#anyway 2. i no longer use this blog to actually engage in debate

[mouserdiscourse]

"endogenic systems are a target of ableism"

"thats not ableism bc you claim not to have a disorder"

"ok we'll call it pluralphobia then"

"ummm, why the FUCK are you using that word? that thing is Clearly ableism"

i love you people. never change

[lily-orchard-gossip-blog]

Part 2

Moving on to the next part of this segment, and Lily brings in Terfs! Yay?

Now, we are slowly entering into what this post is REALLY about. Namely, "don't argue with my stalkers".

Think about it, Lily is saying here that you shouldn't argue with Terfs, because they aren't really arguing about bathrooms, their arguing about excluding trans woman from society. Why bring this up? Because she wants you to equate her stalkers to Terfs without saying that. She did in in Steven Universe is Garbage and Here's Why She's doing it here.

But here's something really funny:

Why am I saying this is funny? Because what's she's talking about is my blog. Not Cyphers. Cypher has yet, as far as I've seen, gotten into a debate with one of Lily's fans, and if someone is trying to debate her, I haven't seen it.

But I did.

Cypher did REBLOG my stuff, so I guess to Lily, it's the same thing.

And the thing is, it's convenient for Lily to not have to say my blog exists, and pin this all on Cypher, because she can drag Cypher, but she can't drag me.

Also, to that Anon who tried to debate me? See this? Lily doesn't want you to engage with me, she doesn't want you to defend her, because she knows that there is a lot of evidence out there, and a debate will mean dragging stuff out into the open. This is the thanks you get for trying to defend her.

But I do find it interesting that she's saying people are taking Cypher (or me, who knows) at our words that we aren't obsessed/stalking her... Is she getting asks in her inbox?

Anyways, skipping the image, and onto the next paragraph:

Man, I really feel for you anon, she is dragging you just for the sin of trying to be helpful. 😬

But interestingly enough, she is now trying to reframe the posts I made, saying that all the evidence that I brought out is just "mental gymnastics" to prove she's a loser and not... actual proof. She's trying to use smoke and mirrors to hide the truth: That the evidence is real.

Also, here's another interesting thing: She is saying that you are not to engage with any criticism against her in good faith. Always assume the worst in people.

But more importantly: Don't defend her. Why? Because if you try to defend her, then that means your giving the person responding to you an opening to bring out the information that she doesn't want you to know about. A discourse drags out the skeletons in her closet, and she doesn't want that to happen.

Because how do you lie about the evidence that was dragged from your own tumblr?

Man, I really feel for that poor anon right now. They where just trying to be supportive of their favorite creator, and that has caused her to freak out.

Moving further along.

Now we loop right back to her ex, and how people understand to only take things her ex says in bad faith, and to never engage with her in discourse (probably because she's afraid of what her ex may say, rather then actually being respectful of her ex's boundaries.)

And that they get to mock her poor ex in her safe space, where she gets to control the narrative and how people respond to this person they have never met. And then cue a realization that will let her drag her ex some more:

Think about that. She dated her ex for three years, is almost thirty, and still won't stop trying to drag her. It's amazing. (Also, side note, her ex would have been 21 when they broke up. Do with that info, what you will.)

Then Lily realizes how pondering time and how things both feel fast and slow isn't as important as dragging her ex. So she moves on to this:

Is it just me or does that list keep getting longer and longer as the years go on? To go over all of it would take forever, but the accusations of cheating only happened in ether 2019, or 2020, and that's because her ex finally gained the courage to talk about some of the stuff that went down, same with the rape accusations against her ex, only started after her ex started talking about her personal experiences.

Also, the police "swatting" was a wellness check, because Lily was publicly talking about ending it, and Lizzy got worried. But I'm not going to comment further, because I would need to drag out A LOT of receipts to talk about it, and I have a life I need to get back to.

Nobody is saying you can't be mad about this stuff Lily. People are saying that you are letting that anger fester and ruin your life. I'm still mad at someone who deeply hurt me, but I don't let them or their actions control my life. If you can't accept that it's alright to be angry at someone, and to also move on from them, then that's on you and your therapist.

Also, dehumanizing your ex, classy.

As for Cypher... You didn't ghost her because of a red flag, you ghosted her because she publicly told you that your head canons aren't canon (and they aren't.) And Cypher isn't mad that you did that, she's mad that you went on a lying, hate fueled campaign about her on your tumblr, and she informed you that if you kept doing that, she would defend herself. And she did.

It's not her fault that you can't let go of tiny grudges to the point they take over your life.

I don't think the people on Kiwi farms cares about having an argument with your fans, outside of watching their reactions from a distance. And remember, your fan came to me, I wasn't looking for a fight. (But does that mean, in your mind at least, I won?)

So we get to what she really wants, namely to prevent anymore discourse about her, between her fans and the critics. That's really what it was always about. She's mad that a lot of her sins where brought out, because somebody wanted to help her, and now she has to play damage control.

Oh Anon, my dear anon.

I'm sorry this happened.

Your intentions where pure.

Your goals where true.

Oh Anon, my anon,

You noble dreams shattered.

But always know this:

[kidzbopdeathmetal]

Hi, I’m still alive, I swear.

A lot has happened since I last posted on this blog, and I’m not sure if I’m “back” per se, but I thought I’d at least check in, maybe look around for a minute or two. I can’t remember what all I have shared, so here’s just a quick summary of my life thus far.

I’ve been to a few shows since the start of the pandemic - Ghost with Mastodon and Spiritbox, and Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, Baroness, and Suicide Silence being the two shows in particular I’ve attended. Generally, I’ve kept a low profile as I’m an agoraphobe and would like to not catch the literal plague of our times.

Which I did in fact catch. It sucked a lot. I was scared for a few days, but I managed to pull through it without needing to go to the hospital (it got pretty close though). After my grandfather dying from covid complications, getting it was kind of a terrifying situation for me given my own health problems.

We had also just adopted a third dog, a German shepherd mix of indeterminate origin that had been found on the street. We found out that she had been abused and abandoned by her prior owner, so now she’s our dog. She’s specifically MY dog, actually, and I’ve got my work cut out with her, as she is unfortunately overweight and I have to get her enough exercise to hopefully cut that weight down to a more healthy number.

Which became difficult during the two weeks I was sick, and I still have some lingering effects MONTHS later - for instance my breathing capacity, which was never great to begin with on account of life long asthma, has been cut down even further. I can barely walk at a brisk pace now without nearly keeling over.

After I recovered from covid in the sense that I was no longer testing positive, it felt like life was throwing nothing but curve balls my and my husband’s way. For reasons I cannot go into legally, my husband lost his job, and we were very uncertain what we would do. I’m at the tail end of my Master’s degree and cannot leave Florida until I’ve got my diploma, considering I LITERALLY have 2 classes left.

After much debate, we decided that it was time to leave Florida anyway. We’ve been wanting to leave for a long time as neither of us have been happy here as life long Floridians, and it’s only getting harder for the people born and raised in this state to live here.

But, moving at this time means separating on a six month basis. It has not been easy. We drove to our new home state together to get a feel for it and get my husband settled into the house he’s renting, and then I flew back to Florida. I cried on the plane.

Currently, I’m working on finishing my degree still and trying to keep myself busy. I was alone with most of our animals (we have 3 dogs and 2 cats between us, one of which is currently with my husband) for recent holidays and it was genuinely miserable.

We’ll see if I’m here for a more permanent basis or if I’ll fuck off back to being on hiatus from Tumblr. Time will tell.

Also the new Septicflesh and Zeal & Ardor albums fuck hard and I love them a lot. Y’all should give them a listen if you have not.

TTFN

[dreamautonomy]

Thank you, thank you for the tag @fanarain. I took my time with this. I swear, I got to find a tag game to share with my followers and those I follow. @dreamautonomy needs more love and activity. 😭

I will answer questions about @dreamautonomy (my main that’s not officially a main) and @defectiveconantoy (my more popular Tumblr).

1. Why did you choose your url? I came up with the name Dream Autonomy waaaaay back in 2008. At the time, I was inspired by Kazimierz Dąbrowski's theory of positive disintegration (TPD), where he explained that one must go through anxiety and psychological tension to achieve autonomy and true individuality. In my teens, I dreamt of independence and autonomy, to live on my own terms and break away from society’s rat race. I still do to this day.

For my DCMK stuff, I’ve considered the name Conanology, but someone on Twitter took it. I wanted something witty. Then, I stumbled upon that Reddit post with the counterfeit Conan and Ayumi action figures. They looked so ridiculous and badly made it’s almost a joke. The thread’s first comment: perfect as a funny username. Unfortunately, defectiveconan was already taken here, so I settled with defectiveconantoy (also nicknamed by me as DFCT - DeFective Conan Toy) instead.

2. Any side blogs? @relaxwithanime because there’s a lot of relaxing anime, and I want to showcase relaxing anime scenes. @sillydogpictures, which has no posts. I wanted to show pictures of dogs with intentionally or unintentionally silly faces. 🐶

3. How long have you been on tumblr? It’s complicated! I began lurking back in 2010 or 2011 but didn’t create an account until 2014 with the original dreamautonomy, now the defunct @olddreamautonomy. I never used it until mid or late 2020.

I made @defectiveconantoy back in October 2020 because I considered participating in the DCMK Secret Santa event. I eventually decided not to, as I was busy with school and coping with the pandemic. I didn’t need more deadlines then.

