#avoiding negative shit. to the point where i’m starting to consider deleting my account

[pitasmare]

i genuinely don’t understand if it’s more common to be overly negative on twitter or if i’m just unlucky w/ the tweets that get peddled to me

[tauforged]

anon, i won’t publish those - i respect your desire to curate your online experience and naturally you can do whatever you like. i think it’s rather unfair that you assign some calculated malicious intent to my actions thus far, as if i wanted any of this to happen the way that it did. to be frank, ive been in a panic trying to backpedal for damage control after i posted a bunch of shit w/o thinking clearly while in a really delicate and volatile mental state, something im not very good at reining in and have been trying to get better about because i recognize that i tend to panic and lash out when im triggered. it became obvious in hindsight that my going on and on about what upset me was starting to negatively affect those around me, so i stopped and deleted everything because i didn’t want to further trigger anyone, not to try and avoid accountability or whatever the fuck you think was happening. i genuinely dont remember most of what i posted because i was in such a state, but if it hadn’t been a sensitive topic i would have left it intact because i stand by my feelings on the matter. you have been reading intent into my actions that simply is not there, and it’s clear that my behavior struck a nerve and reminded you of something or someone else, and i really am sorry for that, truly. i don’t want to be the person you’re describing, and ive never outwardly tried to be.

i do also find it a bit frustrating that you accuse ME of trying to create a ‘surveillance state’ and yet you have been the one to continually come back and checked my blog time and time again to see what i’ve been up to after i have made absolutely no effort to directly engage with you further. i ahve no ill will towards you, im mostly just bummed out that things happened the way that they did, but as someone who really struggles with paranoia and Has been cyberstalked before, i cannot deny that Your behavior has been equally upsetting to Me, to a point where i feel that i can’t even vent about my mental state on my personal blog without having to worry that my words will be taken out of context and misconstrued to be about something or someone they aren’t.

i respect your decisions to want to avoid me, and i honestly feel the same at this point — all i ask is that we genuinely leave this alone and stop coming back to it. i have made no further effort to contact or check up on you once since that first interaction, and yet you keep coming back and backreading thru my blog to react to it as if everything has been directed towards you. it’s not. i quite frankly have a lot more shit going on in my life outside of losing a mutual over a misunderstanding, shit that i have no intention of going into detail about because it is so insanely wildly personal, but to put into perspective, i did not have time to respond to that first ask you sent and explain myself before you blocked me because i had just gotten home from scattering my great aunts fucking ashes. i’m sure this is evidence of me guilt tripping or whatever, since im some sinister manipulative mastermind and not a human being with my own life and bullshit going on at the other end of the screen.

…that was a bit mean, but i’m leaving it in because i’m not really in the mood to hide my frustration with you anymore. i want. to be left. alone. you told me you wanted no further contact with me — i respect that! i get it! i’ve been doing my absolute fucking best to swallow my feelings and move on, i haven’t once even attempted to see what you’ve been up to, i truly don’t care. so why do YOU keep coming back?

i’m not changing your mind with any of this, and i’m okay with that. frankly, i don’t want anything more to do with you. i just want you to consider that your actions are more than capable of hurting people in the future, before someone else touches the same nerve and gets dragged into the same pointless slap fight with you. it’s very clear that you think i’m in the wrong here - again, that’s fine, i don’t blame you - and have been looking for further proof that i’m the villain here to make yourself feel better about reacting harshly. frankly, i don’t want to be responsible for your feelings. if i was the one who kept coming back to you and starting it up again, you would (rightfully) think i was a fucking lunatic. i don’t think you’re TRYING to hurt me, i truly do understand where you’re coming from here, but you have hurt me nonetheless and i need you to stop.

all i ask at this point is that nobody talk about me behind my back or make bizarre claims about my mental health. if that isn’t you, then i truly have no quarrel with you. i’m respecting your desire to be left alone - please respect mine. it’s done. please just stop. this whole thing has taken a tremendous toll on my mental health, and i have more important things to be working on than constantly being retriggered by tumblr drama on top of it all. i am begging you at this point to drop it so that i can move on the way i’ve been so desperately trying to.

i hope you can move on and have a great rest of your day, and i truly honestly do mean that. i have no ill will towards you, though ive been told by friends that i am being far too lenient here. i did not want it to happen the way it did, but it’s done now. please just leave it alone.

[djarrex]

Hi everyone, just wanted to address what happened last night along with some other things from before that all tie in together.

There’s multiple parts to the following post - please make sure you read all of it if you’re gonna take the time to even start.

It was midnight and y'all were still jumping in on anon and telling me how I'm awful for not commenting, owning up, or taking responsibility - I should have been in bed. I have a life and job outside this app; and with the several of you in my inbox and it being too late at night to address each, I’m gonna do it now. I can’t not say something about all of this. I just can’t keep quiet and ignore the problem - it’s not fair to you all. Deleting one post already has you guys even more riled up and all I wanted to do was offer something better than a ���half-hearted apology” (it was very late at night when I wrote that very short apology, and wanted a redo tbh). 

I really didn't want to make a long post like this. I reached out to a select few on here because I care about them (there's more of you, but like I said, it was at the time after midnight and I was fucking exhausted). but I was being demanded for accountability. So here I am.

Allow me to be real with you all, if that's ok. If it's not, well, idk. First I wanna address all you anons, who, instead of speaking to me one on one about all this, want to criticize me and shame me and my writing when truthfully it feels like you haven't even read more than a handful of my work. I didn’t realize that I write the clones all the same way? That I always make them super aggressive and uncaring and dom? “you write every single clone as so dominant instead as unique individual men with their own personalities” Interesting. See, that right there tells me you haven't read nearly enough of my stuff for me to believe that's true. That's one accusation I absolutely will not back you on because I know it’s inaccurate - saying how I group the clones into some overly-aggressive, and uncaring category - that I always write all of them as mean in bed because they're men of color. And hey, if I do write rough smut - which yeah, it's out there and I write it, as do a lot of you - there are warnings at the beginning, aftercare, dialogue, reader sharing their feelings, and most importantly... consent between the two. That’s what warnings are for, so that you know what you’re going to be reading. That’s why I, as we all do, appreciate warnings listed at the tops of fics; honestly, write them sub or dom or switch or however you want but don’t come at me like that. I’m sorry if I'm coming across as rude because I'm usually not, I’m one of the nicest people you’ll meet, but I will not stand idly by while you chastise my writing (writing that is pretty much the same type of stuff a lot of you write & rb with the same characters) that you haven’t read enough of to back such claims.

