#i love sorting algorithm videos - they do something to my brain so obviously i have to make ocs based on them

[callistocomet]

ok… so i made OCs based on sorting algorithms: ten is the loud one from the color circle video (at 3:40) and bogo is literally just randomizes the set until it’s in order (the last one in this video). they are friends and hang out all the times :) i got the idea to make them from ch3rrylemonade on instagram who also has a sorting algorithm OC!!!

[mnchysmanuscripts]

Twenty Twenty

It’s that time of year again, waves of resolutions are washing across my timeline and a sense of self-improvement is in the air. If you think for a second I’m going to miss out on an opportunity for easy compliments and encouragement, you clearly don’t know me that well. But, I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. Creating pass/fail goals over long stretches of time that necessitate radical changes to your lifestyle without accompanying radical changes to your lifestyle never seem to work out. I am a huge fan of yearly themes, however. In fact, I had one for 2019.

Last year was the Year of More. I knew that once I started college I wouldn’t have nearly as much temporal freedom as I once had to waste away and accomplish nothing of value, and so I resolved to branch out and expand my both literal and figurative palate as much as possible before school started. It’s hard to state exactly how successful the year was without concrete data, but I was able to accomplish a few of my goals. I picked up new skills that I use still routinely, I massively expanded my pool of artistic inspiration and intellectual stimuli, I tried a bunch of weird/scary foods, traveled to far off places without my mommy, and moved to a new city across the country. All of these are great victories, but the actual moment to moment of the year was pretty much how the moment to moment of my life had been before it. One of the main goals of the Year of the More was to finish creative projects I had always wanted to but never found the time or place for. That, obviously, didn’t pan out. As it turns out, you can’t do more things just by saying you’ll do more things. Productivity doesn’t really work like that.

Your brain loves crossing out items in a to-do list. There’s no greater feeling in the world than accomplishing your goals and seeing men cower at the sight. But, doing things is hard. It requires time and effort, both of which are limited resources. Not to mention, while your brain loves a completed project, it hates actually performing the actions necessary to complete them. If it’s a matter of life or death, your brain can compel you to do almost anything, but it will continuously try to weasel out of every other scenario until it reaches that point. Besides, your deadline isn’t that urgent. Maybe it won’t be a big deal if you don’t get started right away. You’ve been so good lately too, you deserve a break. You can always get it done tomorrow. It’s here, when your brain is confronted with ambiguity of necessity and genuinely plausible excuses, that it becomes all too easy to become distracted and procrastinate. The problem is multiplied when you have multiple projects you want to work on, because even the act of deciding what project to work on can trigger you to hesitate and become distracted. When you’re distracted, you’re not doing work and you aren’t really having fun either. It’s hard to not feel guilty booting up that video game when you know you should be working, but it’s equally as hard to pry yourself away from it once you start playing. You’re stuck in the middle, all because there was no clear decision to be made. In your hesitation, your brain defaulted to the path of least resistance and you’re paying for it. This sort of thing would happen to me nearly every day of my life. And it wasn’t just my laziness, there’s something else at play here too.

Across the nation, our best and brightest are being round up and employed at a handful of mega-corporations with a singular purpose: to find cool, new ways to sell things to you. This is not a conspiracy, this is not science fiction, this was cutting edge ten years ago and now it’s just taken for granted by everyone who thinks about it for more than a second. Your favorite social media is not a neutral platform that you come to socialize and consume content on. It is a business, and as a business it has the sole purpose of making money, and the way these business makes money is by selling ad space and by selling your data to advertisers. The longer you look and the more you refresh, the more advertisements you’ll see and the more data you’ll leave behind. All the while, that social media platform is making money. Many people I know, perhaps even you reading this sentence right now, get the vast majority of their social interaction and consume the vast majority of their media through these systems which have been designed with the sole purpose of maximizing the amount of time spent looking at advertisements. To accomplish this, social media platforms (and by extension the promoted user generated content on said platforms) intentionally make their websites as addicting as possible. They develop algorithms to show you the posts that will keep you the most engaged, for better or for worse, because they need to keep your attention for as long as possible. It doesn’t matter if you have AdBlock and aren’t literally seeing advertisements, the systems these websites are built on still affect you and are still extremely dangerous. We have become addicted to refreshing the page in the hopes that we will get to see and consume more and more content like pigs at a trough, all for the benefit of the pasty nerds and rich people. Just to be clear, I’m not above this. You aren’t stupid for closing that tab just to reopen it moments later. Like I said, our best and brightest are intentionally designing these systems for their job. They are preying on the mind’s easily exploitable ability to become distracted and using it for possibly the most evil goal fucking imaginable. Facebook broke your brain to spam you with pop-up ads.

