#but i do want to get more active on twitter interacting with people and posting. i’m still in the dippiing my toes phase

[eebie]

i dontThink im chronically online because i don’t GAF about anything that happens on the internet the internet is an untouched stretch of pavement that i[m drawing on with chalk and everyone else is a passerby on the sidewalk and occasionally one of you sits and watches me draw or picks up some chalk yourself. It’s a peaceful life

[todayisafridaynight]

i’m pretty surprised that you can be in a fandom without really checking the tags regularly for new content or discussions that’s pretty impressive

ive got twitter for that and twitter has shown me enough as is

[marq-lynch]

Roll Call! Check your moots, see if they're ghosts.

Looks like the scare yesterday and whatever they had to do to restore order as well as the application of AI to do a lot of the moderation has done the same thing we saw in 2018: flagged soooo many posts and people incorrectly. Worse than last time even. Wow.

I was a ghost for almost three years, it's not that bad, here are the signs:

Your icon is pixelated to others (in this case not on the direct dash or DMs)

You get followed by no one but bots

You get no interaction except from beloved old mutuals and followers who you have had for years (and bots)

Your posts do not show up in the main tags

Your blog becomes unsearchable without the full name

Search on your blog is unusable (more than usual)

I just lived like this until I decided I wanted to come back from Twitter hell, put in a Tumblr support ticket, and was cleared in less than 36 hours. That was before the mass staff layoffs, but it looks like 'my blog has been incorrectly flagged as explicit' is the #1 automatic choice when you click Tumblr Support.

This time, specifically open a new message or choose a post like this one to send to someone.

They may be showing as clear in your activity and/or on your dash, but new contacts are showing flags.

Tickets are 30 seconds below!

[olderthannetfic]

Hey, so I know this is probably something that not many can relate, but I wanted to ask here anyways:

How do you guys do to not feel alone or lonely in fandoms? I'm not mostly active in a small one and almost all of us know each other, but yet seems like I'm an outcast. When I hear that most of the members are DMing one another or creating little creative groups and yet somehow no one tries to dm me and brainstorm ideas... or when some of them have called me their friends yet I try to keep contat and the friendship going and it feels like I'm just being pushy or stupid for trying.

Is funny, because in a way it was some of my fics that rebuilt the community around this fandom, and still it feels like I'm here to churn out fics and that's it. All the fandom interaction I get is minimal and seems like a chore to the others. I haven't felt this alone in fandom communities in the past.

Maybe it's how modern fandom is and I'm being nostalgic for the fandom experience of a decade ago, or maybe it's my brain being stupid. But yeah, just, what do you guys do if you ever feel lonely in fandom spaces? Could use the help. Also, love the blog. Have a nice day :)

--

Okay, first, one hundred percent, your brain is being stupid. I'm having a bad brain day today myself. There could also be some other stuff going on, but let's be real: your brain is being stupid. Not feeling lonely is at least half about general mental health management.

I don't think fandom is necessarily always lonely now. I do find that I've done a bad job of cultivating close friendships lately. I'm trying to finish up some projects, and my kid is entering a phase where it's hard to go to events. I think it's very easy to not have enough energy to make social things happen. It's also easy to not remember how much effort one put in in the past or to not have noticed at the time since one was in a more energetic, excited phase or happened to be in some situation where one ran into potential friends without trying (school or the like).

Now, it sounds like you're already putting in some work trying to connect with people. That's good. That's a necessary, though not always sufficient, step. It's hard to tell from the outside whether other people find it a chore. I'd guess that's more your brain sabotaging you than reality.

I think there's a strong possibility that these DMs you aren't privy to are less awesome than you think. People tend to assume everyone around them is doing better—better than those other people actually are and better than themselves. They seem okay on the surface! They must have their shit together, unlike me! (Spoiler: they probably don't.)

It's certainly possible that you're great at fic but much less good at conversation. If the things you want to chat about just don't mesh well with these other people's style, a DM conversation will grind to a halt. I can give the usual advice about being genuinely interested in others and remembering to ask about them, but it's totally possible there's just a natural mismatch that can't be fixed. It's also possible they all hang out on some discord together that sparks the DM conversations, but you don't like discord and thus aren't there when the conversations break off like that. Substitute twitter or zoom or whatever other divisive format as applicable.

I suppose the times I've really had a good connection discussing meta thoughts on some character or canon have been when I had a beta or someone I was brainstorming with. When you post fics, perhaps you could add a note that you're looking for someone like that, or you could offer to beta for others.

[ms-demeanor]

since twitter has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, and reddit has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, what do we do now that tumblr is becoming (more) actively hostile to its users? i’ve been here for over a decade so i know tumblr users are the type to cling on despite everything and revel in undoing every change, but i’m so tired of the way this website breaks the way it fundamentally works in order to appeal to new users. the twitterfication of the site seems so much worse than when people jumped ship after the porn ban, and even then, only small communities (and twitter) cropped up as solutions. you might not be the person to ask for a definitive answer, but i figured a tech blog might be interested in considering - what do we do when there’s nowhere left to go?

Okay so, I mean this very seriously: how has tumblr meaningfully become like twitter?

I don't personally find the sidebar view obnoxious and it seems to me like just another layout change that's pretty typical to tumblr. New users are getting signed up with a bit more emphasis on algorithmic feeds, but that is still very easy to change (MUCH easier than on any other social platform) and the algorithm has been there for everyone for quite a while, we just typically don't notice it because a lot of long-term tumblr users don't go into the "for you" feed.

I don't think that tumblr *has* fundamentally broken the way that it works to appeal to new users. My dash now is still very much like my dash in 2019, and still very much like my dash in 2018 (though much less pornographic). Reblogs are still reblogs, likes are still likes. Replies, for all that they seem like they've been around forever, are new and good and I think they work well. I'm irritated that the notes menu doesn't have a "view all" option but I think that's a worthwhile tradeoff for an easy way to see tags.

I *do not* understand why tumblr has broken linking back to previous reblogs but I don't think that's out of an effort to act like twitter; it is a bizarre choice that I dislike and don't understand but I also don't think that it has fundamentally changed the way the site works and i mean you've been around long enough that I'm sure you've had the same experience I have of going into the notes of a post and randomly clicking until you found a version that you wanted to reblog without a bunch of bullshit at the bottom. Tumblr has always kind of sucked, this change DOES suck but it doesn't suck in a way that is particularly novel or insurmountable. (For instance, I think this change sucks MUCH LESS than when they made posts with links invisible to the search, that is something that is genuinely bad that has been long lasting but doesn't get brought up much in lists of the ways that tumblr has gone wrong)

Tumblr *is* changing, but I think it is changing more incrementally and less terribly than other parts of the internet. I also hate the floating clown, the login walls, the dash-only view for blogs (you can't archive it and I HATE that), and - to an extent - the new lightbox on mobile. And I dislike that less than I thought I would but I don't think it's a fundamental change that necessarily impacts my interactions with the site - it *adds* a feature that I don't care for but it doesn't *break* anything that I require to have a good time on tumblr - in that way I think of it very much like Live. People hate Live so much and I find that perplexing because it is so easy to simply ignore it.

But that's not really your question; that's just some stuff I want people to think about because as much as tumblr has changed in the last two years it is nowhere near as fucked up as the recent things that twitter and reddit have pulled.

So, as to your question: where do we go?

Well. Not to be an extremely old person on the internet, but damned if I don't miss email lists. And forums. God I miss forums. Neither of those things has all the bonuses of platforms like twitter or reddit or tumblr or facebook, but they were great ways to hang out with people you liked on the internet.

The internet is changing. I can feel it, you can feel it, I'm pretty sure we're all like cattle in a field lifting our noses and hearing some distant rumbling and becoming slowly aware that it's almost time to run. There's a coming stampede and it isn't here yet but you know it's on its way. You're not imagining that, that's how things feel right now and there are a shitload of things contributing to it.

Things like SESTA/FOSTA and KOSA (which has not passed yet but is a big red flag waving on the horizon) have been eroding away the way that users on various platforms can function. Some platforms have consolidated in ways that harm users; some new platforms have popped up and shaken up the map of the internet; some platforms are being torn apart brick by brick by owners who don't care about the users. It kind of seems like people are actually looking up and realizing that advertising is A) bad and B) doesn't actually work and I think we're running straight toward another advertising-based crash like we saw in 2017. It feels like all the desperate things that tumblr is doing is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic as the internet as a whole starts to sink into the ocean.

Honestly, I don't think it's that bad. I think it *feels* bad, but I think we're looking at a slow whimpering death of the platforms, not a bang. I think tumblr is going to hang on at least for a few years and I think it's going to end up like livejournal and myspace, which both still exist as websites that are recognizable as updated versions of the sites they were in 2004-2010. The thing that I think would really, honestly hurt tumblr in a fundamental way is if it moved to a more algorithmic and data-sales based model of advertising, and I think that's still pretty distant. I think Automattic is aware that killing the chronological feed would be the one unforgivable sin that would cause a mass exodus and a final crash, and I think when we see that, when we can't just scroll through the feed and see what our friends did that day in order of when they did it, that's when the party is over here.

But that's still not answering your question.

So, where do we go? What do we do? Well, for now, I'd say it's a good time to get contact info for your friends across various platforms. Get email addresses, get phone numbers.

Now is also the time for you to set up a personal website. NeoCities is currently the best place to do this, though it takes a lot more effort than just starting a blog on tumblr. I think that various oldschool blogging sites like Wordpress and Blogger/Blogspot/whatever the hell the google one is are a better place to have your emergency backup than a more platform-y platform if you aren't up to doing something with NeoCities.

If you've got the ability to do so and a group of people who are interested in the same core subject, set up a forum. There's a decent amount of off-the-shelf forum software out there and a text-and-small-images forum isn't prohibitively expensive, but it's never going to be huge and you're never going to have the kind of spread and virality and random connections that you would on a platform with millions or billions of users.

