#guys he invented the internet we are using right now

[breezybeej]

Season 4 has introduced me to a new love.

[thinking-emoji]

RNZ interview mirror - the original file is exactly 700 kb too big for tumblr so I had to compress it slightly 🙃

Transcript under the cut!

YouTube megastars Dan and Phil will be coming to Aotearoa next week with a live show full of scandalous stories. For those who don't know them, these two Brits invented being internet famous. Coming to stardom in 2009, the pair have amassed a media empire with over 40 million combined followers, 2 billion views on YouTube, as well as a handful of best-selling books. Dan and Phil went on hiatus in 2018, with each coming out as gay soon after. This is their first tour together since then. The show is called Terrible Influence and it's coming to Auckland's Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre next Thursday, the 19th of December. I caught up with Dan and Phil earlier on the line from Australia.

DnP: Hello.

(Interviewer laughs)

D: Sorry, was that a weird stereo hello there? That must have been disturbing.

I: That's exactly how I wanted you to answer the call.

P: Yes, that's how we speak all the time. D: We share one braincell.

I: You speak in unison.

P: Yes. (laughs)

I: Because you two have lived together for quite some time, haven't you? D: We have. I: Not only working together for many years.

D: Yeah, like imagine like being really fed up with your co-worker and then you want to come home and you want to be like, God, this guy, I can't stand him. Like, what are we doing here, people?

P: Then he's in your house.

I: How long have you lived together for?

D: Errr, fourteen- P: No. D: No, thirteen- twel- P: Twelve years. I want to say twelve years. D: Twelve years, but it feels like 2000. Do you know what I mean? P: Time is not real. We don't know what's going on. D: At this point, we're like, you know, when you go to a zoo and there's two elderly tortoises that are about 400 years old. P: Yeah. D: That's how we feel. P: Yeah.

I: I'm glad that you've decided to, you know, take air travel to get to New Zealand.

D: It's literally the furthest place from home we could ever. So we get some tweets from people that are like, Dan and Phil, thank you for coming to New Zealand because, by golly, you've travelled a bit of a way. But hey, we're happy to be there. New Zealand is a beautiful country. P: Yes. D: And so are the people.

P: Whenever I come to New Zealand, I just want to move to New Zealand. I'm like, why am I in London when I could be in this beautiful, verdant land?

D: A lot of people do abandon for New Zealand and we understand why.

I: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you do understand that. And it's your first big tour back since coming out in 2018. D: It is. I: The show is kind of a little bit like a gossip session. Is that right? Setting some things straight?

D: Absolutely. We're people that have been on the internet for a very long time and people have talked a lot of smack about us over the years, as a lot of people do with anyone with a lot of followers. And we're like, you know what? We all deserve to look back at our past. We all deserve to be roasted for the things that we did and said. That includes us being embarrassing and what our audience were like when they were all teenagers on the internet. But if we have a bit of a therapy session slash Catholic confession, we can end it with a bit of a hug and a pat on the back and go, it's okay. We survived. Here we are now in 2024. So it's like a roast and a healing session at the same time.

I: That must be quite an interesting thing because, you know, you both grew up on the internet and made so much content. You have this huge following that you've built. And so many people work really hard to kind of erase their former selves online. And that's probably something that you cannot do.

D: Oh, no. I would love to. It's too late. P: That's the thing as well. Sometimes our audience know us better than we know ourselves because they watch these videos so much. I never watch my videos back ever. So they'll come up to us at a meet and greet like, remember that thing you did in 2014? I'm like, no. D: No, I don't. P: I don't know what I said or did. D: But Phil, you love this ice cream flavour. P: Yeah. Speaking of ice cream, I'm excited for the Hokey Pokey ice cream. That was the thing I remember in New Zealand. I: It is good.

D: Yeah. Someone said, hey, you're excited to have it again. I was like, what was that? P: We don't have that. D: Don't you remember the time that you had it? P: No. D: Here, I've got this photo on my phone. P: Yeah. I'm going to have some more when I get there for sure.

D: That is not the main reason why we made the travel, but it will help with the jet lag.

P: It's 80% of the reason, I'll be honest.

I: Why is the show called Terrible Influence?

D: I think there's this idea that everyone on the internet, all these creators, all these TikTokers and podcasters are just horrible people that are trying to sell you some kind of crypto scam. And the truth is 90% of them are. And the question that we're asking is, were we terrible? What did we do to all these young people that watch it? Maybe the other question is, what did they do to us? Is what we do inherently bad? Is it a two-way street? Well, maybe we can answer that question and along the way just giggle so much that we kind of forgive and forget.

I: I'm sure you have a pretty good idea of the extent of your influence. But being in high school in New Zealand when Dan and Phil were first starting out, it was almost like a code word. (Dan laughs) It was how weirdos, kind of, identified with each other.

P: I think we've always been happy to kind of have representation for the slightly alternative people of the world.

D: Yeah, we like to joke that it's for the goths, the girls, the gays and the geeks. Any type of person that feels like on any level, they may not be completely mainstream. They may not be vanilla. They might feel other in any kind of way. We have an audience and we look out now because you understand when all these people were 14, it kind of looked like they were all teenagers. Now that they're all adults, some people are coming up to us, they're like, hi, Dan and Phil, meet my child. (laughs) But all these people have been in such different journeys in life. But it's knowing that, you know, back in the day, there was a place where no matter what kind of person they are, they felt like, you know what? Here in this comment section with these guys, I can just be myself and that makes me happy. I think whether that is something that we did do intentionally or it's an accidental byproduct of our influence, we'll take it.

P: And a lot of them have grown up with us as well. That's the lovely thing. So we're meeting people now that are just much older, but they're still watching the videos because we've- we've grown up and they've grown up as well.

I: Absolutely. And you took this hiatus, you know, from the internet. How long was that hiatus for and what was the impetus for it? And for coming back?

D: It was five dark years. P: Five years. D: And there was no Dan and Phil in the world until one day, like Jesus, we returned and here we are now.

P: We did. I think it's always a good thing to kind of have a moment where you're like, what's going on in life? Have a reset. And and I think we're kind of back now.

D: You know, like when everyone, you know, there was a pandemic and then they were like, you know what? My relationship, my job, you have decided it's not for me. I think we were trendsetters there. We did that early, voluntarily style, because we'd been going nonstop since 2009. And I was like, I just need to hit the brakes and look around for a little bit. And then I came back and I was like, hi, guys, I'm gay now. And they were like, ah, yes, that makes sense. But sometimes you have to hit the brake in life in order to take the space, look around you, take stock of things, make decisions. And ultimately, when you come back, it'll be healthier and happier.

P: And we didn't know this Dan and Phil thing- Like when we came back, we're like, do you guys still want these videos? And then, like, the reaction has been incredible, like, so many people watching the gaming channel. D: To the extent people thought Dan and Phil, you need to go on a tour right now. You need to get your butts all the way to Auckland (laughs) because I've been waiting for you to come back and we need to have a good night together. P: Yeah.

I: Yeah. And get out from behind the screen and kind of just interact face to face. You two are hugely into gaming and it's been quite a good pivot from YouTube to kind of try and be more successful, I guess. It's incredible how popular you are on these platforms. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that works and how you kind of make a career out of this?

D: Well, Phil's been doing it so long that he did it before YouTube could even monetize videos. He was doing it purely out of boredom and passion for the craft. P: Yeah. D: That's terrifying.

P: I'm a YouTube dinosaur. But I think with the gaming, we've got a Sims series, which we've got- how many episodes now? Like- D: Oh a hundred or so. P: A hundred episodes. And I think people follow along the journey with us playing the games. And it's like, I guess it's like when you were a little kid and you're watching your big brother play a video game. It's kind of that thing. You're just like watching along, having the bants. So I think what the people come to our videos for is more of the personality and us having a laugh rather than getting really into gaming.

D: Yeah! I mean, gaming is just the topic. It's like any type of TV or radio talk or commentary show, it could be about football, it could be about music and pop culture or the news, you just want to see people that you relate to, that you find entertaining, doing something that you find interesting and then you pair it together, and for lots of people they go: yeah! This is what i want to see P: Yeah.

I: Phil, how have you noticed the kind of gaming culture change over time, and was that something you're a little bit hesitant about, you know coming out as gay in that kind of domain, because we know generally that - you know, over the last decade-

D: The gamers are the worst demographic in the world absolutely- I: Things have changed. D: We’ve been on the internet since the ancient times and it's hard to say, like in a way obviously the internet these days, it feels like it's more terrible than ever, but in a sense it is a lot less toxic and a lot more wholesome and inclusive than it used to be.

P: Yeah, I'd say coming out on the internet is always going to be a scary thing, when you're saying that and being kind of vulnerable in front of so many people. Thankfully we've got such a great audience that the reaction was incredible, I would say.

