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yakultii · 5 months ago

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Your uni work sounds really interesting, would love to hear more about it if you feel comfy sharing!

omg yessssss I fr can only study things I am passionate about !! I’d tell you everything but idk where to begin!! I did a lot of philosophy over the past few years but I got tired of it so I’ve gone full circle and I’m back doing sociology which comes a lot more naturally to me (while I looooved writing philosophical essays/curating my own ideas based off previous ones/filling the gaps, I got hella sick of reading stupjd ideas from middle aged white men from way back oop(I have a lot of opinions on that but I’d go on forever) and sociology I enjoy both the reading and the writing and the researching component(I think), though I’m quite new to conducting my research from scratch rn) - I mean sociology is genuinely just about how everything is socially constructed , peeling back the layers, even on the things you wouldn’t think are/sociology is just the study of how social influences play a role in shaping us/how private problems can be shaped by public issues sometimes (not to take away autonomy completely but just to acknowledge there are structural and historical elements at play.. to then find more effective solutions to social problems including things like health, economy and so on) .. so while I’m technically wasting my life away these last few yrs feeling non-human I’m always lowkey learning about life on the side .. so when/if I finally get it together and go live half a life I’m gonna have more knowledge on my side (which can’t be a bad thing surely - though sometimes I wish I knew less about life haha) I also did closer studies in gender studies a few yrs back but I found that general sociology incorporates gender in just about every topic and felt more useful for every day life, though I’d recommend that everyone takes an intro to gender studies class if you can! I’ve done a tonne of units over the yrs.. in philosophy my fav/most memorable was on love, sex and death which was super fun and was actually what made me think I wanted to go down philos pathway ahh I got super passionate and also world religions I loved too! but some memorable sociology units I enjoyed covered public health, youth, performance of identities etc (it’s all stuff I already knew but I love putting it into formal practice) and this sem my focus is on 1. sports and bodies in society 2. contemporary research (which is a diff class entirely but I also happen to be conducting research on transphobia in sport utilising social media) 3. love, sex and relationships (which is mostly on family dynamics so far but I think it’ll get more interesting soon) and4. culture, control and boundaries which is a lot on deviance and how society kinda constructs what is deviant, who is the “other” how we “other” people etc. and then next sem I think I’m gonna go back to focusing on religion again but from a sociological perspective rather than philosophical and some others… I mean obviously within each unit there’s a lot more to it and there is method to sociological approach but that was just a brief overview of what I’m doing rn haha but let me know if there’s anything in particular you wanna know about !!! regarding sociology in general or any of these topics ig :))) p.s if u feel like ur stuck/can’t escape society’s constructions and want to live freely in denial (what I should do) I highly recommend u don’t study soc bc it will only reaffirm how fucked up capitalism and patriarchy got us, no matter what field within soc u look into like this study only enables my depression for sure which is probably why it comes naturally to me lmao but also I feel like everyone should study soc bc I feel like it’s knowledge everyone should have Argh. I need everyone to know and understand everything I know and understand !!!! (I’m learning that’s just never gonna happen ugh)

also side note - I still personally think philosophy is beneficial to study as it teaches you how to think more critically, though I felt I already did that but it allowed me to put it into practice formally I suppose, so I still think it’s worth it! but I feel as though once you are confident thinking extremely critically/not just consuming but critically responding/putting forward your own ideas/knowing how to contribute something new to academic discourse , philosophy starts to feel pointless for me because the content itself is not so applicable to real life as something like sociology but that’s just my opinion haha

also fun fact that I didn’t really know before I studied sociology is that soc is actually a science like it has its own set of research methods and procedures to follow (if you go beyond writing random essays ofc) which I think is kinda cool considering I never took much interest in typical science (I think science is cool and great but my adhd brain just don’t give a fk)

#I just said so much without saying anything at all which is kinda my speciality LMAOOOObye #I’m just as bad as them middle aged white men takes one to know one lmao jk I’m not middle aged or a man #but fr ask me anything idk what to tell ya honestly lol

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girlvinland · 1 year ago

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Sometimes think about how I’d historically only liked RPing male chars who were into women (whether the male char was straight or bi), and it was like. I knew I related to them on some level bc I self-inserted so hard onto them, and ig for some people they would take it as an indication of a gender-relevant thing (which tbf I had done on and off bc even if it was RP, it’s always been deeper for me personally/a way of understanding aspects of myself even if that’s a little cringey). But then like, working through a ton of internalized homophobia eventually made me come to the lightbulb moment of no, that wasn’t it. It was just that I had been exposed to so few wlw relationships that weren’t fetishized (until like mid-twenties when I finally made more wlw friends and engaged w more media for wlw that didn’t fetishize those relationships) that I was trying to put my feelings onto a dynamic that is so much more prevalent and culturally understood in order to make sense of how I felt. And I get how it’s problematic for my brain to have equated any kind of wlw relationships to ones that somehow mirror heterosexual ones, but I don’t know. That’s how it happened, but it would have been a much easier life if my brain could have gotten it’s shit together earlier and just been like. Hey, it’s okay to be sexually/romantically interested in women in these certain kinds of ways like wanting to be the one who woos or supports or tops and it doesn’t necessarily make you weird or creepy or a man.

#by bug

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theurbansquared · 4 years ago

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Guide To Avoiding A Loser Brokerage

by James Hill | theurbansquared

Brokers can be bastards and some even get better at it while other brokers are legitimate life-changing business Sherpas

A broker is supposed to guide you through a career in real estate much like a coach or pimp - offering protection and how to understand a complicated system better and direct it to revenue without getting your neck broke while playing the game. I created and ran the most well-reviewed, largest full-service brokerage in the fastest-growing city in America. This gave me access to nearly ever broker and their broker's pay structure and innovations. I also got the agent's version of my same broker buddies brokerages when they eventually joined my brokerage; hovering anywhere from 20–60 agents. Trending insider chatter has blame going to real estate brokers of decades past (and current) and how they’ve managed their agents - - letting unsupervised agents with no experience run wild on the streets practicing on the public wearing out Realtor love and making a need for all the Mountain Dew-made Zillow-y options that currently exist.

Brokers are out of touch more than ever with today’s current media load, having to understand and use social media platforms for their advertising (since the private Town & Country affair that real estate once was is forever over and the landscape is a bit more like a half Juggalo, half programmer flea market).

Let’s dive into some situations and tenets that most agents don’t consider when choosing a brokerage.

Sales Volume

This is a bit of negotiating psychology and due diligence. Simply ask how much sales they (the brokerage) did last year and how much they’re currently at. If they don’t know these numbers they’re goons. If they don’t give it, you guessed it - they’re hiding something; their lack of revenue. I’ve hired and fired hundreds of agents and in interviews so few ask this question but it’s one of the most important questions you can ask as an agent and you need the information. An agent that doesn’t ask this has already given a tell that they’re not a top producer since they’re not interested in the production capacity of the team they may join. No bueno. Creep the brokerage as well obvi -- reviews, FB & IG engagement and current running ads, and make sure the company Christmas Party isn’t catered by Chic-fil-a at a Burnet Road dive bar.

Office

40% of your learning and 350% of your work will be done at the office. Those numbers will make sense 90% of the time after a few years in real estate. The rest should be on the streets - your car, properties, driving 75 mph talking and sending out docs, gorging on breath mints. Office, home, tiny homes, motorhomes have all blended into one larger conversation where work/live ethos are all in re-definition.

But, when you do need a more savvy moment in any market when people talk about borrowing or selling something that’s over $100K they don’t want to hear some bullshit too loud pedantic conversation seated right next to them at Starbucks or the local kooky coffee shop. In real estate Murphy’s Law is always in effect. The super important listing sign off that has to go well and they want to hear you pitch again before deciding? There will be someone (at this super ‘caj’ coffee house meeting) there projectile vomiting, or throwing cats, or something else tiresome or bad that takes more calls.

Speech and body language are massive parts of sales so when the entire set is thrown because a barista is running through a whole Sublime album. You want the most inviting cool office you can ever pull off at any given moment in real estate . Was that ever a question? There's a balance -- you can't afford that year one or three, but it’s called real estate for a reason. Sexy, exciting buildings is what the brochure said when I joined. Also, it’s about style not size.

If you haven’t lost business to coffee house back pressure you really haven’t failed at agency properly.

Social IQ

Social reach is the only conversation now. Many brokerages won’t make it as the lead generating aspects of the industry aren't powered by a private MLS anyone and the publicly-hated ‘Realtor’ designation have both brokers and agents guessing about tomorrow. Calendars, best practices and free shitty tips & templates are the du jour of the day for anyone trying to get an agent's eyes. You can Google and get all the ‘basic’ social media dance steps, but with everyone at the same happy hunting spot, you’re being covered up, which leaves all your new artistic efforts fruitless and also squandering winning time.

Traffic, leads and engagement are all separate areas that have to be fulfilled properly and even this is in flux with historic corporations and current start ups all on the same advertising playing field. Social reach and engagement is about going to the consumer direct and becoming their friend with soft bribes -- free food, gifts, prizes (trips, events tickets) or industry work tools. The great news is, real estate has always been mostly consumer direct - start up a convoy at the grocery store (bar, church, meetup) and you’re in the car that weekend looking for houses with a new client. While you, your brokerage and the world are figuring out their exact social media mix, you need to make sure a brokerage isn’t lost on social media since many won’t be able to stay in business in the next few short years. Your brokerage needs to have a plan and and at best some presence on social media. Plus, they should be running low-cost performative marketing ad campaigns to get a feel for what and if set user groups are responding to ads. Anyone can post on IG but people engage on IG when they become inspired. A brokerage should have some sort of inspiration and relationship tied in with the local allure of their city -- or heading that direction.

Mentoring

Much like a neurotic buyer chasing an interest rate for their home mortgage (and then never buying a house) agents too focused on commission may miss the essential career need for mentoring -- for their clients and career. I had a 5 deal minimum for my new agents before they were ever unsupervised and received more commission. I've had new agents with celeb clients in hand and celeb agents with no clients in hand. No one wants to do business with someone with absolutely has no, experience but they do it because they like you as a friend or fam. Your mentor is the person riding shotgun with you at the beginning of your career. On many levels you want to be this person since they embody the position and role. You're literally and figuratively are borrowing experience from them and they deserve to be paid for it. You always have to strengthen your brand outside of your brokerage but if you don’t have any experience your brand doesn’t have ‘strength’ you simply have a logo and a drag & drop website where you're possibly talking about yourself and love of unicorns or football shit but the big boat deals you dream about in bed aren’t gotten this way. Remember, no unicorn could ever throw a football good without a lot of practice and a good mentor.

