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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 months ago

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By: Ashley Rindsberg

Published: Oct 25, 2024

a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around israel with alarming influence

A coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack

Six weeks after October 7, one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article on Hamas

The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials”

A group called Tech For Palestine launched a separate but complementary campaign after October 7, which violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord

Tech For Palestine abandoned its efforts and its members went into a panic after a blog discovered what they were doing; the group deleted all its Wiki Talk pages and Sandboxes they had been using to coordinate their editing efforts, and the main editor deleted all her chats from the group’s Discord channel

On everything from American politics to corporate brands, Wikipedia plays host to a smoldering battle of ideas and values that occasionally erupts into white-hot, internecine edit wars. But no fire burns hotter than the Israel-Palestine topic area. The topic is such a flashpoint that the Palestine-Israel Articles (PIA) designation is used synonymously with its own dispute resolution abbreviation — Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel Articles, known as ARBPIA in Wiki-speak.

While always contentious, over roughly the past four years, and intensifying since October 7, PIA has been subject to a highly coordinated, sustained and remarkably effective campaign to radically alter public perception of the conflict. Led by around 40 mostly veteran editors, the campaign has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream.

A separate but complementary campaign, launched after October 7 and staged from an 8,000 member-strong Discord group called Tech For Palestine (TFP), employed common tech modalities — ticket creation, strategy planning sessions, group audio “office hour” chats — to alter over 100 articles. Operating from February 6 to September 3 of this year, TFP became a well-oiled operation, going so far as to attempt to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British members of parliament into changing their positions on Israel and the Gaza War.

These efforts are remarkably successful. Type “Zionism” into Wikipedia’s search box and, aside from the main article on Zionism (and a disambiguation page), the auto-fill returns: “Zionism as settler colonialism,” “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators” (a book by a pro-Palestinian Trotskyite), “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,” and “Racism in Israel.”

The aggregate effect of these efforts is a wholesale shift to the landscape of the Palestine-Israel topic online. As I reported in a previous Pirate Wires investigation, this is largely thanks to Google, which grants Wikipedia a “most favored nation” status with articles automatically given the first spot on any topic-related search result. If you Google “Zionism and settler colonialism,” for example, what you get is a Wikipedia article automatically anchored to the very top of the Google search results, with its own knowledge panel to the right. A fringe concept that would have only shown a smattering of unfocused articles just two years ago — before the article was created — now has its own primetime Internet stage.

“The recent issue with the ‘Zionism’ Wikipedia page is fundamentally a Google problem,” says someone familiar with the matter. “Wikipedia articles act as an unprotected back door to top Google search results, with the article's introduction often populating the knowledge panel, giving the impression Google has vetted this content — when it hasn’t. Malicious editors exploit this vulnerability, platforming fringe views and giving them priority over more reliable sources.”

The kind of coordination carried out by these groups violates many of Wikipedia’s most fundamental policies, including one of its core content policies, Neutral Point of View (NPOV), which states that, “Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them.” The practice also violates the Gaming the System guideline, which prohibits editors from “engineering ‘victory’ in a content dispute.” It runs afoul of the broader Wikipedia ethos discouraging Tag teaming, when “editors coordinate their actions to circumvent the normal process of consensus.” Most flagrantly, it violates a guideline called Canvassing, which prohibits secret coordination with the “intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way.”

To skirt this, the pro-Palestine group leverages deep Wikipedia know-how to coordinate efforts without raising red flags. They work in small clusters, with only two or three active in the same article at any given time. On their own, many of these edits appear minor, even trivial. But together, their scope is staggering, with two million edits made to more than 10,000 articles, a majority of which are PIA or topically associated. In dozens of cases, the group’s edits account for upwards of 90% of the content on an article, giving them complete control of the topics.

One of the most prominent members of the pro-Palestine group is the user Iskandar323, a prolific editor whose nuanced approach to historical and even esoteric articles is representative of the larger effort. In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle, the implication is significant: unlike nations, “cultural communities” don’t require, or warrant, their own states.

Iskandar also worked to sanitize articles on Hamas, in one case removing mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article “Hamas.” (The edit remains intact today.) He removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter in at least three other articles.

To expand his reach, Iskandar also goes on editing rampages, or “speedruns.” Last August, he removed 22,000 characters from the article on Amnesty International that were critical of the organization, in one case wholesale deleting a 1,000-word long passage related to criticism of its stance on Israel. On the “History of Israel” article, Iskandar deleted a paragraph critical of the Iranian government; removed an account of 16th century Jewish immigration to Israel; excised a mention of the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem's alliance with Hitler; and made dozens of similar edits — all in a matter of minutes.

Far from a lone wolf, however, Iskandar is part of a group of editors that uses coordinated “swarm” tactics that, taken together, invert Wikipedia’s founding vision, turning the site's perceived neutrality and authority into an attack vector that can be hijacked to advance ideological aims at a mass scale.

In August, an analysis of the intensity of editing in PIA between January 2022 and September 2024 found that the top contributor to PIA by number of edits, a user called Selfstudier, made over 15,000 edits in the space in that period. Iskandar323 contributed over 12,000 edits to PIA articles in the same period. Other members of the pro-Palestine group are equally prolific, with top contributors including CarmenEsparzaAmoux (8,353), Makeandtoss (8,074), Nableezy (6,414), Nishidani (5,879), Onceinawhile (4,760) and an admin called Zero0000 (2,561).

The 15,000 edits by Selfstudier and the 12,000 by Iskandar323 put those two users in the top 99.975% of editors by number of edits — solely for their PIA edits made in under three years. The other pro-Palestine group members’ PIA edits from this period place them among the top 99.9% of Wikipedia editors. All together, the top 20 editors of this group made over 850,000 edits to more than 10,500 articles, the majority of them in the Palestine-Israel topic area, or topically connected historical articles.

It’s not just the raw number of edits that matters. The same analysis shows that fully 90% of total edits by Selfstudier in that period were made to Palestine-Israel articles. Other members of the group clock in at 90% (sean.hoyland), 86% (CarmenEsparzaAmoux), 82% (Makeandross), 64% (Nishidani), and 43% (Onceinawhile). After October 7 the intensity increased, with Selfstudier peaking at 99% in October 2023, while others got to 97%, 98% and even 100% of their total monthly edits dedicated to PIA.

