her pussy. 

"So good," he pants, "… so tight. How— fuck —how much longer?" Carmy doesn't wanna sound too eager or presumptuous, all traits he despises in himself and others, but… fuck… so good. His thrusts start going choppy as she shudders against him.

“I mean… is this…” Carmy gulps and tries to word that last bit better, "Is this okay?"

"Little more… you're, uh , a little too… big… and girthy."

Carmy halts with the swollen bulb of his cockhead held thickly inside her as a rush swoops into his balls, pulling them taut to his body, ready to burst. He blinks lazily against the crook of her neck, heart hammering, so fucking close to losing it. A bead of sweat runs from his hairline to the edge of his nose as his joints lock, fending off the rip of a climax by replaying whispered verbal abuse from CDCs in his ear…

'You're worthless.'

"Cah-Carmy?"

'Say you're scum. Tell me you're nothing. You deserve to be dead.'

"… you're okay," she says against his temple, planting a kiss over beads of sweat while his cock twitches meanly. He's okay. He's got this… like everything else, Carmy can white knuckle his way through it. And, after a few breaths, the edging of his orgasm fades away. 

"Yeah," Carmy almost chuckles, almost cries, but her palms flatten across his bare back, fingers eroding stoney knots of anxiety with gentle rubbing motions of love and heat. With a nasal sigh, Carmy lets go of the trauma and the expectations and kisses her thrumming pulse point beneath her ear.

"Almost came," he admits, muffled against her throat as he noses her clammy skin. It's so fucking hot in his office—that his mind briefly lands on installing a fan when and if this happens again.

"... hey," she whispers, squeezing him in a tight embrace, "if you cum, you cum. It's more than okay."

He licks his lips and rubs his damp forehead over her collarbone. He can see down her body, between her heaving breasts, at his glistening cock held halfway inside her. No, he's not ready to cum just yet…

With a swallow that clicks in the tiny room, Carmy starts to move in and out of her slick pussy. No more than the first three inches delves through her gummy, vice-like heat. She's so much tighter than he remembers from finger fucking her on his kitchen counter—so much sweeter and mind-melting.

"... ffffuck ," he sighs, "I wanna… gonna make you cum, baby." And again, she makes him want more than good food, sanity, and loneliness. He wants to make her feel good. So… so fucking good. So Carmy slows his roll even more, leaving behind shallow and rhythmic for lethargic and deep. It's almost worse—better—this way since he can feel everything. Each inner ridge plump around his dick, contouring to his girth… sucking him in until his tip is lodged against her cervix. 

Carmy gasps as her pussy flutters around him. Her breath sweats across his hairline.

"... like that," she sighs, clinging to him with hands, thighs, and softness. 

"Right. Good… just," Carmy nods, swallowing, "tell me if—fuck—if you…"

She shushes him softly and rubs down his spine, "Just like this, baby."

He nods again and kisses her pulse, running wet lips up with each slow drag of cock, finding her slack mouth with a great, heavy swell of heat that spreads from his chest out into the very tips of his fingers, toes, and outward. She's a full-body sensation, and while Carmy's never been a sommelier—not even close—he thinks this is what they mean by rounded. Perfect notes that end in words like ambrosia, mellow and rich. Carmy breathes her in with a hard thrust that's still achingly slow, feeling everything.

Her breathing grows ragged, puffing against his lips between wet kisses, her mouth hanging open on a moan so sweet his stomach tightens, and a bolt of pleasure tugs his balls. 

"... god damnit. Hah-hang on," Carmy grunts, grabbing the upper heft of her ass, trying to still the gentle rocking of her lower body as he fights off another urge to cum. She giggles—a din of noise like cooling glass candy—but it's not mean; it's breathless and awe-struck. He knows 'cause that's how his laugh sounds when she pinches the meat of his own ass, filling his office with heavy, happy breaths and her hot whispers of 'cum inside me, baby… I know you want to.'

"You're mean, you know," he pants out, smirking with loose lips when she hums in agreement, squeezing the tight muscles in his back as he shifts on his feet.

He wants to cum, and he will, but it's the same devotion that got him Chef of the Year, which makes him hold off, wanting to prove he can make her feel the same bliss she brings him. There's always his tongue, he thinks, almost giving into that primal urge, but this is different. Carmy wants to feel her cum around his dick, so he sucks down his pounding heart, stabilizes his feet shoulder-width apart, his posture precise, then swiftly pulls her to the edge of the desk, hands sweeping to the backs of her thighs with a squeeze. He tilts her beneath the cabinets spilling with unfiled paperwork, knees up against her glistening breasts, and fucks forward. 

" Haaah-ah… fuck, " her fist grips the desk's edge, the other shoved flat under the cabinetry, "D-do that again," she hisses, then softer… sweeter, begs, "... please."

Carmy does it again, just as hard and swift, getting a sound out of her that's pornographic. He does it three more times, just until he feels her thighs trembling in his palms, then lets his cock slip completely out.

"Wha… what are you-"

He grabs his wet dick and smears the head through her folds, nudging the plump bulb of her clit, ignoring how good it feels to tap and rub it with his plush cockhead, focusing instead on the quiet puffing moans… the way her hips grind forward, swirling herself against the raw contact.

