#I’d also kindly like to ask you to not spam asks to everyone? It can come across as hostile and I know many are annoyed

[cerulean100-blog1]

You are denying the existence of romance in wbk by saying" there's over 160 chapters and there's no set up" where's the same energy for Sakura's backstory?? There's over 160 chapters and there's no mc backstory!

Alright, I know you’ve been going around to everyone using the main tag and venting your frustrations, so I’m gonna be civil and kind to you ok?

Sakuras backstory HAS been setup, just not in a way that divulges a ton of details. We know that his parents aren’t in the picture (wether they’re dead or abandoned him), we know that he’s been treated with scorn and distrust from everyone (from kids running at the sight of his hair to an adult accusing him of stealing his wallet and threatening to call the cops), we know that he had to learn to fight to defend himself, we know that he hasn’t had anyone to rely on to the point that his friends coming to check on him while he’s sick is SHOCKING to him. If you’ve watched the anime the opening scene establishes that he was passed around from place to place (possibly between relatives) and that his caretakers also viewed him with scorn and disgust.

The main thing is that Sakura doesn’t WANT to talk about his past. (he basically said so himself when everything was happening with Anzai, “everyone has a thing or two they don’t wanna talk about”) The main connecting thread through all of the backstories in the series so far is that the character in question is changing/has changed enough that they can reflect on their past through new eyes. Sakura is nowhere near ready for that, he’s only just gotten to the point that he can call his friends Friends, and he still can’t accept that their praise and love is unconditional. To give his backstory now, when he’s not ready to face it, would feel rushed and unearned. Sakuras full backstory likely won’t come till near the end of the series, once he’s gone through major changes and can finally face his past through new eyes and accept that he does deserve love and good things. This isn’t because the author doesn’t care, but because this is what they think is best for the character. Obviously you’re free to disagree and not like this writing choice, but this is how I see it and why I think it works writing wise.

[the-travelling-witch]

✨affectionate ask✨ hullo, my new friend!! I remember we met through my review post and I'm very glad we did. I know we haven't really had any conversations yet (which can always change, ofc) but I'm still grateful we've become mutuals and in my gut, i feel like you're a kindly soul and I'm always open to yap! esp if you want a buddy to yap to about the legend of zelda, the Magnus archives, and gokurakugai 💕💕💕💕💕

me when liking the post that says i should like it to receive an ask actually receives me an ask: :o

not but seriously i should’ve seen this coming hshshsh

anyhow, i totally agree!! i’ve not been doing much writing for reasons, so i’ve not dared show my face around the community(s) much the last few months, but i shall make my glorious return (and hopefully soon too) /silly

likewise, i’ve also not done much reading, digitally or physically for that matter, which i also need to catch up on (there’s a lot of books with bookmarks in lying around here, it’s not funny anymore)

but yeah, all that yapping aside, i really hope i can interact with people more again when i’ve recovered my emotional energy!! ngl i have been feeling a little lonely on here for some time now, like my blog’s in a different orbit, but i’m hoping to launch myself into other’s trajectory again!! all that to say, i’d love to talk more, about whatever really :]

and my view on you hasn’t changed either, so i’m also happy we’ve become moots!! i think you’re cool and have your fandom-heart in the right place, meaning understanding the importance of and encouraging engagement with people and creators of a fandom, which is a situation i’ve been giving much thought myself in general too (obviously i think your normal heart is in the right place too haha idek if this is a metaphor that works in english but we’ll roll with it)

also, the magnus archives… it’s less of a fixation by now and more of an obsession, really. i’ve gone against my very nature and restrained myself from looking at fanart and searching for merch bc i want to keep myself spoiler-free so i can spam my friends, who are further in than me, with my theories and be very smug when i catch on to sth

me about to go off on a tangent in the gc:

anywayyyyy, to conclude my rambling, thanks so much for the ask!! as i said, I’d love to talk more about whatever, i promise i normally know how to talk, just not right now apparently lol<3

and to everyone else here… i might reenter the kitchen soon to cook; do you like your fics sunny-side up or scrambled? too bad, i only ever make them scrambled. so i hope you look forward to the same irregular, incoherent posting schedule that i’ve been serving since the beginning :]

[florenceisfalling]

Okay so you misinterpreted my post entirely. Your post was also was in the tag. You didn't mention their name exactly but you did in the comments and for the fact them being the only tea blog around these days its quite obvious.. (if you don't count im-lmfao who imo is worse at this point for spamming the tag with reminders of blue existing) The whole point of bringing up tea blogs in the tags at all is what I have a problem with. It's so easy to just ignore them. The fandom did for a while and suddenly there's this big surge of people once again looking at blue, interacting with blue, posting about blue, interacting with posts about blue and you are contributing to that and probably don't even realize it at all. I know you had the best intentions and wanted to tell people to NOT post about blue, but by posting that you ARE posting about blue and engaging some sort of conversation about it.. So please. Just ignore the whole tea blogs topic. avoid it, act like it's not there so we can all get on with our lives. (And please if you see ANYONE talking about blue or tea blogs in the tag at all, send them an ask or dm kindly reminding and asking them to not do that.. Only then will we REALLY get rid of them.. Not by publicly reminding everyone that they exist, but by uniting and ignoring)

anon. anon please. i am picking you up gently like a child with a small pet pig. i am looking you deeply in the eyes. anon, my beloved.

the misinterpretation goes both ways here. from what i can gather, you want people to stop bringing up tea blogs in the tags at all because you don't want to see shit about them. that is not my goal here. i want people to stop trying to put in their time and effort to debate blue. these are two different goals.

the reason i'm not deleting my post is because it was about not, like i said, "[calling] them out". i briefly mentioned them to say, hey, guys, that won't work. some people agreed. that's it. you, on the other hand, have commented, sent asks, and also called out other discourse blogs by name. your attempts to fix this have literally been more inflammatory than mine because hey, look at this, now we're engaging in another disheartening debate.

the idea that im "contributing" to this whole ordeal is so wild to me because i have like... minimal interaction compared to a lot of people in this fandom. i barely post in the j**cksepticeye tag at all. the person i was discussing discourse with in the comments literally isn't even in this fandom anymore, they're just a friend.

my blog is just where i vibe. i don't think it's cool or nice to tell me to ignore the tea blogs topic when you're the one bringing up a conversation i finished long before you messaged me. i don't think it's cool or nice to talk about how "we all want to get on with our lives" when you are the only person who has negatively reacted to what i said, and you should not have authority over what i post. and i don't think your last suggestion is nice or cool, either, 'cause i'm not gonna individually call out people + make them feel bad about sharing their opinions,, when my goal was to just help people avoid getting basically bullied by blue in a one-sided argument.

what i said in my original post was an attempt at a helpful suggestion, and i'm sorry if it came across too vague and bothered you. but no one else expressed that they had a problem with it and i'd really appreciate if you would move on like you claim to want to do.

[cryo-locket]

Rules & Info

General Info

❖ This is a highly sfw blog, so please refrain from sending/tagging me in anything sexual.

❖ I am mostly open to any sort of conversation you’d like to bring to me even if it’s unrelated to Genshin.

❖ I ask of you to please be respectful to one another. I’d rather not have any conflict happening.

❖ I write based on my own viewpoint of everything, so please do not try to criticize me if my viewpoint differs from yours, as everyone has their own way of characterization.

———

❖ Feel free to drop some mail into my inbox at anytime! If you have any other questions, I’ll try my best to answer them!!

❖ You can just ask if you want to be mutuals, but please be sure I at least know you and it’s not a situation where I have no idea who you are at all for that would be very awkward.

❖ Tumblr is also known to sometimes bug out and eat asks. I keep count of the asks in my inbox on my pinned post, so if I don’t reply to your ask within a day or two, and the number of asks in inbox on pinned post doesn’t change, you could send in an ask to check with me!

DNI/BYF

❖ Please stay away from my blog if you’re homophobic, transphobic, lgbtqia+ phobic, sexist, racist, etc.

❖ Dark content creators and consumers kindly get tf off my blog, thank you.

❖ I spam random posts a lot at times.

❖ I’d rather not have anyone at the age of 12 and under interacting with my blog as well, thanks. (You’re literally not allowed on Tumblr what are you doing??)

❖ If you’re here just to send hate to me or anyone else, you may leave now. Save your breath and don’t make a fool of yourself on public media.

❖ I often use nicknames/pet names for people, so do let me know if you are uncomfortable with any of them.

❖ I’m honestly still quite confused about how tone indicators work, so please be aware that most of the things I say are mostly sarcastic and I do not mean any harm by them.

❖ I will not hesitate to block you should you try to start any sort of conflict, or violate any of my blog rules. If there’s anything you are unsure of, you can ask me in dms or send an ask on anon if you’re more comfortable with that.

❖ Please do refrain from acting all familiar with me right off the bat when I do not even know you/have never really interacted with you, because it’s just weirdly uncomfortable. And yes my dms are always open for questions of my blog you’re not comfortable with asking through asks, but don’t message me casually through dms otherwise if we’re not close(moots).

Requesting and Writing

❖ I currently only write for Genshin, but I do play ‘Obey Me!’ and Twisted Wonderland, so brainrots are very much welcomed!

❖ I may take quite a while to finish your request, so please do not rush me. Though if you’d just like to pop in to check with me if your request got through without tumblr eating it then that’s fine!

❖ As stated above in the general info section, no nsfw stuff, this is a sfw blog and I am uncomfortable with such things.

❖ Anything too gory, yandere related, cheating, suggestive, etc. I will not write for.

❖ My posts are mainly gender neutral unless stated otherwise, but I am known to make mistakes at times, so do correct me if you notice anything.

❖ I write for every currently playable character plus one stray Scaramouche. (Aloy’s origins are not of Genshin so I don’t write for her either)

❖ I write both platonic and romantic. Small beans are only allowed platonic.

