#Niche Marketing Examples

[gptknowledgezone]

The Truth About Side Hustles in 2024

It’s very easy to get bogged down when people say certain things online, like “drop shipping is dead” or “affiliate marketing is too hard.” And if you’re considering creating a side hustle, then you will be told from some quarters. They will say that a lot of money is needed as a starting point. Let me tell you, these assumptions are way off the mark. They reflect a misconception. It is about…

[lazycranberrydoodles]

every time i make a post that is kind of specific i get so happy when the target audience finds it. yes, i made this especially for you, the 3 people that have gone insane in the tags

[froqpi-art]

HIII everyone i’m going to helping my friend table at the Asian Night Market at Pratt Pullman yard in atlanta this friday!! they have a lot of beautiful prints and stickers and i will also be selling a few stickers as well!! there is yummy asian food and a kpop event so plz come say hi if you’re in the area ☺️☺️☺️

[farmerstrend]

How Big Should Your Farm Be to Make a Profit?

Many new agripreneurs believe that the size of their farm will determine how profitable they’ll be. However, you can be profitable whether you’re farming 1 hectare or 100 hectares; it all depends on how you farm. When it comes to land, the most important thing to consider is not the number of hectares at your disposal, but rather the commodity that you farm and how you manage and control costs.…

[digitaltogrow]

Comprehensive Guide to the Essential Types of Content Writing

In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, content writing plays a pivotal role in engaging audiences and driving business growth. From blog posts that attract organic traffic to technical documentation that supports product use, understanding the diverse types of content writing is crucial for any successful content strategy. Here, we delve into the key types of content writing that can elevate your brand’s presence and convert visitors into loyal customers.

[fragranticareviewers]

Hello!

I never were interested in perfume and your blog is fascinating to me! I’m discovering a whole new world !

So, from what I’m understanding there are perfumer who create perfumes that specifically smell bad or pungent? Like Toskovat?

yes! these are usually referred to as niche perfumes because they're not really meant to be marketable or enjoyable to most people. they're more akin to collector's art pieces, rather than something you're meant to wear.

toskovat is really interesting - he's a romanian perfumer whose perfumes are meant to tell stories about different traumas. each one comes with a different short story.

for example, inexcusable evil - the one with the blood and iodine and concrete and gunpowder - is supposed to be about war:

each note is meant to be a different aspect of war: blood & iodine from amputated limbs, concrete from collapsed buildings, gunpowder and ozone from the guns firing.

another one of his i find interesting is age of innocence:

which, according to the description, is about about a car accident that kills a child:

what's interesting is that the perfume is designed to change as you wear it. when you first spray it, it smells like very sweet bubblegum and cotton candy. the gasoline, burnt rubber, and metal get stronger and stronger as it dries. there's a beginning, middle, and end.

it's all very interesting!

[centrally-unplanned]

We (somewhat rightly) mock the 2000's era fansub translation notes for their otaku fixations and privileging of trivia over the media, but they should be understood as serving their purpose for a bit of a different era in the anime fandom. Take this classic:

Like, its so obvious, right? Just say "pervert", you don't need the note! Which is true, for like a 'normie' audience member who just wants to watch A TV Show - but no one watching, uh *quick google* "Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne" in 1999 is that person. The audience is weebs, and for them the fact that show is Japanese is a huge selling point. They want it to feel as 'anime' as possible; and in the west language was one of the core signifiers of anime-ness. 2004 con-goers calling their friends "-kun" and throwing in "nani?" into conversations was the way this was done, and alongside that a lexicon of western anime fandom terminology was born. Seeing "ecchi" on the screen is, to this person, a better viewing experience - it enhances their connection to otaku identity the show is providing, and reinforces their shared cultural lexicon (Ecchi is now a term one 'expects' anime fans to know - a truth that translator notes like this simultaneously created and reflected).