To evade detection, the group works in pairs or trios, an approach that veils them from detection. They also appear to rotate their groupings for the same reason. Likewise, one or more of the group’s editors can come to the aid of another in the case of pushback. In many instances, editing by the group is made to articles focused on historical issues, where a single editor might be patrolling for this kind of abuse, making it easy for two dedicated users to overwhelm or exhaust the lone editor.

A separate analysis shows the number of instances in which two members of the group edited the same article to be extraordinarily high. As of time of publication, Nableezy and Onceinawhile have co-edited 1,418 articles. Nableezy and Iskandar323 1,429 co-edited articles. Onceinawhile and Zero0000 have co-edited 2,119 articles. Zero000 and Nableezy have co-edited 1,754 articles. Onceinawhile and Iskandar323 have 1,594 co-edited. Huldra and Onceinawhile have co-edited articles 2,493 times. Nableezy and Huldra have co-edited 1,764 times.

[ Incidences of co-edited articles amongst top 30 members of this group. Cells in purple indicate instances of two editors co-editing more than 150 articles. ]

One of the articles targeted most intensively by the group is the one for Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem from the 1920s to the 1950s, a pivotal figure in Palestinian history. While Iskandar323 worked to remove negative content from the Al-Husseini article, it was two other members of the group — Zero0000 and Nishidani — who would have the greatest impact, together making over 1,000 edits to the article, often in an attempt to erase or downplay Al-Husseini’s well-documented collaboration with Hitler.

In one instance in April 2021, Zero0000 and Nishidani worked together to keep a photo of Al-Husseini touring a Nazi concentration camp out of the article. While a single editor, Shane (a newbie), advocated for its inclusion, a trio of veterans including Zero0000, Nishidani and Selfstudier fought back. After Selfstudier accused Shane of being a troll for arguing for the photo��s inclusion, Zero0000, days later, “objected” to its inclusion, citing issues of provenance. Nishidani stepped in to back up Zero0000, prompting a response by Shane. The following day, Zero0000 pushed back against Shane, who responded. The day after, Nishidani returned with his own pushback. The tag-team effort proved too much for Shane, who simply gave up, and the effort succeeded: the photo remains absent. To date, Nishidani’s contributions to the article on Al-Husseini comprise 56.4% of its content.

In another case, Nishidani worked with a member of the pro-Palestine group editors, Onceinawhile to produce an article called “Zionism, race and genetics.” (The article’s title was later changed to “Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism”.) The article attempts to tie Zionism’s roots to 19th century views on “race science” embraced by the Nazis, thereby drawing an implicit — and, in at least one instance in the article, explicit — parallel between Zionism and Nazism. Pro-Palestine group member Onceinawhile created the article in July of last year, accompanied by a note arguing, “Early Zionists were the primary supporters of the idea that Jews are a race, as it offered scientific ‘proof’ of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent.”Together, Onceinawhile and Nishidani’s contributions account for nearly 90% of the article’s content. Onceinawhile would continue to push this view in numerous other articles, including the article on “Zionism.”

In March, a Wikipedia user submitted a case to Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) alleging “a systematic removal of instances documenting human rights crimes by Iranian officials on Wikipedia, accompanied by the addition of misleading information favoring the IRP (Islamic Republic Party) on the platform.” The case shows that a member of the pro-Palestine group called Mhhossein edited the article on the Mahsa Amini protests — the months-long anti-regime demonstrations that rocked Iran when a young woman died in custody after being arrested for improperly wearing her head scarf — to change key wording to falsely depict widespread support for the Iranian regime and whitewash violent calls from pro-government counter-demonstrators.

According to the allegations, Iskandar323 (who has co-edited with Mhhossein nearly 400 times) worked with a separate editor to delete “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Iranian] officials.” This included a claim about Iran’s post-revolution death commissions that executed thousands political prisoners; details showing executions were carried out by “high-ranking members of Iran’s current government”; mention of the Iranian government’s “unprecedented reign of terror” in the early 1980s; the sentencing of an Iranian official to life in prison in Sweden for his role in the executions; the targeting of an Iranian dissident group with “psychological warfare,” and dozens of others.

The charges are serious, and the evidence backing them up abundant. Nevertheless, seven months later the Arbcom case is still pending. The reason is systemic: in a lengthy request for arbitration on a separate PIA case, one of Wikipedia’s arbitrators noted that the final decision-making panel is staffed by 12 volunteers, only 10 of whom are active. “It is clear that AE [arbitration enforcement] has run out of steam to handle the morass of editor conduct issues in PIA,” the arbitrator wrote. “PIA is a Gordian knot; and AE has run short of knot detanglers.”

Electing more Arbcom members would require a massive overhaul of the site’s governing regulations, a task akin to the US government amending its constitution. And though Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site, has around $500 million in assets, because of the air-gap between Wikipedia and WMF and the volunteer ethos of Wikipedia’s mission not a penny can be used to hire people to oversee contentious topics.

So the group’s pro-Iran efforts go unchecked. One of its most prominent members, Nableezy (over 6,000 PIA edits since 2022), has put considerable effort into sanding the hard edges off of Iran’s most powerful proxy, Hezbollah. Nableezy — who took the extraordinary step of including a userbox on his Talk page that links to a text that reads “This user supports Hezbollah.” — has worked to rebuff claims that Hezbollah is a terror organization. In one instance, Nableezy pushed back against another user characterizing a Hezbollah attack on Israeli population centers as a terror attack, arguing “An attack on military targets is not terrorism.” Last year, Nableezy, who appears to be an American, argued in the Talk page for the “Hezbollah” article that, “The US military is designated as a terror group by Iran, should we include that as an endnote everywhere the US army is mentioned?”

But Nableezy’s main area of focus is Israel. To this end, Nableezy’s editing has included subtle, ideologically consistent moves like removing a picture of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the “Israel” article (the image remains absent at time of publishing), pushing for the removal of the ancient history of Israel from the article, and altering a sentence on Zionism that described it as a call by its leaders for the “restoration of the Jews to their homeland” to a call for “the colonization of Palestine by European Jews.”

This exchange embodies the rhetorical approach taken by the group: the shifting of language, the torturing of settled definitions, and positioning fringe academic theory as mainstream — an approach developed by the radical left, in concert with global Islamist movements, in the wake of 9/11, when the attacks put Islamism on the moral back foot. In response, the leftist-Islamist alliance launched two decades of ideological assault on the US, and the West more generally. The same post-9/11 dynamic took place after October 7, when the savagery of the Hamas attack opened a vulnerability as the broader public would recognize it as a barbaric attack on civilians.