> Small Beans: Qiqi, Klee, Diona, Sayu

✫ Please do not ask romantic troupes for any other minor characters if you are an adult!

———

❖ I don’t accept requests often, as my mind often goes blank when I do requests, but my inbox is always open for any sort of other shenanigans you’d like to send in! (Even an occasional ‘hi’ is absolutely fine!!)

❖ Though I do write angst, it’s probably only once in a blue moon, because I’ll most likely cry three times over before I finish the story. (╥﹏╥)

❖ If you have any other questions, feel free to send in an ask or even dm me! Whichever is more comfortable for you

This list also randomly updates whenever I remember something I should add, but I’ll most likely make a post notifying about it. So please remember to pay attention to #notice locket for announcements and stuff!!

<Head Back to Navigation Locket

[janiedean]

aaah, and I thought the throbb/theon fandom couldn’t disappoint me more than it already had

and yet.

okay, so, whatever, I’ve been made aware of a situation on twitter and honestly I’m tired, so let’s just have it out.

apologies for the long-ass post but I honestly am tired of being the uber-correct person who addresses everyone directly and properly and so on and all I get is finding out people trash talk behind your back anyway and don’t engage with me if they have a problem.

so, yesterday I’m minding my damned business, I see that @fleurdulys​ is apparently in some discussions with anti sansan people calling her names, I send her a message like ‘oh god they found you I’m so sorry’ because I have seen anti sansan takes back in the day, two people including someone that had stalked her for months start tagging me too and accusing me of the usual condoning That Horrible Problematic Ship and of being a pedo apologist blah blah blah, I block both of them, the day after another two show up in my mentions uninvited, I block both of them.

then someone who was monitoring the situation warns me that some anon is trash talking me and fleur in the curiouscat asks of some other person that I had absolutely no knowledge of until then. I went to block them, found out I had blocked them already because they were anti thr/amsay and shipped a theon show only ship I really don’t like so I went and blocked them in JULY before they changed nickname because I’m an adult and I like to think I can cut out of my life people I don’t want to risk interacting with because I know I don’t have anything to say to them. said person accused me of ‘using as a tactic calling everything calvinist’ which... well, when the problem is that antis are basically being that it’s not a tactic but whatever, I addressed it on twitter and changed my screen name as a joke because y’know what let’s embrace it, I don’t like calvinists anyway.

I go and forget about it and then the same someone monitoring the situation informs me that these lovely people had this other exchange - I’m not mentioning who it is but they’ll know and at this point I’m honestly done:

now.

sorry but what the hell.

first of all, going in order:

I blocked receiver of the CC ages ago because she ships a thing that for me is an absolute no and I have very good reasons to not like it, and I have zero interest in talking to people who ship that AND are th/ramsay antis, which is a thing that I have zero patience for whichever side of the fence you’re on - saying it as someone who doesn’t like th/ramsay but ffs I don’t agree with anti-ing stuff, if you hate it blacklist and move on with your life;

also, I wasn't lurking on her anons because I didn’t even know she was involved but someone else monitoring the situation told me I was the subject of one of them and I went and checked for myself, so like... sorry I’m not unblocking because I never searched for her, I never talked to her, I never wanted contact with her and she and the anon are there trash talking me and fleur for shipping a fictional ship so what are we even talking here;

and that’s the premise, but: I had gotten my 'bitch ass away from throbb' in 2011, the amount of fics that fandom has would Not Exist At All because *I* was the sole steady contributor (ie the only person who kept on posting it) 2011-18 (and fandom drove out the only other steady contributor in 2015-8 lmao), *I* was the one organizing most theon-based fandom events (which were opened to all ships, including the ones I hated, and if I could handle posting th/ramsay fanart/reading th/ramsay prompts/assigning them when the exchange was anonymous and I had to post all the contributions when looking at th/ramsay art made me sick back in the day I think OP can tolerate people existing and shipping stuff she don't like), *I* was the one periodically coming up with ways to make the tag less filled with hate, *I* called out every single anti shaming anyone for their ships - from thramsay to theonsa because there were theonsa antis back in S5 but she wouldn't know I suppose -, so like she can pay me the favor to not even going there because if it wasn't for me she wouldn't have throbb fic to read *period* (not to brag but check, before I started spamming the tag and helped bringing in people along with someone else who's not in fandom anymore there were literally six), so how about she check what are her contributions to the fandom (less than mine probably) other than creating drama? thanks.

also ‘theon and robb would beat pedos up’ please check your facts, theon/jeynep is going to most likely be canon and she’s like thirteen and he’s twenty-two, which is a nine year age gap, which is not even that far from sansan. also your favorite theon ship has an eight years age gap in the books too so just stop. you ain’t coherent. at least be coherent. but you can’t, because every single asoiaf ship is problematic for some reason. ;)

and that was it for OP.

now, for the anon, who honestly... the entitlement, I swear to god, but in order: if you’re that pressed because I haven’t written throbb in months also thanks to people like you you could have like, come and talked to me on tumblr because regardless from what you assume I don’t bite. also I see that you’re a throbb shipper and you’re calling me THROBB CONTENT GENERATOR?

CONTENT GENERATOR?

ARE YOU COMPLETELY OUT OF IT?

I’M A HUMAN BEING, I’M NOT YOUR DAMNED CONTENT GENERATOR.

I DON’T GENERATE CONTENT FOR YOUR SATISFACTION, I WRITE FIC FOR SHIPS I LIKE. throbb is my otp (still, even if y’all really are trying to drive me out lol) and I wrote novels of it for years for free because I love it, BUT NOT BECAUSE I’M YOUR DAMNED CONTENT GENERATOR. 

content generator.

I’m just. actually you know what, if I write throbb again after this, you can be 100% sure there’s gonna be full-on blown canon sansan in it for a very long time and I’m absolutely not going to make it avoidable if you don’t scroll half of the fic. also ‘I could ask her to write it but she’d put sansan in it so I won’t’ who the hell do you think you are?

who the hell do you think you are?

I take prompts when I can because I want to and because once in a while I enjoy the idea of writing stuff for people because other than being something I love, I like the idea that I can make someone’s day nicer by filling them a prompt if they like my writing, I don’t do that just because you ask.

what the hell? so you’d ask and me, a poor idiot, not knowing it was you, would put it on a to-write list of prompts that’s like ten pages of notebook long because that’s how long my goddamned list is, while you’re here laughing that someone whose writing you like but whose personality you obviously despise has written you your favorite ship for free not knowing that it’s for someone that doesn’t like her all that much?

jesus christ.

like, I thought this fandom couldn’t get lower than the let’s plagiarize fics deal last july, but this is honestly rich.

and then you wonder why whenever I think about finishing sfbd or writing a ship that used to make me happy to write now I go like ‘f* this noise why should I bother I’m writing any other damned pairing instead’.

and I have to read this shit from someone who, when I blocked them the moment I got the fandom twitter account, who I never searched for, who I never talked to and who is friends with people who happily accuse others of being pedo apologists because they ship sansan which is, oh, wait, an almost-canon ship with canon text supporting it and that grrm himself certainly doesn’t hate and has admitted to have been leading up to, and now wants me to unblock her to talk??? when their friends showed up in my mentions absolutely uninvited because I sent support to someone who was arguing with them because we both ship sansan and I’ve done it for longer so I know how’s the deal?

and from some kind of anon who sure as hell reads my fics enough that they know I’m still the most prolific throbb contributor to the tag even if I haven’t written throbb in a year and some who calls me content generator and not even contributor as if I was some kind of juke box machine where you put in prompts and get out 5k minimum fics for free? and who still would like to read them enough to throw that shade but has no issues trashing me because I’m pointing out that antis think exactly like 17th century calvinists, which is a thing that can 100% be proved the moment you look up how the aforementioned calvinists thought?

like, I’d like to kindly tell the both of them to find a hobby that’s not trying to fele better harassing people they don’t know for fictional ships and remind everyone on here (because I’m sure anon is on tumblr as it’s where I hang out most of the time anyway) including the few anons who have asked me if I’d consider writing throbb again in the last months and who asked me if I’d run theonexchange again at some point that fic writers are human beings, not jukeboxes, and that being assholes has, as a usual consequence, driving the content creators out. I’m not a content generator, I’m not here to get laughed at because I fill prompts and I generally like to put content in the tags and not drama and because I think that being a fandom contributor should mean spreading positivity instead of shaming people for what they ship.

anyway: as a conclusion to this rant, I’m definitely not writing throbb that doesn’t have sansan in it anytime soon and if I run theonexchange again at some point (which I would like to but with these premises you’ll see that finding the force of will when I have a life is kind of a problem) if I find out that OP or any of her friends want to participate they’re kindly welcomed not to because I’m banning them on sight.

wow, get my bitch ass away from a fandom I kind of helped make and contributed 10% of the ao3 content to.

congrats, you just made sure I really won’t when I was taking a break but I was planning to come back at some point even if right now it’s quite tempting.

thanks for reading this if you got to this point and sorry for the rant but I’m tired.

I’m really tired.

also I’ve always said I shipped sansan from the moment I was in this fandom, I tag it also for blacklisting purposes and I don’t even put it as a side in fics that much because it doesn’t come up, so if anyone is so disgusted by it they’re welcome to learn to coexist with people who ship stuff they don’t like.

again: I’m really tired.

[thranduilsperkybutt]

Hi I love your blog. I was just wondering if you had any tips or advice in running an imagines blog. Thanks xx

Hi, darling! I think I’ve answered a question like this before, but I can’t remember. Either way, my advice may have changed since then too, so I figure I’ll write out how I see things now! :)

Personally, the big thing that keeps my own blog going is time management. Keeping yourself and your time organized and setting a pace/goal for how much you want to write a day/week/month really helps, and consistency attracts followers in my experience, at least at first. Just be careful not to overwhelm yourself!

