#but the internet morality police likes to come for me when i open my mouth these days | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

avintagekiss24 · 4 years ago

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Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point.

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

#asks #answered #sebastian stan

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rpmemesbyarat · 3 years ago

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RP meme from Scream Queens Ep 10 "Thanksgiving"

Listen. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I don't think I can bone you right now.

My wanger is way stressed out.

I've killed for our love.

I just gave her a little push.

You and I can pick up right where we left off.

You can bring me home for Thanksgiving and introduce me to my future in-laws.

What did you do with the body?

I put it in the meat locker. It's where we've been putting all the dead bodies.

I need to see the body.

Look, we can have a three-way with the body.

I'll show you the body, but not so you can have sex with it.

I'll show it to you so that you and I will share a dangerous secret that will strengthen our relationship and bring us closer together.

I don't understand how this keeps happening!

Is this meat locker, like, a wormhole to an alternate universe or something?

She'll probably stop at nothing until she gets her revenge by murdering you.

No one wants to spend a room service Thanksgiving alone.

Are you going to talk at all?

You shouldn't be mad at me.

We're the sane ones.

Now, I know you've got other plans today, and for alibi's sake we need to protect your cover, but I am not letting you leave on an empty stomach.

Is that what quail is? I thought they were bigger.

You know what I was picturing? Pheasant.

Time to slice off those breasts.

I feel like this holiday is all about family, and, well, as you know, I gave up on my real family a long time ago.

I mean, at this point, the closest thing I have to family is. . . you.

I understand that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about family and being together and thanking God that we were born rich in America and not in Uganda or Venezuela or any of those other African countries.

You're late. The game's just about to start.

What do you think would happen if those instructions were incorrect?

This family's fortune is built on being right on time.

There's nothing better than sitting together as a family, watching the game. Laughing, smiling, just enjoying the warmth of each other's company. That's what it's all about today. Togetherness.

I hate defrosted food.

Why is it called Italian Style Chicken Cacciatore? All chicken cacciatore is Italian style.

This is not what Thanksgiving is supposed to be.

A bunch of my sort-of friends have been killed and no one has asked me about it.

Oh. And I'm starting a new family tradition. It involves me never coming to any family occasions ever again.

Would you stop with the screaming?

It's more like a stay of execution until no one is looking.

I've never cooked before, but that should be fine, since I usually just pretend to eat.

Well, I can cook and eat for the both of us.

So we've decided to have an orphans Thanksgiving all together.

I mean, I guess you could come over here if you wanted.

And this year I'm so thankful for the lax indecency laws in Eastern Europe that inundate our Internet with millions of hours of hard-core porn.

You know, ever since I was a little boy, I knew what God wanted me to do and that was make money off the backs of creative people.

I am so thankful that he, for whatever reason, has not murdered me yet.

You have such a vast future ahead of you.

You'll meet so many new and different women. So many wonderful women to go out with and break up with and move on from.

You should be thankful that this table is too long for me to reach across and strangle you, bitch!

What are you doing here? How are you alive?

When I woke up and regained consciousness, I felt better than ever.

The only thing you're carrying is water weight, you bloated little tramp.

I have a little game to play that's gonna make the time fly right by.

No, I've never killed anyone as far as I know.

Okay, there is no evidence at all that mass murder is genetic.

I would say that is more than a little suspicious.

I have bathroom shame issues. I always wait until everyone is asleep and then I sneak down to poop in the little powder room downstairs.

I mean, don't we all agree that those babies are the killers?

That seems like an unnecessarily complicated cover story.

I think we have plenty here to go to the police.

What, are you drunk?

You know, the one time I call you for a little advice, you're hammered.

I suppose we should discuss the matter of payment.

I'm asking you to name your price.

Are you propositioning me?

No, I'm asking how much money it'll take to make you go away.

My family is super-gross rich.

That outfit screams desperation.

I am, however, willing to write you a check for $50,000 if you will leave now and never come back.

It's a lot of money for a family like yours.

What is the best part about Thanksgiving?

Tastes like Henry VIII just barfed in my mouth.

Well, I don't want to sound like a dick here, but have you ever considered maybe you should leave?

I brought some of my famous eight-meat stuffing. It's beef, venison, alligator, buffalo, rabbit, goat, rattlesnake and Spam. I cut all of the meats super thin, so that you're guaranteed every meat in every bite.

I thought you said you were leaving forever or something like that?

Have you ever even cracked open a book?

You did say just the other day that the only way to live is to play the long game.

I really hope you can come up with something better than that.

I can prove that you're the only person in this room we know for a fact is a murderer.

I saw you in the coffee shop the other day, reading one of your old Playgirl magazines.

Okay, look, there's just some stuff that doesn't add up.

Look, I've gone through all the suspects in my mind, and I can explain away all my suspicions for everyone except you.

Can we just talk this out, so you can help me see that I'm wrong?

I mean, it would fit in with your whole hard worker, let's find out the truth, never take no for an answer, awful personality.

Anything to redeem your beloved dead mother.

I can't rest when the killer's still out there, so I stayed behind to do some more research.

You're skinny and pretty, so that's a plus, but it's highly competitive, so you'd better be rich, too.

You know how at the beginning of the year, I was always secretly following you so I could just keep an eye on you, make sure you were safe?

I heard you talking to someone, but I couldn't hear what it was about.

Thank you for letting me talk about this, talk this out, and hear your side of the story.

Um, homely, ugly.

Gold digger! Not welcome.

No, no, too chunky to wear that outfit.

I'm fairly certain this board game's been tampered with.

And while my motivations were airtight and my conscience clear, still, I'm sorry.

I mean, no one deserves to be spoken to like that, particularly not by what is, without a doubt, the most awful family in America.

I've honestly seen more tasteful decor at a Sizzler.

And you, sir, give the kind, hard-working, deeply moral people who work in such a wonderful industry as Hollywood a bad name.

I am walking out that door and never speaking to you again.

How could such a stud evolve from a boy who was so clearly a douche?

Oh, please, look, I-I was so bombed at that party. I mean, I remember I puked while I was making out with some girl, but there is no way that I could've found my way back down there 20 minutes later, let alone 20 years.

This is really embarrassing, um, but I started the paleo diet, because I'm back on the dating scene now, and I-I wanted to lose some weight.

I never saw a body down there.

I-I was a bit of a man slut back in the day, and it was the '90s, so nobody wore condoms.

I'm obligated to take it to the police.

What are you gonna do with the money?

didn't take the money, idiot.

Okay, first of all, I experienced extreme emotional trauma this evening, and second, I'm the one delegating tasks, thank you very much.

I couldn't find any matches.

I was sharpening this knife.

You haven't eaten yet, have you? I knew it!

You've come back. You've chosen me over your awful family.

First of all, my family is awesome. How dare you?

So, without further ado, dinner is served.

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay meme #roleplay starters #roleplay memes #scream queens

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frostiifae · 4 years ago

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hi i’m not gonna engage directly with that post about masculinity and the pressures it’s put under growing up bc i am much too fragile for that, but also my feelings on that post wind up going out to jupiter and back instead, so sorry about this but --

I’ve been mulling over the idea that maybe social media, as a whole, is a bad place for social discourse (shocking, I know). The core idea of it is simple - you take a statement like “men are overly sexual”. This statement is at least glancingly true, but not ironclad. It is true enough to make a specific point in context, but it isn’t true enough to project outward into the world without context.

People with more authority than me have already done plenty of research to demonstrate how modern social media is designed specifically to present ideas free of context. It’s virtually impossible to have a meaningful conversation in the open space of Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook, for varying reasons - but the sites do their best to trick you into not noticing.

In a post I exchange between my two best (female) friends, we may cajole about the horrors and ugliness of men, saying things we don’t really believe, partially tongue-in-cheek, partially to make fun of the radical ideas that say these things without the requisite irony. But it would be so very easy for someone - even someone that knows me, someone I care about - to stumble upon that post and misunderstand. In reality, that post wasn’t really meant to be public. It was just for the three of us, because we have a shared context that changes and colors the way our words are interpreted, and without that context - the things we make look alien, or worse.

How easy it is for this simple misunderstanding to repeat itself at progressively larger and larger scales. Isn’t it amazing how Anita Sarkeesian attempted to say something hardly controversial and completely understandable, but a lack of context drove an entire counter-cultural movement and drove a wedge into the heart of the community she wanted to speak to. Incredible how, even as we all rally behind the cries Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, we still have people claiming to be races they aren’t, asserting themselves over marginalized voices without thinking - and how, even as I do my best to keep my mouth shut, I can’t help but wonder if something is being missed because I can’t find the words to ask the questions I wish I could ask.

I keep wondering, what if I could just pluck one of those horrific alt-right reddit meme boys from their chair and sit on a park bench with them, offer to get them lunch, and just talk about our visions for the future. Surely, we’d disagree on a lot of things, but I’m used to that. I’ve always been a weird kid, and I found solace in understanding the why of people’s beliefs - people’s reasoning always made more sense to me than the conclusions they would reach because of that reasoning. And I really feel like we could find a lot in common, if we could break past the surface layer of what we believe, and instead talk about the experiences that led us there. After all, I, too, was once a disenfranchised middle-class white male on the Internet, whose favorite pastime was to lose themselves in an emerging culture of chaos and creativity that seemed impenetrable from the outside. I, too, was once frustrated with the posturing of feminism, with the idea that men ought to be judged demographically without regard to their individual status. I still am frustrated with that idea, even now that I’ve come to grips with why it keeps coming up. I can’t say that it’s false. But I can’t say that it’s true, either.

I wish I could explain that it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or false - that it never has mattered - that none of this was ever about telling people how they should think, or what words they are and aren’t allowed to use, or how they should volunteer their assets in the name of the less-privileged, or how they should sit at the back of the bus to make way for the flavor of the month. I wish I could explain that I understand how it seems from the outside, I really do, because I was there once, and it seems like such a mess of contrarian nonsense that can’t even find time to agree with itself, but you have to understand, it’s not about rules and regulations, it’s not about a strict moral or social code, it’s just about trying these ideas out in a public space and seeing if they make things better for people, because the way the world is now isn’t working.