4. Do you have a queue tag? Nope! I should make one once I learn how.

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place? I planned to use @dreamautonomy as a creative blog for posting photography, graphic design, food and travel stuff, motivational stuff, and more. Never happened!

DFCT was made for Detective Conan and Magic Kaito fandom stuff, nothing else.

Stupid me made @defectiveconantoy a completely separate account, even after realizing minutes later that I could have made it a side blog. Oh well! I mostly use Tumblr for fandom stuff nowadays, so I deleted my old Dream account and made a new account as a side blog under @defectiveconantoy. Now, I no longer have to use different apps and browsers for both blogs. Life is good!

6 . Why did you choose your icon/pfp? For Dream, I chose Retsuko from Aggretsuko. That scene wonderfully represents the agony of one’s twenties: working miserable jobs, not being taken seriously, and wishing life was more fulfilling than the average adult life. There she is being “one of us” on a Sunday by lying in bed and scratching her butt. 😂

And for DFCT, how could I not post action Conan from The Fist of Blue Sapphire with the counterfeit action figure’s head replacing the original Conan’s head? 🤣

7. Why did you choose your header? For Dream, because Retsuko’s bouncing her little tail off. For DFCT, because Ran is precious in that scene, all soft and shy.

8. What's your post with the most notes? @defectiveconantoy’s set of GIFs from the Ferris Wheel scene in the Episode ONE special. And that’s my original post. I’ve reblogged even more popular stuff by others.

9. How many mutuals do you have? About a dozen.

10. How many followers do you have? @dreamautonomy: 9 (Most are p*rn bots I’ve reported for spam and blocked. Have no idea WTF I did to attract them.). @defectiveconantoy: 175!! 😁

11. How many people do you follow? 72!

12. Have you ever made a shitpost? I don’t know. I think I only post relevant memes.

Here am I typing this after spending years confusing shitposts with really funny, sometimes offensive memes. I’m still confused about the meaning of a shitpost. I’m not very trend or meme savvy.

13. How often do you use tumblr each day? About 10-20 times a day, usually through my phone app.

14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? Over ten years ago on websites that Tumblr, Twitter, etc. long replaced in popularity. Even then, I’ve usually been a lurker for most of my life and rarely engaged in arguments or debates. Whenever I did, I regret it to this day. I looked stupid (everyone did, actually). What a waste of time!

I wish I hadn’t forgotten about Detective Conan back in 2004. The DCMK Tumblr fandom is chill and AWESOME! I wonder what the fandom was like back in the 2000s.

15. How do you feel about "you need to reblog this" posts? Ehh…it depends. If it’s something most or everyone agrees with, I might reblog it. I don’t know about you, but such posts often bring the rebel in me. If you say, “REBLOG IT,” I say, “Ehh! Nope.” 😋 Anyway, life is short. I’d rather stick to fandom and humor, things that unite people and make them smile.

16. Do you like tag games? Of course! That’s how I get to know everyone. I should initiate tag games and tag all of you.

17. Do you like ask games? YES! I should start ask games as well.

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is [tumblr] famous? We interrupt this program to give mad props to that nicely formatted Tumblr logo-fied text. 👌

Aaaanyway, I won’t name names. Some are Tumblr famous for different reasons, and that’s what matters. We all contribute different things while being under the same main fandom, ships, arcs, and adaptations aside.

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual? No! Why ruin this nice little Tumblr space for drama? It’s not worth having a crush on people you’ve never met face-to-face imo. I’m not repeating my teenage mistakes.

20. Tags: anyone happy to participate! 😁

[snowy-protection-squad]

Hey everyone,

My last post on this blog was almost exactly two years ago and I doubt anyone cares much about this message but I thought I would give some final thoughts before bidding this blog adieu. 

I started this blog in 2016 as a way to interact with other people in the OMGCP fandom and talk about a comic that meant a lot to me. In 2016 I was in ninth grade (freshman year of high school) and had extreme difficulty making friends at my new school. I was trying to balance high school, high level dance, and my struggles regarding my sexuality. I saw a lot of myself in Bitty and seeing representation in comics meant the world to me. Since I had no friends and was immersed in the toxic tumblr culture of the time, I thought that creating this blog would be a good idea. 

I joined the OMGCP fandom near its peak. I had actually already started reading the comic in 2015 but I forgot about it pretty quickly, until I rejoined just a month or so before The Kiss™. After that, I fell hard into the community in one of the worst ways possible. I brought my fanatic SuperWhoLock mentality into a small community with all the confidence of a 14 year old girl who thinks that stan culture is healthy. Looking back on this blog I have a lot of regrets, but I was 14 and having this blog actually helped me a lot. I got to share my dumb headcanons and even managed to make friends through it (shout out to the Bittyholtz twitter group chat). I got to talk to like-minded people and have friendly debates with them. In 2017 I got to meet Ngozi at a comic festival. I probably made a fool out of myself, I can’t remember, but I got to meet an artist I admired and now I own an original Kent Parson pin so it can’t have been that bad. 

By 2018 my interest in the fandom had plummeted and I stopped caring about the comic, the fandom, and this blog. This was in part due to the sporadic updates and lack of engaging fan content, but it was primarily due to the growing toxicity of the community and the way the updates felt...weird. All of year 3 was very touch and go for me. I would spend weeks elbow’s deep in the fandom and then a month doing the bare minimum to keep this blog alive. It felt as if the character development of Bitty and Jack up from the first two years had been scrapped, and in its place were caricatures and fluff. The rest of the cast had also lost their personalities. I still posted memes and joking headcanons, but I no longer felt connected with the characters or the story, with the exception of Kent Parson. 

This community has always had an issue with Parse to the extent that people have received death threats for liking him. It was like that in 2016 and it’s like that now. I always liked Parse because he was flawed and relatable in a more realistic way than other characters in the comic. As I previously mentioned I found Bitty deeply relatable in 2016, but that changed when Year 3 came out. Year 1 & 2 Bitty was a flawed character with endearing traits, Year 3 Bitty was a selfish mother hen with an ego. He was no longer relatable, and the rest of the cast seemed to have been shoved to the side to focus more on Jack and Bitty’s relationship. The Tadpoles weren’t given enough attention when I was still reading the comic, with their personalities being dumbed down to “confused” and “stand-offish”. This left Kent Parson as one of the most dynamic characters in the series, despite his little screen time. Kent Parson was relatable too many people, myself included. He was Jacks foil and gave us a glimpse into Jacks life before Samwell and how that haunts him. The treatment of Parse during the LVA @ PVD updates was the tipping point in my abandonment of this blog.

I didn’t read Year 4 until Ngozi posted the final update schedule for Check Please on Instagram and I decided to catch up before reading the finale. I was reminded of why I fell in love with so many of these characters and this fandom. I started getting back into the fandom and re-reading old favourite fanfics. It made me realize that it was always the characters I loved, not the story. Seeing how people fill in plot holes or write redemption arcs for discarded characters is incredible. I especially love seeing peoples responses to the finale of the comic. Personally, I found the ending lacklustre, though I did get a little teary eyed over this comic ending after all my emotional investment in it. A lot of my critiques have already been said in the OMGCP Critical tag so I wont bore you with them.

Despite starting this post by saying I’ll be bidding Check Please “adieu”, I don’t think that’s true. I’ll continue reading fanfic from this fandom and I’ll likely browse some OMGCP tumblr tags on occasion, but it will likely not be reblogged to this account. I’m debating writing a Bittyparse fic that I’ve been thinking of, and if I write it I’ll post it here, but don’t get your hopes up. This fandom is bound to die in a couple years, some tags are already being abandoned and accounts are rebranding themselves away from OMGCP. The peak period of this blog was a time of growth for me and I thank everyone who read my silly headcanons and ridiculous AUs. 

Anyways. Thanks for everything, Check Please fandom.

ttyl, Mel

[full-course-identity]

Give me your thoughts on uuuh Jake

wew boy

okay. gonna word dump this, and probably other interpretation asks, so I can get the words out there.

from my POV, there’s 3 types of canon Jake + 1 fanon vers + my personal interpretation. lemme explain what they are;

Book Jake, who I don’t have enough experience with bc I STILL haven’t finished the book… >_>;

2River Jake, who is kinda oblivious and very in-the-moment impulsive (not so bad he’s jumping place to place ADHD like Rich, but like, not considering that maybe dropping everything to seduce Madeline or Christine is a bad idea when he clearly really likes Chloe). these are debatably survival mechanisms bc of his family (and wealth, if you want to go into the “being rich actually traumatizes you and locks you into dissociation” theory–but to be fair, this is partially reliant on thinking Jake is Genuinely Rich. … well, not Rich as in… yeah); ignoring any pain he feels in favor of getting dicked down and forgetting about everything for a while. very “I’m not sad, I’m busy!!!!!” 

Bway (possibly the new canon general for all Jakes since it sounds like London’s is modeled after him but just… toned down), who is still oblivious, but towards other people’s emotions instead of himself; he’s manipulative, a little impulsive but a lot more malicious about it, and he knows exactly how hurt he is about his parents. this jake’s awareness of himself makes him act worse because he knows this is the only thing that seems to help and it’s basically the only thing he actually has control of. his wealthiness is undeniably present and Bad here because the reason taking what he wants and not caring that it hurts people is his main coping skill is pretty much only because he’s been allowed that privilege all his life. i tend to think this version of him should be done by a white cishet dude (despite jake’s actor on bway being genuinely FANTASTIC) bc being marginalized in a high school should’ve curved a lot of the “endless power and privilege” he gets for being rich (Not That One). 