Support

Support in a brokerage is really communication and solutions for small problems, and systems for managing bigger ones with people. Most of the annoying things in real estate happen outside of the deal - contracts, calls, emails, docs, signatures, more docs. You typically want a super admin, broker, or agent manager that you can call and they pick up the phone. It’s pretty simple. With a mentor, admin, or broker you’re going to have a n 8:30 PM question or deal that’s going down. You’ll need printer help. Real estate always happens now (this was one of the main mantras in my office). Printing, prequal, weekend support and constant post dinner shenanigans.

Training

Meet Frank Miller, David Mamet, the Sex Pistols, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Hendrix, Tom Hopkins, The World’s Greatest Detective and Conan The Barbarian. We had a lot of different inspirations for the style and ethos of our urban brokerage. The World’s Greatest Detective is Batman. It was a moniker that became popular in the seventies. We used this example about how important due diligence and proper Fact Finding techniques are for serving and closing deals for clients. (It’s almost essential to be inquisitive in real estate esp about property/development to have success). Training is largely your sales meeting(s). Although I don’t come from a car background I’ve mentored many car guys transferring to real estate (they typically are out of the industry within 2 years and are there only for boom markets). Car guys have meetings every morning 6 days a week and they’re not at 9 or 10 am. They’re already working.

free module: The Burger King Phenomena: Why Agents Do Less Working For Themselves Than If They Were Working At Burger King

Many brokerages have no training/meeting schedule (monthly doesn’t count -- that’s a meet and greet company pump and catch up meeting). If a brokerage doesn’t have training on a schedule then there is no training. You’ll possibly be thrown a 3-ring binder, or given some PDF’s, or links to old bizarre training videos or a soup sandwich of all three and sometimes even a bill for the training. An agent’s training/meetings and their attendance to them are the difference between an agent making it or not when you’re 24 months or less in the role as an agent especially in the fast turbulent waters of the current 2021 market where brokerage and agent purpose and pay are under attack. From my experience, new agents that hide die.

Media

Having a background as a creative director I’m aware with great detail of agency and brokerage media needs, the cost and time they extract, and the corresponding revenue they’re projected to bring back. Brokerages are looking for their purpose now as simply having a brokerage doesn’t bring in leads like it used to. This is fitting, since the digital dumbass brokers that that didn’t understand the importance of ‘the web’ rickshawed our MLS data and sold the agent/broker centric real estate system for their benefit while current agents are left with an empty greasy enough to-go box to curl up with. Brokerages were never media houses or ad agencies but now that consumer level graphic programs and website builders are ubiquitous and any agent after being licensed for 10 days can drag & drop a website up in 4 hours and make it look like a brokerage that’s been around for years. I know I’m going wide on the subject here but stay with me because this is the crux of where the industry and consumer are renegotiating roles.

A brokerage’s value proposition has changed drastically with the telecommute revolution that was only sped and strengthened by Covid. Also, generational knowledge base gaps in technology are more apparent than ever with technology as younger agents can often be more media savvy than their broker. The market is flooded with self appointed companies or gurus that are taking on the role of the classic ad agency (Mad Men) or media production house. Also beware of real estate coaches with little or no real estate experience offering to guide you in social media. Okay media can’t be used in apex situations (such as the luxury listings you’re after) and doesn’t draw apex listings. Beware of tapioca room temperature tips and general lists from companies that can appear informative but are really boilerplate low grade data to get your attention to ultimately upsell you on a paid service.

As an agent or a brokerage, consumer level graphic and website building programs can be a death ticket to your business as your competitors have the same tools and are cranking out the same type of style of messaging you are now. Now agents, principals, admins and in art class creating flyers. This has been done since the nineties as the valleys of dead agent careers is full of 2-day Microsoft Word (or any of their shitty office offerings) seshes to produce nasty flyers and presentations. These programs are fun and making bad flyers absolutely work related - the kind of work you don’t want’ related to your business because it’s adult crayon coloring. Activity does not equal production. Staying busy doing the wrong things doesn’t make money in real estate. Rather than spending agent winning time staying in the wrong lanes for way too long, get with a team or brokerage that are providing the most exceptional visual media you can find in your market. It used to be cool 2 years ago, now it’s the only thing that matters. Visual content.

free module: Better Agent Media, Less Agent Money (media tips and hacks).

Access

This is access to your broker. Brokers with families are typically less available. Your best bet as an agent is looking for a grinder broker who sleeps on the couch at their office. This person doesn’t have kids to build into so they’ll build into your career and you’ll get the most out of these brokers. Beware of cheesedick, apathetic, rich boy, bored brokers not around and more concerned with projects like a shitty vanity wine brand that their wife’s forced them to launch since she’s not living her best life anymore as an agent.

Style

What kind of style is your brokerage? Is there an opportunity to bring more style sophistication to the market -- standout in a smaller market? Or, are you in an ultra stylish market currently and butt hurt because you already have a little story about how you’re going to keep it real and be a Dockers wearing slob for eternity? The thing about style in agency is you always need to look like you can list a million dollar house. Oh, is it really that simple? Yes it is. You complicated it. Clients always care about their housing a little bit more than they care about your real estate career. They don’t have time to figure out why you’re wearing shoe styles from 7 years ago. Don’t make it hard for people to do business with you. If you’re ugly, even better. It can be a massive advantage. Everyone on the planet loves when someone who doesn’t fall into our general current ‘attractive’ spectrum doesn’t give af, looks great and puts themselves together in a stylish way that the viewer can understand (can I get away with Teen Wolf?). A great side benefit from this step in the right direction is it’s a great way to make someone who is conventionally attractive insecure.

You want to be in the same style as the people in your area but the secret is you need to lead that style pack if you can -- you always lead and dress apex. Years ago this was anecdotal but after over 100K hours in real estate a good suite (tailored) saved my ass and literally got me business. I listed the largest house in east Austin because of a suit (and got a front page story on the newspaper real estate section for free because the owner saw me walking into the next door neighbor’s house).

Offices, dress, logo, email signature are all elements of you and your brokerage’s style. Style in and of itself isn’t enough to be a top producer in real estate. I’ve had stylish and even celebrity agents that didn't do zilch, but style often is a fingerprint to something more.

Picking the right elements for your agent style is an art because you have to offer something from yourself that’s unique enough as well as something familiar (a bridge to your uniqueness). I have a background as a musician and also as a merchant sailor. Fortunately those are easy convo starters. You could be a philatelist and have some challenges, but regardless it absolutely will take a year or three to develop your own angle and style towards the market as you learn it and the agent role more.

Things that look attractive and familiar puts client’s psychologies at ease. So, if skinny jeans are in you better get in them (that’s like five years old now). You’re on stage. You don’t wear what the worker people behind the camera wear. If you want to wear boring shit get on the other side of the camera. If you want less leads saddle up to a forgettable brokerage. People have hard days. They want you to put an effort into your real estate agency role. Currently it’s a fried role so you’re dealing with that too. People love to be smiled at and sold and especially from someone who smells good. It doesn't ever get old. Don’t make them beg for your charm. Be a nice charming person with a shirt that fits good, it’s a powerful combo.

Get My Damn Paper

If you’ve never seen a werewolf in daylight mess with an agent’s commission after the deal’s done and funded. Admin? Who is the damn person who does the admin? (accounts payable is the icey pro word if you like). That person that you contact to get your commission check cut? If that person is a weirdo, or there’s an unfriendly or sketchy quality to the office or admin staff, do not go forward (don’t confuse this with new people or industry jitters). Grab some free coffee, leave the smarm and jet to the next brokerage blind date.

Software

CRM is an annoying conversation. Here’s the things with CRM’s - for all the work CRMs curtail, because of their complexity and existence and the work(time) they take to interact with you need to consider how much work you’re putting into operating the CRM software verses how much time it’s saving. Many times brokerages have expensive yearly subscriptions with per agent fees for their CRM which can make the brokerage have a zealot meth thing for the ‘team’ software and promise you can’t have a career without taking a bump too. To understand CRM better before it was a name, Client Relationship Management is what analog Proximity became. Let me explain - being close to people in Church, bar, school, same building -- all give proximity. This becomes familiarity, then ease, then trust. People do business with people they trust & like. Once people disconnected physically and started using other means more contact attempts have to be made to work for or ‘prove’ worth.

Follow Up is a large component of most CRM’s and there are gobs of money for agents who follow up meticulously. Simply ask the broker what CRM they use and research it. Something to remember - unless you’re extremely busy with your career you don’t need a CRM. You can manage & database your clients & leads ‘by hand’ and strap it to the cloud with G-Suite/Google Sheets.

Brokerage Name

A small but important aside, if a brokerage have named themselves after a precious metal or a gem, or if it says elite in the name then it’s not elite. If it has the words prestige or worldwide or international it may not be any of those either. I know a handful of exceptions to this rule but this is a great dirty primer to use when choosing a brokerage that’s going to propel your career and have shrimp options at the Christmas Party.

#agent #realtor #realestateagent #broker #brokerage #newhomebuyer #coach #businesscoach #entrepreneurs #new agent #zillow

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mysticalmusicwhispers · 5 years ago

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APH China Musings

When I start thinking about China, and sometimes countries in general, I get this total disconnect between how the anime/manga portrays the country (especially China) and how a lot of headcanons have them as, especially reading headcanons and art about ancient days.

Ok China-specific content below (headcanons at the very end): Very long post warning

Most of the canon shows him as a sort of weird old grandpa who doesn’t really have all his nuts and bolts in his brainpan and pretends to be cool or whatever (when he’s really not) while his kids all mock him. That APH China has a soft spot for cute things and can’t really understand the others ig, which again kinda makes him a laughingstock for his kids. But, the headcanons I’ve read show him as a really manipulative, sly Old Man who enters contracts/treaties/friendships to benefit him, not for the sake of being kind, and doesn’t really see everybody else on an even level with him which... clashes somewhat to a lot with the canon. HOWEVER, this cunning, darker (?) version of him is way more historically accurate... I like certain things from both versions (and I also like being historically accurate as much as possible) and the fact that headcanons vs canon is so contrasting makes it kinda hard to have one concrete China for my headcanons, it’s like he has split personalities or something lol.