Remember that you started your blog for fun, and if it begins to feel like work then take some time to reevaluate your schedule/what you’re writing.

Organization is key to running my blog. I have my own system for how I tag, keep up with asks/requests, and organize drafts/queued posts. Find a system that works for you and keeps things running smoothly.

And if you aren’t getting many/any requests, write something that inspires you. Write what you would want to read! That’s what I did in the beginning of this blog. A lot of the fics I wrote were not requested back then. The more you write, the more people will see your fics, and the more followers you will get. Be sure to use tumblr’s tagging system to your advantage, too, to get your work seen by people! Don’t spam unnecessary tags! Tag what your post is about and know the system for tagging.

Personally something that I prefer is the use of warnings. I like being able to see them before I read a fic, and I’d recommend the use of them. It lets the reader know what they’re getting into. Warnings could be the difference in someone having a triggering experience or not, so I try to be liberal with the warnings I write. If you’re wondering if you should warn for something, do it just in case. What’s the harm?

Don’t be afraid to ask other blogs for promotion to your blog. The worst they can say is “no” anyway!

Participating in challenges is a fun way to participate in something and also get your work seen by a pool of people that it may not have been seen by otherwise. If you see one that inspires you, don’t be afraid to join it!

Something that it has taken me some time to realize myself is that you can say “no” to things! You can reject requests. You don’t owe anyone anything, and don’t feel like if you have to say “no” that you’re a bad person, because you’re not. Always do what is best for your own health and wellbeing, even if that just means you have to dole out rejection.

Be kind. A general rule, for me, is to try and be nice regardless of the circumstance. It makes such a better environment on a blog when you treat people kindly and sometimes simple kindnesses can go a long way in finding friends or having positive interactions. That said, being kind does not mean being walked all over. Know when you have to put your foot down.

I haven’t received much hate in the time that I’ve been on tumblr, but if you ever do receive hate, I’d say to not take it personally. The fact that they are taking time out of their life to worry about your tumblr blog, which they can choose whether or not to follow, is super tragic, honestly. If it really bothers you, don’t even publish it. Just delete it and block the person who is sending it.

Spread the love and promote other writers! It’s so great to hear someone suggesting my blog to follow, so I try to do the same thing!

Stay hydrated.

Remember that these are suggestions and not rules! There are many different ways to run a writing blog, and everyone does it differently! Experiment and find out what works for you! :) This is just what I do!

These are the main things I can think of at the moment that I have advice for. I hope they help you in some way, hun! Good luck!

[khhcoastal]

Live Stream ♡ Christian Yu

“Ah.. Y/N, Y/N, Y/N.. what a gorgeous girl.”

Christian was live streaming once again and I was currently at a shoot getting my necessities together before leaving. I received the Instagram notification and decided to see what my soon to be man had to offer. 

A lot of people figured we were together because of what we post via Instagram, and Twitter. We were just two individuals obviously in love with each other but too afraid to take action. We acted like a couple, that’s for sure. I met Christian when Dabin was searching for a certain someone for his ‘RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW’ music video, and he just so happened to be paired up with my very best friend. 

“Who is Y/N?” Christian repeated from a fan who commented.

“She’s a friend of mine. Such an appealing girl.. ridiculously stunning, and over all just a great catch.”

You’d have to be stupid to not realize how intrigued he was. Not a day goes by of him not expressing his genuine feelings to poor little Dabin about you.

“I’ve hung out with her plenty of times, and not a second goes by where I’m not completely fantasized by her damn beauty of a smile. I swear she’s got to be Santa’s little present to me or something,” Christian grinned before placing his chin on his balanced fist. 

He couldn’t go a day without interacting with you somehow. In fear of rejection, he hasn’t made a move even though it was completely obvious that were both interested in each other. 

"Yo, Christian. I scored the digits,” Dabin chuckled walking inside the room while  looking down on his phone not even realizing that a live stream was occurring. 

“That’s wassup,” Christian laughed slapping his hand against Dabin’s.

“What’s that mark on your cheek, bro?” 

“Eh? What mark?” Christian innocently said as if he were ‘oblivious.’

He’d be lying if he didn’t see comments on the stream asking what it was. He quickly avoided it, and acted like he didn’t notice a thing. If it wasn’t for the beauty he met up with a couple hours ago, he would’ve pulled off his innocence. He tried for hours trying to erase it off of his cheek, but it wouldn’t budge.

I quietly giggled in the drivers seat of my Rubicon Jeep. I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t wear a liquid lipstick that wasn’t matte for a purpose. 

“The red poorly smudged stain you received from your lovely Y/N,” Dabin smirked.

“Mate, shut the hell up,” Christian said through clenched teeth moving his eyes towards his phone to have Dabin take the hint. It was no use because tons of people witnessed it all already.

Dabin quickly averted his eyes towards the live stream, and to say he wasn’t satisfied with Christians misery would be a lie. 

“What’s up mates, Christian here. I wanna express my damn love for Y/N even though she’d make a better couple with my dog Lori,” Dabin teased talking to everyone watching.

“What the hell, bro!” 

“I’m just kidding. I’m going to go get some food. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“Alright. Come back never.”

By the time I arrived at my destination, Dabin was already making his way out chuckling to himself. 

“You had the time of your life in there, didn’t you?” I smiled. 

“Oh hey, Y/N! Yes, I did. He’s a fucking mess without you,” He laughed giving me a quick hug. 

I wrapped my arms around his shoulder before pulling away. “It’s a shame because it’s mutual.”

“Sure, whatever. I gotta get going. Make sure I don’t walk in on your guys making out or doing the dirty, eh?” 

“Dabin!” I giggled. 

“Ah, it was good seeing you but I’m gonna grab some food. Do you want anything?” He asked kindly.

“No, it’s fine. I already ate, but thank you.” I said already walking towards the door.

“Alright, see you later Y/N!” 

I opened the door with the spare key Christian so kindly offered to me ever since we have gotten closer, and closer to each other. 

I could already hear him talking, and if it wasn’t for the notification informing me about his stream I would’ve thought he was talking to himself like a complete weirdo. 

I dropped my bag on the kitchen counter before slowing creeping towards him, and quickly closing his eyes with my hands. 

“If it wasn’t for the amazing scent I’m inhaling right now, I wouldn’t have known about the beautiful girl in my house.” 

“Aw, Christian,” I laughed wrapping my arms around his neck. 

“Hey, cutie,” He said kissing my cheek. 

We were both browsing through the spammed comments, and chuckling at a few. “Give her an actual kiss, you pussy!” He read laughing his ass off.

“Ah, I’m way too sober for this shit. I need a drink,” He added before burying his face into my hair.

“I don’t want to kiss Christian because his lips are reserved for Lori,” I giggled.

“Oh, shut up. You brat,” He chuckled pinching my nose. 

I shoved his hand away, laughing quietly.

“Come here,” He said grabbing my waist and placing me on his lap. 

I sat on his lap securely, careful not to grind. *wink wink

“Are you sure you guys aren’t in a relationship?” I read before looking at Christian in the eyes. 

“I don’t know, are we?” He teased biting his lip while still looking me in the eyes. 

I looked away before things go intense. I sat sideways on his lap so I was able to grab his cheeks, and look straight into the camera. 

“He’s way too cute for me,” I pouted while I squished his cheeks together. 

“And you’re way too gorgeous, baby,”

I blushed before turning away and looking over his shoulder so he wouldn’t be able to see how much of an affect he has on me. 

“You guys see how much of a baby my girl is. She’s so shy around me,” He chuckled after reading comments about how cute we were. 

“Yes. She is the beautiful model you guys see in literally every picture I post on Instagram,” 

“And yes. He is the handsome director you guys see in every picture I post on Instagram also,” I added still blushing furiously. 

He chuckled before intertwining his fingers with me. “You seriously are so fucking adorable. You have no idea,”

“I think I may have been told. Maybe once or twice,” I replied arrogantly grinning.

“Hah. Real cute,” He said playfully giving me a side eye. 

“I’m so thirsty. I’m going to go get some water,” I said trying to get up.

“No, don’t leave me,” He sighed faking crying with his arms wrapped around my waist.

“Fine. Only because you’re acting really cute right now,” I laughed.

“Oh my god! Can you guys just kiss already?” He read grinning at me. 

“Ah, alright. You guys keep asking for it. Might as well do it, am I right?” He added sitting up straighter on his seat. 

I adjusted on his lap before looking at him in the eyes, “And what do I get out of it?” 

“My kissable, smooth, professionally trained lips.”

“I’m so down for that,” I giggled looking at his lips. 

He smirked before looking back at mine, and leaning down. 

His lips passionately smashed itself on mine, and I couldn’t feel more ecstatic. Our mouths moved in sync, and I just couldn’t help myself by biting his bottom lip. His top lip was captured in between my lips. My bottom lip was in between his. It was an overall fantasy. It repeated over, and over again and I couldn’t help but feel like the luckiest girl on the planet. 

His mouth open, and his tongue was about to enter mine when Dabin barged in with his jaw dropped to the ground. 

“For god sakes. I was watching the stream on my way here! Did you guys forget that there around 15,000+ people watching?” He choked with his eyes wide open.

“Oh shit...” 

[ryuuguu-rena]

→ R ・U ・L・ E ・S

Rules { last UPDATE - 05/30/2019 }

x- I will not rp with everyone, I’m currently indie but very selective.

please note that my blog here is highly selective. I will only interact and rp with people I feel comfortable with. With other words I can be picky when it comes to whom I follow. If we aren’t mutuals it doesn’t mean you can’t send me asks or memes but please know that it’s very unlikely that I will start a rp with you. I will however, always try to answer everything as much as I can ic; and eventually ooc;

x- posts&&;threads

I can write starters but not particularly fond of doing so. I think I’m not skilled enough to come up with an interesting intro. Sometimes I’ll post starters however…

Each day, there is a chance I reblog at maximal 5 memes. Exceptions can happen but it will never go beyond 7 memes per day. I don’t want to spam your dash.