[i… think this jake has ‘better’/more nuanced writing in BWay… but i don’t think it fits the musical nor is it the overall direction i think it should’ve gone. BMC feels best to me when there’s a heavier element of Dark Humor that briefly nods to a Larger and more Fucked Up world behind the bit we see in the musical. making it largely a twisted comedy, maybe even ramping that up further with more whiplash lines like jake’s “which means the house is empty, so that’s fun”]

Fanon Jake is… like most of the fanon characters in BMC, a bit… “bipolar” (like, radically shifting depending on the situation). the BMC fandom has been born with heavy engagement from minors in the current fascist climate of fandom as a whole. as a result, you have three general uses of jake that as “approved of” by somehow the exact same people despite being conflicting in a lot of ways. THIS IS NOT ME SHITTING ON FANON, i actually think most of this fandom is just a casual romp for most people and that shouldn’t be snatched away from them nor mocked nor treated like you HAVE to be logically consistent when this is just a fun hobby for most… but there are still trends i notice:

1: Jake the sweet bi disaster who loves their significant other and is just a little bit hopeless in their silliness and Down For Whatever-esque personality. this is often used for shippy pictures and memes and cute little oneshots, plus, of course, fluff.

2: Jake the tragic abuse victim who is extremely sad and has to learn to love again and has always been selfless, plus or minus a permanent disability post-fire. this is of course used for hurt/comfort, plus in combination kinda with michael in the bathroom-esque posts and tragic art, often also used as an example of the squip being the worst for jeremy or rich guilt trauma. also: aesthetic and moodboard posts.

3: the one I have the least good will towards: Jake the “why does everybody woobify mlm? You can’t portray him without flaws! queer boys aren’t your fetish!!!” with an attached, clunkily written reasons why he was an asshole that is also simultaneously watered down so you don’t think he’s a Monster bc then you’d be vilifying queer men (well, more like they’d feel bad about their cutesy-er ‘emotional support’ art and writing which is Totally Different from all the other cutesy emotional support art and writing). 

basically, Meta Trying To Make Jake Reasonably Flawed But Not Evil in this fandom is RARELY genuine–it’s more often than not moralistic hand-wringing made so that they can wash themselves of the guilt for actually enjoying something with a character they portray as mlm, or otherwise the guilt of enjoying anything romantic or sexual involving men or queer people period when we’re apparently not supposed to do that anymore, as decreed by the radfems infesting our spaces. 

and, well, or you’re an mlm writing this post, you’re probably young and still feeling extremely sensitive and scared about your identity. i once saw a very wise post by a trans person who had been trans for a long time, who said that when you first come out as trans (or queer in general, but especially trans people who are beginning social or physical transition and coming to terms with themselves) you are obvs on High Fucking Alert and so you’re insecure and scared of anything, ranging from “obvious transphobia” to “just trans people enjoying themselves and exploring transphobia in fiction or else their own sexuality”. again, this can relate to a lot of identities tbh, and as such young mlm either cis or trans can get very Itchy about people enjoying mlm content.

anyway.

wrapping it back around to me: i edit jake on a case by case basis (sometimes i even make him eviler or meaner based on what’s set up during Bway, he’s just not my usual go-to villain), but i tend to think of him as a tragic Mr. Peanutbutter-y sweetheart who kinda knows he feels like shit yet also knows that if he stops to assess it, it would make his life a lot harder in a time where he can’t afford that. his relationship with chloe is extremely toxic (chloe abuses him horribly, specifically), and so he tries to claw his way out of it only to be continually back in by chloe and her bullshit. 

this is why he doesn’t really get... well. he genuinely thought the thing with christine was going to be permanent; he wasn’t jerking her around, he thought he was over chloe and wanted a girl as cool and fun and genuinely nice as her. afterward he Gets It, and so feels Really Bad--at a time where he doesn’t have his house, his legs are broken (i don’t tend to put him in a perma-wheelchair), his parents have abandoned him, and he best friend is in the hospital. guilt crashes in on him from all sides, and he just has to... pretend it isn’t, even as he can no longer stop himself from thinking about it.

if i was to do a jake focused story, it’d probably be a dating sim where you play as him and watch his life change in conjunction with his attempts to find happiness again; you can either choose decisions that help him greatly or ruin his life so ver much... hmm. lets file that under hashtag “story ideas i’ll never use even though they could be great”

to wrap this up: i like jake. i don’t... really enjoy most of the written content (fanfic, meta, sometimes even the storylines on ask blogs) in this fandom about him or... really, most of the characters, which i feel bad about--i’d enjoy it more if it was every in conjunction with my usual Wants in a fic, which is, like. extreme angst.

BUT

i do still like jake, and i can super enjoy his portrayal in memes and visual art

he’s just not my total fave, but like, the reason he tends not to come up a lot in my content is more what i’m focusing on and why. i’d be happy to use him in stories if his presence fit.

as a bonus

here’s the ships i’m happy to use him for, generally: deere, michael/jake, brooke/jake, toxic chloe/jake, and of course, different ocs/jake

his identities/labels: cis, bisexual/romantic... tho sometimes i actually go for bisexual and aromantic! outside bway and eviler jakes, i’m good with him being any race, and even then it’s just a matter of suspending disbelief re: privilege theory. also, PTSD probably, and maybe generalized anxiety as a result. maaaaaybe autistic too? adhd would be a hard sell for me since he seems super put together in a way that’d be extremely difficult for every form of adhd, but i can see him being neurodivergent on the spectrum + like dyslexia maybe. oh, and i sorta-kinda think he may be color blind? but really i’d drop that at a moment’s notice if it’d be easier to write him without it lol.

his interests: one is more or less sports in general, tho i think that, unless he went straight for track or swimming or something Olympics (which he probably can’t do now...), that’s a high school or some college only focus for him. so, besides sports, i think he’d kinda like the satisfaction and steady growth of Collecting Rare Things That You Have To Look For, like cool rocks, bugs, etc. 

as for careers... some form of doctor something, maybe a businessman of some sort but he’d likely try to curve his power in that field as much as possible; he inherits his parents' assets and company or whatever, but he probably takes a backseat to that and only really has it out of a sense of ‘it’s my job as my parent’s kid to keep the company going--without engaging in the same awful legal issues they did--for as long as i can’. one of my fave jake-is-there stories, vanceypant’s spicy bis-focused fic 1999, has him owning a restaurant, and that was cool as hell.

also jake loves dogs. especially golden retrievers. yes.

[stillaswifty-archive]

Real life shipping discourse and Taylor Swift

Theres apparently discourse going on on tumblr rn about real person shipping. I figured I'd add my 2 cents since.....well this is absolutely not a shipping blog, but I do blog about a real person, and a lot of swifties have brought up kaylors in this debate.

(Disclaimer: I do believe in kaylor, and occasionally reblog some stuff about them, but pretty much only things taylor does/says. K*rlie has made it clear she plans on staying in the closet for now, and I respect that. I also think her """husband""" is an evil crook, so I dont feel like giving her pr while shes doing this. If kaylor broke up, then I am absolutely no longer a k*rlie fan. Anyone who would marry into that family for real, I could never support. But personally, I dont believe she has much of a choice now because of past choices. Anyway that's my current feelings on them. On to gaylor)

I absolutely agree with a lot of what's being said. A lot of fans of different pairings have really gone over the top and genuinely hurt people they say they love. That's absolutely inappropriate. I also find any explicitly sexual (nudity or sexual acts other than kissing) fan art/fanfiction/serious speculation about real people's sex lives to be absolutely gross and appalling. I know there are people who think Taylor is bi/gay and/or believe in kaylor that engage in those activities, and I do not support or engage with them. That is absolutely invasive and inappropriate. Anyone who does that about Taylor and joe is just as invasive and inappropriate. We do not have the right to that part of her life.

However, speculation not only doesnt do any harm, but has been encouraged by taylor. She has never explicitly said shes straight. She has never said that people that think she is bi or gay are wrong. She could immediately shut down theories and rumors and she doesnt. She encourages it. Now you can argue that she does that because she wants people to know shes not straight OR you can argue she is straight and just knows that theres nothing wrong with being gay and it makes her money. I think the second is stupid, but whatever, I'll give you that as a slight possibility. But regardless, she has done nothing but encourage speculation about her sexuality.

There is nothing wrong with being gay. There is nothing wrong with being bisexual. Speculating/theorizing people may be lgbt is NOT wrong. It's actually an entrenched part of our community and culture. And a lot of antis ignore/misunderstand that fact. Some people are genuinely closeted and dont want speculation. Those people shut down rumors and avoid any links to the community. I dont blame them, and I don't bother them. I may be able to clearly tell they're gay, but they dont want anyone to know. Taylor has never explicitly done this. In the past, yes, she has distanced herself more. Shes clearly only now actually in the coming out process. But she left enough hints, and shes explicitly said she leaves hints, to know that she never wanted to be 100% in the closet. If she did, she would've denied this shit many times in the past. And she never has.

I dont care that much about straight people having gay rumors. Theres nothing wrong with being gay, and if it bothers them, they're not good people. OBVIOUSLY, sexual stuff about them (gay or straight) is fucked up. But just saying they might be gay or bi? That's not bad, because it's not bad to be those things.

Stop attacking lgbt people online because some gross perverts write sexual things about celebrities. Sometimes the same people may do both, but not everyone does. and simply engaging in the cultural activity of interpreting gay signaling and having gaydar, doesnt make you a bad person.