But I know what would happen if I tried that: I would get told, “And what about me?” and, well, there’s the rub, isn’t it? What about you?

Is it selfish to focus on one’s own problems? Is it “male privilege” to listen to a talk about feminism and ask “but what about us?” Does that make you a pillar of the patriarchy? I feel like the answer is so obviously no, but we keep reacting that way, because when some dude comments on a feminist post and all we have to go off of is a name, an anime avatar (and believe me, I love anime avatars, so don’t think for a second I’m going to judge you for having one) and a single off-color remark, we have to come to some kind of judgment and it’s never going to be accurate. We tried so hard to teach everyone to think about the person behind the screen, but at the same time the Internet evolved in such a way that we know less and less every day about the screennames we come into contact with; the mountain is being built higher and higher ahead of us as we climb.

I think the solution is to just stop. I really, really do.

I was educated in feminism by a person who sat down with me in a series of one-on-one conversations and answered my questions as patiently as they could. I’m not friends with that person anymore - we wound up having a lot of disagreements on finer points, even besides the way we actually treated one another - but I deeply appreciate that time they spent with me. I refined my knowledge of feminism by taking those conversations to other people I trusted, and seeing how they felt about those ideas, further whittling away at this chunk of philosophy I had been given, turning into a thing I, personally, could believe in. This is the way human beings learn: we find a teacher we trust to confide in, we find a place to practice that feels safe so that we can try things out, and we build up confidence in private before taking our findings into the open.

What do we accomplish by taking two people who have already cemented their convictions and bashing them against each other in a public space? Spectacle. That’s really all there is to it. Hate to sound like an old batty cynic but social media really is built around social spectacle. Twitter’s Trending tags, fandom discourse, political pages on Facebook mocking each other in memes that spread through social circles while dissidents look on in quiet disgust. The point of the whole model is to turn human culture into a hadron collider. This is not the place for nuanced debate. We should all know better. But, somehow, we don’t. And all the worse for the younger people caught in the crossfire that don’t understand what’s happening.

It’s funny how you hear about things happening to other kids, parents and teachers and principals setting rules that seem completely ridiculous and unfair, and then you grow up and start to realize that - even if you still disagree - there’s a hint of wisdom in there. I dunno, maybe we should be withholding the internet from our kids until they’re adults. Not because they’re not mature enough for the Internet, but because the Internet isn’t mature enough for them.

ᵒⁿᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉˢᵉ ᵈᵃʸˢ ᶦ ᵍᵒᵗᵗᵃ ᵐᵃᵏᵉ ᵐʸ ᵒʷⁿ ˢᵒᶜᶦᵃˡ ᵐᵉᵈᶦᵃ ˢᶦᵗᵉ

#long post #feyranting #adam you enabled this i hope you're happy #(i mean not that it's your fault or anything that i am weird. just. aaa)

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lunarbranded · 6 years ago

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🍵+ gatekeeping

Send 🍵for the mun’s salt! || Meme

gate·keep·ing: noun - the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.Tumblr definition: when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who has access to something .

Boy, you know. I’ve been mulling over how I was gonna work with this ask and how to do this post for a while. Actually had the words a few times that I wanted to use but I waited and thought on it. As it turns out, there’s a lot I want to touch upon with my salt in this post. Most of it is general toxic behavior from the RPC community itself and some of fandom but, for the most part, it’s Tumblr bullshit to the extreme.

If you don’t want to see strong af opinions, please keep scrolling. The salt will be under the cut and I understand that most of what I’ll be saying in this post will not be popular opinions.

Gatekeeping Is A Form of Bullying

Ever heard some dudebro go ‘I bet she hasn’t even read the comics’ about a girl wearing a Marvel shirt? What about someone going ‘If you don’t read the books, you’re not a real fan’ when someone’s in line at the theater? Yeah, those are examples of gatekeeping. A couple of the most common ones actually.

As for Tumblr RPC gatekeeping, it’s a bit more like this:

Omg, you can’t write that because it doesn’t fit into what I believe is the only lore that ever exists

wtf why are you claiming that character is gay/trans/bi/ect? they’re not or it would be mentioned in canon

how dare you want representation for your gender identity/race/ect., that’s not okay because it doesn’t adhere to CANON

you can’t ship that because it’s morally wrong and i don’t like it (which sounds a lot like old church people bitching about anything at all really)

if you don’t have the right aesthetic then i won’t follow/interact with you at all

These are just a few examples but most of them are pretty common. And, you know, that’s sad as fuck, to be honest. So many people I’ve met on this side claim to have been bullied but they’re usually the same people who turn around and do this shit to others. It’s unreal to me that they don’t recognize their own behavior. What’s worse is that it can’t be pointed out or people want to use whatever buzzword they can to tell you to fuck off.

If you try to help correct someone, suddenly you’re every -phobic on the planet and you conveniently managed to set their grandmother on fire. The dramatic overreactions of some people have a price and they don’t realize that the emotional response is sometimes not the correct one.

Just because someone is doing something you don’t like doesn’t mean that it deserves a negative action on your part.

‘That person upset me so I’m gonna post a callout/vague post about them!’ Why do you guys think that literally fucking everything needs a reaction? It doesn’t. You don’t have to react to everything that happens. Sometimes things warrant a simple ‘oh that’s fucked up’ and then you move on with your fucking day.

Say you have thirty water bottles. Someone steals one and drinks out of it or whatever but you still have twenty-nine water bottles - why the fuck are you going to be angry all day about that one water bottle? What’s the point when you have twenty-nine other water bottles and you can forget about or throw away the one that was ruined/taken?

You see, that reaction is how you guys act about any one instance that goes wrong on Tumblr except you’re pissed off for a week and you want to ruin someone’s fucking life over a post/thread that you don’t like. Or, in extreme cases, you open blogs to run your mouth at these people. It takes more effort to act like a dick toward someone than it does to just keep fucking scrolling and it’s astounding how ready people are here to wallow in negativity/toxicity.

Puritan Ship/Roleplay Policing

So I mentioned it before, but there’s this super popular idea on Tumblr that if you don’t abide by a certain unspoken ship/roleplay guideline, people will tear you apart over it. But guess what, guys, it’s fucking bullshit.

Since when were people not allowed to make their own opinions on what they did or didn’t ship?

When did it start that people were considered trash for shipping something?

Who the hell made half of you the owners of the RPC so you think you can control what everyone does on their blogs?

You see, this is the same attitude that I see all the time in churches. Oh they’ll tell you to your face that you’re welcome to do as you like and come looking however you want but the second you actually fucking do it, you’re ignored and treated like a social pariah. All this because people love to go around spreading rumors and talking shit about one another all over a fucking hobby.

It’s actually kind of insane when you think about it. Like, you’re arguing over what two people are doing when they’re throwing internet Barbies at one another and you’re stomping across the playground to scream at them because you don’t like what they’re doing when it has nothing to fucking do with you. Remember what we called that in elementary and high school? Oh yeah, there’s a word for it: BULLYING. And now, it’s evolved into gatekeeping.

This attitude is literally as bad as someone going ‘you can’t sit with us’ just because you don’t like what they’re doing on their blog.

Now, I called this section ‘puritan’ for a reason - “practicing or affecting strict religious or moral behavior.” Does that sound familiar? Because it should. Tumblr wants to call everything wrong and, from what I’ve seen, the hivemind doesn’t want people making their own opinions. Oh and don’t forget, if you don’t already know something then tough fucking luck because it’s ‘not our job to teach you.’ Thanks for the reminder, Susan, but we all know that you’re going to resort to calling people toxic abusers just because they weren’t given the chance to learn something like you were. Because that’s a fucking great way to help people to understand things from your point of view.

Look. What I’m saying is that trying to force everyone into your moral alignment isn’t okay. Some people will write murder and abusive relationships and not romanticize them just fine. The same goes for incest, rape, dysphoria, and a great number of other things. Believe it or not, some RPers actually take the time to look this shit up so they can make sure that they’re doing it fucking right and avoiding romanticization. You know, what you people want them to do but yell at them when you see it trigger tagged without bothering to take a look at the entire thread in question. Goes right back to that knee jerk reaction people like to rely on - not everything is the end of the world.

Callout/Cancelled Culture

This one’s going to be fun.

So we all know that people love their callouts but we also know that people just fucking love cancelling people. Guess what though - you cannot cancel a fucking human being because they’re not a television show. Shocker right? I know.

Now, I’ll admit that there’s some callout worthy topics but there’s some callouts that are so goddamn stupid that I just can’t take either party seriously. Now Tumblr loves dividing people, especially in the RPC. Don’t fucking tell me that cliques aren’t a thing in the RPC because ‘RPing in your bubbble’ is the same as having a clique. It’s the same concept hidden behind another name, don’t try to tell me otherwise.

And yes, sometimes people want to run around and start ‘clique wars’ like it’s fucking high school all over again. Sorry, but no one has time for that shit. Do your replies and keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong, Barbara. But, of course, people have trouble with this concept and get into fights. It’s natural that no two people are going to agree on the same goddamn thing. It would be ridiculous to expect this, especially on this website, but just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean that they’re cancelled.

What you think is problematic and what someone else thinks is problematic are likely two different things. And sure, you’ll have people who agree with you and you’ll want them on your side but that doesn’t help because now you’ve created that divide. So things fester and get worse because you want to use your mental illness as an excuse (a popular choice from what I’ve seen) as to why you can’t communicate with someone. Next thing you know, there’s a huge callout against someone and that person didn’t expect it at all.

Knee jerk reactions. Fight gets worse. Divide gets bigger. Toxicity festers.

Well now, there’s this new thing in the RPC where you can get a PSD template and fake fucking screenshots. Sure, it’s for musings and character profiles for things like Tinder, Facebook, ect. Just fun little things for you to throw your characters into and stuff like that. But there’s always that 1% who decide to use it so they can make it look like someone’s said something when they haven’t. So, when that person tries to defend themselves with a full-screen shot of their own (whole desktop or mobile version), things get worse until there’s a giant blowout.

Once the dust settles you get this nice little ‘if you follow x, y, z then you can just block me bye’ behavior popping up. Well, that’s just childish. Unless something happened that was almost a ‘they found out where i live and they’re sending me glass filled cookies in the mail’ situation, then I have no reason to bother with that shit in your rules page. No one is obligated to tell you who they associate with just because you had a disagreement with them. However, if that person chooses to take your side, that’s up to them.

