#Reddit WILL die. Tumblr WILL die. Discord WILL die.

[drumlincountry]

If the entire internet went dark tomorrow, what would you lose? What would you lose that you can't afford to lose? How do you save it?

[overtake]

content for a very small audience but i was experiencing major deja vu when daniel posted this

[togglesbloggle]

Why do you think tumblr will die in only a few years?

Answer with jargon: a strong correlation between recent economic shifts and chaotic choices by major tech companies is most easily explained if the 'traditional' social media platforms of 2005-2020 are mostly a zero-interest rate phenomenon.

Longer answer, with less jargon: Even though Musk's takeover is making all the headlines recently, the last year has in fact seen major shakeups at many social media platforms, so Twitter is actually part of a trend. Almost inevitably, these are cases of social media companies trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of their userbase (Reddit), cut costs dramatically (Twitter), or both. This marks a sudden departure from a much more relaxed attitude towards revenue in the Pictures Of Cats industry, where the focus was historically more on expanding the userbase to a global scale and then counting on world domination to sort of <????> and then the company would become profitable eventually.

We joke, correctly, that Tumblr has never been profitable. But the entire structure of ad-supported content curation between human users is deeply suspect as a business model; IIRC Twitter was never profitable either, and Facebook has been juicing its numbers in very shenanigany ways. Discord was actually making money on net last I checked, at least a bit, so they're not all completely in the hole. But even if you take the accounting figures at face value, none of these companies has anything like the amount of money that their cultural prominence would suggest. Instead, they're heavily fueled by investment dollars, money given by super-rich people and institutions in the expectation that fueling the growth of the company now will pay off with interest later.

So what changed?

I'm not an expert here, but I'll do my best to muddle through. The American Federal Reserve has one mandate that dominates all others (sometimes called the 'dual mandate'), and one primary tool that it uses to enforce that mandate. The goal is to maintain low (but nonzero) rates of inflation and unemployment, which in their models are deeply interlinked phenomena. The tool is 'rate hikes', or more specifically, tweaking the mandatory rate of interest that banks charge one another when making loans.

As a particular consequence of this, hiking the rate also means that bonds start paying out much better. When the rate hike goes through, that affects people who let the government borrow their personal cash- that is, people who buy bonds- as well as institutions like banks that lend to one another. A rate hike means that you, personally, can make a little extra money by letting the government borrow it for a while. The federal government of the US is a rock-solid low-risk choice for this kind of moneymaking scheme, so the federal interest rate sort of defines the 'number to beat'; to attract investors, a company has to give those investors money at a better percentage than whatever the feds are offering. Particularly since a company is a lot more likely to go out of business than the state!

To wrap this back around to the Pictures Of Cats industry: the higher the rate hike, the better your company needs to be doing (or the less risky it needs to be as an option) to attract big investment dollars. Very high rates make it very hard to convince people to invest in business activity rather than the government itself, and very low rates put moonshots and big dreams on the table, investment-wise, in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Social media companies were one of these big dreams.

In the great financial crisis of 2008, the Fed took the dramatic step of reducing their rate to zero, trying to juice the economy back to life. And ever since then, they've kept it there. This has produced an unprecedented amount of funding for very crazy stuff; it's part of what has allowed so many weird new tech companies (Uber, streaming services, etc.) to get so much money, so quickly, and use that to grow to massive size without a clear model of how they're ever going to make money. This state of affairs kept going for quite a while, with no clear stopping point; that zero-interest environment has been one of the shadowy forces in the background that shaped fundamental contours and limits in how our Very Online World has grown and developed. Until COVID.

Or rather, the bounce back from COVID: we suddenly saw a massive spike in inflation and an incredibly strong labor market, as employees quit in record numbers, negotiated higher salaries, and found better work, and at the same time supply chain issues and other economy stuff caused prices to climb dramatically. Recall the Fed's 'dual mandate', to control the employment rate and inflation. This was, basically, kicking them right in the jooblies. They responded in kind, finally finally raising their rates for the first time in 15 years. For some of the people reading this, it'll be the first significant shift in their entire adult lives.

The goal, as I understand it, is to fight inflation by reducing the amount of outside investment into private companies, forcing them to hire fewer people and pay smaller salaries, ultimately drawing money out of the working economy and driving prices back down by lowering demand for everything. You get paid less, so you eat out less, and buy at cheaper restaurants when you do, so restaurants have to compete harder by lowering their prices; seems pretty dodgy to me as a theory, but it's the theory. And the first part will almost certainly work- companies are going to see less investment.

