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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months ago

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Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

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/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

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ritens · 1 year ago

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Miserable attempt at drawing Grendel Prime aside why not give one highest tier pack away for free? As a treat.

(generously provided by Digital Extremes)

More about the PA here.

RULES

Giveaway ends October 29th 2023. One randomly selected winner.

TO PARTICIPATE: Reply to this post with a food item you'd like to see in the game.

You don’t have to be a follower. Don’t have to reblog this post either unless you wish to spread it among your folks.

Extra notes below:

Same as last time I’ll be writing down each participant with an assigned number and select the winner on October 29th via RNG. The winner will receive a DM from me and be tagged under this post. Reblogs (and replies) of this post will be turned off at that time as well.

Prize should arrive on November 1st after 2pm EST / 6pm GMT

Just to be safe here's Guidelines page for giveaways on tumblr. Don't come for my hind I'm trying to be fair ok.

Learned from last time that asking for people's IGN and platform feels a bit invasive so from now on I'll try to come up with some questions to answer in order to participate. More fun that way also!

Cheers!

#free wf pa #warframe #grendel prime #complete

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kimbap-r0ll · 1 year ago

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Hello, Kimbap! May I request the overblot victims with an s/o who's got the ability to manipulate all kinds of electronics (computers, tvs, traffic lights) within her sight? She can also remotely control communication lines at quick speeds with this ability.

Wait that's such an interesting idea 😭 thank you for the ask! I'm sticking to the overblotters from the English version for this one ^^

Overblot students x s/o who can manipulate electronics/communications

Riddle

First doesn't really see the reason behind it, thinks it's cool but doesn't see himself necessarily asking for help

He tends to like using everything on pen and paper still, so if he has to write emails or do things online, he may ask you there. In return, he helps you with things like snail mail (his handwriting's beautiful btw)

I feel like overall he would find it to be cool and will ask you about your abilities just to learn more about you. However, he won't be needing your powers anytime soon (just more simple online help would be enough)

Leona

He will only ask for your help in the most basics of tasks like turning on or off the lights or putting his phone on "do not disturb"

Despite his lazier attitude, he's pretty alert. He knows for example if you're going to use your ability when doing homework (will ask you randomly) and he learns how you are able to manipulate electronics without asking you a lot of questions

I feel like Leona would've liked you for who you were whether or not he knew about your abilities, but nonetheless he does find it to be a pretty cool (and useful) one

Azul

He really likes your abilities and will ask you to help him create some kind of digital ordering app or reservation platform for his lounge hahaha

However he does also like learning from you about your abilities and perhaps about electronics in general (you might have a lot of knowledge on them just because you use them so often). He's still not the best when it comes to online platforms, so you can definitely help him there

He finds your ability to be fascinating! While he himself won't be needing as much help as perhaps some others, he does appreciate the little help you give him when running the lounge's digital side

Jamil

Will ask you how your ability came to be since it's really new to him. He likes learning about others anyways, so it's a nice thing for him to hear about!

Jamil might ask if you can hack into systems and if you can. For some reason I can see him going after scammers that try to target Kalim's computer haha. It might be kind of fun to prank them too

The vice dorm leader isn't the best with technology so you might want to help him out when you can. He'll deeply appreciate it, perhaps he'll make you some of your favorite foods in return!

Vil

You can turn off or block people that try to message him? Like all the crazy fans he has or his annoying manager? Great. He'll ask for your help

Vil's more tech-savvy than he looks, mainly because he has to keep his online presence so up to date. He however, likes how you can manipulate communications. He also likes that you can change traffic lights so whenever you two are going somewhere, expect him to ask you to use it

Though he may find your ability to be super useful, he still feels bad when asking for your help. He'll show you a lot of gratitude whenever you do end up helping him with something, perhaps in the form of a really expensive perfume haha

Idia

Probably the only one that uses your ability the most but you also like using it with him so it's a win-win situation

The internet speed in his room is like crazy high, some other Ignihyde students will ask how that's even possible. Like how can it just be Idia's room and specifically only when you're around haha

He would've been too shy to ask you for help at first, but seeing how he looked curious about your abilities you decided to help. Honestly now you two use it whenever you two play games together or watch anime (it's very convenient!)

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst imagines #anon ask #twst scenarios #twst x reader #twst headcanons #twst riddle #twst riddle x reader #twst leona #twst leona x reader #twst azul #twst azul x reader #twst jamil #twst jamil x reader #twst vil #twst vil x reader #twst idia #twst idia x reader

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octuscle · 1 year ago

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I need to take a work trip to Germany, Leipzig to be precise. Should be a nice change from my NYC life.

I guess, your suitcase won't make it to Frankfurt... Then I guess I have to organize a replacement. Damn Airlines!

The only thing I can offer you so spontaneously is an old army backpack from GDR stocks, covered with graffiti tags, stickers and patches. Pretty heavy... And maybe not necessarily suitable for your classic suit… So, take your rucksckand head to the airport train station. Your train to Leipzig will depart in 20 minutes.

Shit, Frankfurt airport is bigger then expected. When you arrive, you thaught, that you missed your train. But luckily, the train is delayed by 15 minutes. Enough time, to relaxe. And for a smoke. You search the side pockets of the backpack. No cigarettes. But tobacco, cigarette paper. And weed. Shit, that could have ended badly at customs...

Ahh, smoking this feels great. I really needed to decompress a bit after this whole travel shitshow. Don't take offense, but a middelaged man in a conservative suit and a classic haircut smoking weed with an army backpack on the platform of the airport station looks a bit special... You have to admit that, too, when you see your reflection in the window panes of the high-speed train rushing in.

No one had told you that you had better have made a seat reservation. The train is packed. Getting a seat is out of the question. With a little luck, you will still get a seat in the dining car. You order a beer (what else in Germany) and check the contents of your backpack. On top of it lies a hat. It looks funny, you put it on. Otherwise, the backpack is not necessarily neatly packed. Everything is stuffed in more like this. There's a MacBook... You open it. And of course you know the password. Feels perfectly normal to open it. As normal as your pierced earlobes feel.

It is a low-coding platform open to any Big Data AI application. You scroll through the application. Sure, the prototype of an app for digitizing queues in doctors' offices. You open the library of useer stories and start developing the app further. A few hours ago, you had no idea about software development.

It's 9:00 p.m. when you look out the window. Gotha train station. Wherever that may be. You are looking at your reflection. Let's see what the others think of the fact that you have let the beard grow out...

The train is half empty by now. You have not even noticed how it has emptied. It's still a good hour to Leipzig. You close the computer. That's it for today. You order another beer and the vegan curry. Actually, you're also in desperate need of a joint. But of course you can't smoke anywhere on this train.

But you take tobacco, weed, cigarette paper and your cigarette case, which you inherited from your grandfather. And while you're waiting for the food, you roll a few joints on reserve. It will be after 11:00 p.m. by the time you arrive at your shared apartment. But you assume that you will sit together until 01:00 or 02:00. Your roommates are all rather night owls....

You don't notice that you're wearing high-laced DocMarten's boots instead of welted penny loafers as you step off the train. You also don't notice that your hair has grown considerably longer and falls tousled under your hat into your forehead... You pause for a moment as you see the tattoos on the back of your hand as you light up a joint to tide you over until the bus leaves. And after asking the bus driver for a ticket to Connewitz, you wonder if you actually just spoke German with quite an American accent.

The elevator in your house is of course defective again. Old building from 1873, last renovated in 1980 or so. That was long before the fall of the Wall in the GDR. But the rent is cheap. And the atmosphere is energetic and creative. When you met Kevin, Lukas and Emma at university five years ago, you were immediately on the same wavelength. Even though you didn't speak a word of German back then. You would never have thought that a semester as an exchange student would turn into a lasting collaboration. The fact that you found an apartment together where you could work on your startup at the same time was a real stroke of luck.

