#i couldn’t find the original meme on reddit

[makuta-kotok]

Himujiro in a nutshell:

as you can clearly tell, this meme was shamelessly plundered from everyone’s favorite pangolin lady, Voice Quills. Original video down below:

[proud-mama-joyce]

Mike and his $3.50

In S3:E2, Mike’s anxiety-fueled shopping spree for El is ultimately fruitless, in part because he claims: 

$3.50. Interesting choice. Why specify the cents on the dollar? Not too unusual of a dialogue choice on its own, though. 

But...

Think the writers were aware of this meme? 

(taken from KnowYourMeme.com - thanks @cmollyo​ for the link) In case you’re unfamiliar, I’ll elaborate. The meme has expanded compared to how it started. Based on what I’ve seen on Reddit over the years, “tree fiddy,” or even just the monetary amount $3.50, is often buried paragraphs into a long-winded story, piece of advice, or even an answer to a question looking for specialized knowledge. The reader then has the misfortune of knowing that they’ve wasted their time reading a troll post of creative fiction.

It’s also been circulated around deviantArt, Facebook, and even here on Tumblr, among other places on the web (though it’s nearly ancient now in Internet years, first used in 2010). 

Here’s a short example from its birth as an Internet meme: 

The South Park episode originally referenced contains a frustrated refusal to the request: “I ain’t gonna give you no tree fiddy [three-fifty]!” What’s interesting here is that Mike feels similarly obligated to give El something with his $3.50, and he also doesn’t end up giving it to her, which seems to support the reference.

There’s also a question of lies vs. truth in this scene, like with the meme usage. Mike is clearly spinning his story a bit here, adding to his lie about Nana (”Yeah, we’re shopping. Not for us, but for her, for Nana.”). But he also includes some truth--that he was there to buy a present for El but didn’t end up with anything (”Also, we’re here to get a gift for you. Just, we couldn’t find anything that suited you, and I only have like three dollars and fifty cents, so it’s hard.”).

The $3.50 reference, if it is a reference, is actually within the part of his story that’s true--unlike most instances where it’s used as a meme.  So, Mike, is it just part of your story that’s the BS here? Or is the lie something bigger than that? 

[the-lost-media-blog]

Saki Sanobashi/Go for a Punch (Warning: Mentions of violence and suicide)

Alright, the first post for my new blog. Teach, if you’re reading this than hi :). Okay, lets get started!

Go For A Punch (also known as Saki Sanobashi) is a supposed lost anime that is speculated to have been made in either the 80′s or early 90′s that only have a sub available.

The first mention of Saki is on a 4-Chan comment on a post in 2015 asking about what was the most messed up thing found on the Deep Web. The comment in question said that they (the one who told the internet about this and will be called OP) they found the Deep Web. OP went on to describe how, in 2011 they found a subbed anime OVA called, at least on the site, ‘Go For A Punch’. In it, they described what it was about, so here’s the brief description:

Nine girls are trapped inside of a bathroom with no way out, they have debates over whether or not they’re going to get out. After days of starving, and being naked for some reason (honestly idk either), all of them commit suicide by either bashing their heads in against the floor/clawing at their throats, with one girl with a bright -almost white- hime cut being drowned by another girl in the sink because she couldn’t do it herself. ( below is a reference image of the hair cut.)

The OP mentions that it was 80′s-ish in quality, most girls had short bushy brown hair (there was also the hime cut girl who might have white hair, there’s a red-head and apparently a blonde?), the eyes were small and far apart, strange camera angels, a scream that sounded like the scream Dies Irae from Stanly Kubrick’s The Shinning, the player on the site is similar to the modern Bing Player, and that there really wasn’t any music. People questioned OP as the whole thing sounded interesting, and defiantly stood out from the troll and basic ‘I saw real gore’ posts. One of these comments is where the name Saki Sanobashi came from.

The search went on for 5 years as of when I’m writing this, blowing up after YouTuber Whang posted a video on November 21, 2019 as apart of his ‘Tales From The Internet’ series, which brought more attention to it as part one has 779k views at the current time of writing.

One thing I would like to note is that many people have claimed to have seen Saki, some going into details that OP didn’t list, but sadly the majority of those posts have been proven false, with one admitting that their lie was only made to show how gullible people are, and will believe that anything’s Saki. 

Many people were hoping to find this lost anime, one person made a series where they go over manga/anime to see if it’s Saki (the series is on YouTube with a least 50 parts). There has been many false leads, one of which includes the profile pic I’m using claiming the girl was from Saki, but it’s not. Another reason for why the search got crazy was because of all the gore filled anime from back then. Like seriously, there’s a lot there some are more known than others. Also, side note, Saki Sanobashi/Go For A Punch has it’s own TV Tropes page, which is how you know it got big. 

But on December 22, 2019 someone claiming to be OP made a post on one of the many sub-reddits. 

They said that they made it all up for laughs since they thought the creator of the original 4-Chan thread was an idiot for expecting a serious answer, and OP’s coming forward since they feel bad for how crazy this all had gotten. Their proof was screen shots of the hime girl (which is above and why I chose it) and a book spine which was OP’s pic for the very first post on 4-chan, both screenshots dated for 2015, as well as the Bing player, and the Dies Irae scream.

Now, many people, like myself, are assuming that this OP might not be the real OP. One of the main reasons being why would they still hold onto those specific images, for nearly 4 years at that point, if it was for a troll post. This OP said it’s because they don’t delete downloaded pics, which sound off to me. I will delete pics on my phone if I don’t see a reason to keep it (example: I’ll keep a pic of the Halloween Timeline so I can keep track of which films are on which timeline, but delete a screenshot from a BuzzFeed quiz). But, never the less, some people gave up on the search, leading one of the sub-reddits to become nothing but memes, and the other ones had to pick up the slack. 

One group on the sub-reddit is claiming to be making the OVA themselves under the title Team Saki, the trailer’s on YouTube so I suggest that you look it up yourself. I’ve also heard of a possible Visual Novel being made of Saki on one of the sub-reddits. Also, there’s tons of fanart of Saki out there, so if you wanna see how some see it then go ahead search if you want to, there’s a whole sub-reddit dedicated just to artwork. On TikTok, there’s plenty of lovely cosplays as well.

Another thing I feel like mentioning is that there’s a music video made by a J-Pop (Japanese Pop) group, that some people claim is inspired by Saki. I kind of see that, I mean, the art shown at the start looks 80′s-ish, and there are some basic similarities. But, that being said, I’m betting it’s all a coincidence, and we have no clue what the Lost Media scene is like in Japan as Lost Media is different in every country (as the Lost Media ice-burg, made in Spanish, has shown). I’ve Googled if it was, and I’ve seen some sites claim that, but I’m sticking with it’s a coincidence until there’s an official claim from the band themselves to confirm the inspiration so I’m not going by word of mouth. 

Here’s the music video if you wanna check it out and there’s also (fake) blood as well as a suicide scene in it, so just to let you know so you’re not caught off guard when it happens. They stay dressed though, with only the pantyhose getting cut. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBK33DvIoM

So as of when I’m writing, all we have is the mentioned teaser, concept art on the sub-reddit for both the animation and visual novel, an odd half live-action half drawn recreation clip made October 30, 2019. As well as just loads of dead ends. Some people hope that if we find it, or at the very least Team Saki turns out good or it leads to the real deal comes out because of something like a copyright claim or something.

I personally believe that it could exist some where out there, but maybe under a different name and somewhat buried on the internet. I meant if something that was banned such as Shoujo Tsukubki can find it’s way onto YouTube (aka the Surface Web/ Clear net) then it’s honestly possible it’s out there.

Either that or I just wasted your time with reading about something that might not even exist, so here have a kitty!

GO FOR A PUNCH/SAKI’S CURRENT STATUS:  Existence unconfirmed, but fan projects are being made.

[kirishwima]

For scenarios... could I request rfa accidentally meeting MC before the party? no drama like "there's a bomb so I gotta run to your place" they just accidentally meet somewhere and MC recognises them from the pictures in the chatrooms and goes to greet them. Rika's apartment can't be far away from where the others live so it should be impossible. (if you can find a way to squeeze in V that's okay but you don't have to)

i really liked this idea! hope i executed it well ^^

YOOSUNG:

MC and he were actually studying at the same university, but different subjects!

They had a common elective course of modern history though, one that Yoosung’s friends convinced him to take with them since they could share notes, and MC simply had an interest in it, and well, needed the extra credits

Neither of them really noticed each other at first-it’s a big classroom and it’s in the afternoons, so oftentimes Yoosung just skipped lmao

Once though Yoosung’s friends couldn’t make it to the class so he offered to go and take notes for the day, and rushed into the class a little late, so he took the first seat available-right next to MC

He struggled to both write and listen to the professor at the same time, and eventually he got a little behind with his notes. MC noticed his cute frustrated face and shared their notes with him, tapping him on the shoulder as they quietly pushed their papers to him

Yoosung’s happy face was stuck in MC’s mind-he wore his feelings on his sleeve and it was so refreshing to see someone this innocent at this day and age.

They became fast friends afterwards-exchanging facebook accounts and talking via messenger often, sometimes about the class, sometimes about anything and everything else

They even had study sessions to help each other study!

Near the end of the semester, and right when this extra class ended, is when MC stumbled upon the RFA messenger-and one look at Yoosung’s name along with his shooting star emoji got them excited to realise there’s a familiar face amongst this strangeness

The rest of the members found their friendship cute, and Zen constantly tried to play match-maker for the two, telling Yoosung that ‘he should’ve told the RFA he has such a cute girlfriend’ lmao

(*cue Yoosung flushing redder than Seven’s hair*)

ZEN:

No, contrary to what you might think, MC wasn’t his fan-they did however hear about Zen through friends interested in musicals, and agreed he was handsome

No, instead, they met him whilst helping out a friend who was working backstage at one of Zen’s shows-they needed help finishing up painting of some background sets, and MC offered to help them in their free time, and as a return their friend offered MC tickets to the show

Zen met MC whilst rehearsing-he knew MC’s friend and went over to say hi, and met MC, who he of course instantly tried to flirt with, even though he was half-kidding about it

Well, flirtatious nature aside, the two really hit it off, and became good friends-not that they were super close or anything, but Zen would stop and chat with MC after rehearsals, and he invited MC out along with the rest of the crew after the first successful run of the show

He didn’t exchange any social media accounts with MC, because quite frankly, he doesn’t have any lmao, and MC’s phone was broken so they couldn’t give him their number either

Zen insisted that if they leave it up to fate, they’ll meet again, and well-he was right

Lo and behold, MC joined the RFA, and whose face is the first they see in an oh-so-modest selfie?

Yup, Zen the Knight it is

His first words when he realised who MC was were ’See? I told you fate would find a way!’

Sure Zen,,,sure lol

JUMIN:

MC actually scored an interview as Jumin’s executive secretary!

They were so thrilled about it, and did their best to calm their nerves before the interview, knowing that being jittery and anxious would lead them nowhere

Well, they were more than shocked at Jumin’s cold behaviour, but they did their best to match his pace, answering each of his questions without missing a beat, mentioning their credentials without bragging about them

Honestly, Jumin was very pleased-he saw a perfect candidate across him, albeit a little inexperienced due to age, but that didn’t really matter to him-with a little training they’d be perfect for the job

Well, eventually though a better candidate came along, so MC was left with the rejection e-mail in their inbox, disappointed but ready to move on

They had all but forgotten about Jumin Han until stumbling onto the RFA and meeting him again, confused and surprised at the difference of his character in the chatrooms

They didn’t mention the interview at all, but Jumin has the memory of an elephant-one look at MC’s name reminded him of how he met them, and he reassured them that they were incredibly good at the interview and left an impression on him

It takes some getting used to his different attitude, but it’s refreshing to see a man they thought of as cold and calculated be a complete cat-loving goof-and it’s honestly one of the things that makes MC fall for Jumin

And vice-versa, Jumin remembers MC’s serious confident attitude at the interview, and is pleasantly surprised to learn what a gentle, kind person they are in the messenger

When they meet Jaehee though….boy are they glad they didn’t get the job lmao

*pat pat* it’s okay Jaehee…hang in there baby

JAEHEE:

MC was working part-time as a barista at a coffee shop near C&R!

It was a small independent shop, hidden in-between bigger franchises, but their coffee was great, and if there’s one person that loves good coffee, well, it’s Jaehee

The first time she visited the shop she was at a loss of what to order, the possibilities endless with all these brews of coffee they offered, and MC found Jahee’s flustered face adorable

They chatted her up to see what kind of flavours she likes and dislikes, and ended up making her a delicious cold brew with vanilla cream-just sweet enough to give her that sugar rush she needed, but not enough to hide the flavour of the coffee itself

Well, Jaehee was more than thrilled both at the taste, and at the cute cashier *wink wonk*, so she quickly became a regular at the shop

Yes this is your good ol’ cliche coffee AU DON’T JUDGE ME

She’d always stop for a cup of coffee before work, and would secretly be happy on the days she ended up meeting MC during their shift-she’d try and visit during her breaks too, when time would allow it, and would sit and sometimes chat with MC when the cafe wasn’t too busy

MC eventually learnt some stuff about Jaehee, that she works as a secretary to some annoying cat-loving rich dude (lmao sorry Jumin), that she loves coffee, and that her dream is to eventually open her own cafe, if circumstances allow it

One day, Jaehee went to the shop, knowing that MC had a shift at that time, but they were nowhere to be found-their co-workers said MC called in that they can’t make it today because something urgent came up, so Jahee nodded along, wondering if MC was okay

….well, she didn’t have to worry for too long, as not soon after she got her coffee and headed back to the office, a familiar name popped up on the RFA chatroom

Yup, this is a coffee shop au alright-just with some hacker and cat-loving twists lol

SEVEN:

You can never convince me that this boy is not an active reddit user, and you most definitely can Not convince me he isn’t in any and all paranormal and horror forums either

So he’s scrolling around on reddit one day, posting memes and trolling people, when he stumbles upon a really interesting thread someone made about the origins of mothman and possible sightings outside the USA

He’s hooked and spends a lot of time reading through the thread, intrigued by the sophisticated way the OP wrote their points and how well-thought of their evidences were

He started commenting on the thread and talking with the OP, who he soon became online friends with-he loved to chat with them about spooky stuff, cryptids, conspiracy theories and so forth

He didn’t talk much about himself, and would sometimes even make up some lies because he didn’t want to seem like a creep that won’t even share his name, but he couldn’t give out his info that easily; he did however tell them his code name, 707

Eventually they started talking outside of reddit too, through facebook messenger (i mean…we already know this dude has a facebook account and posts his cars there lmao), and is thrilled to find out more about his new online friend, MC, and to even find out they live far closer than he thought!