And so, as a result of being a scatterbrained creative with too much time on my hands and a stable internet connection, I have the worst of both worlds. I’m pushed by my lack of severe lack of self-discipline and easily distractible set of hobbies, and pulled by algorithms designed by a team of the nation’s top scientists to be as addicting and time-consuming as possible, into becoming a strange being consisting only of wasted time and untapped potential.

But no more, I say. It’s time I take matters into my own hands. These distractions are like the brambles of a jungle-- chaotic and ever-growing. I must cleave through them with my machete and create the sort of life I want to live in. It’ll be a life without distractions, without addictions. It’ll be a life of intentionality, of clarity. I will conquer this jungle.

2020 is the Year of Conquest. I’m taking back my life and making sure I live as intentional of a life as I possibly can. What’s so painful about distractions is how they can eat away an afternoon or an entire day you promised yourself you would spend working. I’m not going to never play a video game ever again, quite the opposite. I’m simply going to clearly define times where I will work and times I will play, there can’t be anymore ambiguity. When I’m working, I’m working. When I’m playing, I’m playing. And, of course, I will try as hard as I can to wrestle with my addiction to social media. I’m not leaving the internet, obviously. I will still use social media but, again, in an intentional manner. I will not allow my tools to seduce me. My phone does not get to beckon me to it with notifications and interrupt my work. I will use it when and only when I choose to.

All this might sound a bit vague, but that’s how themes work best. The Year of Conquest is simply the prompt, the starting point for a whole roster of specific resolutions. I fully intend to get more specific and walkthrough my actual plans/goals for the year, but if I just start listing them all right now then I’ll get a dopamine rush that’ll satiate my self-improvement appetite and I’ll end up not actually doing them. In general though, I’m going to use a combination of incentivizes, disincentivizes, and structural lifestyle changes to try and lead a more intentional life. These carrots, sticks, and tracks definitely can and will be explained in a future post but again that’s a story for another time. Probably tomorrow, it’s my bedtime.

(Send me asks and give me some feedback. It makes me happy to know people are actually reading.)

[foxwatchesanime]

How I stopped caring about comments: A rambly post by me

This is rambly so hold onto your seats, I apologies. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about comment/review culture in the last few months, particularly after returning to a brand new fandom as a writer and regular content creator. Maybe this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, maybe not, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the way I perceive comments, how it’s changed for me since I’ve been in fandom and I’d love to hear from other people what their opinion is and how they relate to comments on their work.

I’ve been creating content in fandom spaces for about eleven years now. I started out on YouTube when I joined my first fandom, Merlin, and I made my first fanvideos in 2009. In December of 2009, I published my first fanfiction, plus one sequel which remains unfinished as well as a few other smaller projects. In October of 2010, I published my first podfic and would go on to publish two more. My focus in fandom had always been YouTube, where I regularly created fanvideos. My schedule was never consistent, as with most vidders back in the day, but I’d be comfortable in saying I posted regularly discounting three unintentional hiatuses, one in 2013 following the Merlin finale, one in 2015 probably due to a lack of inspiration and one in 2017 after what I was sure was going to be my permanent comeback to YouTube, only for my hard drive to break and delete all my footage yeeeeeey. 

I’ve now made an actual, official return to my original platform, this time creating videos for my new passion and fandom: anime. Since February of 2020 I’ve also been regularly publishing fic and have no desire to stop doing so. I’m thoroughly invested in new fandom spaces again and am engaging with its fans and the content. 