But of course your audiences have different levels of otaku-dom, and so you can't just say 'ecchi' and call it a day - so for those who are only Level 2 on their anime journey, you give them a translation note. Most of the translation notes of the era are like this - terms the fansubber thought the audience might know well enough that they would understand it and want that pure Japanese cultural experience, but that not all of them would know, so you have to hedge. The Lucky Star one I posted is a great example of that:

Its Lucky Star, the otaku-crown of anime! You desperately want the core text to preserve as much anime vocab as possible, to give off that feeling, but you can't assume everyone knows what a GALGE is - doing both is the only way to solve that dilemma.

This is often a good guideline when looking at old memetically bad fansubs by the way:

This isn't real, no fansub had this - it was a meme that was posted on a wiki forum in 2007. Which makes sense, right? "Plan" isn't a Japanese cultural or otaku term, so there is no reason not to translate it, it doesn't deepen the ~otaku connection~.

Which, I know, I'm explaining the joke right now, but over time I think many have grown to believe that this (and others like it) is a real fansub, and that these sort of arbitrary untranslations just peppered fansub works of the time? It happened, sure, but they would be equally mocked back then as missteps - or were jokes themselves. Some groups even had a reputation for inserting jokes into their works, imo Commie Subs was most notable for this; part of the competitive & casual environment of the time. But they weren't serious, they are not examples of "bad fansubs" in the same way.

This all faded for a bunch of reasons - primarily that the market for anime expanded dramatically. First, that lead to professionally released translations by centralized agencies that had universal standards for their subs and accountability to the original creators of the show. Second, the far larger audience is far less invested in anime-as-identity; they like it, but its not special the way its special when you are a bullied internet recluse in 2004. They just want to watch the show, and would find "caring" about translation nuances to be cringe. And since these centralized agencies release their product infinitely faster and more accessibly than fansubs ever did, their copies now dominate the space (including being the versions ripped to all illegal streaming sites), so fansubs died.

Though not totally - a lot of those fansub groups are still around! Commie Subs is still kicking for example. They either do the weird nuance stuff, or fansub unreleased-in-the-west old or niche anime, or even have pivoted to non-anime Japanese content that never gets international release. But they used to be the taste-makers of the community; now they are the fringe devotees in a culture that has moved beyond them. So fansubs remain something of a joke of the 90's and 2000's in the eyes of the anime culture of today, in a way that maybe they don't deserve.

[powerfulaitools]

Monetize Your Blog: The Top Strategies for Affiliate Marketing

Looking to monetize your blog? Affiliate marketing might be just what you need! Check out these top strategies to maximize your earnings and boost your online presence. Start earning more today! #affiliateMarketing #monetizeYourBlog #digitalMarketing

Introduction Understanding Affiliate Marketing Choosing the Right Affiliate Products Creating Quality Content Types of Content that Work Well for Affiliate Marketing Tips for Writing Quality Content Building an Email List Why You Need an Email List How to Build an Email ListHow to Choose the Right Affiliate ProductsHow to Promote Affiliate ProductsHow to Track Your Affiliate Marketing…

[pukefactory]

🤤pls i need salesperson ena AND meanie ena to degrade me and call me pathetic PLSL tell me u see the vision

•☽────✧˖°˖ PATHETIC CHOICES ˖°˖✧────☾•

★ Summary: A Compilation of Headcanons Featuring Salesperson Ena Degrading The Reader

★ Character(s): Salesperson Ena (Ena: Dream BBQ)

★ Genre: Headcanons

★ Warning(s): Slightly Suggestive

★ Image Credits: @JoelG

☆ Salesperson Ena starts the ��pitch” with fake concern. She clasps her clawed hands together, voice smooth as a well-rehearsed script. “Oh, dear. Oh, sweetheart. You’re looking a little down on your luck today, aren’t you? Lost? Confused? Pathetic?” Her grin stretches wide. “I can help you with that! I can sell you a new identity! One where you’re marginally less pitiful!”

☆ Meanie Ena doesn’t have the patience for this. “OH, WHAT, YOU WANNA HEAR ME SAY IT?! FINE! YOU’RE PATHETIC!” She throws her hands up, staring you down with that sharp, geometric glare. “WHAT, YOU WANT A REWARD FOR BEING A LOSER? YOU WANT A FREAKIN’ CERTIFICATE? ‘OH CONGRATULATIONS, YOU’RE THE SADDEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN!’”