D: And i think that what's great about the internet is that people can find their own communities, so even within spaces that you might think, oh they're dominated by this type of person – any subculture, any type of person that feels like, I want this space for myself – you can find it. If you want to order you know a ping pong club for girls with ginger hair called Susan that drink wine on a Tuesday, you can start that discord server, people will love it.

I: And I think it's nice to have those pocket on the internet where people can feel safe and can kind of commune together. You will be playing the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, on December the 19th. What about people who didn't grow up watching you, who think you might be quite funny right now. Like what could you say to them if you want them to come to your show?

P: I'd say, well luckily for you we have got a whole section of the start of the show which is the complete history of Dan and Phil in five minutes, so if you might have just slightly known who we are and be like, what's going on with these guys? We're going to catch you up in no time.

D: A lot of people drag their boyfriends, their sisters, sometimes like that mum that you need to drive you so you can have a couple of cocktails to the show, and we're like we need something for these people, we're going to catch them up, we're going to get them on our side, and if we have a spot- there's like a grumpy dad folding his arms in row three, I'm like, I'm going to crack you P: but- D: My mission for the night is you're going to be belly laughing by the end. P: They're always smiling at the end though. That's the thing, we do. We do crack them.

I: Oh and this will be your last show before a well deserved Christmas break, then back into the new year. What will Christmas look like for both of you?

P: I mean we're going to try and get home for Christmas. D: Yeah, yeah the question is, can we get back from Auckland on the 21st of December? P: Twenty- yeah. I think it's gonna be a challenge to get all the way home, but then I'm probably just gonna be asleep on my mum's sofa with jet lag, hoping to drink a lot of cocktails. D: I'm gonna slip into a nice coma.

I: I'm really glad to hear you are back together again.

D: Oh, well thank you! We really, really appreciate it and we're so excited for the show, so thank you New Zealand. P: Nice speaking to you!

@dnp-described

[centrally-unplanned]

Let's see if I have one more election take in me:

I am deeply sympathetic to Sam Kriss's rage against the Democratic corpo-political shibboleth, and not just because we are both deeply enmeshed in the grand tradition of dissident Oxbridge-style cantankerous internet rants. He is right that Kamala was a weak candidate, for one. But more importantly, I still feel what he feels deep down. I remember the starry idealism of my halcyon youth, of believing that conviction, that vision, that the zeal only a platform birthed from authentic principles, tempered by struggle and sweat, would carry the day over crass, paint-by-polling-numbers incrementalism. When he describes Harris thusly:

"She’s a machine politician. She wants power, but not for any particular reason. It’s just that life is a game, and the point is to reach the highest level."

I see my own reaction to her when she first stepped into the 2020 limelight, and low-key hating her for it. I feel his heart, for it is my heart.

But it is not my brain. Because I am not a teenager anymore, and his critique is fucking bullshit.

He says all this stuff like:

The reason Kamala Harris lost is the same as the reason she was the candidate to begin with: the Democratic Party is allergic to democracy.

And how the electorate is seen as but ants from inside the towers of the Machine, like the Dems just invented "not running a primary" this time as a lark. As opposed to neither party in America ever having primaries against incumbent presidents! Because they are normally popular, and it would be a waste of everyone's time to do that! Could you imagine, launching a real primary against Obama in 2012? And possibly sabotaging his brand a bit for absolutely nothing? It is a reasonable policy, particularly when incumbents used to have an advantage for being so. Now they clearly don't, Biden was unpopular and too old, and the Dems took too long to realize it. A costly mistake, but it is a purely strategic error. Big orgs have inertia, and the Dems fucked up. It has nothing to do with an "allergy to democracy".

And Kriss can go off summarizing how the Harris campaign was offering voters nothing:

But for some unaccountable reason, among the general public, ‘Kamala: You Already Like Her!’ was not the brilliant pitch it seemed to be. [...] Another option would be to actually offer something to the voters.

Which sounds neat, but he made it up! I remember Kamala's actual campaign speeches, ads, and platforms, which she repeated so monotonically in her tightly-scripted campaign appearances: protect abortion rights, expand the welfare state, provide better child care support, lower the cost of housing. And most importantly, she ran on Biden's record of a strong economy and promised to deliver more of it. What does even mean for this to not be a real platform? Beyond not having some synthesized, totalizing "Critique" of modernity that packages it all into a beautiful, systematizing little box.

Because I promise you, voters synthesize jack shit. None of this is why Harris lost - voters have made that pretty clear:

You can find other data ofc, this or that point varies, but the story is not opaque. They didn't like Biden! They didn't like his inflation. They didn't like immigration, or they didn't like his liberalism, and they thought Kamala was too similar. She had too much policy baggage. And she wasn't charismatic enough to dig herself out of that hole - no disagreement from me on that front.

Though even then, by that we mean she lost an election by ~3-4% margins after getting subbed in at the 4th quarter while down by ~8% in the polls. That ain't bad!

None of the voters who matter share Kriss's sensibilities, and he cannot hide his disappointment in that. So he pretends that Donald Trump, the guy who promised 20% tariffs on everything to fight inflation, is giving them a real vision:

That’s what Trump did: he offered an enemy to blame and the prospect of doing violence to them

I don't know man, I think swing voters just don't like the last four years and think 2019 was better. I don't think the promises of orgastic violence against democrats are why Trump won! Actually a bit of an unforced error on his part.

But since Kriss presumes to value democracy, that thesis can't hold - so the lack of reality delivering on what his vision for democracy should be is displaced onto Harris's mistakes. The voters can never fail you. You can only fail to elevate them with the right candidate. Which, tactically? Sure, why not. But you can leave the moralism at the classroom door.

This ties into our dreaded media discourse debate, so it is time to bring in another explainer, by Michael Tomasky:

The line-by-line isn't interesting here; instead I want to focus on this quote:

Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president? The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.”

To which the immediate reply is: my dude, what are you talking about??

A 56 percent majority of Americans say Trump is probably guilty of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results through false claims of voter fraud, including 40 percent who believe he is “definitely guilty.” Republicans are less united than Democrats. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats believe Trump is guilty, while nearly 7 in 10 Republicans think he is innocent. Among independents, nearly twice as many think Trump is guilty as think he is innocent.

You know how when you ~13 years old, and you have that friend who is just old enough to start taking Dungeons & Dragons books filled with splash art of succubi into the bathroom with him, but not yet old enough to get that "talking to girls" is an acquired skill? And they are blatantly, openly salivating over the first chick in the 7th grade class who discovered what power the combination of a camisole and a push-up bra holds over the male gaze? And she just completely ignores his faltering attempts at ~casual conversation~, so his brain script-cycles through its backlog of tween sitcom plots until it lands on, "Hey, what if I confess to her? Then she will know about my feelings!"

And you have to pull him aside and gently explain that, bro. She knows. That is not your problem.

Kriss is too intelligent a thinker to not understand this, but our dear Tomasky - and so many like him - has stuck his 14-year-old head in the sand over this. Swing voters know Trump is a scumbag! They know he lost the election, they know he raped a few women in his day, they know he is a serial fraudster. Even a bunch of those Republicans who, in polls, go "oh it's all a Dem conspiracy"? They know too; they just have the decency to lie about it. How could they not? Every media outlet in the country has been repeating it for a fucking decade! I might think voters are morons but even I won't stoop this low; they have eyes and ears, they aren't illiterate.

They just don't care.

Not enough at least, not enough to make it the only thing they consider. And here is the rub, here is the grand mistake Kriss & Tomasky are making - they are at least somewhat right to not care. The height of the Democratic privilege is that they get to play this card because they don't have to deal with it being turned against them. Kamala is a political chameleon but she is a decent person. She would never take a bribe from a foreign government, she would never assault a coworker, she would never, ever, deny a free and fair election.

Which means you don't have to choose between voting for a rapist and voting for someone who is going to shove a bullshit interpretation of the 14th amendment down your throat via a stacked court to ban abortion nationwide, forever. Pro-life people think abortion is genocide against babies! Why are you surprised they aren't voting for the pro-baby-genocide person because she is nice? How sure are you that you would do the same when that is reversed? I guess those boycott-Harris-because-of-Gaza people got some cred, but I think we all agreed they were dumb, right?

This is the rub of why outsiders always have so much difficulty understanding how people like Berlusconi, Trump, Le Pen, etc, get so much vote share - they have no stake in the political struggle beyond the vague idea of democratic norms. It is easy to say "Italy, choose a non-crook!" when you don't have to live with the policy programme of the other guy. From the inside the price of those principles is far, far harder. It isn't shocking that most choose not to pay it.