Well, he gets used to talking with MC almost everyday, and it’s actually one of the few highlights of his day-he’s never really had someone care for him the way this person, someone he hasn’t actually ever met in real life does. He wonders if they’d change their mind about him if they ever met him in real life, but shakes the thoughts away-it’s not as if this could ever develop into something more than an online friendship anyway

Well…or so you thought, Seven lol

When a stranger comes barging into the RFA messenger, he’s instantly tracing their steps and finding out all their internet activities, and lo and behold-whose facebook account is this that he ended up finding? Why, it’s none other than MC!

The moment Seven found out, he got suspicious; was MC just pretending to be online friends with him to hack into the RFA? Were they stealing information without him knowing?

It hurt to have to think this way, but how else could they be linked?

When he slowly found out MC was actually innocent, he was more than relieved-he secretly happy that he could now chat with them both online and on the RFA app, that he could share parts of himself with MC that he couldn’t before

to say he fell for them is the understatement of the century lmao

V/JIHYUN:

When he first started with photography, he took some classes at a local university to learn more about professional photography, photoshop e.t.c

And MC happened to be taking the same classes as him!

They often sat next to each other, not talking at first, but then their professors would sometimes ask them to pair up to work on assignments, and MC ended up paring up with Jihyun more than once

They became fast friends-Jihyun was a little distant, but always friendly in a cold, aloof way, and always polite, and he found MC to be so warm and gentle, he was naturally drawn to them

He did feel attracted to them, but never made a move-he was still struggling with so many things himself, he didn’t want to drag anyone else into his mess. He just wanted to focus on photography and that’s that

So whilst they talked a lot during university, as soon as they graduated, V drifted away, and when he even changed his phone number all communication was lost between the two

Well, time went on, and MC slowly began to forgot about the mint-coloured man they met, until they stumbled into the RFA chatroom

They didn’t realise it was Jihyun at first-he did change his name after all, and everyone in the char referred to him as V, but the way he texted was very familiar, even though MC couldn’t quite understand why

When he finally introduced himself, they were stunned. They didn’t want to ask him if he remembers them though-it’d be too embarrassing if he said he didn’t

But of course V did remember them-the moment Seven told him their name after his background check, all the memories came flooding back, opening up a Pandora’s box in his chest where he locked all those feelings away

Even if they’re back within arms’ reach, and even if they seem interested in him though…it’s useless. He’s far beyond repair, and if he didn’t want to drag MC into his mess then, he most certainly doesn’t want to drag them into it now

So he becomes distant again, more so than ever before but MC isn’t having it-they call him out on his bullshit, and tell him to square up and be honest otherwise they’re leaving

So V reluctantly admits to it all-to remembering MC, to his feelings towards them, and to his own cowardliness back then, and how it’s now too late to change anything; even if he wants to. God, he wants to.

hi I’m soph and i love to torture my favs lol

-send me a mystic messenger scenario/prompt for character reactions!-

[zoeyandguys]

Wow, that Stitchwraith gang meme was random. Got any ideas for the Blackbird book?

Thank You! I am well aware it is Random!

And By “Ideas” do you mean the re-write of the Stitchwraith epilogue by me and a Friend on discord that s currently 7 pages long and hasn’t been updated in awhile??

I’m guessing not, also since I’m currently on a laptop while answering this I’ll put the main answer under cut so it hides spoilers form anyone who just happens to be scrolling.

Please note that I have yet to get a copy of the book for myself nor do I have the means too. Even if I did I likely wouldn’t be getting to it in awhile with the way I’m doing art based on the books rn. And since Dawko has yet to post a review on any of the story (which he doesn’t have to do soon, he can do whatever he want), I’ll be basing all this on the spoiler book on reddit, and want my friend who has the book told me

As for Blackbird itself? Nothing really. The only thing I came up with it was LONG before the book came out, and based on the image alone. It takes place in my “Framed AU”, something I have yet to post anything about, but it’s based on the idea William had a twin brother who was the actual killer, and ended up becoming Springtrap due to the kids thinking he was his brother. The idea was Black Brid was a small animatronic bird (ironic to what blackbird actually was) with a camera inside made by Vincent (William’s Brother, who would’ve guessed) that can be connected to a USB to show the footages on a laptop. It isn’t haunted but is an self aware AI that mimics a bird’s personally for the most part. It’s name was “Blackberry” 

The Real Jake is what is gonna bring the most changes to my au. For one, I’m sadly gonna have of get rid of my cool eye designs for Stitch because we know Simon was based on Jake, who has simple brown hair and green eyes. Also speaking of Simon, in my AU his father put so much love and work into making him that a part of his soul got attached to the doll, allowing it to “live” and him fully become Simon after he died. He didn’t mean to put Jake’s soul in the doll too, he was just trying to cheer Jake up after sneaking out of the drawer he was locked in and it happened. He only managed to get a bit away from the house before he was knocked out.

Hide and Seek, is an interesting case. I always been a fan of the Shadows. My personally theory/idea is that they were both workers who in Springlock failures in two incomplete suit. The only other person there, who was the one who was supposed to test the suits, hide there bodies away, and now the two haunt the pizzeria’s usually moving to the next pizzeria when stuff from the one they were at moves. They were Cushions in human life, Shadow Freddy once being a man named “Victor” and Shadow Bonnie once being a women named “Sliver”. (side note, shadow bonnie uses the Them/They because of this). They at some point forgot nearly all about there human lifes besides how they died and why they likely aren’t able to move on, so they came up with there own name. “Shadow Freddy goes by “Shade” and Shadow Bonnie goes by “RWQFSFASXC”, but more often then not goes by “Dusk” because no one besides them can say there name.

ANYWAY BACK ONTO TRACK OF THE STORY- Most humans are unable to see the Shadows, in fact the only other souls who can see them are ones that possesses the animatronics. So when the game in the story came in, Dusk had quickly tried to play it despite going through all psychical things normally, and ended up getting sucked in. It was Originally meant to be a game with toy bonnie or normal bonnie, but Dusk ended up taking the  spot of them, and found they gain some control over the game. to the first few people who played Dusk tried to tell them what happen in hopes of someone finding their and Shade’s bodes and burying them to put them to rest, but after awhile stop trying because the strange messages were making Employees talk about unplugging it. However the ability to interact with normal people again was something Dusk held close to heart, which is why they went crazy when Toby destroyed the game and wouldn’t let him go until it was fixed and won by him. At this point Dusk hardly leaves the Machine during the day now. Shade still hasn’t let go of the fact that for a moment Dusk had a chance to find there bodies and put them to rest and spent it all chases after a man who broke a video game.

Epilogue 6.... NEEDS TO DIE IN A WHOLE.  This couldn’t have waited until, like, the 8 book?? So here’s what happens in my Stitchwraith gang AU. JAKE AND ANDREW DO NOT DISAPPER. They just get hurt and layed besides the remains of Stitchwraith, which does not get fused with the The Miscreation.   Simon/Evan (who was locked away inside of Stitchwraith by William, and was the one who gave Jake his memories flashback.) becomes some sort of Phantom Stitchwraith and helps Jake and Andrew into a new Endo. They go back to the warehouse and plot murder. Also  The Miscreation ends up outside Vanny’s house 

[tragedybunny]

Empty - An Original Piece of Short Horror

A little bit of something different, here’s a piece I published on Reddit awhile back. 

These are the true events we experienced, as best as I can recollect them.

It started off as a fairly average Saturday for the middle of summer, hot and humid, with a light drizzle falling from the sky. Well, maybe not exactly average as for once we didn’t actually have any plans that required leaving the house. As always, first order of business was to get the coffee pot brewing, then I took the dog out.

I stood under the covered entry way of the apartment building and let Pepper do her business, noting that not one person from the complex was out and about. This wasn’t unusual, we lived on the edge of a small city, and there wasn’t a lot of activity most days, let alone a Saturday morning. Most of the kids seemed to stay indoors most of time. Insert your “kids today” jokes as you like.

After we got back upstairs I made myself a cup of coffee and sat on the couch, putting on Hulu for some mindless morning viewing. In the background, I could hear Chris, my husband start getting up, and the rain starting come to down a bit harder. After a bit he joined me on the couch, cup of coffee in hand.

“Morning!” I smiled cheerfully

He jokingly offered only groans in response.

We sat for a couple of hours on the couch, lazily watching shows. At one point I sent a few texts to my brother, but he never responded. I chalked this up to being the father of a one year old and opened my Facebook feed. This is where things began to feel strange. There hadn’t been one single update since the night before, no statuses, no memes, and no vaguely racist relatives talking about Islam.

I poked Chris to break his attention from the TV. “Hey, is your Facebook feed working? I think the last update broke my app.”

“Oh no, the horror, whatever will you do.” He picked up his phone and tried his. “Hmm, nope, must have been the update.” He shrugged dismissively.

“I don’t know, something just feels off.” I got up and stepped into the kitchen dialing my brother. It went to voicemail. I tried my best friend, my dad, and a few other friends. Nothing. “No one is answering.” I reported as I sat back down.

He paused the show. “No one?”

“No one. I mean I didn’t try your mom. See if she answers.”

We had the same luck with his mom and began to dial every number in our contact list until we were down to two, our grandparents’ respective nursing homes. He tried first, only to get the office voicemail in the end. My grandpa had a direct line in his room so I tried that. As it was ringing, I thought I heard someone pick up. I said hello repeatedly, only to be answered by some weird static. “Ok, I’m officially getting a little creeped out.”

Chris rubbed the back of my neck soothingly. “Look, the rain let up. Let’s go knock on some doors and see if we can find a neighbor with a landline. Maybe this is all just network issues.”

“I guess, let me put on some real clothes.”

Our complex has several different buildings spread throughout a pretty decent sized area. I’m pretty convinced the place used to be a condo complex. We knocked on the three other apartments on our side of the building with no luck before moving the other side to knock on the four over there.

I sighed, seeing absolutely no one in sight, and getting slightly wet from the now very light spray of rain. “Let’s go bang on the manager’s door. She said she had a fax, means she probably has a phone.”  Behind me I thought I heard something, causing me to pause for a moment.  It was some sort of metallic screeching, which was gone almost as soon as I realized I was hearing it.

We held hands on our walk to the other building, which isn’t odd for us, but it felt like we were squeezing just a little too hard. We must have pounded on that door for at least five minutes. Other people should have come out of their doors to tell us to fuck off.

I kicked one of the nearby shrubs. “Well, I’m out of ideas.”

“I’ve got one, let’s get back inside first.”

Chris explained as he loaded one of his rifles, and checked his hand gun mags, that we were going to take the guns, and Pepper up to Wal-Mart, and see if we could find anyone. If there was no one at there, we would know something was horribly wrong.

“And why do we need to be outfitted like a small army?” I started to get the dog ready.

“What if there was an evacuation or something that we missed and the only people left are not the kind we want to run into?”

“Fair enough.” We headed out, the rifle slung over my shoulder, Pepper nose to the ground, and Chris leading the way to his car.

As we left the complex it felt like we stumbled into a nightmare. Every street on the way was abandoned, every business seemed empty, and the rain that had become mist hung over it all. A short while later we pulled into the parking lot, which had a few cars in it, but not nearly enough for a Saturday afternoon. Given the circumstance we pulled up right to the door.

“Alright I’m going to go in, you stay here with Pepper. If anything happens, just get back to the apartment.”

“I know how to shoot this thing Chris, I’m coming in with you.”

He kissed the top of my head. “I know that Mandy, but if something crazy happens, it’s easier for one person to escape than two and a dog. Trust me.”

Reluctantly I let him go and settled in to wait, Pepper whining and panting next to me. I tried the radio, working my way through the stations, only to find nothing but static. And then my phone rang.

It was Chris. I felt like an idiot as I realized up until this point we hadn’t tried to call each other.  I answered and was surprised I could hear him, even though it sounded like he was talking under water.

“Holy shit, it’s weird seeing this place empty. You should come in and see it.”

“I’ll bring Pepper, it’ll be like a special family outing.” He snorted as I hung up. I got Pepper and my gun and made sure I locked the door behind me. Which I’ll admit felt odd with no one around, but old habits I guess. As I headed in I thought I heard the same noise as earlier, but it seemed so far off I chalked it up to imagining things. Who wouldn’t be going a little nuts in the current circumstance?

Chris was right, there is nothing like the site of a giant store that should have hundreds of people crammed in it, standing there devoid of life. We met a couple of aisles into the grocery section. He looked a little shaken.  “You ok hun?” I asked as Pepper excitedly explored the shelves.

“Yeah, it’s just, what is happening?” His eyes darted around taking in the emptiness all around us before he let his head come to rest in his hands.

I put my hand up to his cheek. “Hey, come on, what’s the rule? We’re too classy for a meltdown in Wal-Mart.”  We offered each other a weak smile, and he sniffled a bit. I looked down at his feet to find a partially filled handbasket. “Were you grocery shopping?”

He reached down and picked up a box of frozen crab cakes. “Classy enough for you?” For a moment I felt like everything was somehow going to be ok, and that’s when the lights began to flicker.

We stared at each for a moment and this time I was positive I heard that grinding, screeching, horrible sound, because Chris looked at me mouthed three letters. “WTF.”

We took off for the front doors and the lights flickered at even more rapid pace. I fumbled with the keys until I managed to click the unlock button as we dove for the car. Pepper obediently scrambled into the back. We didn’t say anything a few minutes.

“I’ve heard that noise before.” I finally admitted, staring straight ahead. “At the complex earlier, and then I thought I might have heard it as I was locking up the car. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it earlier”

“Don’t be, it’s a fucking noise. Why would you be suspicious? If you told me you’d seen an eldritch horror and didn’t tell me, I’d be a little miffed.”