For social media companies that are still paying most of their salaries with investor dollars instead of revenues, this is especially catastrophic. Without outside investment, they're just a massive pile of expenses waiting to happen, huge yearly costs in developer salaries and server fees. This is why, all of a sudden, every social media company is suddenly making bonkers decisions. They're noticing that nobody wants to give them any more money! So they're trying to figure out how to live a lot more cheaply, to actually somehow for reals turn their giant userbases in to some kind of actual revenue stream, or both.

Tumblr is kind of the ur-example of this kind of thing, supporting a very large userbase with no coherent plan whatsoever to start paying its staff with our dollars instead of investors' dollars. When interest rates were low and Scrooge McDuck had nowhere else to hide his pile of gold coins, a crazy kid with a dream was the best alternative available to him. But now, unless something changes, he's going to notice he can just buy bonds instead, and that crazy kid can go take a hike.

That's why I think Tumblr is living on borrowed time, though I don't know how much. Like all cartoons, the economy doesn't really fall off a cliff until somebody looks down and notices they've been standing on thin air this whole time. But they always fall eventually; that's the gag.

[americanbrightside]

If people are leaving, I'm gonna shill for Retroshare.

https://retroshare.cc/

Retroshare is a program that has every fundamental kind of social media:

Chat rooms (like discord or Skype)

Blogs (like Tumblr or Twitter)

Forums (like reddit)

With other nice infrastructure:

Email

File sharing

The ability to add any plugin

The program is free, and there is no no authority that can take away your connection to other people. If Tumblr dies, you will lose your blog. If reddit dies, you will lose your posts. Retroshare cannot die.

Why?

Because it is peer-to-peer. There are no servers to talk to, centralized or distributed. Your content gets sent directly to other computers. When you log on, your program asks your friends for updates. They reply back with their info and the info of your mutual, and that's your feed.

The only thing Retroshare needs is people, so if anyone wants to follow me on Retroshare I'll reply with my friend code and anyone can send me a friend request.

[inbabylontheywept]

My thoughts on this are a little fuzzy, but it's a sort of AI-fucks-up-the-world scenario that I call The Cacaphony. And I just wanted to share what it could look like.

Imagine a world where the chatbots have gotten good enough that it takes 10 minutes for the average person to spot them. We're getting there already. Once that happens, companies and governments will start releasing instances of these things onto forums to try and push their products and ideologies.

Now imagine that these bots are cheap. Less than $500 a year kind of cheap. Suddenly, you're reaching into an online space where you know that humans are outnumbered.

What happens then? Do we see the rise of a twitter blue-checkmark system for every single social media site? Do we see large platforms break irreparably in favor of small isolated discord cliques?

I don't know. It fascinates me. I can see some sites that just absolutely would never be able to survive. Reddit and 4chan would be obliterated. Twitter would die unless it went back to its old blue checkmark system - and even then, the only people that would ever be taken seriously would be the blue checks. Even tumblr would find itself in a tough position. Imagine how many fewer people you would follow and reblog if you had to spend 10+ minutes checking them to make sure that they were absolutely a real person. Imagine a tumblr where self-doxing started to become the norm. There would be a set point where the site just crystallizes, and it would basically never recover from it.

It boggles me, to see companies that would get rekt by this scenario pouring money into making it happen. Twitter should not want The Cacaphony. Nor should Reddit. Nor should Google, if we're being honest. And yet each of them lines up to cheerfully sharpen the sword that will one day strike them down.

[anarchistartistvt]

honestly I think it’s pretty fucked up how much shit I got over my post.

“hey wait a second these Reddit discussions might be onto something-“ “YOU PEDO DEFENDER DELETE THE POST KILL YOURSELF GRAHHHHHH”

The shitty part is that I didn’t even actively seek out this info. my now ex was posting the Reddit shit in a discord server I owned, and I was like “wait whoa they might be onto something here”. Given it was already on Reddit I figured more people knew but god damn it was like I opened Pandora’s box.

Won’t say I didn’t fuck things up for myself and my friends. Someone tried to doxx my friend daenumao (unsuccessfully thank fuckin god), and I was too stubborn to delete the posts the minute things blew out of proportion. I thought I could handle it. I had gone through shit similar to this before, what with StickyBM trying to accuse me of a parasocial freak and Jordy claiming I doxxed them(only to find out it was their discord tag that got leaked). I thought I was doing the right thing. I knew how detrimentally destructive allegations could be, fake or not.

I sort of named my ex in there because I didn’t want to claim credit for what I had found. It wasn’t to throw her under the bus, and as soon as she asked me to delete the credit part, I did.