If you can't set up a forum, setting up or joining a discord server for your friends is a decent enough option at the moment, and may be a very good option for people who are looking to keep their interactions more private.

But yeah i think right now is a great time for people to start setting up their own personal websites, to start visiting actual webpages again, to start bookmarking their friends' websites, and to start collecting contact info that isn't tied to platforms.

[notmuchtofind]

public eye pt2 | d.s

tw: low appetite, possible miscarriage, cheating

pt 1 here

a/n: it’s finally out lol!! tysm for the interaction on the past fic🥹 i hope you enjoy! lmk your thoughts x

"drew if it's not what you want and it's what I eventually want, are we even right for each other? What are we doing? You don't care for me like you usto, you're not the same. you're a dick" you say trying not to shout

"I don't know what I want right now?" Drew states, not looking you in the eyes.

How's he being so calm? Why is he doing this? This is not like drew.

"fuck you." You stand up out of the chair and walk right out of the cafe doors, tears start streaming down your face and you try to hide your face with the palm of your hand...

*snap* followed by a flicker

*snap* *snap*

fuck.

you look around...

"Is that paparazzi?" you mumble to yourself 

you walk faster to your car, quickly opening the door and throwing your bag on the backseat, you fumble to turn the engine on and see slight flickers through the rearview mirror...this is the last thing you need right now.

_________________________

After setting your keys aside on the kitchen table and kicking your shoes off, you immediately undressed out of the clothes you had picked out to see Drew in and chucked on your dressing. spending the rest of that day on the couch. Tears would brim in your eyes, often spilling over through the course of the day as you'd replay what had been said by drew in your mind. And there was no text from him. no apology, no checking up on you, no nothing...maybe this was really over? It seemed to all happen so quickly. How could you go from, what people knew as the 'IT' couple, to being, well...nothing.

Passed out on the couch, you are awoken by the pinging of notifications coming from your phone. In a dazed state your initial thought is that Drews trying to get hold of you. Your hand fumbles around the couch as you follow the sound trying to relocate the phone. You pick it up, eyes half wide, and check the time. 4:07am.

"fuck" you mumble too yourself, you've been on this couch for nearly 12 hours...

As your eyes wander down from the timestamp at the top of your phone screen, you lock your gaze onto the first notification.

Twitter : @drewobxlover03 Tagged you in a post.

'okay, pretty normal?' you think to yourself 

but as your sleepy eyes drift down some more...

6,789 more.

You quickly adjust your position on the couch, now sitting up as your back leans against the arm of it... your gaze widens.

Too caught up in your own trail of thoughts and distress when you entered your home earlier, The flickers from the paparazzi camera didn't even cross your mind. You were used to it to say the least, but you'd forgotten the difference in what they may have captured earlier on...

Your finger glides over the notifications and swipes to open.

You're met with a picture grid.

A "slideshow" full of your swollen teary face. Drews hands flailing around at you through the cafe windows. your figure towering over drew as you got up out of your seat. You abruptly dash out of the cafe doors...

The number on your twitter activity heading just keeps rising... and rising. 

A pit in your stomach starts to grow, but You can't help but click on more, its a bad idea... 

Met by more photos of you from different angles, red streaks from tears that have trailed down your cheeks. Feelings of embarrassment overcome your being.

until the embarrassment turns into dismay.

Your palm meets your mouth, shocked by the images on your phone screen, you're breathed.

They're in a car...pictures of him, and her... touching her face?...They're laughing? they’re way too close for your liking.

your heart begins swelling with hurt, you feel a physical pain ache within your chest, thoughts that it may almost rupture.

You scan the comments, your thumb appears to be scrolling too fast for your eyes to catch up. 

@user0844628495: OMFG HE DIDN'T TT!!???

@Chaseforeverxoxo: I never liked y/n anyways lol.

@obxstufffff: Who is she??? 

@starkeyandy/l/n20: no no no no!!! please, I don't believe in true love fr :((((((

@user984763097: I hate men.

You should've known from the moment Drew was being distant after he started shooting for the new film that there was something off, that he'd possibly found another girl. it just never seemed to cross your mind. Not your drew? Not after nearly 4 years and especially not after you guys were so public with your relationship. 

Maybe it lingered in your subconscious...but your heart was too heavy to allow yourself to slip that possibility to the front of your mind. You feel like a fool.