“Now what?”

He turned his head to the back seat. “We go home and put away these groceries.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Crab cakes for dinner?”

We did in fact have crab cakes for dinner, as we sat on the couch, attempting to piece together where we went from here. We had closed all the blinds in the apartment, and turned on a few lights as possible.  Pepper was close by, laying down but remaining alert. The steady drum of the returning rain did nothing the calm our nerves.

“I think we should get out of here, at least to see what’s going on in other places. Maybe you were right about an evacuation.” I took another bite, but I barely tasted anything.

He shrugged. “We could try, but I’m fully willing to admit something way more out of the ordinary than that is happening here.”

“I’m calling it, we’re dead.  Or maybe it’s all just a dream.” I couldn’t even smile at my fake levity. I knew he was right, knew that something was terribly wrong that was beyond conventional experience.

We decided to pack some supplies and head out in the morning, trying to find a trace of other people. We’d take the highway back to our old hometown, stopping along the way to look for people we knew.

As we lay down for the night the rain intensified into a full blown storm, pelting our window and shaking the trees. Chris wrapped his arms around me as we both resolved to try to sleep. The air was thick with what seemed like menace. And I could almost feel something out there, watching us from the distance.

In the morning we loaded ourselves up with food, water, ammo, and a couple of sleeping bags. Outside, without the rain the silence was even more obvious. There was no birdsong, no barking from the other neighborhood dogs, not even a fly buzzing over the dumpster. I shuddered trying to take it in. I almost asked Chris what the point was, it was clear everything was gone but us. I thought better of it as I took in his sunken bloodshot eyes. I knew things were getting to him as well. Pepper and I got in the car and we off in search of signs of life.

We lived about an hour from our old hometown, a winding state highway our usual route back. A turn off that highway onto a county road lead to the nursing home my Grandpa lived in. We headed down the long drive into the complex of buildings, each one a different level of care, and pulled up in front of my Grandpa’s building. As I’d expected we saw no one around. This time we headed in together, armed and dog in tow.

A cursory search told us the situation here was the same as back home, even the birds that usually swarmed the feeders that sat outside of almost every window were gone. We still entered Grandpa’s room, holding to that small glimmer of hope. We did notice that the bed was unmade, as they were in the several other rooms we checked.

“What do think it means?” I asked Chris, gesturing at the covers.

“I dunno, whatever happened was before the CNAs could make the beds.” He shrugged at the end, making it more of a question than a statement.

Pepper sniffed excitedly at the furniture around the room. She’s been enamored with Grandpa when she’d met him. “Sorry girl, looks like he’s not here.”

My eyes caught sight of his phone, sitting there off the hook. “Chris, look, when I tried to call the other day, I thought there was an answer but no one said anything.”

Chris narrowed his eyes. “It could have been someone else too, let’s stay on guard.”

“Ugh, you’re right. I’m going to search the nurse’s desks, and the offices, maybe there’s something there.” I left the phone where it was, not wanting to betray to anyone we’d been there, just in case.

We spent about an hour rifling through any area we could find connected to the staff, desperate for some clue to have been left behind. All we could find were some duty checklists and sign offs, the last of which appeared to be about two in the morning.

I kicked a rolling chair. “Another damn waste of time.” I shouted at the air around me.

“What?” It was a woman’s voice, not whispered, but like it was far way.

“Shit, Chris, did you hear that?” Peppers ears were at attention.

“Yeah, time to go.”  He started carefully heading toward the exit.

“But it was like it responded to me.” Soundly, it was like the whole world was filled with the harsh grinding sound that had been haunting us. This time instead of fleeing all we could do was stay frozen in place until it passed and left us gasping for air in its wake.

We made our way back to the car in silence, looking over our shoulders, weapons at the ready. Pepper desperately pulling us along, eager to be out of there.

Once we had made it back to the main road we decided to pull over at the nearest gas station to get some water and food and clear our heads. I pulled a notebook from my bag, and began to make a list.

“This is everything we’ve discovered about what’s going on so far.” I explained to Chris. “We need to make sure we keep track of it all, maybe we can figure this out.”

He looked dubious, and I could tell he didn’t want to say what was really on his mind. You can’t figure something out that had no rational explanation. Instead he asked where we were headed next.

We decided the next closest stop would be my brother Aaron’s condo, and few miles from our current location. We set off again after gassing up the car, glad that at least the pumps were on. Again the overcast skies gave way to a downpour that blurred out the world around us, silence consuming us once again.

This time Chris waited in the car as I ran down the walk way and frantically rang the bell. When no answer came I pounded on the door. I ran to his garage and banged on the door. I rang all the neighbors’ bells. I shouted for Aaron, his wife Lisa, and finally with a small cry, baby Sophie. My world spun, and I collapsed to my knees, sobbing. I hadn’t noticed Chris get out of his car, but he leaned down and put his arms around me.

“They’re gone! Everyone’s really gone. Even Sophie.” I couldn’t stand, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. All I could think was my sweet little niece, my family, my poor old grandpa. Chris finally coaxed me back to the car and we headed back towards home, abandoning plans to keep looking for signs of life and the rest of our family and friends.  We knew enough by the point to know we were alone, whatever the cause.

As we headed down the road I looked absentmindedly at my phone out of habit, and then I noticed, I had a blank text from my brother, coming from about the time we’d been outside his condo. After showing it to Chris scribbled it in the list of clues, and tried to detach from everything we’d seen that day. The rain caused the world around us to blur away into indistinct shapes and colors.

By the time we were home the emotional drain left us starving and exhausted. We clung to one another under the covers that night and I prayed, prayed that we’d never wake up.

I honestly couldn’t tell you much about the next couple of days. We spent them in a quiet fog staring at the TV, reading, playing board games, and eating. We didn’t venture outside too often, as the frequent rain had become near constant, now with bursts of thunder and lightning.

We took a trip to a couple of grocery stores, pilfering the fanciest foods we could get our hands on, and stopping by liquor stores for only the highest end booze they stocked. Every time we ventured out, even to let Pepper do her business, we now encountered the terrible shriek, as though its source was drawing closer to us.

“Let’s go to Florida.” Chris looked up from his lobster tail and porterhouse surf and turf. “It’s warm, and we can run around Disney World.”

“But not ride any of the rides. And it’s warm here. Stop being ridiculous.” I snapped, feeling bad instantly. He was just trying to cheer me up. I took another sip of my wine. “Sorry. Just not in the mood for that.”

He was about to reply the apartment was plunged into sudden darkness. I covered my ears expecting the horrendous shriek, instead the room filled voices, our voices. It was like every conversation we’d ever had there was being played back at the same time, fights, laughter, somber tones, and tears. Pepper braked at the other dog she could clearly hear barking. I shouted nonsense into the darkness, I begged, I cursed the universe, I wordlessly screamed. And then the lights came back on.

Chris reached across the table and held my hand. I offered him a weak smile. He sighed. “Every time I think it can’t get weak weirder it does.”

“We’ll at least we’re all together still, it could be worse.” Lightning struck the tree in front of our window, the explosion rattled the windows. “Fuck!” I jumped up to make sure there was no fire.

The tree stood untouched, as though nothing had happened. For the first time in days I truly looked around. There was no evidence that it had rained for days, no pools of water in lawn, no branches scattered by the wind. Everything looked exactly like it was the morning we woke up in this hell.

I called Chris over to confirm my theory but we were again shook by another near lightning strike, this one causing Pepper to whimper from the floor where she was. “Holy shit. It’s getting crazy out there.”

The shriek returned, not deafeningly loud, but it didn’t vanish. The storm began to pick until we were battered by hurricane like winds and blinded by flashes every few seconds. We passed a long few hours playing games and drinking, trying to keep an eye on the storm that would not let up. “What if it turns into a tornado? We’re screwed.”  Chris had turned back to watching to storm.

“Well, we’re already screwed. Besides, wouldn’t we have had a tornado by now if we could have one? This damn thing isn’t natural in the least.”

“Still maybe we should put the air mattress in the bathroom tonight, it’s the only slightly tornado safe room in here.”

I conceded the point and we made camp in the bathroom. The floor space just big enough for our mattress and Pepper. We set up our propane lantern and put a movie on our laptop. We could still hear the storm and the now distant screech, but the noise was no longer loud enough to drive us insane.

I laughed as we settled in. “Hey, this is kind of romantic right? Low lights, a movie, fake camping, I feel like we’re on a date.”

Chris playfully rolled his eyes. “Great, now she wants to get all mushy on me.”

Eventually we drifted off, Pepper already snoring away next to us.  Sometime during the night we both were jolted awake by the loudest strike we’d heard yet, the whole apartment shaking as though the building had been struck. It stopped a moment later. As hard as a I tried to fight to get up and assess what was happening, I collapsed back into sleep.

The next morning I woke up to the sun shining brightly, I was somehow in the bedroom. “Chris!” I shouted shoving him.

“What?” He sat up and took a moment to register where we were. I realized he hadn’t carried me in here. “What the fuck?”

“It stopped raining at least.” My phone buzzed, and when I picked it up I had about a dozen missed calls and texts. “Chris, check your phone.” I began scrolling through my messages.

Dad – “Heard there’s a big storm coming, hope your windows are shut.”

Aaron – “Hey, take care, it looks bad by you.”

Several friends had sent messages of the same nature.

Dad – “Let me know if you’re ok, they said there’s a tornado that way.”

Aaron – “Not cool, answer, call me.”

I nearly shouted when I noticed the phone told me it was Saturday, it should have been Thursday by now. I jumped up and opened the blinds letting the sun stream over us for the first time in days.

Chris and I spent the next half hour returning calls and messages, assuring everyone we had slept through the giant storm and that we must have left our phones on vibrate. Then we had a perfectly average Saturday.

To this day, I still can’t explain what happened to us. I’ve come to believe we somehow lost sync with time. What caused it and what fixed it, I couldn’t tell you either. I’d chalk it up to hallucination, but Chris has the same memories I do, and in my bag I found my notebook with my list of clues. That and my liquor cabinet and fridge were still incredibly stocked. Sometimes though, when I’m outside and it’s still and quiet, I think I can hear a distant screech.

[playernumberv]

An introduction!

Hello to my likely-imaginary audience! If you’ve somehow stumbled upon this tumblr blog and are wondering what this place is all about, this post should get you all settled in. :)

Where the hell is this?

The short answer is that it’s a personal gaming blog, where I write about gaming to my heart’s content. The long answer is... well, the rest of this post. 

Who the hell am I?

I’m a random Internet person who really loves video-games, who has a strong passion about gaming, and who loves talking about games and sharing his views about games. That about sums it up. I’m a very private person in my personal life (which is why I opted for a blog and not a YouTube channel), so I won’t be talking about myself much, if at all. This is a blog purely dedicated to gaming, so I’d primarily focus on talking about gaming. :)

Let me share a little bit about who I am as a gamer. In general, my favourite genre of gaming is JRPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy, Tales of, Persona) - the recent Persona 5 Royal is my personal favourite JRPG. I also have a strong preference for narrative-focused games, which is why The Last Of Us is my absolute favourite video-game ever. I own a PS4 Pro and a Nintendo Switch, and these are the consoles on which I actively play games on at the moment. I also own a PS3, a PS Vita, a PSP, and all the Nintendo handhelds in existence all the way back to the Game Boy, but these have been retired for some time now. I also intend to buy a PS5 at launch, or shortly after launch. Hence, the gaming content on this blog will overwhelmingly be focused on these consoles - it’s difficult for me to have an informed opinion of games or consoles that I don’t own or have no interest in (such as the Xbox), after all.

I’ve got a Twitter account too (@PlayerNumberV).

At this point, I haven’t decided if I’d be actively using the Twitter account, but tentatively, properly-thought out and longer text posts go here, while immediate short reactions and thoughts will go on Twitter. I’ll work out the specifics along the way.

How did this blog come about?

I’ve been playing video-games for about two decades now (I’m currently in my late 20s), and I’ve always enjoyed writing about games and talking about games, but never really had a proper platform to do so with. I sometimes imagine that I should have pursued a career in the gaming industry, for example as a games’ journalist or even as a games’ writer, but I wasn’t gutsy enough to do so (at least in my country, it’s a pretty risky career to go for). I still enjoy writing about games as a hobby, either way, so why not do it as a hobby? I don’t know why it took me so long to actually make myself a platform, but here it is. 

Also, an interesting bit of trivia: what finally triggered the action of actually making this blog was The Last Of Us Part II. Of the hundreds of games I’ve played in my life, I’ve never loved a game as much as I loved The Last Of Us (2013). Needless to say, I was intensely and incredulously passionate about its sequel. To put things lightly, I was so thoroughly disappointed by The Last Of Us Part II that I felt an overwhelming urge to air my views somewhere, which led me to decide to finally create a gaming blog. That said, I’ve ended up talking about TLOU2 on Reddit (note: click this link at your own risk, I spoil major story details here) instead, so I’ve decided that I do not wish to start off this blog with the kind of negativity I’d inevitably have when talking about TLOU2.

Why Player Number Five? Why not 1, 2 or 3? WHY NOT 69????

I’ve got terrible naming sense, so when I had to come up with an alias, I couldn’t be bothered to give it too much thought. My name starts with ‘V’ (that’s as much as I’d be saying about my personal life here). ‘V’ in roman numerals is the number 5. Hence, PlayerNumberV gives me a convenient alias that incorporates the fact that this is a gaming blog with my own name. It also kind of makes sense that I’m player “five” and not “one” or “two”, because I’m not a professional games’ journalist or some important bigwig who is directly involved with the gaming industry. I’m just a person who really loves games, and I’m writing this blog purely to indulge in my own interests.

Maybe PlayerNumberLXIX (nice) would have been better though (please indulge my terrible sense of humor for a bit, will ya?). 

What kind of content will be posted here?