☆ Salesperson Ena is a master at passive-aggressive degradation. “Mmm. Oh, honey. Oh, champ. You are just… absolutely trying your best, aren’t you?” She sighs, shaking her head. “And yet, somehow, that best is still so abysmally low. Have you considered a career change? Perhaps into something more fitting for your… particular skillset? Say, sitting quietly and being a little failure?”

☆ Meanie Ena doesn’t do subtle things. “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU EXIST. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WERE BORN. OH MY GOD. I WANNA PUT YOU IN A DISPLAY CASE AND CHARGE PEOPLE TO POINT AND LAUGH.”

☆ Salesperson Ena loves to act like she’s being kind. “Oh, sweet thing, don’t look so down! Some people are just born to be stepped on, you know? It’s a valuable role in society! Think of how much joy you bring by being an example of what not to be! Truly, you are doing a service.”

☆ Meanie Ena treats you like the world’s stupidest riddle. “HOW. HOW DID YOU END UP LIKE THIS. NO, REALLY, I NEED TO KNOW. WHAT LIFE DECISIONS LED TO THIS MOMENT? WERE YOU JUST BORN THIS SAD? DID YOU WAKE UP ONE DAY AND GO ‘OH BOY I HOPE SOMEONE YELLS AT ME TODAY’?!?!”

☆ Salesperson Ena offers a solution, but it’s just more insults. “Now, now, no need to fret! Lucky for you, I have just the thing! A custom-designed program guaranteed to help sad, little, pathetic creatures like yourself! It’s called: ‘Oh My God, Get Your Life Together!’ And the first lesson? Try harder!”

☆ Meanie Ena makes it your problem. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT YOU’RE GIVING ME? I HAVE TO STAND HERE AND WITNESS THIS. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO LOOK AT YOU RIGHT NOW?!?”

☆ Salesperson Ena treats this like a business opportunity. “Oh, what’s that? You like being degraded? My, my, what an incredibly niche and marketable trait! You know, I could sell you as a brand! We’ll call it: ‘The Most Pitiful Fool Alive!’ Your face on billboards! Your misery is monetized! What do you say? Sign here, here, and here.”

☆ Meanie Ena doesn’t get why you’re enjoying this. “NO. NO, YOU DON’T GET TO BE HAPPY ABOUT THIS. STOP SMILING. WHY ARE YOU SMILING. DAMN IT, STOP ENJOYING THIS, IT’S MAKING ME MORE MAD!”

[thedaddycomplex]

My dad has written and illustrated a book about geodes and how they are formed. It’s a bit whimsical but science based and the art is pretty good, watercolors, but it is such a niche subject I don’t know how to locate a publisher. Thoughts? Vanity publish?

Vanity publishing is always an option, though I have a whole diatribe about the expectation vs. reality of vanity- and self-publishing.

You might try going to a bookstore to see what other whimsical science books have been published in the past year and reach out to those publishers. (And it doesn’t have to be a publisher that already has other geode books. On the contrary, you want to find one that has sciencey books, but a geode deficit.)

While you may find many examples in the library, it only helps if the books are recent. A store can tell you or show you which new ones are selling now, which will give you some info on the market, which you can then fold into your pitch

For the record, one speed bump you may hit is that you already have art for the book. Most publishers like to have a say—if not outright control—over who does the art for their books. So, if that’s a dealbreaker for you, just be prepared. If not, consider pitching just the text of his book and see if more doors open for you.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Two weak spots in Big Tech economics

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in AUSTIN on Mar 10. I'm also appearing at SXSW and at many events around town, for Creative Commons, Fediverse House, and EFF-Austin. More tour dates here.

Big Tech's astonishing scale is matched only by its farcical valuations – price-to-earnings ratios that consistently dwarf the capitalization of traditional hard-goods businesses. For example, Amazon's profit-to-earnings ratio is 37.65; Target's is only 13.34. That means that investors value every dollar Amazon brings in at three times the value they place on a dollar spent at Target.