In response, the ideological push-back on Wikipedia ramped up. In February, an explicitly coordinated effort was launched when leaders on a group called Tech For Palestine (TFP) — launched in January by Paul Biggar, the Irish co-founder of software development platform CircleCI — opened a channel on their 8,000-strong Discord channel called “tfp-wikipedia-collaboration.” In the channel, two group leaders, Samira and Samer, coordinated with other members to mass edit a number of PIA articles. The effort included recruiting volunteers, processing them through formal orientation, troubleshooting issues, and holding remote office hours to problem solve and ideate. The channel’s welcome message posed a revealing question: “Why Wikipedia? It is a widely accessed resource, and its content influences public perception.”

At the heart of TFP Wikipedia Collaboration was a veteran editor called Ïvana, who was tapped as the resident expert on the site, and whose Discord username featured the red triangle affiliated with Hamas’ targeting.

With Ïvana’s guidance, as well as her hands-on editing of articles, the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration group coordinated both on Discord and Wikipedia, where they created editing staging grounds on Talk pages that included elements like “Work in Progress Table,” “Investigate and Decide,” and a volunteer job board with detailed responsibilities. Off-wiki, the group created planning documentation with agendas, meeting notes, goal setting, role allocation, skills and breakdowns. Their activities ranged from editing celebrity articles by adding pro-Palestine statements they made to creating new articles out of whole cloth, like a proposed article called “Palestine: The Solution.” The group focused extensively on the article for German discount supermarket Lidl, adding a section in the “Criticism” section about products from Israel being incorrectly labeled as Moroccan. They also put special emphasis on articles concerning sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, with Ïvana questioning the veracity of reports of rape from that day, while adding to other articles claims that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians. (In March, a senior UN official who investigated sexual violence on October 7 concluded that, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023.” The official wrote her investigation produced a “‘catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,’ including sexual violence.”)

In its most audacious case, TFP members developed a project to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British Members of Parliament to change their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict in advance of UK elections in July. The plan called for scraping data on visits by MPs to Israel and Israel-related donor information, to create a dedicated Wikipedia article using the data to (as the originator of the project put it) inform “voters to put pressure ahead of the next [parliamentary] elections.”

Within the TFP channel, there was always a background awareness that what they were doing was not in keeping with Wikipedia norms. Early in the channel’s existence, a user and veteran Wikipedia editor called shushugah wrote, “I’m a little confused what the goal is here. I’m an active Wikipedia editor, and for any Israel/Palestine topics you need a solid grasp of Wikipedia policy/culture, and have 500 edits/30 days of activity…no shortcuts.” Within minutes, another user, Heba, wrote “Let’s chat [hand wave emoji].” One of the channel’s power users, zei_squirrel, who runs an X account with 270,000 followers, noted “it’s important to keep this as decentralized and organic as possible to avoid it being used against us, but again this should all be familiar to those who know how wiki works.”

The anxiety was not unwarranted. In September, a researcher discovered the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration channel and published a number of posts on a blog called Wikipediaflood. (A magazine called Jewish Insider also stumbled across the group, but mostly failed to appreciate its full significance.) These events sent the group into a panic, with Ïvana erasing all her chats in the channel, and deleting the Talk pages and Sandboxes staging pages she’d created. The group locked down the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration channel in September. At minimum, the group made revisions to at least 112 articles on celebrities, American cities, pro-Palestine organizations, and figures and events related to the Gaza war.

There is little doubt that the kind of careful, intelligent Wikipedia coordination detailed above will continue. Wikipedia is simply too powerful a tool — and one too easy to manipulate — for actors like the pro-Palestine group and TFP activists to stay away from. But Wikipedia is coming to a crossroads. The ask-and-answer modality of generative AI will eat away at the value of the site’s privileged position within the Google information ecosystem. Groups less savvy than pro-Palestine will also learn to exploit the site, to much more public effect. As with so many of our once-cherished institutions, trust will be lost, and credibility will soon follow.

One of the hallmarks of an institution in crisis is that, far from preparing for the future, it is barely capable of managing the present. With Arbcom grinding to a halt and edit wars erupting in all corners — all while Wikimedia Foundation, fiddling to the baroque tunes of DEI, has turned its attention to funding progressive activism — it seems Wikipedia is facing exactly this challenge. In most cases, calling a crisis existential is overblown. While Wikipedia may not be there just yet, it’s clear that moment is not far off.

This is what online jihad looks like.

If you've donated to Wikipedia, stop. For anything even marginally political, Wikipedia has been successfully ideologically penetrated and compromised by coordinated activist attacks.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -- George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

#Ashley Rindsberg #Wikipedia #ideological capture #ideological corruption #propaganda #antisemitism #terrorism supporters #hamas supporters #hezbollah supporters #islamic terrorism #manipulation #israel #palestine #iran #online jihad #cultural jihad #religion is a mental illness

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safarigirlsp · 6 months ago

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✨ SUMMERWEEN ✨

🔮🐈‍⬛ 😈 & 😈🐈‍⬛🔮

✨ BABBUSHKA’S ✨ 10 YEAR BLOGIVERSARY

🔮🐈‍⬛ 😈 & 😈🐈‍⬛🔮

✨ SAFARIGIRLSP’S ✨ ✨ BIRTHDAY BASH ✨

August is my birthday month, and anyone who's been here long knows Halloween is my favorite time of the year! I also just finished a big 200k plus story and want a little break before starting the next big thing. And on top of that, it’s my wonderful friend Babbushka’s 10 year blogiversary! So, we’re going to celebrate in our favorite ways — by writing spooky stories and tormenting our favorite characters!

REQUESTS ARE NOW OPEN for anything spooky or related to SUMMERWEEN! Please read this entire post for complete information, and if you're new, please take a look at my Masterlist. And see Babbushka’s Masterlist for all of her stories and guidelines.

We’re inviting everyone to celebrate with us! Readers and Writers alike!

All Readers: Please send us requests, ideas, thoughts, HCs, anything you like! And as many as you like! I’ll pick our favorites or, very likely, a combination of a few different ideas, and write a oneshot that includes everything I can fit in. Feel free to send in multiple ideas or requests! The more ideas to choose from, the better! All AU concepts, time periods, etc are welcome. Anything is fair game.