Next: Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart,

I get it. Really, I do. I fully understand the problem of whitewashing in SW along with almost everywhere else, and I do not agree with it. It's a huge problem, and it needs to be rectified. Now just because I don't speak publicly about it and opt out of publicly shaming TBB, doesn't mean that I agree with what’s going on. Not everyone is comfortable with sharing their opinions on a subject, no matter what that subject is or which side they're on. You live and you learn when it comes to that. 

It has never been my intention to fetishize POC in my writing, which btw, the same people who are saying that it is my intention are the ones claiming I portray all of the clones as the same, aggressive men, lacking their individuality. It’s a claim that is simply not true, and I know I have followers on here to back me up on that. I know what I've written; how about you check it out and tell me that you don't see the words "soft" or "fluff" or "cuddling" or “gentle” or “tender” within my work linked in my ML. Clone character being a good partner and father? Tender love making? Holding each others faces in their hands? “We/you survived” sex? Taking care of their partner? Saying “I love you” to one another? Confirming the safe word and going slow at first? Oh my - riveting and harsh stuff - totally unacceptable.  

Now: My admittedly problematic writings of Rex + Zygerria,

I went into writing that rp fic totally unaware and unknowing of the true implications. For that, I sincerely apologize. When I posted the NSFW alphabet, that’s when I was called out on that rp fic - not when I first posted it. Which the timeline doesn’t matter, I know that, but it concerns me a little bit that no one spoke up about it sooner - letting me dig myself deeper into a hole that I didn’t realize I was inside of in the first place. I've apologized once, and I know that doesn't negate what happened; I acknowledged my mistake back then, but I suppose that wasn’t good enough. I had asked you, anon, to message me to give me guidance, to teach me on what to do about the fic - you stayed hidden. Well, respectfully, what the fuck? I know we're all adults but don't lecture me and avoid me when I’d literally reached out for guidance on how to properly rectify the issue. I fixed my wording in some of my fics (the things I’ve caught upon rereading them) because I recognized and more importantly learned about and from my mistakes along with the unintentional negative implications of how I wrote those characters. Some of y'all wanna tell me that I "haven't learned"? Who are you, my personal blog police? My professor? My life coach? Are you even my friend? If I'm wrong and haven't learned, then fucking educate me. I worked hard on that rp fic, just like I do with a majority of what I write, but it doesn’t matter because I will delete it knowing that it’s harmful to others and I apologize for inadvertently romanticizing slavery with what I wrote - it was unintentional, and I’m truly sorry to those who have been hurt by it. I know it’s wrong, and there’s no proper excuse for it. Can’t go back in time, but consider it gone now.

Since that first wakeup call, I’ve been working hard to ensure I avoid using certain words and ideas when describing the clones in my fics. If there’s still something you see that isn’t correct or is inappropriate, please tell me! Don’t hold it in but then jump on the “attack M” bandwagon. Private message me, or come peacefully off or on anon, there will be no hard feelings. I don’t mind being corrected when I make a mistake - that’s just part of life, we all make mistakes and we live and learn from them. Making mistakes doesn’t = scumbag human. When you hold your breath and choose not to take the time to guide me, and if I appear to still be making the same mistakes, well, idk. I’m telling you right now that I do not mind if you message me with the good intention of pushing me in the right direction. When you come at me with hostility on anon, well, no thank you. To the anons that came without rage: thank you! I read what you wrote, and I have a better understanding as to how my writing had hurt the lovely followers of mine, and tried to address as much as possible in this post. See, angry mob anons? It costs zero credits to be kind and offer up your thoughts and advice with a good heart. I’m not going to hate you or block you if you try to correct me. I don’t block unless you’re a snoopin’ minor. Just don’t hold a knife to my throat.

Now: Why did I delete the tags and then my response to that anon ask? 

Simply put: I felt awful. Deleting it doesn’t immediately mean I’m hiding from it and ignoring the issue. I wanted to come up with a better apology, explanation, whatever you wanna call it, because my followers deserve that. The ones who enjoy my work, the ones who interact, the ones who I call my friends, the ones who know that I’m a good person. Didn’t want to leave the tags/post floating around all night, giving more people time to sharpen their pitchforks and join the mob while I attempted to sleep. Trust me, I know saying that I had no ill intentions when tagging that post doesn’t make it better nor does it make it go away. I’m just trying to show you my point of view, that I knew immediately how I should not have tagged it that way, so that’s why I deleted them. I corrected my mistake. But y’all are too fucking quick I swear.

One more thing:

I know some of you who had called me out with the passive-aggressive inbox messages are still following me, and for what? You don’t like what I post, which is why one would follow another in the first place, so why bother sticking around? Do you feel like you need to police my blog? You want to be there the literal minute I make a mistake? I’m gonna turn off anon for a bit, so if you wanna discuss, message me. Just know that if you’re going to come at me with knives out, I probably won’t reply to you. 

To conclude:

I’m sorry. Truly sorry for the entire Rex + Zygerria outfit + slaver ordeal with both the fic from a while ago and then the tags from last night. We can’t go back in time; the only option is to correct past mistakes that are able to be corrected, and then move on with new knowledge that’ll aid in me working even harder to ensure my writing isn’t inappropriate or offensive, and doesn’t hurt my followers nor the characters I write for. I’m still going to write self-indulgent filth and fluff, post-order 66 Rex, and other misc shit. I enjoy writing fanfic, as I know a lot of you enjoy reading what I write and love to talk to me about it. I hope that this didn’t come off as me being a bitch, because I’m really not. I enjoy interacting with the handful of people on here that I’d call my friends, and I love reading your reactions and tags to my fics when you’re excited and/or horny (LOL). It’s just after lunch time where I’m at, so I hope you have a great rest of the day/night/morning whatever for wherever you are.  