What does make you a bad person (or at least an ignorant one) is finding any excuse to deny someone might not be straight, just because they havent said the words point blank. No one should have to do that, because no one should have to come out. If they align themselves with the community, repeatedly mention having girlfriends or reject gendered terms, literally use female pronouns in a romantic sense, and constantly drape themselves in pride flags, it is HOMOPHOBIC to throw them back in the closet, slam the door, lock it, and claim you're trying to keep them safe. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING LGBT. Regardless of whether taylor is really bi, if you think there is zero to slim chance she is, YOURE A BIPHOBE. And if you are a huge fan who follows her closely and you think there isnt a STRONG chance shes bi, YOURE A BIPHOBE. Ignoring soft come outs is at the very least painfully ignorant and accidentally homophobic, and at worst intentionally and viciously homophobic.

And that's that on that.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

My mom got me into The Vampire Chronicles a couple months back, and now I’m looking for the fandom. Why is the fandom so small? Why is there so little fanfiction? I often have to write fanfiction that I want to read. (Which is fine by me, it’s just I’m not that good at writing.)

Hey, welcome to our little corner of tumblrland! Share your fanfic with us, step out into the light, Anon! I’m often critical of my own writing, and I often have a beta reader, a dear friend who gives me constructive criticism and even rewrites lines if I ask her to do so, like an editor, a beta can offer a huge improvement on one’s writing. Maybe you’d like to find a beta reader? 

-PREAMBLE SORRY BUT I MUST- and no TL;DR for it-

Sometimes when ppl ask those questions, Why is the fandom so small and Where is the fanfic b/c I can’t find it, it’s argument bait, I’m sorry to say. 

But I’m taking it at face value that you are somewhat or totally unaware of our history, that your mom might not know, and that you are not putting out bait for argument. I’ll try to give you a synopsis in good faith, and hope that other ppl see this post as such. I’m not interested in taking sides, reopening those old wounds for the millionth time. I think of us as the bastard children of fandom, beaten in to a corner by a formerly abusive parent, and we are survivors of that. As such, I would hope that we could offer each other even more compassion than other fans in other fandoms. It doesn’t always work that way. Things can be misread and emotions misinterpreted; this is a text-based communication so we are cheated of facial and verbal cues, it is far too easy to misread intention.

What draws ppl to VC? From what I’ve learned over the years, a lot of us felt marginalized in one way or another and we related to something in VC, we drew strength from it as we were struggling with something in real life. It helped at a time that we needed it. It might still help us. Some ppl just like the purple prose! For real! 

Whatever the case, and however you choose to engage with canon or fandom, no one’s relationship to the books or characters supersedes anyone else’s. Not mine, not yours, Anon. We all have our own personal relationship with it. I hesitate to use the word “valid,” bc no one needs “validation” to love a book series or character(s). No one can be “invalidated” for loving a book series or character(s). 

I was in fandom before the internet, and even tho, as I’ll mention below, it was with only one other flesh-and-blood friend, we had our own 2-person fandom! We liked what we liked. We didn’t agree on everything, we still don’t, but it was always civil, and any argument was always based on curiosity and trying to gain a better understanding from each other. It was never about this public display we have now on tumblr and other social networking sites of idk, “My 10K notes means my opinion supercedes yours!”? I don’t subscribe… Unless those 10K notes are turning into dollars, then we’ll revisit it, lol. 

What even is the point of my blog? It’s for entertainment, my own experience, a collection of other ppl’s experience, and fanworks. When ppl say that I exert all this influence on an army of ppl, I am, in actuality, preaching to a big pile of cats, that’s how it feels. I serve catnip to cats. That’s the intention, anyway.They don’t even Like some of it, I’ll get like 5 notes on this post, lol. I have no need to be Right. I have no need to be anything other than a brief reprieve from how insane Real Life is and can be.

Fandom isn’t a contest. No one is keeping score. No one even knows your follower count unless you tell ppl (and I wouldn’t, bc even if you only have 10 more followers than smne else, it generally leads to envy). 

TL;DR for the below info: The fandom was small, but it’s growing now, and there is fanfic, try here on tumblr, and try Archiveofourown.org (AO3). Fandom, however, like Real Life, takes your own work to make what you can of it. 

FRICKIN’ WALL OF TEXT™ NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN

A) The fandom is was small bc:

^Gawds this is gonna be me on the outside eventually, it’s me on the inside sometimes lol.

It’s an old fandom, over 40 years old! IWTV, the first book in the series, was published in 1976.

Back then, fandom was just the ppl you could gather together, physical mailing lists, idk. It progressed to zines, probably, like other fandoms, but you had to know who was making them. I wasn’t born yet so I don’t know!

As the internet was born, ppl began to find each other on webrings, but even then, it was hard, bc Anne Rice did not approve of fanfic. So you had to know where to look or be lucky enough to stumble upon it.

By the early 90′s when I came into VC, there were some fic sites like Rotoli dela Lune (IIRC?) but AR waged a #war on fanfic, sending threatening cease & desist letters to writers, and that made everything EVEN HARDER to find. 

There were official VC graphic novels for a few of the first books and they are hilarious and cringey. Here’s Louis feeding on Daniel jeez… Looks like he wants a lick of the trachea first?

Of course, the IWTV movie in 1994 (in development hell for nearly 20 years) did bring in a wave of new fandom ppl, but they really only found whoever they physically met bc of the movie, and the VC books that were out at the time. Meeting in the audience at the movie? Or in bookstores in the Fantasy/Horror section under R, maybe? Probably?

[X] And TBH the movie got backlash bc it was reviewed as being too gay to some, and as not gay enough, but overall, it did well financially and is still considered smtg of a cult classic bc they drag it out and show it on TV leading up to Halloween or whenever Tom and Brad have new movies out ;D (one near-to-Halloween weekend I watched it 4 times, and that was too many, even for me).

Which was my situation, I had my one VC friend, we met in middle school bc I saw her reading QOTD on the bus, I pestered her that morning, and she had to tolerate almost 20 years of my fannish behavior ever since, all directed at her like a fire hydrant, and then she forced me to start a Tumblr and here we are.

*ahem* 

We had another small influx of fans with movie!QOTD in 2002, but as the story was barely tethered to canon, and for a number of other reasons, idk if it was the blockbuster ppl had hoped it would be. STILL, there are fandom ppl who find it nostalgic, or love it and embrace it even admitting its canon non-compliance. So I try not to trample it too hard, but trampling it hard was once encouraged! anyway… suffice it to say, someone(s) has to watch it with me and mock it to help me through it, lol.

In 2012, we got a graphic novel of Claudia’s POV during IWTV called Claudia’s Story. You can find it on Amazon.

B) The fanfic IS out there.

CURRENTLY, the fandom is experiencing a revival, we liiiiive!

with the recently published books and AR no longer fights the fanfic writers! Woo!

AR has a FB page and an official VC FB page, where she communicates with her People of the Page and whoever else comments on her posts.

There’s also a thriving community of ppl here on tumblr, who make fanart, write fic, do podcasts, write meta, cosplay, etc. Dig around in my archive and you’ll find them. We just did a @vcsecretgifts exchange and there’s fanfic in there.

Another great place to find fanfic is archiveofourown.org (AO3). You can set up an account and post your fanfic there, and I bet you’ll find readers who want what you have to offer!

There’s also fanfiction.net, and wattpad, but I don’t know those sites very well.

^^^All this taken into account, the thing is, anon, fandom is not an open door. 

Fandom is not a ballroom with everyone listing their url name down and committing to staying or even having civility, we can’t make a VC RP directory bc inevitably ppl aren’t invited for whatever reason, and feel left out, or they move on to another fandom anyway. It’s not everyone extending their dance-cards for you to sign your blog url for a dance with EVERYONE. We have had arguments and in-fighting, call-out posts, cliques… there are heated posts about certain characters or ships still getting reblogged with their 10K+ notes and an implication that if you “like” those certain characters or ships, that you’re contributing to real world harm. 

Fiction’s affect on reality is a debate that’s started before the internet and will go on as long as we are capable of communicating. Societies have waves of being more or less pure, like a pendulum. That’s not the focus of my blog. 

All debates aside, fandom is what you make it, it’s not guaranteed easy friendship. I once thought it was, but I learned the hard way that it’s very much like real life. You have to do the work of finding and reaching out to those ppl who you find a spark of connection with, and actively nurture that spark. On a public site, you have to extend yourself and show some opinions and thoughts, gush about what you love, reblog from ppl who you relate to, and gradually build your own network of friends. Nothing is handed to you. No one will crowd into your inbox bc your url sounds cool (well, maybe a few urls get attention bc of that!)(there is an exception to every rule).

So whenever I say “Welcome to our little corner of tumblrland!” I mean it, I do welcome all, and I hope that I’m going to see you flourish as you make your way into the space. Are you a new fanartist, or writer, or someone who’s supportive even if they don’t have the skills to create fanwork of their own? A combination? Show us, and reach out, and if we’re compatible, we’ll reach back.

[financingideas-blog]

Argument analysis: Sorting out a thorny statute-of-limitations question in False Claims Act case

New Post has been published on https://financeqia.com/awesome/argument-analysis-sorting-out-a-thorny-statute-of-limitations-question-in-false-claims-act-case/

Argument analysis: Sorting out a thorny statute-of-limitations question in False Claims Act case

The Supreme Court engaged in a relatively lively debate today over a thorny issue of statutory interpreting under the False Claims Act: how two separate statute-of-limitations provisions apply to whistleblower, or “qui tam, ” actions when the federal government has not intervened in a suit brought by a private party, or relator.