This isn't to give voters like a moral pass - Trump's conduct is truly disqualifying, I would vote Republican if the shoe was on the other foot in this case. My point instead is that they generally won't as a simple fact of life, and blaming them is futile. If you have wound up in a situation where the political system has taken its pool of hundreds of millions of potential candidates and narrowed it down to two for the voters, and one of them has "launched a coup but will say go to hell to the inflation guy" as a bundled package, someone fucked up and it isn't the voters.

You need political elites to do their part in the system - Republicans never should have let Trump be their candidate in 2016. Open primaries with no organizational thumbs on the scale are a mistake, actually, allowing arbitrary minorities to generate subpar candidates. The decision to let Biden run again was, fundamentally, born from the same impulse - the Democratic Party had no leadership capable of telling him no, because they outsourced that job to "primaries". The Dems are not "allergic" to democracy; democracy is allergic to too much of itself.

But the cat is out of the bag now! These changes happened for a reason after all. Which I won't dig into here - I will keep my point as focused as something as sprawling as this can be. Voters will not save you, and you should not be disappointed when they don't. It was never their job.

[2------2]

STOBOTNIK HEADCANON #4

Okay, we have Robotnik being all clever, snarky, and talkative, but can we have that with stone as well?

Like:

*Maybe he has a tumblr account and the doctor notices and reads through it

(Stone answered to a post calling him a slut and whore "and with your help I shall be president too" (actual post somewhere on this site)).

*And he texted a friend "This book reminds me of you : [Picture of DSM5]

*Also he just jokes and laughs with himself, when the boss is not around (because I do that with me. autism, comedy show for one!) though that doesn't mean Robotnik can't watch the tapes and secretly laugh at Stones jokes.

Also I would like for him to have dry humor and humor in the face of bad situations (like Bryce tankthrusts's "Aaand there go ALL my friends". Like Gen Z with PTSD from life.

Elephant falling out of the sky, nearly crushing you: "Hi Stacy, How's it going? LOVE your new nailpolish!, How's Fred?

Experiment rendering your car a total wreck? : You know? I always thought there was something not quite right with my car. Now I get it! It was the glove compartment. Never could quite fit all my needed items in there. (while just sipping a mug of coffee or tea).

Guys falls, because he rode his bicycle to fast: Monologuing the "Stop it, get some help" PSA, while gesturing like conversing with someone.

Or just being funny. For example: I sometimes imagine the dial up sound in my head or the windows error and shutdown sounds when I'm overwhelmed. When I am done with a stressful situation (as in: don't want to deal with it, not like "mastered it", lol.) I sometimes make my hand into the "call me" signal and mime hanging the Receiver up (more accurately: putting the receiver down).

Personally I would like for Robotnik to notice it and bug stone, so he can listen and watch it, because it is peak entertainment and keeps him busy when he doesn't want to invent and needs to wait for a new episode of his favorite Soap opera "La Ultima passion". Also it's free. And his laughter is so cute.

Edit: I would also like to say, that Stone is a Tumblr veteran, he has the same complete weird humor of us all, like "Do you know the mushroom man?", "The ways on how to cannibalize children", "none Pizza left beef" etc.

I am talking full, snark machine, will be nice in real life to people he doesn't know, will be menace to people he is comfortable with and will verbally obliterate your ass (friendly) because you can't kick his ass over the internet.

[santa-argues]

wanna remind the jk rowling defenders that she's a bad person! i will not deny that shes done good, 500 refugees on the talibans kill list got saved cus of her and shes donated around 160 million pounds to charity. that is astounding and incredible. she also (and not mentioning her transphobic and acephobic tweets)

- wrote a whole ass book thats basically about a man pretending to be a woman going into womens bathrooms and murdering women using the name of a man who used electric shock conversion therapy on gay people (edit: i think he actually invented conversion therapy after looking into it)

- lobbied a lot of money to appeal a decision made on the definition of woman (reason why its bad: limits trans women from accessing rape and abuse centers for women, excludes them from sports, etc etc, i could go on) also heavily supports and advocates for not giving hormone blockers to people under 18 (these are reversible, safe and very often life saving, i have talked to a lot of people who would have killed themselves due to their dysphoria if they hadnt gotten some form of hrt)

- scotland. everything she did to scotland. the tldr is she donated over a million pounds to keep scotland a part of the uk, and the uk drains a lot of scotlands natural resources

- said they didnt kill trans people during the holocaust???? or burn books on trans healthcare?????

- heavily implied autistic people are unable to figure out their own identity without outside sources influencing them

- even elon musk told her to tone it down on the transphobia btw, absolutely hilarious

theres more, of course, but im done listing them. i see a lot of people saying all her charitable actions mean this stuff is irrelevant, i just saw a take that said we have to consider her to be a good person because of the good shes done and just ignore the bad.

let me ask you this then, can we excuse elon musk? can we call him a great guy?

yeah hes a terrible person, an absent father, abusive, transphobic, racist, homophobic, sexist, and i could go on, but hes donated millions of liquidated money to charity, billions in stocks, pioneered both reusable rockets in space travel and electric vehicles, and is the reason why like half the people who live in remote areas have an internet connection.

do THESE charitable actions excuse him? im not saying musk is better, he's definitely worse, not only that but he's richer and a man, so he has more power than rowling to continue to do these terrible things, hes even a part of the american government now. he's also not smart enough to hide his bigotry behind implications and a pretending-to-be radically leftist ideology and theres a lot more damage you can do by being outwardly a bad person.

the comparison is obviously stupid, musk's charity work doesn't excuse helping to set queer rights back by decades or his weird autism stuff or him hanging out with nazis or him supporting Israel or him actively advocating for nazi ideology, but jk rowling is doing the same fucking thing and its okay because shes done charity work?

[dorka]

Most mar a garbage day is megirta (egybol ossze is omlott a site)

Over the weekend, the always-excellent John Burn-Murdoch, over at The Financial Times, posted an alarming bit of demographic analysis that has now gone very viral. It’s from a column Burn-Murdoch wrote titled, “A New Global Gender Divide Is Emerging,” which shows a tremendous political gap forming between young men and women around the world.

Burn-Murdoch followed up the column with a lengthy thread on X hypothesizing as to what may be causing this gap and thousands of other users have offered up their own diagnoses, as well: Smartphones, video games, economic inequality, lack of education, an over-correction post-#MeToo.

Interestingly enough, though, the bulk of Burn-Murdoch’s reporting focuses on South Korea, the US, Germany, the UK, Spain, Poland, China, and Tunisia. Which, aside from China and Tunisia, were all countries I worked in, covering elections and far-right radicalization, in and around the time period those countries’ respective political gender gaps began widening. I’m not saying I have a tremendously in-depth understanding of, say, Polish toxic masculinity, but I did spend several days there following around white nationalist rappers and Catholic fundamentalist football fans. And, in South Korea, I worked on a project about radical feminists and their activism against the country’s equivalent of 4chan, Ilbe Storehouse.

In fact, between 2015-2019, I visited over 20 countries, essentially asking the same question: Where do bad men here hangout online? Which has given me a near-encyclopedic directory in my head, unfortunately, of international 4chan knock-offs. In Spain, it’s a car forum that doxxes rape victims called ForoCoches. In France, it’s a gaming forum that organized rallies for Marine Le Pen called Jeux Video. In Japan, it’s 2channel. In Brazil, it’s Dogolachan. And most, if not all, of these spaces pre-date any sort of modern social movement like #MeToo — or even the invention of the smartphone.

But the mainstream acceptance of the culture from these sites is new. Though I don’t actually think the mystery of “why now?” is that much of a mystery. While working in Europe, I came to understand that these sites and their culture war campaigns like Gamergate were a sort of emerging form of digital hooliganism. Nothing they were doing was new, but their understanding how to network online was novel. And in places like the UK, it actually became more and more common in the late-2010s to see Pepe the Frog cosplayers marching alongside far-right football clubs. In the US, we don’t have the same sports culture, but the end result has been the same. The nerds and the jocks eventually aligned in the streets. The anime nazis were simply early adopters and the tough guys with guns and zip ties just needed time to adapt to new technology. And, unlike the pre-internet age, unmoderated large social platforms give them an infinitely-scalable recruitment radius. They don’t have to hide in backrooms anymore.

Much of the digital playbook fueling this recruitment for our new(ish) international masculinist movement was created by ISIS, the true early adopters for this sort of thing. Though it took about a decade for the West to really embrace it. But nowadays, it is not uncommon to see trad accounts sharing memes about “motherhood,” that are pretty much identical to the Disney Princess photoshops ISIS brides would post on Tumblr to advertise their new life in Syria. And, even more darkly, just this week, a Trump supporter in Pennsylvania beheaded his father and uploaded it to YouTube, in a video where he ranted about the woke left and President Biden. Online extremism is a flat circle.

The biggest similarity, though, is in what I can cultural encoding. For ISIS, this was about constantly labeling everything that threatened their influence as a symptom of the decadent, secular West.