Upstairs in the apartment, Kevin already opens the door for you. As if he had been waiting for you.

„Sieht heute gut aus”, you say with your strange American accent.

Kevin hugs you and answers „Dude, it's good to have you back! We have missed you! Tell me, do you have new tattoos? Looks hot! And did you bring weed from Amsterdam? Our dealer is on vacation... Shitty situation!“

“Of course, i’d never leave you without”, I say, opening up the cigarette case and offering you one of the hand-rolled contents.

Kevin grins. „What do you say we smoke the first one not at the kitchen table but on your bed? I missed you, stud!“

“I’m so tired after this trip, so the bed sounds just right.”

There is nothing left of your suit right now. Yes, you are still from NYC. But you weren't a lawyer then. You studied computer science. And that was a long time ago. Now you are a Leipziger by heart

You both lie on the bed. You take a deep drag. And blow the smoke into Kevin’s mouth with a deep French kiss. The bulge in your skinny jeans looks painful. “Oh man, Kevin, I need some relief!” you growl.

It doesn't take long and we both have the tank tops off. You discover Kevins new nipple piercings. And can't stop playing with them. And Kevins bulge starts to hurt too.

“Man, let me provide some relief”, he says. And open your jeans. Your boner jumps out of your boxers like a jack-in-the-box.

Those new piercings… You just can’t help yourself… You’ve gotta feel them in my mouth! “Are they sensitive? Does it still hurt?” Kevin starts breathing more heavily. “What are you waiting for you prude Yank! They've been waiting for you for two weeks now!” You take a deep drag and blow the smoke over Kevins chest, which you caress with your tongue. Kevin moans “Fuck! You're doing so well! Sure it hurts. It's supposed to. You make me so fucking horny with your tongue! I love your tunnels on the earlobes!. I can not stop playing with them with my tongue.”

Dude, your dick is producing precum like a broken faucet. Kevin starts to massage it into your dick! You take one last drag from the joint, push the butt into the ashtray and blow the smoke over Kevins boner.

While Kevin rubs your hard dick, You begin licking his uncut cock. Damn man, these uncut European cocks will never not surprise you! Oh man, you love how it feels on your tongue.

Kevin doesn't stop breathing heavily, but still has to grin. “Fuck, admit it, you certainly didn't just talk about user interfaces with Milan and Sem in Amsterdam. You did practice your tongue game. Fuck, you know how to bring someone to ecstasy with the tip of your tongue!”

Oh man, Kevins precum just takes so good. You can’t get enough of it. Kevin reads your thoughts. “I want to lick your precum too. Let's make a 69! I need to suck your powerful circumcised cock.”

Yes, please!, you think in ecstasy. You just love how his balls feel in my mouth. And Kevin has fun to. You must have been sweating like a dog on the trip. Your balls are salty, your cock is deliciously cheesy. “Fuck, I can not tell you how I missed you.” Kevin moans.

He always feels so good, just keep going please, you think. His cock is so hard. His precum is spectacular. It’s like you’re in sync — in and out, in and out, in and out. “Fuck, your balls are so huge”, Kevin grunts. “I didn't jerk off all the time you ve been away. My balls are bursting”.

You both are perfectly synchron. Like one organism. “Please cum at the exact moment that I also cum. I want to make this old house shake.”, you think.You can’t wait to make you explode. Kevins moans “I can't take it much longer. Fuck, you are a master with your tongue. Fuck... Oh yeah... Yes! Fuuuuuuuck!”

Oh god! That was heavy. You both really try. But that was too much. Boy, what a load you both shot! Kevins cum is so thick! So potent! You ’ve got my whole mouth full, not able to swallow everything at once. You both exchange a deep French kiss. The cum runs from the corners of your mouths down our cheeks and necks. Kevin licks the cum traces from your skin. And you his. One last kiss, you pull up our pants again. And go to the kitchen with a joint. Lukas and Emma grin. The whole house could listen to you having sex.

“Incredible, as always, Kevin” You tell him, as you pass him the joint. And as if nothing had happened, you ask Emma if she has any new user stories for your app.

#male tf #reality change #inked man #tank top #male transformation

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fatfables · 8 months ago

Text

I found this undergrad project online looking into the growth of adipophilia (fat fetishism).

Well worth a read as the guy gets kinda carried away!

It's reproduced here in full.

Adipophilia

How do cultural, societal, and technological factors intersect to shape the emergence and growth of adipophilia among young male adults in the digital age?

Shane Tjock

(Bachelor of Science student)

University of Michigan

Department of Environmental Philosophy

Obesity Studies

Abstract

This research project outlines a comprehensive approach to studying the growth of adipophilia (a sexual attraction to fat or overweight people) among young male adults online, integrating observational and experimental methods as well as qualitative and quantitative analyses to provide a holistic understanding of the phenomenon. Adipophilic tendencies have been on the rise in the United States and other western countries in recent years amongst young males and in particular within the homosexual population. The occurrence of sexual attraction to big, round, bloated bellies and buttocks, as well as thick thighs and swollen man breasts is clearly visible through social media platforms, forums, and so called ‘gainer’ dedicated websites. The rise of ‘gainer societies’ at colleges and universities, including the University of Michigan, evidences that the growth of gainerism is not limited to online spaces. Gainerism and feederism are linked sexual proclivities where people actively participate in a concerted effort to make themselves and or someone else fatter. Sexual arousal is often achieved through the act of binge eating or ‘stuffing’ until the stomach is stretched to the max after the consumption of excessive amounts of food and drink. Adipophiliacs like to rub their own and other people’s swollen bellies and elicit pleasure from the effects of purposeful weight gain, such as; out growing clothing, button popping, the appearance of stretch marks, and watching big bellies bounce. Pride is taken in calorie counting, measuring growth, and regular weigh-ins. As well as a personal increase in laziness, selfishness, and greed. The growth of gainerism amongst young LGBTQ+ males is multifaceted and has been caused by the normalisation of obesity in society, the overabundance and marketing of cheap unhealthy foodstuffs, a move towards body positivity, an increased awareness and openness to kink lifestyles, and the fact that it is sexy and fun.

Introduction

The rise of adipophilia as a cultural phenomenon is of interest to psychologists, sociologists, and fat fetishists. The question of why young men chose to over-inflate and swell their bodies with fat until their abdomens are abnormally round and swollen, like water balloons about to pop, is the key question of this study. What is it about huge, heavy, rounded-out bellies, that evidence the greed of the young male overconsumer, that is so deliciously desirable?

This study seeks to answer this question through a mix of observational and experimental techniques that provide both qualitative and quantitative evidence that the results of purposeful weight gain are hot as hell. Observations of publicly posted photos, videos, and conversations of male gainers will be carefully considered and analysed in order to identify common themes and factors related to stuffing your belly so full that it strains and stretches out inches over your belt, jiggling with every step you take. Due to the doubtful efficacy of feeding healthy participants up to the point of morbid obesity, the author has decided to partake in several gainer related activities himself and will rate them on a likert scale, from 1: Not at all arousing, to 5: Extremely arousing, in order to gather real world data into the immense joy of feeling oneself grow bigger and bigger everyday. As a voluntary participant the author will also undergo a regular testing and measurement routine in order to ascertain the effectiveness of various weight gain diets and to see if the experience of having one’s growth recorded is as hot as other gainers say it is.