The only person who knew you and drew just as equally was Madelyne. After phoning her up and apologising for how late it was, you explained the situation. she offered to come round and comfort you, and you allowed her to do just that, as you sobbed into her arms she was wiping your tears. She didn't say much, she just held you...the truth is there's not much she could say...at least not to you anyways. But she promised the next time she and Drew would come into contact it would not end well, and she was adamant that it would be the last time she would willingly be in the same room as him. Even though you met Madelyn through drew, you and her hit it off so quickly, it's like you found your platonic soulmate as well as your romantic one...or so you had thought.

~~~~~~~

Madelyn was passed out on the opposite side of the couch when you decided to get up and get some water, your appetite was certainly not present but you figured you should hydrate yourself, your tears had drained your body from water. You glance over to the kitchen as you make your way there. The time reads 8am on the digital clock within the microwave.

As you drag your feet around the kitchen, collecting a glass to fill with water, your ears prick up to the sound of a knock at your door. Confused, you slowly redirect your journey and turn to the front door. You peak through the peephole, to find the boy you've been in hysterics over for the past, well...however many hours.

He knocks again, this time a little louder.

Your mind starts racing, your heart begins to pound and you get that ever so familiar feeling of anxiety that rushes over you.

You shake your head in distress and you battle with your thoughts on what to do next...

"y/n...please, open the door... I know you're not asleep"

He's right, he knows you well enough to know your mind wouldn't allow you to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time when you're feeling upset.

You glance over to the couch where Madelyn still lays, her breaths slow and fall steadily.

You step a little closer to the door frame and lean your weight onto one side. "um, Drew...I-I really don't feel like speaking right now"

"please y/n, just open the door, let me explain myself... I- i've been shit I know and ...i'm sorry, can you just hear me out?" Drew utters through slight cracks in his voice.

Tears brim in your eyes as you listen through the door to the words that trail out of Drews mouth...you tilt your head back and gasp for air as you try and hold back your wave of emotions. You want to see him, you want to talk, but you feel like you're almost stuck, unable to think straight, you're not ready for the emotional baggage that a conversation like this would bring right now. You figure there's no real explanation on why Drew has treated you the way he has for the past couple of months, and no excuse for acting the way he had in the photos you'd seen, it all hurt you, and it was valid. 

Your brain is scattered trying to figure out the right way to go about all of this...but almost before your mind could tell you no, your hand reaches for the hinges to unlock the front door.

your eyes lock together, and you can see Drews been crying, they're bloodshot and his eyebags slightly swollen. You look down at your feet as you quietly step outside the front door and into the apartment block hallway. "i've got to come out here, Madelyn's asleep..." you whisper slightly. Drew nods sheepishly.

as you close the door and shuffle your feet in front of Drew, you look up to him and fold your arms. "so?...you wanted to talk to me what do you want you want to say?" you question

"I just wanted to say i'm sorry, that I never meant to hurt you, you were right, I have been a dick, i've been scared and stressed and i've made some stupid decision I-"

"did you sleep with her?" you interrupt, you couldn’t truly hear drew out until you got off what was on your mind, you just needed to know first.

"huh?" He questions, his eyebrows burrowing slightly 

"Did you sleep with her?" you utter through a passive tone

" I-what do you mean ?"

"Ive seen the fucking photos Joseph! did you. sleep. with her?" you exclaim, hands gesturing to emphasise your emotions.

"What? What photos y/n? I- I don't know what youre talking about?"

your heart skips a beat

The truth is, Drew hadn't looked on twitter, Drew hadn't seen the photos of you, or him, or her. He always kept his phone on do not disturb between the night and early morning. And when the realisation hits...you can't help but snap.

A small chuckle slips through your lips. "are you fucking kidding me drew?"` you spit " you really was going to come here, apologies and not be truthful about what happened last night, do you think im fucking stupid? look at your fucking phone!?" 

But before Drew can get out his phone to check what youre talking about, you get out your own, shoving the image of him and another girl into his face. "this?" you state through gritted teeth.

Drews expression changes, his brows drop. 

"anything to say? maybe the reason youve been such a dick is because youre fucking your co star huh?" 

but before you could ask him once more, you notice his attention isn’t on you, but is drawn towards the floor

As you look down towards your bare legs, you notice drops of blood beginning to fall from in between, first slowly…then all at once.

cramping begins in your lower abdomen, however, it doesn't feel familiar, it feels uneasy…you begin to panic, facing drew with your hand now clamped over your mouth… 

“what the fuck y/n, we- we have to get you to a hospital…”

a/n: pt3??????

@winterrrnight @loves0phelia @f4ll-for-you @leyla-1905 @dilvcv @abarleyexistentbeing @tringeorge @emmsyysstuff @missamericanablog @deadxrx @clearpoetryobservation-blog @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @emotionsmgcbabe @aliciacat20

[kilibaggins]

WAYS TO HELP PALESTINE. FREE PALESTINE. DO WHAT YOU CAN.

I apologize for not being active to speak up this week during the strike like I've tried to be in the past. I'm not as active on Tumblr as I am on Twitter so it slipped my mind to be posting here about things since I usually don't post here in general.

I decided I'd make a post sharing different ways that you can help the people of Gaza, including ways to do so without donating to the families in need directly. This list includes options that are possible without money along with things that you can give money to to help. Even if you can't give money, you CAN spread the word for all of these things for free and while helping. Your voice matters.

ARAB.ORG

The first way that you (yes. you!) can help is by following the link below to be able to do a daily click that is able to help the people of Palestine. There will also be a link to their information on how it works if you're interested in that. Not only can you click to help Palestine, you can also click to help other causes which helps in general as well.

CLICK TO HELP

HOW IT WORKS

HIND'S HALL BY MACKLEMORE

"If the west was pretending that you didn't exist, you'd want the word to stand up, and the Students finally did."

You may have heard of Macklemore's new song HIND'S HALL, written about the current atrocities happening to the people in Gaza and in support of the students protesting, but did you know that the money that comes from streaming the song is going to UNRWA? You can stream this song for free and all the proceeds will be going to UNRWA (which, by the way, you can donate to directly: HERE).

I've heard from many comments and posts that the streams only count on Spotify if 1.) It is not completely muted, and 2.) There's a song (or two) played in between. This way Spotify will count each stream as a stream towards the song and allow for Macklemore to donate the proceeds.

HIND'S HALL - MACKLEMORE [Spotify] (Also on Youtube, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Others)

CREATORS FOR PALESTINE!

There's also the Creators for Palestine Fundraiser! A ton of different creators, including some of my favorites, are getting together to raise money for the PCRF (and more!).

"Creators for Palestine is raising money for Palestine Children's Relief Fund, a registered 501 non-governmental organization established in 1992."

"With the current state Gaza is in, we are looking to urgently raise $1M to address humanitarian needs and immediate relief, including providing essential medical treatment/supplies, food, clean water, and other necessities for families affected by the genocide."

While you may not be able to donate to them, amplifying their voices, amplifying posts about this fundraiser, etc. Can help spread the word enough that more people CAN donate.

CHADCHAD'S TWEET

JARVIS JOHNSON'S TWEET

FUNDRAISER LINK

WATCH VIDEOS

Speaking of creators, creators on TikTok have made it their goal to donate funds made by you watching their videos, listening to their sounds, etc. Search on TikTok to find these videos, these creators, these sounds, and interact as much as possible. You can do this by especially going through the Pass The Hat Hashtag and helping those who are speaking up about specific families in need.

#PASSTHEHAT on TikTok

Now, onto places, organizations, and people you can donate to.

PASS THE HAT

Speaking of Pass The Hat, I will link to a video by a creator on TikTok named Erin who has started this wonderful initiative. Basically, this initiative is being used to have TikTok and Instagram creators 'adopt a family' in Gaza so that they can speak up for that family and get as many donations as possible. While you may not be able to donate, going through the videos made by people that are a part of this initiative and watching them, interacting with them, and focusing on them, will allow their videos to be pushed to people who may be able to help more than you can. And that alone is life changing.

ERIN HATTAMER on TikTok

PROJECT PASS THE HAT VIDEO

OPERATION OLIVE BRANCH

While Erin is amazing for doing what she's done here, she has also made sure to amplify the voices of Operation Olive Branch and made sure to tell everyone that Operation Olive Branch, a Grassroots movement to organize & promote the safety and wellbeing of families in Palestine, was the operation to truly kickstart all of this. Operation Olive Branch has a TikTok account, which I will be linking, along with a cohesive google spreadsheet of families that are in need.

The spreadsheet has hundreds of families that are in need and includes links to their fundraisers, their goals, the names and ages of the family, and social media links. Each family is put into their own category such as Medical/Disabled, Mutual Aid, Gazan Heroes, etc. Along with a Master list of all of them. The main navigation page has many different recourses and links as well.

OPERATION OLIVE BRANCH on TikTok

FAQ VIDEO on TikTok

LINKTREE

THE SPREADSHEET

Here are some more specific sources and then I'll add different threads of GoFundMe's.

CARE FOR GAZA

Care for Gaza is, in their own words, a Non-Governmental, Non-Profit charity in aid of helping the needy families of Palestine. You can find all of the links I can find for them below including their GoFundMe, PayPal, and their Twitter account. Care For Gaza is a non-profit helping the people in Gaza survive day by day by supplying food, hygiene products, etc. to the people in Gaza with little to nothing. All over their Twitter they continue to post pictures of the products they have and videos of the people they are able to help continuously due to the donations they receive.

CARE FOR GAZA on Twitter

GOFUNDME [€849,343 of €1,000,000]

PAYPAL

ESIMS FOR GAZA

ESims For Gaza is another effort, which is being run by Mirna El Helbawi. She has been accepting eSims donations and distributing them to journalists and other people in need of them and there have been over 1 thousand eSims distributed. Even the smallest amount helps those in need and you can help people in Gaza continue to get in contact with their families.

MIRNA EL HELBAWI on Twitter

ESIMS FOR GAZA WEBSITE

NOMAD

HOLAFLY

SIMLY

AIRALO

Now, onto the GoFundMe's.

GOFUNDME'S

There are many Twitter Threads going through and listing so many different GoFundMe's for the people in need of escaping Rafah. Some of them may repeat some GoFundMe's but I still believe these threads will be helpful to allow you to find some families in desperate need. Here are a few threads (let it be known I do not know the people who I'm sharing threads from!):

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

There is also this GOOGLE DOCUMENT that has a list of different GoFundMe's and other donation sites.

Listen, I know this was a lot. But that's why I felt it important for it all to be in one place. There are hundreds of posts on Twitter, Tumblr, everywhere, that collects information for you like this. You just have to take the time to share it, to read it, to understand that you are not powerless in all of this. This post does not have everything, but I thought it could be a good start.

These people need our help. They need anything that we can give them and the least you can do is share around information and resources so those that can help know where to go. So that people know what is going on right now in the world.

Free Palestine.

[akitossohma]

i wanted to say your post about lu guang's morality is currently my favorite thing ever. im not sure if you're just incredibly smart or have the gift of prophecy but you are so right and the post is very very good