“These the different types of actions are exceptional in many ways, ” Chief Justice John Roberts find about the qui tam suits brought under the 1863 statute that was meant to combat rampant fraud by contractors during the Civil War.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. for petitioners( Art Lien)

Cochise Consultancy Inc. v. United States, ex rel. Hunt stems from a more recent period of U.S. military history — the deployment of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whistleblower Billy Joe Hunt alleges that Cochise Consultancy and another defense contractor defrauded the federal government in a contract to clean up munitions left behind by Iraqi forces.

The FCA helps the federal government recover some$ 3 billion in fraudulent contracting expenses annually, with the government taking the lead in about one-quarter to one-third of cases, while private relators initiate the rest( with the possibility of the government stepping in at any point ).

If the government intervenes in a civil action brought by a relator under the statute, the relator is generally entitled to between 15 percentage and 25 percent of any monetary recovery. If the government deteriorations to intervene and the relator successfully prosecutes specific actions, the relator receives between 25 percent and 30 percent of the recovery.

The case before special courts centers on the FCA’s two statute of limitations provisions.

As explained in David Engstrom’s preview, the law’s original statute of limitations, Section 3731( b )( 1 ), requires suits to be filed within six years of the alleged scam. In 1986, Congress added a second ordinance of limitations, Section 3731( b )( 2 ), which permits suits up to three years after “the official of the United States charged with responsibility to act in the circumstances” learns the “facts material to the right of action, ” but not more than 10 years after the alleged hoax. Both statutes of limitations apply to a “civil action under section 3730, ” and “whichever results last” controls the case.

Hunt’s FCA suit was filed in 2013, more than six years after the alleged scam, which occurred in 2006 and 2007. Hunt argues that his case qualifies for Segment 3731( b )( 2) ’s alternative ordinance of limitations because he filed suit less than three years after the relevant “official of the United States” learned of the alleged scam in 2010.

If the federal government had intervened in Hunt’s suit, the alternative ordinance of limitations plainly would have applied. But the government did not intervene. The district court rejected the suit as untimely, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11 th Circuit reversed, taking a position different from conflicting views in several other circuits. As Engstrom’s preview explained, the 11 th Circuit held that relators can invoke Section 3731( b )( 2) in suits in which the United States is not a party and that Section 3731( b )( 2) ’s three-year limitations period does not start until the government learns of the alleged scam, regardless of when the relator discovers it.

Arguing on behalf of the contractors today, lawyer Theodore Boutrous said that under the 11 th Circuit’s approach, “a relator could disguise from the United States and could wait to sue for a decade and still take advantage of the relevant principles of equitable tolling.”

According to Boutros, that approach would be incompatible with Graham County Soil& Water Conservation District v. United States, ex rel. Wilson, in which the Supreme court held that the six-year ordinance of limitations did not apply to actions brought under an FCA provision that governs retaliation.

Graham “held that these provisions must be interpreted in context , not in isolation, ” Boutrous said.

Boutrous quickly ran into difficulty. Justice Neil Gorsuch said :P TAGEND

I simply put my cards on the table so you can play them as you wish. In Graham, we held that retaliation claims just simply aren’t covered by this provision at all, and they don’t qualify under that introductory speech for either purposes of[ Section 3731]( b )( 1) or( b )( 2 ). Here, you’re asking us to split the baby, as it were. And we normally don’t read the same speech to mean two different things. And I believe that’s a problem you face that we did not face in Graham.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Boutrous that the provisions appear to give relators a longer statute of limitations than the government, but it may be important to look at the broader purpose of the FCA, which is “is to ensure that when some fraud has resulted against the U.S ., that there is recovery for the United States.”

Boutrous observed that Hunt waited seven years to file his qui tam suit, “and one of the cases that creates the conflict that brings us here was eight or nine years. It is so contrary to the very essence of equitable tolling to allow someone to lie in the weeds and disguise from the United States.”

Roberts interrupted him be asserted that seems to be more of an “academic concern.”

The relators “know if they don’t move promptly, another relator might preempt them, ” the chief justice said. “They know that if they don’t move promptly, the government itself might find out before they have a chance to file, and that would preempt their action as well. The hypothesi of a relator just sort of, as you say, waiting in the weeds I think is not a realistic one.”

Boutrous repeated several times that statutes of limitations serve important purposes.

“Ten years in civil litigation, memories fade, people — witnesses die, ” Boutrous said. “They disappear. And so the difference between six years and 10 years is a very long time.”

Justice Samuel Alito seemed most sympathetic to the contractors’ side.

“This is an interesting case because it actually does create a statutory interpretation dilemma, ” Alito said. “This is a terribly-drafted ordinance. It may serve wonderful intents, but if I were to grade whoever drafted it–anyway, I’ll pass that.”

But “you have a real problem trying to fit this into the statutory text, ” he told Boutrous.

Two attorneys argued that relators can rely on the longer statute of limitations even when the government deteriorations to intervene in a case.

Earl Mayfield, representing Hunt, said “the absurdity here would be if the statute didn’t result in the United States obtaining more funds or if there was some anomalous result.”

Mayfield said that Congress has “built a statutory strategy that restricts the very harms” that petitioners raise.

“Virtually all relators bring their suits … as soon as they get a lawyer who is able to identify the cases of fraud and bringing it forward, because otherwise … they’ll lose everything, ” he said. “It would be like taking a lottery ticket and falling it in the toilet. No one does that. And at the end of the day, every time a relator acts , no matter when he does it, whether it be year one, year five, or year ten, it is the government that ultimately benefits.”

Matthew Guarnieri, an deputy to the U.S. solicitor general, also argued in support of Hunt’s position.

“The key thing to keep in mind” with respect to the policy outcome, Guarnieri said, “is that a relator allowed to sue to vindicate an interest of the United States. The United States is the injured party in all of these cases. The United States is a real party in interest regardless of whether or not it elects to intervene in the action, the majority of any recovery would go to the United States. And in that context, it made good sense that Congress chose to construct the tolling rule in( b )( 1) applicable based on the knowledge of the injured party; that is, the United States.”

Despite some persistent questioning from Alito, both Mayfield and Guarnieri apparently felt confident enough in their arguments to finish well before their time had expired.

***

Past case linked to in this post :P TAGEND

Graham Cty. Soil Water Con. v. U.S. ex Rel. Wilson, 545 U.S. 409( 2005)

[ Disclosure: Goldstein& Russell, P.C ., whose lawyers contribute to this blog in various capabilities, is among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondent in this case. The author of this post, however, is not affiliated with the firm .]

The post Argument analysis: Sorting out a thorny statute-of-limitations question in False Claims Act lawsuit appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

Read more: scotusblog.com

[lesliepump]

Should Law Blogs Allow Comments?

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Comment Problems

Trolls

You might not be able to win an argument on the internet, but does that mean we shouldn’t even have the discussion? Back when Popular Science online content director Suzanne LaBarre (@suzannelabarre) announced that PopularScience.com would no longer accept comments on new articles, the free trade of ideas took a hit.

LaBarre provided the following reasoning for hitting the “off” switch:

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

Her argument that comments that call into question scientifically-validated topics are influencing people’s perceptions for the worse, doesn’t seem to me to outweigh the value of the exchange of ideas. Because people make stuff up and lie, and some people buy it, there should be no conversation at all? I feel like I’ve heard this before.

It seems to me that there’s another option: comment moderation.

While supporting PopSci‘s move, The Washington Post‘s Alexandra Petri wrote:

The few places where the comments sections are the home of a vibrant, riveting, polite discussion are the ones where the host site has made a vigorous effort to create community.

Exactly. Unfortunately, Petri also concluded that major news sites just aren’t the place to have good discussions:

And even if you are a regular on news stories (hi, folks!), the nature of big news or breaking science is that if it’s big and controversial enough for people to flood in to read about it, that small regular community gets overrun. It is hard to maintain community in the middle of a stampede. You only use the correct forks when you aren’t fighting through throngs of people to tear hunks off the new carcass.

For what it’s worth, at the time of writing, both The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as, several other major online newspapers, have some form of commenting turned on.

There’s little question that discussion moderation requires vigorous effort. Even tiny sites may have to deal with hundreds, if not, thousands of comments on a regular basis. And the overwhelming majority of those are likely to be bots, trolls or spam. But is the solution to end the discussion altogether?

Of course, there is also room for publications that don’t allow comments. And maybe a scientific research site isn’t a great candidate for debate in a public forum. And of course, PopSci is free to define its identity. However, their message, as Marie-Claire Shanahan, Research Chair in Science Education and Public Engagement at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada puts it:

Well we didn’t really mean for people to be engaged, we just want you to listen to us more.

I tend to agree with GigaOm‘s Mathew Ingram who wrote in response:

both wrong and sad MT @jaredbkeller: Popular Science is doing away with comments: "Comments can be bad for science." http://t.co/fsPaD5kAqp

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) September 24, 2013

I also still agree with Slate‘s Will Oremus in that moderated comments have value:

Writing on Slate, I’ve encountered plenty of both varieties over the years, and on balance I far prefer a mix of useful and useless comments to no comments at all. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been alerted to new developments, factual oversights, dissenting opinions, and fresh story ideas by readers using the comments section below my stories and blog posts. Commenters also help authors understand where they’ve explained a point in a misleading way, and what readers are taking away from their posts. Our commenting system is far from perfect, and yet I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Gizmodo’s Matt Novak neatly encapsulated the alternative: Writing on a site without comments, he said, felt like “whispering to myself in the wilderness.”