Literature Review

There is a very limited amount of scientific literature on this topic, I have chosen therefore to give a brief overview of adipophilia in popular culture. The most commonly cited adipophilic book is Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, (Dahl, 1964), in which an extremely fat German boy wins a trip to a chocolate factory by eating an obscene amount of chocolate. His wonderfully greedy guts are then sucked up a pipe while he attempts to drink an entire chocolate river. A disappointing failure. It also includes a girl who inflates like a giant blueberry, but this study is not interested in girls. A recent prequel film, Willy Wonka (2023), features a heavy-set policeman who is fed chocolate bribes by chocolatier gangsters until he almost triples in size. A life goal for many. The Fattest Man in America (Nicholson, 2005) is a novel about a thousand pound man who eats himself up to a glorious size in order to become a tourist attraction. Alternatively The Fattest Man in Britain (2009) is a TV Movie (freely available on YouTube) starring Timothy Spall about a man who gets into an eating contest in order to prove that he is in fact the fattest. Heavyweights (1995) is a Disney film featuring the fat kids from The Mighty Ducks and a young Ben Stiller. It is set in a summer weight loss camp. The storyline features a lot of alarming similar events to the story of my friend Shawn when he went to fat camp. Life imitates art. The Simpsons (1989-Present) features several episodes in which characters gain weight, and I also used to fancy Kenen from Kenan & Kel (1996).

Research Objectives

To observe online gainer content in order to identify and analyse themes and factors that turn me on.

To experience the pleasure of gaining an insanely unhealthy amount of weight within a very short period in order to discover just how sexually gratifying it is.

To promote adipophilia as a lifestyle amongst other young gay men.

Observational Study

Design:

Conduct a systematic observation of online communities, forums, and platforms known for adipophilic content. Utilize qualitative methods to analyze discussions, interactions, and content shared within these communities.

Sample:

Select a diverse range of online platforms catering to a single interest and demographic.

Collect data over a specified time period to capture variations in content and user engagement.

Data Collection:

Employ data scraping techniques to collect publicly available content.

Record observations, noting patterns, themes, and prevalent attitudes towards adipophilia.

Analysis:

I have spent the last four months observing several online gainer platforms and websites. I have viewed thousands of photos and videos of fat growing men of all ages, from 18 years and up. Though I have a few doubts about all of them being at least 18 and for some reason I couldn’t really find any gainers much older than about 65. I am unsure as to why this is.

Common themes and factors that I have identified are; huge round bloated bellies, ball bellies, balloon bellies, and beer bellies. Some bellies hang low while others stick out really far. Some look soft and squishy while others look hard and round - as if the guy has swallowed a basketball whole. They are my favourite. All of them are wide, swollen, and beautiful. Gainers often eat in their videos and stuff themselves stupid on takeaways. They like to watch each other over-eat and encourage each other to eat even more. I often did this whilst being sure to maintain my distance as an observer. Other factors were; soft flabby love handles and muffin tops that overhang tight shorts and boxers. These were lush fat rolls that I watched grow fuller and thicker on many sweet boys. Moobs, man breasts, and titties are also very popular. Fat boys tend to get big flat nipples that accentuate their doughy chests. I like how once you’re fat enough your tits rest on top of the dome of your distended over-ripe belly.

In many videos boys play with their fat tits, they squeeze and caress them, while teasing the viewer to suck on them like they were a woman. They also like to rub and pat their bloated bellies. I would eat tacos and rub mine while watching them. Some guys burp really loudly after downing fizzy drinks. It makes them seem so wonderfully greedy. One guy on Tumblr did this in only his boxers and I swear I saw his dick twitch.

I didn’t do all of the data collection I was supposed to due to becoming distracted by all the sexy fat men, especially the comparison pictures that show you how they used to look when they were thin compared to now. Other reasons for this weakness in my study design will become obvious when I explain the experimental study.

My prevalent attitude towards adipophilia is very positive as is that of all the gainers I spoke to online. They love getting fatter, telling me about it, and sharing private pics with me via DM’s.

Below is a list of all the fat factors that I identified, my rating for how sexy they are, and my explanation of why they are so fucking hot.

Trying on old clothes - Level 4 - Super Hot - Because I love how it demonstrates just how much they must have eaten. Watching a fat young guy struggle to fit into a XXL shirt makes me super hard.

Button popping - Level 5 - Dick Burstingly Hot - As above, only better! Boys suck their bellies in to try and look as thin as they can and they breathe out. Their bulging bellies overwhelm their shirts or pants as they expand, sending buttons flying off as fast as it makes me cum.

Burping - Level 3 - Sexy - Burping due to overconsumption is cool. I think I prefer it when I do it myself compared to watching others. I love how the escaping gas creates extra space in my belly for even more food!

Shaking/Jiggling - Super Hot - Big bouncing ball bellies and just the best! They make me want to grab them and smash my face into them.

Trying to exercise - Level 2 - Kinda Hot - This one I don’t get so much. Why would anyone want to exercise? It goes against all of the glory or adipophilia. It is though kinda cool to see sweaty fat boys struggle on the floor.

Belly measuring and weigh-ins - Level 6 - Super Dick Burstingly Hot!! - Videos and photos where boys measure their belly circumference and stand on scales cause me to nut directly. I love how happy they seem when they see the benefits of all their gorging. It makes me so proud of them.

Experimental Study

Design:

Spend three months eating as much as humanly possible in order to see just how fat I can get with the help of my friends in the gainer society.

Sample:

Me!

Data Collection:

Quantitative data: Weekly weigh-ins and belly measurements.

Qualitative data: Personal record of how turned on I get by my gains.

Analysis:

I first decided to gain when a friend of mine told me about the new gainer society that meets every week at KFC. I had always found fat boys attractive and was overweight myself. My starting weight was 193 lbs. My friend knew that I liked being fat so he suggested that we go together. There was a guy there called Shawn, he was the fattest kid I’d ever seen. He was so cool! He ate like three family buckets to himself. I wanted to be able to do that. Shawn said that I had a good attitude and welcomed me to the group. I ate eight pieces of chicken, a burger with extra cheese, and three corn on the cobs. I felt so full and my belly ached as I walked home. I knew I needed more. That’s when I decided to do this study for my end of year project.

My friends in the UMGS thought that the project was a great idea and helped me to write a plan and food diary to ensure that I ate an extra 500 calories every day in order to expand my capacity and ensure growth. I stuck to it for the first week and then couldn’t be bothered any more so I just ate as much as I wanted. The plan was too restrictive and writing everything down all the time became a fucking ball ache. I just wanted to eat!

After two weeks I was noticeably fatter. My pants felt tighter and my t-shirt began to ride up my belly. Danni one day even pointed out that one of my love handles was on display in class. I started eating all the time and always snacked on Doritos and Snickers during lectures. I started to go topless in my room so that I could see and play with my fat while I did my observation study and snacked. I started jerking off more often. Gaining is definitely arousing.

After a month I needed bigger clothes and went to TJ Maxx to buy cheap shorts and t-shirts. I knew they wouldn’t last long! In the lunch hall my favourites were chilli dogs and fries, with chocolate fudge cake for dessert. I ate so much of it that my friends started to call me ‘Fudge’, I’d never had a nickname before!

My belly was now noticeably bigger. It protruded out and the front and felt heavy due to the fact that I kept it constantly stuffed to the brim. I could now cup my hand under it and lift it up. I love doing that. The fat feels so smooth and luxurious. My Mom even mentioned to me on a Zoom call that I looked like I’d gained weight. I told her that it was normal for guys at college. I was so impressed that I even looked fatter through a screen!

I kept eating and soon I could manage a family bucket at KFC with ease. I would drown the chicken in gravy, which Shawn said they make out of the fat scrapped from the bottom of the fryer. I so hope that this is true. I also started drinking nothing but Cola and Fanta and Beer. If it ain’t carbonated keep it the hell away from me! Brrruuurrrrppp!