The fact that Big Tech stocks trade at such a premium isn't merely of interest to tech investors, or even to the personal wealth managers who handle the assets of tech executives whose personal portfolios are full of their employers' stock options.

The high valuations of tech stocks don't just reflect an advantage over bricks and mortar firms – they are the advantage. If you're Target and you're hoping to hire someone who's just interviewed at Amazon, you have to beat Amazon's total compensation offer. But when Amazon makes that offer, they can pay some – maybe even most – of the offer in stock, rather than in cash.

This is a huge advantage! After all, to get dollars, both Amazon and Target have to convince you to spend money in their stores (or, in Amazon's case, with its cloud, or as a Prime sub, etc etc). Both Amazon and Target get their dollars from entities outside of the firm's four walls, and the dollars only come in when they convince someone else to do business with them.

But stock comes from inside the firm. Amazon makes new Amazon shares by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet. They don't have to convince you to buy anything in order to issue that new stock. That is their call, and their call alone.

Amazon can buy lots of things with stock – not just the labor of in-demand technical workers who command six-figure salaries. They can even buy whole companies using stock. So if Amazon and Target are bidding against one another for an anticompetitive acquisition of a key supplier or competitor, Amazon can beat Target's bid without having to spend the dollars its shareholders would like them to divert to dividends, stock buybacks, etc.

In other words, a company with a fantastic profit/earning ratio has its own money-printer that produces currency that can be used to buy labor and even acquire companies.

But why do investors value tech stocks so highly? In part, it's just circular reasoning: a company with a high stock price can beat its competitors because it has a high stock price, so I should buy its stock, which will drive up its stock price even further.

But there's more to this than self-fulfilling prophecy. The high price of tech stocks reflects the market's belief that these companies will continue to grow. If you think a company will be ten times bigger in two years, and it's only priced at three times as much as mature rivals that have stopped growing altogether, then that 300% stock premium is a bargain, because the company will have 1,000% growth in just a couple years. Tech companies have proven themselves, time and again, to be capable of posting incredible growth – think of how quickly Google went from a niche competitor to established search engines to the dominant player, with a 90% market share.

That kind of growth is enough to make anyone giddy, but it eventually runs up against the law of large numbers: doubling a small number is easy, doubling a large number is much, much harder. A search engine that's used by 90% of the world can't double its users – there just aren't enough people to sign up. They'd need to breed several billion new humans, raise them to maturity, and then convince them to be Google users.

And here's the thing: the flipside of the huge profits that can be reaped by investors who buy stocks at a premium in anticipation of growth is the certainty that you will be wiped out if you're still holding the stock when the growth halts. When Amazon stops growing, its PE ratio should fall to something like Target's, which means that its stock should decline by two thirds on that day.

Which is why Big Tech investors tend to be twitchy, hair-trigger types, easily stampeded into mass selloffs. That's what happened in 2022, when Facebook admitted to investors that it had grown more slowly than it had projected, and investors staged the largest stock selloff in history (to that point – hi, Nvidia!), wiping a quarter-trillion dollars off Meta's valuation in a day:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/02/03/stocks-plunge-after-facebooks-massive-sell-off-nasdaq-falls-37/

As Stein's Law has it: "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Growth stocks have to stop growing, eventually, and when they do, you'd better beat everyone else to the fire exit, or you're going to get crushed in the stampede.

Which is why tech companies are so obsessed with both actual growth, and stories about growth. Facebook spent tens of billions on bribes to telcos around the world, demanding that they charge extra to access non-Facebook websites and apps, in a bid to sign up "the next billion users":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/countries-zero-rating-have-more-expensive-wireless-broadband-countries-without-it

That wasn't just about some ideological commitment to growth – it was about the real, material advantages that a growing company has, namely, that it can substitute the stock it creates for free by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet for money that it can only get by convincing you to give your money to it.