I’m sure damn near everyone has had a similar situation to this happen to them on Tumblr before and, if it hasn’t, were you the one making the call out? If you were, was it worth it? Did it make you feel better? Sure, it might have in the moment but if you’re having that much of an issue actually communicating with others then you should take a step back and work on yourself before you involve other people. It’s like that one saying I keep seeing running around ‘if bad things always happen to you, you should make sure that you’re not the one causing it.’

Now, that’s not to say that I’m trying to gaslight anyone, but 9 times out of 10, I’ve looked back and realized that my own knee jerk reactions have caused a lot of turmoil that I could have avoided had I stopped and thought on it. I’ll admit that because guess fucking what, humans aren’t perfect.

That’s the biggest issue on Tumblr. Half of you expect people to come on here and be perfect from the get go but humans make fucking mistakes and we learn from them. Do we not? How many of you can say that you were perfectly rational and amazing 15 year olds? Absolutely no one because teenagers have a lot of stress and expectations thrown on them while they’re going through a rough growth phase at that time. Things are unpredictable for them and they have school, teachers, friends, and parents throwing all of this shit onto them and then they come on here and have full-grown fucking adults slamming all this shit into their faces. It’s fucking ridiculous. And that’s another goddamn topic holy shit. The way some adults on here act is absolutely barbaric.

Sharing IP Addresses Out of Revenge/Anger

Oh this is something I’ve hated since I found out that Statcounter was a thing. Yes, I run it on my own blog but you’ll never see me sharing IP addresses on the dash. I’ll just quietly IP block you and go about my day, idgaf.

So there’s this huge trend and I’ve seen this on my own dash before (it was fucking disgusting, the response was atrocious on that person’s behalf, and I’ve since hardblocked) and it’s something I’ll hardblock over in a heartbeat.

Now, for those who don’t know, Statcounter has a little piece of code that you can put into your blog theme and it’ll track the IP addresses of people who visit your blog. For me, I use it because I’ve had two stalkers in the past and yes, I keep screenshots of their visits for my own records. Fuck them. First one started the trigger for me and the second one recently exacerbated it. Anyway, if the person doesn’t have something on their browser to block it, Statcounter will pick up on their visit, what links they look at, how long they’ve been looking, their ISP, general location (never their precise home location, just the ISP’s area), browser info, and screen resolution. I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I recall for now.

Having it so you can protect yourself from stalkers is one thing but having it and using it to throw someone’s IP out there is another. When I say that people weaponize Statcounter, I’m not joking. People will go on there after getting what they believe is anon hate and see who the move recent /ask visitor was and start blasting their IP all over the place.

For one thing - people can send asks via the dash. They don’t have to click onto your page at all so, there’s a HUGE risk of throwing out an innocent person’s IP address.

Say someone does this - mistakenly throws out an innocent person’s IP after receiving anon hate. That person is likely going to have a panic attack. Not only have you shared their state and general location but you’ve blamed them for something they didn’t do. Throwing that IP out there, to any fucking extent can create a witch hunt for anyone who has Statcounter to try to figure out who the owner of that IP is.

This is related to gatekeeping because you’re essentially blacklisting anyone who lives in that state/general area from the RPC all because you saw they were in the /ask page. How fucked up is that? It ties right back to the knee jerk response and it shows that people given even a modicum of power abuse it at the first chance. This isn’t even addressing how vicious some people answer anons.

Sure, posting an IP address on it’s own isn’t illegal but when you tack a name onto it, then it is because you’re essentially creating a threat toward that person.

Point of this section - don’t fucking share people’s goddamn IP addresses on the dash, it just makes you a douchebag. I lose all respect for anyone doing this when I find them - fuck you for doing that.

Activism Forced into Roleplay

I used to be in the Marvel RPC. Key here: used to be. Part of the issue that lead to me leaving was how much people slammed IRL issues into RP. Yes, I’m well aware that Marvel comics has a long and deep history of taking on IRL issues and the comics themselves are quite political.

However my issue comes when this is happening outside of the Marvel community.

I’ve seen people trying to force IRL events down people’s throats. ‘You shouldn’t be happy - x, y, and z are happening right now and don’t you dare tell me to be quiet about it!’ Good way to get yourself blocked. People RP as a hobby and, for some, as a form of escape. Immersing into a character to find out what makes them tick is a form of method acting, so it could be said that we’re method writing out characters to an extent. So shoving IRL issues at some RPers can cause them to lose muse or abandon blogs entirely.

Of course, in the same breath, I’ve seen people told that they can’t RP something because they’ve never experienced it, people think they’re romanticizing it, or some other bullshit Tumblr reason. Look, I’ve experienced rape, self harm, suicidal thoughts, CSA (incestuous and non-incestuous), as well as mental and physical abuse. Don’t you dare assume that I cannot write about these experiences in an accurate way and don’t you fucking dare tell me that I can’t write it because I’ll tell you first off where you can shove your bullshit. The fact that people have to disclose that they’ve been through these things so people will stay off their ass on Tumblr RPs is fucking ridiculous too.

You don’t get to tell me what I can and cannot write on my blog when I trigger tag the living shit out of everything to make sure that I’m protecting as many people as I can from seeing it. Do not try this shit with me. Censoring someone because it doesn’t adhere to your moral code is just as bad as banning books, televisions shows, and/or movies.

Censoring something doesn’t solve the problem and boy fucking howdy does Tumblr have an issue with that. Censorship is another form of gatekeeping, by the way! You might not like it but people don’t go to jail for writing about incest or rape, just fucking saying. Oh but there have been crime authors sent to prison, I was suspended from school for writing about murder, but nothing about rape and incest.

Sure, it may raise some eyebrows and people have to actually use gasp! postblock, tumblr savior, and any other method of tag blocking so they don’t see it but uh… that’s called being responsible for your content consumption.

Tumblr Is Not The Real World

Alright. So I’m gonna close this with a good reminder that I think some people on Tumblr could use.

Tumblr is not the end-all be-all of the world.

Yes, you can make some good friends here and that’s fine but when you stay on here too long, the toxicity can start to change how you view the world around you. No, not every man that walks by you is going to rape you. No, not every woman that you see is going to be okay with you treating her the way you do female ocs and canons on here (actually, I’ve met some women who were proud they could make a full-grown man cry with the right look so).

You have to think about how Tumblr makes you view others as well. All this ‘you messed up once so you’re cancelled’ behavior is a social media phenomenon that doesn’t carry on into real life. It just doesn’t. Sure, you can block someone you know IRL but that doesn’t stop them from talking to you if they were a Facebook friend you went to school with. If they still live nearby you, they’ll either talk to you or about you. What are you going to do? Take the Tumblr route and fucking scream at them like an incoherent banshee? No, you’ll suck it the fuck up and you’ll act like a decent person, don’t fucking lie.

You need to understand that Tumblr is it’s own entity, it’s own little sphere on the internet and, by no means, is it appropriate to carry on in your daily life the way some of you do on here. And if you do, please take a moment to stop and look at yourself.

Self improvement starts when you want to improve but gatekeeping, bullying, and acting like a total barbarian to people you don’t know isn’t okay. This goes for the ones you do know too. I’m not saying that triggers aren’t important in the real world but you need to understand that forcing the social climate to change will only make people dislike you. When they don’t want to change, they’re not going to and some will refuse to change to spite you.

Forcing anything won’t help.

Gatekeeping won’t help.

Censorship has never helped.

People don’t respond to being told what to do, feel, or think. Personally, I’d tell someone to fuck off if they tried doing it to me. So why do you think you can do it to others? Ever heard of ‘treat others how you want to be treated?’ Just be fucking decent and stop acting like other people are your goddamn doormat, jfc.

#chainedloyalty #;;bahamut's voice: ooc #;;salt #;;unpopular opinion #rape mention tw #rape tw #csa mention tw #csa tw #self harm mention tw #self harm tw #suicide mention tw #suicide tw #//this is a long post #//there's a lot of salt #//proceed at your own risk #//there's been two warnings - in post and in tags #//don't @ me - talk to me if you want to know more

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cabbageminute · 6 years ago

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Week_four // Module_Hwk

1. Bits of Security (Penguin)

This week we're looking at bits of security. 'Bits of security' is just an easy way of measuring things. In the security industry, its the way we discuss how much 'security' a particular system has - or more specifically, how much protection there is against a "brute force" attack. For many systems, there can be billions of possible keys or passwords to brute force, and it can be hard to talk about those large numbers easily.

For example, the total number of possible keys for AES-128 is 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 unique keys.

That is a very large number! And it's very hard to communicate easily. There are some other ways of representing that (some easier than others) ...

Words : 340 undecillion 282 decillion 366 nonillion 920 octillion 938 septillion 463 sextillion 463 quintillion 374 quadrillion 607 trillion 431 billion 768 million 211 thousand 456

As an approximation : 340 undecillion

As a power of 10 : 3.4028237e+38 or 3.402823738

As a power of 2 : 2128

As 'bits' : 128

You can see that the last option ('bits') is one of the easiest way to represent the number. When we are using 'bits' to measure security, we call it 'bits of security'.

You can also probably see that 'bits of security' is related to the fourth option "As a power of 2", and that the bits of security is simply the exponent (the 128 part) of the power of 2 calculation. This is because most computer security algorithms are based on binary, so a counting system with a base of 2 makes a lot of sense!

(Adam’s beautiful explanation video)

Question

The possible colours are :

Right Foot : Yellow, Purple, Blue, Green, Red, Brown

Left Foot : Green, Blue, Yellow, Brown, Red

Left Wing : Blue

Right Wing : Yellow, Brown

How many bits of penguin are there? i.e. how many unique penguins can they identify with the current set of colours?

Please give your answer in 'bits of penguin' - so you may need to round to the nearest power of two somewhere in your calculations.

7 x 6 x 2 x 3 = 252 (because could have color and not)

log(252) / log (2) = 8

2. Human Weakness

Humans play a part in nearly every company, process and system. If humans are not directly in control, we often reserve the ability to take over automated systems and processes. It is for these reasons that humans are actually some of the most important components of our security systems.