hi! i'm so glad you enjoy my post >.<

i tragically do not have the gift of prophecy, but i'm happy to explain my reasoning! spoilers ahead.

first off, i wanna say that when i made that post, it was less of a prediction and more of a reading of what the show had already laid out.

i've seen a few detractors of my post on twitter, all of them saying things along the lines of "this is a misguided take because lg is selfless. lg only killed vein bc vein killed csx. we have no proof that lg is sacrificing others." there's a lot to pick apart with these rebuttals, and i'll get to that, but i feel there is one essential point they are all missing: time travel in an of itself is an act of hubris.

going back in time with the intention of changing the past is one born out of great hubristic selfishness. anyone doing so is automatically (and wrongfully) assuming the role of a god.

the show is well aware of this. take the earthquake arc for example. as csx takes it upon himself to try and evacuate the village, lg points out that in doing so, he could end up inadvertently killing more people. this is because the butterfly effect is uncertain and lg knows this. that whole interaction functions two-fold. one: it establishes that the narrative itself is aware of the stakes here. it is an in-universe acknowledgment that changing the past, even if it's to save lives, is extremely risky and ultimately selfish. two: it establishes that lg is very aware of this truth, which is what makes the s2 reveal so shocking. despite being aware of the consequences, lg is still trying to change the past to save csx.

it also tells us that lg's steadfastness about csx not changing the past is likely born out of a fear of csx accidentally messing up the timeline lg is cultivating, and not out of some noble effort to minimize their impact on others' lives, which is how it was previously framed. all this evidence paints a very clear picture: lu guang is not the morally just character we once thought. he is placing his own happiness above literally everyone else's wellbeing. yes he is trying to save csx, but he's only doing that because he can't stomach the idea of living without him. his motivations are objectively selfish at their core.

back to the detractors: i feel some people are conflating lg's actions being done out of love for his actions also being selfless. and while i agree there is an (albeit twisted) form of love behind all this, there is nothing selfless about what he's doing. why does lg get to decide what the future should hold? why does any one man get the final say on what happens to the rest of the world, and all the billions of rich lives within it? hell, why does he even get to decide what happens to csx? yes he's acting under the pretense of saving csx, but does csx even want to be saved? would csx even be okay with what he's doing? i honestly don't think so. when csx believed lg had died, he contemplated using his powers to go back in time and save him, but ultimately decided against it because as far as he was concerned, lg wouldn't approve. he understands the potential chain reaction that comes from saving even one life because lg drilled it into his head. even if he is impulsive to a fault, at the end of the day, csx would never want to cause harm to others, especially not at this magnitude.

even if this effort to change the past/future fails, the fact that he was willing to take this massive risk in the first places says a lot about his priorities and overall character. while he probably doesn't actively want to sacrifice others, he absolutely will if it means keeping csx in his life saving csx.

in this most recent episode, just minutes before killing vein, he says to him, "do you know the butterfly effect? in a dynamic system, any subtle change in the initial conditions may lead to different outcomes. i've been thinking how to change a destined ending completely. if there is an additional point before this, an unchangeable point, what will happen? no need to fear the deviation. just let it happen more completely." lg killed vein partly out of revenge yes, but also to create another unchangeable node in the timeline. he is trying to secure csx's future by taking another life.

and none of this is even touching on how lg possessed a woman's body, which is a COMPLETE violation of her autonomy, to kill vein, knowing damn well she'd take the fall for his murder. lol.

so yeah. lu guang is (and always has been) a selfish, immoral bastard (she said with love), and the writers were very deliberate in setting that up.

there's so much more i could say on this but then this would get way too long, which it already lowkey is haha. thank you for the ask! i genuinely appreciate the opportunity to word vomit all this <3

[lowrahh]

Hey, remember gaypirates.club?

The little Mastodon server half of the OFMD fandom flocked to back in 2023, when we briefly thought Twitter was about to die?

That little server is shutting down at the end of this month (announced by @unicorndeathrace last week), and I'm here to urge everyone who has an account there to migrate that account to a different Mastodon server, even if you're only semi-active or abandoned your account long ago.

Mastodon lets you keep your follower & following lists – if Bluesky and/or Tumblr ever go down or fully enshittify, it'll be good to have your Mastodon account as a backup, with as many of those connections as possible still intact. The more people do this, the easier it will be to find your fandom friends in the next social media apocalypse!

It's actually a pretty simple process, and I wrote a step-by-step guide to explain how it works. You can read the whole thing here, but I'll share an abridged version here, aimed specifically at folks who aren't super familiar with Mastodon!

Part 1: How to find a new server (= instance)

The part people tend to struggle with is picking a home for their new account, so I've dedicated the largest chunk of this guide to that, but I'll also give some recommendations in case you find that part too overwhelming.

No matter what instance you choose, you'll be able to connect and interact with folks on all the other instances, unless their instance is blocking yours or vice versa!

The most important things to consider are:

What kind of community you want most to connect (if your answer to that is fandom, scroll down for a list of fannish instances!)

What kind of content you want to post/see

What you don't want to see

👉 Have a look at your potential new instance's “About” page (for example, gaypirates.club/about) for its individual Server Rules, Community Guidelines, and blocked (“moderated”) servers.

If you want to post smutty fanart or fic, make sure the server rules allow not just nudity/NSFW but also ~erotic content~! You should also check the exact conditions – for example, most instances will require a CW and/or tag, and some don't allow NSFW content in public posts.

You'll find lists of selected instances, sorted by category, at the links below. There are instances focused on fandom, queer community, specific regions/languages, instances for artists, writers, gamers, musicians – you get the idea!

If all that sounds overwhelming or just too hyper-specific, have a look at the “General” category!

If scrolling through lists isn't your thing, this little wizard can give you suggestions based on what you're personally looking for in a server:

❤️ If you just wanna hang out with fellow fans, I recommend joining another fannish instance! ❤️

Personally, I chose blorbo.social! If you're curious as to why, check out this post – it mostly boils down to “I like their server rules, and some of my moots are there already.” (hi @xieliansbignaturals & @ofmdrecaps & most recently @hamykia ... and anyone else I forgot, sorry I can never remember who all is on Tumblr XD)

Having said all that, I also encourage you to check out other fannish instances! Below are a few I've come across but am less familiar with than blorbo.social.

❗Note that this is not an endorsement of any of these servers – I skimmed their server rules but don't really know enough about any of them to say whether I'd personally recommend them! That said, if you happen to know that any of them are actually horrible, please do let me know and I'll remove them.

FederatedFandom.net:

Adult-only “server for the girls & the gays & seeks to provide a trans-inclusive, anti-racist space”;

NSFW images must be under a CW;

no “AI” content allowed.

fandom.ink:

18+ instance

“small instance designed for lovers of fanfic, fan art, fan meta/acafandom, fannish communities, and blorbos of all kinds”

erotic content limited to followers-only or unlisted posts

no auto-crossposting from other platforms

retro.pizza

Queer-run “poly-fandom nerd culture server”

NSFW, spoilers & potentially triggering content must be under a CW (see sever rules & their “Director's Cut” for examples/details)

fandom.garden

“queer, anti-racist, anti-ableist space”

Nudity allowed, erotic content restricted to followers-only posts from 18+ accounts

Runs on a modified version of Mastodon (glitch-soc) that has extra features but is potentially less stable

FanGlitch.space

Adults-only

“no anti-shipper/pro-shipper nonsense” allowed

“adult content” must be under a CW

Otherwise pretty minimalist server rules

Runs on glitch-soc.

Part 2: How to create a new account

This part is so simple I wasn't even sure whether to include it, but it's been a while since most folks signed up, so I figured I should, just in case it helps anyone 🤗 Otherwise, just skip to part 3!

Many instances have a manual review process in place to keep out spam bots, but if you have an invite link from an existing member, your account will get approved automatically! So if you want to join blorbo.social, let me know and I'll send you an invite! 💖

Go to your new instance's website and click “Create Account” or use your invite link.

Review & accept the server rules.

Enter your details and set a new password.

If you don't have an invite, you may now be asked to share why you want to join. For example, you can mention that you're moving from gaypirates.club because it's shutting down soon; for fandom instances, just mentioning your main fandom is usually enough to get you approved! Once you've filled everything in, click “Request account”/“Sign up”.

Wait for your confirmation email.

If there's a manual review process, keep in mind that most instances are run by a small team or even just one person, so they may not be able to approve your account immediately. You may find more info about how long the review process typically takes on the instance's About page.

Congrats, you're in! 🎉

You may now want to fill in your new profile by copying over your bio, profile pic etc. from your old account. But you won't lose any of that in the migration process, so you can still do this later if you prefer!

Part 3: How to export & transfer your account data

The actual account migration requires a bit of switching back & forth between your two accounts, so this part will be easiest if you have them open in two separate tabs/browser windows on your PC.

Step 1: export your data from your old account.

Go to gaypirates.club/settings/export

Download all the CSV files (see screenshot – yours won't be 0 Bytes, that's just cos I used my new account 😉).

I highly recommend you also download the archive of your posts & uploaded media! While these unfortunately can't be imported to your new account, there are tools that make it very easy to look at all the stuff in your archive once the server has shut down, without being some kind of tech wiz! I'll add a fourth part shortly to talk a bit more about the archive – that step isn't time-sensitive once you've downloaded the file, so just make sure you do that before the end of this month!

Step 2: link up your two accounts by creating an “account alias”.

Log into your new account and open the Preferences menu.

Go to Account Settings, scroll down to “Moving from a different account” and follow the link to create an account alias (or just navigate directly to [instance URL]/aliases).

Enter your old handle and click “Create alias”.

This action is completely harmless and will not disable or transfer anything yet.

Step 3: import the CSV files you downloaded earlier.

In your new account, go to Preferences → Import and Export → Import.

From the drop-down menu, choose which file you want to import, then click browse, select the file, and upload it.

Repeat the previous step until you've uploaded all your CSV's.

The number of accounts you're following might not match up with your old account immediately after import, since some may need to manually accept your new follow request. You can easily open those CSV files in Excel, Google Sheets or something similar to see all the accounts in your list, and you can always re-import them if anything goes wrong.

Step 4: transfer your followers & deactivate your old account.

This final step will deactivate your old account, put a redirect notice on it, and transfer all your followers over to your new account.

Until gaypirates.club goes down (cries), all your posts will stay right there, and you'll still have access to your data exports.

Once you're ready to move to your new account:

Go to gaypirates.club/settings/migration

Enter your new handle and the password for your old account.

Click “Move Followers”.

Don't panic if some of your followers aren't transferred immediately. This can apparently take up to a few days (in extreme cases), depending on which servers your followers are on.