All Writers: Please feel free to repost, steal any prompts, write anything, and do your own thing with all of this! I'd love to be tagged in any content pertaining to Adam characters or anything related to Spencer from 1923.

I’m only writing for Mills, Flip, and Jacques for big oneshots. If any new followers have a Spencer request, I would write for him too. I will do HC’s for anyone I have ever written for.

I have a strong preference for horror, action, adventure, and AU's.

My stories generally range in size from 5k to 25k, and some are even more! Look for a mix of horror, humor, romance, and adventure! Everything will contain adult themes and mature content. My masterlist has more detail on what I like and don't like, but one of my few hard no's are ships of any kind.

Requests will be open for one week, from July 26 - August 2. However, because I tend to write longer stories, the sooner an idea comes in, the more likely I am to use it.

This is an Adults Only event. My content is not for minors, or people who are easily triggered or offended. I write mature content intended for a mature audience only. All my content is buyer beware for wholesale offense and toxicity.

Keep reading for prompts!

Prompts

𝑺𝑬𝑻𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑺

* 001. the seaside , as the sun is setting .

* 002. a cabin in the middle of the woods .

* 003. a home with a white picket fence .

* 004. a dark bus stop lit only by street lights .

* 005. a dive bar .

* 006. a funhouse’s room of mirrors .

* 007. an office building , bustling and busy .

* 008. the back row of an empty movie theater .

* 009. a rundown motel room .

* 010. a loud house party on a suburban street .

* 011. a university lecture hall during a class .

* 012. the rooftop of a very tall building .

* 013. a great ballroom during an elegant party .

* 014. a natural history museum .

* 015. the wine cellar of a large mansion .

* 016. an old school gym .

* 017. a boisterous bonfire at the lakeside .

* 018. an otherwise empty parking lot .

* 019. a neon club filled with throbbing music .

* 020. the grounds of an empty summer camp .

* 021. a large hedge maze , easy to get lost in .

* 022. a derelict treehouse .

* 023. a spacious , light-filled meadow .

* 024. an underground illegal fighting club .

* 025. an abandoned mansion .

* 026. a cabinet of curiosities .

* 027. an apple orchard in the middle of spring .

* 028. an empty playground with squeaky swings .

* 029. an extravagant greenhouse .

* 030. the base of a large waterfall .

* 031. a spacious walk - in closet full of lovely clothes .

* 032. an attic or basement filled with forgotten things .

* 033. the dark depths of an abandoned mine .

* 034. the deck of a fishing boat at night .

* 035. at home during a power outage .

* 036. a long , winding road .

* 037. the scene of a violent crime .

* 038. a fork in a hiking trail deep in the wilderness .

* 039. a porch on a stormy evening .

* 040. a dusty antiques shop full of relics .

* 041. the street of an unfamiliar city at night .

* 042. between the tall shelves of a rare book shop .

* 043. an abandoned asylum .

* 044. a brewery or winery .

* 045. a mysterious trail found in the woods .

* 046. a stable of horses .

* 047. a county fair at night .

* 048. a rodeo .

* 049. a garden bountiful with flowers or produce .

* 050. a childhood home or bedroom .

* 051. the site of a horrible accident or crime .

* 052. a closed pool , after everyone has left .

* 053. a home holding horrific memories .

* 054. a drive in movie theater .

* 055. a double-booked air b&b .

* 056. a police station in the middle of the night .

* 057. a violent storm warning .

* 058. a lavish , invite - only party .

* 059. a public transit stop as rain is pouring down .

* 060. a cabin in the woods .

* 061. the underworld .

* 062. a dusty , forgotten attic .

* 063. on the set of a television show or movie .

* 064. a lighthouse overlooking the raging sea .

* 065. in an archaeological site.

* 066. on a ship hundreds of miles from the nearest coast .

* 067. a place from a dream or a memory .

* 068. a tent pitched in the middle of the woods .

* 069. ancient ruins .

* 070. the morgue during an identification .

* 071. an otherwise empty library during a late research session .

* 072. a place that feels familiar , yet you've never been here before .

* 073. a long hallway that seems to stretch on forever .

* 074. a signpost at the start of a hiking trail .

* 075. a bar or tavern bustling with life .

* 076. the dance floor of a masquerade ball .

* 077. inside of a car parked in a secluded area .

* 078. at the edge of a cliff overlooking a large lake .

* 079. inside a very old house with very old haunts .

* 080. inside a courtroom .

* 081 past the warning signs .

* 082 around a bonfire or campfire .

* 083 here there be monsters .

* 084 high on a mountainside .

* 085 inside a trendy coffeeshop or bookshop .

* 086 on a road trip .

* 087 at a writer’s retreat .

* 088 under the stars .

* 089 a swanky restaurant .

* 090 on safari .

* 091 a picturesque beach .

* 092 a quaint village abroad .

* 093 in the fall foliage .

* 094 a crystalline winter dawn .

* 095 an expedition into the unknown .

* 096 a treasure hunt .

* 097 following a mysterious map .

* 098 off the map .

* 099 lost .

* 100 exactly where you were always meant to be .

Dark Academia Writing Prompts

1. A history major begins to unravel a murder that happened 100 years ago on campus.

2 A witch disguises herself as a professor in the occult studies department.

3. A group of history students uncover evidence of a witch trial that took place on campus centuries ago.

4. A journalist investigates a series of murders inspired by works of literature.

5. The study of an artifact leads to mayhem when an ancient evil is brought into the modern world.

Situational Prompts

1. Leaves crunching under your boots.

2. Morning air just a bit colder than expected.

3. The smell of warm cider in a mug.

4. Baking cinnamon muffins

5. Pumpkin spice

6. The harvest moon

7. Going to a haunted house

8. Black cats crossing your path

9. Heat of a fireplace on a cold night

10. Crumbling tombstones

11. Twigs snapping on the forest floor

12. Trick-or-treating

13. The call of an owl

14. Costume party

15. Scary movie night

16. Ghost stories

17. Apple orchard

18. A Victorian mansion

19. Scratching at the door

20. Howling at the moon

21. Eyes in the trees

22. Whispers from the shadows

23. Murder of crows gathered outside

24. Something’s under the bed

25. Fog rolling on an open field

26. The only headlights on miles of open road

27. Footsteps coming up quickly from behind

28. A bathroom mirror in the dark

29. Growls down the hall

30. Wrought iron gates

31. Friday the 13th

32. A scream in the night

33. Blood washing down the shower drain

34. Hot wax dripping on pentagrams

35. Lightning over a castle

36. Torn stitches

🏤 Stepping into a house that gives off all the wrong vibes

🍁 A crisp autumn evening, the smell of leaves and smoke on the air

🎹 Nighttime in an ancient house/manor, with the tinkling of piano keys from the next room

