#i hate this website i hate that work makes me use it i hate that it exists i like using it to stalk creative portfolios <- only good use

[physalian]

Fuck Grammarly

Okay I need to rant about Grammarly. A program I never used before and never will now. Doubly pissed because their ads keep interrupting my peaceful 4-hour Minecraft music session with their fake-ass influencers.

Guys. Gals. Nonbinary pals.

“As a corporate girlie—” learn how to write a proper concise email.

“I used to spend hours proofreading—” enjoy the process, and then the product.

If you hate proofreading, to the point where you’ll consult a robot to do it all for you, then you hate writing. If all you care about is the end product, sorry to say but ‘writing’ is like, 30% of writing. The other 70% is editing, by design. You’re supposed to like it.

Of course I’d love to have beautiful artwork of whatever’s in my head, but I’m going to love whatever I make a whole lot more than whatever I type into some garbage generator. Because I love the process of creation.

Do I think editing is tedious as hell? Absolutely, but it’s still a tedium that I enjoy. I like fixing my mistakes, I like improving my sentence flow. I like thinking about patterns and connections that I didn’t see before and revising and reworking until I’m satisfied.

For the humdrum day to day work emails that some of us have to write—if you’re sending out whole essays to your coworkers that you need a robot to write for you, you’re doing it wrong. Corporate emails are boring and trite, but I can type out a “hey please do this thing for me” faster than I can load up ChatGPT or Grammarly, type out my prompt, make sure the result is what I actually want to say, and then send it to my coworker. If you can’t, learn.

Apparently, Grammarly used to be a helpful way to check for spelling and grammar errors. I don’t have any issue with the AI that runs spellchecker whatsoever. I type so fast and miss typos constantly and when the spellchecker is absent, like on this website, it’s annoying af.

But that’s not what Grammarly is about anymore, and that’s not what the above ad was trying to sell you, either.

You won’t get better if you don’t practice. You won’t get better if you aren’t the one making, seeing, and fixing your mistakes. Especially if you write fiction where grammar rules are a suggestion at best. My published novel is littered with flagged words and sentence fragments that I know are technically improper English, but I sacrificed an MLA-proof paper for something fun and entertaining.

AI does not understand nuance and flavor text and aesthetic choices. It never will.

If you train yourself by using a crutch you don’t need, you will end up needing it because you’ll be too afraid to act without it.

Fuck up. Make a mess. Make mistakes. You won’t make them for long once you see them. You do not need a robot to do it for you. We’ve been writing books for hundreds of years and all the authors who came before did it just fine without a robot.

This isn’t even about writing novels, it’s about communicating in the written medium. Fucking. Learn. It’s not rocket science, it’s not coding in C++, it’s not brain surgery. It’s stringing words together in a comprehensible sentence.

And obligatory disclaimer: To anyone who has an impairment and needs these tools, this is not about you and you know it.

[full-of-malice]

me and my friends are being bitter about ai and nanowrimo again. as one of the kids who was part of the group that made the tag of "#nanopocalypse" as a term for what was happening on our website as we were silenced and groomed and our lives went to shit. our lives were falling apart. it was the nanopocalypse for us. that's why we called it that and have referred to the entire situation as that. and we were the only ones who actually put anything in the "#anti nanowrimo" tag to begin with to talk about our hatred and struggles with being groomed. a desperate and ignored attempt to call awareness

so as someone who put in the work and lost days of my life and will not be the same person again and put tears and long days while trying to juggle my school and personal life, checking in on my friends and ensuring that they were okay, it feels really shitty honestly to watch tumblr take the nanopocalypse tag so they can make themselves feel good by talking shit about the ai policy. it's Exhausting. you guys are a solid year late in support and hatred for nano that we could've used when we were trying to get the website halfway shut down. we have been Trying to tell you. there were tiktoks, twitter, threads, youtube videos, tumblr posts, and it's just exhausting that suddenly the trendy hatred of ai is what gets popular. idk if feels like you all just jump on the trend to be the cool savior and hate on ai and write their posts that do nothing informative of helpful and just say "fuck nanowrimo" instead of hating on it for the actually important reasons.

nanopocalypse was the specific instance a year ago in november of 2023, when ywp (young writer program) website users were sick of being abused, neglected, and being in the dark. the mods started banning us just for voicing our issues and wanting change. we took to. the adult forums and talked to adult users who were in the midst of the own issues as well. we finally found adults who believed our struggles and were on our side. on their website there was child grooming involved too, the fbi was allegedly getting contacted it was so bad. after years finally someone was listening. yet within days they turned on us and told us we were too young and had no place in "their home" of the website and that our concerns for our community and wanting to be involved were no necessary. they started twisting our words against us and picking us apart. i spent days fighting with adults just for basic things, adults who claimed not two or three days ago that they supported us and would fight for us and were so sorry for the way we were treated only to turn around and treat us remarkably the same. there was one nanopocalypse.

it's exhausting to have to reiterate our struggles to people on the internet who don't and won't listen, but don't use our terms that we a group of abused and groomed teens made for a one time occurrence and tag that was for us and our struggles a place for us to talk and raise awareness. a place that got ignored until a year too late so ai issues could talk over us.

so fuck nanowrimo. not for the ai, but for the children who suffered for years in silence. the ai should be an afterthought, not the front of the problem.

if anyone's interested either in a separate post or in the reblogs i'll make an extensive list of any youtube videos, tiktoks, tumblr post links, and twitter links that i know of on the situation if you want. i will gladly answer any question anyone has because i've tried to educate people on this for a long time and no one will listen

[whatlurksbean]

You've made your choice, but we'll miss you posting on DA

deviantart made the choice for me, unfortunately.