"Facebook Zero" (as this bribery program was called) was about actual growth: finding people who weren't Facebook users and turning them into Facebook users, preferably forever (thanks to Facebook's suite of lock-in tactics that make it a digital roach motel that users check into but don't check out of):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

But plenty of the things that Big Tech gets up to are about the narrative of growth. That's why Big Tech has pumped every tech bubble of this stupid decade: metaverse, cryptocurrency, AI. These technologies have each been at the forefront of Big Tech marketing and investor communications, but not solely because they represented a market opportunity. Rather, they represented a more-or-less plausible explanation for how these companies that were on the wrong side of the law of large numbers could continue to double in size, without breeding billions of new customers to sign up for their services.

The tell – as always – comes in the way that these companies refute their critics. When critics point out that Facebook spent $1.2 billion on a metaverse product that only has 32 users:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/metaverse-decentraland-report-active-users

Or that practically no one buys anything with cryptocurrency:

https://www.mollywhite.net/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-crypto/

Not even when the government gives them free crypto and passes a law forcing merchants to accept crypto:

https://bitcoinblog.de/2024/09/02/weak-bitcoin-adoption-in-el-salvador-disappoints-the-president/

Or that hardly anyone uses AI, and what uses it does have are often low-value:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

The "narrative entrepreneurs" behind the claims of infinite growth from these technologies all have the same response: "That's what they said about the web, and yet it grew really fast! People who lacked the vision to understand the web's potential missed out. Buy [crypto|metaverse|AI] or have fun being poor!"

It's true – there were a lot of people who were blithely dismissive of the web, and they were wrong. But the fact that the web's skeptics were wrong doesn't mean that skepticism itself is foolish. People were also skeptical of Qibi, Beanie Babies, and the Segway – all of which were predicted to continue to increase in value forever and become permanently installed as significant facts in the economy. The fact that lots of people think something is stupid is not a reliable indicator that it is actually great.

So it's not just that capitalism adopts "the ideology of a tumor" in insisting that infinite growth is possible. The value in corporate claims to eternal growth is not aesthetic, it is material. If the market believes a company will grow, then that company gets to print its own money, which lets it outcompete mature rivals, which lets it grow some more.

But! When the company runs out of growth potential, the process runs in reverse. Not only do executives – whose portfolios are stuffed full of their own company's shares – stand to lose most of their net worth overnight, but once a company's stock starts to decline, it can expect to see an exodus of the key personnel who are compensated in now-worthless stock. That means that once a company hits a bad bump in the road that sets it off course, it needs to worry about losing all the skilled employees who can get it back on the road.

So growth is important, not for its own sake, but for how it affects the cost basis of companies, and thus determines their competitive outlook. But not all growth is created equal.

Remember when Facebook pissed away billions in a bid to capture "the next billion users"? Those users – people from poor countries in the global south – were not as valuable to Facebook as its US customers. The news that sparked a $250 billion, one-day selloff of Facebook shares wasn't merely about anemic growth – it was specifically about anemic growth in the USA.

American customers are worth more than other users to Big Tech – that's true even of users from other populous countries, and of users from other wealthy countries. Norway is rich as hell, but each Norwegian Facebook user is worth pennies on the kroner compared to American users. And there are brazilians of people in South America, but they're worth even less per capita than Norwegians are. Even the whole EU, with its 500m+ relatively wealthy consumers, is only worth a fraction of the US market.

Why is the American market so prized by Big Tech? Because it the only country in the world at the center of a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles. America is the only country in the world that is:

a) populous;

b) wealthy; and

c) totally lacking in legal privacy protections.

The US Congress last updated American consumer privacy law in 1988, when the Video Privacy Protection Act was passed to protect Americans from the high-tech threat of…video store clerks leaking your rental history to the newspapers. Despite the bewildering, obvious, serious privacy risks that have emerged since Die Hard was in theaters, Congress has done nothing to extend Americans' consumer privacy rights.