💧 Rain in the early morning, so dark that there’s hardly a sunrise

⛪ A church right after a funeral, a small handful of people dressed in black hanging their heads in silence

🌳 A foreboding forest at dusk as the sun disappears

⛵ On the beach before dawn as remnants of a shipwreck wash onto shore

🍂 A chilly, overcast autumn afternoon

🌃 Midnight in a busy city, sirens blaring a few blocks away

🎃 After dark on Halloween night after trick-or-treating ends

🚘 Driving down a long, dark stretch of road after taking a wrong turn

⚡ Distant thunder from a massive storm headed straight this way

🥀 An overgrown garden of nothing but poisonous plants

🌾 An eerie plot of farmland with seemingly no one around for miles

🐊 Murky swampland with posted warnings to keep people away

🔥 A roaring bonfire in the distance on a pitch-black night, with dark silhouettes crowded or dancing around it

🚧 Standing near old, abandoned train tracks when the bell starts to ring

🐟 Taking a swim on an uninhabited plot of beach, noticing ripples in the water

🌿 An old-fashioned plantation with secretive locals and a bitter history

💀 A cemetery full of dead, dry flowers as if all of the plots have been forgotten, some of the stones cracked or sinking into the dirt

🚇 A dingy old subway station, walls chipped to pieces, while waiting for a ride home

🌈 The sad silence after a violent storm, debris and wreckage everywhere

👗 An attic full of musty clothes and antiques belonging to someone long-dead

❄ A snowstorm locking everyone in their homes, with electricity flickering

🌲 An enchanting plot of forest or stream, tiny whispers cutting the silence

🌑 Inside of a re-occurring nightmare had time and time again

☔ A rainy afternoon, running nefarious errands

☕ At a quiet cafe, but unfamiliar folk are whispering and staring

🌵 A winding road through the desert with only one dingy hotel, its ‘vacancy’ light flickering red

💤 Dreaming of scraping nails against the window glass, and waking to still hear it

🐺 A quiet night, the only sound being the call of coyotes/wolves in the woods

🗿 An archaeological site

🏔️ Deep in the mountains

🐆 On safari

🔮 A fortune teller who knows too much

🐈‍⬛ Magic, that's practical

👻 A mansion with a haunted history

👹 A museum at night

🕯 A seance

🍿 Scary movie night

🔪 The killer is here

😱 Spooky slumber party games (Bloody Mary, the Midnight Game, etc…)

☠ A cemetery or catacombs

⌛ An antique store

🏠 At home by the fireside

🍷 Go to a winery/brewery or cider factory

⛺ Rent a cabin for the weekend

🏰 A spooky vacation spot

😈 A cryptid encounter

(here are the same prompts on stupid backgrounds because I felt like making them)

Tagging some witches who may interested!

@babbushka @mrs-gucci @mrs-zimmerman @iamburdened @gabesprincess @maybe-your-left @candycanes19 @rynwritesstuff @caillea @cas-backwards-tie @queeniebee @lumberjack00fantasies @mythrielofsolitude @icarusinthesea @ghoulian13 @reyloaddict55 @fizzywoohoo @heartlight-starlight @richbrittstein @clydesfavoritegirl @bensolodyad @thepalaceofmelanie @celiholland @reveluving @vedavan @queen-of-elves @srorgana1 @reylokisses @vixenofcourse @kylofrk @looking4mymagicshop @diejager

All edits by the amazing @kyloremus

#my stuff!#my writing #birthday bash #best #fic #halloween #summer #Adam Driver #spencer

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canmom · 4 days ago

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damn i missed this whole exchange in 2022. did i even need to write the 'what is the book for' series? well, I guess many can beat the drum.

the first is a polemic I pretty much entirely agree with. indie RPGs benefit very little from being bought and sold. it is a tiny market and unfortunately the pressures of playing to it are not good for the milieu. when marcia says...

Here we also turn a common indie criticism of Wizards of the Coast on its head. It is said often enough that the official publications for Dungeons & Dragons do not offer good material for use. The rules given are wishy-washy, the guidelines unhelpful, and the adventures uncreative. Wizards of the Coast relies instead on building a brand surrounding the game, encouraging players to play however they like and to share in common D&D as an aesthetic and pretense of play. It is obvious then that most of the products sold for the game have no inherent quality to them besides the social value ascribed to them due to their branding. Indie publishers know this. Therefore they may advertise their works as a foil to D&D, that their rules as written actually work and that their texts are written with fuller intent. Their rules are authoritative, their guidelines helpful, and their adventures pushing the edge of creativity. This has sometimes led to an overemphasis of authorial authority among indie publishers, that if you are not playing the game how the author of its rulebook intended, then you are playing incorrectly. Players of D&D thus have a much more flexible relationship to the game they play, even if this is a calculated move by Wizards of the Coast [6]. Who cares what people do with rulebooks or adventures or other materials? Of course, we can read and interpret any text, but these so-called game designers have no reason to expect fidelity to their material in practice. Their emphasis of authorial intent serves mostly to assert the value of their products in the face of a monopoly that openly flaunts its promiscuous interpretability. The stronger answer to both parties is that we shall freely take and use whatever we wish, irrespective of stated intent, and we shall not buy anything if we don’t want to.

it is a relief to see someone else saying the same thing! (her comment on the evolution on D&D into the new edition, through the lens of shifting audience, is also really fucking insightful. I need to read this girl more.)

lich van winkle's post has a good take on many of the sociological observations about the legitimising role of glossy printed RPG books I went on about in part 3. as Prismatic observes in the third post, van Winkle's tone is melancholy - he reflects on the past of deeply personal experiences with games that don't fit into any reproducible published form, unrecordable 'dreams' such as his friend Ben's game (a story spiced with such elements as a psychotic break and slide into death). he observes how the transition of RPGs from niche hobby to major entertainment industry changes the flavour of the hobby, and seems largely resigned to it.

Only with $$$ does the fantasy of today become more than private. It became a part of mass culture when it cost money, a shared medium of exchange. Somehow, that is disappointing to a dreamer like me, as it was to Kask in 1981, yet one must acknowledge that the hobby would be much, much smaller and lonelier without this system of valuation of fantasy.