In a friend server I was in, I was being pinged about the situation nonstop. People were telling me to delete it, and it just felt like silencing me. I was getting harassed left and right. Someone started threatening me on tumblr(a platform I rarely used until now), people started bringing up fake or already resolved shit about me(had to clear that up on a fuckin Reddit thread), and basically everything started crumbling and falling apart.

Finally one of my friends pinged me and was like “delete the posts or I’m blocking you, don’t make me do this”. I had already set dms to friends only by that point, after hearing daenumao was being threatened. I got angry, unfriended her, and left the server. Shortly after, a couple friends sent messages saying they were cutting ties and to never contact them again. Then my girlfriend messaged me saying she was leaving me.

Right now I’m sort of trapped on what I can say without breaking boundaries of anyone. I never meant to invalidate the victims. At the time, my only intention was to raise awareness of “hey this is kinda inconclusive, you might wanna take a look at this”. I didn’t think it would blow up to the point I would get death threats and death wishes.

In a court of law, both sides are to share their experiences. The experience really just told me that the justice system of twitter is fucked beyond comprehension. The victims were quick to attack anyone who doubted their claims, and had no problem siccing their supporters onto anyone who didn’t fall in line. It honestly felt like I was being told, “SUPPORT THE VICTIMS OR DIE”. People are allowed to have doubts, and while I can understand where the victims were coming from, they didn’t care to show much proof denying some claims. One of the alleged victims even said “so many big names are supporting me so I’m right.” Bro what?

When I attempted suicide, it was for a lot of reasons. I have bad anxiety and getting attacked the way I was back there sent everything into overdrive. Not to mention losing about 95% of my friends over this crap. I was only on twitter mainly because I had friends there and would chat with them regularly. I don’t have many friends in real life and I’ve always been kind of a loner. So to see my support system fall apart over this, especially because I have HORRIBLE abandonment issues, fucked with my head.

I’m not happy as a person. I’ve been depressed for years and I’m not proud of it. I’ve been through more fucked up shit in my life than I can even begin to process. Growing up in a broken family, being treated like shit by my stepmother and put through so much abuse, flunking out of high school and falling through the cracks, running away at 19 and immediately being raped and molested by someone I saw like an older brother, being sexually and emotionally abused by an ex who blamed me for being raped, moving out of my aunts house only to be institutionalized from a suicide attempt 4 months later, being in the homeless system, being treated like shit by the government programs, being doxxed and swatted and harassed and had deepfakes made of me, possibly having a condition that means I’m likely to be dead from suicide by the age of 34, etc. Like, I’ve genuinely been through hell and back and a lot of people know it. Maybe more people than I should be telling.

I tend to over share, I vent too much, I go into slumps quickly, and overall I’m a fucking mess mentally. I had gone into a bad psychotic breakdown last week due to trauma and a bad reaction to new meds, so my mental state wasn’t exactly the best when this shit even started. By this point I was already having a sinking feeling that my girlfriend was planning on leaving me, and then a few days later she hit her breaking point.

When I typed up that final post, I genuinely didn’t know if I wanted to keep living. Hearing someone I was close to saying “you better stay alive because you deserve to live with what you did” was horrifying.

I’m a coward, without a doubt. I wanted out. But not from just this. I wanted out from everything. The few people who I was close to, or even people who had tolerated me to an extent, had basically told me to go fuck myself. It quite literally felt like I had lost everything.

I got ahold of some Tylenol and started filling up the bathtub. I had planned to overdose in the tub, hoping that if I went into a seizure from the medication, being submerged in water would limit the chances of me pulling out of said seizure. I’ve only attempted a few times in my life, so you can’t bash me too hard for not knowing how to do it.

As I started undressing, my iPad started ringing with a FaceTime audio call. It was my dad.

Somehow the situation found its way to him and he reached out to check on me. I don’t know if one of my friends contacted him, if he was already monitoring my accounts, or if it had just blown up that badly that even he(someone who doesn’t use twitter or own an account) had seen it. I tried to sound normal because it’s pretty rare for him to call me, but when he started bringing up what he saw, I broke down sobbing.

I explained everything to him, that I just wanted to help, and that I thought I was doing the right thing, and he told me to limit my social media exposure, because of how unhealthy it was becoming for me. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone with my actions. I worded things wrong and handled it badly, and I will wholeheartedly apologize for that. He explained to me that it was good that I wanted to do the right thing, but it wasn’t good to screw over my own mental health over this shit. He advised me to limit my social media usage to only those I could trust.(scary thing is, I didn’t know who all I COULD trust)While on call, I tried to deactivate my account but couldn’t because I forgot my fuckin password. All I could do is private my account and go dormant.