✨ And you're done! Now, anyone who visits your old account will still be able to see your posts, but they'll be shown a link to your new account.

[mrkida-art]

PSA! I am (not) leaving tumblr. But… 

Hi people! I want to start this by saying, I am NOT leaving Tumblr. I am however gonna start focusing on other social media and go back to using my Tumblr blog as an archive for my art. This means you will still get to see my work if you follow me, but most of my activity will be on other sites (also, some of my other socials will have work previously unseen on tumblr btw!).  I won’t link my Carrd here (to avoid my post getting suppressed) but you can find it in the image or in my bio. 

There are two reasons for this, first, I have been neglecting other socials and I got to get my ducks in a row and actually build audiences on other platforms (esp since my “main” audience was on Twitter and well, you know what happened there). The second and main reason is because my engagement has totally died on this site and I’ve received very little feedback or response to my posts on here for a while now. I am grateful for all the interaction I do get and for those who continue to support me, but like most artists, one of my main reasons I post my work is for some sort of response and if I don’t get any, I am simply gonna go looking for other places where I do. Because well, that’s where I have the most fun posting and Tumblr has not felt very fun lately. It’s also very hard to gauge the interest of my audience here with the lack of comments, I have no idea what people think about my work.  What do people enjoy about my art? Are people bored with it? Are people tired of the subjects I work with?  I don’t know because my audience does not tell me, 99% of my notes are likes or reblogs without any sort of commentary about the art itself. 

And yes, I am very grateful for that support too, of course I am!  It’s just that comments are what motivates me to post, and with my note count going down more and more for every post I make, it's simply not worth it for me to put much time into this website with how things look right now (and how Tumblr users use this site nowadays) So instead I am going to try to put more effort into building audiences on other socials where people interact more with artists (like Tiktok for example, we’ll see what happens with the possible US ban though). 

So to summarize this PSA, I am not leaving, but I will mainly use Tumblr as art archive and focus on my other socials instead (and please go follow me there too!)      

[lukolabrainrot]

Calm theory anon here.. I've been busy with life but I checked in and I want to share some thoughts I have been having. Pictures are just a moment in time. I can look at a picture and think wow this couple really looks happy and you can look at a picture and say 0h wow there is sadness in their eyes I wonder what happened. People interpret differently and that's the beauty of everybody having their own mind. So you've seen a lot of photos, right with Nicola and Luke this summer. And we've seen twice now where people have misinterpreted situations. One pate gate people assumed that Luke didn't mind the photos, and that was due to the pictures we got. Later on someone put the photos together and a different story was told. Another circumstance the Nicola and JD picture we didn't get the photos in order and what happened assumed that she was just hugging him. As More pictures dropped we seen that they were actually taking a photo together. That's two times now that we've misinterpreted a photo. And that's fine because we all say this is theory. No one knows what actively going on. Not any of these big creators on Tumblr not any of these big creators on TikTok not any of these big creators on Instagram not any of these creators on Twitter. Not one of these people actively know Luke or Nic. All they're doing is taking a set of photos and likes and assuming situations. But as we've already established, there is something called misinterpretation. so anything you see or read can be a product of misinterpretation. Guys feelings and love aren't easy things to understand. Think about the last time you were in love. I was so confused and the feelings were scary. It was the best and hardest thing I ever dealt with. But imagine someone from the outside that doesn't know you trying to understand your feelings for each other. That's just impossible. Luke and Nic are people. They are dealing with feelings most of us have never dealt with seeing as I believe they are soul mates. I truly feel they will find their way.

💯

Ok I am going to say a few things, and I know my comments are going to blow up probably, but I need to get this off my chest:

Me, and NONE of the other creators on SM, actually know L and N, or any of the people in their lives. We are all coming to our own interpretation based on PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION. None of us have some special inside scoop into L or N's life, and no one should take our word as gospel! I share my opinions on what I am seeing, but I can't definitively say what is going on BTS, or predict the future. I think because we have a lot more questions than answers, we just want to know what is going on BTS. But we are never going to know that full story, and we have to be okay with that. We need to just let them cook, and see what happens.

I have mentioned this multiple times, but my background is in psychology and studying human behavior. I have also mentioned how ~70%-90% of human communication is non verbal. And L/N's non verbal cues speak VOLUMES and is the reason a lot of us are still here. I've talked about this a LOT on here, so feel free to scroll through my page and see my thoughts.

But it was all PR, right?? It wasn't. IMPOSSIBLE. The end.

I try to look at the FULL picture of ALL the publicly available information I have before coming to my interpretation. Yes, I have had a few little freak out moments, but I try not to fixate on a single moment in time, or a single post or interaction on SM. I try to look at everything in context of the bigger picture. And if you look at the larger picture, a lot of the information is pointing to L/N being a lot closer to getting together and going public at some point in the near future. This is my opinion though of course, and it is alright if some of you don't share my opinion.

I think a major reason I decided to start this blog is because I was having a lot of thoughts that I wanted to share around L/N and try and put a psychological lens on what might be going on BTS and what we saw during the PR tour. Another reason I started the blog though is because I have NEVER seen a connection like L/N, or seen people respond so positively to two people just interacting with each other. I am a VERY jaded person, and do not think super highly of the human species. I also have never believed in soulmates, but L/N are the closest example I have ever seen in my life. Yes I don't know them. And yes, I KNOW it sounds sappy. Trust me. I NEVER thought I would end up here today shipping two celebrities I have never met. But watching the way these two publicly interact almost felt like I had run into a unicorn or fairy in the wild. And by THAT I mean this. It is SO rare to see two people publicly show their affection and love for each other the way L/N do. Humans aren't great at it. Period. So I think we fell in love with the way they love each other (at least I know I did) because it is so rare to see, and makes us a little more hopeful. And that, and ALL the other publicly available information I have seen, is why I am firmly sat. I want to see how this movie ends, because I feel like when the PR tour ended, the movie stopped partway.

Lastly, if you do not ship Lukola, MY BLOG IS NOT FOR YOU. Also, if you find yourself spiraling over every new piece of information, this shipping space is probably not the healthiest thing for you. I feel like ultimately, shipping should be fun and not taken too seriously since we're just fans and we don't actually know these people. If you find that you are getting really stressed and not having a lot of fun anymore, it is definitely valid to take a step back. And it is fine if you have a different opinion than me or someone in the comments, BUT PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL. I am going to start blocking more people who are trolling in the comments. Ya ain't slick, people can see you 👀

[wolfertinger999]

I want to know what is wrong with the people following and defending Salem and Wis without even attempting to ask questions or challenge their claims. Instead, falling for obvious lies and not even attempting to get stories from the actual affected parties.

Why are you listening to Wis, who wasn't even involved in the situation, but posts about it on the daily publicly to shit talk an intersex latino person that she personally dislikes and already has a bias towards? Calling them a dog, calling them a groomer when dating a 19 year old Salem as a 22 year old, yet she isn't a groomer for dating 20 year old Salem at 23? Calling them white for some reason, as if that's a negative (Sawyer is not white, they are latino), yet gets mad when you call her a "cracker". She's ACTIVELY DEFENDING A RAPIST AS OF TODAY, EVEN AFTER ADMITTING SHE WAS IN THE WRONG. Even though the rapist Mari/MeggieBun admitted she raped Sawyer. And the rapist THAT WIS DEFENDS calling Wis "ugly", a "gooner", and that she "should kill herself". She will use ANY terms or lies to downplay Sawyer. Using TME as if that fucking matters in a situation like this.

Salem says nothing at all now, because he knows if he gets involved, his audience will keep digging. He's a part of it, whether or not he speaks up. Just as he didn't want to speak up about his shared groomer ex with Sawyer, Torin. He allows his girlfriend to speak lies on his exes name because he dislikes them. He is AWARE this is happening, and will not interact with Wis' posts about Sawyer. No intervention is still bad. Centrist bullshit. He's also interacting with a 16 year old minor a few days after the wolfertinger account pointed it out, when this happened in the past already. He ONLY responds to art criticisms or "hate", nothing else. That's the only way to prove he sees this account. He responds to almost every art criticism posted here, almost out of pettiness, through a vague post or a new drawing. Notice how his art almost always mirrors posts here, a day or a few after it's posted? It's fucking embarrassing. His pettiness runs deeper, trying his hardest to piss Sawyer off by making ripoffs of an oc he gifted them in 2022, Pepper.

They both claim to despise "pedojacketing", but will happily do it to Sawyer constantly, just to get away with it constantly because their fans blindly support them.

You have all of the evidence hand-fed to you, and you choose to side with terrible people because you cannot FATHOM losing access to mid furry porn. Use your resources. You literally don't need to use KiwiFarms for this. These accounts are full of evidence if you need them. PLEASE fucking try. Many screenshots are submitted and taken by me, or very rarely, from Twitter accounts I've nabbed them from who have been around for past issues, such as the Kungfurevvv/Kung Fu Revvy anti Asian racism situation, which only one person ever got a screenshot of.

Type keywords. It's so easy. I am begging. I will type some for you.

"racist" "racism" "nazi" "groomer" "grooming" "rape" "rapist" "lying" "liar" "admitted"

There are more. Think of some, and type it in. You can also view the archive if you'd like an overall view.

Use these blogs. If you don't trust screenshots, I don't know what you want me to say? You can talk to Wis or Salem directly and try to get a story from them if you'd like. Screenshots, a solid timeline, something. I doubt they'll have anything for you but a wall of text, snarky replies, or getting upset at you because you don't trust them. You will get blocked, though. You will also get blocked if you interact with this post, so be careful. You will also be on their radar forever.

I also never condone harassment, death threats, or anything of the sort. Be civil, be normal. Be upset, because these people are lying to you and many sit there and allow it to happen.

Evidence blogs:

@wolfertinger

@bunnyhazedayz

[nedlittle]

hey i don't mean to be mean or anything i'm just wondering about that marauders fans post.

how would a marauders fan art benefit jkr? how would a fanfic about gay and trans characters benefit her? i feel like it does her more harm that people think of her characters as queer. and i think most marauders fans already know not to buy her books or go to the wizarding world or watch the new show or whatever.

like when it comes to spending money everyone's careful to not support her except terfs and people support her ideology and whatnot.

i'm trying to think of how someone posting headcanons about these characters on tumblr can somehow benefit jkr

again, i don't want to come across as hateful or anything i'm genuinely trying to understand your point

thank you for asking this in good faith. i've been having trouble wording stuff lately, so apologies if this isn't as coherent as i'd like.