Prismatic injects a little economic theory with the concept of Veblen goods whose demand increases with price, here observing that putting a price on things gives them a kind of reach that makes people more interested than when they're free. I would qualify this, I think, by saying this is true... when you are at least somewhat known already. Anyway, they then segue into a list of RPG zines to suggest backing in a crowdfunding event, which... idk how I feel about, all things considered.

A couple of weeks ago I released a story on itch (more are coming, but it's taken me longer than planned to get the next one ready to go out, cover art being the main obstacle). I elected to make it 'pay what you want' i.e. free, and I was surprised to see that a few people still sent me money. All in all, A Summoning has made $29... which is $29 more than I got from sending it to magazines, but also it's less than an hour's work at my actual job.

I believe this is probably true of the vast majority of indie RPGs that get published: it's a 'long tail' industry, where only the few projects that get really popular make any actual money. Very few people can make a living as a game designer - even a relatively successful designer is probably sum minimum wage if you tot it up, and it has little to do with how good you are at coming up with interesting games and everything to do with personal branding and all that crap. So why does anyone who isn't called Vincent Baker sell their games, as opposed to putting them out as free blog posts and similar? For the prestige, obviously. Perhaps you'd take me more seriously as a game designer-type-person if I had a PDF to sell you!

Is there a solution to this? I would love to think we could follow Marcia in just rejecting money from the equation outright. I generally release stuff I make outside of work for free, and trust I can accrue prestige in other ways.

However... I also spent money to get an RPG book that caught my interest this morning. I am usually very pro-piracy, but I will generally choose to voluntarily spend money on small indie RPGs, seeing it as something like a donation, or perhaps more accurately, the respect due a peer.

Would I pay so much attention to Apocalypse World if it was just a series of blog posts on the lumpley website? Whether you spend money or pirate it, the printed books, the industry of 'indie RPGs', all serve to reify the whole thing into a movement worthy of discussion and respect.

I don't know a solution, except to just try to be really eclectic in my influences and try not to let my 'play' be measured up against anyone's codified product.

fuck i hate monetary exchange lmao. broken shit please nerf

#roleplaying games

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justtryingtovibe69 · 24 days ago

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this year i started working in fashion, started doing art handling, ended a 3 year relationship and went back to living alone, had the worlds best birthday party with old friends in nyc, flew to new york just to see a retrospective concert of my friends composer dads career, went to budapest by myself for a week, tailgated my first football game, worked 4am shifts at a wholesale bakery for 2 months, biked to the top of one of the highest peaks in my area, watched one of my best friends get married, went to beach bonfires and played in the ocean, started tutoring at the library, finished my first quilt, and went to the movies dozens of times. it was a lonely and seriously unstable year but it was also so fruitful and full of art and love and joy

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saintsenara · 2 months ago

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Is Halloween an American thing? I thought wizards celebrated as well?

so this is an interesting historical context thing. halloween is celebrated now - with all the same trappings as it is in the states - across britain and ireland, but it's included in the books as it is because - in the nineties - the main familiarity the vast, vast majority of british and irish children would have with these sort of lavish, extravagant halloween traditions [rather than local versions, which are generally much cheaper, weirder, and less aesthetically pleasing...] would be from american films and tv shows. it's a piece of worldbuilding which makes the magical world feel like a fantasy land, not only magic but "movie magic", separate from the reader's ordinary life.

i'm in my early thirties. the first time i had a trick-or-treater call on me was about five years ago. i never went trick-or-treating as a child - and nor did anyone else i know, and nobody [or maybe one person] would have had sweets in either. even now, there are still plenty of people who won't. you could buy pumpkins during october when i was little, but you'd have been hard-pressed to find other halloween-themed decorations without having to find a specialist party shop. i started going to "halloween parties" as a teenager... but these were mostly an excuse to get drunk with a bit of face paint on. my siblings who have kids complain about all the rigmarole now expected around halloween because what is now considered standard are things which would have been considered ludicrously over-the-top - to such an extent that they might have wandered off a film set - when we were children. they're a wholesale import of american consumer culture. throwing a sheet over your child and saying they're a ghost, the one house on the street which would indulge trick-or-treaters giving them a clementine, and then everyone going home for apple-bobbing doesn't cut it anymore...

[voldemort's complaints in deathly hallows, on the other hand, seem to be because nobody's spending allhallowtide in church... which is his business, i suppose... but isn't a normal opinion for anyone to have...]

#asks answered

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redphienix · 5 months ago

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I do genuinely think it's abhorrent and baffling that people will love a nintendo game so much they create more and more content for that game, they romhack it decades after release, they add new boards to mario party, they create custom tracks for mario kart, they add new adventures to metroid games, and nintendo, wholesale, top to bottom, wants all these creative people filled with passion to die.

they don't even reasonably offer these games, but heaven forbid someone make a new experience in an old classic.

#my posts

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nostalgiachan · 8 months ago

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Once more, it's 100 OC time, and here we have the second half of the main party members, in both full-size and PS2-output style. As always, new images up top, old below, and detailed character info (and essentially the story of the game) below the cut.

#69 (lol, lmao): Ilya Node Idea: The (World's Angriest) Mechanic Story: Silmerein

#70: Dorom Kolos Idea: The Surprisingly Cultured Drunken Ogre Story: Silmerein

#71: Nalien Urymere aka Nenali Maelstrom Idea: The Acrobatic Witch Story: Silmerein

#72: Dynn Mortar Idea: The Scientist Story: Silmerein

Continuing where we left off in the story summary from the last post...

So next, you head to the badlands, just the rockiest, craggiest piece of shit land you ever did see. And as the party's heading through this bullshit, they see a rail-thin, scraggly-looking girl dragging herself across the road.

They bring her to the wagon, fix her up, and ask where she lives, but she is determined to get to Silmerein. Eventually, after the party tells her "Nah, we're taking you home, you're fucked to shit," she gives up and tells the party where she lives: a super-secret city lost to history deep in the badlands.

So back when the end times were happening, the few survivors had huddled together in this city. And once Silmerein had saved the day, most people left and never looked back. But some folks were far too paranoid to leave. And they were determined to make sure that anybody who left never found their way back. So over the centuries, people forgot it was there, and anybody who still lived there wasn't allowed to leave.

So this girl, Ilya Node, telling the party where it is is A Problem.