I wish Popular Science had taken a page from YouTube and come up with ways to make their comment system better.

Likewise, I don’t believe trolls, ignorance, and bots are sufficient justification to end the conversation on legal websites and blogs.

If your concerns stem from the resources required for moderation, there are a variety of ways you may limit those costs. For example, tools like Disqus can be configured to drastically reduce bots. You can also require users to register before commenting or use whitelists.

If you’re looking for examples of busy legal bloggers who are pulling it off, I direct you to Popehat and its comment policy.

Ghost Town

Another argument I regularly hear levied against comments goes something like this:

Blogs that have open commenting, but receive no comments, look sad.

To this I reply, “Boo-hoo.”

What’s more sad is that you decided to remove the ability for your audience to leave comments because of feelz or marketing. Instead, why not try to publish something that spurs discussion? Pro tip: this is actually much more effective for marketing.

The Case for Comments

Back at The Post, Petri observed that:

The more obscure and bizarre the niche group, the friendlier the comments. By and large the comments on your Erotic Lincoln Vampire Fanfiction are much kinder and better spelled than the comments on a major news story about, say, wiretapping and surveillance, which mainly consist of erratically capitalized screeds against the president and observations that would not be out of place in a toilet stall.

Which raises the question, do law blogs in general have the kind of niche audience that makes comments better than usual?

While generally not as inflammatory as the stuff found at PopSci, the legal blogosphere is hardly immune from, “shrill, boorish, specimens of the lower internet phyla.”

Furthermore, as some veteran curmudgeons are quick to point out, some of the comments may actually be eroding well-established principles of the practice of law. Should the legal blogosphere also “hit the off switch” on comments too?

Unfortunately, it seems the trolls are winning. Above the Law said farewell to comments in 2016:

Today the comments are not what they once were. Although occasionally insightful or funny, ATL comments nowadays are generally fewer in number, not very substantive (often just inside jokes among the commentariat), yet still often offensive. They also represent a very small percentage of our total traffic (as we can tell because of the click required to access them).

To me, it seems they had it closer to right back in 2009:

Here at ATL, we reserve the right to moderate comments as we see fit. We delete comments for reasons including (but not limited to) offensiveness, abusiveness, excessive profanity, irrelevance, or rank stupidity. Above the Law is a privately owned website; we have no obligation to provide our bandwidth to any particular user. Because we are not governmental actors, we are not subject to the equal-access rules of the First Amendment; when we moderate comments, it is not “censorship.”

But we also offer this recommendation to people who are offended by the comments: DON’T READ THEM. Toward that end, we want to make it easier for you to avoid the comments if you want to. Over the next 24 hours, we’ll be changing our site design so that comments will default to “hidden.” If you want to see the comments, you must affirmatively opt-in, by clicking a button to reveal them (either the “show them anyway” button within the post, or the “comments” button / counter on the front page).

At the risk of pummeling horse carcass, legal bloggers can use their judgment in deciding which comments see daylight. But I would suggest, that even those comments that go against everything veteran lawyers have learned from eons of practice have some value.

First, when attached to real identities, they help readers weigh the credibility of the person leaving the comment, as well as, the response. Second, they tease out “the work” of demonstrating why the comment is wrong.

To me, comments (even the dumb ones) are fundamental to the very nature of blogging. As noted at Wikipedia:

A majority are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via GUI widgets on the blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs, but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers. There are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments, such as Daring Fireball.

Sure, there are plenty of great one-way blogs. But there’s something special about a blog that can result in a robust community in the comments.

Social Media as Comment Substitute

It has also been suggested by some that social media platforms are effectively replacing comments. This was part of the reason driving MarketingLand��s and SearchEngineLand‘s decision to remove comments:

2.) We see much more commentary about our articles on social media.

We get a report every month showing all of the social activity surrounding both websites, and it’s not uncommon for each article and column we publish to get hundreds of engagements across social channels; our more popular articles often go over a thousand engagements. In most cases, this may just be a tweet or Facebook share of the headline and link, but very often there are comments and questions included in those social posts — certainly far more often than the few times our articles ever received on-page comments.

When I write an article for one of our sites, I regularly get engaged in conversation with readers on Twitter. And I see many of our staff writers and contributors doing the same. That’s anecdotal, but the overall evidence is unmistakable: Social media is where the commentary is taking place.

Here’s the problem:

Since your site decided to remove comments: I am left to discuss them on social media; Not much discussion this way either. ;(

— Bill Slawski ? (@bill_slawski) October 30, 2017

  When people arrive at a post or page, their attention is on the subject matter. Relying solely on social media for these conversations creates unnecessary barriers to the conversation. Most won’t bother to click through to Facebook pages to spark conversations. And those that do, face fractured conversations and platform limitations.

Social media is simply not a replacement for comments.

Comments and Legal Ethics

Of course, in considering whether to allow comments, lawyers must consider potential legal ethics issues. Especially those issues that relate to risks to clients and potential clients. Much of this risk can be diminished by holding comments for moderation before publishing. In other words, protecting clients and people with legal issues from posting something stupid that might put them in jeopardy. At a minimum, you should not allow any comments that reveal details about the commenter’s particular legal problem.

It’s also useful to provide visitors some information about your policy on comments. You might refer to The New York Times for some guidance. Or use something like this:

When you post a comment, you grant us the right to modify or delete your comment, but we have no duty to do so. If you want us to post your comment, make it coherent, relevant, and respectful.

Also, posting information about your legal problem on a public website is a bad idea. Any such comments will be deleted.

Mind Your Comment Settings

No matter which platform you choose, you should hold comments for moderation. If you’re a WordPress user (and you probably should be), get familiar with the comment settings in the Discussion panel:

I recommend checking the boxes for:

Comment author must fill out name and e-mail

Enable threaded (nested) comments at least 3 levels deep

An administrator must always approve the comment

For repeat comment policy violators, you can use the Comment Blacklist:

When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be marked as spam. One word or IP per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”. This text box acts the same as “When a comment conatins any of these words…” except comments which match these words will be deleted without warning. You may want to use this as a last resort, as genuine comments can end up deleted (WordPress 1.5 and later)

You might also consider requiring comment registration. However, Kevin O’Keefe provides a bunch of reasons why that’s lame. It really depends on the nature and purpose of your blog. But I agree with Kevin in that it’s likely to discourage people from commenting.

If you’re not satisfied with the WordPress comment system, there plenty of comment tools that can assist with moderation, like Disqus, Livefyre, and Facebook comments.

In addition to providing more advanced commenting options, third-party comment platforms can attract new readers. For example, if you embed Facebook comments, your commenters’ Facebook friends can see those comments, which may make them more likely to discover your blog. Remember, if you do use a third-party comment platform, configure them for moderation before posting.

What About Anonymous Comments?

One of the most effective ways to police unruly comments is to ban anonymous comments. As Jimmy Soni Managing Editor, the Huffington Post puts it defending HuffPo’s decision to end comment anonymity (citing Harper Lee):

We are capable of doing far worse things to one another when we do not have to own up to the things we do. The mob grants its members the gift of anonymity, but after Scout outs Mr. Cunningham, there ceases to be a “mob” in any real sense; there is just Mr. Cunningham, and associates. And when some kind of identity is attached to their group, the plans of that group carry a good deal more weight.

Of course, there are very compelling reasons against a total ban on anonymous comments.

It seems to me that we might want to nudge people to attach their identities to their comments, but at the same time, provide an avenue for anonymous comments. Again, this will largely be a judgment call for comment moderators.

My advice is to ask commenters to reveal their true identities, be liberal in deleting anonymous comments and allow readers to weigh the relative value of anonymous comments that meet “light of day muster.”

Should I Respond to Comments?

Responding to comments presents an additional layer of legal ethics issues. For example, can a lawyer respond to comments on their blog without creating an attorney client relationship? Sure they can. But they can also easily mistakenly cause someone to believe that the lawyer’s response was legal advice, thereby leading them to believe that such relationship exists.

So, should you respond? Sure, but don’t be stupid. Also, not every comment that’s worth publishing is worth responding to. Also, use disclaimers. Look, disclaimers are not magic Kevlar that will insulate you against every issue that arises. But they’re a good CYA practice.

If you largely ignore comments, you shouldn’t be surprised when people stop commenting, and perhaps, stop reading.

Law bloggers should also become familiar with how Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code (47 USC § 230) might apply to them, and more specifically, to comments on their blogs:

Your readers’ comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by email, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it. However, if you selected the third-party information yourself, no court has ruled whether this information would be considered “provided” to you. One court has limited Section 230 immunity to situations in which the originator “furnished it to the provider or user under circumstances in which a reasonable person…would conclude that the information was provided for publication on the Internet….”

Obviously, while Section 230 might provide protection from civil actions, lawyers are held to a different standard and really need to focus on the interplay of blogging, comments and their state’s rules of professional conduct.

Should Lawyers Turn on Comments in the First Place?

It might seem that comments are more trouble than they’re worth. If you’re feeling that way, you might re-examine why you’re even blogging in the first place.

To me, there are plenty of reasons to allow moderated comments. Comments extend the conversation beyond the substance of the post. They provide valuable feedback to the author. They can inspire future posts. They’re the symbiotic connective tissue between author and reader.

How Does it Make Me Look?