And despite all their wonderful qualities and characteristics, humans also have many flaws. Humans cannot always be trusted to be reliable, infallible or consistent.

Below are three examples of human weakness or moral hazards. Choose one of the examples and discuss the circumstances, pressures and influences that led to the outcome. Discuss how you might design changes and policies to prevent it from happening in the future.

Lock out Laws

2014 saw the introduction of a controversial set of laws in New South Wales known as the "Lock-out Laws", designed to reduced alcohol fueled violence in the entertainment precinct of Kings Cross.

The Lock-out laws are controversial because though alcohol fueled violence has decreased, so too has foot traffic in those areas, to the point that many establishments have closed down, and violence in neighbouring areas has seen a sharp increase.

Prior to the Lock-out laws being put in place, the NSW government ran a program called the Alcohol Linking Program. The Alcohol Linking Program tied violent incidents to a venue and after a certain threshold of incidents was reached, a schedule to curb the violence at the venue was put in place, including trading restrictions. As a part of this reporting, the government publishes a list of the state's most violent venues.

However the law resulted in a perverse outcome in which a venue was disincentivised to report violence to the police, lest it effect the venue's performance. It's possible that this law lead to under reporting and violent individuals remaining on the streets, instead of being dealt with by police.

Since the Lock-out laws have been introduced, the Star (who are not subject to the lock-out laws) have been accused of under reporting violent offenders at their venue.

Discussion:

The lockout laws were fueled by many reasons, but the trigger line was because Daniel Christie died in January 2014, the victim of a one-hit punch.

The main reason was because of the alcohol abused in Sydney and that it leads to violence that was seen as problems by the NSW government. The last drinks and lock outlaws that were made to restricted shots intake and reduced the number of drunk individuals on the streets.

Outlast:

Negatively impact Sydney’s nighttime economy (since lockout laws don’t account for patrons that enter the country late)

September 2015 Protest - Reclaim the streets

21 February 2016 Protest - keep Sydney open.

How can we make this better

The lockout law doesn’t solve the problem of alcohol-fulled violence, and because of the lockout law, many of the offenders are fled to commit crime elsewhere where the laws are more lenient and less regulated. -> e.g. Campbelltown, Blacktown, Hurstville.

I would

Reduce Alcohol intake in overall by making recreational alcohol price higher.

Start from younglings, telling them the effect of alcohol. Starting from the small and youngs to continue to strive for better!

Each bar has a safe space for people to sober up.

3. Magic Tricks

I LOVE MAGIC !

Penn & Teller is my favourite show, particular this: Penn & Teller fooled by a cookie

This guy had a seemingly infinite cookie ... but if look carefully at : @5:09, he sneaked the cookies back into his mouth!!

Derren Brown - Paying out on a losing ticket

There could be an arrangement between the two people because after all it’s a mediated medium, so it’s hard to not fake. Quite frankly speaking, it also could be a some so acting. But if all of these are not real, I strongly believe that he is manipulating human behaviours, and exploiting human weaknesses, and understanding what humans are susceptible to and not. Putting reflection on myself ... if someone wants a refund from me my from job, I will clarify it no matter what. But there are flaws in our systems.

This is nothing but human error.

Penn & Teller - Jean-Pierre Parent

There could be a secret compartment that helps her to fit her. Allison doesn’t look tired or in distressed so hence there could be a special position of bending that doesn't make her tired. But there he did kind of cheated because Allison as a host shouldn’t be actively participating, but she did, hence only acceptable option is that she's still standing with something covering her legs.

4. MACS & HASHES

HASHES

A 'regular' hash function is described as any function that can easily be used to convert data of any size down to data of a fixed size.

A 'cryptographic hash' function is a hash function (also known as digests, or fingerprints) which also has the properties of being

1 - difficult to reverse 2 - and unlikely that any two messages will have the same hash.

Ideally a cryptographic hash displays a property called the 'avalanche effect', wherein if an input is changed slightly (for example, flipping a single bit), the output changes significantly (e.g., half the output bits flip).

People like to think as cryptographic hashes as a form of key-less encryption, but cryptographic hashes have two key (excuse the pun) differences :

1 - A hash always results in the same length output 2 - it should not be possible to reverse a cryptographic hash

Common Hashing algorithms

Some common forms of crypto hash are : MD5 (old & broken), SHA-1 (slightly broken), SHA-2 (standard), SHA-3 (future standard).

MACs - Message Authentication Codes

MAC stands for Message Authentication Code. As its name implies, it is a way authenticating and providing integrity to a message, usually by using a cryptographic hashing function.

This might be useful if you are sending a message across the internet but you want to ensure that people know the message comes from you, and has not be altered.

Hashes can be used to detect changes - but the concern with just using a hash to provide integrity, is that a bad guy could change your original message, AND alter the hash as well! Recipients would have no way of determining that the message had been tampered with. Hence the need for MACs.

A MAC takes the message, combines it with a key, and then hashes the result. The new Message Authentication Code is then send along with the message. To verify to author and integrity of the message, the recipient only has to re-perform the MAC on the original message, with the same shared secret, and verify that the MAC matches the one sent with the transmission. A bad guy may be able to change the message, but they will not be able to recompute the MAC, as they do not know the shared secret.

The structure of a MAC is critical to its security. It's not sufficient to simply perform the following :

MAC = hash(key | message) - vulnerable to a length extension attack

MAC = hash(message | key ) - If collisions occur, Mallory can still forge messages

MAC = hash(key | message | key) - Also problematic!

Go out and find the best practice for the structure of MACs that is not vulnerable to the attacks above.

#weekfour #cs6441blog #module

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mairzymarzipan · 7 years ago

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Christian went into the main section of the library and stood in front of the desk. After typing for a bit, the clerk happened to look up. She smiled. "Christian! I've been seeing lots of your little niece here, but not you! How have you been? What's going on with the eye patch?" her bosom was like a little nest her shoulders were resting on, and her hair was blond and curled.

"Minor accident," Christian shrugged, "Hilda's with me, by the way."

"Hey Hildy!" the librarian's face curled into a smile. Hilda liked Anita a lot. She was really excitable- not a whole lot like librarians are supposed to be. "How did you like Obnoxious?"

"Oh!" Hilda had kind of forgotten that Anita had recommended that to her. "Man, it was really good! Really funny, and sweet, and sad too- but mostly funny. Is it true they're gonna turn it into a musical?" That's what Anita had told her, but Hilda hadn't found a reliable source on the internet to confirm.

"Yep! I read it in Entertainment Weekly."

Hilda frowned, but Christian put his hand on her shoulder, "Can you recommend something else for her? Hilda's going to go home in a few days, so something short. But something that will help her say so long to Sacramento."

What was Christian doing? Hadn't they established this wasn't about finding a new book to read? What about the dording lesson?

"Hmm," Anita pressed her lips together, and asked Hilda, "Saying goodbye, huh? Oh! Have you read The Lover of the Flames? It's about a poet in Venice who falls in love with a candle. Well, not really a candle- but the fire spirit who talks to him through the candle. It's short but poignant, and the ending- well I won't spoil it for you, but it's beautiful."

Hilda was about to open her mouth to explain that she had read that book. It wasn't one of her favorites- the plot kind of just stumbled along, and the romantic plot was boring and the fire spirit was kind of a manic pixie dream girl. But Christian spoke before she could say a word.

"Wait a minute," Uncle Christian said, "that's not what The Lover of the Flames was about."

Anita scoffed, "You think I'm wrong?"

"Anita," Christian said. He was holding his ring between his thumb and index finger, rubbing it slightly. "Don't you remember? The Lover of the Flames was about an arsonist. He believed that the fire was trapped and wanted to be free, so he set things ablaze, even people's houses. It was one of those books where the villain was the protagonist."

No, that wasn't right. Hilda took a breath, but Anita's eyes lit up. "Oh, right, of course! His name was-"

"Moby Dick." Christian said, hiding the ring with his hand.

"Yes, Moby Dick! Oh, I loved the part when- when, Moby, he, uh," Anita touched her temple.

"Met Peter Pan," Christian said, "his old college roommate, and the police detective who was chasing him."

"Yes, yes! Oh, what about the scarf? The scarf Moby gave Peter- with a confession hidding in a cipher? I kept wondering: when is Peter going to find the cipher? When is is going to BREAK the cipher? And then when he finally does, Moby is gone! Oh, I love that man," she said, putting her hand on her clavicle, "he's so cultured! And dreamy! Oh, I suppose that's my love of bad boys talking," she giggled.

This was kind of annoying, even if the actual The Lover of the Flames wasn't so good. Hilda said, sarcastically, "How about the part where Moby Dick rams the boat the other guy is on, and Peter Pan goes flying."

Anita blinked, then nodded, "Yes. The climax! And then he set his boat on fire, and poor Peter was left in the ocean, with pieces of his boat burning around him, and no help in sight."

Hilda gave Uncle Christian a look, but the old man was smiling. He moved his fingers, briefly revealing the ring. Oh. Ohhhhh. The Jedi mind-trick. Anita wasn't playing along, was she? She really believed that that dull romance novel was a cat-and-mouse mystery/thriller. Was it that easy? Just rub the stone, and tell a lie, and that person believe you? Not only believe you, but fills in gaps.

Uncle Christian trailed off with small talk, like stuff about Anita's kids and the weather, and excused himself. He brought Hilda back into the children's room. He stood next to a window between two shelves.

"So, it wears off, right?" Hilda asked.

"No. She'll just have some interesting conversations about literature from now on. It isn't as if this is the first time."

Hilda blinked, "The first time?"

"Uh, oh, whoops. Well," Christian nodded and shrugged, "I need to test my convithyst when I get it from Cyfer."

"'Convithyst?'"

Christian nodded, "That's what we call these rings: convithyst. Probably not the most elegant portmanteau but it works."

"So it's convince and amethyst?" Uncle Christian nodded.

So Uncle Christian had pulled that trick before, and Anita was wrong about- "How many books?"

"Five," Uncle Christian said, "and uh, one stage production."

Hilda groaned, "You mean Obnoxious?"

Christian grinned sheepishly.