<3 

M

[jchall110]

So ordinarily I would put something like this on my Twitter, as that’s kind of turned into my personal vent/diary platform as of recent, but this is going to be much longer than Twitter can allow, and I need to write this all out without losing my train of thought. It’s gonna go behind a Read More, and I’d like to request that you only read it if we’ve been mutuals for a while, and only if you really want to. I’m not expecting any response, hell I don’t want any responses, I just need to put my thoughts down somewhere, and if I put it in a Google doc or something I’m gonna come back to it later and dwell on it, but if I just put it somewhere and immediately delete it, I’m not going to be able to talk to my therapist about it on Monday. Anyway, content warnings abound, as I’m gonna be talking about depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide, covid-19, stalking, emotional abuse, and a pretty negative experience I had in a partial hospitalization program at a local mental institute. You’ve been warned. (Also for those of you who are new here, “ignore me” is my personal rant/vent tag, feel free to blacklist it to avoid seeing future posts like this)

So. Here’s a brief recap of the past year and a half in my life. Back in October of 2018, my best friend went through a very bad breakup with her emotionally abusive ex, while another of my friends was struggling very much with his mental health and attempted suicide. I was miserable working at Target and was gearing up to return to school in the Spring. I had also had feelings for the friend who went through the breakup, and she sort of had feelings for me, but she also had feelings for the other friend, and I had some vague kind-of feelings for the other friend as well, so in December we all decided “fuck it, let’s all date.” I won’t recap the full details of the relationship but it was a goddamn shitshow. His mental heath continued to deteriorate and he wasn’t seeking treatment for any of it, her mental health was extremely poor as well as a result of two years of emotional abuse and extreme codependency issues, and my mental health suffered greatly because of the expectations placed on me, as well as his frequent mood shifts where he would go from wanting to spend the rest of our lives together to, at one point, telling me things in an effort to get me to hurt or kill myself. Not a good situation by any measure. School was good, though, and the two classes I took last Spring were excellent, and I was ready to go back to school full-time in the Fall. Flash forward to September of 2019. My mental health is terrible, though my academics are very strong. I decide, after a few specific incidents, that I can’t be in the relationship with the both of them anymore and break up with him. A lot of bad things happened. She ended up leaving him as well. Then, about a month later, she left me as well and moved out of the state with someone she had met on OKCupid only a few weeks prior. At this point I need to take a medical leave of absence from school and move back in with my parents because I’m so depressed and traumatized that I can barely function. You see, since breaking up with him, he had been harassing me, even after I had attempted to get the police involved. He would call me, text me, make new Facebook accounts to send me message requests, anything to try to get in touch with me. So with all of this happening, and with me basically unable to do anything, I decide to look into a partial hospitalization program at a mental institution not far from where I live. Insurance covered most of it, my parents said they’d pay for the rest, so I started the program in early November. Ordinarily it’s only a three or four week program. I was there for at least 5. It was essentially a day program, so I would be there from 9 to 3 every day Monday to Friday. It was a really great program, except for a few things. Firstly, because it was a program both for mental health and addiction, a lot of the programming wasn’t really applicable to me, as the only thing that I’m addicted to is sugar, and I have no plans to break that habit. There’s a history of temporary psychosis caused by mind-altering substances in my family, and I don’t want to even find out if it applies to me as well. I barely even drink. So anyway, I was one of maybe three people who was there exclusively for mental health, so my options for programming were a bit limited, until a bunch of us complained about the repetitiveness of that aspect of the program and they switched things up a bit. Unfortunately it was at the tail end of my time in the program, so I didn’t exactly get much benefit from that. Secondly, and more importantly, close to the end of my time in the program, one of the mental health workers, a pre-doctoral intern who was running most of the “classes” that I was in, said a few things to me that were really frustrating and upsetting. Firstly she said that “ADHD doesn’t exist, it’s just a reaction to trauma. Too many kids are getting diagnosed with it when they just have regular attention issues, and in adults a diagnosis is almost always accompanied with trauma. And of course people are going to perform better when they’re on a stimulant.” Which. Is wrong on so many accounts. First of all, it’s overdiagnosed in the wrong people and massively underdiagnosed in the people who actually have it, especially young girls. And secondly, of course it’s paired with trauma when adults are diagnosed with it. They’ve had to deal with it for their entire lives up until then without knowing why they couldn’t do things the same way as everyone else, and there’s also a lot of trauma in general that comes with having ADHD considering how many people say “Oh, you’re just not trying hard enough” or “You’re just making excuses,” not to mention the self esteem issues that come with it. And thirdly, yeah people will perform better when on stimulants, but does taking a stimulant make everyone else tired? Cuz it does for me because it lets me slow down my brain enough to actually sleep. So yeah, that was fucked up. But the second thing she said was probably worse, and it didn’t actually occur to me how much this impacted me until earlier today when I realized something, but I’ll get to that realization soon. So it’s my second-to-last day in the program. I had gotten almost no sleep the previous night because I had a massive panic attack right before bed because my asswipe ex messaged me some really fucked up stuff. So I’m way out of it, and my ability to concentrate is pretty shit. I’m doing my best, though, and I’m paying attention to the discussion. We were talking about the parts of the brain and how they’re impacted by trauma. There were a few times during that day where I had forgotten words but still knew what I was talking about, and at least one of them had happened in front of this woman. So she asks “Does anybody know what the part of the brain is that connects the two hemispheres?” I say “Oh, I do” cuz I do know what it is, but for the life of me I can’t remember what the name is. (It’s the corpus callosum.) So she looks at me and says, out loud, in front of the entire group, “You know, it’s okay if we don’t know everything.” So I get all flustered and embarrassed and mad at myself because, in my ADHD people-pleaser brain, the teacher just failed me in front of the whole class and now they all hate me. So I don’t say a goddamn word for the rest