"Jesus Christ, Carmy. If you… keep doing that," she pauses to whimper, "I'm gonna cum."

"I'm gonna make you—fuck—gonna fuck you until your too fuckin' weak to walk out of here," he promises, giving her clit a final, sticky smack before pressing down and back in with a hard thrust. It's effortless this time. She's so impossibly wet.

He fucks her just like she wants, giving unforgiving, precise thrusts, bottoming out at an angle that combs over her thickened sweet spot. With every slap of his hips, he can feel it firming up. Each meticulous, well-angled motion dials her moans up higher. Her hands are suddenly around his waist, holding on tight. That flutter he felt before becomes a wet, noisy slurp, getting wetter and louder… tighter and hotter. Carmy repeats his method several times: thrusting, pulling out, rubbing and tapping, back inside… fucking… and pounding until his heart's in his throat and sweat running down his temples, stinging his eyes. She's just as wrecked, perspiring under his hands on the backs of her knees, licking it off her upper lip and cheeks, hot and shiny.

"... oh, fuck—I'm… yes," she rips a hand off his side to lay flat on his desk. Her hips start to meet his in a messy, slippery mash. 

Carmy watches, hypnotized. The jiggle of her breasts is only one of many mouth-watering delights like she's some feast prepared just for him, by him… steaming, boiling, cooking him alive. Fuck, he's not gonna last… and she's so close… 

Just a little more—just another minute or more.

“I-I-fuck, fuck… I got this…”

He's chewing on his lower lip, watching the rapid blur of his cock as it pistons and slaps, disappearing and emerging, covered in shiny arousal. Her pussy is raw and swollen, her inner lips hugging him. She's sobbing, tears in her eyes, and, for a second, Carmy thinks he's done something wrong. Maybe he's hurt her… perhaps she's been pretending all along, or maybe he's been too selfish to take her hiccuping moans for what they really are, but then she's pressing up and forward, clawing at his back, leaving red welts through sweaty skin, shivering and trembling. 

She yelps like someone spilled boiling water over her lap, then clenches down on his dick in a way that throws him into the back of his own body. It's all auto-pilot now…

“... fff’uh-fuck!”

Grunts rush between his teeth, his lips pressed into a white, pulsing line as the office fills with the rapid, wet slap of skin meeting skin; it claps with her 'uh' and 'ah's and his hot gushing exhales. He feels a fever wash over him. 

Carmy winces with nails in his back, feeling everything all at once until the pressure in his lower back doubles, gripping his pelvis, balls, and upper thighs… until… it just… snaps…

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

A dim flicker of sapphire catches in his left eye from the lamp light. It glitters and gleams. Melted ice. 

Deep lines grin beneath his eyes, trapped emotions spilling free. It would be odd coming from anyone else, but you think it's beautiful with Carmy. 

Popping your cherry or lancing a wound, you think only partially consciously; sometimes , the difference is slim to none.

His dick twitches inside you, deep and thick, almost parallel to the soft, vulnerable line of his lips, their downward hook on either side and the tremble in the lower plush. Your hand finds his jawline, the scratchy five o'clock grating. His shoulders tense and shake, but he takes a great breath and lets it out as your palm moves upwards, a thumb sweeping away the tear before it can fall. It all feels terribly romantic until his right eye brims with moisture, and a drop escapes, leaving a line of shine behind. 

"Oh, Carmy…" you murmur without thinking, "Should we have laid you out on a feather bed your first time?"

Judging by the silence, your poor attempt at a joke goes over poorly. A sick prick of anxiety settles in your chest as another tear breaches his lashes. Quickly, you shift despite your sore back, midway to wrapping both arms around him when his lips twitch. Carmy smiles—a snort of hot breath and then a smirk.

"I don't know, blowing my load in Mikey's office feels pretty good," Carmy's smile lifts tight on one end, "I mean, I loved the asshole, but this is…" a whistling sigh, "pretty sure he deserves this. Sorta payback."

"Could say it's also a comeback, " you grin, relishing the surprised cough of laughter from Carmy, lashes fluttering when the both of you feel his dick jostling softly inside you.

"Hey," he whispers, the vibe dropping to somber, "you're okay, though? Right?"

"M'hm," you smile, leaning in, fingers teasing the sweaty curls at his nape, "are you… okay? "

Your lips press in, brows up and open to reassure him you won't judge his answer. When he stays mute, you thumb the slick spot behind his ear, "Seriously, I mean… first times should be a bit… nicer than this. Not that it wasn't nice—it was great—the best—I just… I, uh, hope it lived up to your expectations." 

Jesus, you think you sound like an executive apology video. 

Carmy's smile drops for a second, eyes lazy and large, looking into you like he sees each stutter, each heartbeat, and flaw, loving it all. Tentatively, he closes the distance, kissing you as if it's the first time… like, after everything, there's a chance you'll pull away... 

"It's perfect," another kiss, "it's fucking perfect." His voice breaks a bit with a whisper, "Thank you…."

You swipe a cool tear from beneath his soggy lashes and whisper, "What about these?"