Some of you might still be worrying that allowing comments, but not having any, makes it look like nobody is reading your site. Well is anyone reading your site? If you mean to encourage comments and they are not coming, you should consider whether what you’re writing is “comment-worthy.” The lack of comments can be an indication that what you are publishing is not very interesting.

Do Comments Help My Pages Appear in Search Results?

Maybe. If your blog regularly motivates authentic comments, and you have properly implemented your commenting system to make it easy for search engines to index comments, then there’s little doubt that comments provide valuable feedback that search engines use.

However, if you don’t moderate your comments, leaving your posts riddled with spam comments, you might actually be hurting your posts’ chances of appearing in results. Furthermore, depending on your comment system configuration, you may be limiting your comments’ indexation. While Google has been indexing some sites’ Facebook Comments, it’s not clear that this has been completely resolved. Over at Blind Five Year Old, AJ Kohn breaks down some of the search issues presented by Facebook Comments. If you do use Facebook Comments, you should still extract them and display them inline for search engines.

As search engines continue to evolve, who comments on your site is likely to play a larger role in how your pages appear in search results. Yes, fix the technical issues preventing your comments from getting indexed. But more importantly, focus on publishing stuff that real people actually want to read and comment on.

Hopefully, it’s pretty clear how I feel about comments. What do you think?

This was originally published in 2013. It was updated and revised on 2018-02-13.

Should Law Blogs Allow Comments? was originally published on Lawyerist.com.

from Law and Politics https://lawyerist.com/should-allow-comments-law-blog/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[dmmowers]

No Condemnation

No Condemnation A sermon for Trinity Episcopal Church, Baraboo, Wis. Sixth Sunday After Pentecost | Year A, Track 2 | July 16, 2017 Isaiah 55:10-13 | Psalm 65 | Romans 8:1-11 | Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

My father died six years ago next month. He had a brain aneurysm at age 57 and lived three weeks after that, but never made it out of ICU. That episode, in the middle of 2011, is a significant milestone along the path to finding myself here as your Rector. That's another story. The reason I bring this up this morning is that in the aftermath of his death, I carried his work cell phone around for a couple of days. It was the old kind of flip phone. Raise the antenna, flip it open, tiny screen. I remember my surprise the first time I opened his phone and turned it on. There was space on the top of the screen for a short line of text that my dad had customized, and it said "Romans 8:1". I didn't know what Romans 8:1 was. I had loved the Bible for a number of years, and at times had posted Bible verses around in prominent places where I could see them. Romans 8:1, though, was not one of those verses. So I went and looked it up: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

My father was a good man, but a sinner like the rest of us. He took his failings hard, maybe harder than most people - a trait that I am certain I have inherited from him. More than once growing up my dad would lose his temper, or be short or curt with someone in our family, and then he would go away and come back later and apologize, and I could tell -- even as a teenager who was maybe not so inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt -- that he felt badly about whatever it was he was apologizing for. As a pastor, now, with a lot of experience with this sort of thing, I can look back and guess that the time between when he would walk away and when he would come back and apologize was filled with a lot of voices in his head, berating him for not being good enough as a parent, as a spouse, as a Christian.

And so, when we began to attend the Pentecostal Church where I was formed in high school, the place where I and my dad both learned to love Scripture, I can only imagine the joy that overtook him when he first ran across our passage from Paul's Letter to the Romans this morning. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." I. This is the good news that we have from God: even though we on our own were unable to cope with the power of Sin and death, God has been faithful to set us free from slavery to sin. We've heard a lot over the last five weeks about the Power of Sin - how it was at work in the world to destroy us, to condemn us, how it came into the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As a response, God chose Abraham to be the father of a chosen people, Israel, who would receive the Law and live according to it so that they would be a blessing to all nations. But Israel failed over and over to live according to the Law, because the Law was used by the Power of Sin to exploit the weakness of human beings. When you tell a toddler not to touch a stove, the first thing they think is that they should see about touching the stove. That is the same weakness that prevented the Law from achieving its purpose and setting people free from the Power of Sin.  

All of this provokes theological questions for some people. If choosing Abraham and his descendants as his people was God's response to sin, doesn't Israel's disobedience mean that God's plan has failed? In other words, if God's solution for the sin that entered the world through humanity was to call Israel and give them the Law, didn't that solution fail? And do we really want to follow a God whose solutions fail?

Other people wonder about Jesus' death. Questions like, "Why did Jesus have to die, anyway? Couldn't God have just gotten out his magic wand and made sin go away some other way? Why did Jesus have to offer himself on the cross in order to condemn sin? If Jesus' death really did conquer sin, then why is the world such a cruel place? Wouldn't it have made more of a difference if Jesus had actually dealt with sin in the flesh?

II. 

And finally, if Jesus' death really means that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, why do we still experience so much condemnation? We have a political culture that no longer debates ideas but rather throws around personal insults as if that is the best way to ensure that the government continues to function. Baraboo and Sauk County are not immune from this political culture: go read the comments in the News Republic about the county board chairman, or about investigations into the highway department, or the roundabout in front of St. Vinny's, or a dozen other things, and you will see that we are so often a people who do not debate ideas, but rather who call people names and condemn each other. 

I'm sorry to say that in my experience Christians fare little better on condemning other people than the general population. This week, Religion News Service ran an interview with the famous pastor and writer Eugene Peterson. Peterson is best known for The Message paraphrase of the Bible, but he was a pastor to a church in Bel Air, Maryland for 50 years prior to his retirement a few years ago. He has recently published When Kingfishers Catch Fire, which he has said will be his final book. I have a number of his books on my shelves and have found him to be a wise pastor to me, as well as a faithful, interesting reader of Scripture. Now, at age 84, he is retiring from public life and will no longer write or speak, and so agreed to be interviewed by RNS. At the end of the interview, Peterson was asked if he was still pastoring today, and a couple of the same sex came to him to ask him to marry them, whether he would do it. He answered, Yes. The next day, the internet exploded. Headlines blared about this famous pastor's change of heart. People who support the Church's recognition of same sex marriage fell all over themselves to praise Peterson. On the other side, blogs pulsed with rage over Peterson's thin reasoning and abandonment of biblical principles. The following day, Peterson published a retraction, stating that he had been taken off guard by the question and that he had been confused. He now said that he supported the church only recognizing marriage between men and women, but that he loved the gay people he pastored and that they had been and would always be welcome at his table. The internet exploded again. Headlines blared that Peterson had been pressured into retracting his change of mind. Blogs raged over how Peterson couldn't give a clear answer and so could no longer be trusted. The people who had rushed to praise him yesterday now condemned him.

This is what happens when we treat people as collections of positions, as a set of viewpoints. When we fail to attribute the best motives towards those whom we disagree with, when we fail to give our opponents on hard issues the benefit of the doubt, we are often doing so because we need to be right more than we need to care about the person with whom we're talking. We want to win arguments, to be heard without having to listen, to convince others without having to do the hard work of understanding what they are saying. We fail to give grace to others, and that leads us to fail to give grace to ourselves. If you're anything like me, the loudest voices of condemnation you hear come from inside your own head. Maybe you think about what others think of you. Maybe you think about your unemployment, or how small your paycheck is, or that you got too sick to work and had to retire, and the voice in your head is there to tell you, "You're worthless. Your life is over. Give up." 

Condemnation is rampant in our world, and in our own community. How can we, Trinity Church, make a difference for people in our community who only hear voices of condemnation? As I have lived among you as your Rector for these last four months, I know many of us care deeply about these people. My hope for this community is that we would become known as a place that does not let people sit in the darkness of condemnation, a people that goes out to the hurting so that they might be comforted. God would have us be a presence in this community that would tell the brokenhearted that in Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation, that the Power of Sin no longer has the final word, that they can be set free by the Spirit of Life. 

III.

But that doesn't stop us from wrestling with hard theological questions. In fact, the amount of condemnation in our world propels us to ask hard questions. If Jesus' death conquered the realm of the flesh and the power of sin, why is there so much condemnation in the world and inside our own heads? Why did Jesus have to die? Did God fail when he gave the Law to Israel? Why couldn't God have done something about sin without the crucifixion?

God's plan didn't fail. From the creation of the world, he knew that the command to Adam and Eve would be broken, that the Law would be misused by the power of sin. He knew that people would be bound up by the power of Sin, that the people of Israel would never keep the Law, and what's more, especially when they DID manage to keep the Law, it was not enough to deal with the power of Sin. God was at war, engaged in a cosmic struggle against the Power of Sin and Death, against Satan. Something decisive would need to be done to break them of their power. Sin had latched onto the creation God loved, onto the people God loved like an infectious disease sickening everything and everyone it touched. Such a strong illness required strong medicine.

So God came to Earth as a human being, Jesus Christ, to do something about sin. He was the person from outside, apart from the universal force of sin, who could do something about sin in the flesh. In coming to Earth as a human being, submitting to the most degrading death imaginable, Jesus conquered the Power of Sin. He became the Lord over sin. In conquering death, Jesus has submitted himself to the judgment that the Power of Sin rightfully deserved. He has heard the Father pronounce the death sentence over the Power of Sin and he offered himself as Jewish Messiah and Suffering Servant to take that sentence in his own body, and then the Spirit of life raised him from the dead, opening for us a new way of living and the hope that at the end of time, we will be raised from the dead just as he was. Because Jesus Christ invaded Earth, there is now a new possibility is open to us, a possibility that is without condemnation: living life in the power of the Spirit.