of the day, and the next day I leave without saying goodbye to that one woman, after leaving a glowing review in the exit survey. So the thing about this that’s really fucked up is that like two days before, I sat down with her and told her how I have a lot of specific trauma around rejection and failure, especially relating to my dad and how he constantly asserts that I don’t try hard enough or that I need to do better, shit like that. Like, that was a major theme with me the whole time I was in the program. It was like, getting over the intense rejection of my best friend/girlfriend running away with a guy she just met, and my relationship with my dad. That was it. (Of the two, the one there that’s still a major thing in my life is my relationship with my dad. At this point, she can fuck off with whoever she wants. I’m more pissed at her than anything else now.) So for her to turn around and embarrass me in front of the entire group like that, when there was solid evidence that a) I did know what I was talking about and b) I was having a very off day was really messed up. In thinking about it, there was quite a few messed up things that she did in the last week or so that I was there. Probably more during the rest of my time there but I don’t actually remember most of it because working on your trauma can be traumatizing itself, go figure. Anyway, I had almost completely forgotten about that until earlier today when I was thinking about how I was getting much more sensitive to rejection and perceived failure recently than I was before all this had happened. Part of it is probably my increased estrogen dose fucking with my mood, but the majority of it, I think, stems from that one incident of her pretty much violating my trust and invalidating me in front of like twelve people that I really trusted and felt close with. Fucked me up, yo. Anyway, so I leave the program and start working for my dad at his machine shop. Things are going super well, I’m making a fair bit of money, keeping in touch with my friends as best I can, and doing my best to avoid my ex harassing me further. About midway through December I change my phone number so that he’ll stop calling me (he had several ways to get around me blocking his number), and in the middle of February I change my name on Facebook so he won’t be able to find me and send me more message requests, cuz there’s no way to stop that from happening either, and the police were useless because “I wasn’t in any physical danger.” At this point he had moved away from my town, presumably back with his parents but I don’t really know, and I really don’t care. So he messages my siblings on Facebook trying to get my phone number, and then somehow finds my Facebook again and sends me a picture of him cutting his wrist. So I get fed up, go to a local domestic violence prevention nonprofit, talk with one of their advocates, and file a restraining order against him. It gets approved, and the messages stop. A court date is set for us both to meet with a judge to discuss everything and see if it needs to stay in place or not or whatever, and for about 2 weeks everything is great. Then covid-19 starts hitting. I get what was probably just the flu or a cold or whatever a few days before the court date. Then the state that I live in announces that most court hearings are postponed until mid-April. I check on the website and find that stalking and domestic violence, among a few others, are exempt from this and will be going on as scheduled. Because I was recently sick, I call the courts the day before and ask if I can appear over the phone. They say yes, it’s all good, great. So the next morning I call in and things get moving. It turns out that my ex didn’t show up to the hearing, even though he definitely knew about it. So I talk with the judge for a few minutes and we decide that I don’t need the restraining order anymore because he’s not likely to start harassing me again, and if he does I can always get a new one or get the police involved. And so far I haven’t heard a peep from him so I’m assuming that chapter of my life is closed for good, which is excellent. But then more things start to close down, and my dad basically tells me that he doesn’t really need me at work and it’s best if I stay home. So since then I’ve been staying at home. It’s been 15 days total that I’ve been home, with only minimal trips to work for an hour here and there. And I really don’t do well with isolation. It’s not all bad, because I live with my parents, so I have some social contact, but as was mentioned above I don’t exactly get along with my dad, I don’t have a lot in common with my stepmom, and my grandmother is a grumpy old lady who isn’t very good for conversations about much else than knitting and Jeopardy. I’ve been doing my best to stay in touch with folks online, and it’s been decent, but it’s still pretty rough. And when Animal Crossing came out and all of my friends started playing it, I started feeling even worse because I’m poor as shit and don’t even have a Switch, and they’re fucking $400, which is a whole student loan payment for me. So I’ve been pretty miserable the past two weeks. To top it all off, I have to register for Fall classes next week, and I don’t think I can even imagine that far into the future right now. The world is supremely fucked, and there’s almost no way that I’ll even be able to afford to go back to school. I’ll probably have to drop out entirely. For at least a few years. And I’m really not ready to give up on school right now. Like I said above, I’m really sensitive to failure, and this is the third time I’ve tried, and failed, at college. And I’m getting real frustrated about it. The first time it was my ADHD, which at the time was undiagnosed. The second time it was mental health and my asshole ex harassing me. Now, when I finally have my ducks in a row, it’s money. The one thing that no amount of treatment or medication or court hearings will change. Plus there’s all the political bullshit going on still, and the impending collapse of society as we know it, and any number of other global crises (yes, that is the proper plural of crisis) going on. Oh, did I mention I’m an empath and the moods and emotions of the people around me, and of the world in general, pretty heavily impact me? I’ve been able to tell when some massive tragedy occurred even before the news story breaks. So yeah, all in all I’m doing about the worst I’ve been doing since high school before I was on antidepressants, and it’s really hard to see any end to this tunnel. I know I’m one in several hundred million people who are struggling right now, and I’m lucky that I’m at least moderately healthy with a steady place to stay and things to eat, but goddamn if things aren’t shit for me right now. Like I said, I’m not looking for any kind of response, and if you even read all of this I’m legitimately surprised. I just needed to put this all down somewhere because keeping it in is getting to be almost too much.

Don’t worry, friends. I promise you I’m safe. I’m just scared, lonely, and really lost right now.

I love you all.

[theliterateape]

Misanthropic Tendencies and My Desire for Less Noise

by Don Hall

I’ve long argued that social media is merely a tool and, like a hammer, can be used for a positive outcome (hanging a picture) or negative (bashing a hole in the cranium of someone who cut in line in front of you in a grocery store). I still believe that.