A few people reached out in Twitter dms and I spoke with many of them. They were extremely kind and supportive, and redirected me to the Mandela Catalogue Reddit forum, where I was welcomed in. I’ve been staying there, as well as occasionally posting on Tumblr. I’m scared to even touch my Twitter account with a 10 ft pole, and discord interactions have been next to none. I considered rebranding but I didn’t want to feel like I was trying to sneak my way out of accountability. I was just threatened and bashed so fuckin much that I didn’t feel safe interacting as myself, Anarchist Artist.

A bunch of people were screaming at me for linking Reddit threads and saying “YOU CANT TRUST REDDIT ITS FULL OF LIES” you’re literally using twitter which is probably WORSE when it comes to misinformation.

I never intended to fall down this rabbit hole of who’s right or who’s wrong. I will apologize for how I handled things and how I worded my post, but I will not apologize for speaking up about a story full of holes. For the victims to bully someone into submission is not mature or appropriate, and they should be held accountable as such. I have no intention of clearing my name, I have no intention to regain my friends or close ones, and I have no intention of saying “HA HA I TOLD YOU SO”. I just want shit to go back to even a slight semblance of normalcy.

Even if the victims’ stories are truthful to an extent, they way they have approached all of this is horrible and I’m upset that they endorsed harassing anyone who didn’t fall in line.

I’ll be here for now, but won’t post much. Everything is still a mess and I’m still concerned for my safety.

[le-panda-chocovore]

ME : *use mainly Pinterest and Tumblr* I swear to god if I see another JJK post -ESPECIALLY SATOSUGU- I'm going to pull out my heart from my own chest and drown it in a pool of my tears. I will never be okay again.

MY BROTHER : *use mainly reddit and discord* HEY LOOK AT THIS NEW JJK MEME LMAOOOOOO THEY DID THE Nth VERSION OF "NAH I'D WIN" BWAHAHAHAHA IMAGINE IF KENJAKU SLIPPED ON A BANANA AND HIS BRAIN FELL OUT THAT WOULD BE FUN FOR HIM TO DIE THAT WAY !!!

[vampirepunks]

7, 8, 12, 14 and 25 for the character ask game with Higgs!!

-@goldenbridgessss

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

There's a lot of little things when it comes to art and fic that tickle me sm when it comes to Higgs, but my absolute favorite has to be when people draw Higgs and don't bother to do the equations on his forehead (it's so tedious, kill me!) and instead write random things or draw squiggly lines. It's adorable and hilarious. Bonus: Higgs having Troy's nipple ring. :3 Fandom is v cutesy about him a lot in general and I adore that.

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Ah, jeez, I could go on a tangent or two... The big one for me is the common practice of dismissing the abuse Higgs has experienced. Non-enjoyers of his character are actively hateful a lot of the time, and even Higgs fans (not naming names or pointing out specific examples, I've noticed this on several sites, tumblr, reddit, discord, etc) minimize or mock his trauma in certain ways. Like, getting low-key sadistic (not in the kinky fun way) about the Beach fight with him, talking about doing violent things to him, etc. Just makes me uncomfortable as an abuse survivor myself, when all I wanna do is pat his little head and wrap him up in a warm blanket because, y'know, my daddy hit me too and that's given me a deep empathy for Higgs. Could attribute this to ingrained cultural denial of men as valid survivors of abuse (sociology major heh) but overall it's just kinda insensitive. Bothers me.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

Ooooh boy, I could answer this one a dozen times... so I'll pick one for now. I think Higgs is the kind of person to write in his books. I imagine him underlining certain lines, putting borders around specific paragraphs, writing little notes and observations in the margins, and jotting down his own musings on the blank pages. Messy intellectualism born of hyperactive ADHD and years of loneliness.

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

Grunge punk! He's already got that going for him quite a bit, but he'd look great in fingerless gloves, boots with lots of buckles, fishnet anything, ripped jeans, and jackets with patches.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

I was instantly enamored as soon as he showed up. First, I got excited about Troy Baker and his Texas accent, then I fell in love with his aesthetic. The color palette, the military-esque punk vibe, the mask... the blue eyes and eyeliner peeking through the mask... The poetry references and anarchism... Oh man. I was ready to fall at his feet and beg him to explain to me what exactly was going on in that game lmao. I didn't believe for a minute that Bridges was telling the whole story about his terrorism, and knew by the South Knot City cutscene that he wasn't The Big Bad, but rather, their right-hand man. I could explain why, but I'll write three paragraphs about political ideology and sociological theory, so I digress. Once he started instigating fights and running his mouth, I hated him. Then I fell in love with him for realsies after his body language during the Beach fight gave me an intuitive feeling about his backstory, and I read his journals... and oh no he's just like me fr. Now, he's my favorite character of all time, my precious angel, my king, my beloved. I would die for him I stg.