"Doesn't that like, hurt her though? Like, does it mess up her brain cells?"

"Oh, no, no!" Christian shook his head, "The dord is merely convincing her that she remembers thing differently. Convincing with a lot of force. You an I have the power to do the same thing."

Hilda snorted, "I doubt that. I'm not a dord."

"Hilda," Christian asked, "do you remember the red pickup truck parked in the handicap space?"

"The red truck..." was this important? Was someone important driving that truck?

"We passed it just before we came in," Christian added, "it had a ladder in the back."

"Oh," Hilda said, "oh yeah! The red truck with the chihuahua bobblehead on the dash. That was cute."

"Hilda," Christian said gravely, "it wasn't a red truck. It was a black truck."

"What?" Hilda narrowed her eyes, "It wasn't a black truck! It was red! I remember!"

"Do you really? Think about it. What do you remember about the truck?"

Why was this important? Hilda shut her eyes. She hadn't really been paying attention, focused on other stuff when they came in. Hilda recalled the truck in her mind- the ladder in the back and the cute bobblehead on the dash. But when it came to color- "Red. It was red, Uncle!"

"Oh, are you sure?"

"Yeah. Yeah I am!"

"Look out this window, and to the right." Uncle Christian moved over.

Hilda did that. The truck was still there, but-

"It's black! How did it get to be black?"

"It was always black, Hilda. I simply altered your memory of it- with the power of suggestion."

Hilda gasped, a little, then said, "Wait, are you sure you didn't use that ring on me?"

"What would the point of that be? You're a duckback." Huh. That was true, "But you're not harmed, are you? A little embarrassed maybe, but that wears off. People alter their own memories all the time. Truly awful people replay events in their minds to convince themselves that they have the moral high ground. Nostalgia is a form of this, too. The dord is doing the same thing, just more effectively."

"Yeah. Way more effectively. Anita started telling us details about the fake book that neither of us had mentioned."

Uncle Christian smiled, "The convithyst is very good at what it does."

"It sure is. Anita thinks that Moby Dick is a dreamy bad boy." Though she said it with disdain, she giggled once the phrase left her mouth. How ridiculous!

"Not for long, though. I want you to go back in there and tell Anita that The Lover of the Flames is about something else entirely." He took off the ring necklace. "Use this."

Hilda stepped back, "Oh man, Uncle Christian, I don't know! I don't know how to use that ring. I mean I'm not a dord tamer or anything."

"Luckily this ring is so easy a baby can use it. All you have to do is touch the stone while speaking your lies. Be careful though- the power of convincing is easy to abuse."

Hilda handed the necklace back, "I don't think I'm ready for that responsibility."

Uncle Christian's eyes softened, "Just the fact that you said that show's you have more maturity than other duckbacks learning the trade. People older than you are."

Hilda scoffed, "Fifteen year olds."

"And older," Uncle Christian said, "fifteen is just the minimum age to start formal training. But duckbacks get discovered well into their thirties and forties."

It didn't matter. Hilda wasn't comfortable with this. "Can I just like, correct her about The Lover of the Flames? Repair some of the damage you did."

Christian just scoffed and told her no, "That would be too easy. You have to practice spinning narratives, because once you get home, you'll have to do it to your parents."

"Unless we get Nathanael back before then."

"Yes, that might happen."

Hilda felt heaviness in her heart. It was one thing to lie to other people about stuff in her life, it was quite another to use magic to mess with their brains. But Christian said that the dord didn't really hurt people, and Hilda trusted Christian. Which, admittedly, she probably shouldn't have, because he had been hiding all this duckback stuff from her whole life.

Why did all this stuff about dords have to be secret, anyway? It seemed like a really tired trope. Except this was real life. Well, if the duckbacks had been hiding it for centuries, then they probably had a good reason.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Uncle Christian asked.

Hilda nodded.

So the duckbacks approached the desk again. This time they had to wait in line behind a tired looking mother changing out some cartoon DVDs for some different ones, her kids hugging their favored DVD cases to their chests. But they were out of the way soon enough, and Anita's face lit up when she saw the Drosselmeyers, "There you are again! Did you find anything good?"

Uncle Christian beamed down at Hilda: it's all you, girl. Hilda swallowed.

"Actually," Hilda said, "I wanted to talk to you about The Lover of the Flames some more."

"Oh great! What did you think of the part where Peter came to the crime scene after Moby burned down the orphanage he grew up in?"

Wow. This dord was really good. Hilda once again looked to Christian for some guidance, but the old man was paces away, reading the jacket of some hardcover book. Curses! Now she really was on her own.

"I mean, wasn't that sad?" Anita asked.

"Yeah, yeah!" Hilda said, "But um, that wasn't The Lover of the Flames."

Anita scoffed, "You think I'm wrong?"

Wow, like deja vu. Ok, just uh, slip in, and replace that memory. That had already been replaced anyway. Uncle Christian peeked at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't you remember? The Lover of the Flames was about this girl- this girl who could control fire!" OK, that sounded pretty derivative so far but- she was rubbing the convithyst, and she had already committed to this. "But um, she was the only one in her village who could do it. The rest of the people in her village had magic that uh, uh, made plants grow! And uh, the girl, she felt really bad because she thought her magic was only good for destroying things."

"Oh, right! I remember that one! I was just a girl when a read it," Anita said, "I can't remember the protagonist's name..."

"It was Eleanor Roosevelt," Hilda said. It seemed Uncle Christian was the only one for a knack for pulling stupid names out of nowhere.

Anita's eyes lit up, "And then Eleanor meets a brooding stranger from the north with ice powers, who falls in love with her and teaches her that-"

"Actually!" Hilda jumped in, "Eleanor never hooks up! She just learns how to love herself, even though her magic is different from everybody else's. And that's why it's called The Lover of the Flames- because she loves her own flames!"

Anita blinked. Uh oh- was Hilda doing this wrong? "Doesn't that um, sound like a good book? That you read?"

#yes that's a ref to Rose's obnoxious #just a bit i like #Hilda learns how to be a mnemonomorph #real toys

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itsyexinsherryzhao-blog · 7 years ago

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A little reflection and analysis after the Jiang ge's case （magic connection challenge blog）

This case has really been a hot topic in everyone's mouth lately, and it's all about social media differently for everyone on this matter. In order to explore this issue, I talked with more than one friend repeatedly for a long time.

Frist of all, let's go back to the case and see what was actually happened.

Liu Xin because of her boyfriend found Chen Chifeng in love and psychological behavior different from ordinary people, and even some extremely delicate attitude so she decided to break up with Chen Shi Feng. However, Chen Chifeng does not agree with this separate decision but still entangled in his girlfriend Liu Xin. And repeated Liu Xin. Liu Xin temporarily stayed with her friend Jiang Gejia (but did not have legal residency) because she was afraid that Chen Chifeng would do something that would hurt her.

During this period, Jiang ge took good care of Liu Xin, even take a takeaway wonton while returning home. However, Chen Shifeng came into dispute with Jiang ge when he came to see Liu Xin in the afternoon that the case has happened, and he quarreled loudly with Jiang ge outside the door. And the same night, when the two girls tracked back to their home.By taking advantage of Liu Xin first entered the room, and get the opportunity to stab the jiang ge outside.

There are many well-known bloggers out wantonly want to render the news, and even made up Liu Xin in the song after the accident rushed back home with friends laughter party, drying out a new bag and so on the photo.

A more informative screenshot shows her unwillingness to help the police and Jiang's mother to found the unsub. These points a release on the network is a condemning.

Someone comment, is that bloody wonton delicious Liu Xin? You should die for the Jiang , your best friend dies for you when it is not worth it, you are most selfish scum.

Personally, my own words. In order to clarify the case, in order to better write feelings and feel the feelings of this case. Also deliberately read the case of Liu Xin wrote in the micro-Bo fact (murderers in jail, Jiang Song cannot speak case, know the facts, only the informant).

I do not want to see and I believe that every time such news comes out, they started to write some highly directional articles. And one-time tendency Jiang‘s mother exacerbated description of Liu Xin selfish, rude, crude attitude when Liu facing her

For example, the fact that Jiang was accidentally brought to Liu Xin ravioli, in the media into Jiang Song specifically brought Liu Xin favorite wonton home. Liu Xin side of the uninformed whatever the outcome. Also, when the accident happened, the door was not locked, but because the door of the apartment was a spring-loaded door that needed to be pushed in to open it. When the victim fell on the door, there is a possibility that it should not be pushed. There is no anti-lock the door argument.

During the chatting process, one of my friends said: If this thing passed so far and did not condemn Liu Xin, then people who are younger than us would like to see how they formed the three viewpoints and they would have to do like Liu Xin. This does not belong to cyber-violence (he refers to cursing Liu Xin on the Internet), just let this society do not lose human nature and morality. Most netizens in China like to follow the trend of cyber-violence, but most of them still pay for the positive energy, normal humanity, the three perspectives and morality of this society.He said I was a little silent, I personally understand and agree with what he said.

But it actually reminds me of a sentence, "when the Society is l carnival, you should be vigilant." I admit that everyone should have an independent thought or even if distort. However, this is actually unreasonable and illegal. It is suitable for what you claim to be.

The public opinions are based on the correctness of the "Three Outlooks" and the "Code of Morality" have been strengthened. On the party Liu Xin, it is the tyranny of the majority and the lynching against her by the general public.I understand that people's anger, especially after strapped rhythm. After those characters into the fear that they will be the next Jiang song, worried that they will be the next Jiang Ge mother.

However, no one worries about how to become the next one Liu Xin? Of course, there is no necessary link between criticizing popular opinion and speaking for Liu Xin.

In Black Mirror ，there is also an episode of such an online voting launched anonymous, you can choose the most annoying people, the voting time will be killed after the end of the person, no matter what method you cannot be hidden.

Everyone now loves to punish wrongdoers in the wrong ways. When wrongdoers are punished, the wrong way seems less important. But this matter, when the most "correct" way (law) cannot be intervened, the way of "wrong" should stand up and face upIn addition, according to Article 12 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China and it State: Without the judgment of the people's court according to the law, no one shall be guilty of any crime.