Carmy huffs, good-humored, "Just got something in my eyes, is all."

You snort, then blush, about to apologize for your awkwardness, but Carmy just grins, showing some teeth with that love in his eyes again, and gives you another soft kiss. The aftermath of fucking on his desk is not magical—that's not how reality works—but it's relaxed. There's something like butterflies in your tummy when Carmy fails to bite down a whimper as your bodies disconnect, releasing a hot trickle of cum between your crushed globes.

Paper wings flap harder when he excuses himself with a stutter, begging you to 'stay right there' using his hands to coo you into stillness before rushing on weak knees out of the office, black jeans still sagging around his bare ass. He returns with a wet cloth, muttering 'shit' under his breath as he hesitates at the mess dripping off the desk. 

"Bet you wish I made a mad dash to the bathroom now, hm?" He blinks, looking a little hungry. You chuckle, feeling your muscles tighten and cum ooze. Carmy just gulps and finally slips the rag between your splayed thighs.

"Naw," he smirks, nose against yours as the pressure of the damp cloth, his hand, and your swollen folds brings your heat beat south, "it's a good look on you."

"You're filthy."

It might be far more awkward to share this vulnerable moment with him, where his shaky palm wipes away your combined fluids from your sore pussy, your hips tilted out, and his other hand raising one leg. The kiss he presses to the cap of your knee? That should be corny and sickly, but it makes your heart skip happily… happy skipping… as if you'd forgotten it could do that.

"Thanks," you whisper, lower lip between your teeth.

"Sorry-" he winces, trying to dab away a dollop on your inner thigh, "-sorry, there's uh, there's a lot. Jesus. I really made a mess, huh?"

Something about the quiver of awe in his voice makes your pussy contract again, more cum heating out, only for Carmy to wipe it up with a groan of, "Fuck me… kinda looks like a" He stops, but you know exactly what's going through his mind because he thinks in food and sauces like you feel in flour and candied orange peels.

"A creampie? A twinkie? Bavarian Cream Donut?"

Carmy's lower lip droops, his face ruddy red. You think he will flounder for words like a fish for air, but he drops his head, shoulders limp, and shakes with a quiet laugh. He rubs at his nose and smirks, thumb and forefinger pinching the tacky fat of your inner thigh, right where that stray drop of jizz had been a moment ago. Cheeky and happy, you think, liking the look on him so much that you lean forward and plant a peck on his blotchy jaw. 

You both help each other dress in comfortable silence, nothing but the howl of the wind outside the restaurant and distant car horns.

As Carmy tugs the hem of your sweater around your hips, he swallows—the sound of a bomb in the quiet, "Do you… wanna maybe get some coffee?"

"Thought you didn't fuck with caffeine?" You smirk, watching his hooded eyes open up a bit more as his gaze lifts from your chest to your lips, then your eyes. He matches your look, then drops his sweaty face into the crook of your neck and mumbles, "Yeah, but…" followed by three little words. They're a whisper, more like, but they feel loud and real… more real than anything—more real than the sex, panic attacks, or kneading the dough with a head chef screaming in your ear…

"I might…" you pause, sliding your arms around his shoulders, fingers threading over the back of his greasy scalp, "… feel the same way."

His response is a hug hotter than the heat rattling in the walls, tighter than the choke of fear, but soft, sweet, sugared, and spiced. 

"Heard, Chef."

And you love him, fierce and suddenly, yet not so sudden as it suddenly feels.

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Carmy doesn't mess with caffeine like she said, and he must have said at some point, but he's sipping on a cup of black because it's midnight, and he's not done just yet. Somehow, against all odds, he made her cum on his cock less than an hour ago, but it's still two to one in his favor, and he wants to study how her brows lift and crease when she orgasms at least once more tonight. 

"You're being pretty quiet for someone who just got laid, ya know?"

He looks up to find the woman he wants to spend the rest of his shitty life with, looking just as flushed as she did when she came.

"We're not having an existential crisis, are we?" She says it with some humor, but it's dusted in insecurities and quickly covered by a sip of tea. Carmy can sniff that shit out faster than she can hide it cause he understands that shit all too well, but it's nothing like she thinks. If anything, he's almost more nervous to admit how wrapped in his thoughts she is—how soaked into his skin she feels. After what they did an hour ago… as if getting his dick wet has made him some fucking horn dog, she's all he wants to do. Kinda like trying to make up for lost time, maybe.

"Another one? Naw. No, I'm just…" he looks around the coffee shop; it's quiet—it's late—but there are still a couple occupied tables, "I was just-did you wanna… I dunno," he shrugs, looking into his coffee, "come back to my place tonight?"

Her cheeks are blushing near swollen when he glances up, but the smile on her face bolsters his confidence. All that fragrant affection and sweetness makes Carmy feel warm despite the chill the old coffee shop's heater just can't shake. 

"Sure. Did you, umm… " her thumbs brush the lip of her cup, "what-what did you wanna do?"

"Fuck you again," it's an exhale laced with self-deprecating humor to mask his nerves.