But the one thing I have seen change drastically in my approach to things is commenting, following and general engagement. 

Let’s take a step back. 

When I first started posting content, comments were not something I even had in my consciousness. I think I knew YouTube comments existed, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. I didn’t even know what subscribers were until I started hearing other people talk about them and then I suddenly felt like it’s something I should be keeping an eye on myself. 

In a centuries old vlog of mine that is now private on my channel, I noticed that when I hit 100 subscribers, I made a video thanking everyone because I was so excited that with more subscribers, I was going to “make more friends.” Oh dear xD 

But the truth is, I have been consistently and chronically bad at keeping up with or caring about the analytics of my various platforms. It wasn’t till writing this post today that I went to check my FF.net account to see how many comments my first two Merlin fics ever got. I still couldn’t tell you my exact number of YouTube or Ao3 subscribers, how many hits or kudos my fic have and I don’t think I’ve ever checked my bookmarks for notes, or whatever you’re able to leave on there. 

Commenting culture on YouTube, for all my joking earlier, was primarily about connection, at least back then. Most of the old guard have moved on and those who have remained are now vidding in other fandoms. The social aspect of YouTube in my opinion has changed dramatically since I was at my peak output on there, but I remember how interactive the comments sections used to be. They literally were, where you made friends.  

A couple of years ago, me and a friend of mine started a Merlin podcast called Merlisten. We created it for fun and without many expectations of what might come out of it. And it was this that changed my relationship with commenting for good. 

Doing Merlisten felt, for the first time in a long time, like pure creativity and passion without anyone’s permission. We always encouraged people to leave feedback as one does, but I don’t think either of us expected to get much, if any. Even considering the incredible support we’ve received with feedback coming in almost every single episode now, there is still a clear and overwhelming gap between the amount of comments given to an episode of Merlisten, to one of my old fanvids or fics. It’s even more interesting when one considers how much more effort and time went into creating Merlisten compared to say, editing or writing, at least for me personally. The amount of man hours spent on creating one 2.5 hour episode from pre-production to final posting often outweighs any other video or chapter I’ve created. Not always, but often. 

What struck me as interesting, however, was that even though comments weren’t always consistent and I always love and continue to love reading them, it’s not what was fuelling me to work hard on this project. I was doing it because I adored it and I knew it was something I was proud to put into the world. 

And that literally changed everything.

I think for a long time, I was always trying to cater my art to what might get the most attention or please the widest demographic of people. It’s how you think when you’re young and you don’t know any better. But for the first time, I was creating something on my own terms that I had no idea if anyone would even listen to and the actual creative process of making said art was ten times more rewarding than any single comment I could ever read. Which really, what I realised, is what art is supposed to be. I can safely say that if Merlisten didn’t get a single comment from here on in, I would still want to see it to its conclusion for one very simple reason: Because I had something to share. 

This brings me to my recent return to writing fic in fandom and it’s not a decision I’ve regretted for a second. More than anything, I’ve realised how personal art can really be, especially when it’s in writing. I’ve found it revealing and cathartic and fascinating in a way that I didn’t ever imagine.

But more importantly, I’ve realised that the real beauty for me in engaging in art is the ability to get an emotional response from it or to relate to it. And that goes for both other people’s work and my own. I can feel just as invested in my own work as someone else’s and that’s not because I think my work is amazing, it’s because I know it’s come from something that was living in me. When I put something out there that I made with my own two hands, that feeling now trumps any sort of feedback I could possibly get and that’s the endorphin I live off. 

Don’t mistake this for me not liking comments, that’s obviously not true. My brain gets the same dopamine hit as anyone’s when I get a notification for something or other, but I’ve realised that I have a very specific relationship with comments that I definitely didn’t have before, if my requests for review on FF.net is anything to go by.