participating in the marauders fandom continues to benefit jkr simply because you cannot divorce the marauders from their larger context. the fandom may have turned the marauders into something more than glorified side characters, but they cannot exist without the framework of the harry potter universe which has bigotry baked into its very core. imagine we're all playing in a sandbox. marauders fans may be making beautiful sand castles and art with their own two hands, but they're using the sand toys that jkr left for them and the sandbox that they're playing in is in her backyard and in order to play you have to get your hand stamped by joanne personally.

it would be so easy for people to just....make their own ocs or switch to a different fandom. the marauders are hardly characters to begin with, but the inability to let go of a text which gives them basically nothing as characters ensures that the bloated corpse of the harry potter fandom continues shambling around long after it should have died.

and for the most part, the marauders are not relevant to normies. i think even if someone was a big fan of the books in middle school, but has moved on, they aren't going to think of the marauders beyond the characters we actually see on page. the prevailing cultural view of those characters in the context of how they were written is not "look at this cool and diverse friend group coming of age in the 70s and sticking it to the man" or w/e it's "those guys who were mostly in the background." most people do not think of these characters as queer because they aren't doing the mental labour of filling in jkr's world for her.

but because this fandom is so popular--it trends every other week, pinterest is filled with it, youtubers are making video essays on marauders fandom as a queer utopian reclamation of hp--jkr sees the continued relevance of people talking about her characters. she does not see the caveat that you are taking this character who is just a name on a page in some supplementary material and making her into a black lesbian (which is a whole other thing where ppl treat diverse headcanons as a "punishment" for bigoted authors in the same way that twitter libs will qtwt homophobes like "i hope your kids turn out to be gay" which is....not activism but anyway). she doesn't see desi james potter and gay trans boy remus lupin, she just sees the interaction between creator and consumer. she sees this as "people still care about the art i have made and must agree with my views". it makes her believe she still has an audience, which she definitely does unfortunately, which is why we're getting the series reboot and theme parks and merchandise for a piece of ip that peaked what? 15 years ago? i'm not looking that up

tl,dr in jkr's brain support of her work = support of her views

[swiftllama]

Anthony Complimenting Ian ☀️🔍

“I think that’s a big difference in us reuniting, is I am so willing to praise you and mention your strengths.”

Hey guys! Been working on this post for a while and so happy to finally share!

Before we knew of their reunion, there was this window of time where Anthony kept complimenting Ian on social media. That stood out to me then, especially after having very little interaction between them in so long. But now having the context that they were actually hanging out again behind the scenes, and that Anthony now makes a conscious effort to compliment/praise Ian makes it all the more sweeter. The said compliments I mentioned were posted at the time but the fandom wasn’t as active as it now is again so I wanted to compile a list of all the moments of Anthony complimenting Ian from their reunion to present for anyone who might’ve missed it. Enjoy!

Pre-Reunion

Okay so this first post is actually from before they reconnected. We know from the Smosh Reunion t-shirt that they reconnected in November 2022 and this post is from July 2022.

I like to think Anthony was in a better place with his emotions towards Smosh/Ian by this point, and that Ian had been on his mind and so a nice little compliment was to be had.

Post-Reunion

April 2023

5 months post-reunion and Anthony’s feeling more confident to joke around whilst still complimenting Ian. You love to see it! And Ian’s reply, him getting all embarrassed is cute 🤭

It also reminded me of these tweets from back in September 2017 :-

Confirmed: Anthony has a thing for calling Ian ‘daddy’. Noted. 👀

May 2023

Less than a month later and Anthony was back at it again with the compliments

Ian looks good and Anthony is determined to tell him at every opportunity!

And then…

June 2023

THE (PUBLIC) REUNION

And so ensued an abundance of compliments.

Anthony’s Interview

First lot of praise we saw from Anthony to Ian was in his interview with him. Tumblr sadly doesn’t allow you to add more than one video to a post so these are all quotes from said interview.

Like the tweet above of Ian getting his first chain necklace, they reference it once again. Ian is talking about how even though they’ve grown as people they haven’t changed that much, he references the fact Anthony has “more bling and tattoos” now, Anthony then interjects with :-

“Hey, you got a little bling too, let’s not discount it.”

Ian then shows the jewellery off and Anthony comes in saying “Baby’s first chain.” I like to think he was the first one to say that when Ian got the chain and where Ian got the inspo for his Twitter caption. Anthony then finishes this topic of conversation off by adding on that Ian also got “face bling too” in reference to his glasses. I know this isn’t really a full-out compliment and they’re just kinda messing about, but I think it still stands with Anthony saying that’s something that’s changed between them now is that he’s willing to compliment him, and I love how when Ian tries to downplay something about himself, Anthony jumps straight in there to lift him up too.

Another complimentary moment from the interview was when Anthony was talking about when he was 15 and came down with an autoimmune disease resulting in him missing half a year of school and Ian got a bunch of people to sign a ‘Get Well Soon’ card to give to Anthony to make him feel better.

“There is one moment, one thing that you did for me, when we were younger that really stood out to me that I never mentioned to you and I never thanked you for. I’ve been holding it in and I have never expressed it…. I don’t know how you got it to me, but somehow you got a ‘get well soon’ card that you gave to me - Okay, I don’t know if it was you who came up with the idea or your mom, or if like your mom told you, you had to do it. And a whole a bunch of people signed it and you wrote a message like ‘get well soon, we can’t wait to see you again’. And that, it really meant a lot to me, and yeah, it kinda kept me motivated and focused, and I don’t know why but for some reason it motived me to learn how to program a website, program a game, and I feel like because of that in some ways I was able to channel all my energy into creating the things that eventually culminated in what the foundation of Smosh was.”

I really love this moment, and I think it really shows Anthony’s growth. As was revealed in his letter to Ian, there was a period of time in which he felt he had more of a hand in creating Smosh in the early days, but the fact he can now acknowledge and recognise Ian’s input in it all, even before Smosh was a thing, and thank him for it really shows how far Anthony has come.

The last lot of praise from the interview is actually something Anthony has mentioned multiple times as you will see later on in this post and that is about their dynamic and how they work together.

“I think the fact we work in such different ways, like I’m able to really hyper-focus on something and put all my energy, just like back-to-back constantly in one chunk, I think that works really well when compared against the way that you work, where you are super creative and..”

Ian interjects by saying his head is “up in the clouds” when he works. Anthony continues by saying that Ian needs to be there to come up with the ideas that he does and then praises him once more :-

“I could never come up with most of the ideas that you come up with, but I feel I know how to formulate it and put it together.”

Next lot of praise for the month was this tweet :-

Anthony praising Ian, along with everyone else who had a hand in keeping Smosh going all these years. Similar to something he said at Vidcon when he interviewed Ian once again :-

“I just want to say huge, huge respect to you for staying with Smosh. For having that faith in it that it could continue to grow and be something bigger…” [audience cheers and Anthony points to Ian] “So huge, huge respect to Ian. That took a lot of tenacity - the tenacity you said I had, that’s where you really showed up. And Ian had to learn how to be a leader, Ian had to learn how to do all these things where he was just thrown into that because I made the decision to leave because Smosh, what it had become, was eating a hole in me and I felt I needed to walk away to figure myself out, to just grow on my own and I’m so thankful that you stuck around to keep it going so that we could do this [own Smosh again].”

And there was more where that came from and leads me onto the next lot of compliments :-

Vidcon 2023

“When Ian came over to my place to write… I remember I was sitting on the coffee table writing these jokes and you would say something and it would totally catch me off guard just like you used to do.”

Anthony said this so fondly to Ian, the “just like you used to do.” It goes back to what he said during his interview with Ian, which he got emotional about, that during the lunch where they reconnected properly for the first time, he saw his childhood friend in that moment. That despite how much they had both changed, the Ian he knew, the only one who can make him laugh like he does, was and is still there.

Anthony goes on to bring up their working dynamic again as he did in his interview :-

“While we were writing that sketch, while we were shooting it, there was this feeling - I didn’t realise it, but there was something missing from my creative process. Especially in creating comedy, that Ian just perfectly… I don’t know if I want to say yin and yang - I don’t know what I want to say about it. But it was just this perfect balance, that feels like in order for us to reach our fullest potential creatively, us working together is, in my heart, the only way for that to really reach its fullest capacity.”

Ian then responds in his usual way, trying to downplay his efforts by agreeing that their dynamic works well that way because he’s, in his own words, “kind of lazy.”

Anthony is quick to jump in though :-

“I think that’s a misconception, you’re not lazy.”

I love how he just outright refuses to let Ian talk down about himself nowadays. He will absolutely not have it!

Ian continues on and compliments Anthony in return by saying he is very ‘tenacious’ and ‘focused’, and ‘particular about things.’ Whereas Ian’s way of working, as Anthony goes on to say, is “throwing stuff out” and Anthony likes to pick out the best of the best from those ideas. And this is when we got the first of the ☀️🔍 analogies :-

“It feels almost like Ian is the sun radiating all these ideas in every direction, and then I’m the magnifying glass that’s like ‘let’s focus on this one, let’s make this one fire. This one’s amazing.’ And something about just the way that we work together just meshes so perfectly, and I think that’s how we became best friends in sixth grade, that’s how we established our sense of humour and why the Smosh videos that we created resonated with so many people, is because there is that perfect dichotomy between us.”

Do you think Anthony thinks their dynamic is perfect? I don’t know 🤔 I don’t think he mentioned it enough.

Jokes aside, it is very sweet. And I love how much he loves their connection.

The next lot of compliments come straight after the quote of Anthony praising Ian for sticking with Smosh whilst he was gone :-

“I’m super thankful - you know for the past six years it just felt like there was a hole in there [in his heart]. You know I’ve been creating my own interview series and it’s felt like this is a great way for me to be able to express a part of me, but not all of me. And that other part of me that wasn’t being expressed is that part of me that I now get to experience with you, and working with you, my childhood best friend, in creating something and being able to capture that magic and express it, and be able to present it for all of you [the audience], it’s a really, really great feeling.”

Ian then responds with another little compliment of his own :-

“I think on my side, you know when you left I was still making sketch comedy, I was still writing, but I never found the same kind of writing partner that I did after you. It was never the same. The way that we work together, I never quite found that kind of person to easily bounce ideas off to, so I kind of stepped back a little bit from the writing.”

It also reminds me of something Ian said during Anthony’s interview, about how they have this level of ‘trust’ between them, that Ian never found again with anyone else after Anthony left. Makes me so soft, they feel so lucky to have each other again. No one quite gets them like the other does and they can never replace what they have. Their connection truly is special.

This is more of a silly one and just them joking around but I’m including it anyways! They had a Q&A session with the audience after the interview and the person asking the question starts off by introducing themselves and saying how they met Ian the other day and apologises for calling him “old.”