(X.com/jeremykauffman)

Taylor Swift, an extremely affluent blonde, blue-eyed white woman who writes country-inflected pop music and is dating a football player headed for the Super Bowl. She should be a resounding victory for these guys. Doesn’t get more American than that. But due to an actually very funny glitch in how they see the world, she’s actually a huge threat.

Pop culture, according to the right wing, should be frivolous. Because before the internet, it was something sold to girls by corporations run by powerful men. Famous pop stars through the ages, like Frank Sinatra, America’s first Justin Bieber, or The Beatles, the One Direction of their time, would be canonized as Great by Serious Men after history had forgotten they rocketed to success as their generation’s Tumblr Sexymen. But from the 2000s onward, thanks to an increasingly powerful digital public square, young women and people of color were able to have more influence in mainstream culture and also accumulate more financial power from it. And after Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was able to connect this new form of pop influence to both liberal progressive politics and, also, social media, well, conservatives realized they had to catch up and fast. And the fastest way to do that is to try and smash the whole thing by dismissing it as feminine.

Pop music? It’s for girls. Social media? It’s for girls. Democrats? Girls. Taylor Swift? Girls and also a government psyop. But this line of thinking has no limit. It poisons everything. If Swift manages to make it to the Super Bowl, well, that has to become feminine too. And at a certain point, the whole thing falls apart because, honestly, you just sound like an insane loser.

[frostyreturns]

"the tinfoil comes off when you have to imagine the government as smart." This is one of the responses to my post about government having access to technology far beyond the general public. This is a pretty common dismissal of conspiracies and it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard every time I hear it.

A.) What you think the government is and what the government actually is are two different things. This attitude only works if you actually believe the puppet they parade in front of a camera is in charge. Can you honestly tell me you believe that, for example Joe Biden a demented old fuck that doesn't even know where he is...is the one writing and enacting policy right now? You have no idea how smart or how dumb the people in charge are because you don't even know who they are. There's video footage of him signing laws where he says the words "I have no idea what I'm signing." But sure I guess if you're dumb enough to think guys like him are the government I guess thinking the government is too stupid to plan stuff makes sense. The government has so much power and so much control over your life that this idea that they are just too incompetent to plan anything is beyond ridiculous.

Bureaucracy is just one part of government and yeah they're going to have incompetent workers maybe even more than the general public but to say the people in charge are too dumb to plan anything...come on. They were smart enough to trick you into allowing them to steal from you every week, to control your entire education and to be able to send armed men to kill or imprison you if you do anything they don't like.

B.) You know Hanlons razor "never attribue to malice what can be explained by stupidity" well that's retard shit go ahead and reject that premise in totality because reality is actually the opposite of that, the world is full of malice especially when you look to the upper echelons of power....those people are all psychopaths.

You have made the mistake of assuming the terrible things they do are because of stupidity and that they just keep screwing things up by mistake...the screwing up is very intentional. Every socialist policy maker who claims "oh I'm raising the minimum wage 5 bucks to fight inflation because I care about the poor" knows 100% that they are causing inflation and that it will make life harder for everyone and especially hard for the poor. They know...they want your life to be harder, they want money and power and wish you harm. It's not a bug it's a feature.

They knew when they went on tv and said get this shot it will save your life and your grandmas life...they knew they would be injecting you with heart attack cancer juice, that was pure unbridled malice, not stupidity.

C.) You understand it's not DMV employees and politicians doing science for the government right? You do understand that when I say the government has tech we don't it's not because I think Justin Trudeau figured out AI before google right? They use those private companies as contractors to develop technology and then control how it is accessed used and if and when and how it is released to the public. Or they just hire the smartest people to do R and D directly for them. Like when they invented the internet at DARPA. But usually they just swoop in and take what they want that someone else created. People also have this idea that major corporations and the government are separate competing entities when they're not. They dump funding into companies and install CEOs and board members to control them. Google for example only exists because of the government, oh did you think google does whatever the government wants purely coincidentally? The idea of corporations vs government is a fantasy that should have been even more apparent during 2020 when the will of the state was summarily executed by virtually every corporation on the planet.

The idea that people still think the government is separate from corporations after minimum wage employees at walmart were tasked with being bouncers at the door and making sure everyone was wearing a mask had their injection and weren't standing too close to each other because the government told them to ...is ridiculous. 2020 should have been the death of the "private company can do what they want" nonsense.

D.) We tend to use ourselves as barometers of what others are capable of but the problem is there are ways of life and being that are totally foreign to us. Many assume because they are not smart or sociopathic enough to collude and scheme to achieve power and control over others...then nobody must be like that. You went to public school smoked weed the whole time and learned how to write in cursive poorly...I don't think your experience is the same as someone who was born into wealth and power and can spend every minute of their life for generations learning how to keep and amass more wealth and power. You have no idea what it's like to have everything you could ever ask for, all the money you could have to indulge any whim and get weird and disconnected because of it and to feel entitled and superior and spend your days trying to exert your will on the rest of the world. That's not even going into any secret cults or organizations...which are also a thing.

Embracing the tinfoil is the only rational way to proceed with what we know. The only alternative is comfortable delusion. And this wasn't even about a wild or hard to swallow reality...it was just the notion that the government is ahead of the consumer market with technology...that's not even a conspiracy it's a demonstrable fact.

[gaykarstaagforever]

I'm finally watching the Bell Riots episodes of DS9. I'll wait to do a big post until after I see how this all plays out.

But what I don't get now is why these matter? Like, this is still pre-World War III, pre-Post Atomic Horror. What does anything that happens in this universe in 2024 matter once all that happens? I got the impression that living in the Fallout Universe was the thing that actually prompted a substantial evolutionary change in human beings. It's certainly what prompted Cochrane to invent the warp drive.

I guess the idea is that there was still meaningful piecemeal change that was necessary to get us there? Fine, I guess. But it's hard to see how any of that would matter after we have to spend awhile Mad Maxxing it to realize how being shitty is bad. Like, it just seems a moot point.

Obviously the riots can be a thing from American history that happened that Sisko knows about. But trying to shoehorn it into the lore as a significant thing seems like unnecessary desperation. Especially in a universe where, by this point in the history of the franchise, the original Enterprise had already fucked around in the 1960s with a secret alien (sort of) man, Kirk broke and then fixed the 1930s, the TOS crew went to the 1980s and stole whales and an entire lady, and Guinan met Picard in the 1890s and they had a fun adventure with Mark Twain, that led to Data's head being 500 years older than his body.

Like, sure, Ben, the Bell Riots mattered to 2024. I guess maintaining the timeline matters. But Riker and Geordi are still going to have to force Cochrane to invent warp drive whether he wants to or not, and the NX Enterprise crew are still going to do whatever they did when they went back in time to the Depression, or whatever happened there (I have not seen that episode).

This is the problem with time travel stories. They never make sense.

They shouldn't have tried to make the riots significant outside of the timeline being screwed up. It just raises stakes that don't need to be raised and messes with the lore.

...Oh and SO THIS HAPPENS 30 YEARS AFTER THE EUGENICS WAR, HUH? AFTER THE EUGENICS WAR, GUYS?? WHEN WE HAD DEEP SPACE CRYO PRISON SHIPS?? GUYS?? EUGENICS WAR?? LATE 90S?? ANYONE????

I'll give them this. Their stab in the dark at what 2024 would look like in the mid-1990s feels more right than it's wrong. I wish we had that awkward Teletex Internet on big desk screens.

Also that skeevy white techbro is right to no longer have Maori tribal tattoos in 2024. Though for different reasons than the show implies.

[stemms]

Hello, guys. I’m sorry for being inactive in terms of original content lately, but I’m back, and right now I would like to give you an important update.

I’d briefly mentioned my abusive familial situation in the past, but I never really went into details. However, I’d like to share more context now, as it is directly related to the reason for my sudden disappearance.

I’ve been trapped in an abusive situation for the past seven years, and the longer I stayed in this household, the worse it became. While the abuse was mostly psychological, it escalated to the point where one of my abusers nearly choked me to death. I will elaborate on that incident after giving you some context.

My abusers are my mother and stepfather, with the latter causing me more harm. He tends to always blame me for everything, invent more and more nonsensical rules for me to follow (and randomly abandoning some, only to come up with something else) and get mad if I don’t learn them by heart the moment he introduces them (which happens because of my horrible memory that his abuse worsened). He always expected me to reach out to him if I needed emotional support, but when I was actually struggling mentally, he either preferred to ignore it or cut off the internet because “it was obviously the reason”. Additionally, he’d always get mad at me over the stupidest things ever and use it as an excuse to yell at me for 2 hours. Also, fun fact: some of my top posts are heavily inspired by something he did to me (: (: (: My mother isn’t better because she watched every single time he was abusing me, but never really tried to stop him. Yet, when I tried to confront her about his behaviour and explain that this is literal abuse, she’d gaslight me into thinking it’s normal, and it could’ve been worse, so I’m lucky and he “has good intentions anyway”. She’s also extremely controlling, manipulative, and obsessed with the idea of moulding me into the person she never got to be, as well as always keeping me around.