Thanks for the ask! 💛

Character Ask Game

[magpiepills]

apart of the pedro scouts freindship badge idlike to send you a bracelet! i was gonna make you an ezra themed one as i can tell by your blog that ezra is your fav but i don't have a single creative bone in my body

my get-to-know-you question is

how did you become apart of the pedro fandom? 💕

Thank you!! I love it! You’re so nice to think of me and to want to make something Ezra. I’m not creative with visual things either! ❤️❤️❤️

How did I get here?

I think I have issues with men, and intimacy and commitment, but I was born a goon and I’ll die a goon, so… 😂

Other than that, I was a really big fan of Game of Thrones and I remember loving how he made Oberyn so much more interesting and sympathetic than he was in the books. He was attractive, but I was a Jaime girl and there was a whole lot going on in that show.

Then I remember seeing him in Narcos and thinking “That’s Oberyn.” And again, obviously, Pena is hot and I watched and enjoyed it back then but I was still in control of my life and vagina, so I was alright.

I was happy to hear of any work he was getting, and then I watched Chernobyl to get over the heartbreak of GoT s8. I LOVED Chernobyl. Then TLOU came out and it’s made by Craig Mazin and it’s got Oberyn Martell AND Leanna Mormont of fucking Bear Island??? Say no more. I loved TLOU.

I was down bad for him. But I was still hanging on to my sanity and then, that fateful day.

That vanity fair lie detector interview. You want to know what brought poor Bat to brink of madness???

This right here. This is what signed my warrant. I’ve been on the lam ever since. They’ll never catch me, I refuse to die in horny jail. Reddit couldn’t contain the magnitude of my thots and now I’m holed up on tumblr saying disgusting things about the characters this man plays and I’m on discord just blatantly flaunting the laws of god and man and good taste. There’s no end in sight.

[deathb8dy]

THOUGHTS ON QUALIA AUTOMATA, TUMBLR EDITION

ORIGINAL POST I MADE WAS PUT ON REDDIT FIRST FROM DISCORD, I'LL JUST COPY AND PASTE WHAT I SAID AS IT'S EASIER. WITH EDITS OFC.

This point on holds spoilers in relation to the newest song 'Lamentations'. Please do not read unless you have seen the song OR are fine with it. Also this all will be copied and pasted from discord with edits to include examples (at least for the lyrics and such.)

If you have any comments or criticisms to make, please do so.

spoilers begin below here.

Even in the initial impression, the song about Fayrouz is the MOST human out of the three. In RBB, it's very mechanical and erratic in wording (no rhyming scheme at all but it still made sense for a song). In EWN it's still mechanical but has some humanity to it if that makes sense.

But both songs of the machines you can tell something is off.

Example in lyrics:

Tamari uses more nonsensical and complicated words as if to compensate for a lack of understanding. These words also tend to not make sense with each other either.

(EX; ‘Invite Suicidation, Transfer Enumeration’ is a great example. Suicidation is obviously about yk. But fun fact, it’s not even a word! And Enumeration is “the action of mentioning a number of things one by one.” Compared to the rest of the song of RBB, it does NOT make sense at all.)

Mariyam has more simple terms used and a rhyming scheme but still reverts to what Tamari does... And also references some really obscure stuff (Such as a french women's asylum!) that no one who would go looking would understand.

(EX; The lyric I mentioned is “Fleeting words in pen, I tell the story of Salpêtrière” with the last word in reference to ‘an institution founded in Paris in 1656 as an asylum for the infirm, aged, and insane. At one time, it contained nearly 10,000 people, and treatment was proverbially brutal.’ Which… is ironic since Mariyam is meant to be a therapist)

Example in art:

Tamari is FULL of references and barely anything that's actually their own design. While cool as hell, Tamari is basically what an AI does... Generate images/prompts based on wording and such. Which is likely why Tamari is so ... erratic!