If you want to reply to an ask or meme , then please post a new thread tagging me in it. I don’t like reblogging asks.

When I reblog memes, feel free to send me some it can be either ic, on anon or off. I will definitely try my best to reply to each ask

my writing style differs via mode. Sometimes I write a lot, sometimes not. My preferences are para-semi and novella. There is absolutely no need for you to do the same in return. But if we have chosen a semi para rp I ask kindly that you refrain from sending a single line as reply. I always allow this for asks and crack rps tho. I’m not a professional writer so please expect me to have writing flaws. English is not my native language after all. But I do my best.

roleplay

Planning to kill my character? Notify me first and we’ll discuss it. mentally or physically tormenting my character is okay but refrain from anything lewd.

When we start a roleplay, I try always strictly to stay in character, Rena will not just appear in your timeline/world without a proper plot.

I approve of M!A’s but I have a right to refuse them when I don’t like them, or think of them as too ooc;

If you are part of a MMOFRPG group and would like to rp with me, don’t be afraid to approach me. I used to rp at MMOFRPG for an entire year and I don’t mind roleplaying with you just because you’re part of a group.

I do have mains, And I don’t intent to replace them. Chances are very high I will reply to my mains first before anyone else. but that does not mean I ignore you, I will get to your reply too. If you however think I missed it, hit me up pls.

I try my best to make each roleplay enjoyable for my roleplay partner, chances are , I’m trying even to meet your way of writing, to please you.]

I can be very slow with replies, please be patient.

Threads come and go. Don’t take it badly when I drop our thread, we can always start a new one. or maybe our preferences of writing just doesn’t match, in that case I’m still willing to interact ic; via asks and similar but long threads are out of question.

If I drop a rp it can have many different reasons but certainly not because I didn’t enjoy to rp with you. The same goes vice versa.

Mun is over 18 years old

Personally, when it comes to smut, I prefer noncon themes, Unless you rp Keiichi. because Rena loves Keiichi and out of her own will she wouldn’t even consider to sleep with anyone else. However, she often deals with people that clearly cross the line. Making her more insane.

IMPORTANT: I will not rp any lewd here with anyone.

The only one I sometimes rp this with is my husbando but we do not rp it here on tumblr.

Rena was almost raped in the past in Ibaraki. By the only male friends she made, 3 classmates- one of them ( Kouhai ) was related to her best friend Ozaki Nagisa. During the rape attempt , she injured the boys with a baseball bat, and smashed all the windows of the school. After that happening and after Nagisa’s death*  who was actually murdered ) she was left with a major trauma. Increasing her to believe more strongly into Oyashiro-sama’s curse. This is not made up or a headcanon, but it’s actually canon from Higurashi Sui - Tokihogushi-hen. You can look it up , if you wish to do so. The reason I mention this, is because not everyone knows about Tokihogushi-hen arc. I approve of that kind of rp because I absolutely love angsty-themed rps,

another aspect of this might be my husbando, since he roleplays mainly edgy Battler, it’s more ic; for our muses; rena loves Keiichi, and even if she falls for Battler during an rp, there is no way she’d fall for the edgy Battler too. Since he’s literally a nightmare of the original Battler.

mun&IMPORTANT details!

Please note that what I write has nothing to with the real me. Though, I won’t lie that my muse and me are very similar, I’m in no way supporting everything that my muse does.

Furthermore, I know that RP is just for fun indeed, However. Rena is REALLY important to me. I rp  Rena since a long long time and never got bored of it and never will.  Rena is not just a muse/character for me, it’s basically part of my life and very strong influence on me. Not to mention we share lots of things in common. Rena helps me to keep my cool. This character means all to me. It’s literally a part of myself, very important to my soul. So much that I changed my real name to Rena long ago.

This is also why , I’m trying absolutely always my best to be absolutely ic; and that’s not difficult to do for me because I know all the higurashi games and even study japanese. You may will realize this whenever I talk/rp with someone of my rp partners in kanji.  

Due to learning japanese, I keep using lots of japanese catch phases that Rena says during rp’s. However, I never use anything that may seems too hard to be understood. So please do not let this be of a disturbance to you , If you ever want to know what I’m saying however, please just mention it in your tags.

Now as for myself, there isn’t much to say. I told you already my real name is Rena and I’m a hardcore 07thExpansion fan. I’m actually mysterious and not very open hearted. Some may even see me as arrogant for being an INTJ. but that’s not true at all, I’m just a picky person in general. I have a sideblog that I use mainly to reblog and post all kind of 07thExpansion stuff and moe culture. @maid-rena​

Discord/SKYPE/TWITTER: is eventually available upon request

this blog will have trigger warning contents.

RP’s can get quite dark, angsty, psychotic and bloody. Trigger warning content such as gore, homicide, torture, self-harm, can or will happen, but will be tagged accordingly.

IMPORTANT: Again, I will never approve of a smut rp here on tumblr.

formating

Edits, Icons and Layout are made by myself unless otherwise stated. Most of my icons are edited and cleaned by me, please don’t use them.

I made over 1k icons before but unfortunately. I lost many, likely I will make new icons again.

the mun faceclaim here for myself is roon from azur lane

I’m not the best editor however and I really suck making themes so chances are low that I will update my theme often. However if you’re skilled and talented in editing and making themes, then you’re absolutely free to help me out, Like, totally  ~

I sometimes use scripting and sometimes not, it’s always up to my laziness and mood and it often depends on me being mobile or using my laptop.

about rena

Rena has been through a lot of shit. She is bad-ass insane at times. However, Rena isn’t a killer-loli, She’s much more than that. Despite her usual cheerful and childish behavior, she’s actually one of the most matured characters in Higurashi with a really deep personality. And I will roleplay her accurate to the games not the anime.

You may consider Rena as a Yangire which isn’t just wrong, but please keep in mind that her deceiving treats come from her delusions most of the time and such come again by 80% from the hinamizawa syndrom.

Rena has the highest number of murders of the club members because in Yoigoshi-hen (the alternate version of Tsumihoroboshi-hen) she successfully blew up the whole school which killed 15 children (including herself, Mion, Satoko, Rika and Keiichi), likewise, she murdered Houjou Teppei and Mamiya Rina.

Rena is not mentally labile, tho she may seems evil at times, she is neither good or bad. One could most likely say she’s very ‘sick’ at times. Absolutely delusional.  If I had to categorize her, I’d say she’s “chaotic good”.

For further information about her mental disorders, please follow this LINK

[fabletonrp]

RP Rules Review and Being Considerate - A (Long) General Information post

I think the time has come to post something like this as a reminder about how to deal with people.  It’s no great secret I’m a little older than most people involved in roleplay, and with that advanced age comes a slightly different perspective on how to interact with others.  Before I really begin, I would like to stress that I have a lot of work experience interacting with people, face-to-face and over the phone/internet, who are happy, who are angry, and who are experiencing profound tragedy.  I’m not a social worker, I’m not particularly warm and fuzzy by nature, and I’m only minimally trained in a formal way.  My interactions are governed by experience, common sense, and a desire to ultimately be effective over being nice.  

However, this doesn’t mean I take free reign to be rude.  That also applies here.  I’m not trying to be rude. I also loathe passive-aggression to a pathological degree.  I’m just trying to share my own experiences in a context and provide a guideline for interacting with other people in a specific place -- in this case, a roleplay. I’m trying to outline what I look for in managing this group and how it informs the things I say to roleplay members who come to me for whatever reason they choose.  As you all know, my metaphorical door is always open.  I’ve happily worked through a number of interaction issues and I have no problem working through more when the need arises.  I also have no problem cheering people on, in their lives or in character. That’s the kind of stuff I’m here to do and I know that.  I’m not posting this to say I’m better than anyone else.  It’s just a way for me to share what I’m looking at when I’m dealing with complaints about how interactions happen, and a place to outline how I do it so you can hold me accountable for it.    

With that introduction and explanation out of the way, I’d like to start with explaining my perspective on an important difference.  This article, by a school counselor with extensive training on the topic and a lot of written force behind that, is my basis for it.  

When I guarantee a ‘safe’ environment here, what does that mean to you?  

To me, it means I won’t tolerate my members being spammed with inappropriate, frequent, or aggressive messages, whether in character or out of character.  This constitutes harassment.  

To be harassment, it has to be systematic. The only thing I can recommend to stop anonymous harassing messages is limiting the avenues they’re received.  For off-anon messages, if I look into it and agree that it’s bullying or harassing, the guilty person gets one conversation in which they are most likely removed from the group.  

What it doesn’t mean is writers will be comfortable all the time.  Especially in a roleplay like this with darker themes, there may be content that is objectionable to some.  That’s why we trigger tag.  Blacklisting is always an option, too.  Characters may not be liked or loved.  Someone else’s perception of your character may not be a positive one. 

It doesn’t mean disagreements won’t happen.  It doesn’t mean you won’t hear the word ‘no.’  It also doesn’t mean assumed priority or rank.  Every character and every plot has a sliding degree of importance based on scale.  In the end, we do not have a main character.  The biggest plot points are outlined on the main roleplay page.  With over a hundred characters, there will be different plots overlapping one another all the time.  With around 20 roleplayers at any given time, there will be different opinions, backgrounds, and needs to balance out.  

A safe environment doesn’t mean we all agree all the time or feelings won’t be hurt.  It just means a respectful place to work through and resolve differences.  It means no one is ignored if they make the effort to be heard.