I’m a text kinda person, so most of my own original content will come in the form of text posts, such as opinion pieces, game reviews, and the like. Full-length posts will likely be in the minority - I haven’t written a full-length game review in 3 years; it’s simply too much effort, and as a working adult, it’s difficult to find the time. Similarly, full-length opinion pieces will probably be written only if there’s a subject I feel extremely strongly about. I will, however, commit to posting mini-reviews (i.e. of length around 200 words or so, where I summarize my overall opinions) of all the games I play, complete with review scores too - if it matters, I generally rate games on a 0 to 100 scale (PSA: all review scores are inevitably subjective, and mine will be too, so don’t get mad if you don’t agree with my rating). 

Occasionally, I may post other types of gaming-related content, such as concepts and ideas I have for video-games, personal wishes for an upcoming video-game, and other such content. I also do enjoy memes (seriously, memes helped me cope with my disappointment in TLOU2 so much), so if I come across a gaming-related meme which I particularly enjoy, I may post them here too! Hell, if I have a great meme idea, I may even make my own memes and post them occasionally. Some images would probably help break the monotony of a text-only blog, after all. :D

Since this is a gaming blog, I will overwhelmingly post only about gaming. I do enjoy movies and animes very much as well, however, though it is less common for me to have anything passionate or important to say about these. Still, on the rare occasion that I do have something to say about an anime or movie I watched, it’s entirely possible that I may post about them here too. 

How will I handle spoilers in my posts?

Tumblr is a public platform, and while I’m no professional writer and I don’t expect much traffic on this blog, if at all, there’s always a chance that someone may randomly stumble upon this blog. I’d hate to be the guy who posts a spoiler for a game that someone is still halfway through. In general, my policy is that reviews will be completely spoiler-free, save for information already divulged in pre-release official marketing. Other text posts, if they include spoilers, will be prefaced with spoiler warnings. As for image posts, that’s a little more difficult, but I’d generally try to avoid images with spoilers for recently-released games. At this point I haven’t decided if there’s an embargo period before I start posting freely about spoilers on this blog, but the above will be my general policy for now. I’ve gotten spoiled by the Internet before, so I absolutely understand how frustrating it is and I’d like to be a good denizen of the gaming community by not spoiling games unnecessarily.

Should you care about my opinion?

Honestly? Probably not. I’m quite literally a random Internet stranger, and as should be common wisdom by now, the words of an Internet rando don’t mean much. Still, it’s up to you, really. If you read something here that you agree with, or that helps you with thinking about games or making a decision about games, good for you! If you read something you don’t agree with, that’s fine too - as I’ve said, I’m just a random person on the Internet, and my opinion isn’t important. I’ve listed (or intend to list) my favourite games on various pages of this blog - if you find that my tastes in games coincide well with yours, by all means heed my opinion if it helps. If you think I have terrible taste in games and you disagree with almost everything I say, then clearly my opinions are not going to be of much value to you. That’s fine too - to each their own! I’m sure there’s no need to get mad at the opinions of an Internet rando, is there? ;)

Upcoming Posts

As a start, I have two posts I intend to work on in the coming week(s) or so.

First is a list of ‘upcoming games’ that I’m personally interested in. These may include games that I’m actively excited for and intend to pre-order, or may simply be games that I find intriguing and am looking out for more information on before I decide if I’d play them. I think there’s no better way to start a gaming blog than a joyful discussion of the games that I’m excited for. :)

Second is a more formal discussion I’d like to embark on in some detail: Are Metacritic scores accurate or useful? As a hobby, I’ve kept a log of subjective review scores I’ve given to many of the games I’ve played over the past 10 years or so (unfortunately, I didn’t properly keep track of scores for every single game, so I’ve lost the records for quite a number). Still, this gives me the opportunity to actually do statistical comparisons between the scores I’ve given and review scores based on Metacritic (with some caveats that I’d discuss more about in the post itself). I think it’d be quite an interesting and informative discussion of a pretty relevant topic in gaming.

More distantly, I’d likely write mini-reviews of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Nintendo Switch) and Ghosts of Tsushima (PS4) when I play them in July! Looking forward to these!

That’ll be all for my first post! 

-V

[adonis-koo]

Sleepless Nights on Saint Avenue (Jimin x Reader)

Modern Cinderella AU | 1

Pairing: Fuckboy!Jimin x Reader, ??? x Reader

Description: You‘re an average college student being crushed under the pressure of your stepmother, your one escape from your own private hell is through your identity posing as Jay Six, an anonymous dancer who has become a star amongst the campus. But even the one thing you take peace in begins to developes it’s own demon, and his name is Park Jimin.

Note: In honor of Jimins birthday I’m finally gonna post this lmao, psa I’m an ugly fiend who can’t just do a regular social media AU and I deeply apologize but hey, more content atleast amirite?

-

Previous | Next

~

Your eyes were in physical pain from not getting any sleep from two days before as you whined laying on Namjoons bed, “Out of all the days why did they have to set the exam for tomorrow? I actually finished early tonight, I genuinely thought I was gonna get 8 hours of sleep for the first time in six months,”

Unshockingly the boys were typing away on their laptops too absorbed in silent panic to really pay attention, Jungkook was the only one who appeared to really notice your whining as he replied, “Yeah but your first lecture is at 6 am anyways so...Ow!”

You threw your notebook at him as you huffed, so what if your first lecture was at 6 am!? That didn’t demean the fact that atleast you would’ve gotten some sleep had it not been for this useless exam, it’s not that you were a total baby but you had been running on espresso shots and three hours of sleep for too long to proper functionally.

“You can go to bed Y/n, your grades aren’t as low as Jungkooks IQ like the rest of us,” Namjoon finally chimed in, briefly looking away from his laptop as he stretched his arms before giving a small shrug, but something on the screen caught his attention as he quickly returned to his original position.

But that was the problem....when you didn’t reply you began to feel three pairs of eyes bore into you staring with interrogating looks, your step mother was benevolent enough to be paying your student loans, but she had stipulations, one being you wouldn’t move into the dorms. The second was you would take the classes she wanted you to for extra credit. And the third was making sure you had good grades if it was less then an 80% she wouldn’t pay a month of student loans.

You had never gotten below an 80 on a test or exam but it was only out of fear of what would happen should you fail, it came at the cost of your mental health and sleep schedule, but atleast you weren’t being harassed. Okay maybe that wasn’t completely true, your step sister was the pain of your existence but atleast you weren’t trying to hide physical bruises when it was just her.

“I could but...I really want to do well on this exam,” You looked away, your friends knew your step mom was a bitch but they didn’t know extreme details and you weren’t planning on having a heart to heart with them tonight about it. Namjoon and Jungkook exchanged glances before returning to their work, clearly not buying your excuse, but you couldn’t blame them, you had figured Taehyung- your closest friend- would’ve interrogated you, but when you looked toward his direction you saw him furiously typing.

You almost expected him to be on Reddit looking at memes to try and cope from the stress until he howled out laughing causing the others to look his way, “No way, no fucking way. Y/n you’re never gonna believe this,”

Sitting up you quirked an eyebrow, was this a challenge? When you were friends with three of the biggest losers on campus you could believe just about anything, “Try me son,”

Taehyung turned his laptop around only to show you your own post looking at him in confusion until he clicked on the comments,

daddypark...as in Park Jimin? He had commented plenty of times before on your alt account since he was a dance major and dancing was kinda the whole point of Jay Six, who was your online alter ego, you shrugged as you replied slightly confused, “Yeah?”

Taehyung continued laughing as he replied, “It gets better,” unable to stifle his childish giggles he opened up his phone to reveal snapchat,

“Park fucking Jimin is whipped for you,”

The three of them roared out laughing at the post while Jungkook collapsed onto the floor meanwhile Namjoon was slapping the bed close to tears from laughing, groaning you couldn’t help but inwardly cringe, Park Jimin whored himself constantly to girls those posts could’ve been for anyone, “How do you know that’s even about me,”

“Y/n you dumbass meme lord connect the dots, see how close all of the times are? Let’s not even get into the crypticness. ‘Someday I’ll find out who you are’? Really bitch? Who else could he be talking about?” Taehyung continued laughing as he grabbed his stomach.

Leave it up to Taehyung to be the Sherlock Holmes of social media, groaning you collapsed on the bed, sure it was fun to meme with your friends, but not at your own expense, “Oof you guys suck,”

That only fueled them to laugh harder at your cringing expression. Park Jimin was many things, he was loud, he couldn’t keep it in his pants half the class, and he was absolutely obnoxious anytime he talked to you with that sneering arrogance like if he snapped his fingers you’d be in his bed.

But most of all he was a fuckboy, you refused to associate yourself with that walking parasite, you weren’t the only girl on campus who’d roll her eyes at his dirty flirt lines but Park seemed to have a particular sore spot for you and you could say feeling was mutual.

With that background you could confirm you were surprised when he had retweeted a video of Jay dancing for the first time asking, in quotes: ‘Who is she? 😫’

Yeah you had just about choked on the coffee you were drinking when you saw his post had made its way onto your timeline from so much retweeting. As much as you wished you could deny it, he was part of the reason you were so popular now on social media, ever since then he would alway like your videos and would occasionally comment on posts.

But you had never seen such thirst directed at Jay before from him which still led you to doubt that it could actually be Jay - you- he was referring too.

Groaning you picked up your phone, you were gonna shut this down because you knew damn well when Park Jimin wanted something he was gonna get it, and him finding out who you were was not gonna happen on your watch, the boys crowded around curiously as you opened up Instagram typing in his IG name before replying to his post.

“I bet you my left ass cheek he’ll take that as an invitation to slide into your dms,” Taehyung snorted out as he returned to his laptop.

Rolling your eyes you closed your phone as you sighed, you were already stressed out on a daily the last thing you needed was to deal with a thirsty fuckboy on a witch hunt to find out your alter egos identity, “Shut up you dumb whore and get back to studying,”

Shockingly enough everyone listened including yourself as you continued reading through the notes Jin had so kindly given you.

It was gonna be a long sleepless night.

[miriyos]

Hey so who actually made the duchene meme? They’re not credited on that post

I don’t know. I saw it on Reddit or shared on a Facebook hockey page. It had already been shared once

(Edit) So I did try to look for it again. I couldn’t find it on the hockey page that I follow and if it’s on r/hockey, it’s probably way deep into the feed. I really hadn’t expected it to get more than a few likes rather than hundreds of reblogs. Otherwise I would’ve added credit if I saw it at the time

There’s no watermark or anything so the person who shared it may not even be the OP of the original-original post.

[baitrotate1-blog]

After a huge user revolt, nobody wanted to work at Reddit. Three years later, the CEO explains how the 'front page of the internet' rebuilt the team

Steve Huffman is cofounder and CEO of Reddit.Guru Khalsa

Reddit, known as the "front page of the internet," has weathered a lot of storms. Over the years, the site has been dogged by user revolts, controversial content, and public oustings of its leaders.

The situation made hiring a nightmare. When Steve Huffman, the site's cofounder, rejoined the company as CEO in 2015, he learned that very few people in Silicon Valley wanted to work at Reddit.

This is a story about how Reddit convinced hundreds of engineers to come work for the company — and gave Reddit its mojo back.

Steve Huffman returned to Reddit, the company he helped launch and later abandoned after its multimillion-dollar acquisition, to find it had become one of the most radioactive companies in the Valley.

Almost no one wanted to work at Reddit in 2015.

In seeking to hire engineers, Huffman told Business Insider, "It was hard to get people to respond." 

He explained, "Reddit was in the press for all the wrong reasons. All of them. ... Our reputation was in the dumps across pretty much every dimension."

Reddit, known as the "front page of the internet," is the fifth most-visited website in the US. And yet, it's nearly imploded on several occasions over the last decade. The site has been engulfed in controversies fueled by internet trolls and disgruntled users. A revolving door of CEOs did little to stabilize the startup's reputation or improve morale among a shrinking number of Reddit employees.

Huffman stepped back into the role of CEO to save Reddit, but he didn't do it alone.

Despite a series of crises, the San Francisco-based company would double its staff, growing from approximately 75 to 150 employees, over 2016. They would transform the site from looking like a dystopian Craigslist — or "hot garbage," as one top Reddit executive described it — into a place where new users could more easily find their people online and share news, images, memes, and video.

Today, Reddit has more than 400 employees on its payroll, with the biggest gains in engineering. The company raised $200 million last year from a number of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, to continue its hiring spree. It seems that Reddit's renaissance has just begun.

Business Insider spoke with Huffman and a handful of engineers at Reddit — as well as checked out journalist Christine Lagorio-Chafkin's excellent, upcoming book about Reddit called "We Are the Nerds" — to learn how the internet's front page got its mojo back.

Reddit put out a call to 'every engineer in the Valley,' Huffman said

Reddit hadn't hired an engineer in nine months when Huffman — who left Reddit after his contract with the company's buyer, publisher Condé Nast, ran out — rejoined in 2015. And it showed.

The site looked very similar to the original version that Huffman and his cofounder, Alexis Ohanian, launched ten years earlier. 

"It wasn't really hard at that time to look at Reddit and think about ways to improve it," Nick Caldwell, vice president of engineering at Reddit, told Business Insider.

Reddit got a new — but still familiar — look in 2018.Reddit

Over the course of 15 years, Caldwell had worked his way up from intern to general manager at Microsoft. When a recruiting firm approached him about going to Reddit in 2016, he was skeptical.

"I visited Reddit like four times before I took this job," Caldwell said.

Huffman needed help trying to staff up Reddit. New hires would allow the company to give the site a refresh, replace much of the original, clunky code, and build new products and features aimed at stamping out hate speech and other noxious content on Reddit.

That was easier said than done. Not only did few people want to work at Reddit in 2015, but the San Francisco Bay Area faced a shortage of engineering talent. The problem worsened over the years, according to a recent Workforce Report from LinkedIn, as demand for data scientists in particular outstripped supply.

In addition to its struggles recruiting engineers, the company had trouble holding onto its existing employees.

According to Lagorio-Chafkin's book, about fifty staffers quit or were terminated in the months following Huffman's return to Reddit. Some of those defectors left in protest of Ellen Pao's ousting. (The Silicon Valley power player was asked to resign as CEO of Reddit amid a user revolt.) Others said they couldn't get behind Huffman's vision for a new era at Reddit, the CEO told Lagorio-Chafkin.