Everything depends on the pardon that God has extended to us through Jesus Christ. Everything depends on whether that word of no condemnation is spoken to each of us and that we also hear it. If that word of no condemnation is addressed to us and we hear it, we know that there is no longer a judgment to be feared - not from God, not from anyone else - because Jesus has taken the judgment onto himself. (Barth, CD II/1, 403)

The Father sent the Son as Messiah to offer himself to conquer sin, so that his death could defeat death and offer to us eternal life. IV.

That eternal life begins right now. For those of us who struggle with the voices in our own heads, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You lose a job and don't find another one immediately and tell yourself that you are a failure? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Your house is messy and your lawn isn't mowed, and you just know that your mother would be flipping in her grave if she could see your house now? There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You missed a payment on a bill and it feels like your life is just a pile of second notices? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You don't make it to church very much and you feel guilty every time you do for all the times that you're not here? There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The life that Jesus offers us is a life where we are free to be ourselves without fear of being condemned by others, a life where we admit to God and to each other that we are broken, that we need help, that we need the Spirit of Life to transform us, to make us new, to undo the effects of the Power of Sin in our lives. 

I yearn for us here at Trinity to be sharing our lives together deeply so that we can experience the faithfulness of Jesus through each other. I yearn for us to be able to share our faults, our struggles, our real-life problems with each other, and for our community to be a place where we can do that without fear of condemnation. I yearn for us to study the Scriptures together, to pray together, to eat together so that our life as a community following Jesus will be deeply compelling to those who observe it. May Baraboo know that we are Christians, not because of our rush to condemn people who disagree with us, but because of the ways in which we love each other. And remember, as I like to say from time to time: love is an action verb, not a feeling. Jesus' death has made this kind of community life possible because we are not in the flesh, we are not bound to the law of sin and death any longer. If Christ is in us, we have life because of his righteousness. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

[automationgeeks]

Blogging Income: Blogging Is Similar Thing

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Although it's easy to start a blog, hi John Paul, a no nonsense post and true to reality, Undoubtedly it's another thing making money from it.

As you say it requires hard work to get to that level, as possible as Surely it's to make good money with blogs.

At some point get and extra income on my blog that my be great I am not counting on it, Therefore if I could.

Hi JohnVery nice post and some interesting points you make. Here is not reason I started blogging, Know what guys, I wouldn't mind earning money on my blogs. The question is. It's always about learning and sharing, why should anyone comment on your blog if you knew it all and Surely it's all written there already?

I especially like you DON'T need to know it all.

All you need is a decent following or readers that trust you to start making a few sales.

Selling your favourite product or service on something you REALLY know is another great way to earn money fast with your blog. For example, you are losing it big time, if you should build it and have consider that they will come. Consequently, awesome post man, You nailed it all.) That's just fact! Did you hear of something like that before? I doubt if they will.

Your all worked up man haha I agree, it gets old when people come to blogging and ask me how they can make good income with their blogs yet they have 2 posts on it.

Yes there're many ways to earn money online.

You should find what fits you. To you face long hard road of building awareness, without it. I'm sure you heard about this. I had a couple of favorites until I read last one Someone Is All Ready Doing It.

It's much easier to compete in a niche that's already proven to work well for others.

You just tell it like it's.

I learned hard way that competition is good, as someone who entered a very small niche market years ago. Usually, great post John Paul! So, I always like your blog but I reckon so that's a bit of your best work yet. And that's lamest reason for not starting a business that I've ever heard. Oftentimes many people are fooled that getting their blog to 1st position on page one will drive HUGE traffic to their blogs, the thing is so that's not tocase. To enjoy big traffic from Google you'd better be on page one for MANY keywords not only one. Hard work is what it will for sure take and love how you helped folks see the myths of blogging. For instance, another great post and keeping it real as usual which is one of my favorite things about you!!! For instance, striving to write fresh new content for one blog on a reg basis is hard enough, never mind making an attempt to do that with 5 -10 or more blogs.

Yea if blogging was as easy as putting up ads and making money so we should all be rich.

That is great that you are finding your voice.

STRONG community first, and active community on your blog way before you push any products. Both you and I know what a harsh reality awaits them. I see a lot more people deluded by prospect of easy and huge income from blogging or online ventures. Thats what we need, more people to dispell myths and shout bullshit where necessary! Keeping your day job as you grow your blog will let your grow your blog with less pressure to achieve goals. Therefore, if you quit your job and wanted to make a living off your blog. You see, indeed your intro caught me once again.

Especially last part that you have to stay commited, success never happens over night. Excellent post John. I think another MUST for bloggers is networking and crosspromotion. Really important Whether not is up to debate but I believe that networking with other bloggers and building a readership beyond your personal graph is really,, or they knew that was what they have been doing at totime. Most successful blogs were able to create bridge points across different social graphs. Quitting your for any longer being that you've started blogging ain't a wise thing to do. Of course thanks very much for sharing. You must be certain your blog is bringing nice income before taking that bold step! Your same statement about making little with a couple of products VS a lot with one product can hold true for blogs as well.

Here's why micro niche's are becoming more popular and there're so most of them. Having 1020 microsites with $ 100 earnings every is $ 1000- $ 2000 and is easier to achieve than attempting to invest in a single site to reach those goals, it's far easier to earn $ 100 per month from one site than So it's to earn $ 1000 a month from one site. What are some blogging Lies you have heard? Tags. Hey John, all valid points. I think That's a fact, it's good that someone is finally showing things way they really are. Yea, I believe if poeople look for to make an extra 100 $ a month so they can do that pretty fast, 6 months or so. Yes, that's right! For you, I'm almost sure I say do some basic learning of blogging and WordPress hereafter just get to work.

Whenever learning things I felt I needed before I started my blog, m a little compulsive haha, I'm quite sure I could of started sooner but I wanted to be ready, To be honest I spent about 2 months just reading blogs.

An online business can move in different directions we just have to seize those chances when they come and roll with it.

Congratulations on your Social Media Manger clients and being in a position to take them on. It's a decent lesson for us all. Everyone should be rich, if it was this easy. Great point John, and I also agree with Pawel. Needless to say, a number of people have notion that setting up a blog with a bunch of ads and driving some traffic to their site will make them rich. Notice, micro niche blogs are becomign harder to do well with sicne Google new focus on quality.

Starting a blog is pretty easy and cheap.

Add to that Guest Posting, basic Search Engine Optimisation, Article Marketing and those are just a few ways to drive traffic to your new blog at no cost.

Now with social media, you can build a nice following of readers at no cost. You can get setup with a free blog and a $ 10 domain and your up and running. Basically, I think And so it's critical for people to find their passion, most certainly if you care a lot about your subject somebody else will So work that it will take to give it your all is like a marriage, and society has already proven that you may lose more than you win. Known I think it's possible that gonna be successful while others would not. With that said, your post has added more substance to this mad blog world, it's an ideal place to start.

Blogs are awesome for so many reason, people need to start for those reasons not merely for money since money wont come for awhile.

What I will say is you have to like blogging, you have to like all things that go with blogging for you to be successful for ages long time.

While learning to do all that is what actually was hard, as soon as you get all that clicking gether therefore a blogging income will come pretty fast. I especially like last part. For example, that one shouldn't be afraid to 'reinvent' wheel and try out things that others have done before you. Fact, if your talking about a full income from blogging so your looking at hard work for AT LEAST a year before you will see anything good. This is where it starts getting interesting. Mom was right.

There're many way you can make a blogging income. You just need to find what fits you and your blog. Basically the past 5 months I was getting clients hiring me to be their Social Media Manager. Because of what I was doing on my blog and social proof, they reached out to me, I'm almost sure I never planned to offer this service and I never even had it on my blog. For example. I am learning and working to make second income online. Let me tell you something. Love to have life balance and build my own side business in niche marketing, I'm consumed by my busy job. John, so it's an outstanding about all tolies.

Plenty of people wanna profit blogging in this down economy.

There's no get rich quick and free lunch.

Indeed, it should take time and hard work. Not, hell they both continue to learn today. You think John Chow or Darren Rowse knew everything about blogging before they started, right? Every successful blogger started at the initial stage. Anyways, you have to go with what you know and learn rest as you go.on job training. The reality is you are better to put out 5 -10 smaller products around one big product that way if your goal is to make $ 5000 a month, it going to be easier to make $ 500 to $ 1000 per product so it will be to make full $ 5000 from one product.

Making money from blogging takes time and lots of effort, much more than what you usually give to your employer and it may take years how many burger places we have in town, I reckon about They do compete for customers but all offer different experiences. Blogging is identical thing. I know it's funny you mentioned to burger joint. Content that is discused is fine to write here and there sinc eno one has your view point as well as like you said, its not new to you but it can be to your readers. Blogging is just one from many points of earning money online Either another,, or way. Also, try other way, if not. Furthermore, for people who succeed, job well done to them. Accordingly the point is to be authentic, form a strong relationship with your readers, and eventually money will come.

Lets not forget that now we're all interconnected in a global scale, that allows us to reach even a broader audience.

Competition is good, and there're so many people to reach out to one blogger could never do it all.

There're many bloggers that earn a blogging income doing quite similar thing and So there're just fine, as far as blogging. YAY! What I was really doing best in order to say is that it's an ideal post. Furthermore, it's only repetitive to me. As a result, after that, I believe two things. Essentially, my content had been discussed before but I have alternative perspective and spin. My readers may not know about bloggers that are bigger than for ages being that I target different markets. You should take this seriously. Everyday, I'm pretty sure I worry that my content is repetitive.