I have a zero tolerance policy for hate-filled speech regardless of the avenue someone is being attacked (shape, size, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc - my ideas generally follow legal language because of my professional background.)  If someone receives this kind of a message from another member of the group, it is cause for immediate removal and I won’t provide the courtesy of a conversation. 

Gross instances of godmodding or metagaming will not be tolerated.  Smaller and possibly unintentional ones will be discussed.     

If the behavior doesn’t meet the legal and/or widely-accepted definition of these things, the guilty person gets a conversation that I consider a warning they need to consider how they’re treating others.  If the behavior doesn’t stop, they’re removed and blocked.  I don’t have a set timeframe for compliance here because it depends on the circumstance and its severity.

In the article I provided above, though, it splits out the difference between being rude, being mean, and being a bully.  That’s what I’d like to focus on next.  I notice the word ‘bullied’ or ‘bullying’ being tossed around a lot, both in the roleplay context and outside it, so I want to clearly outline what it is here, at least in my mind and in my operation as an admin. I agree with the article in that providing misnomers or using the buzzwords involved, at times, does a disservice to some grave issues.  This is the guideline I’m using now, and will continue to use, so please read through. 

Being rude is inadvertently saying or doing something that hurts someone else.  Not everyone is comfortable, if they feel someone is rude, saying ‘Hey, stop it.’  But the key difference between being rude and being a bully is the intent behind it. 

Example in a roleplay context: “I don’t think that’s how your character would react to that.”  Whether this type of statement, which I’ve seen more than once with different phrasing, is said in an effort to mold the speaker’s in-character interaction a certain way or for another reason, it’s rude.  It’s hurtful because of its implication that you know someone’s character better than they do.  A better, more collaborative approach might be “Tell me what your character was thinking when they said/did that.”   This automatically puts someone into a more creative place, rather than a defensive one. 

As a note, rudeness is something I will generally stay out of as an admin because we’re all adults here.  I’ll rely on you guys to work that out amongst yourselves for the most part. 

Disagreeing with someone is different from being rude.  How it’s managed is the difference.  The Golden Rule totally applies - stop and think about your own feelings or response if you were approached with a certain comment before you make it.

Being mean is a contained instance designed to hurt someone else.  Most of the time, this is inspired by anger and often it can be misdirected anger.  A lot of it is passive-aggressive.  All of it could be controlled or avoided but the person has a clear and willful disregard for the other’s feelings.

Example in a roleplay context:  “Character A hasn’t been around because they don’t care about me.”  This is a mean, planned out, and a passive-aggressive bid for attention if spoken in-character.  It casts your own character in the role of victim to someone else’s actions and casts the other character in a negative light in a way that is easily preventable.  It’s designed to get another roleplayer’s attention in a second-hand way (no direct OOC contact).  It’s also godmodding.  A better example is to place constraints and limit it to your own character’s perception.  “I don’t feel like Character A cares about me.”  This is open-ended enough to allow the other roleplayer to respond without trapping them and dictating where they’ve been or what they’ve done (or where they haven’t been/what they haven’t done.)  

As a note with this specific example, we don’t follow a day-to-day format here.  There are some roleplays that do, so an extended absence on someone’s part is a little more noticeable.  Because of the loose timeframe here, only really defined as ‘present-day’, it’s very easy to headcanon out day-to-day interaction.  

One example I feel comfortable giving is, as Marian’s roleplayer, I’ve discussed with Robin’s roleplayer that, in spite of our insane schedules, the relationship between Robin and Marian is stabilizing over time.  They see each other at home and nothing is remiss.  We’ll write out some of the bigger plot points we had discussed for them and we started a para.  This two-minute conversation literally eliminated the awkwardness and need for in-character meanness and passive aggression.  The important thing is having the two-minute conversation before we post and, trust me, with the two of us, the two minutes was spread out over about 6 hours. 

This is mostly about perception, because being rude and being mean both cause hurt in the receiving party.  The difference is really the degree of intent.  I’m more than willing as an admin to look at comments, posts, or messages and determine a degree of intent or look for patterns.  However, please realize this is a subjective science and it’s based on my own knowledge and friendships with each of you in the roleplay.  I try to talk to everyone and get to know them well, so I do consider each writer here a friend.  

If your feelings are hurt by what someone has said or done, please don’t think I’m defending them if I encourage you to consider that it may have been done from a different perspective.  

As much as I say I’m not a nice person, I don’t think that makes me a mean one either.  I don’t think anyone here is legitimately a mean person -- and the intention to degrade someone else is what makes the difference between being mean and being rude.  I know it can be hard to sort out when you’re the one hurting, but when you approach me I will try to decide if I think there’s a difference.  And I won’t be shy about expressing my opinion.  Even if I think the person is just being rude, not mean, it’s entirely possible I will go kindly ask them to knock it off.

Bullying involves three elements no matter where you look:  intent to harm, a perceived/emphasized power imbalance, and aggressive acts/threats against the weaker party.   It’s a big step up from being mean and, obviously, not all aspects apply to roleplay.  Physical bullying isn’t something we can do. I think the most pervasive kind in a roleplay is relational aggression. It’s kind of tied in with cyberbullying, considering the format, but in a long-running group roleplay, the friendships and connections you build (IC and OOC) are the key to having fun, and relational aggression undermines those.

Example in roleplay context:  “I’m just going to ignore your posts and hope you go away.”  This is an example of shunning or socially isolating someone, which is probably the most hurtful form of bullying in a roleplay because it’s insidious.  Obviously people just do this rather than saying it most of the time.  It goes without saying that not all characters will reply to all starters.  However, it becomes apparent over time when all of one roleplayer’s characters are ignored by another’s.  Things like a refusal to plot, ignoring messages without a clearly stated reason why beforehand, and spamming the dash to push someone else’s thread out of sight all fall into this category.

One example I don’t think people traditionally think of as bullying is bubble roleplaying.  We all have our ships and our favorites -- but please expect me to contact you if I notice you’re only writing with certain roleplayers or characters all the time.  It’s very much relational aggression to ignore plots with connected characters without a respectful explanation.  If you have connected characters in the roleplay, I expect you to have some form of interaction with them.  If you don’t like the connected character, you need to reconsider the role you’re taking on.  It seriously screws other people over and it’s a noticeable, glaring lack of development.  Plus it’s hurtful in an OOC way and makes others/newcomers feel unwelcome.  

I know this is long and detailed.  I had hoped it wouldn’t need to be said, but at this point I think it’s good to have a general reminder so we can avoid the casual indifference that happens once we’ve been established this long.  This isn’t me being passive aggressive and I’m not posting this because of any one thing in particular.  As I said earlier, it’s here so it’s all spelled out and, if you come to me with an issue, you can understand a little better what I’m looking at or how I think about these kinds of things.  It lays out a guideline for what I will do and makes me responsible to do it evenly and fairly.  Please click the heart if you’ve gotten this far so I know you have. It will hopefully also avoid me giving you a shut-down response if I think you’re using buzzwords in an attempt to get my attention (it won’t work.  I’ve seen that tree before.)  My ultimate goal is to keep this a safe place, to keep growing as a family, for as long as we can. I have all the trust in the world that you guys are on the same page as I am with that goal.  I love writing with each of you, even if time doesn’t allow me to do it as often as I would like.  

Thank you for being members here, for giving me your time and attention and turning this into something with a life of its own.  

Thank you for being great.   

~ Admin J

[un-enfant-immature]

LinkedIn sucks

I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.

I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium. I have 16,000 connections. I posted this story on LinkedIn and on Medium. It’s a post about how to write a book. If the spammers on LinkedIn would have loved to learn something from a writer, I suspected that would have been it. But no. Check out these read counts:

LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it’s LinkedIn it’s super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam and so I get messages like these:

[gallery ids="1708969,1708970,1708971,1708972,1708973"]

I don’t know this for sure but I think that somewhere out there is a self-help book about networking that tells introverted desk jockeys to fill their conversations with canned junk. Gail, above, seems nice enough and he’s been doing a really nice job keeping up with all of my anniversaries. But why? What did it get him? Maybe I’ll meet him at a conference and he’ll be able to use it as a point of connection. That might be cool, but I doubt it will happen.

I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me. Guys like my buddy Lewis Howes have used it to create mass followings but now Lewis is mostly showing up on Facebook and not LinkedIn. In short, I know people like LinkedIn.

I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.

How would I like LinkedIn to be used? Want to see the best pitch I ever got in that dead drop sewer? It’s right here:

Bang.

That’s the best exchange I’ve had on LinkedIn in years. I mean the very best. It’s one that I replied to kindly and with interest. Why? Because I wasn’t someone’s cheery spam message. It was a question that I could help with.

That’s it. It’s an actual conversation. Someone says “Hey, I need help” and the response is a quick “What’s up?” Someone on Twitter said that this exchange stroked my ego. Sure. Why not. But it was also the most human interaction I’ve had on LinkedIn in years.

Rather than get into that, however, I’d like to explain how to pitch someone like me — a busy journalist and entrepreneur who treats LinkedIn like a whack-a-mole weekly chore that has become more a bad habit than necessity.

As I’ve said before and will say forever: selling and PR and gathering customers is about being a human. Want to approach me on Twitter? You say “Hey, I have a question,” you ask it when prompted, and you wait for a response. Sometimes it never comes. You move on. A lot of folks have said they prefer a full chunk of text when the get spammed on services but I disagree. I get enough of that in email. I get enough of that everywhere else online. If you’re going to network with me (or anyone else who is equally cranky) you’re going to have to try something different. You’re going to have to try to be human.

So next time you’re encouraged to Control-V in some copypasta about your business, don’t. Next time you think it might be a good idea to say “Congragulations on fifteen years at Scrablr!” maybe take another tack. LinkedIn isn’t a game. It isn’t an alternative to MailChimp. It’s a conversational tool. Use it that way.