Side note: I’ve never heard/known of anyone Chinese ever saying -aru in English, so... It might be just a voice tic of Chinese people when speaking Japanese, but I sort of get annoyed when it’s added in every other sentence he says in a fanfic. He doesn’t talk like that in the English dubbed anime either, and it seems that the English translations of the manga have also omitted the -aru (except for one strip I believe, correct me if I’m wrong). So please don’t add it in fanfics unless you want the characters to all be speaking Japanese with their own unique voice tics.

However, I do like some parts of the canon portrayal, SUCH AS: his doing tai chi every morning, the portrayal of his relationship with Japan before the “betrayal”, and apparently how he “isn't one to waste a second of time” (from the wiki). So in my head, I try to meld the canon and Sly Old Man together, because I like some aspects of China that may not be explained by either the country’s history, culture, or stereotypes, and honestly I feel like some parts of a country’s personality can just appear spontaneously; you don’t need to be able to explain every part of you from your past experience or the people and country that you make up and represent.

Without further ado, the Headcanons!

- MORNING PERSON, does the whole tai chi thing in the morning with the birds in his garden or something, finds it very relaxing, and then goes back inside for an actual breakfast (I have no idea what he’d eat because Chinese cuisine varies A LOT from region to region, ex. in the north/Beijing region there’s usually soy milk, “Chinese oil stick” which is basically like salty fried dough sticks, and “tofu brains” <-- literal translation, it’s a sort of soupy thing with very soft tofu (very good). In the south, there’s a lot of sweet meats and dim sum, almost like a mini lunch sort of thing, etc.) He’d also drink tea, and never adds sugar (I don’t think restaurants in China ever actually give you sugar packets with tea)

- I feel like he’d be a CAT PERSON nowadays dogs as pets have become more popular in China but before, cats were more common (I think) because of their usefulness as pest control and the fact that they can get their own food; dogs weren’t really kept except to be guard dogs. I feel he’d have gotten used to cats, and also he’d enjoy a quiet pet’s company more

- ANCIENT DAYS/RELATIONSHIPS: He’d probably be slightly manipulative, and ENTER relationships for a trade benefit/power/control/good stuff, but if the relationship goes well and the person is charming (Rome cough cough), he’d slowly warm up and become real friends after a while.

- I agree with the Sly Old Man treatment of COLONIES/TRIBUTE STATES, he’d probably just protect them for the benefits instead of actual Love (but isn’t that what all countries do these days). I do see him as very patronizing to his underlings, because of a) his age and him thinking that he’s seen it all with his dynasty changes and wars and stuff and b) Confucianism, which said to respect your elders and all that, so I think it’d make him slightly full of himself and patronizing (the wiki says this is also his current attitude and I can see that). But I see a situation similar to the relationship one playing out here; as he gets more and more contact with a tribute state he actually grows closer to them in the Normal Human Feeling way, so that would explain his feeling of betrayal when Japan left (literally back-stabbing him), as well as his feeling sad (not just because he lost a trade partner and revenue maker) when Korea was taken. For his tribute states, my headcanon for their relationship is pretty much summed up in this post (esp his relationship with Korea, but also Japan a bit): https://stirringwinds.tumblr.com/post/119403708770/tsk-look-at-you-all-battered-and-bruised-its (patronizing but still caring)

- VERY PRAGMATIC AND EXTREMELY BLUNT. I have no explanation, he just seems like this kind of person (and according to the wiki, he “isn't one to waste a second of time”). Doesn’t care at all if he offends you, intentionally or not (unless he’s trying to impress, of course).

- VERY TRADITIONAL. He probably knows at least a handful of traditional instruments, pipa, ma tou qin, gu zheng, erhu, xun, etc. And will roast people on the internet if they play them wrong (a while back at some really fancy gathering, there was a performer who was in front, mind you, playing a yu (wind instrument) upside down and totally wrong, and that caused a huge firestorm in Chinese social media. I’d like to think China would have been one of those people to be like “what are you doing you know you just made a fool of yourself right?” Incidentally, there’s also an idiom related to the yu that is literally about playing it wrong (literally it’s something like one bad apple can be covered up in a sea of good ones but one by one, people will see you’re bad))

- TRADITIONAL pt. 2: good at calligraphy and also very good at guessing dui lian (apparently called antithetical couplets) hung up during the Lunar New Year. Also adhering to tradition, he gathers up everybody for every single big Chinese/Asian festival to eat together. I know Japan doesn’t interact much with China and China still feels betrayed by him in the manga (the Japanese and Chinese relationship nowadays still isn’t the greatest/closest for multiple reasons) but I’m going to take liberties (and my heart needs fluff). Also, if China invites/drags everybody but Japan to his house, I feel like that’s awkward and one of his kids/siblings would get Japan to come anyway. There would be a lot of arguing at the dinner, about food, politics, memes (from HK), trends, or anything really, but it’s all in good fun, yeah?

- MODERN POLITICS: still a bit of Sly Old Man, and probably very stuck in his ways. Some countries he doesn’t really respect. For example, he doesn’t see America as a fully respectable adult, probably because a) he’s still older and b) I think China agrees with his government’s structure to a point? Like with the way he suffered during the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (Boxer Rebellion, WWI, etc.) I think he’d take any system (including communism) that worked and improved people’s lives. At heart, I think China wants to do what’s right for the people, and at the time, the Communist Party promised that people’s lives would get better under their leadership, and for some, it did. That convinced so many people to take their promise, and I think China would have supported it at the time. As well as, I believe that country’s perspectives of their government is /somewhat/ influenced or warped by their people’s perspective, and /most/ people in China are /okay/ satisfied with the central govt. (not extending this to regional govts, that’s kinda a different issue). So I see China (as a character) being mostly satisfied, and America’s criticism and complaints about him pretty much bounce off, because China doesn’t see his comments worthy of respecting, especially because his govt. is doing ok from his point of view. There are definitely things that need working on, but he won’t take US criticism.

- SLY OLD MAN pt. 2: Basically the same as the tribute state thing, he’ll help you out initially to get your benefits, but if you last long enough, he’ll gradually grow friendship feelings. I feel like this is what real China is trying to do with the “Belt and Road”, basically spreading influence to less developed countries, although it may not be working out. Sort of like manipulation, which also fits in with the Sly Old Man thing.

- I can see why Hima originally designed China as being a bit cold, because I feel if he doesn’t need you, he won’t really talk to you. Although as mentioned above, I also see him start to care for somebody once he takes the effort to get to know you, and will probably care for his close friends long after they’re actually needed.

- I agree with the canon that he can GET ANNOYED EASILY AND SNAPS A LOT, but I see this happening only with people he thinks aren’t interesting enough, are below him, or don’t get him (or are just incessantly annoying).

- Also a bit EGOTISTICAL, but doesn’t show most of the time. Unless you happen to mention a recent achievement, and then he’ll go “Haha! I did that ____ (pick a number from 1,000 to 4,000) years ago!” or something and probably roast you

- SENTIMENTAL OLD SOUL: often reminisces about the past when alone, or with someone he truly trusts (that used to be Japan, but...). Slips into “how did the world get like this?” sometimes to a lot. Feels lonely sometimes too, and can be found stargazing on his front stoop at night

- RELAXING: if he doesn’t have work, he’ll just relax at his house, probably take a long bath/shower and just do nothing, maybe play some sort of instrument for fun, go into his garden and paint/walk around and enjoy the flowers, or watch some new addictive show. If he feels like working, he’ll cook dinner for all his kids/siblings and invite them over (this will also be done if he thinks one is overworking)

Ok those are all the headcanons for now, but probably will be more to come. My love for this Old Man is infinite <3. If you want, reblog/submit/comment your own aph China headcanons! Do you think I did him justice?

#aph china #musings #aph china headcanons #long ass post #long post #aph #hetalia #hws #headcanons

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs

This is the third of a three-part series, where we’ll explore how Ring transformed from start-up pitch to the technology powering Amazon's privatized surveillance network throughout the United States.

On Halloween 2017, Ring’s servers crashed en masse. The Ring app was nonfunctional. Why? Millions of trick-or-treaters overwhelmed Ring’s servers. Children dressed as ghouls and superheros executed an accidental denial-of-service attack.

Kids are central in Ring’s marketing strategy, and the company even bragged about how many children they surveilled on Halloween this year.

When the company once known as DoorBot relaunched as Ring in 2014, its marketing strategy promptly changed. The convenient “smart home” doorbell butler was gone, reborn as Ring, a home-security product that doesn’t simply sell fear, but sells the idea that the nuclear, suburban family is a delicate, precious thing which needs protection from a hostile world.

In Ring’s advertisements and commercials—which are spread across HGTV, Fox News, podcasts, and social media alike—the company tells the public that it isn’t watching their families, but watching over them. Ring wants customers to think it's the protective father, but not Big Brother.

Although Ring is telling families that they need protection from unsafe neighborhoods, the company is also radically changing what a typical neighborhood is like. Ring has quietly partnered with over 600 police departments around the country and promotes Neighbors, its own neighborhood watch app, where users are supposed to report “suspicious” people.

Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.

We don’t have any substantial proof that towns become safer when Ring enters the picture. But when Ring cameras enter a town, it’s easy for cities to equate surveillance with being a good neighbor.

Inside Ring’s Marketing World

Ring’s marketing materials on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are a strange mix of installation instruction videos, testaments to how Ring supposedly reduces crime, and family moments as captured through surveillance cameras. It’s like a combination of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Ellen, and Cops.

In these videos, high schoolers leave for school and say goodbye to their parents. Small children in costumes talk to their parents through the camera intercom. A family plays in the front yard, unknowingly activating the motion-detection feature on the doorbell camera.

Image: Obtained via public record request from Commerce, CA

Ring dedicated a blog post to a video showing a 19-year-old woman leaving for a date. Her dad demanded to interview her date before allowing her to leave the house. The dad made the man repeat, several times, that he would return his adult daughter before her 10:30 p.m. curfew.

These videos sell old-fashioned notions, depicting the typical customer as a nuclear American family with a patriarchal father figure supervising women and children who are unable to protect themselves.