Mariyam on the other hand does have more original art but most of it is ALL black and white until the end with Tamari. And even then, it's not complicated art with a lot of details unless with Tamari and even then... She still fails to have something to be put to human

And music wise:

Both songs are VERY metallic noise-wise with choir like sounds within the instrumentals. Both beginning and end. Tamari specifically has the "jumpscare scream" while Mariyam has just more "clock/chime" motifs. It's all still mechanical without any sort of "organic" tones if that makes sense

FAYROUZ ON THE OTHER HAND. Despite being the "villain" of the story is the most human.

Lyrics - She uses the most simple BUT effective words that aren't overly complicated/nonsensical (Tamari) or aren't as impactful as they should be (Mariyam)

PV - Unlike the two, I just noticed it's just a static one image pv as well as it's fully colored. Tamari and Mariyam had movements in their pvs, like they are trying to move to humanity but also how AI is always constantly shifting.

Music - THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE. It has some mechanical elements (like the 'siren' like sounds in the beginning and end) BUT IT HAS MORE ORGANIC SOUNDS UNLIKE THE GRITTY GEAR LIKE SOUNDS YOU HEAR IN RBB AND EWN

Fayrouz also admits to being at fault but pushes on to do better (at her work, mess up on words but ykyk). Which is ironic isn't it? Her creations are more "human" than she is. Which lyrically also- Fayrouz references more mechanical functions while Tamari and Mariyam reference more humane functions.

EX:

Tamari - My stomach turned at the thought of the stars / And my heart pounded louder than the ones I had before

Mariyam - Though you’ll never die, you’ve found that / All eyes are staring at your hands

Fayrouz - Restarting, rebooting null programs / Running, debugging their brains /Forging and sorting successes

AND FINALLY. Tuning wise, Fayrouz sounds more human (if it's intentional or not) but still has the lyrics that are guilt based BUT focused fully on being like a human machine. If you are raised up to be a "machine".... how can you even know otherwise? Tamari and Mariyam are learning to have humanity, Fayrouz lost hers due to the loss of her husband and control over what she had (aka the siblings)

(out of context but it’s related to how different the first two songs are to the newest.)

It makes you think it'll be the same as the two but it's not because Fayrouz is meant to have humanity. She's human after all no?

ANYWAYS.

Basically:

Paradoxical shit of the Robots being more human than their creator who’s losing her humanity with the losses she’s had.

BONUS: Forgot to mention since I made this BEFORE Mors made the tweet out. The title of the series supports what I said heavily.

Qualia, according to wikipedia, "... are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience."

While automata means (according to google) "... a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being." but also "...used in similes and comparisons to refer to a person who seems to act in a mechanical or unemotional way."

[skelezomperman]

Some random Thoughts the first

Here's some random thoughts about Fire Emblem that I'll post here since the Opinions Thread on Reddit is a bit late. Negative first, then positive.

Firstly, I've said this before but I think that the biggest casualty of incest being discussed in Fire Emblem is that it means that people cannot treat a brother and sister being affectionate to each other normally. Every time they do so much as share an embrace, you are sure to see someone claim that there is some kind of romantic undertone. I really, really just hate this. Can we just...not?

Secondly, there's a pattern I've noticed, a sort of temptation to get addicted to looking at other people's bad takes. It is certainly not hard to find people saying things that objectively make no sense, not especially on social media sites like Tumblr, Reddit, or Twitter/X. Sometimes it is so funny that you have to say something to someone else. But at the same time, it's easy to fall into this addiction to looking at bad takes. To make it a full-blown habit of spending so much time at looking at terrible things said on the Internet is extremely unhealthy! I am not saying this to laugh or to proclaim myself as better, because I too am guilty of gossip. But we are called to greater things than circlejerking off other people's faults.

---

We are honestly blessed to have so much talent in our community. Obviously, there's artists, but we also have talented writers, talented cosplayers, talented translators, talented analyzers. I see it when I see the subreddit, I see it on Twitter, I see it on Tumblr, I see it on Discord. My talent is nowhere near the talent that other people have. I can't draw, I can't really speak Japanese, and my creative skills amount to some middling writings. So to everyone who has this talent, I thank you for all you've done, and if you want to use your talents to enrich the community, I say go for it! I support you.

Have I mentioned before that I like Ivy from Fire Emblem: Engage? I will spare you the details of my months-long angsting with the fact that I like her. I've said repeatedly before that I would not die on a hill defending that character, but for once I'll say that I appreciate her. I appreciate that she isn't one-dimensional (contrary to popular belief, ghosts are not mentioned in every support she has). She's adept at maneuvering around many different people, whether it's with Alcryst who clearly still has bad feelings about what happened in Chapter 10, with her sister whom she wants to support despite the enmity between their mothers, or with someone like Mauvier who is in a similar situation to her. Yes, the worldbuilding in Elusia rings hollow just as it does throughout the game, but I still felt that she was fine with regards to fitting into the plot, perhaps more-so than any of the other royals in the game.