There are other rich countries where privacy law sucks, but they are small countries with few people. There are extremely populous poor countries with shitty privacy laws, but they're poor. Tech has to steal the private data of dozens of those people to make as much money as they can get from selling the data of just one American. And there are other rich, populous countries – like Germany, say – but those countries actually defend the privacy of the people who live there, and so the revenue tech gets from each of those users is even lower than the RPU for the undefended poor people of the global south.

America is exceptional in that it represents the one place where there are lots of wealthy people who are totally defenseless. We're an all-you-can-eat buffet for the privacy-annihilating voyeurs of Silicon Valley.

These are the two dirty secrets of Big Tech's economics. These companies are reliant on the fragile narrative of infinite growth, and that narrative isn't merely about global growth, but it is particularly and especially about growth in the USA.

Tech's power comes from an implausible story of discovering an endless stream of Americans to sign up and screw over. That story is extremely load-bearing – so much so that by the instant at which the first crack appears, collapse is only moments away. And boy, are there cracks:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/06/privacy-last/#exceptionally-american

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: 10 Uncommon Magic Systems

These examples of unique magic systems might pique your curiosity and inspire your next fantasy epic. 

Color Magic: Harnessing colors to invoke specific spells or effects.

Sound Magic: Crafting spells through vocal tones, vibrations, or musical instruments.

Time Magic: Manipulating the past, present, or future, often bending the laws of physics.

Egoic Magic: Altering one's sense of self or emotions to use as a magical conduit.

Manufactured or Artificial Magic: Magic crafted or produced through synthetic means (e.g. via objects or alchemical processes).

Nothingness Magic: Conjuring voids or vacuums, often manifesting as spatial anomalies.

Glass Magic: Manipulating glass to create barriers, projectiles, or even complex machinery.

Astrology-Based Magic: Drawing powers from celestial bodies or zodiac signs.

Fate Magic: Influencing destiny or chance to manifest predetermined outcomes.

Bio-magic: Utilizing biological processes or traits for supernatural effects.

Incorporating lesser-covered categories of magic can set your story apart in an oversaturated market, helping you carve out your distinct niche and voice. Source

More: On Fantasy ⚜ Writing Notes & References Writing References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for scamming my ex out of an extremely valuable virtual pet?

🐓🥤to recognize. This might be a very long post with a lot of added context for a very niche hobby and a very small actual conflict.

I religiously play a virtual pet site called Chicken Smoothie. It's a pretty old site as far as virtual pet games go, starting back in 2008, so there is a pretty solid established site economy. Just for some context, Every pet on the site has a rarity, ranging from "OMG So Common" to "OMG So Rare", being the most common and most rare respectively. But there are rarities within those rarities, where some OMGSRs can be worth more than others based on species and demand. For example, an OMGSR dog from 2008 will be worth more than an OMGSR rat from 2008 despite being the same highest rarity and year, because people prefer the dogs over rats. These pets can get extremely valuable. You can't sell them for real money (according to site rules, but of course there's a black market), but the site has its own virtual currency you can buy (with real money) and trade for called Chicken Dollars, and you can also trade a valuable pet for other valuable pets. It gets very complicated, with the community coming up with its own set of value terms each pet can have. I'm not getting into specifics there, that's not important.

Every year, on December 18th, CS has gift boxes you can adopt from. These gift boxes can contain any rare pet from any previous year, including special "Unreleased pets" that you can only get from these Dec 18th boxes, with a very slim chance. These unreleased pets are some of the most valuable and rarest in the game.

Recently, I had seen my ex posting on the forums. I didn't know he had an account, he had made it within this year, long after I got the fuck away from him, and I only knew it was him because he uses the same username everywhere. This person had groomed me, physically abused me when we were together (we no longer live anywhere near each other, thankfully) and has always been emotionally manipulative. He does not know I play, and he wouldn't recognize my account as me. I took a note of his account and left it be for a while, until December 18th hit and I took a peek at what he had got. And what he got was one of the new Unreleased pets, which currently at the time of writing this only looks like a box of cereal. (Most pets on the site have growth stages.) And even better, all his groups were open for trade, so I took a chance and sent an extremely terrible trade. I told him that this pet would only be a recent rare, and I offered him a "Very Rare" rarity (but not very valuable) pet from 2018, telling him I was overpaying. (In the CS community, this is known as Ninjaing, and it's Not A Good Thing To Do). I didn't expect him to accept it, I at least thought he'd be smart enough to ask in the trade advice thread that is literally pinned on the home page for December 18th, but he didn't. He took my word for it and accepted the trade, and now I own an unreleased pet that will eventually end up as an OMGSR.