Fortnite is impressive, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by the world’s largest video game, LinkedIn, played exclusively by 40-50 year old white guys who compete by sending random connection requests in a quest to build the furthest-reaching “professional network.”

— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) September 4, 2018

[413-request-entity-too-large]

Why reCAPTCHA is actually an act of human torture

Like many things that start out as a mere annoyance, though eventually grow into somewhat of an affliction. One particular dark and insidious thing has more than reared its ugly head in recent years, and now far more accurately described as an epidemic disease.

I’m talking about the filth that is reCAPTCHA. Yes that seemingly harmless question of “Are you a human?” Truly I wish all this called for were sarcastic puns of ‘The Matrix’ variety but the matter is far more serious.

Google describes reCAPTCHA as:

[reCAPTCHA] is a free security service that protects your websites from spam and abuse.

However, this couldn’t be further from the truth, as reCAPTCHA is actually something that causes abuse. In fact, I would go so far as to say that being subjected to constant reCAPTCHAs is actually an act of human torture and disregard for a person’s human right of mental comfort.

Back in the 90s a bunch of smart-asses realized money was to be made and much time saved by programming bots to do everything for them online. Some bots were good and helpful and made things easier and more efficient for everyone. Whilst others were used to send spam and even caused some websites to crash or suffer lag due to repeated use.

For a time websites employed easily defeated methods for trying to prevent such abuse by making anyone (or anything) who visited/accessed page ‘x’ do ‘y’ thing. Mostly these preventative methods were something stupidly easy for even a computer/bot to solve and did little to stop spam and misuse except prevent access from those only computers/bots that didn’t have a method of solving such simple problems.

To solve what was (at the time) an epidemic in and of itself of bots, reCRAPCHA was born.

Late edit: *Although the topic of ‘who made reCAPTCHA?’ is mostly irrelevant as far as this post’s topic is concerned. I was firmly, albeit still mostly ‘kindly’ reminded that Mr. Luis von Ahn is the inventor of reCAPTCHA and who sold it to Google after ~2 years.* In my defense, the above wording is still right but as an author you have my apologies for not dropping your name sooner Mr. Ahn.

Google came to the rescue of all, as was arguably their responsibility because they were the ones taking it up the rear the hardest from such bots. With the torch now passed to Google, and in really no better shape than the original countermeasure. The below example is what you were tasked with solving, which in hindsight seems fair enough, though in reality – it’s incredulous to ask.

Clearly something like this frustrated people and it wasn’t outsmarting computers either so it was time for Google to get “smart” and being Google, of course they realized they could kill two birds with one stone. So they came up with a way that almost no one was able to criticize them. They turned to making people solve reCAPTCHAs that were actually helping transcribe written works into digital format, searchable by OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

What am I talking about? Well do you remember the days when a reCAPTCHA suddenly went from looking like gobbledegook, to looking like this:

I know I do. I solved thousands of these myself. A simple quick single or double word combination which could also be played out via audio. Mildly annoying but quick and simple for humans, and apparently hard for computers. Except when it became trivial for computers. So Google had to up the ante.

It started out as the lesser of two evils, the good guy vs the bad guys. Except now the fight has evolved into a level of complete disregard for humanity thanks to the likes of these barstads. Yep that’s exactly what it looks like. A “Professional” company that literally EMPLOYS PEOPLE TO SOLVE OTHER PEOPLE’S reCAPTCHAs.

Oh wait it can’t be that ba-

cough

cough

cough

cOuGh

and the list goes on, and on, and on…

How to meet the resistance in battle? Well, fast-forward to now and you’ve got this disease that is reCAPTCHA v2. The piece of crap that you now find front-and-fucking-center of every single login/register page or text/form submission on the web. That beast that ‘blocks your path’ every time you want or need to login or write anything online.

In 2017 and 2018, the average time to solve one of these annoyances was a mere 8 seconds for most people. I personally could do them in about 2-3 if I’d had my coffee. In fact, people are doing studies on how long it takes different types of people to solve them. Such as this one here. Though mind you, it’s from back in 2015 where you could solve these in seconds with both hands tied behind your back.

But now?

Now?

THE AVERAGE TIME IS OVER 30 SECONDS!

But don’t for one second think it has anything to do with some increasing level of complexity in the war against bots. No, no, no. How long it takes to now solve these things has increased due to completely deliberate and specific choices that Google has made in reCAPTCHA v3! Yes, I do mean v3 here because these changes (increased complexity in v2) were only made after the arrival of v3.

I’m talking about why, despite you being a completely normal human being of sound deductive capability. You… just… keep… FAILING these things!

So why… why does this happen? It isn’t because you are in fact a dunce who cannot count up to three or cannot tell how many buses or traffic lights there are in a few blurry photos and it also isn’t because you don’t know what a fire hydrant looks like. The reason that people fail reCAPTCHA v3 prompts so consistently now is because Google realized there was no punishment to forcing people to solve more of these ‘human verification puzzles’ and only more to gain by forcing (yes it IS forcing) people to train their AI for free.

“People whine non-stop about hidden crypto-miners in websites but those are in fact a far more honest take of the kind of beast reCAPTCHA is.”

In short. GREED is the reason why you are doomed to fail at least 2 to 3 times every time one of these blocks your path. In fairer times it used to be that if you had recently finished one, Google could tell and you would be able to outright skip any additional annoying puzzle or prompt after you had recently finished one already.

It used to be that Google recorded a bit of your mouse movements and any other inputs you made and if those were ‘human enough’ you were spared the expense and agony of having to dance like a monkey to a tune. But no more. There are no short-cuts now. No free passes. It doesn’t matter if you’re logged into your Google account and allowing all manner of cookies.

Google, despite its ability to track you even through every single reCAPTCHA prompt. They STILL force you to solve these things even though they know damn well you’re not a robot. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why!

“We have now hit such a dystopian phase in internet history that some people are in the business of hiring humans to sit in front of a screen and just solve other people’s reCAPTCHA prompts.”

Things are only set to get worse too, and [I’m certainly to the only one who thinks so. When we hit reCAPTCHA v4 and beyond the time that it takes to solve these prompts will arguably get longer and the tasks become more frustrating.

You will likely be asked to turn on your webcam to confirm you are a human, and not in fact a pesky cat that just stepped onto the keyboard.

You will likely be asked to enable access to your microphone and forced to sing the chorus to the likes of Billy Ray Cyrus’ – Achy Breaky Heart.

You will likely be asked to open your phone/iPad/whatever and perform some action on a device other than the one you are trying to solve the reCAPTCHA on –

all begging the question of “I mean do you really I mean really need to login or submit that post? What if you try later… Maybe it will just go away? If only.

and…

YOU WILL WANT TO PAY A COMPANY TO SOLVE THESE THINGS FOR YOU. BUT YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO AFFORD IT! Solving reCAPTCHAs will be just another LUXURY like fast download and upload speeds, 4K displays and toilet paper that doesn’t give you a rash.

But hold up, if you don’t think that before you start to even consider that there must be a way to bypass or block these things just like you can block an advertisement online. Leading you to find one of those aforementioned ‘solving services’ and actually ever sign up to one of them.

That there will, and, not LONG, before you ever could get to that stage, be an option to PAY GOOGLE THEMSELVES some form of subscription to bypass these things altogether. If such a thing sounds like a fairytale to you, my dear reader, you are very naïve. I call it the reCAPTCHA Pass I dare say it’s already in the works and that, if you value your time, you will want one. With Google controlling the supply, demand and complexity of these bloody things, you can bet that their prices will be the cheapest!

Really I’m surprised there isn’t a freaking crypto ‘credit’ service that exists that you can use to pay your way out of having to do them. Now wait, that’s an idea! BRB whilst I go patent that.

Mark. My. Words. It will only get worse and there will be multiple businesses and services available pining for your money. ‘When computers attack’ the only thing that can solve the question of “Are you a human?” is literally exactly that, a human. Either you, or some poor sod you are paying. So what’s it gonna be?

This article was originally published by Nils Gronkjaer. You can read it here. 

[fyrapartnersearch]

Roleplay Redux [09.25.18]

memo

Back in what I believe to be July of this year, I was forced to take an unforeseen hiatus. As some of you may know I have been dealing with issues with my health since last year; those same problems have since gotten worse and have made me weary. I apologise to those whom I was formerly speaking with or those who I still owe responses to; it was not my intention to abandon you. To those who are interested in continuing or starting a new with me, you may kindly (please) contact me at your leisure. As for those who are new here, I welcome you. I have an arrangement of choices that I hope someone fancies. I am in the process of trying to come out of the same hiatus I mentioned above. I have returned for the moment searching for anyone who is interested in both chatting and writing together. I have just a small forewarning, while I will do my best to reply swiftly to everything, it might take me some time to comply a proper response. Therefore, I ask that you have patience with me. If you cannot understand this or accept the fact that I cannot respond every single day, please seek partnership elsewhere. Thank you.

what I’m looking for in a partner

Someone willing to take the time to sit down and plan out a story we’ll both enjoy.

Someone who will respect me in the same manner as I will them. It’s a two way street and I’m tired of being disrespected and harassed.

Someone who will take the time to read my rules and regulations. There have been too many instances where I’ve discovered people have either disregarded my rules or simply glossed over them. In exchange if you have any concerns please bring them to me.

Someone who understands that I won’t be able to respond every day. I’ve been dealing with an ongoing health issue since back in June and every month it’s been constant trips to the doctor. It will take me a bit, have patience with me, please. There are some days where I might only be up for talking OOC, then there are others where you might not hear me because I simply don’t feel well.