(In general, I think my enjoyment of Engage increases when I turn away from looking at posts where people say they dislike it. Then I feel less bad about liking Engage even if it went against a lot of what I was wanting out of future Fire Emblems.)

One last thing is that I want to just say that I like how many little things there are to discover about FE4. I'm in the process of building a group of docs comparing the various translations of FE4. It's been three years since I went through the work of putting together a script for Project Naga, and I'm still finding lines that I never knew existed. Who knew that there's actually a line for if you seized Lubeck (first castle in Chapter 5) with Byron somehow still being alive? Or that Ishtore's boss dialogue changes if you fight him before killing Liza? So many little details to appreciate from this game even if it does show its age.

[natdafat]

Non DLC related eleden ring question

Okay, so I haven't used reddit in about 5 years due to the fact that I hate it, and it sucks.

What is the discourse with Radahn and reddit? I've heard bits of the discussion that has somehow made its way on tumblr, but only people complain about it, never what it is.Like is it the lore? People claiming he would have beaten Malania or something. If I find out it's a power scaling thing, I'll be pissed.

I know it's not about Why do you have to kill him for the DlC as this reddit discord has been going on since launch from what ive heard.(my guess is that since stars are related to fate and such as seen through rani's questline the same is applicable for the dlc hense why he must die)

[that-one-lotr-orc]

One post gotta be the first

So, for me Reddit finally died. As a programmer who is generally in favour of making stuff available for as many people as possible, they did right by that for many years. Giving everyone who wanted that access to it was generous of them, and made it a very fun platform. Random bots everywhere, apps catered to whatever preference people had, even -dare I say it- the tiniest bit of the wild-west-internet that once existed. But they got to greedy, flew to close to the sun, whatever analogy you want to have for it. I don't fault them wanting to make money off that, hosting is expensive, but the way they lied to everyone, attacked the Apollo developer for outing their lies, "riding the storm until it died out", it was too much.

So now I'm here, hopelessly lost in land I only got glimpses of on r/tumblr. I don't even know why I write this. I doubt many people will read it, or even see it. It's my first Tumblr post, and it probably will be very rambly, incoherent, and missing any kind of red line. The shortest answer to "Why I wrote this?" is probably "Because some google doc in '#tumblr help'" told me to post stuff!".

And I'm bad at posting stuff. I never done it. In the olden days, when forums were all around, I was a lurker. I'd read about everything, posted when I actually had something relevant to say, and shut up otherwise. I was known within the communities, generally active in the adjacent msn/skype groups, but not on the main spam threads in the forum.

When the forums began to die out, I got on Reddit. My account is 11 years old now, I've been using it almost hourly over the last 6 years, and it has a grand total of 9 posts. There's a bit more comments in that, but it's probably basically nothing compared to the average comments per hour spend on other accounts.

Why do I tell this? Because I might change that here. I've been lurking around Tumblr for the last few weeks, and the interaction and people are way different than I'm used to. Honestly, it's refreshing, and nice to see. But entering a new environment, one has to adept.

And I've been stuck too long in my old habits! I am often hesitant to contribute to anything, because I never did. I don't write, because I never wrote. But having a new environment, new people, new interest around me makes me wanna try out new stuff. And who knows? Maybe I'll like it, maybe I'll find people who like what I write, and I'll have more stuff to interact with.

And maybe I don't. Maybe I'll feel too unsure, too self-conscious, to change my lurking habits. I'm fine with that. I got other places to interact about my passions. Most of them are through Discord-groups nowadays, others through the few still-existing actual forums out there, but they still exist.

That's my last thing. I don't know what I even write about. Some of my interest are too different from the usual Tumblr-niches to have any kind of following. While typing this I had a look at the "enlisted game" tag, which has a grand total of 1 active poster. I had some looks at the different Magic the Gathering tags, but (as I expected), most of the people in there are about more about the lore of the game than I do. That's fine, I got my spike-talking places, and I will probably lurk those tags anyway.

The one place I'll probably feel most comfortable is the Brandon Sanderson-aligned tags. I'll be there, maybe even contributing, once I finished the last books (or I find the appropriate tags to block, I probably gotta look into that).