What I did was not a bannable offence. He will not get his unreleased pet back. The CS mods are laughable at worst, incompetent at best, and don't do anything to stop scamming. They have an "eh, sucks to be you, sorry, be smarter next time" mentality when people get scammed (Which is insane because there are literal single digit aged children allowed on this site!!!)

After taking a bit to think about it, I do feel a bit guilty because I really would not do this in any other circumstances. I hate scamming. I did what I did out of anger and contempt, and I do feel a bit guilty because in essence, I scammed a new player that didn't have much else and didn't know any better.

I'm still keeping that unreleased cereal box no matter what though

What are these acronyms?

[paper-mario-wiki]

How is work going! You hardly ever post about your job

work's fine! tho the reason i don't post about my job because my job is boring to talk about. i present myself in the office lady attire cuz i do boring cubicle shit.

for example:

the projects ive been working on recently are all in preparation of launching onto a network platform my boss was invited onto to act as a leader, and currently, as our company is only 2 people and has no dedicated team regarding public outreach or PR because most of our clients are garnered from events we go to, i'm assembling CRM (customer relationship management) information into a database ive been building to determine our precise audience for an email campagin. to do that i assembled a hypothetical customer profile for our ideal demographics and worked with a third party to develop a niche to theme the campaign around that would maximize retention to the mailing list within our target market.

^ if you read that and thought "oh wow thats interesting" no you didnt

[pansyfemme]

I’ve got a question about packing- so I know some packers can be used as dildos as well (at least that’s what my high school trans friends said) so my question is- can *every* dildo be used as a packer? Or is it like- some packers are dildos but not all dildos are packers. I’m messing around with my gender identity and just trying to have fun with it. I’d like to wear my 9 inch sparkly pink n blue dildo out but im not sure if there’s a difference in the way packers lay in the underwear vs dildos. Sorry if this is convoluted ahsjfjsk I always talk too much

hey yeah this is a good question. this gets somewhat detailed and has a lot involving sex and masturbation for ftms so putting the rest under the cut.

so packing as an actuon is generally divided into two catagories, soft and hard packing.

usually when people talk about packing they mean soft packing. If packing in general is the action of inserting an object into your pants to create the illusion of a penis- soft packing would be creating the illustion of a soft or flaccid penis. this is for everyday use. this type is usually unoticable and can aid with passing or just be affirming for a person. This can be a sexual act but it’s most often a nonsexual act. When you look for packers, they’re usually made for soft packing. So they will be of a soft material and usually smaller. You can’t really penetrate with them because they are 1) much softer than a dildo and b) usually don’t have a lot of usable length. They’re not designed to have penetrative sex with. It’s also why people use socks or another soft object. You are simulating a flaccid penis.

The other type is hard packing. You are simulating an erect penis. So generally, you would use a dildo for this. However. because you are purposely putting an object that resembles an erect penis into your pants, it will look like you have an erect penis in your pants. There aren’t a lot of packers sold for this specific purpose, so you would usually just use a dildo. This is pretty much exclusivly for sexual use. Not always ‘i am going to have sex’ but if you are going to go somewhere purposely looking like you have a very noticable and very large erection, that more often than not will be for some sort of sexual purpose, whether it be exhibitionism/humilation, crusing or signaling to others you want to have sex or whatever else you may want to with it. I’m sure there are exceptions. but that’s the basic idea.

essentially if the object resembles a flaccid penis in softness, shape and size, that’s soft packing. if the object resembles an erect penis in softness, shape and size, thats hard packing.