Reddit hired a recruiting firm that, according to Huffman, "called every engineer in the Valley" in a "brute force" attempt.

After accepting the job, Caldwell also hired as many Microsoft employees who were interested in jobs at Reddit as he could.

"That turned out to be not a huge number of people," he said.

With his network tapped out, Caldwell had to search in new places for candidates. It required a change in perspective.

Reddit widened the pipeline for talent

At Microsoft, Caldwell has admitted to being one of those hiring managers who scanned people's résumés for top schools and major companies before "taking a deeper look." This strategy can often surface the usual suspects: white male engineers in the Bay Area.

Nick Caldwell, Reddit's vice president of engineering, said the stigma against hiring from coding bootcamps is fading.RedditIn seeking to widen the net, Caldwell began recruiting from coding bootcamps, such as Hackbright Academy, whose mission is to help women from diverse backgrounds land jobs in tech. It specializes in providing opportunities to women with a few years of work experience under their belts, those who want to explore a new career path.

There's an old stigma that people who emerge from coding bootcamps are less skilled than those with computer science degrees. That's changing rapidly, according to Caldwell.

"People are realizing that technology changes so fast nowadays that you don't necessarily get practical knowledge from a college degree," he said. "And bootcamps are like only practical knowledge."

As a bonus, companies who aim to improve the ratio of male and female employees may find that "bootcamps bypass a lot of the traditional problems that people have with the pipeline," Caldwell said. These programs are often much more affordable than college and can be completed in weeks or months, not years, which makes them accessible to a wider range of potential students.

Building a diverse organization is especially important when you run a site viewed by millions of people each month.

"You cannot build a product that appeals to a diverse set of people without having a diverse set of people designing product," Huffman said.

Reddit declined to release its hiring or diversity statistics. However, the company has hired half a dozen graduates from Hackbright Academy alone — and has even more employees, including Huffman, serving as program mentors to aid in recruiting efforts. 

Reddit has over 400 employees today.Reddit

Having an impact matters

With its headcount ticking up, Reddit began shipping product again. 

In 2016, the startup overhauled its mobile app, created new tools for tracking site traffic, and launched a new department, known internally as the "anti-evil" team, that was dedicated to ridding the site of harassment, spam, and abuse. Their efforts slashed the number of spam reports coming from users and moderators by 90%.

Huffman set out to double staff again the following year.

By then, the team had made a key discovery about how to get people to come work for Reddit: It had to sell them on the story.

Bhavana Shanbhag was comfortable with her gig as an engineering manager at Groupon when she received a cold message on LinkedIn from one of Reddit's directors of engineering in 2017. In it, he described some of the problems they were trying to solve for.

"We need people like you," Shanbhag remembered him saying.

Shanbhag, who described herself as a "lurker" on Reddit more than a hardcore user, made arrangements to interview with 12 employees — more than what was required of her — before accepting the offer.

"I didn't want to switch my job for the sake of switching it," she said. "I wanted to make sure that I would actually have an impact."

Caldwell heard this from potential hires a lot. The team started to think critically about how they pitched candidates on the startup.

"What we settled on in those early days was — the value of Reddit was really about building community. And people coming into the company had huge amounts of opportunity to pick up the low-hanging fruit, to help us toward that mission," Caldwell said. "Once we really understood that, the pitch was pretty straightforward."

He explained: "Hey, you can be the first person to come into Reddit and help us build our machine learning processes. And by first person, I mean literally, there's no one else here. Please come help us."

Alexis Ohanian, a cofounder of Reddit, drew the company's little alien mascot, Snoo, while he was sitting, bored, in class at the University of Virginia.Flickr / Anirudh Koul

A more established company like Facebook or Google could pay them better, Caldwell said. But Reddit offered ambitious engineers huge amounts of impact on a product under rapid development.

"It's pretty cool, as well," he said.

In her role as senior director of engineering, Shanbhag said she often hears the question she asked — "Will I have impact?" — from people she's trying to recruit. She gives them a resounding "yes."

The startup is still hiring, but not without growing pains

There's still more to do, according to Huffman.

"I don't think the pitch has changed tremendously," Huffman said. "Everything is changing here, like we're rebuilding this company that has more potential energy than any company that you're talking to or thinking about joining. I can guarantee you that."

Reddit grew the number of engineers by 270% since the start of 2017, and it's still hiring. There are about two dozen job listings on the website, spanning data science, engineering, legal, and marketing, across offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.

It hasn't been all kittens and rainbows.

Employees agreed that Reddit grew too quickly, and the situation left some new hires feeling underutilized. The company slowed recruiting over the past summer to catch its breath and see what the full capacity of all its new hires was before ramping back up.

"We're 400-some people now, and fewer than 20 of those people were here in 2016," Huffman said. "Every quarter, we joke that it's a new company. And it is a new company."

Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/how-reddit-hired-engineers-after-revolt-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-2018-9&r=US&IR=T

[homestuckhomestuckhomestuck]

Summary of Homestuck fandom after [S] Cascade.

(2011) Homestuck as a general phenomenon was very active and developed at a swift pace from the time it was published (2009) onwards, especially in 2012-2013, including and past the first years of the Homestuck Kickstarter Project, a.k.a Hiveswap.

Between 2009 and 2012, Homestuck as a webcomic was infamous for updating daily, constantly, multiple times a day, at all hours, for years. There was a calculated average that Homestuck updated 5.5 pages per day, dropping entire bundles of updates of character interaction and plot reveals frame by frame, posted as fast as Hussie could write it. Though it wasn’t immediately obvious, this pace was sleeplessly breakneck, Hussie allegedly didn’t do anything but live, breathe and dream Homestuck for at least four years straight. I’m serious when I say updates came at all hours. I would wake up 2am on a week night and idly check MSPA to see if there was a new update, sort of like a trained parrot. Then in five minutes I’d tab back over to the Homestuck tab and refresh, just in case. 

This lead to an phenomenon appropriately dubbed “upd8 culture,” which became the basis of the sheer evangelical furor people still associate with the Homestuck fandom. Quick history: MSPA/Problem Sleuth fans originated and migrated over from the Penny Arcade forums, Reddit, and 4chan to nestle permanently within the bowels of 2011 - 2013 tumblr, and were best described from a distance as ‘zealous.’ Even remembering it now almost feels like recalling a distant riot. If you didn’t cosplay, write up a detailed theory post, or scribble up a crazy level of appropriately detailed fanart within 10 or so minutes any given upd8, you were buried under the force of post overload and were officially late to the party. After years of this, fans had some idea of just how dedicated it came off as, which was used to further spur on fandom and made Homestuck into the most meme filled in-joke community you could possibly imagine. 

What’s frustrating about describing Homestuck and Homestuck fandom is they both heavily affected each other and were both unique experiences within themselves, which makes actually trying to get across the atmosphere of the early 2010s a wordy process. Homestuck heyday updates regularly crashed tumblr servers, which became an actual fake rss way of seeing how much the plot progressed that day, which is unusual even if the tumblr servers 2011-2013 were not funded by the corporate might of Yahoo. The bigger the update, the faster the crash. I could tell you Homestuck dominated tumblr to the point it had a virulent hatedom of people who had never even read it and constantly saw it and never understood what was happening in it, and fans couldn’t stop themselves from chattering about it all the time. One thing that has to be noted is all this continual bickering and movement and development and competitive content production was honestly fun as hell. 

Besides constant updates and a continual stream of new content, the story was completely unpredictable. Game-changing plot twists continued to happen up until the very ending, and while this made Homestuck’s plot happily convoluted, for fans this meant one thing they never lacked for was barely solvable mystery. Even the (fan)artists and (fan)musicians hired to work on Homestuck had to guess what would happen next even if they were part of animating the next update. Under similar principles of an ARG, story presentation was created with the vague expectation fans would work together to explain to each other what just happened.

What this meant in conjunction with Hussie’s oddly accurate tabs on fandom theory was that when an update dropped you had to release whatever you were doing fast, or you would be outdated, wrong, inaccurate, or irrelevant at some undisclosed unspecific time, very soon. Canon and fanon directly pulled from each other, especially in the small character details. The very fact the comic spun on such accurate knowledge of fandom that was purposefully fostered between fandom and canon means that even now reading Homestuck while updating is considered an experience different from an archival read, even though Homestuck was always a self-contained story.  

Upd8 culture followed like this: Popular fan theories had multiple fanfictions written on them just to better explain what could happen next, and fan projects from voice acting to art to music to fiction were constantly being corrected, updated, and replaced by a deluge of new information and characters to pore over every single detail with a fandom magnifying glass. An endless amount of hyper ambitious fandom projects, games, animations, multi media fanstories made in rotating teams were abandoned for new starts JUST because the information they were working off became too outdated by the newest few weeks of updates. Cosplays were mocked up in hours (for the next morning of con,) art in minutes, theory in seconds. You threw everything out as fast as you could so someone else could build off of it. It did give a strong impression of collaboration and possibility. As the fandom grew bigger and younger Hussie seemed to shade more politic in his fandom communication, but Homestuck managed to maintain an “open channel” like feeling between fandom and comic for a long time. 

Innovative form encouraged innovative output. The point was to create. Another aspect feeding upd8 culture was in the way Homestuck was told. Not only were Homestuck’s detailed plot points hard to predict, but so was what would happen to the site in a meta way.  A page could range from a scribble to a 3 hr fully programmed rpg or 18 minute asset heavy style swapping animation, or most commonly, sprite art followed by several hundred words of dialogue and character interaction. Pages came by different artists, different styles, different mediums, different paces and focuses, but with a breadth-spanning understanding of memes and the internet. Factors of style, innovation and novelty affected the diversity of fan output. Part of my extreme willingness to take part in Homestuck fandom was that Homestuck was so crammed to the brim with open ended creative potential, just the multiplicity of cool ideas and plot mechanics and vivid characters and weirdly novel framing that had really good ideas and existed literally nowhere else, and I say that as a huge sci-fi fan. Time travel in Homestuck was excellent. It was an ambitious story and I really do think it pulled it off. Homestuck was once described as the fossilized excrement of someone’s personal creative experiments, and I think that’s a good way of putting it. Enthusiasm and confusing daring teemed off the page, and translated into a wide variety of fanfiction and art, in style, content, theme, and pov. 

Lastly, Hussie had a tendency to canonize fan content and hire fanartists and fananimators if their output was solid enough with a gentle horse kiss of approval and a naturally internet-transparent hiring process, like a forum. This was a purposely fostered atmosphere in the spirit of experimental adventure, and was just fucking nuts. Fans never wrote the story, but they did heavily influence aspects of how it was told and where it went (by design, fans were pretty much involved in making the comic) and even get to actually flesh out the details, like the main character’s names, memes, romances, character, and scope. Everything from canon sprite art to bits of the Midnight Crew to Caliborn’s character to Calliope’s art skill to music and trickster arcs were all originally based on years of fan jokes and fandom. Homestuck was definitely Hussie’s sole property and precious baby, but he built it as interactive-ish and creatively as he could. It added an extra layer of galvanizing egging on to fandom purpose. I don’t know how else to explain everything that came of it. Fandom was like a roiling morass of bullshit activity, like a breaking news bullpen 24/7, there was so much energy sparking off of all facets of fandom because it was just so fun. Fan output was borderline insane in 2010-2013.

Hussie said fandom grew exponentially at the introduction of the Trolls in Act 5 in mid 2010, but I can honestly say I think fandom really started treating Homestuck like a hidden gem worth proselytizing right after the events of [S] Cascade at the end of 2011. Before then, Homestuck was tenuously good, and had a rep on tumblr for having weirdly ubiquitous fans and over- detailed fancontent, but [S] Cascade was the moment every single gamble asked of the reader in the story actually paid off. In fact, Homestuck’s plot was generally constructed to climax at [S] Cascade, as was apparent from the big explosion of fan reaction after the fact. At this point, you would be hard pressed to find a fan that wouldn’t say, “Homestuck is good.”  

THE KICKSTARTER (2012)

Right after [S] Cascade, a lot of things happened in quick succession. Act 6 started, revealing what endgame would probably look like. It was slated to be shorter than Act 5, envisioned as a kind of denouement. Lord English, the final villain, was revealed. Hussie stated he thought the comic would end the following year. I think Hussie saw the ending was in sight and started trying to merchandise for real at this point, god tier hoodies started releasing at a faster rate, Homestuck book 1 came out (in addition to Problem Sleuth book 3), there was a Homestuck music (and track art) contest announced with hundreds of fan submissions, and the incongruous but hilarious public induction of Dante Basco, Hollywood superstar, who was instantly whisked into the Homestuck fandom’s fold as soon as he formed a tumblr. Homestuck had a bit of a reputation by then so the fandom (+ Hussie) was legitimately trying to woo him gently. This was entertaining for everybody, including Dante Basco. (For those who haven’t gotten that far, Dante Basco is a character in Homestuck.) (As some trivia, Grey DeLisle also briefly made a tumblr in this time, influenced by the instant rapport Dante Basco had, voiced some Vriska lines, then left due to some unrelated but tumblr-typical drama.)

There probably weren’t even specifics on who was going to be programming, illustrating, producing, and writing Hiveswap- and I’m still vaguely convinced Hussie scrolled through Promstuck and then hired deudlyfirearms (Calliope’s official artist) on the spot to illustrate all his future creative endeavors. I know Guzusuru got hired at least partially due to Lullaby for Gods, not to speak in the least for Paperseverywhere or Toastyhat (tumblr usernames used just in case, dril), plus a literal list of artists you could follow through various Homestuck fan production to official product lines. With Hiveswap, Homestuck went from hobby to full time job for some people. But before all that, in 2012 Homestuck as source material was apparently endless and constant, and let’s just say by 2013, Hussie never had to ASK for specific fan content, assets, musicians, artists, programmers, writers, even money. He just had to allow fandom a place, an address, an email, anything, to let them throw it at him. I have actually never seen anything like it, this weird businesslike use of talents within and out of comic. This is why mid 2012 art assets and minigames suddenly start becoming more populous, culminating in the nearly entirely guest art illustrated, programmed, and animated EOA6 and A7 and guest written post-canon snapchats in 2016. (This is also the time the MSPA forums crashed.) Also the art, programming, and music team for Hiveswap seem comprised of former fan musicians and artists. 