That uncertainty makes me circle back to a point a made a few paragraphs ago. I can explore, I can try out new stuff. Maybe I'll try to add to some of the punk tags here, maybe I'll hop onto some of the computer science tags and see if I can wordvomit there, maybe I'll go to something completely new! I can go exploring again, discovering things I never saw before, and that makes me eager.

[miupow]

this is a genuine question and i honestly dont mean this in bad faith at all >< but what constitutes a chubby girl ? im chronically offline except for like tumblr and i stay away from body stuff like the plague because it will make my brain explode and die with how some people talk about bodies 😵‍💫 im assuming its like a specific body type since weight can be so varied ? Im so sorry if this is like uncomfortable 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

cw// i yap a lot lol

hey bb!! honestly i’m the same way with socmed lol i really only use discord pinterest reddit and tumblr lmao (and i post on instagram once every like ten years but my entire feed and following is just people i went to high school with who i don’t talk to anymore)

it’s completely understandable and honestly for the best that you stay away from body discourse online 😖 the one thing that kpop has ruined for me is my body image and i work very hard to have a positive outlook on the way my body is built, my weight fluctuates a lot due to my health and job etc. but i have ALWAYS been chubby and i don’t think i could be like lobotomy chic skinny if i even tried it’s my genetics (and the pasta. but getting rid of carbs would make my ancestors roll in their graves)

honestly terms for body types have been thrown around everywhere like “chubby”, “curvy” “midsize” “plus size” etc .. to me personally (and i’m sure to a lot of other people) chubby is really up to your own personal interpretation? i PERSONALLY identify as chubby and midsize (i’m a size 16-18 in jeans) but i’m sure other people my size view themselves in tons of different ways. when i talk about chubby girls on my blog i’m really just referring to a girlie who views themselves as chubby. who’ve got thick thighs and a belly :3 i don’t discriminate or gatekeep chubbiness when we need each others support so badly

[khiphop-discussions]

im trying to have discussions about khh and twitter isn't good place. where's forum to discuss khh nowdays?? or any active forum still??

There's not many places tbh. Obviously to me, Tumblr is the best LOL. I think it was better some years ago though. A lot of people abandoned their accounts. I know some people made discords but IDK how those turned out because I never really joined any.

There's Khiphop reddit. It seems like there's a lot of activity overall but I don't see any one thread get that much interaction most of the time. There will usually be a handful of people talking and then the thread will die. That's fine but it means it might be harder for certain topics to get traction.

I think Khiphop has never had anywhere near as much discussion as Kpop. I'm not really sure why. I think part of the reason could be less accessibilty of translations makes it harder for international fans to discuss much of anything. Also, the fans are usually late teens and early 20s so its just harder to really have time to follow people as deeply as kpop fans do.

I forgot to mention HipHopLE. If you're fluent or speak/write Korean well enough then maybe you could engage with Korean fans over on that site?

I agree that Twitter isn't a good place for discussion. There's a lot of drama and cattiness so I feel like most people tread REALLY lightly. There's also the character limit. It makes it hard to really get in depth as some people may like to.

[olderthannetfic]

re: reposting anon. I am genuinely curious - where’s the generally agreed upon line?

People repost content all the time and get celebrated for it. Tweet threads, reddit posts, memes, and quotes from various sites get screenshot and put on tumblr all the time, and the only complaining I see is folks who want everyone to use image IDs.

I personally always ask before I post someone’s art to another social media site, and am often directed to the artist’s profile to share from there, but even more often am told it’s fine with a direct link and credit to the artist. I’ve never reposted fic. That feels more invasive to me in some nebulous way, but I do post fic recs, and I’ve never asked permission to make fic recs, either.

Clearly no one (sane) is saying there should be no content moving between sites unless the original artist puts it there, but tweets et al are just as much the intellectual property of their OPs as art and fics are of those creators.

--

It's hard to say.

I do have qualms about the endless twitter reposts on tumblr even as I reblog some of the funnier ones. I have zero qualms about using that one bird rights screencap as a reaction to things all over the internet. I never have qualms about reccing in whatever space I choose to use. The desire for historical preservation and the desire for control of one's own content are directly in opposition, and I tend to fall somewhat more on the historical preservation side.

Reposting to twitter is especially contentious because twitter is even more of a generator of mass harassment than other platforms. If you reposted to Dreamwidth, that shit isn't retweetable/rebloggable, and nobody's paying attention anyway, so the level of drama is going to be lower. If you save a copy on your own computer or repost to a private discord, who's going to know?

I don't mind a pithy quote being quoted elsewhere because it's funny. That's typical fair use. I absolutely mind my content being used to further sites I think we should mass abandon and make die. Twitter is at the top of that list.