Now, what I find exciting and thrilling is the thought that, if writing this fic got this sort of emotional response out of me, the writer, I wonder if there are other people out there who think the same way I do? Who have a similar way of experiencing joy or suffering or humour or who like the same things as me? That, is an insanely invigorating feeling. And then when someone chooses to take time out of their day to tell you that what came from your head is the same sort of way they feel about life? That’s not a comment, that’s not feedback, that’s a connection you have with another person. And that’s where I start to get excited. And it’s taken me this fucking long to realise it. 

Honestly, I was really worried upon returning to writing and vidding this year that my experience working in digital marketing, where everything is about numbers and social media is all about engagement and nothing else, that I would be overwhelmed and not be able to switch off the part of my brain that’s been trained to think like that. I’m so relieved that that’s not the case. 

As previously mentioned, I suck at giving a shit about analytics and looking at my own stats. I couldn’t give a flying fuck. But I did just go and check my YouTube videos since returning back to vidding. Not a single one of them has views over 200 at this point. Most have less than 100. My most viewed video on YouTube has 57,000 views. And the thing is, there might have been a time when I looked at that and thought, well, this means I suck. This means I can’t make art. This means there’s no point to it.

But no, that's not true.

The point is not how many people see it, how many people like it, how many people comment on it. The point is that I made it. I’m going to continue making YouTube videos despite the fact that the algorithm will destroy any chances they have at getting engagement or views. Even if not one single person comments on them. Because when I’ve finally rendered a new video, or finished proof reading a new chapter, I feel so fucking happy that everything else is just window dressing to me now. 

Because not only is online engagement and following such a stab in the dark these days anyway with algorithms changing and trends moving constantly, but this is the real truth about comments, following and feedback:

The truth is, I don’t need a stranger on the internet to praise me so that I can feel good about my art. The day that I start doing that, I’ve already lost. I used to think that way on a regular basis. Guess what, it didn’t make me produce better art. It didn’t make my life better. Because being validated by others never does. It doesn’t matter how many keysmashes I might get or how many sonnets or kind words, because If I don’t like what I create, there isn’t a single human being on the planet who will make me like it, no matter what they say or how they say it. For others, this might not be the case. But this is my reality. 

I know this, because I recently speed-wrote and published a fic for a fanweek. I wrote 13k in about 8hrs. So far, it’s received nothing but positive words. But it doesn’t matter. After I published it, I had a crisis about how it wasn’t good enough, that there should have been an extra arc, that it ended too quickly, that there wasn’t a climax. Even as the comments came in, it didn’t change my mind. Because other people’s comments will never really lead to fulfilment. 

I want you all to know that I get emotional over every single comment that is sent to me. Every personal story, ever keysmash and heartfelt thoughtful message that took the time to analyse my work. Connecting with you guys has been one of the biggest joys of entering this fandom. But it’s not going to be what fuels me to create and to carry on doing the best work I can. All I can do is treat it as the wonderful privilege that it is, and not any part of the reason I do it.  

In conclusion:

Finally, at age 27 and in the midst of enjoying fandom after a very long period of being either meh about it or lurking, I finally feel content with the fact that I want to create in order to put things out into the world that I worked hard on, that I’m passionate about and that hopefully, in whatever way it might be, it might have touched someone who feels the same things too. It makes me feel accomplished, it makes me feel like I might be contributing something small to the world and it makes me feel like maybe one other person was made happy by it. And even if they never tell me that and if no one else ever comments on what I create, or even if they comment on it in spaces that I never see; private servers, chats between friends or blogs that I don’t follow, that’s also fine. Because there’s always at least one person who is going to feel happy that she made something. And that’s me. 

The short version: I never used to care about comments, then I did, and now I no longer do. 

Sorry for the ramble, but I wanted this here for myself to look back upon in case my opinion ever changes on this or I ever start to lose my way again and feel overwhelmed. I’d love to hear your guys’ experiences with this sort of thing and whether you’ve ever felt bogged down by the need for feedback.