This ethos extends to the influencers that Ring has chosen to sponsor its cameras:. At least a dozen popular Instagram accounts , almost exclusively run by white women, have promoted Ring products, according to Ring’s tagged posts on the platform. They all appear to be mom lifestyle bloggers who favor a Charleston aesthetic of white houses, linen clothes, and Etsy signs that say things like “Hello” or “No Soliciting.”

View this post on Instagram

When you’re paranoid like I am & think every time the doorbell rings it’s a crazy person on the other side (who else pretends like they’re not home & hides when the doorbell rings 😂) you invest in security for peace of mind. Y’all know I love my security cameras so we recently got the @ring so now I know who is coming & going and that makes this Mom feel so much safer! Check out my IG stories for details ❤️ • I just wish I had it a few months ago when my door was shot with silly string 🤷🏼‍♀️ 📷: @chelsearoc

A post shared by Ashley McClellan Houston (@nashvillewifestyles) on Jun 7, 2018 at 7:25am PDT

Ring also has a section of its website called RingTV dedicated to sharing videos hand-picked by the company. RingTV’s Fun & Convenience tab is dedicated to videos like "Goldendoodle Puppy Uses Ring Doorbell."

But aside from all the wholesome family videos and cute puppies, the company also uses the RingTV website to try and prove that its cameras prevent crime.

The Crime Prevention tab shows videos depicting people who "stop crime in its tracks" or catch "strangers in the act." Some of the videos appear to show people apparently considering stealing a package, but not doing so after seeing a Ring camera.

However, it’s unclear how commonplace any of these success stories are. Millions of people own Ring cameras, and the Crime Prevention tab hosts nearly 50 videos.

Image: Screenshot from RingTV

The Neighbors App, and the Racial Politics of Suburbia

Suburban life is at the center of Ring’s marketing materials, and almost all footage that the company shares is captured at suburban homes. This focus says a lot about what Ring is selling, and to whom: Historically, American notions of the suburban, nuclear family have been built upon the exclusion of people of color.

After World War II, white families fled from urban centers and resettled in homogeneous suburban regions. Redlining practices excluded people of color from getting loans and mortgage payments that would allow them to move into the same areas.

Additionally, as Vanderbilt University historian Sarah Igo writes in her book The Known Citizen, Americans associated the sanctity of the suburban home with the right to privacy. Suburbia was meant to be not only a destination of white flight, but a refuge.

Neighbors, Ring’s neighborhood watch app, efficiently encapsulates the mixed politics of privacy within the home and racial exclusion.

The Neighbors app, in its most basic function, allows people to upload footage from Ring products or other security cameras for other users to see. A post can be sorted into one of five categories: crime, safety, suspicious, stranger, unknown visitor, or lost pet. The Neighbors feed consists of these user-submitted posts and bite-sized alerts posted by Ring about possible dangers around town.

The app was launched in May 2018, one month after Amazon finalized the acquisition of Ring. (It wasn’t the company’s first experiment with mobilizing the politics of neighborhood watches to sell their products. In 2017, Ring offered free swag and discounted Ring products to neighborhood watch groups that promoted Ring and agreed to testify against their neighbors in court, if necessary.)

The Neighbors app has since developed a culture that is completely obsessed with crime and the self-policing of neighborhoods, and users often resort to racial profiling. Similar problems exist on the crime-reporting app Citizen and the neighborhood hub app NextDoor. On Neighbors, all posts are dedicated to crime, and three out of the five possible post categories deal with suspicious, strange, or unknown people. These options implicitly encourage people to post about people they don’t trust. In practice, this lack of trust is often racist.

The Aesthetic of Fear on Neighbors

The Neighbors app empowers people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers. Ring markets Neighbors as a “digital neighborhood watch,” which is an accurate description. It encourages people to think about who belongs and who is an outsider. In this way, Neighbors is not just a digital neighborhood watch. It’s a digital gated community.

“So much of it is this shared sense of the people who happen to be on that [app], or who we assume are neighbors like yourself, and watching and policing the dangers in your neighborhood,” Igo told Motherboard. “[Neighbors] also will undoubtedly reinforce some sense of who belongs here and who doesn't.”

When people take pictures or videos, they determine who and what is worthy of attention. But when people use security cameras specifically, they also determine who is suspicious and who does not belong.

Security cameras carry an aesthetic of suspicion and fear. Footage is often grainy, black and white, or green-tinted due to night vision filtering—but these aren’t inherently “sketchy” traits. Since security footage is usually shared in the context of crime on local news, all security footage is marred with the appearance of suspicion. Local news tends to over-represent crimes committed by people of color, meaning people of color captured on security cameras are at an especially high risk of appearing to be suspicious.

As more people buy cheap home security systems, the amount of security footage is proliferating. This means that more people appear suspicious than ever before. Even if a person has done nothing wrong, even if they have the wrong address or if they’re dropping off a package, they will appear suspicious.

Neighbors, and apps like it, have empowered people to publicly share footage that they consider unsettling, and people who they consider to be out of place, at a scale that we’ve never seen before.

Individual Decision With Group Implications

There’s a crucial, unstated aspect of owning a Ring camera: You aren’t just making the decision to surveil your own property and visitors when you buy one. You make a decision on behalf of everyone around you. If someone walks by your house, lives next door, or delivers packages to your home, they will be recorded and surveilled. They don’t get a choice. Buying even one Ring camera is a fundamentally communal decision.

Andrew Hager, who was a delivery-person for a meal-prep company in the Portland suburbs, said that he noticed all the “fancy houses” had Ring cameras, especially around Beaverton, OR. (The Beaverton Police Department has partnered with Ring, per documents obtained by Motherboard.)

For a while, he didn’t realize that Ring doorbells were actually cameras.

“It might've changed how I acted if I knew that there were cameras,” Hager said. “I was always professional, but I would’ve made sure I was not picking my nose or something.”

Hager added, more seriously, that he would not have been “blatantly checking the house out” if he knew he was being recorded.

“I feel like if people were watching me, they would've thought, ‘Oh, is this guy casing the joint out or something?’” Hager said. “Because you could totally think I was like, ‘Oh how much square footage is in here. I wonder how much they pay for this place.’ Before the door opens, I’m always looking around.”

Hager’s fear is justified. On the Neighbors app, users frequently post videos of people looking at their homes, taking pictures of their homes, or lingering around their homes. The captains often speculate as to whether the person is planning a robbery, although they just as well could have been at the wrong address or admiring the house.

“Making sure that packages are okay seems like a pretty common sense goal,” Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the anti-surveillance advocacy group the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and member of the Immigrant Leaders Council of the New York Immigration Coalition, said. “But the problem is that it comes at the price of recording these workers who are delivering them. It's just part of this surveillance web on the job that's depriving workers of autonomy and privacy, and can really have an emotionally toxic effect over the long term.”

The New Neighborhood of Ring Cameras

Ring has two aims that work in tandem. On one hand, it wants to become embedded in the process of policing. But it also wants to build relationships with neighborhood watches, and to have its cameras to become a feature of neighborhoods.

Ring doesn’t only partner with police departments. The company also provides discounts to local neighborhood watches and homeowners associations. According to emails obtained from Olathe, KS using a freedom of information request, all community leaders need to do is reach out to Ring.

"We would ask that a community leader (for instance head of HOA or neighborhood watch president) go to [redacted] to begin the process,” a Ring representative told a police officer who asked about local subsidy programs. “The community programs teams at Ring will work with them to create a limited time, zip code specific discount zone."

Ring also provides city-level discounts, if the city agrees to pay up.

Dozens of cities have Ring discount programs, which involve cities and towns paying Ring up to $100,000 in taxpayer money in order to subsidize Ring camera purchases for their residents. Ring will match every dollar committed by a city per the terms of these discount programs. This means that for every $100 residents save when buying a Ring product, the city pays $50 and Ring pays $50.

These city-level discounts have been happening since 2016, according to documents obtained by Motherboard.

By funding these discount programs, cities conflate surveillance and citizenship. For instance, West Hollywood, CA distributed flyers advertising its Ring subsidy program at voter registration events, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. West Hollywood also sold subsidized Ring products “exclusively” to residents in areas moderated by neighborhood watches. Everyone who bought a discounted camera was added to a registry list with their name and address.

West Hollywood isn’t alone. Camera-purchase registries—which Motherboard obtained from Redondo Beach, CA, West Hollywood, CA, and Green Bay, WI—included the names of purchasers and the police patrol areas in which they live.

Image: “RE__Request_for_shapefile_assistance.pdf” from West Hollywood, CA.

Documents obtained by Motherboard also show that several cities will loan or sell discounted cameras Ring cameras to residents. In one camera “loan” program in Green Bay, WI, police technically owned all footage generated on all cameras given to residents, per contract documents residents had to sign.

Police from Redondo Beach, CA even used the pretense of camera registries to determine who should get a discount and who shouldn’t, according to a city council meeting memo obtained by Motherboard. Police said that they inspected the facades of homes of each applicant, and looked for who had the most “optimal viewpoints that could assist with criminal investigations.”

In a slide presentation obtained by Motherboard, Redondo Beach police said that applicants who offered to surveil their neighbors would get a heavier discount than those who only offered to surveil their own property.

Image: Screenshot from Secure Your Castle slide presentation from Redondo Beach, CA obtained by Motherboard.

Ring doesn’t officially endorse cities requiring people to go on a camera registry in order to obtain free or discounted cameras.

“Ring won't subsidize devices to cities to be used for camera registration programs,” a Ring lawyer told city officials in Peoria, IL, who asked about creating a camera registry program. “If you cannot agree to that, then we cannot do the program.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” the Peoria lawyer said to a Peoria City Manager, after forwarding the email thread to him.

But cities can make camera registries without Ring’s permission. The Peoria Police Department unveiled a surveillance camera registry program two weeks before these emails were sent.

“As a policy, Ring does not support any subsidy match program that requires recipients to subscribe to a recording plan or share footage as a condition for receiving a subsidized device,” a Ring spokesperson said in an email. “We actively work with these groups to ensure this is reflected in their programs."

The Fanatic Culture of Ring Stans

People decide to buy Ring cameras for lots of different reasons. Ring customer Bryan Herbert told Motherboard that Ring makes his life easier.

“I’m disabled and tend to walk slow,” Herbert said via Twitter DM. “It’s nice being able to speak to people at the door and let them know it’s going to take me a minute to get there.”