My general manager at the casino has never had any use for that tool. He’s never had a Faceborg account, never even seen Twitter, and looks at me like I’m speaking Swahili when I mention Instagram, Snapchat, Tick Tock, or any number of the second-tier platforms. He has never felt the need to hang a picture or crush a skull so he never bought a hammer. He sometimes feels a bit left out of things, he’ll confess to me, when so many others are in the club.

I’ve been in that club for a good long time. I had a MySpace account. I engaged heavily in LiveJournal, Friendster, and Blogger for years. Message Boards of all stripes were the jam. When Faceborg came along, I jumped on it. Twitter took me some time to get the hang of but I greedily dove in as I did with Instagram. The point was to see and be seen. To promote your ideas and listen to others, to market your small business or advertise for your favorite bands, movies, restaurants, you name it. Social media connected me to everyone and made me feel as if I were a part of a larger community of people.

Except people became immersed in it and it changed how they behaved. As those who were too sensitive to exist in the world realized there were others just like them, the formed groups and cliques, and almost overnight, the platforms became exactly like high school. Overly dramatized bullshit pervaded. Guys who would never throw a punch became bold and confrontational. Anonymous accounts popped up in record numbers to level insults, calls for violence, and death threats.

Unlike my general manager I had immersive experience in this world. I could say I was quasi-addicted as I loved wading into the fray and arguing with, well, everyone. I found myself posting opinions that I knew would elicit those kinds of vitriolic responses and trolling, as myself, those folks I considered stupid and dogmatic. It was fun for awhile.

Last year, after moving to Vegas, something snapped. I had nearly 4,000 Facebog “friends” and only perhaps 500 whom I could pick out in a lineup and maybe 100 I could say I really knew and could call even friendly acquaintances. At the pool on top of the Strat while Dana and our friend Kelli swam, I sat in blistering heat and started deleting friends. Most were connected so I could market this digital ‘zine and events we did. It took a few hours with breaks in the pool. At the end of the purge I had 495 left.

With the bitter partisanship of our current moment I found myself blocking genuine friends because we might disagree on certain issues that ended up threatening the relationship. I continued to maintain that this was all just a tool that I was figuring out how to use in this expanded cyber-community.

I read about how Russian hackers used Facebot to influence disinformation and attempt to tip the 2016 election. I read that Zuckerberg’s monster was a breeding ground for the fascist Right and that Twitter was becoming the home of the equally vicious woke Left. As I perpetuated my own presence I began to disdain humanity. My time on these platforms was soaked in disgust at people, anger at bullies, and a gnawing and growing hatred for everyone around me.

Earlier this another snap. These platforms made me miserable. I spent hours checking in every day and then dwelling on everything I read that infuriated me. It was like willingly drinking acid daily. So I deleted my Fuckface account. I deleted my Twitter account. Friends wondered how long it would be before I returned like I was taking a break. But I didn’t miss them. At all. My days became less anxious. I chose what I wanted to read online and wanted each article to have been thought out and reasoned.

I did keep the Literate Ape Twitter account as well as my personal Instagram. For the most part, I just looked in. I tried to avoid retweeting or commenting. I played around with IG Stories. Slowly, I started engaging more. Retweeting perspectives I agreed with that somewhere in my snakebrain knew would stir up those dipshits back in Chicago or anti-maskers here in Vegas. I put more and more political pictures up in my IG Stories. I was getting sucked back in.

I couldn’t watch more than a collected thirty minutes of that first Trump/Biden debate. It made me want to destroy something beautiful like Edward Norton smashing Jared Lito’s face to much in Fight Club. Why would I want to sit and watch this fucking bully asshole yell and interrupt and lie and taunt anyone and especially a nominee I believe is simply a very good, empathetic gentleman.

Wait. Everyone at some point becomes Trump online. Everyone. 

There’s something to be said about dealing with real in-person human beings in the casino at the end of the world on a daily basis — anti-maskers, degenerates, hopeful gamblers, low-rent prostitutes, MAGA hat wearing truckers — that diminishes the optimism required to push forth. It’s a bit of a grind to deal with people seeking instant gratification and striking it rich against all odds. Adding to that the condescension, outrage (both genuine and signaled), and intractable certainty of zealots online is like taking it up the ass by a bull moose and choosing to eat some shit at the same time.

I don’t need Trump in my life. I don’t need to be reminded that a vocal minority in the country use this brilliant and extraordinary technology to mimic his tactics. I have an almost primal desire for less noise and, always a stripe of a misanthrope to begin with, my retreat to the less noisy, more substantive digital world has become a matter of sanity. No more Instagram. No more Twitter. No more Linked In. I am becoming a Las Vegas version of that guy holed up in a bunker or a throwback to a time when knowing everyone else’s opinions about everything else was a sign of lunacy.

As the blackjack dealer when being shifted out for a new dealer waves her hands to demonstrate no cards are up her sleeve, I clap my hands, wave my hands, and walk away to a place where the things I read have merit and the conversations I have are focused on common purpose rather than hostile power grabs.

I’m glad I played in these sandboxes for so long. Social media is a tool and sometimes it is a teaching tool. I’ve learned what I needed and am content to disengage.

I recommend you do the same.

[zacfaq]

PLEASE DON’T SEND ME “PASS IT ON” MESSAGES !! as sweet as some of they are they can be really annoying. i don’t check my PMs here! if you need to get ahold of me either send me an ask, or email me.

apparently necessary reminder: google exists! i’m not a know-it-all source, honestly i shouldn’t even be your second plan after google unless it’s a question specifically based on me or something relating to me

i try to avoid fandom drama as much as possible and keep a generally positive space, so please don’t come and ask me about stuff like that. thanks. 

if you want to commission me please send an email to zacharyjackbaron@gmail.com. do not email me through this address if your intentions are purely social and not work related

-what do you use to record and edit your speedpaints?

i use OBS to record, and edit in sony vegas

-what do you use to draw?

huion gt-191 and clip studio paint

-what are your pen settings?

just the default settings. all my custom stuff/things i’ve downloaded from CSP assets are just things i think look neat but probably never end up using. 