Since I’ve been dealing with this kind of behaviour for so long, my mental health seriously deteriorated. My hands are always shaky, I flinch whenever my stepfather enters the room, I tremble if he comes too close, I flinch if he touches me, I’m horrified of maintaining eye contact with him, I’m always in the fight or flight mode, I overanalyse his behaviour and always make sure to do anything I can (even if it's humiliating) to ensure that he doesn't hurt me again. Recently, I started going to therapy and taking medication, and it's been very helpful so far.

Although things weren’t perfect already, I didn’t expect my life to be threatened. A while ago, I was having an argument with my transphobic mother about my identity, and after it was over, we had dinner. During the argument, my stepfather wasn’t home, so he was unaware of it, but he noticed the tense atmosphere, and it infuriated him to the point where he went to the kitchen to do the dishes instead of eating with us. I had a feeling that he thought it was my fault, so I followed him to reassure him that my mother’s state wasn’t his fault, and it was just a small argument between us (which was literally true), but he started shouting at me because he assumed I was accusing him of something???? I tried to reassure him some more, and then he lashed out at me and said lots of transphobic shit. After that, he grabbed me, pushed me to the floor and got on top of me, pressing me harder and harder to the floor, started choking me so hard that I could barely breathe, so I bit him, and he continued to choke me and pull my hair. I messaged my English Literature teacher and she called the police. We were interrogated and although my mom told me to downplay it, I was too scared to do so and told them everything, plus showed them the pictures of my bruises.

After that, I couldn’t look at any c!Prime content for a while because it suddenly felt triggering, so I just needed to take a break from my blog and work on my mental health for a while. But right now, I'm doing better and I’m feeling more comfortable about c!Prime again, so I should be able to make more content soon. I must admit, I'm not that hyperfixated on it at the moment, but I’m definitely going to do more c!Prime content soon because these freaks are too fun :)

[tayfabe75]

Love your theories, but one thing gives me pause right now. Would they really spend important holidays away from each other, kissing different partners for New Years Eve for example, just to prove some sort of point? We know they’re both romantics and I just can’t see them faking it for such important occasions.

Hi anon! First and foremost, nothing at all wrong with having pause. If everything seems normal to you and nothing feels a bit off or amiss, then there's absolutely no reason to engage with theories or even humor them. We all have our own sense of intuition. And regardless of what I say, or what Twitter says, you should trust your own instincts!

That said, my own instincts tell me that something is "off". Personally, I could not reconcile the breakup based on Taylor and Matty's words and actions. I could not reconcile Taylor Ssswift 🐍 bowing to a hate mob similar to the one that tried to take her down in 2016, or turning her love life into a spectator sport.

And wouldn't you know it? The more I dug in, the more history I found between the pair. The more their respective discographies started to sound like a dialogue, two halves of the same story. And then the coincidences! Everyone has a threshold of how many coincidences are too many before it becomes impossible that they are coincidental. For me, I think that number is just lower than for most. But as someone who loves mysteries, my brain is primed to see patterns in a way that maybe most don't (for better or for worse).

As a proud non-conformist, I wouldn't give the media or the internet the satisfaction of baselessly hating Matty Healy. I often say I learned about him out of spite! (Turns out the world cannot identify a man of outstanding moral character when it's staring them right in the face, and trust me, this is so much tangibly worse than the jokes he laughed at)

I became so fascinated by Matty's character that I started obsessively listening to all of his interviews. Turns out that he can't shut up about Brad Troemel, the guy who created the Taylor Swift Fan Union (and probably The 1975FU) and who has been working literally over Matty's shoulder throughout this year, and has suggested he might be working with Taylor, too.

Now, I bet you're scared to theorize because you're scared to be compared with a subculture of Taylor fans who have theorized about say, a hidden relationship or sexuality, perhaps? Here's what I'll say about that: for their theories to work, they had to completely ignore Matty's existence at his own fucking show on December 4, 2014, aka ground zero. I believe Taylor and Matty once benefitted from these theories - they were somehow so close yet so far off the mark that they were 'safe' being underground without raising suspicion. Why go underground? Well, Matty told us exactly why (and was crucified for it)! However, ignoring this subculture for so long turned it into a Frankenstein's monster. So, since they knew this monster was going to try to destroy Matty at all costs anyway, they had to come up with a plan. I think they did two main things to address it:

1) Orchestrated Matty's cancellation 2) Hired Brad Troemel to do it

So, how can I believe Taylor and Matty are still together despite spending holidays apart and kissing separate partners?

Kayfabe.

Now this is a wrestling term, so you're going to have to think a little outside the box to apply it to celebrity culture instead, all right? I'll start by quoting the man, himself, Brad Troemel:

"The term 'Kayfabe' was invented to describe all the different measures taken to ensure viewers' suspension of disbelief was upheld. Kayfabe includes everything from the matches' predetermined outcome, the scripted moves wrestlers use, their stage personas, their promotional interviews, the feuds between competitors, their ongoing love interests, the storylines that weave feuds together, the belts wrestlers win, the media coverage surrounding wrestling. All of it! Kayfabe is the entire massively collaborative theatrical universe created to maintain wrestling's believability. It's the never-ending commitment to the bit. One of the most important parts of Kayfabe, developed in the 1930s, was the idea that all wrestlers could be sorted into two camps. On one side, there'd be the good guys, known as babyfaces - who follow the rules, take their vitamins, and say their prayers. Then on the other side, there'd be the bad guys, known as heels - who play dirty tricks and would do anything to win. The job of the heel was to generate heat among the audience. This meant goading the crowd into belligerent anger by breaking the rules whenever possible, and cowardly hiding behind the rules whenever convenient. Once a wrestler's persona was established, it extended into every aspect of their life. Wrestlers were expected to maintain kayfabe both inside and outside the ring whenever a fan was present. This meant that if your wife at home was different from your in-ring lover, then you were expected to keep your marriage secret."

Then you have quotes from Taylor like this one:

"Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute-by-minute, ever-fluctuating social relevance and likability. Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine."

Because everyone tends to speculate the worst in others, the narrative quickly turned into: "Taylor always wanted to be in the spotlight having people spectate her love life, it was her mean ex who kept her trapped indoors!" Okay well, now we know thanks to Jack that the "mean bad ex" was probably out of the picture by the time she made this speech. For a woman who proudly easter eggs her clothing, the fact she wore the NYU sweatshirt when she was seen with Matty was… a choice.

Now, let's think about Matty's quote about how he struggled to distinguish reality as a kid because his parents were both actors and celebrities:

"I'd be a child, and something would happen in my real life, and then I'd see that thing on a newspaper, and I'd think, That's not what happened, but that's my mum saying a version of what happened, and I know Mum's at home and she's O.K." He came to understand that a person's life was "a balance between what is real, what is said, what happens, what people believe, what people project, and what is true."

Pair this with not just his desire to make a name for himself and his band completely outside of the shadow of Taylor Swift, but the recent prediction that The 1975 will become the most important band of the decade (and just before hiatus!) At this point, I would say there's a pretty striking case for motive. The Reputation prologue is another great read for anyone who presumes they know a damned thing about Taylor Swift (oh, definitely including myself!):

"We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us."

That was me trying to keep it brief, but I'd say that's a good "101" of the basics, at least! 🤼‍♂️

[womanofwords]

The Poisoned Prodigy (Chapter 10)

I woke up alone in a hospital bed with a blinding light in my face. "Where am I?" I asked the bleached white walls. A nurse bustled into the room with a tray of food.

"How are you feeling?" he asked me.

"Pretty good, but my head hurts," I told him. "What happened, exactly?"

"You were brought in here unconscious after a man hit you," he said, putting the food down on a table next to me. "You are now in Olympus Medical Centre."

Olympus Medical Centre. The same hospital Patton was admitted to. "Where's Patton? He's a patient here. I need to see him."

"Oh, no you don't," he told me sharply. "You're not going anywhere. You need to rest, Vincent. People will be visiting you soon."

So my parents were coming. Made sense. I settled back into my new bed and waited. I closed my eyes to prepare for sleep.

"Hi, Vince," Patton said. But it couldn't be Patton. Patton was still in a coma.

It was Patton.

I scrambled into a sitting position. "How are you awake? You're in a coma."

"I came out of it," he giggled, hopping over and sitting on my bed. They'd taken his prosthetic leg off and left him crutches to use. "So, since you've been awake for the past few days and I haven't, how's Ernest doing in prison?"