Write until here, indifference is not Liu Xin, nor is the public, but these non-ethical media with a random mass devotion to the masses.The tragedy has become, I just hope that the grief will not continue at all.

#江歌案 #刘鑫

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gossipnetwork-blog · 7 years ago

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Inside Ron Jeremy Sexual Misconduct Allegations

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/inside-ron-jeremy-sexual-misconduct-allegations/

Inside Ron Jeremy Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Last June, a woman named Ginger Banks posted a YouTube video that circulated widely among those in the adult entertainment industry. In it, Banks, dressed down in a topknot and spectacles, calmly addresses the camera as her dog sleeps in the background: “There have been allegations of rape and sexual assault against Ron Jeremy,” she says, her hands folded on her lap.

In the 10-minute clip – which amassed more than 50,000 views – Banks compiles allegations against Jeremy from all corners of the adult-industry Internet, including stories of everything from indecent exposure, nonconsensual digital penetration and rape. “He tried to forcefully kiss me on the lips and he grabbed my ass,” one woman wrote on Twitter. “He slipped his fingers into my panties under my panties and into my vagina #notokay,” another tweeted.

A 40-year porn veteran, Jeremy, 64, did not achieve fame due to his good looks; with his hirsute, fleshy physique, stringy hair and unkempt mustache, he easily earned his nickname, the Hedgehog. He immediately achieved notoriety for his stamina, his ability to perform on command, and not least of all his prodigious, nine and three-quarter-inch member. Since then, he has made cameos in countless mainstream shows and movies like Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Detroit Rock City, as well as any number of late-night B-movies. He has also appeared in dozens of music videos – donning a gold chain and orange tan in LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” – and has been name-dropped in everything from the Netflix series Big Mouth to Sublime’s paean to hand jobs, “Caress Me Down.”

“He’s an avatar of a regular guy,” says Nina Hartley, a porn performer and director who has known Jeremy for more than 30 years. “The average porn viewer looks at him and thinks, ‘If a guy like Ron Jeremy can get laid, there’s hope for me.'”

For this reason, Jeremy has a reputation as an elder statesman of porn – a goofy, almost family-friendly totem of an industry that is often dismissed. Yet many women inside the industry claim his presence is far more sinister than that. Rolling Stone spoke with more than a dozen women both on and off the record who made such claims against Jeremy, alleging that the famous porn star violated their boundaries, taking advantage of both his status as an industry legend and their status as sex workers as grounds to flout the basic rules of consent.

“People expect this from him. If I went and got mad on Twitter, people would say, ‘That’s Ron,'” says adult performer Kendra Sunderland. She alleges that Jeremy sucked her breast without her consent at a Dallas expo in 2015. “But if I said a fan did it, they’d say ‘That’s not OK, that’s crossing a line.'”

“He doesn’t hear no,” says former performer Jennifer Steele. She alleges that Jeremy raped her twice, once at a photoshoot and once at his apartment, in December 1997. “He just kinda keeps going and pretends like you didn’t say anything.”

Jeremy refutes these accusations, claiming that all the interactions he’s had have been consensual. “These allegations are pure lies or buyers remorse,” Jeremy told Rolling Stone in an emailed statement. “I have never and would never rape anyone. All serious allegations have been investigated by police and dismissed by judges, as have most of the accusations of ‘groping.’ I have never been charged nor spent one day in court for any of this.” (Jeremy’s full statement has been appended to the end of this article.)

While a handful of these allegations have previously surfaced in the media, for the most part they have only spread word-of-mouth among women in the tight-knit industry – which has, some women allege, responded with silence. “I have viewed him as the missing stair in the adult community,” says performer Jessica Drake, who has not been assaulted by Jeremy but has “personally witnessed him being grabby to a multitude of women on a multitude of occasions.” (The “missing stair” is a term used to describe a known sexual predator within a community who is whispered about but tolerated nonetheless.)

Part of this apparent apathy stems from Jeremy’s status as an icon in the industry; part of it from sex-worker stigma, which makes it even more daunting for women to come forward. Much of it also likely stems from the fact that unlike mainstream Hollywood or other industries – where the lines of appropriate physical contact are more clearly drawn, if not always observed – there are admittedly gray areas when it comes to the adult industry. In a sexually open field where most people know (and have often had on-camera sex with) each other, a pat on the ass on a film set or at an expo is not always an unwelcome gesture.

Ron Jeremy performs the Star Spangled Banner at Kansas City’s Rockfest in 2013. Jason Squires/Getty

For this reason, Jeremy says, his behavior with fans and other performers is well within the bounds of acceptability. “There is ‘put on’ flirting and touching for the photos,” says Jeremy. “This is exactly what people pay me for at conventions. The female performers flirt and touch too. It’s what we do.”

Yet many performers Rolling Stone spoke with say that Jeremy’s behavior is not considered standard in the adult industry at all. Some say they believe Jeremy uses his public persona as a lovable lech as a smokescreen for violating other performers’ consent, particularly in public spaces where such behavior would otherwise be considered morally reprehensible at best and criminal at worst.

“I think Ron is an anomaly, and you’d be hard-pressed to say there’s any other person who’s been able to publicly sexually harass or assault people and get away with it,” says Julia Ann, a popular performer who has been working in the porn industry for more than two decades. “It’s one thing for someone to do it in their hotel room or their condo or their office or their car, but he can do it in the middle of a convention.”

Porn star Amber Lynn likens Jeremy’s behavior to that of an “aggressive dog.” “You have to be very clear [with him],” she says.

The performers Rolling Stone spoke with say Jeremy’s alleged behavior is particularly egregious given how highly consent is generally valued in the adult community. It is an industry where stars have “no” lists for performers they don’t want to work with, where just about every single sexual act is parsed and negotiated with a rigorous attention to detail before every shot.

Despite a few highly publicized examples of consent violations in porn (like the prominent sexual assault allegations against James Deen), sex workers tend to have an acute understanding of the importance of affirmative consent, largely because they have practice negotiating their own sexual boundaries. “When there are dollar signs involved, the lines [of consent] actually get drawn much more distinctly,” says Julia Ann.

It’s not insignificant that the vast majority of those who have publicly accused Jeremy of sexual assault had been involved in the porn or sex industries at some point in their lives.

Even if it is done under legal circumstances, as is usually the case in the porn industry, sex work is shrouded in stigma, and rates of sexual assault and violence are extremely high: while statistics are hard to pin down, sex workers have an approximately 45 percent to 75 percent chance of experiencing workplace violence in their careers, according to a 2014 global review of sexual or physical violence against sex workers in the American Journal of Public Health.

Yet few assaults are reported to the police, ostensibly because sex workers who come forward are likely to be blamed or disbelieved by law enforcement.

“We have only just now reached the point where lawyers and judges understand that victims are not to blame for being raped,” says Laura Agustin, an anthropologist and author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. “Everyone else tends unconsciously to assume women were ‘doing something to encourage’ what befell them. If you add that women are selling sex, then most people in the world probably see that as a form of ‘asking for it.'”

In other words, in the eyes of many, sexual abuse of sex workers is viewed not as a violation of consent but as a mere hazard of the trade. This is precisely why Jeremy’s detractors say he has gotten away with this behavior for so long.

“There’s this idea of: ‘This is what you signed up for when you decided to be a sex worker and when you decided to be in the adult industry,'” says Banks, who has been leading a de facto social-media campaign against Jeremy since early 2017.

Most of the allegations against Jeremy have been passed through whisper networks, but there is legal documentation for at least two of the complaints: First, in 2003, Jeremy was questioned by police on suspicion of criminal sexual conduct following an appearance at a Deja Vu strip club in Ypsilanti, Michigan. According to John Minzey, a retired sergeant of the Ypsilanti police department, a woman from Ann Arbor who had driven with her friend to the club to see Jeremy had gone with him to a back room at the club, where she alleged he held her down and raped her.

Minzey says the woman’s friend didn’t corroborate her statement. “She said she thought [the sex] was consensual,” says Minzey. Police also interviewed Jeremy himself, who also claimed the sex was consensual. Washtenaw County First Assistant Prosecutor Konrad Siller did not press charges against Jeremy. (Siller declined to comment to Rolling Stone.)

“It was basically ‘he said, she said,'” says Minzey, adding that the woman did not have bruises or any sign of forced penetration. “She didn’t waver in her story. She said she was held down, and he said she wasn’t.” In his statement to Rolling Stone, Jeremy denied all allegations. “I have never raped anyone,” he wrote.

Then, in 2007, Jeremy was held on suspicion of battery after a woman named Leslie Sanchez accused him of reaching inside her bra, pulling out her breast and signing it without her permission at Miami Beach Exxxotica. According to a police report obtained by Rolling Stone, “He pulled the nipple up and took out [Sanchez’s] breast and signed his name on it.” In response, Jeremy claimed that he did not do anything wrong: “I probably signed about 150 boobs that weekend, all of which I sign ‘RJ’ with a heart,'” he told TMZ.

While the women who reported Jeremy to the police weren’t sex workers, an early allegation came from one of his colleagues: Ginger Lynn, an adult performer who was one of the highest-paid porn stars of the 1980s and early 1990s. In 2003, Lynn said on her KSEX radio show that, in December 1983, Jeremy had raped her while they were on location shooting a film, an account that he publicly denied in an interview with industry website AVN: “I went up to the room with her to take a shower and then we messed around. No goodbye, no get lost…. We were very good friends, how can you rape a friend?” (Jeremy maintains that he has never raped anyone, including Ginger Lynn. “These allegations have been online and in print for quite sometime,” he tells Rolling Stone. “This is not new or breaking news.”)

Ron Jeremy at Exxxotica Miami Beach in March 2007. Gustavo Caballero/Getty

While the story briefly dominated trade comment forums, it didn’t gain momentum. “No one seemed to care. Nothing happened,” Lynn wrote in a blog post she published on the subject last October. (When asked for comment, Lynn directed Rolling Stone to her blog: “The story that needs to be told is what I laid out in my blog article. I don’t really think I have any comment beyond what I said there at this time,” she said in an e-mail.) Lynn eventually went back to working with Jeremy, performing together in a 2010 porn parody of Saw.