[n7punk]

fuck the titantic if i had a time machine i'd go back and kill the linkedin founder in his sleep

[subarashiihibi]

you would not beliueve what im doing(actually being productive)

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

reading the comments of OI stories is so unpleasant sometimes like 😭 i hate seeing people rage and curse at characters who aren't the protags. bro it's not their fault that they're antagonists and they're not even THAT annoying lmao

[hel7l7]

do you sell your art?

Yes!

If you send me a private message or an e-mail: hel7l7.art@gmail.com

Prints are $15 with shipping included

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Just applied for a summer childcare position (like for a camp type thing) that pays 20–28 dollars an hour based on qualifications (I should be towards the end of that scale because I work in a school; and the only requirement the job lists is to be 16 and have experience with children). So hopefully they’ll consider me. That would be wonderful.

[kittlyns]

My best friend's birthday is in 5 days and I just got her present in the mail and it sucks. So I'm killing myself.

[starlightkun]

finally had to buy a new phone 🤢🤢 spending money 🤢🤢🤢

[onedirecton]

need an appointment to redo my thing but they don’t have any available for April

[kuromi-hoemie]

me: weird, I’m not able to reblog anymore? If I click reblog nothing pops up. I notice ublock origin’s counter keeps going up, what gives?

tumblr:

why the fuck is a wordpress pixel preventing me from reblogging you loser ass website. I’m not on wordpress, this breakage shouldn’t be happening.

Tbf, if I open a new tab or refresh the page I’m able to reblog again - but if I’m deep in the dash that’s obviously not the ideal move to make. I’m assuming this has something to do with the new UI Tumblr’s using because this hasn’t happened before.

Also, having refreshed the page and basically JUST making this post - can you fucking not??

Maybe it’s because I have the logger open so it’s not refreshing things but uhhh yeah this is dumb, whatever’s happening here.

On top of my heart kinda racing (bad) by just using the new UI because it feels like I’m on twitter again I’m just so annoyed with everything @staff​ is doing >.> STOP IT god dammit

[autisticlee]

how to make business plans: spend 2 weeks looking for a website to make a visual plan guide that you can collaborate with business partners, but you end up nowhere because all of them require paid subscriptions to do more than a few basic things. except you don't want to pay for these because you don't have a business yet and therefore no money!!!! but you need more than basic features (basically you can only put 50-100 items on your board with free account and i will definitely need more)

[homophyte]

was just subjected to a self righteous post about how we need to learn to respect second generation atheists (important context: i am one) and how their existence begs the question of if atheism is always in reaction to something or if it can be an independently held position. which then followed it up with a 'summary of responses to this post' that included, peppered among things second generation atheists said or remarks about never hearing about this before, extremely reactionary positions about the necessity of religion in life all couched in the language of simple 'concern' for these atheists upbringing. like omg yesss your post is soooo important we really need to interrogate this group that is persecuted by literally every large religious organization on the planet about if their way of life is legitimate! its sooooooo crucial we open doors to religious mandates. its imperative that we teach them about religion, a thing they are so cruelly denied, but dont worry guys, for some of them, its not their fault! we can help them! by making them religious i mean teaching them about religion! remember that some jewish people are atheists too <3

[neverendingford]

.

[doodlemancy]

Hey, so, Patreon is lying to you about Apple forcing their hand.

Patreon is getting rid of 1st-of-the-month/per-creation billing, claiming a new decision by Apple has forced their hand. This will hurt a lot of creatives, and their excuse is bullshit. Allow me to explain.

In 2018, Patreon tried to impose a new ill-considered fee structure on everyone that would have cost creators a lot of smaller pledges. They ended up apologizing for this profusely; they have now deleted this apology from their website and unfortunately I was unable to find it on the Internet Archive. This was shameful, but to their credit they backed off quickly when things got ugly.

Back in 2021, Patreon discussed plans to force all creators into a rolling bill structure and get rid of first-of-the-month/pay-up-front billing. The community once again very decisively shouted them down, and they had to walk it back again. This whole fiasco damaged the already shaky trust between Patreon creators and staff.

This week, Patreon announced that, along with extra fees, Apple's policies were supposedly forcing them to move everyone over to the rolling fee structure that they first tried to get us to agree to in 2021. Patreon will tell you they are not happy about this. As a person who spent a long time watching Patreon make terrible decisions, I can tell you-- they are probably very happy about this, because it's exactly the smokescreen they needed to do what they've been trying to do for years, which is pull ALL Patreon creators away from 1st-of-the-month and per-creation billing.

The spin in the news I've seen so far is "Apple bullies Patreon, boo hoo hoo poor Patreon". This is very obviously not what's happening. Mind you: Apple does suck, and they are doing something bad here. Fuck apple. But Patreon and Apple are BOTH the asshole in this situation; Everyone Sucks Here. Patreon has options: they can make the iOS app a reader app and do billing through the browser to avoid the restrictions and the extra fees (Netflix and Amazon, notably, both do this), or they can allow creators to opt-out of iOS billing if they want to use billing models that don't work with it.

It seems most likely to me that the Apple situation is a real fire that Patreon has chosen to use as a convenient smokescreen to do what they've been wanting to do since at least 2021, and maybe since 2018.

What do we do?:

They have a feedback form specifically about this.

They also have a creator discord.

And they have lots of social media pages where they probably really, really hope that this doesn't blow up again, because they never learn. The incidents I've described here aren't the only two other times Patreon has pissed off their creators. They know if they don't contain the noise it'll be harder to get away with it, so make some noise. They've done a lot of work to spin this cleverly so you'll have sympathy for them and they won't get the kind of backlash they know they deserve.

Please don't misuse these links and make threats or spam or something. All you have to do is give well-reasoned feedback. Patreon hates feedback. Make sure they get a nice heaping helping of their least favorite vegetable.