I explained everything that had happened, the bribery, the blackmail, the frame job. Patton's eyes watered. "Dr Jacobs was my favourite teacher," he said. "He inspired me to create the prosthetic leg with the flexible foot to better mimic the movements of an actual foot. I won with the invention he inspired me to make."

"I'm so sorry to tell you." I pulled him towards me and hugged him. "You'll be OK, eventually. Your school had a shrine to you. And the skate park. You are loved and missed, something Ernest and his family will not know anything about."

"I've been told as much. I was surrounded with so many flowers I thought I woke up in a florist."

"I met your friend, Sally, too. Apparently, all the people who like Ernest could have been written on a sticky note that was ripped in half."

Patton burst out laughing. "She said that? That is cold. Accurate, but cold."

"Once you get onto the internet, you'll be able to follow the whole story online," I said.

"Cool." We lapsed into a comfortable silence, until Patton decided to speak again. "What's going to happen to Ernest? He's been proven innocent, but the stuff his parents did for him doesn't look good."

"He'll probably leave the school. Having your parents blackmail a teacher into making other students do work for you and poison a student isn't a good look."

"Oh. You are the coolest best friend ever," Patton said.

"I'm really not."

"You solved my poisoning, saved Ernest from going to prison even though everyone thought he did it, and went head to head against an evil teacher that had everyone fooled. Admit it; you're amazing."

"I'm still not."

"Well, that's it. I'm going to make you admit it. Admit that you're amazing." He poked me in the ribs experimentally.

"I'm not ticklish, Patton."

"Right. I keep forgetting that." His shoulders slumped. "What do I do now? Something has to convince you that you're awesome."

Umma rushed in, Appa and James close behind her. "Vincent!" She hugged me tight. "What were you doing? Who did it?" She did a double-take when she saw Patton. "Patton!"

"Hi, Mrs Song," Patton said.

"Patton, he found your murderer!" James yelled. "My dork brother Vincent found the guy who murdered you!"

"He's not my murderer; I'm not dead," Patton explained. "And I already know that it's him. He told me."

"Oh," James said, looking deflated.

"Also, you're a prick," Patton said.

Umma gasped. Appa's jaw dropped. James glared at Patton. "What was that?" James asked, fist clenched. It was a rhetorical question.

"You are one, though," Patton said. "You always make fun of Vincent, even while he's in hospital for exposing an attempted murderer and corruption scandal and getting hurt while doing it. He's an actual hero and he still can't catch a break from you."

Appa, Umma, and James looked at Patton like he'd grown a second head in front of them. "James, be nicer to your brother," Umma said. She looked embarrassed that Patton pointed out what a jerk James was. She never listened to me when I was telling her the exact same stuff.

"Fine," James said. He looked embarrassed, too.

Good.

"Vincent!" Sally rushed into my room, stopping when she saw everyone staring at her. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Vincent, this is your . . . friend?" Umma asked.

I took a deep breath. "Mom, Dad, this is Sally. She's been helping me with this stuff. She goes to Patton's school."

"Hi, Sally!" Patton said, waving. She froze.

"How long have you been awake?" she asked.

"Since yesterday," Patton said. "And then I went back to sleep because I was still tired."

"You were just out of a coma!" Sally laughed.

"Patton's kind of like a cat. He's supposed to sleep for eighteen hours a day," I said.

Patton clutched an imaginary pearl necklace. "Hey!"

"You have to admit that it fits, though," Sally laughed.

"I have two friends, and they're both mean," Patton groaned. "Why are you both mean to me?"

"Hey, we went out of our way to find your real poisoner, have some respect," Sally said.

"You are still awful," Patton said. Aunt Indigo and Uncle Malcolm rushed in and carried Patton out.

"How did you get here?" Aunt Indigo said, handing him over to his uncle like a package or something.

"I was looking for Vincent. He found the real poisoner, Auntie."

"What?" She paused. "What?"

"Yes. It was mostly him. I helped a bit," Sally said.

Malcolm sniffled. "Thank you. Thank you so much for finding my boy's attempted killer." He approached the bed and lifted me up out of it. I always thought that him lifting Patton around just meant that Patton didn't weigh very much. He actually was pretty strong. Half of me was lifted out of the bed as he hugged me.

"My son should rest," Umma said, suddenly shooing everyone out of my room. She had been watching all of this from a corner of the room with a smile on her face.

Pride.

She was proud of me.

:-)

The hospital allowed my family to take me home after a day of observation. "Rest, Vincent," Umma told me. "Enjoy your gifts. People have been very worried about you."

I stopped focusing on the raindrops racing each other down the window and looked forward. "Worried?"

"Yes, everyone's been very scared. This is big," Appa said. "Media asking questions. Very invasive."

"It blew up and people found out where we lived. You're a hero, man," James said.

We arrived at our home and found flowers. Bundles of them waiting outside our home, with cards and letters. "This is a lot," I said. "People actually know about me?"

"People love you! You're a badass!" James said. "My little brother's a badass! My little brother's a badass! My little brother-"

"JAMES!" Appa and Umma yelled.

Appa took me home and walked me into the house. "My good boy," he said, over and over. I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Same bland, boring ceiling. I hated that ceiling. I stared at my skating helmet. Green and reflecting light from the light streaming through my window. It didn't feel as foreboding as it used to.

I'll be able to skate with Patton soon.

If you want to read the other chapters, see Masterlist.

[rosesapphire2323]

Oh boy does it get worse.

We have a deacon who goes drinking regularly with his god because why not. this deacon comes from unknown and suspicious and perhaps draconic origins. the city was under a very calculated attack by a dragon who ATE his own dead 'sibling' for info. the two ruling parties of the city decided the best way to counter this is by planning a countermeasure since over six months before. they threw a fake trial to catch the true criminal red-handed, who is an imposter. multiple imposters. their god helped invent telephones before Fontaine and has literally everyone on speed-dial. which adds up, considering he had the whole city on the equivalent of internet superhighway via the power of ~breeze and song~. that's all he had to do, by the way, because on one side Klee was being a nuclear disaster, and on the other Noelle was singlehandedly holding fort in one whole wing of the city, all on her own. the same 'oh no I'm so helpless!' god told a group of lethal witches "yo, meet my buddy Varka! he's fun!" and that's somehow a whole tripartite system, now? he accidentally called his Buddy Varka™ MID-BATTLE and the guy legit picked up. while surrounded on all sides. the man has a stash of wine hidden somewhere for his freaking god. then the drunkard god called a witch like "wanna kill and then resurrect your nephew?" and left us to play a game of insane chess. then while he was busy enjoying the highs of stardom for the festival literally Made For Him, one of his best citizens sat the whole city alight in alchemical gold and made his own brother. yeah. made him. like cake. also his mom devoured THE FREAKING RULER OF LIFE™ APPARENTLY. HE MENTIONED IT LIKE AN ANECDOTE. the after-mentioned god held such a captivating performance that no one noticed a literal explosion of golden light right under their feet, AT NIGHT. then gave us a suspicious item, played an extremely cryptic song, gave no explanation, and LEFT.

oh, did I say the resident dragon? sorry, my bad, I meant the two resident dragons. Plural.

also, BARBELOTH IS CALLED BARBIE.

imagine attacking Mondstadt though. 'oh you wanna attack mond? don't do that. they have one fanatic nun and another who hides knives in her nun dress. they have a workaholic acting grandmaster, and a witch for librarian who graduated from the akademiya early. they're friends with a wolfpack and a wolf god and there's this kid who literally howls at the moon. they have a princess...? from another world? they have a knight whose friendly interaction is calls for vengeance. there's this kid with the worst luck ever who's actually alive. the most powerful witches throw tea parties there. one of them has a student who can look at you and tell you when and how you'll die. another one of them has an arsonist daughter who makes bombs. for fun. she's shorter than your knee and she'll kill you. one of her big brothers is a witch-made alchemist and the other is khaenri'ahn royalty. whose brother is literally banned from snezhnaya by the decree of the cryo archon herself. oh did I mention the resident dragon.'

[the-firebird69]

This kid and his wife are important to our future the Mac proper have a game they want to play it with them if we don't play along we don't survive we can be part of miscellaneous that's dingleberry top guys and others who want to stick around here's the game it's very intense I figured it out once not necessarily.