[thepixelelf]

hi hi!! how's your day going? do you have anything fun planned for this week?

also, i'm curious about something you said a while back - you mentioned that when you started sys you thought about jaehyun differently than you do now, and i'd be interested to know how your perception of him changed, if you feel like sharing! he's one of the members whose personality i have a bit of a harder time getting insight into (seungmin is the most difficult for me to understand how his brain works because i think he and i are very different and i can't really wrap my head around his way of thinking, then jaehyun because he seems kind of shy so i don't feel like i see enough of his personality to get a good idea of it, then jangjun because it feels like he's actually got a lot going on up there, he portrays this kind of random persona but i get the feeling that he thinks and feels really deeply about a lot of stuff and we just don't see it because of his funnyman image)

hope you have a great day!

- 🥭

hi mango!! I've had a pretty good day so far 😊 how are you? I'm actually starting at a new job the day after tomorrow, so hopefully that goes well! my family also offered to babysit our little baby cousins at the end of the week; they're sooooo cute <3

as for what I said about Jaehyun, yeah! my perception of him definitely (what's the right word here?) evolved? I honestly didn't have that strong of a read of him before, and I'm guilty of sort of generalizing him as the "golden retriever" bf WHICH I still love writing for him btw. I kind of always knew that wasn't his "true" personality because that's no one's true personality lol, but I still think he killed it in fling at convenience store, which is where a lot of his character's inspiration used to come from. obviously I don't actually know golcha and these characters are all just approximations and not meant to be 100% accurate, but I think it's when I watched the baebongdong algorithm brothers videos that my perception of jaehyun really changed. even with my favourite groups, I don't watch every video or check every update, so I honestly don't know much about any of My Guys lol. anyway, I think that string of baebongdong videos actually helped mould my perception of both jaehyun and seungmin. they felt really candid in these videos (donghyun too but I feel like I already knew him a bit better). jaehyun was way more... jokey? mean but in a playful way (mostly to jibeom)? embarrassed by cringe? cool? than I originally pegged him as. honestly none of that makes sense, and I'm way better at characterizing people by writing them in action rather than using adjectives, but yeah, my previous image of golden retriever bf jaehyun was not as strong after those videos.

seungmin, too -- I used to think of him as like a quiet intellectual (idk why I honestly couldn't tell you) but now he is my loseriest cringe bf and I love him. he's part of my "mischievous golcha" line (jangjun, sungyoon, joochan, seungmin) aka the ones from that one april fools vlive. but I never really wrote him as mischievous or shit-stirring in btdt (sungyoon too but he has potential to change lol), so I'll have to figure out how to input seungmin's "new" personality in aromatic. or maybe I'll still write him as an intellectual. who knows ¯⁠\⁠⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯

and I definitely agree with us not seeing every side of jangjun! I think he's actually a pretty smart guy and really good at reading people -- esp his best friends. he's probably a really really good friend that anybody would be lucky to have :') still, it's fun to use him as a gag character in btdt lol

I don't really know golcha (esp not when the cameras are off) but I do think my perception of them now is better than what it was in 2020. idk

what do you think?

[hellsbellschime]

Thank you for answering all those youtube questions. I find it really interesting. Especially considering the algorithm seemed to love a video like the creeps of asoiaf when I would have thought it would be restricted at best. How long does it take you to make a video? Or does it vary depending on the topic? How long did it take to get monetized? Are these ideas you’ve had for a while or do you tend to get video ideas from asks you get on tumblr? Do you have any desire to go into other types o commentary videos (like IRL stuff or movies) or are you more happy with staying with tv/books? Sorry I keep thinking of new questions. I don’t have any desire to make a channel of my own, but I’ve always been intrigued by the ins and outs of establishing a channel and having to figure out what works best on YouTube and all the bts stuff that goes into it. Your videos are always really nice to listen to while I’m working and I can’t imagine the work and research you put into them while also having a full time job.

For shizzle! And yeah I thought it was weird too, I mean I'm pleasantly surprised but I didn't expect that to go well algorithmically.