But one thing connects all Ring camera owners: a sense of community.

Digital community is a crucial tenant of Ring ownership. There’s Neighbors, where geographic neighbors connect with one another through Ring’s platform. But there’s also Facebook and Reddit, where user-moderated, fanatic communities for Ring product owners have flourished.

In these groups, people are implicitly understood to have accepted the privacy tradeoffs that come with owning the cameras, and the proliferation of police partnerships. The resulting culture is a combination of a do-it-yourself machismo and intense product loyalty.

The most noteworthy examples are r/Ring, the Ring-focused subreddit, and Ring Doorbell Users Group, the Facebook group for Ring owners. These online communities aren’t primarily focused on sharing “success stories,” or sharing so-called sketchy footage on Ring cameras. Users mostly troubleshoot technical problems and answer one another’s questions. Often, people who speak too negatively about Ring products are disparaged, even when they face frustrating technical problems with no obvious solution.

The admins of the Facebook group often advocate on behalf of Ring. In one post, the Facebook group admin screenshotted and shared a post, which began by complaining about the quality of Ring cameras.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the group admin wrote, “I’m sorry that [name redacted] is having issues and feels he must so eloquently announce to everyone that he is GIVING UP.”

The admin suggested solutions to fixing Ring products that were often more labor-intensive or expensive than setting up the device itself.

The culture on r/Ring is pretty similarly to the culture in the Ring Doorbell Users Group on Facebook. Dan Sullivan, one of the moderators of r/Ring, said in a phone call that he’s been a subreddit moderator for about four years, around the time that DoorBot became Ring.

“I’ve been leading that disaster for a while,” Sullivan said. “It was really an echo chamber when I came across it… There were people who loved it, people who hated it, and there was no one to talk to about it. It’s still like that now.”

Sullivan said that he tried to engage with Ring’s social media team and get them to provide help. Ring tried, but it’s mostly stopped engaging.

“Ring used to participate, but then they stopped because people were attacking the employees,” Sullivan said.

How Does It Feel to Be Watched?

Among the many Ring users that Motherboard spoke with for this article, none expressed privacy concerns, or misgivings about having a camera in and around one’s home.

Sullivan, the r/Ring moderator, said that if people are worried about their privacy, they just shouldn’t get a camera. It’s like Facebook, he said. If you don't like Facebook, just get rid of Facebook.

“I don't have it inside of my house for a reason, but I don't really care who sees what goes on on the outside,” Sullivan said. “You could make a list on why you shouldn't have a camera. Obviously these [videos] are going somewhere, being sent to a server somewhere. But I don't have anything to hide. I’m not a criminal, there's no risky things going on at my house. So I’m not worried about it.”

Sullivan added that there are benefits and drawbacks to every product. For him, the benefit of catching a criminal on camera outweighs the risk of relying on a private company to catch them.

Several Ring camera owners told Motherboard that they, in part, chose Ring because they wanted cameras that weren’t made in China, citing security concerns. Neither of them were concerned about how camera footage and customer data is used.

Why We Watch Ourselves

There’s one unavoidable fact about Ring: people are choosing to use this product. They’re choosing to put a camera in their homes. They’re choosing not only to watch other people, but watch themselves.

Self-surveillance isn’t a Ring-specific phenomenon. The core of self-surveillance has to do with how we understand privacy.

Sarah Igo, the historian, says that “privacy” deals with the threshold between where the individual person ends, and a collective society begins. As a result, privacy concerns are often invoked in situations where people are scared, apprehensive, or uncomfortable about changes happening in their society—technological, social, or otherwise.

As explained by Igo, after World War II, when white people fled to the suburbs, a combination of academic scholarship and popular opinion strengthened the idea that freedom, especially freedom from authoritarianism and fascim, can be found in the right to private property, space, and land.

The American home, in the face of these fears, became a place of safety and tradition. It was a place for families where a patriarchal figure protected his wife and children.

Americans, as Igo describes it, often fear and mistrust objects that mediate between the private home and the outside world. Many people in the early twentieth century viewed the telephone as an unwelcome intruder in the home. Fear of wiretapping was widespread throughout the century. The doorbell, for many, was no exception. Igo writes that people viewed the doorbell as something that empowered the outside world to penetrate and intrude on “domestic tranquility.”

Interestingly, Ring customers believe that the doorbell camera protects the home. It doesn’t invade the home; rather, it guards the home. Igo said in a phone call that this isn’t necessarily surprising. Ring doorbells, like all doorbells, mediate the relationship between the home and the outside world.

“Video cameras, security cameras, and so forth is the turning of the home outward to watch, in the other direction,” Igo said. “So I think it's still connected to this longer history of worry about invasions of the home. To prevent those, you have to look outward and invade the privacy of those potentially right on the street outside.”

“[There’s] this sense that the barrier can also be a window on to who's on the other side,” Igo added. “And that, at the very least, suggests rising distrust of unplanned interactions.”

So What Now?

Ring has some experienced pushback in recent months. In August, Senator Markey demanded the company answer questions about its data retention and relationships with law enforcement. Then, in November, five senators demanded Jeff Bezos answer additional questions about its data security practices.

Despite this pushback, Ring is not faltering or losing momentum.

It doesn’t hurt that the company has crucial connections to power. Jacqui Irwin, a member of the California state assembly, is married to Jon Irwin, the chief operating officer for Ring. Kira Rudik, Ring Ukraine’s chief operating officer, was recently elected to Ukranian parliament. Ring has connections in precisely the places it needs them in order to continue operating as it always has.

However, it’s impossible to talk about Ring in a vacuum, as if Ring is the only home surveillance company selling fear and promising security in return. Ring is the symptom of a worldview in which crime is an existential threat, and data-capturing technology is the solution. For people who subscribe to this worldview, it doesn’t matter that crime rates are actually going down nationwide. The only thing that matters is that they believe crime is a threat.

According to Evan Greer, deputy director of digital activist group Fight for the Future, Ring is a product that’s “incompatible with a functioning community.” If you don’t trust your neighbors, Greer said, it becomes okay to surveil in perpetuity.

“That's a fundamental idea that ties community together: neighbors trust each other, and protect each other, and take care of each other,” Greer said. “It just feels like, for Amazon’s business model to succeed, they have to sow distrust and fear between neighbors.”

Cahn, the privacy advocate, said that Ring and security products like it capitalize on a widespread feeling that we are never safe.

“It goes to some almost society-wide anxiety, that if we can't prove everything's okay, at every moment,” Cahn said, “then somehow, something terrible is happening.”

There is no single reason that people choose to watch themselves and others. The people of Baltimore, MD believe that camera footage can be a tool that facilitates justice in a city where justice feels rare. For others, Ring cameras offer the convenience of seeing who is at the door. Some people buy Ring cameras to usher in peace of mind.

Everyone who buys a Ring camera shares one core belief: that Ring cameras are neutral, objective, or even benevolent. However, in a world so overcome by fear that the people believe they must not only watch others, and watch themselves, there’s no such thing as a truly benevolent tool.

How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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hxojylpaeaut-blog · 5 years ago

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neverisalongtime-ja-blog · 7 years ago

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Chapter 32: Glasto dreams

Hello everyone! I just wanna say that the amount of love that I’m receivingfrom all of you is immeasurable and I’ll be forever grateful for that!

Also I want to invite all of you to visit @bemygetawayjz to read Zara’s story with Josh if you haven’t - In that case you should be ashamed of yourself - and to ask her weird shit! Say that I sent you and she’ll give you an special answer (Not really).

Remember to visit Anastasia’s IG profile:

Anastasia_Truman ❤️️

Thanks to everyone who reads the fic, much love to you all! ♥

Read chapter 31

This leg of the tour was the one Anastasia’s was looking forward to the most; they would be traveling the South of the country to end in Florida where Anastasia was going to take advantage and make of it a small, very small, vacation. And now that the barrier between her and Josh was down, she was so excited about this new adventure, it was going to be like the old times.

She was wishful about the Josh situation; even though she said she wasn’t going to put her hopes up, but Josh kept texting her and they talked until late those two nights before traveling to Washington, DC for the show. The two bands traveled apart this time. Dead Curse arrived to DC earlier so the four bandmates decided to have a day together, visiting some historic sites like the Smithsonian, and other common touristic sites. Then, they went to some music stores and ended up at a bar near the hotel.

Next day, they were the first to get to the venue. Anastasia hadn’t seen Josh yet, but walking through the stadium she stumbled upon Anthony and Chad talking in front of the stage.

- Here we go again –She said to Chad and Tony – This “two weeks on, two weeks off” thing is killing me, man.

- When you have a family you will understand – Chad said smiling.

- You are part of the Josh club – Anthony said surprising Anastasia.

- How come? – She asked.

- He doesn’t like this schedule neither – Anthony answered – Hey, did you take pictures of us in Venice?

- Of course – Anastasia replied.

- Can I see them to see if we can post some on our social media? – He asked again and Anastasia handled him her phone.

- You choose.

She continued talking to Chad while Anthony checked trough her phone, then he gave it back to her and they walked together through the backstage area to a common room, where Josh was practicing and Flea was there teaching some bass lines to Mandy. She was thrilled to be there as Anastasia could see. As soon as Josh saw her, he put his guitar away and walked towards her to give her a big hug, she responded with a smile. Anthony walked to a couch and took his phone out while he kept talking to Chad.

- Did you bring your new guitar? – Josh asked Anastasia, grabbing his pink Fender 1960 Relic Stratocaster back.

- Of course! I’, even gonna play it on some songs – She answered.

- That sounds awesome – He said with a proud smile.

In that moment a phone started to ring, but the ringtone was the Dark Necessities song.

- How much of a narcissist do you need to be to have your own song as a ringtone? – Mandy said laughing.

The song kept going off but nobody picked up the phone.

- Somebody needs to pick that up – Anastasia said, and in that moment she felt a vibration inside the left back pocket of her jeans, that was weird because that wasn’t her ringtone. Sara by Fleetwood Mac was her ringtone.

The song went off again. At that point Anastasia grabbed her phone and realize it was her own iPhone ringing, and in the screen she could see that Anthony was calling, her eye roll must have been huge because Anthony started to laugh loud.