-a blog called papersans is claiming to be you! are they a thief?

that’s literally me, i use it to archive my art so i can find stuff easier without having to hunt through my tag. also available for people who just want to see my art n not my other posts

-when is your birthday?

february 6th!

-what is your sexuality?

gay. i like men.

-how long does it take you to draw?

idk like. awhile? sometimes 45 minutes sometimes four hours sometimes a week. 

-can i draw you/your ocs?

of course! pls show me after it would make me very happy !!!!! 

-favourite band/singer/musician?

i don’t know a damn thing about myself here’s a spotify playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Zk5o5g7nMnGt0vrJVEcDq?si=7cd248a0b64046ee

-will you do art for cheap/free?

nah. art is currently the only job/income i have, if ur interested in commissioning me you can either find my prices on like, any of my pages, but if not ur more than welcome to email me @ zacharyjackbaron@gmail.com and i can give you prices there !! -(venting or something involving abuse, suicidal thoughts, self harm, bullying, eating disorders, or other similar things in real life situations. even in fiction i’m iffy.)

i hate to sound rude or not be of help, but please don’t send these messages to me. they send me into horrible anxiety  for several personal reasons. if you’re having such negative thoughts i implore you to speak to someone you trust without an anonymous mask, or do your best to seek help from a professional. i have my own things to worry about and as much as i’d like to help, i simply can’t.

-(asking for advice that isn’t related to art)

i would love to help but i’m not an ~all knowing source~. i can’t give you tips for school. i can’t give you tips for life. not only will i probably not know a solution for you but there’s likely a chance i’m in just as bad a situation as you/going through the same problem, as silent as i am about my personal life. also don’t use ‘asking for advice’ as an excuse to vent about things or to send me a paragraph describing in depth something listed above/that’s potentially triggering. thank you.

even if you’re looking fr art tips i’m not a great source i’m still learning, ur best bet is looking for already existing sources and reading through those bc i don’t preach the word of Art God. i’m also awful at explaining things

-why didn’t you answer my ask?

Main reason is i’m just really really bad at socializing, so it’s not anything on u. i’m almost always low on energy and when i do talk to people it wears me out really quick. i’m also just. not gr8 at talking in general so if i can’t think of a reply i tend to just leave things n then end up forgetting about them

-how do you draw [blank]?

honestly my art style is such a fucked up thing that’s so personalized to my own use i can’t do or make tutorials. the best i can do is direct you to my youtube.

-can we do an art trade?

sorry, i’ll have to say no. i’m not necessarily busy but i get stressed very easily, so i try to keep my art to either personal stuff or work ! if you would like art from me, please considering commissioning me! mutuals and friends may be the exceptions here if they catch me at a good time or we make plans well ahead to do smth when we’re both free to work on stuff

-can we be friends?

please don’t ask this. i’m awful enough at socialization as is and i just don’t fit well with most personality types. not to mention this is just overall a bad question. it backs the person being asked into a corner where they either have to say “yes” and end up in a friendship that actually isn’t working out and is maybe only good for one side bc they’re getting any and all of the benefits, and if they say “no” they look like a total dick bag and come across as an ass. don’t ask this question. it’s not how socializing works. it’s not how friendships work. thanks. -can you tag [blank]? unfortunately i’ve been a real bad place in terms of memory so i can’t tag tons and tons of things. i try and tag more general/basic things but i’m sorry i’ll have to pass on specifics. if i post or reblog things that trigger u or harm you it might be best to unfollow for ur own safety!! very sorry

if it’s specific words you’d like tagged please consider blacklisting the word itself. 

-how tall are you?

i’m 5'11".

-can you promo me?

i’d rather not, doesn’t sit well with me. if you have a commission post you want me to reblog i’m happy to! but i won’t just do text based handouts, y’know? not a fan of being used for visibility for no reason, and chances are if i do it for one person it’ll happen with hundreds of others and i don’t want my blog to turn into a free advertisement zone that just floods peoples’ feeds with promotions.

-you reblogged something from someone extremely problematic/unsafe

thank you for letting me know! tell me what it is they did, even better offer proof on it. i’ll likely delete the post and blacklist their url to hopefully prevent their name popping up on my blog in the future. i won’t publish these asks mostly to avoid discourse or in the event false information is provided. sorta just safety precaution i guess

-you’ve done something bad

again, thank you for letting me know! if i post or say something questionable please feel free to message me and i’ll try my best to address the issue and adjust accordingly. i’m aiming to grow as a person so critique is welcome, both on me and my artwork. don’t just come up and call me an asshole or a prick or something, actually point out the errors and explain why they’re wrong so i can better understand and it doesn’t just turn into a defensive round of who’s worse, because i tend to be a very defensive person.

-i think someone is stealing/reposting your art!

thank you very much for telling me! don’t message them right off the bat, come to me first and i will deal with it. i’ve dealt with this shit tons of times and it’s tiring as fuck but i’d rather repeat the same stupid civil message over and over again than start a giant calamity over something and end up with someone getting hurt. if you do get involved please stay polite about it don’t throw insults just a simple “hey this art was done by princeofmints/tv-headache/zachary jack/dirtypip/(etc my other account names) and he doesn’t want his art reposted, please take this down or add proper credit.”

-can i use your art as an icon?

sure man. only on places like instagram, tumblr, or twitter though, and proper credit in an easy to see place must be given. if a piece of art is of my ocs or especially vent art though never use it for icons. thank you.

-can i repost your art?

the answer is “no” but i know you’re going to do it anyways. easy to see credit is mandatory. if you see somebody reposting my art please let me know and i’ll talk to them. if you want to use my art in things like image edits, i don’t allow that. want to use my art in a video? if it’s something like an AMV sure fine just credit me and inform me beforehand, if it’s something like a cringe/comparison video. no. i don’t want any association with work like that whatsoever. you may not use my artwork for fanfic covers.