"Oh," her lips form a puffy little circle, reminding him how it felt to have them wrapped around his cock earlier. The light rush of blood to his groin almost makes him laugh, like his body waking up for the first time. Carmy needs to reign it in… doesn't wanna come across as desperate or greedy, but then again…

"Sorry, that was… I just-just wanna keep doing whatever this is." He tries to emphasize whatever 'this is' with a palm waving against his chest, gesturing between them, "Been awhile since I've felt like…" 

The word escapes him, though a quick glance at her soft smile says she gets it.

"This. Yeah," she whispers, grin growing.

"Yea, this." Carmy agrees and takes a sip of black coffee, bitter and nutty; the roast over-brewed but rich. 

"And, yes, by the way… I'm up for round two if you are."

"Good," he breathes out, a mixture of relief and palpitations.

"Good."

After a minute of comfortable silence, an older Italian man sets a ceramic dish of cheese and raspberry danishes on the table, sparing a fleeting glance between them before dropping a few napkins by the pastries and ambling back behind the counter.

Carmy watches over thin steam trails as she slides the dish between them and breaks off a corner heaped with sweetened mascarpone. She pops it between her lips and sighs, "These things are always better a little stale."

Carmy's brows lift even as his lashes lower, "Didn't think you'd be the type."

She throws him a smart look and takes a sip of tea before snapping the Danish in half and shoving the flaky, sticky thing in her mouth. It's adorable—cute and sweet, and Carmy's heart beats a little faster… or is that the caffeine?

"Don't be such a purist, Carmy," she says after swallowing, brushing away crumbs, and licking her lips clean. He thinks of cum and blowjobs and kisses in the dim office back at the shop and nervous habits in the rain beneath the car park… and his breathing stalls for a second. Then she takes another bite and hums at the look on his face like she knows—fucking knows—exactly what's on his mind. 

Like he's become some fuckin' horn dog overnight. Wild to think about. Cousin would probably bark at the moon knowing his baby bitch got laid.

Thank fuck it's Sunday tomorrow.

Carmy's shoulders laugh, lips twisted, "Look, don't for a second think I've never eaten three-day-old pasta out the fridge in the middle of the night… cause I've done even worse than that. Not even ashamed," a pause, "... well, maybe a bit."

"Ah, so your standards are finally called into question, Chef of the Year, " she jokes and gestures for him to finish the cheese danish while she breaks the raspberry one in half. "Seriously, I could never understand why my old pâtissier wanted these batched fresh every few hours… something about the filling solidifying, gunking up the filo… just tastes better the next day."

Nostalgic patina coats her words, her cheeks, and her eyes. It looks sad but full, and Carmy swallows before sinking back into his chair. They've talked about childhoods and pasts a few times, but it feels different now. Things are different, so Carmy scrubs his palm across his lips and settles in.

"When I was a kid, my brother and… we'd make pizzas on the weekend, right? Just the two of us. Every Monday morning for breakfast, we'd eat the leftovers cold," he says, licking his lips and tasting salt, "but it wasn't just cold pizza, like, it was homemade, so not so bad. But the thing is, we'd end up ladling these huge globs of jelly and peanut butter on them, fold 'em in half, and have these cold pizza peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch."

"That sounds…" pausing, then her nose scrunches with a smile, "super gross."

Carmy laughs silently, "Not as gross as congealed sweet cheeses."

The sadness melts away, and her eyes twinkle with mirth. 

" Mmm, same level of heresy, but… that's the power of nostalgia, yeah? As kids, we eat what's there or easy, and it sticks with us…"

"Guess you could say food's good at that."

"Hm?" It's a mindless sound as she stares intently ahead, right into his own sleepy, dreamy gaze mixed with gap-toothed times of old and love-drunk highs of now.

"Memories," Carmy clarifies, "You know, making us feel shit when we're—fuck, I dunno—when we're struggling… like a stale danish can make us just fucking forget about everything for a while."

"… yeah. Or like, not just forget but feel."

"Yeah." He likes that. Feeling instead of forgetting or reliving bullshit that leaves him full of grief and bitterness. If he squints, looking for those feelings, they're far away, replaced by syrupy sweetness and sex hormones.

"Heh, yeah." She muses with a blush, fingers pitter-pattering against her cup of tea, eyes trained through the dark window pane on her right and then back at him with an even deeper color, "So, umm… think I'm ready to go—go back to yours I mean."

"Bake some fresh danishes, right? Or?" Carmy smirks, feeling oddly confident.

A coy little smile hitches up on one side of her face, "Or, maybe danishes if you're lucky."

"First time… starting to think I might be."

Lucky… yeah.

AO3 Link: HERE

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tiktok's enshittification

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

When a platform starts, it needs users, so it makes itself valuable to users. Think of Amazon: for many years, it operated at a loss, using its access to the capital markets to subsidize everything you bought. It sold goods below cost and shipped them below cost. It operated a clean and useful search. If you searched for a product, Amazon tried its damndest to put it at the top of the search results.

This was a hell of a good deal for Amazon’s customers. Lots of us piled in, and lots of brick-and-mortar retailers withered and died, making it hard to go elsewhere. Amazon sold us ebooks and audiobooks that were permanently locked to its platform with DRM, so that every dollar we spent on media was a dollar we’d have to give up if we deleted Amazon and its apps. And Amazon sold us Prime, getting us to pre-pay for a year’s worth of shipping. Prime customers start their shopping on Amazon, and 90% of the time, they don’t search anywhere else.