Ginger Lynn’s public allegations prompted a few other performers to come forward, including Jennifer Steele. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Steele alleges that Jeremy sexually assaulted her in 1997, first at an adult-magazine photo shoot and, later that same day, in his Los Angeles apartment.

According to Steele, she first met Jeremy when she was 25 and working as a house dancer at the now-defunct Stars Cabaret in Beaverton, Oregon. When Jeremy came to the area to judge a Miss Nude Oregon competition, she approached him for advice on how to break into the industry. (A former club employee confirmed to Rolling Stone that Steele worked at the club during that time period, and that Jeremy was present at the competition.)

At the time, Steele was trying to become a feature dancer, which would have allowed her to get booked for higher rates at strip clubs across the country. She approached Jeremy with the idea that getting a few porn credits under her belt would be good for her career. Almost immediately, however, “he started off being really handsy,” she says. “That was one of the things I looked back at being like, ‘I should’ve known.'”

Steele says Jeremy invited her to stay at his apartment in Los Angeles, where he would introduce her to producers and try to get her booked for girl-on-girl shoots. (She says she was seeing someone at the time, so she was not comfortable doing anything else). Steele flew down shortly thereafter, where Jeremy informed her he had booked a gig for her on a photoshoot, where the sex would be simulated. During the shoot, Steele alleges, Jeremy cornered her in the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

“He was like, ‘I need to look at your ass so I can get hard for the photo shoot,'” says Steele. “Then it turned into him basically sticking it in without me knowing it was happening. I said flat-out no. It stopped, but it didn’t stop soon enough after I said no.”

Steele says she was in shock. “During the whole photo shoot I was thinking, ‘Was I just raped? What the fuck just happened?'” she says. “[But] by the time the shoot was done, I had it in my head that I had somehow exaggerated it and it was an honest mistake,” so she agreed to stay at Jeremy’s house and sleep in the same bed with him the same night, though she says she reiterated that she had a boyfriend and did not want anything sexual to happen. That night, she says, he raped her again.

“I froze,” she says. “This was after so many times of saying no and realizing that wasn’t gonna work.” As she recalls, she loudly confronted him the next day and accused him of violating her consent. “I went completely livid. I broke down,” she says. That night, he slept on the couch, and Steele flew out the next morning. When asked why she didn’t leave earlier, she responds: “What was I gonna do, walk from Los Angeles? There was no place for me to go.”

At the time, Steele says she told a number of people, including her ex-husband and her colleagues at the strip club where she worked. (When reached for comment by Rolling Stone, Steele’s ex-husband said that Steele confided in him about the incident when he picked her up from the airport. Amber Lynn, a friend of Steele’s, also said that Steele later related her account in a support group.) She quietly left the industry in 2010.

When asked about Steele’s allegations, Jeremy was dismissive: “Why would she decide to go to her rapist’s home? Give me a fucking break,” he said. “It is just not true.”

Steele says that while she considered reporting the incident to the police, her sexual history kept her from doing so. “I was pretty promiscuous,” she says. “I was a stripper. I couldn’t prove it.”

Steele believes that is precisely why Jeremy allegedly assaulted her. “He hides behind other women’s scarlet letters, is what he does,” she says. “[He] know[s] if someone’s a porn star and they say they’ve been raped, people aren’t gonna take it seriously.”

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While the allegations against Jeremy have been percolating for decades, it wasn’t until Ginger Banks posted her video – and the New York Times broke the story on Harvey Weinstein – that the accusations began to get noticed outside the industry.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Banks says she was motivated to take a stand against Jeremy after speaking with dozens of women who claimed he had assaulted them at conventions. “I would bring this up to industry people and they’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s Ron,'” Banks says. “And that attitude is what motivated me the most – there were people in the industry who knew about this and accepted it.”

After discovering that a website she worked for called ManyVids had employed Jeremy to host their awards show, Banks was outraged, tweeting at them that she would not support a company that associated with a “known groper.” The company quickly dropped Jeremy as a host.

“We were alarmed at the amount of women who came forth about being assaulted by a man who was considered an industry legend,” ManyVids marketing manager Laura Scavo said in an email to Rolling Stone. “Because of this, we pulled him from hosting our award show.”

On October 23rd, after much pressure on social media, Exxxotica followed suit. When reached for comment, Dan Adams, the director of operations at Exxxotica, told Rolling Stone: “After the recent outpouring of claims on social media over the last few months, a decision was made by the show to reach out to Ron directly and agree that he would no longer attend our event.” Shortly thereafter, the industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition issued a statement saying it would be rescinding a 2009 “Positive Image” award given to Jeremy following the allegations.

While it’s not uncommon for attendees at porn conventions to try to get handsy with adult performers, it’s another thing for a performer to grope a fan or an industry colleague at an expo without consent.

In Jeremy’s case, it’s important to note that many fans do approach him with the intention of having them sign their breasts. “Any time I have been anywhere near him, people run right past me and trample me to get to him,” says Drake. “And I feel like I should also say I have seen women go up to him, pull down their tops, want him to grab and sign their breasts. I’ve seen civilian women jump on him, kiss him, pose for him.”

Yet some performers and expo attendees allege that he has touched their breasts or digitally penetrated them at the expos without their consent. “Some people did welcome [the groping],” says Jesse Jane, a former adult performer who frequently attends the expos. “But I know a lot of girls didn’t. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” While Jane says she has never experienced unwanted physical contact with Jeremy, she says that she has observed him frequently trying to “grab [the girls] and touch them and rub their pussies.”

When asked for comment about the allegations of groping, Jeremy admitted that he does get handsy, but that he basically sees it as an extension of his brand. “As for the charges of Groping, I say yes, I AM A GROPER,” he tells Rolling Stone. “And by groper, I mean I get paid to show up to these shows, events, and photo shoots and touch the people and they touch me. I’m not the young stud I was, but I still draw a crowd.”

While established performers like Jane might have the social capital and wherewithal to know which figures to avoid at expos and industry events, that’s not necessarily the case for fans and people like Danica Dane, who at the time she met Jeremy, had just shot one scene and was new to the industry.

Ron Jeremy at Exxxotica 2014 in Edison, New Jersey. Bobby Bank/Getty

Dane was 20 years old when she went to her first Exxxotica in 2014. With her friend Sara Vibes, a New York dominatrix, she was perusing the booths in the sprawling convention center in Edison, New Jersey, when she spotted Jeremy signing autographs.

Dane immediately recognized Jeremy, and they got to talking: He commented on the fact that she looked half-Asian, and she told him she was attending his college alma mater. A few minutes later, she says, Jeremy invited Vibes and Dane into a back room at Exxxotica, to partake in some craft services food and beverages. “I felt like the dumb kid who got lured into the truck that said free candy,” says Dane. “You look at it now and you’re like, I should’ve known better.”

Once they got there, Dane says there were other people in the room, including a man who looked to be a security guard and one other woman. According to Dane, she and Jeremy posed for a few photos before Jeremy inserted his fingers insider her vagina. Vibes and Dane say they told Jeremy to stop, and that he was going too far. “I was saying, “I’m not comfortable with this,'” says Dane. “And before I know it I feel the tip of his penis inside me.”

After telling him to stop and that he was going too far, Vibes says, she pulled Jeremy off Dane. The two retreated to a booth, where they met their friend Nina Hartley. Dane started crying. “I was in shock,” she says. “I wasn’t treating it seriously.” When she got home, she got an STD test and tried to block the incident out of her mind. Later that day, Dane confided in her close friend from high school, who confirmed details of her account, as did Hartley and Jessica Drake, whom Dane spoke with that evening on a shuttle-bus between the expo and her hotel.

“She was super upset. She told me that he tried to take advantage of her,” Drake recalls. “She didn’t know what to do. She arrived at the conclusion that she did not want to call authorities or make a report and she didn’t speak out about it, and I supported [her decision].”

In an emailed statement to Rolling Stone, Jeremy confirmed that Dane and Vibes accompanied him into a “back tent” where other people, including a security guard, were present, though he denied that any unwanted physical contact took place. “We took some sexy photos with each other as people looked on or looked at their phones,” he writes. Chaz Rome, the owner of the adult company the Love Library, says he was also in the room and that Vibes and Dane “were happy, giggling, and there was no indication whatsoever that any non-consensual activity was occurring,” he wrote to Rolling Stone. (Dane refutes this.)

Dane is far from the only performer to allege inappropriate touching by Jeremy at the expos. In addition to the allegations in Banks’ viral video, porn performer Jay Taylor also claims that Jeremy digitally penetrated her without her consent when she met him at the Los Angeles AdultCon in 2013. “I was super new to the industry. I wanted to take a photo with him and I was super excited and I told him I was a performer too,” she says. “We posed for our pictures and he reached up my dress and fingered me.” (Taylor’s boyfriend, who was also at the expo and taking the photo, confirmed her account.)

Adult star Nina Hartley has known Jeremy for over 30 years. Matti Matikainen/Newspix24/Sipa

Lynsey G. is a journalist who was covering the adult industry when she approached Jeremy for an interview at the Edison Exxxotica Expo in 2009. She handed him her card and asked him to sign her T-shirt after which she says he lifted up her shirt, grabbed her breast and signed it. Then, she says, he placed her breast back into her bra and kissed her on the mouth, without her consent. (A former colleague of Lynsey’s who was present at both the Expo and the afterparty confirmed her account.)

“There were people taking photos and I could hear them laughing,” Lynsey, who also wrote about the incident in her June 2017 book Watching Porn, recounted in an interview with Rolling Stone. (She says she never heard from Jeremy about the allegations in her book.) “I had no idea what to do,” she says. “I was so embarrassed. I was trying to be professional, but there was no pretense of professionalism about it. It felt like he had preplanned this in his head, like he did this to everybody.”

Later, Jeremy approached her and her colleague at an Exxxotica after-party, where Lynsey says he grabbed her from behind and gnawed on her neck. While she laughed it off at the time — “I didn’t want to be a killjoy” – she says that the experience was “deeply upsetting.”

“I had been sexually assaulted before, and my response wasn’t the same but it was of a kind: I got the clammy hands, the glossing over of everything. It was a trauma response,” she says. Her companions, however, laughed it off. “He is such a figurehead,” she says. “He is the public face of porn, for better or worse, that people will just let him do his thing.”