And yes, the time it takes generally depends on the topic, I mean some videos are like 10 minutes and others are like 30, but even the long ones don't take an outrageously long time because of how simply I actually make them. But I also don't tend to make them all at once, usually one day I'll write the essay out, I try to review it at least twice at separate times, then I record the audio maybe the next day, and then edit the audio and video for a day or two after that. And it's sort of a mix of ideas, I have a lot of ideas that I put on a list whenever I think of them but I also get asks for them that I will usually do at some point. It's kinda hard to tell how long it actually takes because I do a lot of it intermittently, but obviously what I do now is incredibly simple so it doesn't feel like a lot of work. Really the only "hard" part is actually recording my voice because it's surprisingly tiring to speak nonstop for like 35-60 minutes straight and I have a little grit in my voice that tends to get worse/more painful the longer I have to talk. It also takes so long because naturally when you're reading that much you're going to flub lines, and I also talk with my hands a lot so sometimes I'll actually get a really good read through on a sentence but then accidentally hit the microphone with my hand or something, LOL it doesn't happen a ton but it is SO ANNOYING when it does.

You can't actually get monetized on YouTube unless you've had 4,000 hours of watch time and have 1,000 subscribers, and I hit the watch time mark quite a while before the subscriber mark but once I actually passed a thousand it only took a few days for the whole monetization signup process to go through.

And yeah, if I have the time and it grows enough I'd definitely like to branch out and do more stuff, I think it would be fun to do reaction/commentary/analysis videos to other shows and to movies, and if I ever start making enough money where it's basically worth it to reduce the hours/days I work for my job now in order to make video content I think it would be fun to do things like livestreaming watch parties for HotD and other shows that I watch as well as maybe more interpersonal and less strictly structured content about the same topics I already cover. But that's all based on a lot of pretty big ifs and if I'm not in the position to do that at any point then basically doing meta videos is more than enough too.

But I'm glad you enjoy! And honestly I do actually do it simply because I really like it, I mean I hardly ever write for work anymore but I feel like that is my biggest strength, and once I actually start writing it's typically fairly easy. Plus, because once my brain starts going it's hard to stop, usually my "research" consists of reading like one chapter about one character and going off on a 4,000 word rant about it so it's not that hard.

[shinssoliloquy]

WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHY? HOW?

5 Questions you should ask anyone when they’re starting off a project made from the basis of ego and tenacity. I’m really not a particularly smart person, But I’m smart enough to know how dumb I really am.

I’ve always been itching to do this. Twitter was never a great way to display my thoughts and writing on grounds that by limiting characters your characters by tweet you’d either get into long threads of diatribes that likely no one will even read or you’d have to space out your thoughts and mince words in order to fit to these said limitations. Obviously it’s not a bad way per say to fully flesh out your thoughts but there’s obviously some downsides and you won’t be fully capable of fulfilling those quandaries, much so espousing on your thoughts and opinions to the fullest extent. I could write a book but I’m not knowledgeable enough feel like my thoughts are worth putting into a non-fiction book. I could join discord servers but I don’t know a wreath of people who even care. I could still talk off into the Twitter void but that’s only for short bursts at a time, any ideas or subjects I’d like to elucidate or spell out would just get lost, all my themes would shoot off into the negative space that is a twitter timeline regardless of if they’re worth revisiting or not.

But of course, would it even matter if people do care or they don’t. People live off making Youtube videos and content based on themselves because they assume people actually care about whatever benign thought or creative pursuit they’d have in their head. It’s not up to me to judge if my thoughts are worth putting out there but I guess the reason people use social media is to give a voice to the voiceless, have anyone out there a chance of their own success, But how does that affect content input though, How does impact your very own mental psyche. This is a conversation for another post and it’s far from a topic I’ll have any meaningful outlook on, just from my own experiences as an outsider looking in.

WHO?