- God! I give you my phone to check a picture for ten seconds and you change my ringtone? – Everybody in the room was laughing at this point – You are such a child.

- Look at your screen background – Anthony said and she did it, a Josh picture was her new background. It was him smiling in the floor, holding a guitar in black and white.

- You are such a child! – Anastasia said laughing too. Josh grabbed her phone.

- It’s a nice picture – He said smiling as a joke.

- Listen! – Tony spoke up again – We noticed yesterday that you sing the chorus on The Getaway and we haven’t performed it together during this tour! Would you like to join us on stage tonight?

- Wow! – She was in shock – That would be cool! Do we need to rehearse or something?

- That’s the other part of the surprise! – Chad talked this time – We have a couple of interviews so I don’t think we’ll get the chance to rehearse it.

- Nice – Anastasia put a fake smile on her face.

- You already know your part – Josh said – You helped build that song.

- Well… I like extreme shit, so let’s do it!

The Getaway was the third song on the Red Hot Chili Peppers setlist that night, so she waited at a side of the stage where nobody was allowed to be except the crew and sound engineers. That place from where she always watched Josh play, she just stood there until Anthony mentioned her name.

- For the next song I would like to bring up here someone special. She is like a niece to me and so is for everybody on this band, well, almost everybody – “He had to say that”, Anastasia thought – And she helped bring this next song to life, so please give it up for my favorite girl in the world, Anastasia Truman! – Anthony said and the whole venue burst into cheers and applauses.

She smiled and took the stage, and as soon as she walked out she felt someone holding her. It was Josh, giving her a big hug from behind, she tried to hold herself together and walked to Flea’s side of the stage where he gave her a hug too. She only sang the chorus on the song and some harmonies so she decided it was best to just jump on top of Flea’s amps and sit there, once in a while she shared a smile with Chad or Anthony come closer to sing some parts to her, by the middle of the song she was so hyped she got off the amplifiers and walked next to Anthony but Josh turned her around and while she was singing the last chorus he had the brilliant idea to join his forehead with hers. That caught her by surprise and she didn’t know what to do except to follow his lead. She smiled and for the end of the song (which was sang by Tony and her at the same time), she decided to stand next to Anthony again. He thanked her for joining the band for that song, she said “thank you” to the crowd and before leaving she felt Josh’s arms around her again.

- That was a weird attitude from Josh last night – Mandy told Anastasia while they were getting ready to leave for the next city, Atlanta, the morning after the show.

- I know, he was so loving on that stage – Anastasia said with a smile – But – She changed her expression – I woke up with this knot on my stomach today, like if something is going to happen.

- Really?

- Yes, I don’t know – Anastasia closed her suitcase – It’s probably nothing.

They traveled alone again. When they landed in Atlanta, they went straight to their hotel rooms. Josh hadn’t texted Anastasia since the night before, so she wasn’t sure if he was in town yet. She went to sleep feeling the knot on her stomach and woke up next day with the same feeling. She knew something was going to happen.

Mandy wanted to wander around the city a little bit so she, Nick and Anastasia went to have lunch to a Southern cuisine restaurant where everything was fried, that grease filled An’s heart. Greasy food was the best! And this tour was making her gain a few pounds but she was having so much fun she didn’t focus on that. Tour had been great thus far, she was so thankful.

After eating such a huge amount of fried chicken, the three Dead Curse members made their biggest effort into walking to the venue. They were going to play a song for the first time that night, so Nick wanted to do a short sound check. Anastasia was sensing a bad feeling while she was approaching the Philips Arena, they entered through the backstage door and walked to the stage where Nick grabbed his guitar, and after planning with some engineers they started soundchecking. They song only required voice and guitar, it was a ballad and it was probably the first time they ever performed a ballad, but it was one of Nick’s favorite songs from their last album and he really wanted to play it.

- That song is beautiful – A shirtless Anthony said to her when she walked out the stage – Your songwriting is so good. I’m jealous!

- Don’t worry “Ding, dang, dong, dong, deng, deng, dong, dong, ding, dang” is still one of the best lyrics ever written in music history, and nobody can’t take that away from you – Anastasia said smiling sarcastically.

- Oh my God, An! – Mandy interrupted the conversation trying to catch a breath because she was obviously running but before saying anything she looked at Anthony for a second – If someone would have told me I was going to deal with so many old shirtless dudes on this tour…

- What the fuck is wrong with you two today? – Anthony said laughing.

- Back to you – She looked at Anastasia again – I have to tell you before you find out and it gets worse – Mandy took a deep breath – Lauren’s here – Anastasia’s heart stopped.

- Man! That Josh is so stupid sometimes – Anthony said – Are you ok? – He asked Anastasia.

- No – She answered – But I’ll be.

She lied. She wasn’t going to be fine. This was a sick joke from the Universe or from Josh. What was she doing here? After Josh denied her as his girlfriend? Her world collapsed in a second and she felt sick. That was why she had that knot on her stomach, she sensed it. She wanted to avoid him, avoid her and avoid them. Mandy grabbed her and took her to their dressing room as fast as she could.

- This is a neverending thing – Eric said when the girls arrived to their dressing room.

- I need to make this stop – Anastasia said – It’s my fault, I fell for him as I fall for him every damn time I see him. I thought this time it would be different but no. It’s my fault.

- It’s not your fault – Eric talked again – You love him and you can’t control that, and…

- Don’t dare tell me he loves me – Anastasia said before he could finish his sentence.

- I think you need to be alone – Eric said walking to the door and grabbing Mandy.

- But… - Mandy said

- It’s true. I just need to be alone for a few minutes. Let me breathe, break some things and I’ll catch up with you later.

Mandy walked out reluctantly, followed by Eric who closed the door behind him.

Anastasia took a look at herself in the mirror. She promised herself she wasn’t going to fall again and there she was, compressing all her anger on her throat as her eyes became watery, she wanted to scream but the pain didn’t leave any space for energy, so she threw herself in a big white sofa. She fell down next to her purse and took a look inside, and there she saw it: a box of Xanax. She hadn’t taken one in so long, years probably (she battled a little addiction to them about ten years ago and after that she never took another pill), but she always kept a box near, nobody knew about that, she never said a thing because it would piss everybody off, but ever since, she never felt the desire to fall in that again… until then. She felt defeated, lonely and so sad, and on top of that she had a show to perform in a few hours. She sat up and grabbed the box and without even thinking about it she popped one pill. She got up to look for some water but there wasn’t any near, instead she found a vodka bottle and by then she didn’t gave a fuck about collateral effects, she looked at herself in the mirror one more time feeling so disgusted with who she was at the moment and swallowed the pill with a shot of vodka, straight from the bottle. She looked at herself one more time and grabbed another pill to repeat the procedure. She sat on the floor, her eyes still watery but she wasn’t able to cry.

Anastasia lost track of time, and she just sat there waiting for the drug to kick in when she heard a knock on the door. By then the Xanax had done its thing and it was hard for her to move but she managed to get to the door and opened, Carl was on the other side.

- Are you ok? – He asked.

- I’ll be in a moment – She answered.

- I need you in the meeting room, I have something to discuss with you guys – Carl said.

- I hope it makes my day better.

- Oh, it’s gonna make your whole life better – He said smiling.

They walked together to the meeting room. Anastasia was looking at the floor the whole time, she didn’t want to see anything or anybody. Once they arrived, Mandy, Nick and Eric where already there, sitting around a large black table. Anastasia took a chair next to Mandy.

- So I have great news, like the best news – Carl said. He was showing such an excitement.

- Please, enlighten us! – Mandy said.

- I managed to get you guys a spot in Glastonbury this year – Carl said with an exaggerated smile.

- We already been to Glasto – Anastasia said.

- Yes, playing at 4 o’clock – He talked again – But this time you’ll be headlining fucking Saturday in Glasto! – Anastasia’s eyes opened big

- Wait, what? – Eric said trying to contain his smile.

- You’ll be headlining Glastonbury in June!

- OH MY GOD, CARL! – Mandy screamed and got up her chair to jump on Carl’s arms – Did you guys hear that?

Anastasia was trying to process the information. When they started Dead Curse they did it as a way to express themselves and play music which was something they all loved to do, they never had any expectations to where this journey would lead them, but headlining Glastonbury was something she always dreamed about. It was her favorite festival in her homeland, and now she would have the opportunity to headline it. Dead Curse’s name would be among other big names in music like Radiohead, David Bowie, The Smiths, Oasis and many more. It was a dream come true for her.

- It’s a dream come true – She wanted to scream and jump and dance but the Xanax and vodka mix was on full effect and she couldn’t move her body.

- Do you feel okay? – Carl asked her.

- Yes. I just need to sleep for about an hour – She said getting up with difficulty – Can I do that?

- Be my guest – Carl said.

She left her bandmates celebrating and walked back to her dressing room but on the way she fronted Josh.

- Hey! I heard about Glasto, congrats – He said with a smile.

- I can’t deal with you right now, please let me through – His smile automatically faded and he didn’t try to stop Anastasia – You know? – She said a few steps away and he turned to see her – When you’re done playing with this girl and get ready to hang with a woman then we’ll talk – Xanax made her honest. He didn’t answer.

She was feeling a windwhirl of emotions at that moment: sad because of Josh, angry with herself for being so stupid and extremely happy because she was achieving a longtime goal. She rested her head on the sofa and without thinking about it she fell asleep.

Within an hour for the show, Mandy woke An up and then helped her get ready to perform. On a quick meeting before taking the stage Anastasia decided to add a cover to their set list, it was a song that all of them knew well so nobody had a problem with it.

It was Fleetwood Mac’s Silver Springs. She took the Stratocaster Josh gave her for her birthday and started to play and sing.

I'll begin not to love you

Turn around, see me runnin'

I'll say I loved you years ago

Tell myself you never loved me, no

And did you say she was pretty

And did you say that she loves you

Baby, I don't wanna know

Oh, no

And can you tell me was it worth it

Really, I don't wanna know

She noticed Lauren and Josh at a side of the stage, he was looking at her with a mix of regret and love in his eyes, maybe it was the Xanax but at that moment she didn’t care what the hell he was feeling.

Time casts a spell on you, but you won't forget me

I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me

She looked straight into Josh’s eyes at that moment. And Lauren noticed it because she looked at both, confused. But once again: she didn’t give a fuck about it. She was returning the favor to Josh, as he sang Landslide for her a couple of weeks ago but with a lot more revenge on it, this time.