That tempted in lots of business customers — Marketplace sellers who turned Amazon into the “everything store” it had promised from the beginning. As these sellers piled in, Amazon shifted to subsidizing suppliers. Kindle and Audible creators got generous packages. Marketplace sellers reached huge audiences and Amazon took low commissions from them.

This strategy meant that it became progressively harder for shoppers to find things anywhere except Amazon, which meant that they only searched on Amazon, which meant that sellers had to sell on Amazon.

That’s when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and send it to Amazon’s shareholders. Today, Marketplace sellers are handing 45%+ of the sale price to Amazon in junk fees. The company’s $31b “advertising” program is really a payola scheme that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to bid on the chance to be at the top of your search.

Searching Amazon doesn’t produce a list of the products that most closely match your search, it brings up a list of products whose sellers have paid the most to be at the top of that search. Those fees are built into the cost you pay for the product, and Amazon’s “Most Favored Nation” requirement sellers means that they can’t sell more cheaply elsewhere, so Amazon has driven prices at every retailer.

Search Amazon for “cat beds” and the entire first screen is ads, including ads for products Amazon cloned from its own sellers, putting them out of business (third parties have to pay 45% in junk fees to Amazon, but Amazon doesn’t charge itself these fees). All told, the first five screens of results for “cat bed” are 50% ads.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.

This is why — as Cat Valente wrote in her magesterial pre-Christmas essay — platforms like Prodigy transformed themselves overnight, from a place where you went for social connection to a place where you were expected to “stop talking to each other and start buying things”:

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

This shell-game with surpluses is what happened to Facebook. First, Facebook was good to you: it showed you the things the people you loved and cared about had to say. This created a kind of mutual hostage-taking: once a critical mass of people you cared about were on Facebook, it became effectively impossible to leave, because you’d have to convince all of them to leave too, and agree on where to go. You may love your friends, but half the time you can’t agree on what movie to see and where to go for dinner. Forget it.

Then, it started to cram your feed full of posts from accounts you didn’t follow. At first, it was media companies, who Facebook preferentially crammed down its users’ throats so that they would click on articles and send traffic to newspapers, magazines and blogs.

Then, once those publications were dependent on Facebook for their traffic, it dialed down their traffic. First, it choked off traffic to publications that used Facebook to run excerpts with links to their own sites, as a way of driving publications into supplying fulltext feeds inside Facebook’s walled garden.

This made publications truly dependent on Facebook — their readers no longer visited the publications’ websites, they just tuned into them on Facebook. The publications were hostage to those readers, who were hostage to each other. Facebook stopped showing readers the articles publications ran, tuning The Algorithm to suppress posts from publications unless they paid to “boost” their articles to the readers who had explicitly subscribed to them and asked Facebook to put them in their feeds.

Now, Facebook started to cram more ads into the feed, mixing payola from people you wanted to hear from with payola from strangers who wanted to commandeer your eyeballs. It gave those advertisers a great deal, charging a pittance to target their ads based on the dossiers of nonconsensually harvested personal data they’d stolen from you.

Sellers became dependent on Facebook, too, unable to carry on business without access to those targeted pitches. That was Facebook’s cue to jack up ad prices, stop worrying so much about ad fraud, and to collude with Google to rig the ad market through an illegal program called Jedi Blue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Today, Facebook is terminally enshittified, a terrible place to be whether you’re a user, a media company, or an advertiser. It’s a company that deliberately demolished a huge fraction of the publishers it relied on, defrauding them into a “pivot to video” based on false claims of the popularity of video among Facebook users. Companies threw billions into the pivot, but the viewers never materialized, and media outlets folded in droves:

https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html

But Facebook has a new pitch. It claims to be called Meta, and it has demanded that we live out the rest of our days as legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-poly cartoon characters.

It has promised companies that make apps for this metaverse that it won’t rug them the way it did the publishers on the old Facebook. It remains to be seen whether they’ll get any takers. As Mark Zuckerberg once candidly confessed to a peer, marvelling at all of his fellow Harvard students who sent their personal information to his new website “TheFacebook”:

> I don’t know why.

> They “trust me”

> Dumb fucks.

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

Once you understand the enshittification pattern, a lot of the platform mysteries solve themselves. Think of the SEO market, or the whole energetic world of online creators who spend endless hours engaged in useless platform Kremlinology, hoping to locate the algorithmic tripwires, which, if crossed, doom the creative works they pour their money, time and energy into:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/11/coercion-v-cooperation/#the-machine-is-listening

Working for the platform can be like working for a boss who takes money out of every paycheck for all the rules you broke, but who won’t tell you what those rules are because if he told you that, then you’d figure out how to break those rules without him noticing and docking your pay. Content moderation is the only domain where security through obscurity is considered a best practice:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

The situation is so dire that organizations like Tracking Exposed have enlisted an human army of volunteers and a robot army of headless browsers to try to unwind the logic behind the arbitrary machine judgments of The Algorithm, both to give users the option to tune the recommendations they receive, and to help creators avoid the wage theft that comes from being shadow banned:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/tracking-exposed-demanding-gods-explain-themselves

But what if there is no underlying logic? Or, more to the point, what if the logic shifts based on the platform’s priorities? If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you’ll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.