What your friends were describing could be a few things. the first is often refered to as a 2-in-1 or 3-in-1 (or however many features it has) prosthetic. These are pretty special in a few ways. They are 1) usually on a spectrum from pretty realistic to ‘holy shit that’s not an actual penis attached to your body??’ 2) extremely expensive 3) handmade and often made to order 4) a very niche market and often seen as less of a sex toy or gender affirmation object and more of a.. bottom surgery replacement. they are very cool and very intense. There’s differences between different brands but generally it is one object that performs a variety of different functions based on how you wear it and different inserts. For example, someone may buy a prosthetic that claims to be capable of four whole things! Packing, Peeing, Sex and Masturbation. Packing: You put it in your pants. Depending on things you may use a harness or an adhesive to attach the prosthetic to your skin (which can look pretty seamless and last for days at a time which is pretty awesome) Peeing: You may use a stp (stand-to-pee) harness for this part but a prosthetic with stp capabilities is indeed hollow and acts as a funnel so you can indeed pee standing up. Sex/Masturbation: These often come with stiff inserts you put inside of the hollow stp cavity. These make the penis erect and sometimes have a stimulation area at the back of them so the part that presses agaist your genetalia can be stimulated during motions of thrusting/jerking. Some can even ejaculate! it’s pretty neat. But those are generally the things people talk about when talking about packers you can use as dildos. There are many variations of prosthetics that can and cannot do different things, I only really described one function. There are also bendable dildos and dual density dildos- but listen to me. silicone is great, but it can only do so many things. Things it cannot do is shrink in volume or change firmness. So while you could pack with a bendable dual density dildo, it will look more like you have a bent erection or at best a semi than it will a flaccid penis. If that’s what you’re going for, that’s great. But prothetics tend to go the route of a removable stiff insert for a reason.

I hope this made some sense. tldr. good luck and do whatever you want forever! however. packing with a 9 inch hard dildo is going to look like you have a 9 inch hard penis. do with that what you will.

[vixenvtuber]

Are there any struggles while being a VA? If so, what are they? :)

absolutely. if you want to become a voice actor, there's some struggles to keep in mind

1 - work is not guaranteed. you can go weeks, months, or years without booking anything. you need to have other revenue streams like a dayjob, or other work within the audio industry, to make sure you can still support yourself when times are tough and work is dry

2 - not all types of voiceover work pay well. some pay very generously for the time you spend working, but others are not so good. if you only work in certain genres/niches, you still might not make enough to support yourself, even if you work consistently

3 - even if you're a fabulous actor, some studios/agents/directors will just never be interested in working with you for some reason or another. so much of your success in this business is predicated on people (hopefully) liking you enough to give you work, but out of the possible infinite ways to get said work, some doors will always be closed to you for reasons you can't explain, and you need to be OK with that

4 - if you want to go fulltime as a voice actor, you might end up deciding you need to move to one of the voiceover markets (california, texas, arguably florida if you're in the united states). this does mean potentially moving quite far away from friends and family depending on where you're originally from, which can mean missing out on important life events/celebrations, losing touch with people you care about, and the repeated financial strain of a plane or train ride back for things you absolutely don't want to miss like holidays, weddings, whatever

5 - as much as the industry tries its best to put bandaids on this, discrimination absolutely still can and does happen behind closed doors. if you are in any way a minority, you may find yourself fighting an uphill battle to be considered for the same roles as your peers. it sucks majorly but is something to keep in mind. even if you see some poc or queer actors succeeding, the biggest issue this industry has is saying something like, "i don't need another actor who is X, i already have [famous example]". you will be fighting for room in a way that simply doesn't happen to cis/straight/white actors for reasons i really can't fathom in an industry where VOICE is all that matters. be ready

there's more, of course, but this is just what springs to mind. please don't let these things dissuade you from getting into the industry (especially if you're a minority of any description, we NEED more variety of voices), but please do consider these things VERY CAREFULLY so you don't burn yourself out or put yourself in a bad financial situation chasing the dream. protect yourself and your peace first and foremost <3