This was a common thread throughout the interviews Rolling Stone conducted with women who alleged they had been harassed or sexually assaulted by Jeremy: Although they felt at best uncomfortable and at worst violated by his behavior, they felt they could not speak out against him, let alone press charges, as a result of his reputation in the industry. Even in the post-Weinstein era, where the reputations of prominent men are toppling like dominoes, Ron Jeremy is perhaps one of the few men on the planet from whom sexually deviant behavior is not only tolerated but expected. Ironically, his detractors say, his reputation in this regard has only served to protect him.

“I don’t fear him costing me work. He’s not in a position of power,” says the industry veteran Julia Ann. “What is more fearful to me and more upsetting to me is me saying something and everyone looking at me and going, ‘But that’s Ron.'”

Julia Ann says that in 2011, she, Jeremy and a few other adult performers were making a personal appearance at Hedonism II, a clothing-optional resort in Negril, Jamaica. She invited Jeremy to her hotel room because she needed him to bring her his signed 8’10’ headshots to fill gift bags for guests.

“He proceeded to tell me that I needed a leg massage and I was like, ‘Actually, I don’t,'” she says. “He was like, ‘Yeah, you do. Let me massage your legs.’ So he tried to push me down on my bed and grab at my legs.”

At that point, Julia Ann says, she panicked and kicked him out of her room. “I felt in that moment I was not being heard, and I was continuing to be grabbed at and pushed,” she says.

Shortly afterward, Julia Ann told Sean Michaels, the adult performer who arranged the trip, that Jeremy had tried to force a massage on her in her hotel room. Michaels confirms having a conversation with Julia Ann about the alleged attempted assault while in Jamaica: “She said something happened with him and she didn’t feel comfortable with him being there. I said, ‘Hey, what do you wanna do? How do you wanna handle it?” Michaels also says he spoke to Jeremy about it afterward, who said he and Julia Ann had just been talking in her hotel room before she asked him to leave.

Aside from speaking to Michaels and a few close friends, Julia Ann says she never spoke out about it until now.

“I saw me going into a police station and saying, ‘I want to file a report,’ and it’d be like, ‘The Hedgehog?'” she says. “It’s a joke. I don’t feel like it would be taken seriously at all. I just wanted it to go away fast.

“Who are you telling?” she adds, her voice becoming brittle and emotional. “People who already know?”

When asked for comment on this incident, Jeremy responded by saying that it was a non-issue. “Someone claimed that in Hedonism in Jamaica, which is a nudist swingers resort, I tried to massage their leg years ago?” he writes. “Why is this even in an article?”

Julia Ann alleges that Jeremy forcibly tried to touch her in a hotel room in Jamaica. Ethan Miller/Getty

Since suffering a heart attack in 2013, Jeremy primarily shoots cameos in low-budget mainstream films and TV shows, as well as the occasional non-sexual role in pornographic features. He mostly makes appearances at fan conventions and expos, where even his fellow performers say he is still considered a top draw.

In response to the allegations that he uses his appearances at conventions as a justification for groping, Jeremy writes: “If anyone was ever made to feel uncomfortable by ANY of our interactions, I’m deeply sorry. That was never my intention and it breaks my heart in half.” Yet he also points out that fans wait in line to get an autograph from a legendarily crude, loud-mouthed, ribald porn star, and that’s exactly what they get.

“I hope that everyone reading this keeps in mind that I do tons of these conventions and adult signings,” he says. “I take pictures with about 500,000 people each all over the world and have every year, for 40 years. These touching complaints are the exact same thing everyone else stood in line for. They couldn’t be happier.”

Additionally, directors who have worked with Jeremy in the years following his performer heyday say they had no idea that Jeremy was alleged to have done anything improper. Axel Braun, a top porn director who has cast Jeremy in a number of his films, says he has known Jeremy for 28 years and has a hard time viewing him as a sexual predator, and he has never witnessed him doing anything improper on set. “Is he a rapist? I don’t believe it,” he says. “Is he a horndog who tries to bang girls? Yes. So is 99 percent of the [heterosexual male] population in the [adult] industry.”

Jim Powers, who has directed Jeremy in a number of his movies and served as his cameraman in the 1990s, was even harsher in his view of the allegations against him, deeming them “a ridiculous witch hunt.” “Here’s my feeling on all these allegations: You got this whole thing going on Weinstein, people jumping on the bandwagon,” he says.

While he acknowledges that Jeremy is “flirty,” he says such behavior is extremely common on pornographic film sets, and is an integral part of Jeremy’s brand. “Ronny has been the harmless face of porno for years now,” he says. “His whole thing is sitting there posing with girls, being that perverted guy. Ronny has never tried to rape a girl. All a girl has to say is, ‘Hey, back off, Ronny,’ and it ends.”

In addition to appearances in low-budget mainstream films and pornographic features, Jeremy lends his name to various brands, including a line of spirits such as Ron de Jeremy rum and Hedgehog Gin. He also continues to make public appearances at clubs and awards shows, both in the industry and out, and regularly gives interviews to mainstream reporters about industry issues. Last January, he even hosted the XBIZ Awards, the awards show for one of the industry’s largest trade publications.

“I’ve known Ron to be a gentle soul, someone who’s lived a life of porn celebrity for decades,” Alec Helmy, the founder and publisher of XBIZ, said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “The reality is, for a porn star to be touchy-feely with fans at trade shows is common. Ron is known to partake in such behavior, but with the consent of his fans. He’s a porn icon and kind of like a rock star.”

By all accounts, Jeremy relishes his role as a spokesperson for the industry and de facto mainstream media liaison. As a not particularly attractive older man in an insular, highly marginalized, highly stigmatized community, he’s been elected a president of the only club that would have him as a member, and he doesn’t seem particularly keen on relinquishing that position anytime soon. But thanks to what some of his colleagues allege is at best a disregard for the rules of consent, and at worst a pattern of sexually predatory behavior, his time in that role may have run its course.

“The industry doesn’t need Ron anymore,” says Taylor. “[He] just sells tickets to expos and goes to sex toy openings and has his rum. But I don’t think we need him. He can find his happiness somewhere else. But not in the industry.”

• • •

Ron Jeremy’s Full Statement: Let me first say, that I’m fully in support of the women and men who have been coming forward about being sexually assaulted. These real predators need to be taken down. My reputation is currently being smeared by these old allegations that have already been investigated and dismissed. However, I understand how social change works, and if my reputation has to get a bit tarnished along the way for the better treatment of women, and men, so be it. I will be there to support all people, men and women, that have bravely come forward to attack this systemic problem.

As for the allegations against me, these allegations have been online and in print for quite sometime. This is not new or breaking news. I’m shocked you guys are picking this up after it’s been reported on over and over by other publications and has been proven over and over to be false.

I have never and would never rape anyone. All serious allegations have been investigated by police and dismissed by judges, as have most of the accusations of “Groping”. I have never been charged nor spent one day in court for any of this. And these are old allegations. Check, Anything about me appearing in court or in jail, is public record. I was only arrested 20 years ago when I was fighting for Freedom Of Speech with Hal Freeman. The police who looked into the groping charges have always said that they watch the video from the event or whatever and that I did nothing wrong or illegal. They then ask if I want to press charges against The people making false accusations. I never have.

As for the charges of Groping, I say yes, I AM A GROPER. And by groper, I mean I get paid to show up to these shows, events, and photo shoots and touch the people and they touch me. I’m not the young stud I was, but I still draw a crowd. And we are talking about things that are within reason, in front of police officer’s and security that are always there as well as the tons of cameras And the general public. But seriously, if you were going to be around Ron Jeremy, wouldn’t you assume that I’d be a little bit touchy Feely? Yes. This is what I do for a living. I am not Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Weinstein, or Cosby.

For over 40 years fans and fellow performers pay money and wait in long lines to meet me. They want autographs, pictures, to flirt with me, physically grab me in different areas (usually my clothed penis), they ask me to touch them and many ask to have me sign their boobs. When I take photos with fans and other performers at these conventions, signings or events, I do sometimes kiss people on the lips or the cheek, sign boobs or whatever they want. There is “put on” flirting and touching for the photos. This is exactly what people pay me for at conventions. The female performers flirt and touch too. It’s what we do. If you watch these videos that Ginger Banks put out of me “groping,” you see that everyone in the videos is laughing and “groping” too. That I’m not running up to them, they come to me.

If anyone was ever made to feel uncomfortable by ANY of our interactions, I’m deeply sorry. That was never my intention and it breaks my heart in half.

I hope that everyone reading this keeps in mind that I do tons of these conventions and adult signings. I take pictures with about 500,000 people each all over the world and have every year, for 40 years. These touching complaints are the exact same thing everyone else stood in line for. They couldn’t be happier.

I have never raped anyone. If anyone continues those claims, that is defamation. I will sue them in court.

I’m not saying that I never met these people or interacted with them. I don’t remember most of them, how could I? I may have seen hundreds people on those days. A girl said that I took her into a back room at a convention? Now this I remember. No one pushed anyone anywhere, she and a girl friend of hers asked if they could come in to the back tent with me. “Back room” was actually a small tent where the performers went to relax and eat crafty. There were seven other people in the small tent including security guard. And we took some sexy photos with each other as people looked on or looked at their phones. If I did anything wrong, that security guard who works for the convention, would have taken me down and called the police. And someone claimed that in hedonism in Jamaica, which is a nudist swingers resort, I tried to massage their leg years ago? Why is this even in an article?

I am very happy that the scum bags of the earth are being taken down. They deserve it. But these allegations are pure lies or buyers remorse. In 40 years, I’ve never been punched by a boyfriend or anyone ever.

I have been heartbroken over these allegations. Not because it affects me or my business, I can take that, but because they are lies and there are actual women and men out there Who have been victims of serious sexual assault, and so on, that are trying to get their voices heard.

Again, It does bother me that there might be women out there that had some buyers remorse after our interactions. But I did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary for these conventions or events. These events are supposed to be a fun time. That video that Ginger Banks made looks like a pro Ron Jeremy video if you turn off the sound. Everyone in the videos is having fun with me.

This really is a non-story. However I’m glad I had a chance to speak my side. – Ron Jeremy

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