-can i colour/finish one of your sketches?

no. even if you don’t intend on posting it. 

-what is [insert some form of media/fandom]

https://www.google.ca/

-why do you have an entirely separate blog for your FAQ? you know you can make blog pages, right?

i’m well aware of that and originally my faq WAS set up on a blog page, but unfortunately many folks proved to be either lazy or just couldn’t figure out how to get to a blog page on mobile so i had to set it up this way for accessibility purposes.

-tons of your videos are gone, what happened to them? will they come back? can you repost them?

i set old videos on private for my own sake, i don’t like having my old content available bc it just looks old and stale and i don’t like it. there’s nothing deep about it, i just don’t want people interacting with my old stuff. as deep is it gets is i just deleted videos related to fandoms i’m sick of bc the association is fuckin annoying. these videos will not come back into public. i do keep them posted for my own reflection sake, but that’s it. don’t ask me to bring them back. don’t whine about me not putting shit back out just bc ur a little sad n gonna cry. guilting people is gross, reevaluate yourself.

if you want a song from an old video, just ask me! I’ll happily let you know what the music is in case u liked ‘em and can’t remember the titles or artists. i’ve also got a playlist full of the music i listen to so u can comb through there n see if the songs u want are there

[fair-fae]

You know, I'm not a drama person, I don't like it, but it came up on my dash so much that I kind of had to read it. All of that nonsense could've been avoided if you didn't even take it to the public. Judging people for THEIR characters that THEY made and can do WHATEVER the hell they want with them? Oh woo ho good job, you're so popular for taking the "barrage" of it. No. all it did was prove that you're a D-bag and I've got a nice, long list of people to block now and avoid contact with.

Okay, anon. I haven’t bothered setting the record straight with most of this shit, because I know folks like you will continue to believe what you want to believe and hear what you want to hear, just like you’re doing now. But I’ll bite. You’d think all of you getting onto your soapbox about how you shouldn’t judge or attack others wouldn’t keep talking shit about a situation you know nothing about and/or are terribly misinformed about. So I’ll enlighten you with what actually happened.