Someone who doesn’t mind talking outside of roleplay. Another perk of roleplay is finding friends and that’s what I seek. I would like to find someone who I can build a friendship with. We can fangirl over our story and our ships, talk about our day and slowly get to know one another. ❤

types of roleplay

basic: 

Contact me with what fandom(s) you’re interested in, we’ll make a mutual decision on the choice, before exchanging oc information and discussing plots. The format is what we’re all used to: portraying our oc’s, each other’s love interest(s) and side characters.

doubles: 

More or less the same as above, except if there is more than one thing you’d like to do  and are up for doing more than roleplay, than we can. I will probably only accept 2-3 per person, due to time management.

split: 

The format is similar to the basic formula, we both choose one fandom of our respective sides. Then, we exchange oc information, love interests and plots.                      

split 2.5:  

This is similar to the former, but different than the ones before it. Normally, a split roleplay is done where we choose two separate fandoms; but I can make an exception for a basic format if that is what you wish. Now, here is where it’s different after we choose our respective fandoms, along with our oc information we will include a big or small write up of a plot for our character and their love interest(s). Now, I will give my partner full-rein in regards to what kind of plot they want. Want a storyline filled with drama and mayhem? Go for it. Want a reverse harem storyline with four characters vying for your character’s heart? Fine with me. This is your opportunity to play out any kind of headcanons and storylines you wish. I only ask for nothing that violates my rules or limits, otherwise sky’s the limit. I will may accept 2-3 per person. If you need help with a storyline, let me know.

rules and regulations

length:

Normally, I will write one to two paragraphs on both sides. However, that is not my limit for I can write anywhere between one to five paragraphs per sides. Length for a single paragraph can range anywhere between 200-500+ words, whereas each individual side usually equates anywhere from 400-800+ words. I like to consider myself a paragraph|multi-paragraph writer, although I know a lot of people are converting to novella writers, I can accommodate to a novella partner just beware that it will take me longer to reply to you as opposed to someone else. This is due to how much time and effort that goes into novella responses. I am the type of person who likes to take the time to construct a quality response, rather than rush and send someone a response for the sake of replying. Which is why I ask, please give me time to write your response.

 format:

I can write in either first or third person, despite preferring first because I can connect with my character more; I will do whatever my partner feels more comfortable with and if that’s second so be it. Also, don’t forget that roles between the two of us should follow accordingly; I play my OC, your love interest(s) and additional side characters. While you play your OC, my love interest(s) and additional side characters.

 love interests, mary sues, and spotlight:

I’m lenient when it comes to love interests, as I allow more than one suitor for our characters because love triangles make the story more interesting. However, I would ask that if we just so happen to have the same choice(s) for a love interest that we don’t fight about it; instead try to sort things out. I’ve literally had someone threaten me, simply because I liked the same person as them (I’m not kidding). Second, I’m not an extremist when it comes to characters; meaning I won’t knit pick about every little thing. All I ask is no Mary-Sues and no hogging the spotlight; this is a storyline created between the two us. Let’s share it please.

 spelling and grammar:

There are a lot of people who tend to knit pick about this; but rest assured I will not. All I ask is that you have a decent grasp on both spelling and grammar. Do this and we’ll get along fine; this is something that I can and will promise you.

 manners and etiquette:

This should be common knowledge, but all I ask is that during our time writing together that you treat me with respect and courtesy; I will return the gesture as it is only right. I’d like us to get along, I would hate for a disagreement to ensure and there was bad blood between us due to something frivolous.

 patience and commitment:

I am a full-time student, attending college and leave for school early in the morning and return home later in the afternoon; I am usually quite tired when I return home, but I try to reply to my partners as frequent as possible. However there are times, unfortunately when I cannot reply when I’d like due to an abundant amount of assignments, health issues which can lead to me becoming sick or an emergency at home. I try to inform my partners of these occurrences, but if you don’t hear from me in two weeks time don’t be afraid to send me a message and ask me about it. What I won’t accept, is being spammed every five seconds with the same message; again and again because I’m not replying like you’d like me to. I do my best to get to you all, roleplay is supposed to be fun and enjoyable; an escape from reality for both of us. It shouldn’t have to feel like a job. I will do the same for you because I understand everyone here has different lives and schedules to attend to; but please don’t ditch me half-way through the roleplay. If you need to take a break or something; then please tell me. I don’t bite- I’ll understand.

 limits:

Upon sending a request please include your limits; the last thing I wish is to make you uncomfortable. My own limits include but are not limited to the following: male x male,  female x female, incest, paedophilia, and bestiality. This is where my limits stand as of now and may or may not change depending on future roleplays. If you’re unsure about something please don’t hesitate to ask me. In regards to what I will do well I am open to mature themes within my roleplays; actually, I would prefer if my partner was as well. These themes are but not limited to: foul language, violence, blood/gore (but not too heavy, please), smut, sex, alcohol, drugs ( prescription or not), mental illness, psychological themes and more. However, please be advised that I would like to keep everything to a certain level; this means while I do allow cursing, please do not have your character do so every other word. Also, I will not engage in a roleplay that is dedicated solely to sexual activities, alone. I believe that there is more to a storyline than this.

 canon, crossovers and au:

I can do strictly canon roleplays or an alternate universe roleplay. Alternate Universes can range from ‘what if’ situations, different settings and scenarios. If you have an idea let me know, or we can brainstorm ideas together; I also have a list of AU prompts so let me know if you’d like to take a look at it. I am also crossover friendly

 location:

I use mediums such as Skype, Discord and Kik to talk ooc, but tend to roleplay through Google Docs, Email (preferred) or Tumblr.

 ooc chit-chat:

I’d like to chat on the sidelines with my partners, as it allows the two of us to get to know each other; thus making things less awkward for the both of us. Plus, I like to make friends with my partners and would enjoy the extra person to converse with.

roleplay subjects

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d0mnY-OKlZvMvAeWwLts9yLJXIA3U7GvPt9e9Owpb2s/edit?usp=sharing

The link above will provide my full list of fandoms (cravings included) and original prompts. Please be sure to visit before contacting me.

final checklist

Respect my limits and I’ll respect yours.

This list will be updated when I see fit

If it’s not on my list, don’t ask me about it, no offence but you’re wasting my time and yours.

Please acquaint yourself with my rules before messaging me. Failure to comply with them or in the instance of repeat offences will result in the termination of the roleplay.

Love interests are written in order of preference. If there is only one listed then that’s the only one and I won’t change it.

Listed above are the fandoms I would be interested in writing for, with them are characters who I wished played against my OC. In return, I will play a character opposite your own OC.

Please try to have at least two choices when contacting me. I will be thrilled if you have more than that.

Seriously, don’t contact me if you’re going to ditch. I’m tired of having someone contact me, I get excited and then get dropped. It’s even worse when I write a starter or reply that goes unanswered. If you haven’t heard from me in two to three weeks time send a follow-up message. I cannot stress this enough. Odds are I didn’t receive your message, my own message has gone astray or something simply came up. Either way, I will always get replies out to my partners.

DO. NOT. HARASS. ME. Spamming won’t make me respond faster, threatening to ditch the roleplay because I haven’t responded won’t make me respond faster. This will just turn me off from the whole thing altogether and I WILL end contact one way or another. I don’t mind a light nudge or friendly ask, but anything else won’t be accepted. I’m tired of it.

Be prepared to plot.

Split roleplays are an option

Double roleplays are an option

Plot Candies: Fandoms, Canon, Real world meets the Fandom world(aka: Characters from a fandom transported to the real world or vice versa), Action, Adventure, Superhero fiction, Crime, Fantasy, Supernatural, Urban Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Epic/High Fantasy, Magical Girl, Alternate Universe, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Slice of Life, Thriller, Psychological, Drama, Mythology, Fiction, Tragedy, Time Travel, What-If (prompts),Married-Life, Pregnancy, Family, Crossovers, Reverse Harem

Genres and Themes that are a no-no: Science Fiction, Western, Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Historical, Mecha, Zombies, Canon/Canon

Upon contacting me please make sure to do the following. First, I believe that first impressions matter and therefore would appreciate if you could please introduce yourself to me. I find when people contact me with simply “Want to RP” or “RP?” to be very off-putting and therefore leave me with no desire to return the message. Second, please include the following information: what you’re interested in writing for, any limits that you may or may not have (this one is important because I know everyone is different) and what type of roleplay you’re interested doing. Lastly, it would be nice if you could include any ideas you may have. If you don’t have any that’s okay, if you do don’t be shy to share. Thanks. ❤

contact information

email: x_heavenly.aura_x@yahoo.com

skype: x_keyblade.princess_x

kik: Sailor.Nyx

discord: Stray Cat #6885

tumblr: miss-mischievous-minx.tumblr.com

[nuttytriumphenthusiast-blog]

I hate LinkedIn . I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.

I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium. I have 16,000 connections. As a test I posted a story on LinkedIn and on Medium. It’s a post about how to write a book. If the spammers on LinkedIn would have loved to learn something from a writer, I suspected that would have been it. But no. Check out these read counts…

This is Medium:

And this is LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it’s LinkedIn it’s super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam and so I get messages like these on a daily basis:

I don’t know this for sure but I think that somewhere out there is a self-help book about networking that tells introverted desk jockeys to fill their conversations with canned junk. Gail, above, seems nice enough and he’s been doing a really nice job keeping up with all of my anniversaries. But why? What did it get him? Maybe I’ll meet him at a conference and he’ll be able to use it as a point of connection. That might be cool, but I doubt it will happen.

I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me. Guys like my buddy Lewis Howes have used it to create mass followings but now Lewis is mostly showing up on Facebook and not LinkedIn. In short, I know people like LinkedIn.

I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.

How would I like LinkedIn to be used? Want to see the best pitch I ever got in that dead drop sewer? It’s right here:

Bang.

That’s the best exchange I’ve had on LinkedIn in years. I mean the very best. It’s one that I replied to kindly and with interest. Why? Because I wasn’t someone’s cheery spam message. It was a question that I could help with.