I always fancied myself a writer more than an illustrator. The whole crux of my need to learn how to draw was from the idea that “hey no one wants to draw my webcomic ideas on something awful or whatever internet messaging board I was using at the time that’ll date this post when I look back on it when I’m 40, I’ll learn how to draw then and show everyone I can STILL MAKE IT” Then I started drawing and never really looked back. Within the few years or so since I’ve made that discovery I never really focused on my writing, much less my creative writing. I’ve had few instances where I’d try to light up my spark by blog posting was making other short lived wordpresses and blogspots where I can peruse and write for a short while until I get bored and go back to drawing everyday. Of course two particular things happened in which I’ve gotten that spark back, to an extent. 1. The corona virus quarantine happened and I was stuck with nothing to do, I dropped out of school to go to a new college out of country that hasn’t really happened yet and aside from my retail job I haven’t had a good outlet for where to put my creativity too. So I ended up just drawing more but also, reading off some books off my backlog. I’ve always been interested in philosophy and non-fiction since reading Kant and Hume at age 12 and Now rediscovered it because of quarantine. Really I’ve always been a better writer or story teller than anything else but efforts to light up that energy in me has been fruitful and I’ve relegated to being another artist in the pile of artists who’s only personality is that they “like art”. Which made me realized how much of a better self sufficient and self respecting the writer can be rather then the animator. Illustrations are fleeting, words stick with you. Of course greats work of art exist and will always exist. Beautiful paintings can grip me just as much as a good work of philosophy can, But lately beautiful paintings have been disgruntled and disavowed from public schema. If you want to provide good art for people to see, use hashtags and make fast fleeting content for people to consume easily and forget about. Such is the way of social media and how they grip you to keep using their products, It’s not a revolutionary idea but it’s a concept that ends up working. In a way I’d like to counteract this by making fast fleeting content but also putting in forth ideas and writings which I can consider good but we’ll see how that ends up panning out. My goals as an artist is for another topic entirely but really I need a way to practice my non-fiction writing skills and having a blog where I can just go on and on about pointless shit is good exercise. 2. I’ve stopped communicating to people that would point me to a direction in life I didn’t really need to go through and because of that I took a detour in my mental stability and mental development, really it wasn’t good for me. but because of that I was able to keep track of where I need to go and have removed all elements in my life that can allow me to find different paths and know where I’ll truly be. I could also just talk to people about these kinds of stuff but it’s hard to really find people who I can talk about the stuff I want to talk about with and nothing really beats writing a whole diatribe about whatever comes to your mind at the time. Why do I have a lot on my mind? You’ll hear that story in another time but it’s MOST likely an autism thing.

WHAT?

Look at section: Who again but to summarize and clarify what I mean. Content is fast fleeting and non-self actualizing, people don’t want ideas they want content, They need personalities to leech off and see themselves in instead of being creatives themselves. As someone who makes art and wants to make more art It’s hard to really judge if my art is worth it for the algorithm or if it’s worth it to bring in audience retention. Not to mention most people who use social media are kids, and the only way to grab kids attention is to play to their interests, play into their already corroded brains by playing onto their synapses, Not to imply I dislike it per say but more so that I feel that certain audience can somewhat affect your creative output. 

WHERE?

I made a Medium account last month after reading an article on Luxury Communism. It was a fine article but what I got out of it was how good it seems to use Medium to communicate and write articles like these, Until I realized that really it can only be used for more academic pieces and while sure I’d like to do that one day something more lowkey and personal was what I really needed. Hence a tumblr, originally a blogging website before being used to oxidize internet discourse and internet creativity in general, was a perfect outlet for these kinds of posts. I’m actually used to using tumblr for one and can edit and know my way around doing these sorts of posts and the archive feature is good if I ever want to look back on old posts as opposed to Twitter. I can use the ask feauture to take requests or have feedback on my posts in a more concise manner. Unlike Medium or Wordpress I can easily hide certain posts or even the entire account if I wanted too and I won’t be seen or be recommended by the algorithm because I won’t even put tags on these posts. If you know where to find me you know where to find me. Although I do think I’ll make this public at some point I atleast need to know if I’ll even use this or if I’ll even keep making the same kinds of posts as I’d want too.

WHY? 