They both laugh and Ian pretends to begin to walk off stage. And then, you guessed it, Anthony swoops in with a retort :-

“Hey! He’s 35 years young.”

Moving on to later the same day, after playing a live version of TNTL with the cast, they all had a sit-down Q&A :-

Q: “What inspires you? What made you who you are?”

And of course, as if he hadn’t already killed us enough, Anthony has to go and say this :-

“I’m about to say something totally whack. I’d say, Ian and my friendship when we first started really connecting. I feel like Ian taught me to not take myself too seriously and his sense of humour is just all over the place and I eat that shit up, I think it’s so funny.”

Like wtf. WHAT THE FUCK.

Ian’s reaction to him saying that pretty much sums up my emotions.

And that was it for Vidcon!

Except if you count this little cherry on top and the perfect closing to June as the picture is from Vidcon :-

Anthony being obsessed with Ian on main! You love to see it!

July 2023

Started off July with a bang and the ☀️🔍 article :-

Never getting over this! Anthony just loves the sun and magnifying glass analogy and I couldn’t be more here for it. Ian is the sun in his life 💛🖤

Ian Reads Anthony’s Angry Letter

And then came the infamous letter video. Which even though there were a few hurtful things revealed, there still managed to be a few nods of acknowledgment towards Ian even in that hurt Anthony felt.

As mentioned earlier in this post, in part of the letter Anthony writes that in the early days of Smosh he wanted it to be something ‘he’ made with Ian’s help, and that he considered Ian to only be “tagging along”. He goes on to apologise [in the letter] for if he ever made Ian feel like he didn’t deserve as much credit as he did.

“You may not have done some of the heavy lifting I did in the early days, but definitely encouraged us to keep going and you kept things light and full of laughs as we did it. We accomplished so much and I am just now realising how important you were in making that happen.”

Anthony then brings up something that happened recently between them :-

“But that thing that you read there - you did, and this was actually really nice for me to hear from you. It was a few days after we had confirmation that we had bought Smosh, you came over to my place, we had a little celebratory hang; very luxurious. We chilled with cigars and some whiskey, and we just bro-ed it up, and you said that to me. That exact thing - you said, “hey, I don’t think I ever really acknowledged the heavy lifting that you did in the early days” and you said that you “felt really lucky to be there at that time and that I included you in that.” And that was really nice to hear, even though I know.”

So I know technically this compliment/praise/acknowledgment isn’t new as the letter was written in 2017, but it’s ‘new’ to us. But I’m glad to hear that Anthony does acknowledge Ian’s involvement in Smosh’s success, even in the early days when Anthony was doing more of the technical things. He acknowledges that Ian still had a role to play in it all being what it was.

Ian agrees with what Anthony is saying, and that he always felt ‘guilt’ over the fact Anthony had to do the things he didn’t have the skillset to do, but recognises that he didn’t acknowledge or thank Anthony enough for it because he was ‘afraid’ that he might have to do more when their whole thing was about doing “equal work” because they felt as a duo they had to, and that if the other felt they were doing more work then there was some resentment there. Ian tries to downplay himself by joking “In most cases you were doing more work than me…” but Anthony is quick to jump in again and not allow it.

“I was doing more hours, but I think you were doing more of the creative heavy-lifting which is more taxing in many ways. So I think that you needed your time to recoup your energy, cause you’re coming up with funny stuff, and at that time I was like ‘I’m doing so much work’.”

Also another mention of Ian’s creativity and humour when it comes to writing, that Anthony acknowledges he wouldn’t be able come up with. But you can see where the ‘resentment’ they talked of came from, and why Anthony felt he was doing more. When in reality it’s just that’s their strengths lie in different areas, but that doesn’t make the work they both do individually any less important. So I am happy they can see that now and praise each other for the unique ways in which they shine which compliments their own strengths in their own special ways.

WE WERE ROBBED! Watch Party

It happened again. Anthony calling Ian ‘daddy’. Can we just all agree that he has a thing for it? Okay. Good.

They’re discussing how everyone in chat is poking fun at Ian for saying “you guys are a fun bunch” to the rest of the group during the ‘Do Men Know Reproductive Anatomy?’ Smosh Pit video and how it was a ‘dad’ comment. Ian reads out a comment talking about how Arasha called him ‘dad’ and he says “[she] can because she’s my son”. And then Mr ‘Ian is Daddy’ Padilla jumps in with the correction once again :-

Anthony: “I think you’re becoming ‘daddy’.”

Ian: [asks if it’s when he puts his glasses on]

Anthony: “Especially.”

Ian: [puts glasses on]

Anthony: “Oh damn, daddy.”

Like why is this Anthony’s thing now? Whatever the reason - I’m here for it.

Also, Ian doesn’t like to be referred to as ‘pops’ but Anthony’s into it. So, Daddy and Pops. It’s settled. Love our parents 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦

Smosh Mouth

And just like we started July, we ended it the same - with a bang!

I urge you if you haven’t seen it yet (or even if you have), to go watch this video. It may as well have been named ‘Praise Ian Hour’. Not only have we got Anthony, but also Shayne and Amanda coming in to add to the many compliments.

I know all these compliments the others were giving Ian were probably making Anthony’s heart swell with pride. To know that not only himself, but everyone else also recognises Ian’s strengths. To know that these things he loves about Ian, others see in him too.

So a lot of the video was the others complimenting Ian rather than from Anthony himself, but he agreed with everything they were saying and added a few little tidbits. So this next lot of compliments will be what Shayne and Amanda said, along with Anthony’s comments :-

Amanda: [talking about when she first auditioned for Smosh] “And I’ll never forget after I did that [read the script], it was really fun - they asked me a question, and I was in a really interesting place in my life… And they were like “If you could have one superpower, what would it be?” and I just said “Vulnerability.”… And I’ll never forget, Ian stood up and went “Do you write comedy also?” and I said “Yeah!”, and he went [nods] and he shook my hand.”

Anthony: [grinning ear to ear] “He knew. He knew.”

Happy boy loving hearing people praise his bff 🥰

“I think honestly that statement alone is exactly why you’re doing a podcast. I think Ian was able, if he really did know in that moment, I think it probably was seeing that there was more to you than just the comedy, there’s more depth there, there’s multiple layers, and you can build on that a lot more than just somebody who can only do one type of thing.”

A very sweet comment. How Ian recognised the talent in Amanda from that one thing she said, and also cute how well Anthony knows Ian so can see exactly where he was coming from in seeing that talent in her and why she ended up at Smosh.

Shayne: “…I’m curious how you [Anthony] think things were going in the years you were gone? It’s been fun to see this arc of Ian. And being honest I’ve gotten to know Ian so well over the course of 6 years and that’s what’s so interesting about you coming back. You know Ian better than any of us-”

Anthony: “But I don’t know the Ian from the past 6 years as well as well as you guys do.”

Shayne: “…But you haven’t seen president Ian.” [talks about how when Anthony was still there both him and Ian were so busy under Defy that they weren’t around much to act as leaders]

Anthony: “Yeah, there was no leadership really coming from Ian and I, except that I think we showed excitement and passion… We showed that, and I think that’s where we kinda led, but it wasn’t really ‘we’re the leaders’ and when I left, and especially when Defy collapsed and Ian was left there making a lot of those decisions, he had to be the leader that had to lead by example and get everyone onboard with his ideas, and that was a really unique role for him because he was kinda forced into that position, and he was forced to get really good at it. And I think, over the 6 year time period that I was gone, I’ve seen him, observing from the outside, I’ve seen him get better and better at that role. Even though I know he doesn’t ‘love’ it, he’s not like ‘I can’t wait to go and be a leader when I go to work’, and he’s told me that he feels like he thrives most when we have the dynamic between us where I can pick up when he’s not really-”

“observing from the outside” 🥺 the fact he was still checking up on Ian even when they weren’t close anymore, it shows that the care was still there despite the strain on the relationship. It also reminds me of what Ian said during Anthony’s interview, that he could tell Anthony was floundering when he first left :-

Ian: “I could see very clearly what you were doing and what was going on. It was very clear that you were trying to find your individual creative voice. And with the types of videos you were putting out it felt very much like you’d throw this out and see if that would stick, you’d throw that out and see if that would stick. You’d get excited about something - I could tell there was a time when I think you were watching Nathan For You, and you were getting excited about this one kind of style.”

Anthony: “Damn, you read me like a book.”

It’s just like Shayne said - they know each other better than anyone. And that extends to even when they weren’t speaking, they still knew the other inside and out.

Amanda: “He’s glowing right now.”

Shayne: “He’s been so happy.”

Anthony: “It’s really, really cool to see because you know watching from the outside, I was able to observe his mannerisms and kind of get a general idea of where his headspace was at, but even then I wasn’t able to fully understand him because I didn’t fully understand him for so many years leading up to it, so I was just an outside observer trying to just keep tabs. But I do notice a stark difference, ever since Ian and I had that discussion, and were like ‘you know what, let’s buy Smosh and anything we can do to make that happen, let’s do it’. And after that conversation I’ve been keeping up-to-date with the content a lot more and I’ve seen Ian shine in such an interesting way, where I don’t even know if you guys felt it - like before the announcement, you felt something good was coming?”

Is everyone sufficiently in tears? Good, because me too. This isn’t even the end of this convo, I just had the pause to go over all of what was just said. Both Amanda and Shayne saying how happy Ian is now, I don’t know how Anthony didn’t cry on the spot! I did and it’s not even about me! Like hearing that, knowing it’s because of him that Ian is so happy 😭 and I think the same can be said for Anthony. They’re both so happy to have each other again ❤️

Shayne: “I did start to notice a change these past few months. I started to notice - this dude, there’s something about him, like the ‘cool’ factor started to change. He started wearing a chain! He started tucking shirts in.”

Amanda: “Oh yeah! He tucked in every shirt. He wore a chain. He was glowing. And our conversations were about life and joy and not really what he was reading on the internet.”

Shayne: “His confidence level has changed this year. When you guys announced the whole thing [buying Smosh], you walked into the building and I was like ‘Okay this makes sense!’ He’s feeling a lot more confident because things are feeling more certain and this place is going to turn into more of what he wants.”

Anthony: [agrees, and talks about how he thinks the confidence comes from a place of Ian now knowing the future of Smosh is secure under them after not knowing for a long time] “And I think for some reason, just naturally his confidence started growing as - I don’t know if this is related, but he is so good at writing and coming up with jokes, and I think for a long time he got the impression in his head that he wasn’t good at that anymore. And I think the Smosh channel moving away from written stuff, which I feel like he just really shines at - these absurd ideas, and when they come to life on screen maybe I’m able to help keep them a little bit more focused. But I really love that, cause he has so many great ideas and I started noticing just how many good ideas - he would throw out like 30 ideas and 20 of them were brilliant. But I feel like he started to gain confidence too in our writing sessions where he realised, ‘oh this isn’t a fluke, I wasn’t just funny in the past’ - I don’t know if this was the worry that was going on in his head, but it certainly was in mine. I was like, ‘was I only good at this in the past? can I be good at this now?’ and we both discovered together that what we were good at in the past, was more of a representation of our innate abilities and personality on our own but also the dynamic between us, and it seems like his confidence was growing there, and on camera when I would watch him from the outside, even hosting ‘Let’s Do This’ - when I saw him hosting these things it seemed like he was much more confident and he was able to take initiative.”