One thing that’s no concern for Hiveswap: it will be was beautifully illustrated, scored, and animated by people who loved Homestuck.

In sum: 2012 Homestuck was in full swing. Homestucks flooded cons, more than usual, to such a volume of painted gray tweenagers that cons in general (and hotels) had to rewrite the rulebooks surrounding such things as panels, photoshoots, and draw meets. MSPA servers were still barely holding up, especially after big upd8s, and were constantly being upgraded. Tindeck made a whole genre tag on their site for Homestuck fanmusic. What Pumpkin and Topatoco couldn’t keep up with demand, everything was constantly out of stock. Staff and even Hussie didn’t announce when new products were released until weeks later because if they did, the entire store server would immediately crash for long periods of time. This remained true even into 2016, apparently. There were homestuck plushes, furniture, tattoos, rooms, board games, video games, cards, dolls, products you wouldn’t even think of– a whole years long scrum about establishing copyright and what could sell where to who. Promstuck was a once-a-year reality in random cities around the US or otherwise. Art Team and Music Team had quick fame gain, I know at least Music Team members could feasibly live off of Homestuck revenue as their day job. Ben Nye grey paint actually sold out before a con, and even to this day any gray paint on amazon will be utterly dominated by troll cosplay reviews. Even small trivially related products like the record of the guy who posted “I’m a Member of the Midnight Crew” on youtube was convinced to list the record on ebay for a couple hundred dollars in a sprightly fan bidding war. This was completely unremarkable at the time. 

The most interesting thing about Homestuck is that it was a) entirely spread by grassroots efforts and word of mouth, and b) a free webcomic. Though unlike the T.V syndicated and advertised shows like Sherlock or Dr. Who or anime, or the multi-billion dollar industries of Marvel or Nintendo, with nearly zero effort to be anything but weird and internet obscure, Homestuck seemed just as bafflingly popular and literally impossible to avoid as professionally advertised hollywood blockbusters, popular anime, television serial shows, and multi million video games, at least on tumblr, reddit, and 4chan, and conventions. Because of all the factors that went into it’s circuitous development, if you hadn’t read through a huge chunk of Homestuck, you wouldn’t even understand and you couldn’t even properly explain why such a niche but undeniable popularity existed. It was such a phenomenon. 

People who had (reasonably) never even heard of Homestuck would stumble upon a fandom antic and observe with growing confusion the busy masses hard at work. Bright blue horse dildo fundraised and sent dutifully to creator? (At least three different dildos on 3 different social media homestuck fan sites were fundraised publicly.) Gruesome artwork of puppet fetish websites carefully placed with pages of critiqued meta with way too much attention? Even the usual deluges of upd8 fanart and fantheory? Entire forum sites and rp sites and chat clients enthusiastically founded just for the constant need to discuss the story? Homestuck became recognizable by horns and grey paint and terrifyingly huge meetups, a nearly frantic aura and art meets or prom dances just for fans - “What the fuck is Homestuck?!” became a fandom catchphrase, because it was always being commented on. Tbh, Homestuck is the r rated precursor for Undertale in memetic inclination and story framing style. Memes, man.

And in the midst of this, in September 2012, Hussie suddenly announced a Homestuck Video Game Kickstarter. The long awaited scalemate plushes were introduced as a reward tier. And unexpectedly, a lavishly illustrated ostensibly Kickstarter exclusive Homestuck tarot deck by popular fanartists as one of the reward tiers.  

For context: The entire premise of Homestuck is that it was a transcribed gaming session of a video game that didn’t exist. Opening a Homestuck Video Game Kickstarter was a fitting sequel, the equivalent of waving an 8th book prequel in front of Harry Potter fans, as illustrated by the cream of the crop, if every previous iteration of the Harry Potter series was also free. In addition, the goal was $700,000, and Homestuck had over 2 million online fans. There wasn’t a question if $700,000 was going to be feasible as a funding goal, it was more a question of how far the fandom could goad itself into trying to overshoot it. In fact, I remember being kind of disappointed we didn’t reach 3 million. We capped just below 2.5 million including the paypal donations. Homestuck started making “official” waves in news articles and such, of people who noticed a completely incomprehensible kickstarter got a lot of money somehow, and this in addition to the typically update culture-fast result (the funding goal was reached in about 30 hours of a month long campaign,) was regarded as very bizarre by everyone who didn’t know what Homestuck was. 

Trivia: there was even a $10,000 tier introduced as a joke, where “your fantroll will become canon (for one panel, and then die),” which was hastily closed after two people actually took it. (One was an army vet who thoroughly enjoyed the story and basically wanted to donate as thanks, and the other has remained impressively anonymous.) First time I saw Hussie publicly searching for words. I really could say 2012 Homestuck was approaching some kind of mania. Considering how Homestucks were, if someone named their firstborn off a Homestuck character, I wouldn’t have been shocked. The game was funded. 

Homestuck hiatus’ started in earnest. This was due to the increased production schedule of both the Kickstarter game being punted into development, the troubled indie game development cycle, and more detailed HTML5 games (openbound) in the comic, and product production, which is, you know, was fair enough. Updates were frequent enough to keep fandom active and frothy well into 2013, where the lack of Game Updates in conjunction with comic hiatus’ were both uncharacteristic and concerning. 

Homestuck was abruptly shifted off of regular upd8 schedules, and upd8 notifiers were sadly put to rest. 

HIATUS FANDOM (2013-2014)

Here was a unique factor of 2013 Homestuck fandom, for the lack of content, fandom moved en masse to an alternative ‘hiatus fandom,’ in some kind of effort to keep together over the wait. This literally singlehandedly boosted the popularity of games like OFF, Dangan Ronpa, etc. Homestuck hiatus fans were already pro at boosting popularity through word of mouth, and these obscure-but-popular video games were fun to pimp in the meantime. A more recent, toned down example would be 17776. 

Here was also something weird. In December 2013 Hussie apparently (as creative director only) had some kind of mysterious would-be trial run with Shiftylook with Namco ips, resulting in Namco High, the Homestuck and Namco character dating sim, where you could date Davesprite (who had a surprising amount of meta character development,) Terezi, Pacman, and Galaga. It was so out of nowhere nobody knew what to do with it. It was an indication of what Homestuck as a franchise was probably going to expand into, though, and an intriguing move on the part of Bandai. 

In the comic hiatuses and throughout the roadblocked kickstarter game development, canon-side, the Paradox Space quasi-canon side project and WeLoveFine (later ForFansByFans, who took over merchandising,) continued on the spirit of fandom support- notably the original Art Contest to make new merch- now streamlined into a “fan forge” where any fan can go through a voting process to say, pitch a new product and later be hired on the most recent calendar, then show up working a new Friendsim.... etc. 

After this a new generation of internet fans appeared to ‘notice’ Homestuck, hearing it was ending, and joined in, making the Kickstarter garner a kind of shadowed conspiracy-riddled rumortale more than anything, which really outstripped the simplicity of what happened: hardworking but troubled development.

The End of Homestuck was hanging like the sword of Damocles over our collective motivations, you can still find mournful farewell Homestuck fanart floating around to this day! In fact, the fandom believed it was the End of Homestuck several times in 2014-2015. Fandom was tamping down on the corners, cleaning up fanart (relatively), tucking away the crazily ambitious scifi world spanning AU fic. The wild, raw creativity that used to be so rampant through all corners of the internet seemed vaguely diminished, tidier, more understandable, trackable, and efficient. Big Projects never showed their roughs and drafts until the final products anymore, small circles of discourse popped up in pretty polite language and with almost no capslock. The discussions weren’t on What Hussie Would Pop On Us This Time To Overhaul The Entire Plot Of Homestuck, it was more like, did he make the gay Gay Enough™? Vriscourse remained eternal, though. 

And it isn’t just nostalgia talking. I’ve noticed some Homestucks still think fandom is a rush of collective community like they’ve never before experienced, that upd8 celebrations are pretty dang wild, and Homestuck convention presences are well-established, but now? In 2015-2017? This is calm and active, there are still some cool projects going on, but nothing like the insanity that was associated with Homestuck. Homestuck was the ‘biggest’ fandom I’ve ever been in, in terms of sheer forced commiseration and activity, and it just has not reached anything close to the levels of 2011-2013 bullshittery and spark plugs. 

But the fandom is still present- people treat it like a phase, but Homestuck is still a clever story that retains all the aspects that attracted readers to it in the first place. Also, the fandom still regularly accomplishes minor feats of economics like this even in 2016: 

because that is the level of fan fervor that Homestuck inspires, forever, apparently.

I’d last like to note I’ve skipped a lot, I tried to keep it as zoomed out and as general as possible. I’d like to explain the true foibles of 2013 Homestuck fandom, such as the forced formation of entire rp websites, apps, programs, and platforms dedicated to fanning Homestuck more efficiently, how fans formed new mediums and literal ways of expression and vast organized contests on how to express themselves and collaborate better, how there was almost a fan project-pipeline system in place, and how exactly Homestuck influenced Undertale (think of the meta) and an entire mini generation of webcomics and tv show story boarders spiritually, and I haven’t even tried to explain the aspects of Homestuck’s use of framing and how genuinely interesting it is from a storytelling perspective, and how the interaction of Hussie and the fandom and serial updates affected people’s connectivity because out of scope.

...But just for posterity and context of update culture: Quoth Gankro, programmer: 

So the biggest thing to keep in mind with MSPA is that it's based entirely off of collaboratively riffing off eachother's ideas. It started out as a faux text-based adventure where people would post prompts, and Andrew would take the ones he liked and riff off of them. As far as I'm concerned this is Andrew's super power: the ability to take a pile of things (comments, art, music, ideas, people) and rapidly recombine them into amazing things. The chatlogs in Homestuck full of amazing back and forths? That's just what talking to Andrew in chat was. Constant riffing and feedback loops.... 

Anyway, this is all to say that the genesis of ideas, and even how things got developed, is honestly really murky with Homestuck? Everything was kinda adhoc, a riff-on-a-riff, and done in incredibly little time....

I can't emphasize this scramble enough. Andrew was a ceaseless content machine, and I don't think I was ever "blocked" on him producing content. Which is ridiculous considering how much content is packed into our games. (like, hundreds of pages of dialogue)

Michael Bowman, music team: 

Volume 5 going out of its way to include gobs and gobs of material definitely changed the project; the floodgates opened. I think people admired Andrew's astonishingly prolific pace from 2009 to 2012, and between 2010 and 2011 the music project had the same vibe: we released one or two albums monthly. 

-fan interviews courtesy though the efforts of u/drewlinky 

Homestuck and it’s fandom has the unique distinction of being nigh unexplainable, as in, it took this long just to fully outline how the Homestuck Kickstarter was always going to be wildly successful, and how development was always going to take years even without the incident with the Odd Gentlemen, who clearly didn’t understand why Homestuck was popular or even why that mattered, (pre- Undertale), in the first place, but with the news of Viz taking on Homestuck’s license on account of that viral-like marketability so now there’s an actual possibility that Homestuck will finally become…… anime, why not hearken back to the good ol days and be relentlessly picayune for the hell of it? 

Happy 10/25!

[blindfoldxx]

Just caught up on steven universe and AH IT WAS GOOD...

Spoilers under read more

Gonna bullet point this cause I can’t keep my thoughts straight enough to write paragraphs.

Can’t Go Back -> Reunited

I got spoiled about Rose = PD... but WOW I can’t believe what was originally a meme/shtpost actually came true.

DID AMETHYST JUST DO A KAMINA POSE IN “WHATS YOUR PROBLEM”

Also gotta say that “What’s your Problem” just became one of my favorite SU episodes ever.  It was so realistic, one of the first times that they made Steven think about himself, and Amethyst sure has grown up a lot, I love her.

Loved that dramatic scene when Ruby came back to Sapphire as a cowboy.  So anime.  Also: “Why would she be a cowboy?!”

The WEDDING..... Was that a SU fanfic come true? I LOVED STEVEN’S SONG IN THE BEGINNING SO CUTE

was that. the FIRST REAL GAY KISS SHOWN ON A CARTOON. WAS IT. WAS IT.

HELLO BISMUTH... kinda random they just released her for the wedding, if it was that easy couldn’t steven had done it earlier? I guess he needed to find out that Rose = PD first tho.  I love bismuth

THAT LAST FIGHT... FELT LIKE AN ANIME FINAL BATTLE OMG

I loved how badass Connie has gotten.  CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

"Does every gem that comes in contact with this planet turn traitor?" -BD. Lol foreshadowing?

“I’ve felt worse.”  LAPIS BASICALLY SAID TO BD: “GET ON MY FCKING LEVEL OF DEPRESSION” L O L 

I love these comments I found on Reddit: 

Blue: W E A P O N I Z E D D E P R E S S I O N / Lapis: E M O T I O N A L T R A U M A I M M U N I T Y

“That my secret, Steven. I’m always depressed” -Lapis

^^ LOL I CAN IMAGINE HER VOICE SAYING THATT

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT WHEN PEARL SAID “I’ll do it for me!”.  LIKE, GOD. THAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Lol I’m sure Peridot & Lapis are going to reform with Crystal Gem stars on them

I can’t imagine Peri & Lapis’s reactions to the Diamonds being cool now lol

Legs From Here to Homeworld

Omg I absolutely LOVED yellow and blue in this episodes!!! I loved both of their facial expressions, and it’s SO NICE to finally see them be friendly & reasonable with the main cast. They are honestly pretty amazing together, how they contrast & balance off each other: both their art, dialogue, expressions, character, etc. I love how Yellow told steven “let me talk to her”, like she’s another one of his moms.  Ahhhh I LOVE THEM.  Both their personalities & characters are so great, I love it so much.

homeworld is broken

WHITE DIAMOND??!?!!!! Need I say more? 

Honestly tho, I DID NOT imagine that SU would get such a creepy-ish turn like that scene with WD. A lot of people have been making this comparison, but WD tbh reminds me of Ragyo Kiryuin from Kill la Kill lol. 