From my observational study I learnt that some gainers like to rest their full bellies on a sink. I thought at first that this was just a bit weird and silly but then I tried it! I was amazed by how fat I felt resting my gorgeous growling gluttonous gut on top of the cold service. I spent ten minutes lifting and fondling it while I jerked off to my own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

By the end of the second month I felt massive! My dick was constantly as hard as my tightly packed stomach. Adipophilia is so sexy. I bought new clothes again and they already felt restrictive. My tits became more sensitive and I was overcome with pleasure when Danni sucked on them. They didn’t quite rest on top of my belly yet but I knew it wouldn’t be long.

In the lunch hall I turned to pizza and pasta and all the carbs. It was like the Atkins diet but in reverse. ‘Fudge’ was turning into a real fat boy. My thighs were thicker and began to chaff in the heat. At first this annoyed me but Shawn said that it was a sign of my progress and kindly offered to rub vaseline onto my groin for me. He said that my thighs were soft like two tubes of thick cookie dough. That made it feel much better.

With all the extra weight I was carrying I felt myself become more lethargic and lazy. I spent even more time in my room alone doing my observational study but lost the urge to continue with the boring data collection. All I wanted to do was eat, watch videos, and jack off. My gut is now so big that I really have to stretch to reach my dick when I’m sitting. When I lie down it still rises up into the air, whereas before it splayed out wide and flat while I slept. I guess it’s because I always have a pre-sleep meal of filling chow-mein and dumplings every night.

On the very last day of this study I returned to KFC by myself and ate three family buckets! I knew that I could do it! I was so proud of myself that I had to go into their bathroom and jack it while I farted ferociously on the toilet!

I would never have behaved like that before I got into adipophilia. I feel now like a much happier, sexier, more fun, and adventurous guy. I’m sad that this study is over, but I know that my adventure with gaining is only just beginning. I’m now 286 lbs and am determined to gain my first hundred. I am so close and just typing this makes me deliriously hungry. I’m gonna go stuff myself with a mountain of McDonalds before I write out my results which are summarised below.

Results

Month One:

Starting weight 193 lbs, Waist size 36 inches.

Main foods consumed: KFC, Chilli Dogs, Chocolate Fudge Cake.

End weight 216 lbs, Waist size 38 inches.

Turn ons: Outgrowing my pants, feeling my belly swell, burping.

Month Two:

Starting weight 216 lbs, Waist size 38 inches.

Main foods consumed: KFC, Chilli Dogs, Fries, Pasta, Pizza, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Doritos, Snickers.

End weight 245 lbs, Waist size 40 inches.

Turn ons: My fast ass ripping my boxers, eating so much that I actually puked, abdominal pains, lifting and massaging my soft silky overhang, my love handles spilling out in class.

Month Three:

Starting weight 245 lbs, Waist size 40 inches.

Main foods consumed: KFC, Chilli Dogs, Fries, Pasta, Pizza, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Doritos, Snickers, McDonalds, Chinese, Cheesecakes, Profiteroles, Tacos, Ice Cream, Chicken Wings, Candy. So much candy!

End weight 286 lbs, Waist size 42 inches (and feeling tight AF!!)

Turn ons: Red raw stretch marks that circle my deep belly button like a whirlpool sucking me deeper in to the world of gaining, my fat heavy circular tits that feel soft and squishy, eating despite the fact that my stomach is howling in pain due to being stuffed with delicious high calorie junk foods, licking Shawn’s ass out while he farts, knowing that I’m already a huge fat gluttonous pig that’s only going to grow rounder and fatter with every greedy day that passes.

Implications and Recommendations

I recommend everybody to get into adipophilia. Fat is not only beautiful, it is tantalising, addictive, and highly erotic. Fat boys are the epitome of sexual desire and the most lush and lavish example of the human form. Big, round, heavy, ball bellies are the most attractive and every gay boy needs to have one. Social media and other online forums are a great way to get into adipophilia and the gainer/feeder scenes but nothing is better than doing it for real. Growing as fat as you can with the help of friends who want nothing more than to see you bulk out and grow into the fattest, roundest, blob of lard possible is unbeatable. Especially when they are more than happy to beat and suck you off while you gorge yourself on heavy milkshakes.

The personal implications for my belly and ass have been massive. They have both grown and swollen out immensely. Other gay boys love to watch and grope my fat ass as it bulges out of my straining gym shorts. It’s so soft and wide and round now, more of a balloon butt than bubble butt! The belly is so much bigger than it was. It loves what I have done to it and only wants more. It speaks to me now and says “Feed me!” all of the time. I have forgotten what it feels like to be hungry. A sensation that I never want to feel again. Being constantly full is the only way to be. The only way to ensure that I keep expanding.

Societal implications are also hugely positive. The more young guys who get into gaining then the more sexy fatties there will be for me to look at, encourage, play with, and fuck. Boys deserve to be fed to the brim with everything that they could ever desire and more. I want everyone to experience the advantages of the fat, lazy, and greedy lifestyle of a true glutton.

Conclusion

Adipophilia is on the rise and we should all welcome it with open arms and a tray of twenty four chocolate cream donuts! Through my observational and experimental studies I have discovered just how thrilling purposeful weight gain can be, both for the gainer and the people encouraging them. Online adipophilic content is growing every day, like my waistline, and I predict that it will continue to do so. I sincerely hope that adipophilia continues to develop into the mainstream and recommend any young male researchers interested in the topic to repeat and expand upon my study in order to help validate the scene. I promise that you will have a whale of a time!

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milk5 · 2 years ago

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A Modern Parable: The Curious Little Alien and the "Wise" Game-Player

The curious alien: so what is an RPG game

The "wise" gamer: Well that stands for role playing game. So you dont have to say game after it.

The curious alien: Ok. What do you do in them

The "wise" gamer: Yeah so it's usually some sort of adventure slash quest

The curious alien: Why is it called role playing and not adventure or quest then

The "wise" gamer: Well you take the role of someone in a story usually

The curious alien: Ok so like mario

The "wise" gamer: Well those are more like platformers

The curious alien: But you take the role of mario. In his story to save the princess and shit

The "wise" gamer: Mario is mostly about jumping on platforms but RPGs are more about fighting monsters and other stuff.

The curious alien: Maybe call them fighting games then

The "wise" gamer: Theres already a genre called fighting games. And technically you fight in mario too.

The curious alien: So what are fighting games about

The "wise" gamer, now playing New Super Mario Bros on his DSI at max volume: Usually two dudes fighting on a 2D plane. But it can be more dudes fighting. Girls too. Sometimes robots or monsters. So non-dude slash girl things are included as well. Doesnt have to be 2D either. Theres some 3D ones.

. . .

After a few moments of silence, the "wise" gamer looks up from his toy, only to realize that the curious alien is no longer on the bench next to him. The curious alien had scuttled away, eager pursue the Earth-knowledge of bushes and trees! As he approached park's groundskeeper, the poor little alien was ripped in twain by a duo of wayward pitbulls. The "wise" gamer watched on. He felt nothing as he witnessed the fear and confusion of the alien's final moments. Such atrocities meant nothing to him anymore, for his digital games had conditioned him to no longer perceive violence as an unjust act.

Moral of the story

The pitbull is not an inherently violent breed. The owners of the two pitbulls in the story are both thirty-something year old white women that were distracted by their phones. They were negligent of the breed's dietary needs, and would typically feed them a 100% plant-based dog food that is deficient in the protein that is necessary in a healthy pitbull's diet; this dog food was advertised to them on Instagram and is presently unapproved by the FDA for canine consumption. Additionally, the women have failed to properly train their dogs; pitbulls, particularly rescues, require intense attention and proper disciplining techniqies in order to develop into a well-behaved pet. The women foolishly believed that such behavior would naturally develop with minimal effort on their ends, eventually resulting in the choice to allow the two largely-untrained dogs to have a leashless "play date" at a public park. Neither the women nor the dogs were punished for the mauling of the curious alien, as there are no laws currently in place that protect (or even acknowledge) the rights of extraterrestrial peoples.