Then it was time for the song they practiced that afternoon, she announced to the crowd that it was the first time they would play it live and everybody cheered.

It's been so long between the words we spoke

Will you be there up on the shore, I hope

You wonder why it is that I came home

I figured out where I belong

It was a song called Long and Lost that she wrote after breaking up with Valentine but it seemed so valid and relatable at the moment.

But it's too late to come on home

Are all those bridges now old stone?

But it's too late to come on home

Can the city forgive? I hear it’s sad song

Read chapter 33

Disclaimer: as I always tell you I have not a tiny bit of talent to write songs so I use some that have been already written, the one in this chapter is “Long and Lost” by Florence and The Machine. Such a beautiful song.

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And now I give you “Silver Srpings” by Fleetwood Mac. Ultimate favorite. Any Fleetwood Mac fans out there?

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Couldn’t Be Me: So you’ve accidentally streamed yourself having sex

Thankfully, the internet has a short memory.

Welcome to Couldn’t Be Me, a weekly advice column where I solicit your personal dilemmas and help out as best as I can. Have something I can help you with? Find me @_Zeets.

Sooner or later, we’ll all do something stupid and regrettable on social media. It’s the nature of the platforms. They demand that you express yourself, all the time, whether through tweets or five-second photos and videos, and when combined with conditions like drunkenness or emotional fragility, odds are that eventually you will post something embarrassing.

These stupid things will vary, of course. Some can be as minor as a bad tweet that you have to apologize for. In more serious situations, ones that athletes seem to find themselves in with surprising frequency, you might accidentally send out a nude, or stream yourself having sex.

In this week’s Couldn’t Be Me, we look at how to recover from the worst of these moments.

Clinton:

I’m a soccer player who is in trouble because of a sex scandal. The story that I’m sticking with is that after signing a contract with my new team, I was so excited for the move, which is the reward for all of my hard work and sacrifice, that in trying to read the news of the event on social media in my hotel room, I pressed the wrong button on the phone and accidentally broadcasted me having sex with a woman in that moment.

CBM:

This must be the most common form of social media fuck-up for athletes. Or rather, the one that people tend to care about the most. There’s nothing more sensational, now and historically, than celebrity sex scandals. I’m guessing here that the story that you’re sticking with isn’t the truth, and that in reality you were trying to record the encounter or show it to a specific group of people, and completely messed that up.

Fortunately for you, we live in an age that’s over-saturated with pictures, images, and information. Your scandal won’t register for more than a day or two before people have moved on. It wasn’t long ago that Draymond Green accidentally uploaded pictures of his penis on snapchat, and within the week it was forgotten. And it’s happened for many other athletes. Even as I type this, people have probably forgotten what you did. The nature of our world now is that everything is exposable, since privacy barely exists within the world of social media. But because people are seeing so much of everything all the time, information is much more ephemeral than it has ever been.

In general, however, it’s best to stay away from your phone while you’re doing things like that. Not just because you might accidentally stream your sexual liaisons, but also it’s probably illegal if you’re recording or streaming that without the woman’s permission.

Debbie:

My oldest sister’s husband is an enormous prick — no one in the family, minus my sister, likes him. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding and upset that she didn’t see what we all saw, that she could do so much better than this guy. So a few weeks before the wedding, I tweeted out, “Does anybody want to fuck my sister so I don’t have to go to this wedding?” Which probably would’ve been fine if my other sister didn’t follow me at the time. She saw it and completely chewed me out for it. I stopped tweeting about my family after that, until I blocked all of my siblings.

CBM:

It’s my belief that you should avoid all family members and close friends on Twitter, and I would have suggested Instagram as well if Instagram hadn’t recently implemented the option to share certain things with only people in the “close friends” group. Twitter and IG are both theater — as is life, since we all change our behavior depending on our surrounding conditions, but social networks are theater within theater — but no matter the level of careful curation, there’s so much space for disaster, especially in moments of emotional turmoil. I know that most people have private accounts for those types of really personal posts, but widely broadcasting something you don’t want to be public is just one mis-click away.

“Does anybody want to fuck my sister so I don’t have to go to this wedding?” is a thought for a diary, or for followers who have no immediate effect on your life, so they can laugh at it as you do. It’s cathartic, a ways to vent your frustration into the abyss. But when family members follow you, it takes away the only true magic effect of social media, and being anonymous on the internet, which is the ability to create a self.

Who you want to be on the internet is not usually the person that folks who are involved in your actual life know about, since they encounter you in a specific and personal way. A frustrated joke that should have only lived for a few seconds can then have real life consequences because of the disconnect between your dream-life online and the one you’ve built up over your lifetime.

Real life is much messier, and much more tangible. Online life can be messy, but there’s a distance in being online that is central to the experience. You know people without really knowing them. Online, you say things you ordinarily wouldn’t, because as real as your audience is, the distance gives them a feeling of non-existence. After all, they disappear once you log off or close the app.

There’s a world online, and you enter it when you want, behave as the character you’ve built yourself up to be, and express thoughts and yourself in ways that the real you wouldn’t, even if those thoughts come from valid feelings. I’ve seen many relationships end from this problem.

I strongly feel that people should make sure to create that boundary between their online and real life worlds. My brother follows me on Twitter, and I often wonder how he feels about things that I tweet, and whether he gets annoyed by some of the personal things that I post about. And I sometimes feel that he’s being false in some of his tweets, or revealing too much, but that’s the problem that comes from knowing someone so well.

Connecting with family and friends online doesn’t have to lead to disaster, but as with your thoughts about your sister and her husband, there remains the possibility that you could slip and say what would ordinarily be a harmless and funny thing online. Better to block them all in advance.

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olaluwe · 6 years ago

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Police IG Ibrahim Idris Yet again, men of the Nigerian Police Force took to the streets to press home their professional grievances. This time around it was in Maiduguri, Bornu state capital which is the operational headquarters of the war against the terror group, Boko Haram. And as it were, reports have it that it was because of the non-payment of their allowances in the last six months. While the protest lasted, the aggrieved mobile policemen were said to have blocked the entrance to the force building and shoot sporadically into the air which caused quite a scare as motorists and those walking by scampered for safety.

Historically speaking, protesting as a tool for resolving industrial disputes was first adopted by officers and men of the force during the government of Olusegun Obasanjo and it has remain ever since a regular feature of its industrial activity.

A lot, however, have been said and is still being said by writers and commentators alike on the issues of poor welfare system in the force and how it has so far negatively impacted and still impacting on the force's operational effectiveness and by extension the professional dispositions of policemen and what should be done to reverse the ugly trend.

Similarly, security experts have often alluded to this as the number one reason for the dishonor regularly done to their badges usually by the rank and file of the force by way of bribery taking, forceful extortion, unwarranted incriminating of and harassment and extra-judicial killings of members of the public across different demography and especially those perceived to be rich before their time because they cruise around town in flashy cars, own expensive mobile phones and other luxurious existential chattel and all which in effect has led to recent calls either for its re-organization or complete scrapping. And guess what the response of the force headquarter has been since the #endSARS activism started on the social media, personnel changes at the operational center of Special Anti-robbery Squad!

As solution to the trending menace of policemen, among others, many have suggested improving the salaries of policemen especially those at the lower rung of the ladder and prompt promotion of deserving officers and men. Sure it sounds great; but we are waiting for policy thrust in that direction. At the same time you can only wonder if more money by way of salary increases and the like would be able to curtail consumption driven by nothing but greed and clearly a case of lawless elements who have find their way into the police through years of a highly defective recruitment procedures compromised of course by politicians and other influential members of the society.

While I think the police personnel just like professionals from diverse life endeavors have every right to feel dissatisfied and may be disgruntled by not too encouraging happenings in their industrial setup and to pressed for peaceful changes by way of strikes and picketing; processions and protests which of course care must be taken to ensure they are not hijacked by social miscreants who one may say are even more unfortunate than those protesting.

But the idea of trying to justify the viral act of illegalities as enumerated above often credited to our security operatives especially policemen by they themselves and their unofficial spokespersons at the altar of poor salaries and allowances to the effect it has almost become a norm so to say is totally unacceptable. And so no day passes without one or more tales of gross misconduct by policemen hitting either the conventional or online information space.

If they do not constitute themselves into the on-the-spot prosecuting officers, legal counsels and the presiding judges on criminal matters yet to be thoroughly investigated; they are often found to be delivering jungle justices with the force of arms in their possession legally.

As if that is not bad enough, rarely do we hear of inquests ordered from the appropriate quarters at least to allay the fears of the people their actions are not an official position.

Kudos, however, must sometimes be given to the force hierarchy because there are also cases of dismissed officers and men who have dishonored their badges in the line of duties. A case in point is Adiukwu, who was one of the Offa robbery suspects. Reports have it that he was a dismissed policeman from the force allegedly for gross misconduct. Definitely there must be others. Perhaps you should know some too in your neighborhoods and communities who today are living faking around as security personnel after they were summarily dismissed from the force because they do not appreciate their profession enough up until they lost it. Now it dawned on them how precious the job could be that they so much hold in contempt under the guise of poor salary and other conditions of service.

The more we wait the more convinced we have become it may after all be a part and parcel of the operational modus operandi adopted by the force to fight crime on the one hand and at the same time reward their poorly motivated rank and file who it is no gain say are growing in confidence by the day of unleashing mayhem on both peace and law abiding members of the society and as well as the law breachers they were trained and deployed to arrest and prosecute.

Like I was saying no policeman should hide under the excuse that his salary is poor or his conditions of service is deplorable or something akin to now resort to transferring his aggression on the members of the public because some powers are on his side. If we are to use similar logic that once the salary of anybody is poor he or she should find any illegal means to augment it then we are going to have a lawless society which will not augur well for all.

Imagine for a moment what kind of country we would have if every businessman in Nigeria today is to follow the herdsmen’s example who today hide under the indefensible excuses that they lost their animals to rustlers and so decided to take law into their own hands by arguably killing and maiming innocent men, women and children in their sleeps, and destroying properties of people who after all may not have anything to do directly with the criminals who stole their stocks in the firsts place?

And to now think it is the officers and men of an important social security institution like the police that are the ones in the vanguard of justifying all manner of criminalities in the name of poor salaries and other conditions of service speaks of the depth of condemnable moral bastardization the country has found itself. And which can only add salt to the festering social injuries on our hands instead of serving as an impartial correcting tool to such in an organic society.