I’ve already explained why you knucklehead, but I guess here were some of my inspirations to make a writing blog. I could list actual writers or twitter personalities or internet reviewers with blogs I can talk about, for example Yahtzee Crosshaw, Film Crit Hulk, Or even the elusive Andrew Hussie when he had a wordposts and while those people were instrumental to my development as a writer and artist I can’t say they were my full inspiration for making this.

Back in 2016, I was introduced to the Procrastinators’ Podcast by consuming Digibro content and having her podcast be linked at the end of one of her videos. I’ve since started concurrently watching her podcast and while I’ve always sucked into Digi’s cult of personality I’ve started appreciated her other friends in the podcast too, everyone except Nate. One of those members I gravitated too was MunchyWearsTinyHats. He was only one year older than me but I could still see myself in him and in effect appreciated him more than anyone in the podcast. We both seemingly grew up watching and reading the same shit, Homestuck, TF2, He introduced me to Nuclear Throne which because one of my favorite games and we both had the same appreciation for Hussie, Sam Hyde (sadly) Performance art, weird abstract art bullshit and of course My Little Pony. If I actually joined RFCK who knows what would’ve happened but that’s just my take. Of course a surface level description of Munchy aside, as someone who consumed everything he was in, I Lived my life vicariously through him and to all the members of the Procrastinators’ Podcast to an extent even though we both became completely different people as we reached our 20s. Currently he’s 20 and I’m less than a year away to being 20. But I feel as if our paths have drifted far enough that I can properly say I became a whole new different person to who I was in 2016. I still have appreciation for MLP, Homestuck and Minecraft and all the weird media shit me and him consumed. Back then I even modeled my art and persona to look like his too, It was a whole thing. Of course all of these posts and videos and personalities are very very out of date and they don’t reflect the content I consume or even the type of person I am now. I had a friend who also liked the PCP, well it was more like a love-hate relationship I feel but it was nice having someone who I could talk about the PCP with since at this time they were the only people or content creators I was consuming, what’s less said about current pcp the better. She’s always told me, I feel sorry for people who model their lives around these content creators and take advice from them since they clearly don’t know what they’re doing. And while I agree with her to an extent, I wouldn’t go as far as to discredit these artists accomplishments since they seem fulfilled with what they’ve made of themselves, not like we’re doing anything different or are any different to them. It’s about trying to live in a world with your own meaning in it and you can’t do that but disparaging the careers of grown men you don’t even know. Again topic for another day but I guess with this blog I’m always copying and ripping off some of their ideas for myself. In 2019, Munchy made a Tumblr where he’d detail and do the same thing and post blogs or writings he’s made or opinions he’s had, It hasn’t been updated in a year and a half but if it isn’t broke, don’t call the gas company asking for a refund. I even stole his alliteration with Shinsuke’s Soliloquy and Munchy’s Manuscripts, Shinsuke being my real God-given name. Of course the posts on his tumblr are really incredibly out of date and downright stupid and I’ll talk about them on their own on a seperate post since I feel like he really just didn’t know what he talked about and they’re baseline at best and wrong at worst. Regardless he still planted the seed of me as a person to make my own blog and talk about random bullshit.

HOW?

Obviously I will still tweet out stuff on my private twitter, Obviously I will still make art. Right now I’m making my own comics and writing a few short stories that maybe? I’ll put here I’m not really sure. Just depends on if they’re worthy on being posted since I’ll make a short story collection with them instead. Maybe I’ll continue the favorite character writing, maybe I’ll make my own picrew. We’ll see and no doubt these promises will become out of date in a week or two. Rather than the right of the moment malaise of tweeting around bullshit and sending it quickly I’ll use this for more concise text, something that I can sink my teeth in and tap away for what like 5 hours or so? Beats the essays i’d be doing but it doesn’t help that I am typing this in total silence, and I guess those essays will just be posted here. Do people post their school essays like they post their poems or their artwork for school? If you want to use my ask blog then it’s right there if you want a topic for me to talk about or just ask me a regular question. I’m bringing back tumblr asks to it’s real purpose. And of course, the only thing sure about me, is that nothings for sure.