A while back, the person in question got into an argument with some people on the RPC, trying to tell them that their interpretation of the lore was wrong. Rather than leaving it at that, when he effectively got shut down there, he proceeded to take a screenshot of the conversation and post it on his tumblr, complete with a rant about the people who disagreed with him, their opinions are so wrong and awful, how dare they disagree with him, etc. essentially playing the victim when he was the one to try to badger them for their opinions in the first place. He also left their names, icons, signatures, etc. in full view.I responded and told him he probably shouldn’t be trying to harass any other people about the lore considering his own character concept (thus, you would think, making my opinion on his character pretty clear). Why? Because it’s fucking true.I don’t give a shit about the lore or whether anyone follows it. Probably every single one of my own characters at least bends the lore. But at least have the self-awareness and respect for your fellow role-players to say “yeah, my character breaks the lore” or not get your jimmies rustled every time someone says “oh, yeah, his character is lore breaking.” You wanna break the lore? Cool. Own up to it. And if you do break the lore, don’t try to force everyone else into following it–especially when you can’t even admit you break lore and instead stretch the lore to try so hard to justify your entirely lore-breaking character concept. Don’t try to heckle people for presumably doing what you do but won’t admit. Granted, these people weren’t even breaking lore anyway, which makes his insistence that they were even more ridiculous.So after some excuses about how he was trying to start some intellectual discussion or something and not just drag these people despite featuring their identities and primarily just complaining about them throughout the post, he admitted he should have at least edited out their names and apologized. Great! You’d think that should be the end of it. I didn’t have anything against him at that point, but also had no desire/reason to associate with him, so I didn’t. A couple months go by. Some post comes across my dash. A girl in the community is doxxing her online ex-boyfriend in a callout post about him for unexpectedly breaking up with her because she “thinks” he was lying to her about serious issues and “believes” he was cheating on her. Because I’m a loud and opinionated person, and because that’s some heinous thing to do, I spoke out against it (via a post on my own blog without naming names, mind you, because I’m not going to hijack someone else’s post with negativity or call them out by name). The girl found it, assumed it was about herself, flipped out, and then of course I was the bad guy for saying doxxing isn’t okay. And then the person in question joins in. Not even to discuss the topic at hand, but to dredge up the old drama about how I was so mean to him and he did nothing wrong, etc. A pretty crappy 180 turn for a person who apologized and made it seem like there were no hard feelings, but whatever. Someone saw that he obviously didn’t like me, and seized the chance to try to talk shit and spread rumors because they knew he’d give them the platform. They sent him some anon about how I hate women (lmao). And of course, he published it, with no skepticism or disagreement, only more commentary about how I’m mean and awful. I went to respond, only to find myself blocked. So I went on about my life because it’s not that big of a deal, but hey. The moment you talk shit about me, especially in a venue where I can’t respond, especially facilitating some lies and BS rumors, especially after leading me to believe we’d made amends–you aren’t off limits. You don’t get spared niceness and politeness. Is that mean and petty? Probably.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ve never claimed to be a nice person.Now, to the horrible, awful thing I did to make this “public.” Fast forward to yesterday. I’d kept my mouth shut and left him alone. In a section of the RPC that doesn’t get a ton of traffic, largely because you have to make an account on the website and then manually opt in to this specific forum, several of us were discussing an absolutely awful person which is an unrelated story I won’t get into. Someone asked something along the lines of, “Are you guys talking about Underaged Looking Allagan Voidsent Chimera Demon Guy?” I responded with basically “No, we’re not talking about Underaged Looking Allagan Voidsent Chimera Demon Guy.” And that was it. We moved on with the conversation because he wasn’t who we’d been talking about. His name, tumblr, server info, in game race, class, etc. was all never given. No identifiable information beyond a very brief and tongue-in-cheek description of his RP character comprised of words taken directly from his own wiki, tumblr info, talk of his own character and RP posts.Someone saw the conversation, and based on our intentionally shitty description, was able to accurately guess who we were talking about and send him an anon to tell him about it. You’d think that would be pretty telling about his own RP, and this anon’s interpretation of it. He answered the anon in a long rant about me that featured both my in game name and my tumblr handle. In case you need me to spell this out for you, he went public with it first. I’ll also remind you that I was blocked, so I wasn’t/couldn’t be following him, and I was not properly @tagged in this rant, so I never would have seen it unless someone told/linked me, or someone I follow eventually reblogged it. And I honestly can’t imagine the level of narcissism it takes to write a long personal post full of wangst and victim-playing every time you hear a person had something negative to say about you or your RP character (not even by name–and by picking words from his own descriptions of his character), especially a person you have had issues with in the past and who you openly shit-talked yourself prior. Who does that? Lord knows my blog would be overflowing. Not everyone will like you, especially not people you jabbed at first. Especially not with an off the wall RP concept. Especially not with you trying to pass that concept is lore abiding and just “unusual.” Especially not with you trying to tell other people they’re “wrong” about the lore. Especially not with your character being a squicky, walking fetish and immortal jailbait. And that’s not even touching other things people have told me about this person that rubbed them the wrong way. Move on with your life.However, I found out about the post thanks to the OP himself when he unblocked me just to send me the link to the post and then before I could even read/respond to the post, sent me a barrage of IM’s still playing the innocent victim which is grating enough on its own but also included him straight up lying about ever posting/saying anything about me, insisting he’d done nothing to me, had nothing against me, this was so out of the blue and uncalled for, etc. When I pointed out this wasn’t the case, that I had seen and read the posts firsthand because blocking me doesn’t prevent me from seeing his posts, he began to lie instead about the contents of said posts and pulled some gaslighting bullshit about how I had just “misread” them, all the while either willfully or coincidentally not seeming to understand anything I said to him (I mentioned him publishing the anon about how I hate women at least twice and the response was always “I never said you hate women!!” Well no shit). He kept insisting that I had “gone behind his back” and that if I had a problem I should “say it to his face” despite the fact he’d had me blocked and that I’m not a douchey enough person to try to contact him despite that, and despite the fact that he had “gone behind my back” and not “said it to my face” twice now prior, and had done just that with his post about the folks from the RPC as well.He also insisted that the tumblr post was meant just to innocently “bring the issue to my attention to clear things up” despite me having no way to see it on my own unless by coincidence, and despite him proving to be willing and able to send me IM’s instead, which you’d think could render the need for a public post moot. When I pointed this out, he promptly deleted the post, lest anyone else see through his bullshit to what he was really trying to do.After my initial response to his wall of IM’s, he sent another wall this time with more insults and accusations, and promptly blocked me so I couldn’t respond. So yes, I made a vaguepost, I know, how awful, how dare I. A vague post vague enough that only someone who had seen his post, or who heard about it from him otherwise, would know who and what it was referencing. Until he responded to it himself, that is and unblocked me again to send me more angry messages to which I responded by permanently blocking him instead because this game of blocking and unblocking sure was getting old.Cue his charming friends sweeping in to tell me to eat a dick, making false accusations against my RP partner and I, sending me threats on Discord, telling people I flashed my breasts for money, etc. And the other person? The one who brought him up in the first place who I had only been responding to? Whose name he was given, was aired in the same public post on his blog as mine? As far as I know, she hasn’t gotten any hate, probably not a single message. And I’m glad, because she shouldn’t get any, she doesn’t deserve it. But at the same time, sure seems sketchy that the person who did the same exact thing as me–and who did it first–has not provoked anyone’s ire, not even been messaged. The public post in reply to the anon who named her, even, was aimed 100% at me. Now isn’t that funny. It’s almost like this was an excuse for people who already had beef with me to try to take shots at me and pretend it was justified. It’s almost like all you anon keyboard warriors don’t even know how this started or what actually happened.And now I’m going to talk about something else. You cannot do “whatever the hell you want” with your character. RP is a two-way (or more) street. There is a real person behind each and every character. These people are looking for fun just like you, and are every bit as deserving, and your fun shouldn’t impede on theirs. We are all allowed equal parts of fun.So when people play their weird ass lolicon/shotacon/pedobait characters, who is having fun? What if the other person in the RP was sexually abused as a child and you’re dredging up terrible old memories for them and making light of their pain? What if they’re a parent worried for their child, or worse, the parent of a child who’s already been abused? What if they’re an actual pedophile and seeing you RP this is tempting them, making them think they’re desires are normal and okay? Hell, what if they’re a goddamn ordinary person who finds it creepy and uncomfortable?What if the fetishized, futa ERP avatar is interacting with someone who is trans or nonbinary or intersex IRL? What if it’s triggering them (in the genuine, real sense of the word)? What if the walking affront against the lore character talking about being an Voidsent Half-Primal Garlean Spy in the middle of the Quicksand is ruining everyone’s immersion–particularly when they refuse to play along as others respond realistically IC and try to kill them or arrest them or kick them out? What if the OP af infinitely-stronger-than-everyone-else-around-him character is making the RP unfun for every other RPer involved because their characters can’t do anything but get beaten up or bow to his whims unless they stoop to godmodding or suddenly beefing up their own character?People can and will judge your character. Those judgments are usually best left kept themselves or quietly shared between trustworthy friends. But when your character trespasses on the OOC fun of the role-players around you? Sorry, my guy, people have every right to speak up. And all this nonsense? All this nonsense was a small handful of people who were already pretty nasty showing their true colors and getting told to pipe the fuck down. A pretty good outcome, if you ask me. So, please, block me, anon. My life will be better without idiots like you in it, and the same probably goes for anyone else you intend to block. Your nameless, ignorant, anonymous presence will not be missed–or noticed, for that matter.