--he handled money at work and he helps procure work and he got us jobs and he did it by making technology very weird but he was getting jobs from massive massive changes in the paradigm and in how we do things email internet included massive changes and his brother and the clans were involved but they plan on taking the money he was handling that was associated with those advances and they hand it back to him and he takes over the companies that we were working with and owned at the companies that we had him at so in essence it's like this weird repeating parallel he's building things for us in companies that we owned that he started and he's just a builder running around making places to put it in and it's a very lowly job for what he actually did and eventually he will be sitting in the seat and controlling companies that he started to satiate him and keep him occupied and to try and find his people a lot of people are going to be fired and quit and he's supposed to take over and that's how it's going they know their system and it's wicked they know a little of it he says and it is wicked and that he admits it's massively scary and they're around him and he knows about it and they don't talk and they're deadly and there's other things too and his mother and father are deadly people we understand what we're messing with is dangerous but this puts it in perspective and the cash that's his investments where what infused into the company huge investments massive amounts of money from his investments are now there and they inspire people to invest in those companies and those companies will still be around and they're going to be the biggest and not the only companies he has children and they're going to be invited to the table and they have to and we know why or there's no economy and no people and he's going to have to float us it's a different story than JC and Mary no it's like a clan so they're kind of repeating that and they had them do it and that they did it some of the inventing most of the engineering and they built the companies buildings a lot of Mac proper did so they're saying that they will turn around and take it over in the end that's how it goes and this money is important to them very important and he touched on it saying some things to entice you like your children and it works this might be something that takes a while for you to understand

Mac Daddy

You said something like that before and I didn't get it but he gets it now you get it and now it's starting to make a lot of sense and infusing the money is really making sense to me it makes a ton of sense and he does have investments already and there's one that I can tie on to for goober Meister and it would become huge and he says that Hera can invest directly into it and I didn't get that but I do understand it and she has a way of doing it and you won't know he says until it's done and the people will check and see that it's her afterwards and she's showing an image of Katya with their huge sunglasses what you thought were fascinating and she laughs and says it's probably my sisters and we're supposed to get mad about it and make our own and he says I don't know what the deal is I'll have to copy the style anyways and she says what's coming out of him right now is bothering me and really out of his mouth but he wasn't saying it and he's saying I get a jump in it on them and a head start and I made the retiree glasses type of thing that goes over your glasses for people who are four eyes now she's upset she says don't say four eyes say it's people who wear spectacles like Ken. And yeah spectacle Island okay that didn't have to do with that no. It's getting me back no it's just making it up she says that's Hera and we are saying this is how it's going to happen and it is very big we're going to print some people get it.

It was Trump on top switched into us

Thor Freya

Olympus

[danielmoduleb2]

Filmmaking and AI (Final Full Essay)

In this this new era of film making it seems anyone can be a fil maker. Just typing in a sentence of what they want to see, and it would ‘magically’ appear out of thin air. This is where the technological advancement of AI is heading to where the process of film making should be easier to accomplish, but would that compromise the creative thinking of film makers such as myself essentially becoming lazy? Would it replace jobs as big corporation would need to employ people but invest in AI instead since it easier and would go on strike? AI seems frightening to the creative community, but I believe AI would not replace humans.

Since film making started in the late 19th century the process was gruelling. From only shooting black and white footage with no sound thus having to have a live band perform at the cinemas to give life to these films. The editing process was long since they used the linear method of editing, which involves arranging images and sounds in order. At the beginning, this did involve using scissors to splice the footage and then using tape to attach it in the correct order. This was until 1920 when the Moviola was invented making editing easier but still long. Until 50 years later when the tape recorders started appearing during the time when computers were beginning to advance. Eventually util the digital age where we can transfer files easily from hardware to hardware. We’ve seen in each era in retrospective how technology advancement has helped improve film making process. Why however does AI feels different?

AI has been used in many areas not just in the creative industry but when AI started becoming a ‘problem’ for creatives is when generated still images was created. Ethically this function was controversial as AI steals data from actual artists and essentially steal their artwork for a random person to type in and have an artwork that is the same. Because of this, AI was negatively looked upon from the get-go. Not only it looked ugly and unpolished, but they were no creativity to these images. Despite this these tools were used constantly even by me. In HNC (my first year) I used AI generated imagery to use for a book cover design.

Since overall, the reception was positive Google first announced the first video generated AI tool. Now 14 months later we now have Sora Open AI which right now isn’t available to the public, however they contacted Hollywood to allow fil makers to have early access and make short films. To me this thought is crazy since I already believe Hollywood is becoming to corporate and not allowing creativity to flourish as hard as before (when it comes to blockbusters). So now will Hollywood get rid of employees to make more cash grab movies?

Well looking at the history of film making, and AI I have concluded that AI will not replace anyone. When the internet first came it was controversial for people back then but now it is accepted and is instrumental to the process of film making. AI will be the same if it used as a tool not a replacement.

While I have always been attracted to film making because of the visuals, hence why I am more into music videos and moving image rather than just movies or tv shows, I know that narrative is the most important element of film making. Making something the audience can relate can only be achieved through a human making it. AI can’t understand human emotion or doesn’t have that experience to make a film that can be as emotional. If someone asked me to watch a film made by a human or AI, I would choose human because the authenticity is there. If Hollywood or other big film industry turn to AI film making, they will become bankrupt. To prove my point, I will analyse the AI short film Air head by shy kids.

Air Head is an AI movie is about a guy that has a ballon for a head. He monologues his identity crisis but, in the end, accepts it. This movie wasn’t enterally made by humans. First a human created the concept for the AI to visualise, but also the voice acting, and music was made by humans. Now AI properly isn’t as advance when it comes to making music out of thin air yet otherwise, they could have generated music for this short film and voice acting sounded robotic I originally thought it was AI.

So visually this movie is bland. It uses reference points to make a story because it doesn’t have the relatability to make this concept emotionally. There are many movies that have unrealistic concepts, but the audience can relate because the content in the movie has realism to it. This movie fails to emphasise this because AI is only projecting the data that it has gathered and not creatively thinking of and interesting idea.

Comparing this to another movie with a similar concept, Edward Scissor Hand, is night and day. From the colour grading, the acting, the emotions, Air Head possibly can create this because it can’t replace human talent. The movie Edward Scissor Hand is about an animated human that has scissors for hands. Edward is an outcast therefore however in the movie he falls in love with a girl and thus accepts his identity. Both Air head and Edward Scissor Hands have outcasts as main protagonists but what the latter movies does it takes use through a show does not tell journey that gives us time to sympathise with the main character and cheer him along. Air Head just tells us his issue and doesn’t give us any time to understand his character. Air head may be a short film, but other successful short films are able to tell gripping tales in the short time frame.

I believe AI should be used in post-production, specifically, editing. Right now, I am making my moving image video for my exhibition piece. A problem that I am facing is not being able to overlap. I you see my final footage (thus far) on Tumblr, you’ll see in the question section the video footage is in the back. I want the shape animation to be in the back but to do that I would have to rotoscope the footage for that to work. That would’ve been a long task that I don’t have the time for, so I just settled. If there was an I tool that can just rotoscope for me accurately it would’ve been easier. That example is what I mean when AI can be used as a tool to enhance to creative process does not replace it.

Overall, hard work pays off. Those that stand out in the film industry are the innovators that can be create and make moving tales. Since AI is here and it is not going away, I believe we should adapt to it. If I can be just as creative and use AI to enhance my projects that will push me further than someone who has is doing it traditionally.

So, to conclude this study I will evaluate AI authenticity by giving an AI generator the same brief I had for my artefact project. I made a short film based on my artefact which was an inhaler. Since I have asthma, this film is personal to me so can AI relate that. Also, can AI generate a more creative video than me. That is what I will assess.

[whyse7vn]

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS -

[ ot7 x reader ]

LOSERS 😟

8 participants - 8 online

———————————

y/n: ass or tits?

jk: tits.

y/n: oh?

jk: preferably yours

in my face

all the time

y/n: not all the time

jk: all

the

time.

jimin: is he dunk??

when have jungkook ever been that forward

yoongi: right.

anyways ass

namjoon: what happened to hello

how was your day?

miss you?

jin: tits

y/n: fair

tae: both

i say both

do i?

yes i do

or do i…

um

wait

nvm

okay both final answer

y/n: booo pick one

tae: come back to me

y/n: jimin?

jimin: ass 😌

jk: wrong the answer is tits right y/n?

hobi: is jungkook drunk omg

jimin: RIGHT I WAS SAYING

y/n: hoseok ur answer?

hobi: i have no answer because i’m a feminist 🙏🏻

tae: liar

because i am a REAL feminist i say ass #womenarethebest

y/n: ur all so predictable

thought i would be shocked and surprised

tae: are shocked and surprised not the same thing?

jimin: no?

jin: yes?

yoongi: who cares?

jk: i’m crying

hobi: LMAO

sorry i’m not laughing at you i’m laughing with you

jk: but i’m not laughing

i’m crying

namjoon: why are you crying??

jk: i think i’m drunk

jimin: i could of told you that

jin: who let the loser drink omg

tae: jungkook is borderline an alcoholic and we need to talk about it

yoongi: i prefer not to

let him suffer in silence

y/n: yoongi omg?!