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femalechibiblogger · 8 months ago

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More Underrated Indie Horror Games

1. Andy's Apple Farm

Andy's Apple Farm is a 2021 indie horror game developed by M36games. The game was first released on Itch.io and Game Jolt on August 22, 2021, and was later released on Steam on November 26, 2021.

The story revolves around the player Beta-testing an 80's retro game created by Thomas Eastwood called Andy's Apple Farm and discovering the hidden truth in the seemingly innocent game. You play as the titular protagonist, Andy the Apple, who in Chapter 1, had his keys stolen by his friends, and he must complete minigames and earn Bonus Stickers to get them back. As the player progresses the game, they uncover dark secrets about the creator's family and a strange dark Entity that stalked them.

youtube

2. Bonnie's Bakery

Bonnie's Bakery is a horror and cooking game created in 2022. It is being made by a group of 7 under the name Melty Clown Studio, under the publisher aislebsoupid on itch.io.

"A game where you serve customers delicious food as Bonnie! Yes, that's all it is! A game where you serve customers delicious food...

Nothing else."

youtube

3. Shipwrecked 64

Broadside Beach: SHIPWRECKED 64, known as SHIPWRECKED 64 in-universe, is the third of a three part mockumentary series dedicated to Broadside Animation, uploaded by Squeaks D'corgeh. Previously, the game had a legacy release before its official release on January 1st, 2024.

Bucky and his gang are in danger and they need your help!!With this brand new 3D platformer, Bucky and his friends are going to be taken on a wild ride through an island they had crashed upon. Help out your pals and get the ship back up and running so you can go home once again!

youtube

4. The Bunny Graveyard

The Bunny Graveyard is an episodic horror adventure about a bunny who seeks to find the horrifying truth behind her existence. Immerse yourself in a world of pixel art inspired by GBA and NDS graphics, while unraveling an enthralling story that keeps you hooked!

Begin your journey as... a cursor? Your job is to find Skye, the bunny! But there seems to be some kind of strange entity inside the computer that doesn't want you to leave... can you complete your task and survive?

youtube

5. Happy's Humble Burger Farm

Happy's Humble Burger Farm is a restaurant simulation horror game series developed by Scythe Dev Team and published by TinyBuild.

As the series sets in the urban city, the player takes the job as the employee of the fast-food restaurant Happy's Humble Burger Farm where they must do their absolute best to satisfy the customers by serving their correct orders as swift as possible, while surviving from nightmare-fueled versions of the restaurant's beloved mascots.

Congrats, you're hired! Serve customers and maintain the Happy's Humble Burger Farm restaurant alone on the overnight. But be careful; things fall apart if you mess up! After work, head home and keep your eyes open for a way to escape the Barnyard Buds and their fast food fever-dream.

youtube

6. Garten of BanBan

Garten of Banban is a game made by the Euphoric Brothers. It is part of the controversial t mascot horror genre and is the Euphoric Brothers' 8th game. Upon release the game was met with a very ftff reception from gamers and critics alike, It received a lot of popularity on the internet as well as a lot of criticism and hate.

Enter Banban's Kindergarten, and you're sure to make some friends. Explore the mysterious establishment and don't lose your life and sanity. Uncover the horrifying truth behind the place, but be careful, as you are far from alone…

youtube

7. The Mortuary Assistant

The Mortuary Assistant is a 2022 horror game developed by DarkStone Digital and published by DreadXP. Set in 1998 in a small town in Connecticut, players control a newly hired assistant at a haunted mortuary.

Alone with the dead... Embalm corpses, banish demons, save your soul.

youtube

#Youtube #indie horror game #underrated #andy's apple farm #bonnie's bakery #shipwrecked 64 #the bunny graveyard #happy's humble burger farm #garten of banban #the mortuary assistant #scary #horror

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mariacallous · 10 months ago

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Lai Ching-te will be Taiwan’s next president after winning Saturday’s election, ensuring that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will remain in power and dealing a rebuke to Beijing’s wishes for a more China-friendly administration. In the days before the election, Taiwanese voters were flooded with information. Look up, and they saw posters on buses and buildings declaring the virtues of all three candidates and their running mates. Look down, and they got a stream of news, gossip, and opinions from their phones—not all of it true and much of it likely stirred up by internet trolls in China.

Taiwan is one of the world’s most digitally connected countries, and on social media, false posts and videos are reaching thousands of people before platforms can take them down. TikTok was flooded with disinformation accusing Lai of sex scandals, tax evasion, and conspiring to start a war with China. His vice presidential pick, Hsiao Bi-khim, has been accused of secretly holding U.S. citizenship. So has the running mate of Ko Wen-je, the third-party candidate livestreaming his spoiler campaign on YouTube and TikTok.

Researchers have attributed much of the false information to Chinese actors—and rather than blasting pro-China views to Taiwanese voters, they’ve focused on amplifying negative stories about Taiwan’s domestic politics and wedge issues, such as the role of the United States, with the intent of polarizing Taiwanese society.

“Beijing’s cognitive warfare is evolving,” said Tzu-wei Hung, a scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “Negative narratives are effective not because they will change the election result but because they intensify social conflicts and create a vicious cycle of distrust and hate.”

Taiwan faced a similarly toxic disinformation environment before the 2020 presidential election, and at the time, it fought back—hard. Officials frequently accused China of being behind wide-ranging disinformation campaigns. Police summoned private citizens for posting false stories and levied fines in some instances for violating a law preventing public disorder. The National Communications Commission (NCC) issued a series of fines to the pro-China TV station Chung Tien Television (CTi) for broadcasting false information. Eventually, in December 2020, CTi was taken off the air after the NCC declined to renew its broadcast license.

The government learned quickly that none of it worked.

“If you want to curb disinformation by legal measures, it’s difficult and dangerous,” said Yachi Chiang, a professor at National Taiwan Ocean University specializing in intellectual property and tech law. It “opens a pathway for the government to control speech.”

Taiwan has always been a banner holder of free speech in Asia. In 2020, however, DPP legislators were panicked over the prospect of Chinese election-meddling. President Tsai Ing-wen was riding a wave of global popularity by supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, which had broken out months earlier, giving Beijing every reason to remove her from office or disrupt her legislative majority.

Tsai was reelected in a landslide—but not because her government cracked down on fake news. Many fines levied under the Social Order Maintenance Act, an existing law that was utilized against disinformation peddlers, have since been overturned by the courts.

The NCC’s crusade against CTi hasn’t gone much better. Opposition politicians used its removal from the airwaves to hammer DPP politicians as enemies of free speech. The NCC, at the time, argued that CTi had failed to adhere to basic fact-checking standards and could not ensure impartiality from outside influence—a clear reference to its owner, the domestically unloved Tsai Eng-meng, a snack food tycoon with extensive business interests in China and a track record of pro-unification statements.

In May 2023, a Taipei court ruled against the NCC’s decision to shut down CTi, saying it had failed to provide adequate reasoning for its decision. At present, CTi remains off the air—and its request to have its license renewed by the court was rejected—but the NCC has been ordered to review its own decision and provide stiffer reasoning. “You need something stronger to sustain your ruling,” Chiang said.

Taiwanese authorities have successfully prosecuted citizens who received funding from China to publish fake news. But in general, politicians began to realize that moving through the judicial system “would be slow,” Chiang said. “The decisions might be disappointing. The results might be less effective.”

Just after the 2020 election, however, Taiwan’s government found a better way to combat disinformation when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. Taiwan was the first country to alert the World Health Organization of the presence of a coronavirus in Wuhan and then introduce travel restrictions and quarantine protocols.