When they reach the city, they're lucky enough to be met by Ilya's mentor, a fairly dorfy engineer. And he welcomes them inside and whatnot, but once they're in, he tells them they're not leaving again. Meanwhile, Ilya is fucking pissed. She's healed up enough that now she's practically frothing at the mouth to get out of the city again, because she is on a fucking mission.

See, she and her younger brother, Leon, were orphans, getting along as you do. But one night, her brother was snatched right out of his bed, and Ilya happened to see it. She couldn't do anything about it because the plague had caused her legs to stop working, but she swore he had been taken by a Silmereinian. Nobody believed her, though, because how could a Silmereinian still have knowledge of the city? Pff, nah, can't be me.

So she had managed to hobble her way out of the city and walked far enough across the badlands that her leg braces and crutches totally shattered and she was forced to crawl. She was powered by THE FUCKING FURY. Well, as you're learning her backstory from her mentor, she revs up a mining mech and BAILS. She takes off for the mines, which are just a horrible labyrinth of caves, and figures she'll pick a point and start digging her way to freedom this time.

And unfortunately, this is about the point where the plot gets just slightly more vague because I hadn't quite worked out all the details. But the important thing is that somehow, Lima had to get into close enough proximity to directly touch Ilya off-screen. Because as we'll find out later, the only reason the big boss-fight-inducing freakouts happen is because Lima's causing them. So Ilya becomes a giant rabbit monster.

They have a fight, Triangle wins, Triangle man.

So Ilya's like "I guarantee you I'm burning Silmerein to the fucking ground when I get there, let's go." She's your big heavy hitter character, pilots a mining drill to fight.

Anyway, after badlands, our next stop is further into the mountain to meet the Mountain Ogres, specifically this guy, Dorom Kolos.

The Mountain Ogres are in a pretty constant war with the Sea Ogres as the Sea Ogres ran the Mountain Ogres out of their ancestral homeland. I don't remember what the exact arc of Dorom's story was going to be, but tl;dr his infection is in his spine, which is now wholesale jutting out of his back, leaving him in a constant state of pain that he medicates with alcohol. He's your drunken berserker whose super mode is a demon bear.

bearserker

This is about the point where you'd be properly introduced to the Paladins of Silmerein, the goon squad who are your initial direct antagonists as they're trying to keep you from reaching the city and/or kill you. Mostly kill you.

[I briefly cover the first one you'd probably run into, Gamel Jugrenon, but I'll leave that solo sentence to when I actually redraw her]

One way or another, you fight Dorom's demon bear mode and ward off the Paladins, and you head on to the next bit.

Next is a spooky little forest in a mountain valley where you run into a circus featuring one Nalien Urymere aka Nenali Maelstrom.

Nalien comes from a village in said woods which is horribly superstitious and believes magic use and consorting with monsters to be a capital offense. So when she grows bat ears thanks to the plague, her parents are terrified for her safety but don't think they'd be able to leave without raising suspicion. Fortunately for them, the circus had come nearby, and they asked if they would be able to take in Nalien for a short while. The ringmaster agreed, took Nalien in, and started training her in magic and acrobatics.

[Fun fact: the bat ears also reduced her eyesight, which is why she wears glasses.]

As with Dorom, I didn't quite get into when the Paladins would show up and how Lima would get Nenali alone to cause her freakout, but big bat battle under the big top happens. I presume the spooky villagers would probably show up to ruin everything.

The last place before hitting Silmerein is a laboratory high in the mountains that the party stumbles on. There, they meet this fellow, Dynn Mortar, a magitek scientist.

It's here that they'd find out a lot more about the Paladins, chiefly that they're all missing body parts for which Dynn had fashioned prosthetics. [I make a brief swerve to cover all of the Paladins. We'll get to them next time.]

So back to Dynn, as you can surmise, he's the final host needed, and his infection's in his heart. So he turns into a monster squid. Because squids have three hearts. Look, I tried to relate the monster forms to the parts, and spine and heart gave me problems. Just like in real life amirite. [For some reason, I didn't mention how Dynn's infection properly manifested, but: basically, it caused severe heart arrhythmia and wholesale heart failure. He had to build and install his own pacemaker to keep functional.]

But yeah, at this point, the We Have Horrible Demon Infection Crew is assembled, and the only thing left is to get into Silmerein, get to the monument, and get this party started. So by this point, there's been a budding romance forming between Talin and Lima, and you either get a confession before the big event or it edges real goddamn hard, I don't remember which I was going to go with. But you get to the city, you get to the monument, and that's when everything goes to absolute balls.

The romance was completely calculated on Lima's part.

Because, as mentioned, the whole point of this trip was for Lima to go about, collect the now gestating parts of the avatar of Rodimir, and return them all to the source so the avatar can rise again.

So Lima Does the Thing, but after all this time Being a Person, she doesn't want to just go back to being an unconscious part of the avatar. So she pulls a Pope Zera and subsumes his will. So now the avatar is well and truly dead and it's Lima's time to be in charge. Talin is fucking crushed, everybody's just lost a lot of power now that they're not hosting body parts anymore, Clarine [the leader of the Paladins] is freaking out because "Wait, didn't I do everything Imosene told me to? Why didn't this work?" And here's where we get into what her plan was.

See, while the avatar was busy seeding the plague, Imosene was functionally doing the same thing. But she had to expend a lot more juice to do it and wasn't able to craft a wholesale person like Lima to do the collecting. The best she could do was grab the first person who could hear her, and that happened to be Clarine. And all she was really able to tell her was to "gather the parts" and show her who she needed to find.

And Clarine interpreted that literally. She found everybody on her list, but thought she needed to remove the parts from them, not really knowing about the whole gestational period thing. So now we've got a whole lot of underpowered Jesus parts that can't be used for much.

Things are looking pretty fuckin' bad.

At least until this guy shows up.

And he'll be covered in the next batch, along with the first three Paladins of Imosene. So stay tuned, same Silmerein time, same Silmerein channel!

#my art #100 oc challenge #original characters #silmerein

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cosmetic-manufacturer · 3 months ago

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#cosmetic manufacturer #private label cosmetic manufacturer #third party cosmetic manufacturer #skin care product manufacturer

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thatwildyard · 6 months ago

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Deals Deals Deals

After getting so much abuse at pretty much ALL of the sales platforms this year, I decided to make a page here in the hopes of retaining some sort of following without all of the algorithms, scams, and hassles.