That pearl tho? Isn’t it awfully strange how WD’s gem is on her forehead / WD’s pearl is on her stomach.  And PD’s gem is on her stomach / PD’s pearl is on her forehead....  Coincidence much?  These gem placements also align with the diamond placements in the “master diamond” that’s always shown...... (WD = top, YD/BD = side, PD = bottom.)  YD/BD & their pearls all have gems on their chest, which follows the theory.  But why WD & PD’s Pearls have switched gem placements?  Did they switch Pearls?  Maybe Pearl = White Pearl theories are finally true!!!

Lol the leg ship theories did come true

ARM(YD) + ARM(BD) + LEGS(PD)... HEAD = WD?!????  IT’D MATCH THE DIAMOND ORDER TOO. OMG. HOW DID I NOT REALIZE THIS BEFORE... MY MIND IS BLOWN.

UGH I don’t think I’ve been this excited about Steven Universe in a LONG WHILE.  Tbh I’ve been feeling kind of out of it/tired about SU for the entirety of Season 4 (after the whole Jasper thing happened)... but these episodes JUST BROUGHT BACK THE HYPE.  TYSM UGH THEY WERE SO GOOD. “Reunited” was FOR SURE on the level of Jail Break & Earthlings. (Which in my opinion, are the two MOST intense/shocking/dramatic SU episodes. Now there’s three lol.)  please keep it up CN... and pls pls pls don’t make us wait another 6 months for the next episodes cause honestly the waits between episodes is what has been making me lose the hype and I can’t keep hyping forever lol

[thesevillereport]

In Focus: Twitter 2021

In November 2013 investors were preparing to invest in another millionaire maker. At that time the term "social-media" was becoming a buzz word like "blockchain" is today, and the millionaire maker was supposed to be Twitter (TWTR).

Twitter was going public more than a year after the Facebook (FB) IPO, and investors were hungry to get into the social-media business.

Facebook had gone public in May of 2012, and made its early investors billionaires, but the investors who purchased the stock after the IPO took a beating for a while.

Facebook's IPO price was $38 per share, and after the stock's debut it traded down over the next 14 weeks before finding support. The stock traded for under $20 per share for several weeks to the delight of skeptics who believed the social-media company was worthless because it didn't sell anything, but little did they know.

After Facebook found its support the stock would go on to rally and make millionaires. Twitter's stock however struggled for much longer than 14 weeks. Twitter's IPO was priced at $26 and traded to a high of $74 per share to close out 2013, but after that, it was a two year slide for the stock and another year of trading sideways.

The biggest hurdle to Twitter's stock between 2015 and 2018 was Facebook's success. Wall Street could only compare Twitter to Facebook, and downgraded Twitter because it couldn't replicate Facebook's success. While Facebook's stock flourished, Twitter's stock floundered.

At the time, very few analysts knew how a social-media company was supposed to work, and for that reason all social-media companies were put in the same bucket and expected to adhere to the same business model, and this hurt how the Street viewed Twitter. 

The gap between Facebook and Twitter was extremely wide when compared head-to-head. In 2016 Facebook reported $27 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profits, during the same year Twitter reported $932 million in revenue and a net loss of $457 million.

A New Twitter / It's Okay Not to be Facebook

The tides are changing for Twitter and it appears professional investors are starting to see that it is a different animal from Facebook, and may never be as valuable as Facebook, but still very valuable.

In 2017 Mark Cuban made headlines for investing in Twitter. Cuban made the investment during a time when Wall Street analysts had written off Twitter and were licking their wounds from SNAP (SNAP), which had gone public in March 2017 and just couldn't stop dropping in price.

Cuban's reasoning for the Twitter investment was because of the company's focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence. While Wall Street analysts were beating down Twitter for not being like Facebook, Twitter was looking towards the future and Cuban noticed.

Twitter spent a good portion of the 2010s acquiring machine learning and artificial intelligence companies. In 2013 Twitter acquired data-visualization firm Lucy Sort. In 2014 Twitter acquired deep learning startup Madbits, and in 2015 it acquired Whetlab, a machine learning startup. 2019 saw Twitter lean in even more with the acquisitions of Fabula AI and Aiden.ai.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, did what companies should do when the spotlight is off of them, he looked towards the future, instead of managing for the quarter.

Twitter is trading at $68 per share as of this writing. The stock briefly traded above $80 per share on February 25, 2021, but has sold off since then. For investors who have followed Twitter since its IPO, it once seemed that the stock would never trade out the $14 range, but it now has in a big way.

A Path Forward, Maybe

Twitter was able to report revenue growth of 7% in 2020. The global conversation surrounding COVID-19 played a big part in the company's revenue growth, as did the U.S. elections and Donald Trump's last few months on the platform.

witter's management knows a repeat of 2020 will be tough, and advised investors that they expect slower year-over-year revenue growth in 2021, but it may not be as bad as the company thinks.

The rise of GameStop, AMC, Blackberry, and the other meme stocks has made the data licensing aspect of Twitter very valuable.

Twitter allows programmers, whether hobbyists like myself or major companies and outlets to data mine tweets. For a programming newbie like myself, I've been able to use the Twitter API (Application Programming Interface) to get sentiment on stock symbols and find out what stocks are being tweeted about the most, which is very elementary programming.

There are major firms that have large scale applications that are capable of getting sentiment analysis, as well as use what's going on socially to make winning stock picks. My access to Twitter's data is free, but I only get to make a small number of requests to the service per minute. Large companies who need to have the program constantly accessing Twitter's data for information have to pay for that unlimited access.

Revenue from data licensing and other grew by 9% in 2020, in comparison revenue from advertising services grew by 7%. The rise of the meme stocks has shown that it pays to be plugged into social media, and firms that aren't yet will likely be by the end of Q1 2021. There may be no better tools to judge sentiment than Twitter and Reddit.

It's Twitter In The End

I've always been a believer that when it's all said and done Twitter will still be standing. It will never have the growth that Facebook had in its heyday or TikTok has now, but I think it will survive.

The value of Twitter rests on my ideal that Dorsey and company have not really figured it out yet. Yes, they make advertising money, and from the start getting users and throwing advertisements at them has been the way that social-media companies make their money, but I'm not sure that's the most profitable business model for Twitter, or the way they're currently doing it is the most profitable way for them to do it. But I have to admit, I have no ideas of how to do it better.

The subscription model is being tested by Twitter now. I've rejected the idea in the past because I believed that all that I loved on the platform would be put behind a paywall, but the company thought of something better, but not that original. Twitter is testing a feature that will allow Twitter users with large followings to charge their followers for exclusive or additional content, which is the Patreon business model, but now on Twitter. I'm eh on the ideal, I don't love it, I don't hate it, but I will follow it closely to see how it goes.

I remain a big believer in Twitter. I wrote about the company in July 2019 , and I advised anyone who would listen to buy the pullbacks. I feel the same way in 2021, buy the pullbacks with optimism that Twitter's management is going to really figure out how to maximize the platform's earning potential.

[thefablednib]

Seeking a Friend for the Apocalypse

When I think about messaging strangers on the Internet, red flags wave frantically inside my head. As a child, my parents taught me that I shouldn’t talk to strangers online because they would find where I live and kidnap me. As a result, a chance encounter full of philosophy, poetry, and sincerity that changes my life unexpectedly is far-removed from what I’d expect from an online chat. But that’s exactly what happened to me over the course of three serendipitous weeks in July of last year.

Like most people, quarantine left me detached from the world, and I was utterly craving for human interaction. Being sequestered inside our house for more than five months, I was scrambling to find ways to connect with my friends, but to no avail. They wouldn’t return my video calls, reply to my messages, or even react to the memes I sent them. Despite the loneliness that we were all feeling, it became difficult reaching out to each other.

However, my desperate attempts at conversation led me to the forum app Reddit. In there, a subreddit (which is equivalent to a Facebook group) called “r/penpals” caught my attention. It was like the classified ads section of a newspaper where people from all over the world who are also tormented by quarantine cast about for pen pals. To me, writing to a pen pal seemed like a perfect arrangement to message people while remaining concealed by the mystique of the Internet. I found that it’s easier to confide to a complete stranger about the crevices of my life than a friend who comes with strings attached.

Thereupon, I mustered up enough nerve to post an ad, even if it’s a shot in the dark. So I wrote, “Seeking a Friend for the Apocalypse… Let’s talk about philosophy and music and life before the coronavirus wipes out humanity…” Then, I further epitomized the essence of my personality and poured it into that Reddit ad. I listed all of my hobbies, interests, hopes, and dreams in that post. Being a lover of poetry, I even wrote “Tonight I can write the saddest line” by Pablo Neruda in my profile bio, hinting at my quarantine loneliness. The only exception was my name. Instead of my actual name, I put “Jacinto” as my “real” name as a nod to my being gay and my interest in Greek mythology. In a way, I was completely exposing myself while hiding at the same time.

When I tapped the “Post” button with shivering fingers, I didn’t expect anyone to reply. No one did for a while. I refreshed the page a hundred times with clammy hands and a drumming heart. Then, a notification popped up. It said, “Calcirium has sent you a message.” I swear my whole room shook as I leaped off the bed in a flash, all in agonizing anxiety. As I read the message, I paced around my room relentlessly, already scripting my reply.

In the message, “Calcirium” told me that my post made him chuckle and that I seemed like a fun chatterbox. This stranger also noticed the Neruda line in my profile bio and even translated it to its original language and offered some interesting insight. Then, he introduced himself as Julio, a 19-year-old Spanish guy who is studying astrophysics in London. At that point, those red flags waved inside my head. He was too good to be true like the kind of boys I used to read about in John Green novels. But upon further reading, there was a part where he said that he didn’t understand poetry until he fell in love with a guy through the letters that they sent each other. The candidness of this line sold me hook, line, and sinker. He concluded with a Carl Sagan quote that said: “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

It shocked me, how easily Julio divulged a lot of deeply personal details to me, a stranger to him. The candidness of his words made me flustered as if I was looking at the nakedness of this honest person. Julio is unlike the people around me whose laughs conceal emotional walls around them. His willingness to be sincere scared me, to be completely honest. Despite this (or maybe because of this), his fascinating words compelled me to write back and ask for his email.

In our emails, Julio and I hit it off right away as if we were two friends catching up. The poetry of his words reached out of the screen and tugged my heart. I guess he enjoyed my responses too, as he always replied to me before sleeping. In our emails, we debated about how far human progress can go, talked about Plato’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophies, babbled on about our favorite songs, and so many more topics.

As we went deeper into each other’s minds, his stories became even more personal. He confessed to me his fear of death, his insecurities, and his feeling small compared to the vast expanse of the universe. Then, he started talking about how he found the boy he likes through Reddit as well. He told me about how he fell for that boy before even seeing his face. Once, he wrote, “I’m sure one day, very soon, I’ll be sleeping by his side and I’ll tell him: ‘What will I dream of now that I’m so happy awake?’”

On the other hand, my emails included a surplus of “Oh, wow!”, “That’s great!”, and “Good for you!” The stories I told him about my life were only asymptotes, always approaching real-life details but not quite touching on it completely. They were only hints of a life that I’ve kept hidden by a fa��ade of a personality. Instead of genuinely opening up to him, I resorted to haphazard jokes that were devoid of any sincerity. I told him generic stories about imminent college applications and difficult online classes (which, I realize, were excuses that I had gotten good at telling).

Soon, after Julio and I wrote pages upon pages of emails, a nagging feeling drove me to doubt his stories. I thought that he couldn’t have been real. At that point, I already memorized every corner of Julio’s psyche. But doubt has a way of tricking hollow fools like me. So I typed his email on the Facebook search bar, debating with my conscience about whether I should do it. Then, I pressed “Enter.”

When the page loaded, my heart dropped to my stomach because there he was. In front of an old, castle-like building stood a lanky guy with pale skin, chocolate-brown hair, thick eyebrows, sleepy eyes, and a sharp European nose. He wore a brown tartan vest over maroon long-sleeves, and he held a black blazer over his arm. But one thing stood out about him: his smile. His smile was not a stretched-out beam but more of a quiet, shy smile that is almost indiscernible. It looked as friendly as the words in the emails that he sent me. It’s Julio smiling right at me.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t get any butterflies in my stomach. Julio was attractive in his photo, exactly like how I imagined the boys from John Green novels would look like. But finally, he was a whole, real person in my eyes, not just an abstract idea or a fictional character.

However, in my following emails, I didn’t mention to Julio what I had done. I felt guilty that I’ve seen him, but he hasn’t seen me yet. To me, this was a red flag. I felt like I was a catfish, even though everything I told him about me was truthful. My duplicity to Julio almost felt like voyeurism, like I was taking illicit peeks at his naked body. As he poured himself into his candid emails, I remained hidden behind a mask, behind a pseudonym. And I loathed that feeling.

Eventually, the guilt became far too heavy to carry, and it curbed my motivation to reply to Julio. But because I couldn’t let go of him, I knew I had to do something to revive this motivation. I knew coming clean was the right thing to do. So I revealed what I had done and told Julio to call me “Alfred” instead. I explained that “Jacinto” was only a pseudonym, but everything else I told him was true. When I told him that he might want to look me up on Facebook, he refused. Being the wholesome person he is, he said that he didn’t care.

Our conversations continued for ten more emails or so. Then, he disappeared like a momentary daydream, and that left me crushed into a million glittering pieces. There are people whose hearts are so big and sincere that they dent your own. Julio was one of these people. Now, my chest was left with an indentation in the shape of Julio’s heart. I have only his emails to fill this dent.

Nevertheless, Julio’s sincerity and willingness to bare his soul revealed a fatal flaw of my generation: a hesitance to sincerity. The quarantine period only strengthened that hesitance as people struggle to reach out to one another. It widened that gap between people because now, they feel more distant emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Like how I hid behind a mask when I spoke to Julio, my friends and I were only hollow masks that spoke to one another.

Despite this hesitance to sincerity, quarantine proved that human connection can be found anywhere, just as Julio and I found each other serendipitously. The power of human connection reveals itself more potently in times of hardships if only we are steadfast enough to harness it.