The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he’d carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers — as a convincer in a “Big Store” con, a way to rope in other suckers who’ll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.

Which brings me to Tiktok. Tiktok is many different things, including “a free Adobe Premiere for teenagers that live on their phones.”

https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-fragments-of-media-you-consume

But what made it such a success early on was the power of its recommendation system. From the start, Tiktok was really, really good at recommending things to its users. Eerily good:

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1093882880

By making good-faith recommendations of things it thought its users would like, Tiktok built a mass audience, larger than many thought possible, given the death grip of its competitors, like Youtube and Instagram. Now that Tiktok has the audience, it is consolidating its gains and seeking to lure away the media companies and creators who are still stubbornly attached to Youtube and Insta.

Yesterday, Forbes’s Emily Baker-White broke a fantastic story about how that actually works inside of Bytedance, Tiktok’s parent company, citing multiple internal sources, revealing the existence of a “heating tool” that Tiktok employees use push videos from select accounts into millions of viewers’ feeds:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/

These videos go into Tiktok users’ ForYou feeds, which Tiktok misleadingly describes as being populated by videos “ranked by an algorithm that predicts your interests based on your behavior in the app.” In reality, For You is only sometimes composed of videos that Tiktok thinks will add value to your experience — the rest of the time, it’s full of videos that Tiktok has inserted in order to make creators think that Tiktok is a great place to reach an audience.

“Sources told Forbes that TikTok has often used heating to court influencers and brands, enticing them into partnerships by inflating their videos’ view count. This suggests that heating has potentially benefitted some influencers and brands — those with whom TikTok has sought business relationships — at the expense of others with whom it has not.”

In other words, Tiktok is handing out giant teddy bears.

But Tiktok is not in the business of giving away giant teddy bears. Tiktok, for all that its origins are in the quasi-capitalist Chinese economy, is just another paperclip-maximizing artificial colony organism that treats human beings as inconvenient gut flora. Tiktok is only going to funnel free attention to the people it wants to entrap until they are entrapped, then it will withdraw that attention and begin to monetize it.

“Monetize” is a terrible word that tacitly admits that there is no such thing as an “Attention Economy.” You can’t use attention as a medium of exchange. You can’t use it as a store of value. You can’t use it as a unit of account. Attention is like cryptocurrency: a worthless token that is only valuable to the extent that you can trick or coerce someone into parting with “fiat” currency in exchange for it. You have to “monetize” it — that is, you have to exchange the fake money for real money.

In the case of cryptos, the main monetization strategy was deception-based. Exchanges and “projects” handed out a bunch of giant teddy-bears, creating an army of true-believer Judas goats who convinced their peers to hand the carny their money and try to get some balls into the peach-basket themselves.

But deception only produces so much “liquidity provision.” Eventually, you run out of suckers. To get lots of people to try the ball-toss, you need coercion, not persuasion. Think of how US companies ended the defined benefits pension that guaranteed you a dignified retirement, replacing it with market-based 401(k) pensions that forced you to gamble your savings in a rigged casino, making you the sucker at the table, ripe for the picking:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

Early crypto liquidity came from ransomware. The existence of a pool of desperate, panicked companies and individuals whose data had been stolen by criminals created a baseline of crypto liquidity because they could only get their data back by trading real money for fake crypto money.

The next phase of crypto coercion was Web3: converting the web into a series of tollbooths that you could only pass through by trading real money for fake crypto money. The internet is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, a prerequisite for full participation in employment, education, family life, health, politics, civics, even romance. By holding all those things to ransom behind crypto tollbooths, the hodlers hoped to convert their tokens to real money:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

For Tiktok, handing out free teddy-bears by “heating” the videos posted by skeptical performers and media companies is a way to convert them to true believers, getting them to push all their chips into the middle of the table, abandoning their efforts to build audiences on other platforms (it helps that Tiktok’s format is distinctive, making it hard to repurpose videos for Tiktok to circulate on rival platforms).

Once those performers and media companies are hooked, the next phase will begin: Tiktok will withdraw the “heating” that sticks their videos in front of people who never heard of them and haven’t asked to see their videos. Tiktok is performing a delicate dance here: there’s only so much enshittification they can visit upon their users’ feeds, and Tiktok has lots of other performers they want to give giant teddy-bears to.

Tiktok won’t just starve performers of the “free” attention by depreferencing them in the algorithm, it will actively punish them by failing to deliver their videos to the users who subscribed to them. After all, every time Tiktok shows you a video you asked to see, it loses a chance to show you a video it wants you to see, because your attention is a giant teddy-bear it can give away to a performer it is wooing.

This is just what Twitter has done as part of its march to enshittification: thanks to its “monetization” changes, the majority of people who follow you will never see the things you post. I have ~500k followers on Twitter and my threads used to routinely get hundreds of thousands or even millions of reads. Today, it’s hundreds, perhaps thousands.