yoongi: *yeah let’s help him 👍🏻

jk: i am nojt and alcoholick

tae: see now he can’t spell

look at the alcohol poisoning his mind the youth these days

namjoon: jungkook had been drinking a lot lately

jk: NO

ony

olly

onl

onlyyy

only every saturday

jin: it’s tuesday?

jk: what

yoongi: hes a grown man i say let him drink his life away

#freewill

jimin: rip bro

jk: rest easy i’ll miss you 💗😭

who died?

y/n: yikes!!!

jin: jungkook this is an invention

hobi: don’t you mean intervention??

jin: didn’t you fall at the grammys??

y/n: HELPOEODO

hobi: WHAT THE FUCK????

jk: what did you in

vvent jin?

jin: THIS IS AN INTERVENTION JUNGKOOK

put the alcohol down you are a light weight and a loser when you are drunk

jk: wJAHT

WHAT

NO

NO

NO

who told you i was dRunk

yoongi: i say this is a problem beyond us guys #letssleep

y/n: now i agree

#movingon

jimin: do you believe that jungkook is princess diana reincarnated?

tae: what is princess diana

y/n: i believe in the jungkook first life theory

jin: jungkook not british wtf

yoongi: no

jk: ipad

namjoon: what the fuck

jimin: i think jungkook isn’t real and we all made him up because we needed someone to bully

jk: i’m am a real

y/n: standing with the first life theory

jin: i stand with the not real theory

yoongi: he’s dead

hobi: robot boy built in space by tiny ants

jk: some times i thin k ants are iN my braiN

hobi: see

yoongi: who ate my pizza?

tae: who would do that omg 😭😭😭?

y/n: was tae

yoongi: figured

namjoon: i am genuinely concerned for all of you

y/n: namjoon is an ass guy

jimin: real

namjoon: ???

hobi: imagine we got jumped by all of nct and seventeen at the same time

y/n: hot

jk: 2 baddies 2 baddies

jin: why would they want to jump us

are we not their idols?

namjoon: you can’t just assume we are everyone’s idols jin

jin: why not?

tell me mr kim namjoon

…

right

stfu

don’t talk to me for the rest of they day

tae: imagine getting stomped on by all of them

y/n: i’m sick of pretending i’m okay with taehyungs freaky little foot fetish

yoongi: agreed

hobi: i say let’s kick him

namjoon lowkey got one too and no one talks about it

y/n: REAL

jimin: SO GLAD IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHOS NOTICED

KICK THEM BOTH

jk: wwweowowowwwww

jin: omg forgot about jungkook

where even are you rn bff

namjoon: i do not have a foot fetish

jk: i with my otherR friends Butte dw im nottt replacing u guys

yoongi: he has other friends?

jk: yoongi my BIGGEST HATEFR LRTS TALK ABUTTT UIT

jimin: namjoon you literally post pictures of your feet on the internet for fun like

y/n: just like tae but make it aesthetic

jk: yoongi just saY ur in liove with y/n and go

jin: OMGhwhdhdhdhd

hobi: WOAHSHSHDHHSHDNDND

y/n: NO CUZ YOONGI ME PERSONALLY I WOULD HAVE ITTTT

tae: i have love i want to share

jin: this is not about you tae

omg yoongi typing

hobi: kinda nervous

namjoon: that does not mean i have a foot fetish wtf?

jin: someone tell namjoon to stfu we have bigger problems rn

hobi: namjoon jin said to stfu cuz we have bigger problems rn

yoongi: if i wanted her i could have her just saying

you should be thanking me tbh ur little crush isn’t that much of a secret

y/n: NEHHEHDBFBFBFBBF

hobi: I SCREAMEDDDDDDDDDDD

jimin: DAMNNSNDJ

jin: YOONGI ATE SORRY

tae: i have a crush

jin kicked tae from the gc

jin: he can come back after

jk: wjat I HAVVBBBB Njko nncrudhj

jimin: someone translate i beg im too invested

hobi: fight i say

to the death preferably

yoongi: going to bed

gn y/n

y/n: ur so evil omg

gn yoongi

jimin: NO CUZ JUNGKOOK GONNA CRY WHEN HE READ THIS WHEN HES SOBER

jin: YOONGI JUST DID JUNGKOOK SO FUCKING NASTY OMSHSHSH

hobi: YIKES LAMSKDKOD

namjoon: damn

jin: jungkook wya????

jimin: express your thoughts rn this is a safe place

jk: i canTttty sea

hobi: he’s so fucked up

jin added tae to the gc

tae: let’s run away together

forget all the drama bae just you and me against the world

jimin: omg ok 🥺

tae: ew not u wtf

was taking to y/n

jimin: EW???

tae: ew.

would rather kms

xoxoxox

y/n: you know you can just open a mcdonald’s if you have the money like that’s so crazy

jin: i don’t care for that type of food

they are serving you horseback and pig feet

hobi: did you not eat it yesterday?

jin: don’t let me get you again

hobi: this is a toxic friend group

namjoon: do you guys really think i have a foot fetish?

y/n: come on now…

jimin: 10000%

hobi: there is no doubt in my mind

jin: YEAH

tae: it’s okay bro

namjoon: you are the last person i want comfort from

tae: WTF???

last time i’m ever being nice

fuck you

kys how about that?

hobi: how you like that?

that that that that that that

y/n: where did jungkook go

jin: dead

jimin: crying

tae: idk

namjoon: he probably fell asleep it is like 2 am??

tae: namjoon kinda annoying guys

jin: someone had to say it!!

i agree

namjoon: sorry i am the only functional one in this group?

jin: look at him getting all defensive omg

tae: you cant even cut food right so how functional are you really?

jimin: no cuz remember when he was cutting that fucking carrot omg

namjoon: bye it’s late and u guys are annoying

tae: loser

y/n: cheer up joonie

jin: pussy

…

HELP i feel so bad cuz i was writing an individual one and i just couldn’t think of shit to say writing the gc ones are so much easier but i promise i’ll fix up and write more individual ones i just wanted to release something cuz i’ve been posting consistently lately and don’t want to break the streak so sorry if this one feels a bit rushed love you all comments reblogs and likes are always greatly appreciated and TY for being sosososo nice to me in my inbox entirely grateful love u xoxox

( also pls ignore any mistakes if there are any it is literally almost 2 am and i cant see straight will go fix it later love u )

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Batman: Let me get this right, you invaded the Justice League database so you could prove what?

Riddler: That you guys invented Atlantis and Aquaman is just a normal metahuman.

Batman: And how exactly did you convinced Poison Ivvy of being a distraction for this? The two of you are not in the best terms and I can't see she agreing with this plan.

Poison Ivvy: She is right here. And she also wanted to prove that Aquaman isn't real.

Batman: Look I really didn't want to bring the heavy violent interrogation tenicques. But there's no way I'm buying that excuse, so I'm giving you one last chance, why did you invade the Justice League database?

Poison Ivvy: You can torture us all you want Batman, we are talking the truth.

Riddler: Please don't torture us all you want, Batman. But yeah, we already told you the reason.

Batman: *grabing something from his utility belt* I warned you.

Riddler: Wait wait wait... Bill Nye doesn't believe in Aquaman.

Batman: What?

Riddler: Yes, Jon told us.

Batman: That makes no sense. How would Scarecrow even know that?

Poison Ivvy: His best friend told him.

Batman: Best Friend? Crane doesn't have friends... unless the Mad Hatter? Is he controlling you two?

Riddler: No, you moron, a girl called Velma Dinkley that he met in an Elvira parade or something, she personally knows Bill Nye.

Batman: That's just insane.

Riddler: And that's why I searched the internet for proof while Doctor Isley sended a fanmail to Bill himself asking about it.

Poison Ivvy: Nygma found a video from Nye's own security camera where he gives a very long explanation to a trick or treating kid about how Aquaman's existence is scientifically impossible and therefore he isn"t real. Not much after the response to my letter with the very same explanation came. I have it here with me. *even hurt and handcuffed to the Batmobile she makes a plant grow on the pavement and there is a letter inside it's leaves"

Riddler: And I have the video on my phone. I would show you, but I can't acess it while bounded upsidown with a broken rib!

Batman: I'll look it up. *thirty minutes later* I suppose you were right. I'll still have to take you to Arkham, but if I find any evidence of Aquaman not existing I'll send it to you.

Riddler: Oh, I thought Aquaman not being real was a ridiculous notion, detective?

Batman: That was before Bill Nye the science guy explained it. Now it is my duty to investigate Aquaman.

Poison Ivvy: Good. I hope you know Arkham won't keep us long. We will soon also be investigating it and it's better that we help each other, cause you won't want to go against me.

Riddler: Independent of your choice, we will find out the truth, Crussader, there's no puzzle I can't figure out. Also I want my phone back.

Poison Ivvy: And I want my letter. It's autographed!