That’s it. It’s an actual conversation. Someone says “Hey, I need help” and the response is a quick “What’s up?” Someone on Twitter said that this exchange stroked my ego. Sure. Why not. But it was also the most human interaction I’ve had on LinkedIn in years.

Rather than get into that, however, I’d like to explain how to pitch someone like me — a busy journalist and entrepreneur who treats LinkedIn like a whack-a-mole weekly chore that has become more a bad habit than necessity.

As I’ve said before and will say forever: selling and PR and gathering customers is about being a human. Want to approach me on Twitter? You say “Hey, I have a question,” you ask it when prompted, and you wait for a response. Sometimes it never comes. You move on. A lot of folks have said they prefer a full chunk of text when the get spammed on services but I disagree. I get enough of that in email. I get enough of that everywhere else online. If you’re going to network with me (or anyone else who is equally cranky) you’re going to have to try something different. You’re going to have to try to be human.

So next time you’re encouraged to Control-V in some copypasta about your business, don’t. Next time you think it might be a good idea to say “Congragulations on fifteen years at Scrablr!” maybe take another tack. LinkedIn isn’t a game. It isn’t an alternative to MailChimp. It’s a conversational tool. Use it that way.

Fortnite is impressive, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by the world’s largest video game, LinkedIn, played exclusively by 40-50 year old white guys who compete by sending random connection requests in a quest to build the furthest-reaching “professional network.”

— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) September 4, 2018

LinkedIn sucks – TechCrunch

I hate LinkedIn . I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t.

LinkedIn sucks – TechCrunch I hate LinkedIn . I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t.

[saltysuittaco-blog]

I hate LinkedIn . I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.

I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium. I have 16,000 connections. As a test I posted a story on LinkedIn and on Medium. It’s a post about how to write a book. If the spammers on LinkedIn would have loved to learn something from a writer, I suspected that would have been it. But no. Check out these read counts…

This is Medium:

And this is LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it’s LinkedIn it’s super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam and so I get messages like these on a daily basis:

I don’t know this for sure but I think that somewhere out there is a self-help book about networking that tells introverted desk jockeys to fill their conversations with canned junk. Gail, above, seems nice enough and he’s been doing a really nice job keeping up with all of my anniversaries. But why? What did it get him? Maybe I’ll meet him at a conference and he’ll be able to use it as a point of connection. That might be cool, but I doubt it will happen.

I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me. Guys like my buddy Lewis Howes have used it to create mass followings but now Lewis is mostly showing up on Facebook and not LinkedIn. In short, I know people like LinkedIn.

I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.

How would I like LinkedIn to be used? Want to see the best pitch I ever got in that dead drop sewer? It’s right here:

Bang.

That’s the best exchange I’ve had on LinkedIn in years. I mean the very best. It’s one that I replied to kindly and with interest. Why? Because I wasn’t someone’s cheery spam message. It was a question that I could help with.

That’s it. It’s an actual conversation. Someone says “Hey, I need help” and the response is a quick “What’s up?” Someone on Twitter said that this exchange stroked my ego. Sure. Why not. But it was also the most human interaction I’ve had on LinkedIn in years.

Rather than get into that, however, I’d like to explain how to pitch someone like me — a busy journalist and entrepreneur who treats LinkedIn like a whack-a-mole weekly chore that has become more a bad habit than necessity.

As I’ve said before and will say forever: selling and PR and gathering customers is about being a human. Want to approach me on Twitter? You say “Hey, I have a question,” you ask it when prompted, and you wait for a response. Sometimes it never comes. You move on. A lot of folks have said they prefer a full chunk of text when the get spammed on services but I disagree. I get enough of that in email. I get enough of that everywhere else online. If you’re going to network with me (or anyone else who is equally cranky) you’re going to have to try something different. You’re going to have to try to be human.

So next time you’re encouraged to Control-V in some copypasta about your business, don’t. Next time you think it might be a good idea to say “Congragulations on fifteen years at Scrablr!” maybe take another tack. LinkedIn isn’t a game. It isn’t an alternative to MailChimp. It’s a conversational tool. Use it that way.

Fortnite is impressive, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by the world’s largest video game, LinkedIn, played exclusively by 40-50 year old white guys who compete by sending random connection requests in a quest to build the furthest-reaching “professional network.”

— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) September 4, 2018

LinkedIn sucks – TechCrunch I hate LinkedIn . I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t.

[theinvinciblenoob]

I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.

I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium. I have 16,000 connections. As a test I posted a story on LinkedIn and on Medium. It’s a post about how to write a book. If the spammers on LinkedIn would have loved to learn something from a writer, I suspected that would have been it. But no. Check out these read counts…

This is Medium:

And this is LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it’s LinkedIn it’s super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam and so I get messages like these on a daily basis:

[gallery ids="1708969,1708970,1708971,1708972,1708973"]

I don’t know this for sure but I think that somewhere out there is a self-help book about networking that tells introverted desk jockeys to fill their conversations with canned junk. Gail, above, seems nice enough and he’s been doing a really nice job keeping up with all of my anniversaries. But why? What did it get him? Maybe I’ll meet him at a conference and he’ll be able to use it as a point of connection. That might be cool, but I doubt it will happen.

I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me. Guys like my buddy Lewis Howes have used it to create mass followings but now Lewis is mostly showing up on Facebook and not LinkedIn. In short, I know people like LinkedIn.

I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.

How would I like LinkedIn to be used? Want to see the best pitch I ever got in that dead drop sewer? It’s right here:

Bang.

That’s the best exchange I’ve had on LinkedIn in years. I mean the very best. It’s one that I replied to kindly and with interest. Why? Because I wasn’t someone’s cheery spam message. It was a question that I could help with.

That’s it. It’s an actual conversation. Someone says “Hey, I need help” and the response is a quick “What’s up?” Someone on Twitter said that this exchange stroked my ego. Sure. Why not. But it was also the most human interaction I’ve had on LinkedIn in years.

Rather than get into that, however, I’d like to explain how to pitch someone like me — a busy journalist and entrepreneur who treats LinkedIn like a whack-a-mole weekly chore that has become more a bad habit than necessity.

As I’ve said before and will say forever: selling and PR and gathering customers is about being a human. Want to approach me on Twitter? You say “Hey, I have a question,” you ask it when prompted, and you wait for a response. Sometimes it never comes. You move on. A lot of folks have said they prefer a full chunk of text when the get spammed on services but I disagree. I get enough of that in email. I get enough of that everywhere else online. If you’re going to network with me (or anyone else who is equally cranky) you’re going to have to try something different. You’re going to have to try to be human.

So next time you’re encouraged to Control-V in some copypasta about your business, don’t. Next time you think it might be a good idea to say “Congragulations on fifteen years at Scrablr!” maybe take another tack. LinkedIn isn’t a game. It isn’t an alternative to MailChimp. It’s a conversational tool. Use it that way.

Fortnite is impressive, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by the world’s largest video game, LinkedIn, played exclusively by 40-50 year old white guys who compete by sending random connection requests in a quest to build the furthest-reaching “professional network.”

— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) September 4, 2018

via TechCrunch

[jimivaey]

I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.

I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium. I have 16,000 connections. I posted this story on LinkedIn and on Medium. It’s a post about how to write a book. If the spammers on LinkedIn would have loved to learn something from a writer, I suspected that would have been it. But no. Check out these read counts:

LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it’s LinkedIn it’s super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam and so I get messages like these:

I don’t know this for sure but I think that somewhere out there is a self-help book about networking that tells introverted desk jockeys to fill their conversations with canned junk. Gail, above, seems nice enough and he’s been doing a really nice job keeping up with all of my anniversaries. But why? What did it get him? Maybe I’ll meet him at a conference and he’ll be able to use it as a point of connection. That might be cool, but I doubt it will happen.

I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me. Guys like my buddy Lewis Howes have used it to create mass followings but now Lewis is mostly showing up on Facebook and not LinkedIn. In short, I know people like LinkedIn.

I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.

How would I like LinkedIn to be used? Want to see the best pitch I ever got in that dead drop sewer? It’s right here:

Bang.

That’s the best exchange I’ve had on LinkedIn in years. I mean the very best. It’s one that I replied to kindly and with interest. Why? Because I wasn’t someone’s cheery spam message. It was a question that I could help with.

That’s it. It’s an actual conversation. Someone says “Hey, I need help” and the response is a quick “What’s up?” Someone on Twitter said that this exchange stroked my ego. Sure. Why not. But it was also the most human interaction I’ve had on LinkedIn in years.

Rather than get into that, however, I’d like to explain how to pitch someone like me — a busy journalist and entrepreneur who treats LinkedIn like a whack-a-mole weekly chore that has become more a bad habit than necessity.

As I’ve said before and will say forever: selling and PR and gathering customers is about being a human. Want to approach me on Twitter? You say “Hey, I have a question,” you ask it when prompted, and you wait for a response. Sometimes it never comes. You move on. A lot of folks have said they prefer a full chunk of text when the get spammed on services but I disagree. I get enough of that in email. I get enough of that everywhere else online. If you’re going to network with me (or anyone else who is equally cranky) you’re going to have to try something different. You’re going to have to try to be human.

So next time you’re encouraged to Control-V in some copypasta about your business, don’t. Next time you think it might be a good idea to say “Congragulations on fifteen years at Scrablr!” maybe take another tack. LinkedIn isn’t a game. It isn’t an alternative to MailChimp. It’s a conversational tool. Use it that way.

Fortnite is impressive, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by the world’s largest video game, LinkedIn, played exclusively by 40-50 year old white guys who compete by sending random connection requests in a quest to build the furthest-reaching “professional network.”

— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) September 4, 2018

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LinkedIn sucks I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t.