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These are my rock bottom prices and deals, which I can offer here without the 3rd party overhead. If you’d like to make a wholesale purchase, please contact for pricing. If you’ve bought from me before and are comfortable, please feel free to purchase here. Please be prepared to use a fee-free service like Venmo or Zelle, or, prepared to pay associated fees on your end.

If you have any questions, I’m always here. Contact directly at (((username))) at gmail dot com.

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Drop an email my way with your order, any questions, or with your zip for a quote with combined shipping.

#plants #jungle cacti #epiphyllum #jungle cactus #plumeria #succulents and cacti #bargains #permaculture #self sufficiency

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beardedmrbean · 7 months ago

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When conservative activists set aflame boxes of Bud Light and urged a boycott in response to an endorsement from a trans influencer last spring, they sent sales of the beer plummeting in a rare success in the long history of consumer movements.

Even more improbably, the backlash continues to hammer Bud Light and strain independent local wholesalers more than a year later, according to third-party sales data shared with ABC News as well as interviews with six Anheuser-Busch wholesalers.

Most of the wholesalers, small- and medium-sized businesses that draw a significant portion of their revenue from Bud Light, said they remain weakened by the decline in sales and uncertain about when, if ever, the brand will fully recover.

The owner of an Anheuser-Busch wholesaler in the Northeast, whose child is trans, told ABC News they have taken a 30% pay cut to make up for the losses and are considering retirement.

MORE: Colorado GOP rebuked by Republicans, Democrats after calling for burning Pride flags

“It was really hurtful personally,” the owner said. “I’m trying to understand what my kid is going through and then this happens.”

“It’s still very upsetting,” the owner added, noting the company’s Bud Light sales declined by 50% in the immediate aftermath of the boycott. “It’s very difficult to come in every day and look at those sales numbers, knowing I have a responsibility for everyone here.”

Another executive at a wholesaler in the Mid-Atlantic said they have spent sleepless nights devising ways to shed costs without laying off employees; and a top official at a distributor in the Southeast said they expect sales of Bud Light will remain down for at least two more years.

Still, the wholesalers added, harassment of employees and drinkers has faded, indicating the boycott fervor has died down and the brand reputation of Bud Light has begun to mend. Many of the wholesalers said sales had improved lately and Bud Light remains their top-selling beer.

The wholesalers requested anonymity because they didn't want to be publicly identified speaking about the financial consequences of the boycott. In all, roughly 500 independent distributors sell Anheuser-Busch products nationwide.

In response to ABC News' request for comment, a spokesperson at Anheuser-Busch touted the success of Bud Light and the company's relationship with wholesalers.

“Bud Light continues to be the number one selling beer brand in the country because for decades it has been synonymous with programs and activations that consumers love, including partnerships with the NFL, NHL, UFC, and College Football," the spokesperson said.

"As we have for nearly a century, we continue to work side-by-side with our 350+ wholesaler partners to drive growth for our collective business and provide best-in-class service to our consumers and retailers across the country," the spokesperson added.

Sales of Bud Light declined by roughly 25% over the weeks following a product endorsement from Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, which sparked backlash among many conservatives last April, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen NIQ obtained by ABC News.

In a video posted on Instagram, Mulvaney held a specially designed can of Bud Light featuring an illustration of her. The can, Mulvaney said, included a message congratulating her on "365 days of womanhood."

Until April of this year, sales of the beer stayed stuck at the same level while the boycott persisted, Dave Williams, the president of Bump Williams Consulting, told ABC News.

“Sales cratered and sat there. They didn’t get any worse but they sure as heck didn’t get any better,” Williams said. “I don’t think there are a lot of examples where the king of the castle, someone in such prominence, took such a public and drastic hit in beer.”

In recent months, sales have shown signs of improvement but remain well below pre-boycott levels, Williams added, noting that some customers appear to have returned to the brand as the social stigma has waned while others remain steadfast in their opposition.

“The goal is to retain the consumers they have and hopefully try to win some back.”

An executive at a wholesaler in the Southeast said Bud Light sales plummeted by at least 20% in the aftermath of the boycott and remained at that level for the rest of 2023. The blow to the balance sheet hurt company morale and raised questions about the firm’s future, the executive said.

“We’ve got employees who expected a career helping to build this brand and this business,” the executive added. “To have that undone was a bit of a shock, to say the least.”

In recent months, hostility toward the brand has faded, sales have stabilized and morale has improved, the executive added, acknowledging that sales still stand well below pre-boycott levels.

“Once a consumer drops off a product -- where there is a readily available and similarly priced substitute -- a habit has formed and it’s difficult to shake that habit,” the executive said. “We have to give them a reason to come back.”

Williams said Bud Light has returned to its spot as the top-selling U.S. beer by volume, even if revenue has lagged. Meanwhile, other Anheuser-Busch beer brands are performing better than they did before the boycott.

Some wholesalers expressed optimism about Bud Light's outlook and praised Anheuser-Busch for providing financial support in response to the sales slump. They also downplayed the boycott's impact, attributing much of the sales decline to a wider shift away from beer to other alcoholic drinks.

“The beer industry -- no matter what product you’re selling -- is down in sales,” Tom Davis, director of operations at Maryland-based Katcef Brothers, Inc., an Anheuser-Busch wholesaler, told ABC News. “That has a bigger impact on beer sales than anything.”

An Anheuser-Busch spokesperson shared a statement from a wholesaler with ABC News.

"Anheuser-Busch recognizes the vital role their wholesaler partners play in the business, and last year they stepped in to provide critical resources to ensure we were positioned to continue serving our consumers and communities across the country," Sarah Matesich Schwab, President of Ohio-based Matesich Distributing, said in the statement.

"There’s lots of positive momentum in the system, and we are focused on strengthening our partnership so that we can continue to grow and succeed together," Matesich Schwab added.

The enduring impact of the Bud Light boycott defies a decadeslong history of largely ineffective consumer boycotts, Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business who studies consumer movements, told ABC News.

The continued struggle of Bud Light owes to the easy availability of similar products as well as the highly polarized political environment nationwide, Schweitzer said.

“Given the history of boycotts and its history of ineffectiveness, it is really surprising that this one has had the staying power that it has,” Schweitzer told ABC News.

“In this moment, we’re so politicized,” Schweitzer added. “The weather is political, the employment rate is political and now beer is political.”

#nunyas news

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