I just handed Twitter $8 for Twitter Blue, because the company has strongly implied that it will only show the things I post to the people who asked to see them if I pay ransom money. This is the latest battle in one of the internet’s longest-simmering wars: the fight over end-to-end:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

In the beginning, there were Bellheads and Netheads. The Bellheads worked for big telcos, and they believed that all the value of the network rightly belonged to the carrier. If someone invented a new feature — say, Caller ID — it should only be rolled out in a way that allows the carrier to charge you every month for its use. This is Software-As-a-Service, Ma Bell style.

The Netheads, by contrast, believed that value should move to the edges of the network — spread out, pluralized. In theory, Compuserve could have “monetized” its own version of Caller ID by making you pay $2.99 extra to see the “From:” line on email before you opened the message — charging you to know who was speaking before you started listening — but they didn’t.

The Netheads wanted to build diverse networks with lots of offers, lots of competition, and easy, low-cost switching between competitors (thanks to interoperability). Some wanted this because they believed that the net would someday be woven into the world, and they didn’t want to live in a world of rent-seeking landlords. Others were true believers in market competition as a source of innovation. Some believed both things. Either way, they saw the risk of network capture, the drive to monetization through trickery and coercion, and they wanted to head it off.

They conceived of the end-to-end principle: the idea that networks should be designed so that willing speakers’ messages would be delivered to willing listeners’ end-points as quickly and reliably as they could be. That is, irrespective of whether a network operator could make money by sending you the data it wanted to receive, its duty would be to provide you with the data you wanted to see.

The end-to-end principle is dead at the service level today. Useful idiots on the right were tricked into thinking that the risk of Twitter mismanagement was “woke shadowbanning,” whereby the things you said wouldn’t reach the people who asked to hear them because Twitter’s deep state didn’t like your opinions. The real risk, of course, is that the things you say won’t reach the people who asked to hear them because Twitter can make more money by enshittifying their feeds and charging you ransom for the privilege to be included in them.

As I said at the start of this essay, enshittification exerts a nearly irresistible gravity on platform capitalism. It’s just too easy to turn the enshittification dial up to eleven. Twitter was able to fire the majority of its skilled staff and still crank the dial all the way over, even with a skeleton crew of desperate, demoralized H1B workers who are shackled to Twitter’s sinking ship by the threat of deportation.

The temptation to enshittify is magnified by the blocks on interoperability: when Twitter bans interoperable clients, nerfs its APIs, and periodically terrorizes its users by suspending them for including their Mastodon handles in their bios, it makes it harder to leave Twitter, and thus increases the amount of enshittification users can be force-fed without risking their departure.

Twitter is not going to be a “protocol.” I’ll bet you a testicle¹ that projects like Bluesky will find no meaningful purchase on the platform, because if Bluesky were implemented and Twitter users could order their feeds for minimal enshittification and leave the service without sacrificing their social networks, it would kill the majority of Twitter’s “monetization” strategies.

¹Not one of mine.

An enshittification strategy only succeeds if it is pursued in measured amounts. Even the most locked-in user eventually reaches a breaking-point and walks away, or gets pushed. The villagers of Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof tolerated the cossacks' violent raids and pogroms for years, until they were finally forced to flee to Krakow, New York and Chicago:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

For enshittification-addled companies, that balance is hard to strike. Individual product managers, executives, and activist shareholders all give preference to quick returns at the cost of sustainability, and are in a race to see who can eat their seed-corn first. Enshittification has only lasted for as long as it has because the internet has devolved into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”:

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

With the market sewn up by a group of cozy monopolists, better alternatives don’t pop up and lure us away, and if they do, the monopolists just buy them out and integrate them into your enshittification strategies, like when Mark Zuckerberg noticed a mass exodus of Facebook users who were switching to Instagram, and so he bought Instagram. As Zuck says, “It is better to buy than to compete.”

This is the hidden dynamic behind the rise and fall of Amazon Smile, the program whereby Amazon gave a small amount of money to charities of your choice when you shopped there, but only if you used Amazon’s own search tool to locate the products you purchased. This provided an incentive for Amazon customers to use its own increasingly enshittified search, which it could cram full of products from sellers who coughed up payola, as well as its own lookalike products. The alternative was to use Google, whose search tool would send you directly to the product you were looking for, and then charge Amazon a commission for sending you to it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10ft5iv/comment/j4znb8y/

The demise of Amazon Smile coincides with the increasing enshittification of Google Search, the only successful product the company managed to build in-house. All its other successes were bought from other companies: video, docs, cloud, ads, mobile; while its own products are either flops like Google Video, clones (Gmail is a Hotmail clone), or adapted from other companies’ products, like Chrome.

Google Search was based on principles set out in founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s landmark 1998 paper, “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” in which they wrote, “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”

http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/361/

Even with that foundational understanding of enshittification, Google has been unable to resist its siren song. Today’s Google results are an increasingly useless morass of self-preferencing links to its own products, ads for products that aren’t good enough to float to the top of the list on its own, and parasitic SEO junk piggybacking on the former.