And I repeat poor salary and the likes should never be used by anybody whether in the force or outside of it to justify the despicable villainies they have so far display. Anybody who does should be find out and punished to serve as deterrent to others to avert an unpleasant situation that I would call ‘criminal merry go round’ which seems from the look of events in recent times is where the country is drifting to.

God bless Nigeria!

#IFTTT #Blogger

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surveystodestressme · 7 years ago

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105.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 26

2401. Does love come from the brain, the heart or elsewhere?

the brain

2402. Have you ever given a shot?

yep

2403. Can you lick your elbow?

i doubt it

2404. If i was going to be talking to you for 10 minutes, what would be something really interesting you know a little bit about but would like to know more??

ummm... i don’t know. something historic maybe. i don’t know a lot about history

2405. If today was a holiday, what would it be?

i don’t know

2406. If you were making a mix tape what would you HAVE to have one it?

hmmmm, something fun that you can dance to

2407. What do you think of the Sopranos?

never watched it.

2408. Can you name three good things about the society you live in?

respectful, technologically advanced, and intelligent

How about three bad things?

racism, social media over attachment, and ignorance

2409. Have you ever had a crush on your teacher?

I mean i’ve probably thought one was cute but nothing serious

How about your boss?

no.

2410. What is the difference between acting like someone in high school and acting like an adult?

teenagers are just more immature most of the time and adults are supposed to be more mature

2411. What is the difference between a whopper and a whopper jr?

the whopper jr is slightly smaller duh.

2413. Do you like:

Moby?

Run DMC?

the Cure?

Shakira?

Blink182? yeah

the Pet Shop Boys?

Weezer? yeah

Red Hot Chilli Peppers? yeah

Nick cave?

The Pixies?

KRS-One?

The Juice Crew?

2414. Have you ever seen a movie in 3D?

yes.

2415. How difficult do you think it is for immigrants to come into your country?

i’m sure it’s pretty difficult

How difficult is it for them to become citizens?

still prettty hard i’m sure

2416. Do you have what it takes to go live in another country, maybe for years, where you don’t speak the language as your first language?

i think it would be hard but if i tried to learn the language and studied hard, i think i would figure it out eventually.

2418. Have you ever died in your dreams?

yeah

2419. Do you like

Douglas Adams?

Kurt Vonnegut?

Tom Robbins?

Philip K Dick?

Orson Scott Card? idk any of these people

2420. What clothing size are you?

medium

2421. Does science leave room for faith?

i mean, not really

Does faith leave room for science?

idk.

2422. What book should our political leaders read and why?

ohhh idk

2423. Why and under what circumstances are people more likely to buy brand names rather then their generic counterparts?

most people who buy brand name things only for the name not because of how good or not good the product actually is.

2424. What is your favorite glass object?

mugs

2425. Do you like to window shop?

not at all

2426. Have you ever loved someone so much it just turned to hate?

no???

2427. What is arrogance?

check the dictionary.

2428. Are you more liberal or conservative?

2429. When there is a presidential election in the USA why do we never hear anything about the third party candidates? Do you even know who they were last time?

because they only try to focus on the two main candidates

2430. Are you more likely to buy one really nice expensive outfit or a couple of cheap outfits?

a couple cheap outfits.

2431. If you could, would you wear everything once, throw it out and buy something new?

nahh

2432. Do you believe that people have a responsibility to be:

good to other people?

good at their job?

helpful to the earth(not litter, recycle)?

aware consumers(not buy animal tested products, not buy products that were made in sweatshops, etc)?

non-wasteful (not spend their money frivolously when they could save it to help others)?

charitable (donating money, volunteering)? yeah

Which of the above are you?

i’m charitable, good to other people, and good at my job. the rest i’m not so good at

2433. How do you feel about the internet?

i like it, i just know i need to not be on it so much

Should there be laws and censorship on the internet?

on some things, yeah

2434. Can you think of any questions that aren’t already on this survey?

not off the top of my head

2435. Does sleep seem like a little death to you?

kind of? ig

2436. Have you ever seen(and if yes, what did you think of):

Joy Ride?

Ghost World?

Monsters Inc? yeah, it’s a classic.

Queen of the Damned?

Office Space?

2437. At what age did you find out that Santa Claus wasn’t real?

like 13 lol

2438. How many pairs of shoes do have in your closet?:

around 50

Do you like to wear the same shoes everyday or do you like a variety?:

i like a variety

2439. How many lovers have you had?

one.

2440. Have you ever had surgery? For what?

when i was really young, i swallowed a penny lol

2441. What puts you in the mood for sex?

a lot of things honestly.

2442. Have you ever been on alcohol or drugs while at school or work?

i smoked weed before i went to work before and that was a bad decision idk how people do it every day

2443. What do you think of Martha Stewart?

i don’t really have an opinion

2445. What do you think of:

British people?

Australians?

Americans?

Canadians?

Mexicans?

French people?

Germans? i don’t mind any of them except americans (i am american) and they’re mostly a bunch of idiots and give us all a bad rep to other countries.

2446. What do you do to cure the hiccups?

drink water? idk

2447. What is the FIRST thing you do when you come home from school or work?

find something to do that’s fun

2448. Are you a slob?

the opposite, actually

2449. Do you have a good work ethic?

generally, yeah.

2450. Are you a pack-rat?

nope.

2451. Do you roll your eyes alot?

not really

2452. Do you prefer b-sides or remixes?

b sides.

2453. What makes the world go ‘round?

money

2454. Is Blink182 punk or pop?

a lil bit of both.

2455. Do you remember Fat Albert?

yes.

2456. Do you take things slowly, as they come?

it depends

2457. Are you laid back or tense?

more tense i think.

2458. Are you insecure?

not usually

2459. Imagine you are working in a soup kitchen. You are supposed to give each person on the line a half a cup of soup. When hungry people come up to you do you just end up emptying the cabinets for them?

i would tell them to come back for seconds so everyone in the line can have an equal share first.<---- (what the last person wrote and i 100% agree)

2460. Why can’t we give ourselves one more chance?

we can.

Why can’t we all just get along?

good question

2461. What bands do you want to see live that you have never seen?

oh there’s plenty

2462. Do you like raunchy songs (like that lick ny neck, lick my back, lick my pussy, lick my crack song)?

i don’t mind them i guess? lol

2463. Do you think that the Beatles are still the Beatles without John Lennon?

sure

Would you want to see the Sex Pistols without Sid Vicious?

idk who they are really so idc

Did you think that the members of Nirvana were smart to reform as the Foo Fighters instead of trying to stay Nirvana after Kurt’s death?

sure.

2464. Do you like the band Squeeze?

never heard of them.

2465. When you are angry or upset do you know you’re being irrational but you can’t really stop?

pretty much

2466. Is there room in your life for one more trip to the moon?

huh?

2467. Where are they now:

Your first best friend in elementary school? oh i don’t know, i have her on facebook though

your first crush? i think he lives 30 minutes from me

your first boy/girlfriend? ^^^^

your first love? ^^^^^^

your first lover? he is at his house right now

2468. Do you have a lot of self pity?

nah

2469. have you ever had something really good come out of something really bad that happened to you?

i’m sure

2470. Do you like magnetic poetry?

i don’t even know what that is

2471. What is one of your secret delights?

uhhh i don’t know

What gives you a cheap thrill?

idk

What is your biggest guilty pleasure?

i have a lot of them

2472. Have you ever misinterpreted song lyrics in a funny way (I used to think that 'wake me up before you go, go’ was 'wake me up and buy me cocoa’)?

plenty of times haha.

2473. What are the most popular/overused diary names?

2474. Are you under pressure?

kind of

2475. How well do you know yourself?

pretty well, i think

2476. Is 'soul’ such an old fashioned word?

i don’t think so

Is 'love’?

no.

2477. Name a person you love: my boyfriend.

How do you love them? Let’s count the ways…

i love everything about him.

2478. Does your place have a lawn gnome?

i have two really tiny gnomes but they would look silly on my lawn

2479. Do you ever wonder, 'why me’? sometimes, yeah

When?

when i’m having a shitty day

2480. Is rap a form of poetry?

i suppose

2481. What’s the difference between a player and a baller?

i don’t think there is a difference?

2482. What imagery do you get from the words 'woodsmoke and herbs’?

food

2483. How many days until your birthday?

a little less than a month

2484. have you ever MEANT to hurt anyone?

eh, kinda.

2485. What are 3 things you don’t know?

there’s plenty of things that i don’t know

2486. Do you usually feel physically well or unwell?

sometimes, yeah

2487. Would you ever submit your picture to be 'rated’ on one of those 'hot or not’ websites?

haha maybe

2488. Why are there hardly ever any fat people in movies?

because they don’t like overweight people in hollywood, however i’ve seen a lot more overweight people in movies recently.

2489. Is there any difference between what’s real and what’s for sale?

huh?

2490. Are you funky?

funky fresh

2491. Do apologies always make things all better?

not always, no

2492. Let’s just say that there is a huge ass bomb that can blow up the Whole Planet..it is set to blow up in 100 years. You can push the button to stop it but if you do you Will die. You only have this one chance to stop it. Do you stop it?

if it was for real, then yeah. and hopefully after i have time to say goodbye to my family.

2493. Let’s say someone else found the button to stop it instead of you. Do you think it is their moral obligation to save humanity at the expense of their own life?

i mean, no not necessarily. it would be a hard decision for anyone

2494. What’s the silliest name you can think of?

kudos

2495. It’s the middle of the night and you are home alone. Someone knocks on the door and says their car broke down and asks to use your phone. What do you do?

if i am home alone, i am not answering the door unless i know someone is supposed to be coming over. they are shit out of luck.

2496. If a cop pulled you over and asked if he could search your car what would you say?

i know my rights, they cannot legally search my car without probable cause. and they would have no reason to search my car anyways.

2497. Are you meek or nasty around cops?

meek. i’ve never had a problem with one before

2498. If you were me and I was you then where would we be?

idk.

2499. What has been the greatest invention so far?

electricity, farming, heating, carpentry, etc.

2500. We are at question 2500. Do you REALIZE what this MEANS??!!!

halfway point

#bored #survey #questions #quiz

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