I love how much Anthony talks about how good Ian is at writing and coming up with jokes, and how much he reiterates that nowadays. I love that he recognises that talent in him and acknowledges how his own abilities complement Ian’s so well and why their dynamic is so special and works so well.

Shayne: “Ian is so much funnier than he realises. And maybe he’s realising it now-“

Anthony: “Yeah, I hope so.”

Aw Anthony 🥺 well if he doesn’t, you’re there to remind him tenfold.

Shayne: “But over these past years, I think the thing that has always frustrated me is - as you said [Anthony], he’ll throw out ideas but he’ll be like ‘oh this one’s dumb’ and I’m like ‘no that’s really funny, man’…. But whenever he goes 100% and he commits fully it’s always great.”

Anthony: “Always great.”

Shayne: “And I think he really does that in your guy’s sketches, there’s no doubt - the Ian that people know and love is that guy. And I think when he’s able to write and know what it is, he goes full force. But I will say even with the improvised stuff he held himself back - he’s so good, but he just needs to allow himself go full force.”

Anthony: “I think he would second guess.”

Shayne: “He second guesses. And I feel bad talking about him without him here, but it’s all good things. Cause reality is he’s really, really talented.”

Anthony: “The truth is he was doubting himself, but the less he’s doubting himself [he’s able to go full force].”

Shayne: [talks about how Ian has said 2019 was one of the hardest years after Defy collapsed and he had to step up as a leader and figure things out on his own] “So suddenly one day Smosh is gone and all these people are just gone, they don’t care. And I remember talking to Ian and being like “hey, so what are we gonna do?” and I remember this look of just - it’s still Ian where everything’s very casual and just kinda shrugged off almost, but I remember him just being like “We’re gonna figure it out. I’m gonna get this together”, and I was just like “That’s the most confident you’ve ever sounded about anything.”

Amanda: “It’s cause he was a single dad, he had to figure it out.”

Shayne: “But Ian’s always like ‘yeah, I dunno’ but this was the first time he was like ‘we’re gonna - I’m gonna - we’re gonna have it.’

Anthony: “And I feel like we see that [confidence] a lot more from him now.”

Shayne: “Yeah, and that was the first time that I was like ‘Dude, this Ian’s crazy. This guy’s not fucking around.’ and he had to do so much behind the scenes that I didn’t see, but he was making business deals and he was working all day, every day to get that shit together. And you know people say Rhett and Link saved Smosh, it’s like Ian saved Smosh. Rhett and Link were there to make that deal happen, but Ian was the one who put that shit together.”

Anthony: “For sure.”

Loved this from Shayne! Because it’s so true, yes R&L were there when Smosh needed a home, but Ian was the one who put in the hard work to make that happen. None of it could have happened without him. And I’m glad Anthony agrees, and as his comments at Vidcon suggest, he’s very thankful that Ian was there to save Smosh so he could come back and they could rightfully own what is their’s, doing what they love, together again.

Shayne: [talking about how Ian and Anthony going their separate ways needed to happen] “You started this thing forever ago when you were kids and it’s completely overshadowed your own lives and your friendship. To be able to take a step away and figure out who you guys are on your own and then come back - you guys at a certain point were forced to be best friends on camera and that’s tough and it becomes a product more than an actual friendship, so to be able to walk away and leave that alone and then choose to be best friends again.”

Not so much a compliment, just loved this. It’s the choice to be best friends again that gets me. Something they’re actively choosing and put above everything else, they’re never going to let anything get in the way of their friendship again and that is so special.

The famous quote comes to mind :-

“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours.”

Shayne: “I said it to Ian when he was on the podcast - I really respect both of you for your both individual journeys in all this. Like your choice to leave the thing you made forever ago as a kid, that meant everything to you, that’s an insane choice. And you made it for your own good, and you recognised your own happiness and that was gigantic. And Ian, I think really was scared to be a leader here, he was scared to be on his own, like president, and he really did it and he’s stuck with it through crazy [times] - not only the shutdown where he stepped up, but the pandemic as well, where we were all filming stuff on our own by ourselves, and he stuck with it, man. That dude, he’s had some endurance with all of this and so to see you guys back together, I know for him there’s pressure taken off because he has you, and I can see there’s so many aspects of the job that he questions himself - I think he’s great at it, but he questions himself and I think you can fill in that part for him where he’s like ‘oh sweet, I know I can rely on you’.”

Anthony looks like he’s about ready to cry when Shayne said that and I don’t blame him because I could too.

Knowing just how important he is to Ian. That he is the only person Ian can rely on when it comes the leadership side of the business, an area where he’s been alone in for so long, doubting himself, I’m sure it makes Anthony want to hype him up and reassure him even more that he’s doing a good job.

Shayne: “And I said this to you, I think the day you first came back, but I’m like - you both together is one of the greatest YouTubers ever.”

Anthony: “I appreciate that.”

Shayne: “You individually - super successful. Like you went and you were successful on your own. Ian maintained Smosh on his own. That’s really cool to see that there was success from both of you individually, but together - I mean when we’re at Vidcon and we’re talking to other YouTubers, Smosh has, there’s something to it right? Like other YouTubers go ‘Oh! Smosh!’ that’s a big deal.”

It’s so emotional how this thing that Ian and Anthony created together as teenagers is what it is now 🥲 and it’s so true - together, they’re something special.

Anthony: [discussing how he discovered his interview format for his videos after trying lots of different kinds of content after leaving Smosh] “I thought that my lane was making sketch comedy so I was writing out some stuff. But I realised that on my own, without Ian, I am not a very strong writer. I do not have the funniest jokes.”

Again, Anthony recognising Ian’s talent when it comes to writing and the Yin and Yang of their dynamic, and how they need each other to really be at their best.

[Amanda says how Anthony seems like an extrovert in his interviews. He says it’s an illusion and that he’s really introverted - Shayne agrees that he is]

Shayne: “I mean I’m just now hanging out with you again recently, but I always got the sense, and I get the sense still, that Ian is the outgoing one.”

Anthony: “Yeah.”

Shayne: “Ian’s super outgoing, and people maybe don’t clock that… At parties, Ian will walk up to any group of people and he’ll just join the conversation.”

Anthony: “For sure.”

Amanda: “You’re right, he does.”

Shayne: “It is shocking to me. And he’s so chill about it.”

I know this was mainly just Anthony agreeing, but I found it interesting and it made me wonder if that is another reason their dynamic works so well and if it’s maybe also a comfort for Anthony? As a fellow introvert, I know how much easier it makes things when you have an extroverted person with you in social situations that you feel uncomfortable with. So I wonder if it’s the same for Anthony with Ian, that he has him there to lean on, knowing he’ll take the forefront in those types of situations if he needs it.

And that was it for the podcast and for the month of July.

And so draws to a close the first instalment of this compliments series. I plan to continue this month to month, or every few depending on how much content there is - you’ll be able to find all parts in the Compliments Masterlist.

Thank you for reading and catching up with the world of the Anthony Padilla Ian Hecox Fanclub with me. Hope you enjoyed and I shall see you next time!

[respectthepetty]

wrt joong being emotional on social media (ie public), my personal take isn’t that someone shouldn’t have emotions, but rather that a public figure should be aware that anything the share or tweet in a moment of pique will last forever—not just in an archival sense but in the fandom’s collective memory as well. i come from a background where i am legally held responsible for anything i put on social media that could be ‘damaging’ to my company even if it’s on a personal account. not saying that’s fair or right, but that’s the reality for myself and many others. beefing with someone also signed to your company and intimating and dissatisfaction with your coworkers is something that would personally get me brought before a manager at minimum. again, this is just how it would work for me, but i’m guessing some other people in this fan space may be in similar circumstances and this also see these tweets and insta posts as unprofessional. there’s another possible discussion to be had here about the way society deems anything undesirable in a sort of mental illness-unprofessional venn diagram, but this ask is already long enough.

Anon (if this is the same anon), your response wasn't too long! It was perfect! And so was @waitmyturtles' response because it's getting at what I'm trying to highlight - his behavior could be deemed unprofessional, but not mentally unwell. I understand that the tweets and retweets are crude, but my resistance is aligning that with his mental health.

Just like you, I have a job that monitors my social media activities (if they can be found *wink, nod, Tumblr*), and if I wrote about my department mates the way Joong and Dunk are interacting, my department chair would have me in the vice president's office after the second tweet. I get it. But even if I did shit-talk my department mate on Twitter because she threw a party with my professional enemy (business instructors), I would be displeased if my chair connected that with me being mentally unstable.

There is definitely a "discussion to be had here about the way society deems anything undesirable in a sort of mental illness-unprofessional venn diagram" and after reading yours and turtle's responses, I feel we are all in the same boat, but coming at it in different ways. However, I want to emphasize that regardless of Joong's actual mental health, I do not attribute his social media behavior as a reason to claim he is unwell. Unprofessional? I see it. Unwell? That falls into that Venn diagram of unrealistic societal norms you mentioned, and I think both of us can agree that is unfair for us to place that label on him.

I appreciate your initial ask to me because it let me know that Twitter was popping off during all of this, and gave me more details to add to my "We Got Beef: Joong & Est Edition" pile, but I'm even more thankful you replied to the follow-up question.

[wolfertinger]

"(Anon meow)

↓

Went to check salem daily ramble filled with buzzwords and i thought this comment was very very funny (as well as the locked replies) oh my god the image is huge is there a way to make it smaller😭

You cant go 'do not cancel this person for drawing idk necroshota content its their kink!!' while actively defending the person that shamed Sawyer for liking pooltoys idk. The locked comments is also so telling, Salem, go tell everyone what the people you follow actually post or something! Aren't you proud of white transfems doing what they want?

Its known you have alt accounts, how about you interact with dark content there? You're just begging to be called out at this point!

Two choice screenshots. First speaks for itself, second... If this is about salem, his number was never leaked, just address speculations - someone on twt got the ambulance for him iirc. Nobody is saying anything about his father either so... Stop making people up to be mad at, wis.

Also (couldn't snip) the 'i wouldn't have been treated like this on my teens if i was yt' post. Stop acting as if you were 15 when you got kicked off twitter. Most of your deal happened when you were 18-20, grow a pair and admit it. People aren't racist for pointing out the Green thing, or revvy, or the enabling countless minors to do risque fanart of pepper; its what you did (and I'm very sure its archived), why deny it?

You said it yourself, 'imagine sending porn to a minor and still expect to be back to the internet' (something like that) (admin if you have this tweet I'll praise the floor you walk over everyday) so... Just change porn with softcore and nsfw art tips

There were more than enough reasons not to want him on the internet before Sawyer came out, and just what happened as wolfertinger is enough to get him kicked out again idk how he's still there. Maybe flooding his blog is actually an strategy so people get exhausted of scrolling before seeing a quarter of the deal? Lol"