Public officials also began releasing accurate, easily digestible information as quickly as possible, before disinformation could reach people’s phone screens. Chen Shih-chung, the health minister at the time, held press conferences each afternoon, earning him the nickname “Minister Clock.” His ministry, along with the social media accounts of Tsai and Premier Su Tseng-chang, posted colorful memes sharing data on the pandemic and extolling the virtues of masking and hand-washing.

It was a triumph of public transparency that paid off handsomely. Taiwan saw just 823 COVID-19 cases in all of 2020, despite its close proximity to the pandemic’s epicenter.

It also helped politicians realize that “you can’t count on laws to tackle disinformation,” Chiang said. “You need to create your own information.”

“Free speech is not the cost but the key to counteract disinformation,” said Hung, who noted that in 2022, Freedom House found that countries that protect free expression and have robust civic society groups do a better job at mitigating false information.

Taiwan has tried other forms of a more open approach. Although it banned the Chinese-owned video platform TikTok from government apps in 2022, Taiwan has not followed countries such as India in issuing a general proscription on the app despite concerns that Beijing can influence content. About one-quarter of Taiwan’s population uses the app, including a host of popular influencers and celebrities.

Taiwan also has a network of strong civic fact-checking organizations that work with social media companies to combat disinformation. One of them, MyGoPen, recently started collaborating directly with TikTok to correct false posts about the 2024 election.

No matter who is in power, politicians seem to acutely understand that the best way to combat false information about them is to push out their own narratives on social media. “If you are popular on the internet, that’s more important than [popularity on] traditional media channels,” Chiang said.

Lai’s win on Saturday is not an outright victory against disinformation itself—both Chinese and domestic actors will surely continue to create confusion and distrust whenever they can. It did, however, show that Taiwanese voters can’t easily be swayed, as long as public officials do their part to communicate rapidly, positively, and honestly.

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thefatartist · 7 months ago

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Darcie and the Gym Rats: CHAPTER ONE

Nestled within her pillow fort on the cozy expanse of the couch, Darci found herself in a familiar ritual, her gaze fixed on the illuminated lock screen of her phone. Each passing second was pregnant with anticipation, awaiting that gratifying ping of a notification. Yet, as the alerts materialized one after another, most failed to capture her interest, swiftly swiped away with a casual flick of her finger. They barely earned more than a fleeting moment of Darci's attention before being consigned to digital oblivion.

In this digital landscape, only notifications bearing the insignia of Instagram stood a chance to disrupt Darci's nonchalant dismissal. It wasn't that she harbored an addiction to the platform, she reasoned, she could easily break free whenever she pleased. But today wasn't the day for such resolutions. Today, Instagram held sway over her attention, a tantalizing oasis in the desert of mundane notifications.

The tranquil hush of the living room was brutally shattered by the forceful swing of the door. In stepped Jessica, a whirlwind of energy and unmistakable gym dedication. Among the trio of roommates, Darci stood as the sole advocate of a hedonistic lifestyle, her mission clear: to lure her companions to the enticing depths of pleasure, excitement and indulgence. Jessica, with her characteristic grace, slinked over to the couch, collapsing beside the meticulously arranged "meal" that had been left untouched on the coffee table, a testament to Jessa's culinary efforts. Her gaze darted between the abandoned chocolate wrappers and the inviting warmth of the chicken salad.

"I can't fathom why I bother preparing food for you, only for you to disregard it in favor of..." Jessica's accusatory stare flitted to a suspiciously empty glass bowl perched innocently on the kitchen counter. Jessa’s jaw clenched, "...raiding the entire communal candy bowl?! Darci, that was meant for all of us!" Jessica let out a deep growl, like a dog being deprived of her food bowl by a stranger.

Darci's arm emerged from the confines of her plush pillow fort, dismantling her makeshift kingdom with a casual wave. "The rest of the community was busy battling the Iron Legion of Dumbbells and Broken Dreams," she declared with a scoff. "You snooze, you lose dearie."

Jessica, undeterred, lifted the fork from the salad bowl, its prongs laden with lettuce dripping in ranch dressing. "Why must you drown perfectly good chicken salad in ranch?" she lamented. "Can't you show some respect and at least drown my salad in Thousand Island?"

"Can't you refrain from commenting on how I choke down your rabbit food?" Darcie retorted.

Jessa's eyes rolled so far back into her head that they nearly disappeared, just as the door creaked open once more. Chad swaggered in oozing confidence. "Sup, Protein Princess and Sleeping Drooly…"

"Watch it, Chad, or I'll turn your Prince Charming into Miss Charming!" Darci warned, a mischievous glint in her eye.

Chad was preparing a sarcastic retort before he saw the salad Jessica was eating. “Aw c’mon Jess! Even an Adonis like me needs a cheat day sometimes!” Chad whined.

Jess snapped back “This ‘rabbit food’, as Darcie so delicately put it… “. Chad snickered and Jessa’s voice responded “…It's a carefully planned, macro-balanced...”.

Darcie interrupted “...recipe for utter boredom. Look, why don't we ditch the rabbit food and order some actual food for once? Pizza, maybe? I hear there's this place with a triple-decker meat lover's special...”.

Jess shrieked in horror “Triple-decker? Darcie are you trying to clog my arteries?”. Darci’s eyebrow furrowed “You're already halfway there with your sad little salads. Besides, a little indulgence never killed anyone.” Darci’s familiar ADHD brain sprang into action after having clearly had too much sugar “Except maybe that guy who ate a bathtub full of Jell-O. But that was clearly a personal failing.”

Darcie would have continued if Jessica had let her. Still upset that her chocolate reward went to first place unexpectedly, she snapped fingers at Darcie. “Earth to Darcie…”. Darcie blinked. “Yes?”. Jessica, torn between the siren call of pizza and the guilt ingrained in her by years of calorie counting couldn’t finish her sentence. Chad, meanwhile, dialed the pizza place on his phone, a triumphant grin plastered across his face. Jessca whispered to herself, “One slice won't hurt. Just one. To appease the carb demons and quiet your... unsettling enthusiasm.”

Darcie leaned in close to Jess. “Oh, honey, I was just getting warmed up. We could raid that bakery down the street for dessert. They have this éclair that looks like a goth's dream come true - black chocolate and raspberry filling. Pure decadence.”

“Maybe just a small cookie?” Jessica gulped.

Chad piped up “Ignore them, Jess. They're just jealous. Double pepperoni for you, right?” Jessica looked at Chad, a feeling of defeat swept over her. “This is a slippery slope”. “Don't worry, darling.” Darcie assured Jess, “We'll hold your hand all the way down. Now, about that éclair...?”

Chad’s phone, on speaker, rang. One last glimmer of defiance died in Jess’s eyes. “You know what? Screw the macros. Let's do this. But I'm picking the toppings”. Chad jumped in, “Deal! Now, who wants extra cheese?”.

Darcie released a single, solitary laugh. What was this feeling; ‘happiness’? Less painful than Darcie imagined. Jess and Chad barely had time to respond before the voice on the other end answered. “Thank you for calling ‘Papa Tony’s Pizza’.

“Yeah, hi!”, Chad coughed “I was told you had a triple-decker meat lover's special…?”.

******

The smell of the kitchen flowed like a river against Darcie’s nose. “Oh, come on”, she grumbled “I’m hungry!”. Jessica’s mind flowed with hurtful comments. She was still very upset about her chocolate, or rather lack thereof. She bit her tongue. There was no need to upset the peace in the apartment. Maybe she’d eat Darcie’s second dessert. That’d teach her. Before she could think about Darcie’s reaction to such meanness, the waiter approached with their dinner. The thick, juicy pizza was left on the table and the waiter departed with instructions to retrieve another cup of root-beer for Darcie. The three roommates continued looking at their phones, Jess taking selfies, Chad chuckling at memes and Darcie flicking away notifications between testing to see if the pizza cooled down enough.