Just like the Carl Sagan quote Julio sent me, perhaps the universe is trying to know itself. Maybe I am the universe, and he is the universe too. I am he. He is I. For all I know, Julio might be my way of trying to make sense of life amid the global health crisis. There were a lot of truths that Julio instilled in me, but the one that I could never forget was the truth of understanding and loving people. I melted off my bed when I read this simple question in one of his emails: “How could I not love your body when it’s your body?” Such simple words. But it holds a world of meaning to me.

When I think about messaging strangers on the Internet, red flags still wave frantically inside my head. But now, I also think of Julio and how I was changed forever after him. Even though I haven’t met him personally, I will miss him and my nightly readings of his emails. I sincerely hope that he finally sleeps in the arms of the boy he likes. I hope that this boy soothes his fears, listens to him intently, and worships him as Julio does to him. I hope he also knows that he had touched my life in profound ways.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and try messaging my friends once again…

written by Alfred

[tgallant-mppr]

Reddit: Brands beware or bust

If Tyler Durden, the deranged brain-child of author Chuck Palahniuk, was a moderator, he’d probably tell you that the first rule of Reddit is you do not talk about Reddit. Even after months of being a so-called Redditor professionally, I cringed a bit when creating a personal account. Why the visceral reaction? Because my experience on this social media platform was like dirty secret – a secret I couldn’t wait to talk about. However, I quickly found out I had no one to tell.

A Reddit revelation

As the social media manager for a chain of Montana newspapers, I was charged with training reporters to use social media, measuring our impact on the digital discourse, and investigating new ways to engage in the online community as publishers. I was always eying new measurement tools, like Parse.ly and Sprout Social, to test, and after training photojournalists to share their content on Instagram, I was on the lookout for the next social platform opportunity.

One night at home, my husband and I were lounging when he asked me if I’d read an article about a particular news event. When I hadn’t, he pulled the article up on his Reddit account for me to read. After scanning details about the event, I navigated back to the Reddit thread where I perused reader commentary. I noted the sarcastic banter, system of upvoting and downvoting both content and comments, and the structure of the subreddit, including the list of rules specific to that particular community.

Although I recognized the playful orange alien that is the Reddit logo, I was totally unfamiliar with the social media platform. After only a few minutes of exploration, I was hooked. Perhaps this was the channel I’d been looking for.

Time to spy

It didn’t take much to convince my superiors that Reddit was an avenue worth exploring. Since Reddit is the second most popular online news source worldwide, and is primarily a destination for users to share and consume news, it just made sense that a news publishing company might have a place there. Plus, at the time, The Washington Post had a well-established presence on the platform. Why not a Montana newspaper?

As the only person exploring Reddit for the company in 2017, I had a lot of freedom. I got to set my own objectives for growth, determine my own metrics for success, and engage in the discourse freely to enhance our brand. But I had to do so as a private user and not on behalf of our branded papers. At least not yet. If a brand is going to be on Reddit, it has to be there very strategically to avoid getting shut down by users and subreddit moderators for shameless self-promotion.

Armed with a spreadsheet of karma goals and click-through hopes (and possibly fewer ethics than I’d like to admit), I went to work sharing content from five newspapers to a set of relevant subreddit communities to see what captured user interest. I recall that the most successful post I made was a grizzly bear’s prediction for the 2017 super bowl win. Some historic photo galleries and an AMA I helped a reporter host on the opioid crisis also performed well. When articles did well, they topped subreddit hot charts, but for the few topics with broad appeal that caught on, there were many hyperlocal stories that received little interaction.

After a quarter-worth of data gathered, I presented my findings. My enthusiasm was met with crickets. I quickly found out that only one other team member I reported to had even heard of Reddit, and none of them were active users. After explaining the platform, my objectives and performance toward them, and my recommendations for how we might proceed with exploring a brand strategy on Reddit, the project was shut down by staff convinced that if they weren’t on Reddit, neither were our readers. My undercover data undoubtedly went to some hard drive corner to die that day.

Thread lightly

Recently, I revisited Reddit – not under the guise of publisher strategy, but as myself. I had created a new personal account after leaving my previous employer, but I rarely visited the platform to passively peruse content. It was a bit unnerving to approach the platform without the confidence behind my original mission.

As a new mom, I decided to join a few related subreddit communities, like r/mommit and r/parenting. With only 130 karma, I began to engage with other moms about topics like breastfeeding and maternity leave. I upvoted cute kid photos, shared my birth story, and read the latest news in vaccines and women’s health. After nearly two years of being virtually inactive, I’ve grown my karma by more than 2,000 in just a couple weeks.

Now that I’ve had some time to engage with this unique community, I’ve learned a lot more about it than I ever had approaching it with an ulterior motive. I am so impressed by the breath of users I encounter – from teens making hilarious memes to lawyers sharing their expertise, fellow nerds who love Harry Potter as much as I do to animal rights activists, marketers, and video game enthusiasts. They are all united under a shared love of news and niche community. And they’re all quick to shut down people who don’t belong, like those sharing their own blog posts or promoting their own businesses – there are subreddits for that sort of self-promotion, and they’ll be directed to them in a sort of “we don’t like your kind around here” repartee.

Brand or bust

Don’t get me wrong, there are some brands who’ve made a go at Reddit and been successful. But even Digiday has said it’s “one of the trickiest platforms to crack.” This is because Redditors have no time for commentary that offers them no value. If you’re in it for yourself, you’re bound to fail.

Take EA for example. In response to user criticism, the brand attempted to diffuse negative feedback with a carefully crafted message about how they appreciate the comments, will try to keep doing their best, and so on. Their message quickly went down in history as the single-most downvoted comment in Reddit history. Yikes.

On the other hand, Nordstrom, the WWE, and, as I previously mentioned, The Washington Post have all broken through the Reddit barrier successfully as brands. They’ve done so by capitalizing on their existing fan base to create a community where those fans can openly engage with the brands. Redditors respond to articles, ask questions of customer service, and share their experiences in these unique subreddits.

Other brands are looking to ad content and Ask Me Anything sessions as loopholes to get in front of Reddit’s 330 million active monthly users. Toyota promoted videos of professional drivers racing its Supra models, and even Bill Gates has hosted several AMAs about technology and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Was there a place for Montana newspapers to join the digital discussion on Reddit? Maybe, although I doubt they’ve begun to explore it even now, two years after my time there. However, like any good Reddit community before them, if there are enough fans who have enough to say about the brand, one of them is sure to create a subreddit for it in the future. I’m looking forward to joining it if they do.

[xoidua]

How do I stay sane on the information superhighway?

A month ago, I read an article written by Angus Hervey on Future Crunch with the title “The Information Diet”. It stroke the right note in conveying the brutal truth: We are drowning in a chaotic pool of information.

As with everything in life, we can only truly process information through moderate input. However, it is so hard to control how information can come through to us. In fact, we receive new information mostly passively, through social media networks, TV and radio.

The Original Information Diet

This is when The Information Diet comes into action. It is a guideline on how we can keep ourselves informed and where we can find more trustworthy sources.

The Information Diet by Angus Hervey suggests that a healthy diet should consist of:

Mindset = dietary philosophy aka “a central organizing principle” around which to create the diet

Books = wholewheat grains

Email newsletters = vegetables

Podcasts = leafy greens

Reddit = beans and pulses

Specialist publications = fruit

Social media = junk food

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

-- quoting Michael Pollan in “In Defense of Food”, The Information Diet encourages people to “eat” healthily and in moderation.

My version of The Information Diet

Before having discovered the article, I had already realized my problem with information overload. There were times when I found myself reading too many things, yet I could not remember a damn thing I’d read. I was overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at me through all angles: Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn newsfeed, newspapers, radio, email newsletters, etc. (luckily I don’t watch TV, or else it would have been another strain on my poor attention).

I felt like a rotten VW Beetle on the information superhighway.

During an episode of immense frustration, I decided to review all of my information sources. After all, we can never know everything because knowledge is infinite, so the least I could do for myself is to entertain my brain with the most relevant things.

I started by jotting down my problem zones aka things that annoy me the most, both in degree of frustration and frequency of disturbance. It came down to these:

I spent way too much time scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook newsfeed. I’ve already unfollowed all trivial pages and prioritized more “informational pages” by marking them as “see first” pages. Somehow, the better posts would run out in no time and I would go back to watching meaningless short clips and cracking up at countless memes. At the back of my mind, I knew I should stop scrolling and get real stuff done. In reality, I wasted hours every day just by lying in bed with my phone hovering over my tired eyes.

My addiction to checking emails is real. I can’t help but keep my mailbox all-read and organized at all times. Add to that a dangerously large amount of email newsletters that I’ve subscribed to, and you’d find me pulling my phone out to check for new emails every 10 minutes. Not only did I subscribe to advertisement newsletters from brands, but there were also informational newsletters, which I used to justify my overuse. 

I felt like I don’t have time to read books. Even when I did sit down with a book, my mind kept wandering and I couldn’t concentrate.

Step 1: Tackle the Facebook newsfeed

I’ve been actively not checking my Facebook newsfeed since December last year and I must tell you, it’s hard (duh). I deleted the Facebook app on my phone a long while ago, so every time I want to access Facebook, I must do it on my phone browser. It helped just a little, because I was still binging on the newsfeed occasionally. The difference between an app and the mobile site is not as significant as I thought.

Until The Information Diet brought the Newsfeed Eradicator to my life. It is God in the form of a browser plugin, whose sole mission is to eradicate the Facebook newsfeed from desktop and mobile browsers. Users are still able to view posts and everything else when they go directly to the user profiles and pages.

The Newsfeed Eradicator is truly the saver of my dilemma. Now, I can freely check my FB messages without being lured to scroll for just-a-little-bit on the newsfeed.

Eternal feed-less bliss

Step 2: Unsubscribe to irrelevant newsletters

There have been newsletters that I found useful in the past. For example, I subscribed to my favorite fashion brands to know when sales were to happen. Nowadays, I don’t support fast fashion anymore and thrift most of my clothes, so I can’t see myself subscribing to fashion brands’ newsletters anymore.

Step 3: Subscribe to more relevant newsletters

Now, this is the most important step to take on my journey to staying sane on the information superhighway. This is the part where I set down boundaries to keep me on track. Over time, I’ve accumulated a list of newsletters which I find informative, helpful and interesting to read.

To avoid being in a filter bubble, I prefer a variety of newsletters from authors of different backgrounds. My interests are technology, productivity, psychology, philosophy, and climate change, so I make sure that I receive numerous opinions about the same matter before deciding my own POV.

Here are my personal favorites:

TLDR

They really deliver what they claim. It takes under 10 minutes to go through the newsletter. All news are up-to-date and relevant.

TLDR is the first “techie” newsletter that I’ve subscribed to. I’ve recommended so many friends to check it out. The world that we live in is becoming increasingly influenced by technology. The digital transformation affects each and every one of us. Therefore, it makes so much sense to be informed.

Future Crunch

Of course, I have to mention Future Crunch. After all, it is where I found The Information Diet.

The team at FC introduces themselves on their homepage:

Future Crunch is a group of scientists, artists, researchers and entrepreneurs that believes science and technology are creating a world that is more peaceful, connected and abundant. 

As a result, FC newsletters feature scientific and technology breakthroughs all over the world. It is nice to be reminded of the good things happening in a world where only breaking news can make headlines.

Dense Discovery

My inner nerd sang heavenly songs when I found out Dense Discovery – “a weekly newsletter helping web workers be productive, stay inspired, and think critically.”

Besides being abundant with useful information, DD itself is a beautifully crafted email newsletter in a very much friendly and readable format.

The header of the latest issue (Issue 41). I love it!

The Whippet by McKinley Valentine

At last, a worthwhile newsletter by a female author! McKinley Valentine is the woman whom I aspire to be. She writes eloquently and finds stuff you wouldn’t normally find on the internet. Her newsletters are a combination of her own writing and links to interesting stuff she’s been reading about, with absolutely zero mention of Trump or any other contemporary politics (her words).

Excerpt from the latest issue

There are some more newsletters that I subscribe to, but for the sake of this lengthy post, I decided to feature my most favorites here. If you are interested in knowing more or are looking for newsletters about a certain subject, be sure to check out The Information Diet article. You will find an exhaustive list of recommended newsletters.

My advice for beginners: Start with a few and slowly add more along the way. If you subscribe to a bunch of newsletters all at once, you may feel overwhelmed when your inbox is flooded with information. You can’t just trick the brain into acknowledging that reading these newsletters is good for you. It already knows. But upon a huge pile of information and potential overload, your brain will automatically protect itself by refusing to process anything. Also, remember to keep your newsletters in check from time to time. If you stop reading a certain newsletter, be sure to find out why and unsubscribe if necessary.

Step 4: Befriend podcasts & audiobooks

This step is solely personal preference. Because I’m having trouble reading physical books, I turn to audiobooks to temporarily solve my problem. 

I think that my attention ability has been damaged by my endless scrolling on social media, to the point that I can’t concentrate to read a few book pages anymore. While I slowly reintroduce my brain to long-form reading (by reading rather lengthy articles and newsletters), audiobooks are here to save the day. 

I don’t force myself to hear audiobooks all the time nor do I set any goals. I just listen when I feel like it. This mentality results in me voluntarily listening to an audiobook whenever I’m commuting, standing in line or running errands. I’ve been a productivity freak in the past, and boy oh boy did it mess me up. Nowadays, I know better than to force my brain to do stuff it doesn’t want to. Surprisingly, I can get more stuff done without feeling like I have to do anything at all. There are days when I just want to be a sloth, and that’s totally fine. We are not our productivity.

Back to audiobooks: I prefer ones that are narrated by the authors because they certainly know the tone better than anyone else.

If you are new to audiobooks and don’t want to commit to a subscription service like Audible yet, there are many good audiobooks on Youtube to try out. What I do: I download these audiobooks as .mp3 file, then listen on my phone via an app called BookPlayer. It’s super easy to use and doesn’t gobble up much precious battery juice.

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We made it, friends! I’ve told you all my secrets in staying sane in a world that’s seemingly isn’t.

I can’t speak any better for the necessity of an information diet. We should stay well-informed and practice our critical thinking ability before the information flood gets ahead of us. 

Between a skillful driver who stays on the right track, a careless driver who speeds and a miserable drive who blocks the way, who do you want to be on the information superhighway?

Original post on my blog.

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