Enshittification kills. Google just laid off 12,000 employees, and the company is in a full-blown “panic” over the rise of “AI” chatbots, and is making a full-court press for an AI-driven search tool — that is, a tool that won’t show you what you ask for, but rather, what it thinks you should see:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23563851/google-search-ai-chatbot-demo-chatgpt

Now, it’s possible to imagine that such a tool will produce good recommendations, like Tiktok’s pre-enshittified algorithm did. But it’s hard to see how Google will be able to design a non-enshittified chatbot front-end to search, given the strong incentives for product managers, executives, and shareholders to enshittify results to the precise threshold at which users are nearly pissed off enough to leave, but not quite.

Even if it manages the trick, this-almost-but-not-quite-unusuable equilibrium is fragile. Any exogenous shock — a new competitor like Tiktok that penetrates the anticompetitive “moats and walls” of Big Tech, a privacy scandal, a worker uprising — can send it into wild oscillations:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/08/watch-the-surpluses/#exogenous-shocks

Enshittification truly is how platforms die. That’s fine, actually. We don’t need eternal rulers of the internet. It’s okay for new ideas and new ways of working to emerge. The emphasis of lawmakers and policymakers shouldn’t be preserving the crepuscular senescence of dying platforms. Rather, our policy focus should be on minimizing the cost to users when these firms reach their expiry date: enshrining rights like end-to-end would mean that no matter how autocannibalistic a zombie platform became, willing speakers and willing listeners would still connect with each other:

https://doctorow.medium.com/end-to-end-d6046dca366f

And policymakers should focus on freedom of exit — the right to leave a sinking platform while continuing to stay connected to the communities that you left behind, enjoying the media and apps you bought, and preserving the data you created:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

The Netheads were right: technological self-determination is at odds with the natural imperatives of tech businesses. They make more money when they take away our freedom — our freedom to speak, to leave, to connect.

For many years, even Tiktok’s critics grudgingly admitted that no matter how surveillant and creepy it was, it was really good at guessing what you wanted to see. But Tiktok couldn’t resist the temptation to show you the things it wants you to see, rather than what you want to see. The enshittification has begun, and now it is unlikely to stop.

It's too late to save Tiktok. Now that it has been infected by enshittifcation, the only thing left is to kill it with fire.

[Image ID: Hansel and Gretel in front of the witch's candy house. Hansel and Gretel have been replaced with line-drawings of influencers, taking selfies of themselves with the candy house. In front of the candy house stands a portly man in a business suit; his head is a sack of money with a dollar-sign on it. He wears a crooked witch's hat. The cottage has the Tiktok logo on it.]

[swiftietartt]

NOT STRONG ENOUGH — BOYGENIUS

[scorchedmazes]

me and @sadgalwrites planning a baker/chef minally fic…

[colourme-feral]

Annnnnd once again, no one asked for this, but here is GMMTV 2024 Part 2′s shared filming locations game in thai ql,

Ossan's Love Thailand and Moonlight Chicken

The Heart Killers, Pit Babe and its Official Trailer, Playboyy Official Teaser and Midnight Motel

Revamp the Undead Story, Tell the World I Love You, Pit Babe, Dead Friend Forever - DFF Pre-Release, My Dear Gangster Oppa, Y-Destiny, Return Man, 55:15 Never Too Late, Midnight Motel, Never Let Me Go and My Only 12% (1, 2)

The Dark Dice, Baker Boys, I Will Knock You, My School President (and its pilot trailer), PP Krit - ลังเล [Official MV],  Never Let Me Go, You’re My Sky and The Miracle of Teddy Bear (location)

GMMTV 2024 PART 1・OTHER SHARED FILMING LOCATIONS

[me-sploh-rada-imas]

have we talked abou the difference between the way nace holds his own face and the way jan holds it yet?

thinking about how gentle jan's hand is even though he's covering nace's mouth. the way nace's hands distort his face and his eyes and he looks in distress. but jan avoids nace's eyes. and nace is looking at him like that.

[starleska]

fun little thing for all you TimeToys (the Doctor x the Toymaker) fans...the Toymaker has a teddy bear on one of his shelves that looks awfully similar to the one Six keeps in his coat pockets. fanfic fodder, anyone? 😉

[lifeofloon]

Making Rainbow Chocolate Chip Cookies...

It's a process 🌈🍪🐻

[samirafee]

#MAJA🐈🐾🌼WISHING YOU A SMILEY, SUNNY DAFFODIL SORT OF DAY💛💛💛

@samirafee

[firecooking]

Zero Marine Bigg City Corporate Pride Shilling

Asexual, Aromantic, Baker Original Baker Update, Bear, Bisexual Bigender, Demigender, Gay Reverse Gay, Genderqueer, Genderfluid Intersex, Leather, Lesbian Polysexual, Toothpaste Transgender, Twink

And because i made them

[bezierballad]

[v-4-l-0-n]

“The gay flag copies the lesbian flag !!!!🥺🥺🥺” mfs when the ocean flag was based on the toothpaste flag which was based on the sunset flag which was based on the lipstick (+ butch) flag which was based on the cougar flag which was based on the bear flag which was based on the leather flag which was based on the Gilbert baker flag