“Pizza’s cool” Darcie announced happily as she scooped three slices onto her plate. She delicately lifted the pizza to her lips and nibbled a bite before taking a much larger one that filled her mouth. “This is actually decent!” Darcie smiled, “Not bad for a place catering to the... unrefined palate.” Darcie shot a playful glance in Chad’s direction as he placed a couple of slices onto his plate. Jessica took the pizza scoop from Chad and got herself a single slice. She chuckled as she stared at the thick, layered pizza. She took a small bite, the melted cheese holding on for dear life to the pizza.

“You know, this isn't so bad. Maybe, a little indulgence every now and then isn't the worst thing in the world”, Jessica admitted. A grin grew across Darcie’s face as she wiped away some grease that dripped from her mouth. “I told you!”, she celebrated. Chad smiled and took another bite from his pizza. “Anyone down for some garlic knots?” Darcie raised an eyebrow, “Garlic knots? That sounds positively pedestrian.”

Chad, almost insulted, responded “What’s wrong with garlic knots?”. Darcie’s wide eyes squinted as her toothy smile grew. Chad never saw Darcie smile like this. It made him almost uncomfortable. “Oh, they're delicious alright. But have you considered... black garlic knots?”, Darcie asked, “Made with squid ink, of course.” The look of disgust grew in Chad’s eyes, but the subtle tilt of his head suggested interest. Jessica, however, was fully intrigued. “Where do they even have those?!”, she asked. Darcie winked. “I have my sources.”

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usmarie · 1 year ago

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beeclops · 3 months ago

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Cartoon Network’s Website Was Deleted. That Should Scare You All.

Warner Bros. Discovery is deleting some of our most beloved movies and TV shows—and some may be gone forever.

The most remarkable feat that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president David Zaslav has accomplished this decade may be his rapid transformation from relatively little-known network executive to name-brand villain of the culture. For this, he can thank such disastrous high-profile decisions as stonewalling the striking writers and actors, crudely stereotyping his properties’ audiences, and tanking much-hyped movies that were all but ready for release—all of which reflected poorly and played out rather publicly.

Lest you be inclined to defend all this as just a hard-nosed boss making tough-but-fair decisions, consider that Zaslav continues to be very, very bad at making money and managing a media conglomerate—just ask the investors who depressed WBD’s stock value to a near-all-time-low valuation of $6.62 per share on Monday. Or look to the company’s loss of its long-held NBA broadcast rights to Amazon, the $9 billion write-down of its other TV assets, and its nonstop waves of steep layoffs. Or even its wildly unpopular move to shutter Cartoon Network’s iconic 26-year-old website, scrubbing an almost historical archive of clips, show episodes, and digital games in order to direct young viewers to sign up for the clunky streaming platform known these days as “Max.”

Nuking a kids’ network’s digital presence is hardly a sin on par with, say, killing Cartoon Network altogether, as was rumored to have occurred last month. Even though Zaslav didn’t go that far, it wasn’t unreasonable for so many to assume he had. Since April 2022, when he finalized the megamerger that fused his Discovery Communications juggernaut with WarnerMedia, Zaslav has repeatedly invited mass criticism for actively degrading and torching so many of the treasured creations that made his media empire such a highly valued asset.

First came the sudden cancellations of already-completed films like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, then the secretive removal of dozens of HBO originals (e.g., Westworld, An American Pickle) from the HBO Max streaming service—which subsequently received an unholy intrusion of selected titles from Discovery+, the streamer that shuttered just so that HBO Max could just become Max.

Max kept shedding beloved entries from its historic catalog, including large chunks of Sesame Street and Looney Tunes. This continued into 2023 with the erasure of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim classics such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, along other Max Originals like Game Theory With Bomani Jones, which was soon removed altogether. Later that same year, Zaslav’s mismanagement of the treasured Turner Classic Movies channel spurred Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson to basically stage an intervention.

In fairness, many (though not all) Max Originals are either available on other services, on physical media, or via video on demand. Some other shows from WBD have been licensed to Netflix. Still, in light of CartoonNetwork.com’s demise, it’s worth keeping in mind something key about David Zaslav, who hasn’t made an effective turnaround in valuation or revenue after two straight years of nonstop cuts across all his properties, extending into last month’s CNN layoffs.

It’s worth taking stock of how many of your favorite shows, networks, catalogs, and films belong to Warner Bros. Discovery, because it weighs a ton. In addition to every entertainment behemoth already mentioned, the company once known as WarnerMedia brought TNT, the CW, and DC Comics to the WBD marriage. In turn, Discovery imported its namesake channel, Animal Planet, TLC, Food Network, HGTV, GolfTV, and the Oprah Winfrey Network, among many other names.

Unless you grew up without any electronic screens, you’ve likely seen at least a couple of shows and flicks from any or all of those brands. You probably have a meaningful attachment to those works and thus a vested interest in making sure they remain available so you can share those experiences with your friends and loved ones. If you’re of the nerdier variety, you view all this media as an invaluable resource of important cultural markers. Where would cinema and TV of all kinds—comic, prestige, edutainment, reality, talk, news—be without these rich treasures, and how much would our collective consciousness have suffered in their absence?

Zaslav should understand this better than anyone. He’s had a front-row seat to shifts in media consumption since the fall of communism. He also ushered some of those major changes into being through his role in helping to launch CNBC and MSNBC. He should know the importance of preservation better than anyone, having gauged early on how rapidly physical media was subsuming into pixelated microscreens, and how urgent it was to ensure his brands retain their recognition, familiarity, and quality in the midst of that transition. What better exhibition of that than a rich, thorough catalog made readily available to consumers via a streaming platform?

But this man, to put it gently, couldn’t give a flying fuck. Because, much like Paramount’s decimation of the online MTV and Comedy Central archives, Zaslav’s own butchering of the Cartoon Network website is a cheap ploy engineered to force viewers into signing up for his own increasingly enshittified streamer—and at a time when the internet as we’ve broadly recognized it is rapidly crumbling.

In recent years, we’ve seen once inescapable media disappear from the internet at a frightening rate, whether it’s general-interest blogs and websites closing down (or worse, turning into A.I. slop factories), popular old browser games losing their adaptability and functionality, pre-Spotify music streamers tanking their servers, social networks collapsing into the void along with all their memories, hyperlinks degrading in functionality, or copyright-flexible artworks from an older internet age getting hit with suits by rights-holders and then being pulled from distribution.

The Internet Archive can only do so much to preserve all of this, especially when the nonprofit is already staving off endless, expensive lawsuits (and making steep cuts to its own selections while at it). The great irony is that modern life and culture’s hapless dependence on a functional internet—CrowdStrike, anyone?—makes it imperative that vast troves of history be copied in some form onto cyberspace; otherwise, it might as well not exist. This goes for a classic movie missing from any digital service or a publication of yore finding a new life and preservation online.

To seal off great works of art behind increasingly paywalled, pricey, and ad-choked streamers is to rob an already overwhelmed public of any actual choice in creative exploration. It’s further maddening when you never know that a given show, movie, or special will even remain on that service. If it does indeed go away, you may not even be able to find it through a physical copy or via some weird black market of cast-offs. No wonder the production company behind Adult Swim’s The Venture Bros. is currently offering a DVD sale of the complete series while the show itself remains in limbo between its recent Max removal and its upcoming Netflix entrance.

This is no way to treat some of our greatest cultural legacies—but it’s inevitably the result when we trust them with the David Zaslavs of the world. We should look at streaming-service erasure as an issue on par with that of greater internet fragmentation and the worsening digital amnesia that results.

It’s only going to get worse, especially as creators rightfully concerned about A.I. apps training on their hard work elect to take their stuff off the digital commons to protect their artistic contributions from cannibalization by the power-hungry networks attempting to supplant them. The data centers lose their higher-quality building blocks, but keep churning along in order to make something more artificial and just plain terrible. David Zaslav will stand by, burning more cash and trashing more titles, only to keep failing, and making our culture—as well as our history—all the poorer for it.

#warner bros discovery #wbd #david zaslav #fire david zaslav #cartoon network #internet #article

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larakb117 · 2 years ago

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LONDON ADVENTURE

Joseph Quinn & female y/n

Summary: Eating with Joseph Quinn at Covent Garden! (Slow burn)

Warnings: 18+ (soon), but fluffy, rpf…

Part 3

It was a relaxing evening at Covent Garden. Joe and you ordered vegan Burrito Wraps at Seven Dials Market and took a seat downstairs in the seating area. It was really crowded, but you got a nice place in one of the corners. You both couldn´t stop talking about anything possible. You told Joseph about your job and what it was like to work in a kindergarten as an early child educator in London. He seemed to be really interested in your work with children, he would probably be a good dad. Joe just turned 30 years old about 4 months ago, maybe he already considered to be a dad very soon. The thought made you hesitate again for a second. You weren´t ready for something like that, you didn´t even had sex before. Another thought that made you shakingly nervous. “Sounds amazing, love. I guess working with kids can bring a lot of laughter into your life.” “Yes, that’s for sure.”, you were enjoying your chat. “Do you like your job? Acting, is it something you always wanted to do?” “Oh, it was the only thing I was good at.”, he jokingly answered. “I went to LAMDA for my education, it´s a…” “I heard about it, Benedict Cumberbatch went there too. “He observed you obviously surprised. “Yeah, I am a huge fan of him.” Joe chuckled: “He´s a nice guy, I can totally understand… What else are you doing?” You really had to think hard for that question to get answered: “Well, here in London I love to just explore the city. I love to travel in general.” “Where do you want to travel?”, it felt like he inspected your face really closely. “New York City.” “Really?” “Yes, I´m a city traveller, I grew up on the countryside but never felt really comfortable there. I love to spent my time in big cities.” “I´m travelling there next week.” “You need to tell me everything when you come back!” Joe smirked and his eyes sparkled: “That means you want to meet me again?” “Of course.”, you said softly and you felt the need to take his hand. So you did. Your burrito wraps were already eaten 2 hours ago, and the market had become pretty empty. Both of your arms kind of rested on dirty old food waste, but that didn´t matter at all. You looked down at your hands and noticed Joe´s watch on his wrist. It was late. “I´m so sorry, but I think we have to leave now. I have to get up early tomorrow. I need to prepare a lot of stuff for my week off next week.” “That´s okay darling, still makes me sad though.”, he frowned his forehead in kind of a funny way and his face shifted into a cute smirk again. “Let´s go love.” He grabbed your hand and you went outside, it was a warm evening. “Which underground do you have to take?”, he asked. “Northern.” “Me, too.”

You started your walk back to Leicester Square station.” When you arrived, you did not have any idea how to say goodbye to him. Before you could even decide, Joe went in for a tight hug. It felt really overwhelming but soft and gentle at the same time. Something you never wanted to miss again in your life. Once he let go of the hug, you felt like a big hole in your chest. “You want to meet again tomorrow?” “Yes, Joseph. I´d love to.” “Same time, same place?” “Yes.”, you widely smiled. “Bye Joe.” “Bye, y/n.” Your paths separated, you had to go to the platform connecting you to Edware, he left for Morden. There was a last intense stare into each other’s eyes, but you could not fight the fear of being rejected, so you did not kiss him. And then, he walked around the corner and you had to wait about twenty hours till you would see him again. The digital display showed that you had to wait 7 minutes for the next train to arrive. Suddenly you felt a hand on your shoulder, just like at the beginning of your evening. You turned around and Joe had already smashed his lips against yours. It was passionate, soft and way to short. Joe left, you were too stunned to react.

To be continued…

Let me know what you think!! I have 13 parts ready to be posted!Just enjoy writing to much, but couldn’t post for a long time!

#joseph quinn #joseph quinn imagine #joseph quinn smut #joseph quinn x reader #joseph quinn x y/n #joseph quinn fanfiction #joe quinn #eddie munson #joseph quinn rpf #fluffy #spicy stuff #slow burn #actor rpf

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mynimalistic-dev · 1 month ago

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xoxovalerie-c · 2 months ago

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Blog Post Week 6: Due 10/03

How does the normalization of the merit system influence genuine human interactions?

During class, while watching Nosedive, I started thinking about how the merit system in the episode was becoming normalized and how it gradually affected each person's life. What shocked me most was how a single rank determined what someone could achieve in life. It struck me that the score only seemed to go up by being literally likable. This reminded me of my own life experiences while working in the fast food industry some days I have off days, and in the episode, when the main character ordered her coffee, the server's over-the-top friendliness made me think: what if she didn’t like his service? She could have used the rating system to manipulate him for her own benefit. It's sad that no real emotions could be expressed, and how the merit system makes privilege even more visible through an app. This app that grants the opportunity to travel, get the job you want, a house, or even open a simple door.

In what ways have video games influenced society’s views on race?

I believe it's widely recognized that race is represented in many video games, especially in those where players can create characters in their likeness. We have come to think of that term through corporeal qualities like skin color, hair, body type, accent, and so forth, and especially from within a black-white binary (Fickle, 2019). Many games now go beyond just selecting a character to allow for deeper personalization. Even in fictional game worlds, where the characters aren’t real people, race still plays a role because the audience real-world gamers are impacted by how race is portrayed. This makes race a significant factor in how players engage with and perceive the game. So video game creators have allowed race to be a part of the gaming world.

To what extent do they reinforce or challenge these racial stereotypes in these video games?

Video games often reinforce or challenge racial stereotypes to varying extents, primarily through their storylines, character design, and gameplay mechanics. Many games draw from historical events, integrating real world issues like racism, segregation, and violence. For instance, there are games set during the Holocaust where players can confront figures like Hitler, directly engaging with the themes of oppression and resistance. These historical narratives provide players with a platform to reflect on past atrocities, but they can also risk making it less serious to these subjects if not handled sensitively. Moreover, games depicting segregation or civil rights struggles often incorporate racial elements through character outfits, skin color, and even voice, which can either reinforce existing stereotypes or challenge them. For example, a game that allows players to customize characters can empower them to express their identity, but if the game only offers stereotypical portrayals of certain races like associating Black characters with violence or Latinos with criminality it risks perpetuating harmful narratives.

What defines a cyborg in today's digital world? Why do people resemble being like a cyborg?

In today's digital world, the word "cyborg" can be understood not just as a blend of human and machine in a physical sense but also as a way people add technology into their daily lives and identities. Online, people resemble cyborgs by using digital tools to extend their capabilities whether through social media profiles or avatars. The boundary between human and technology becomes blurred when our thoughts, expressions, and interactions are getting sort of manipulated through these platforms. For example, when people make their avatar versions of themselves. This digital self can be modified just the way people wish in which can even be fictional. In other words not being themselves.

Fickle, T. (2019). The race card: From gaming technologies to model minorities. New York University Press.

Ow, Jeffrey A. “The Revenge of the Yellowfaced Cyborg Terminator: The Rape of Digital Geishas and the Colonization of Cyber-Coolies in 3D Realms’ Shadow Warrior.” Asian America.Net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace. Eds. Rachel C. Lee and Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Brooker, C. (Writer), & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive (Season 3, Episode 1) [TV series episode]. In C. Brooker (Executive Producer), Black Mirror. Netflix.

#WGST320F24

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