#it got reposted by a bunch of different people and sometimes without credit

[angieblogging]

Yelena Belova - Sociopath

A/N: This is simply my observation. If anyone wants to add anything to this feel free to. Please DO NOT repost this anywhere without giving credit, DO NOT claim as your own work or I will fucking get you. If you have any issues with this post feel free to let me know by commenting or in the “ask me” box. Be civil.

This is something the MCU probably won’t do, but you can always imagine lol… Yelena or at least how I see her shows sociopathic traits. I shall explain.

“Those with ASPD have no regard for others’ rights or feelings, lack empathy and remorse for wrongdoings, and have the need to exploit and manipulate others for personal gain. Nature and nurture play a role in ASPD. The reasons behind the disorder are not fully understood. The current belief is that psychopathy generally comes from genetic factors, such as parts of the brain not developing fully, while sociopathy results from an interruption in personality development by abuse or trauma in childhood.”

Obviously Yelena has childhood trauma, so yeah. Anyways so there are some traits I’d say fit her, here’s a list of traits and I’ll explain which ones I find suited to her and why.

SOCIOPATHIC TRAITS:

Lack of empathy for others

Impulsive behavior

Attempting to control others with threats or aggression

Using intelligence, charm, or charisma to manipulate others

Not learning from mistakes or punishment

Lying for personal gain

Showing a tendency to physical violence and fights

Generally superficial relationships

Sometimes, stealing or committing other crimes

Threatening suicide to manipulate without intention to act

I think couple traits match and those would be:

“lack of empathy for others”

she is an assassin, a killer, I’d say there’s no room for empathy and hard feelings there, obviously if the situation is different like for ex. Bucky’s, he has nightmares, is no longer a killer or an assassin, he has remorse and empathy that’s clearly shown through his screen time, the only times he lacks it is when he’s a Winter Solider, but even then he shows glimpses of it.

“impulsive behaviour”

she without hesitation went to take down the Red Room, which makes sense, as that place plays a big role in her childhood trauma. she literally bought herself a vest and my question is when?? got a dog, like bro you’re an assassin, when tf do you take walks? and as soon as she saw her opportunity to go back into killing, she did, which is to me at least quite odd. We don’t see that with Natasha, sure there are certain traits that stay with her, like paranoia probably, her spying skills, her ability to blend in and be on the run too, but Natasha would never, she did what she had to to survive, but she came out of it clean and wouldn’t approve, same thing with Oksana - the widow who freed Yelena, she was an older widow, she chose to help other widows, she made the antidote.

“using intelligence, charm, or charisma to manipulate others”

literally she manipulates Kate Bishop and apparently a bunch of audience. the important part is that she is no longer under the Red Room’s influence, so everything post her being a Black Widow is simply Yelena.

“showing a tendency to physical violence and fights”

self-exploratory. she got out of the red room, is literally free, went to help widows as that is what Natasha told her to do, lost Natasha, it all went downhill from there, she could’ve continued the mission, she went downhill from there and went back on the path of violence and such.

“not learning from mistakes or punishment”

she was a widow once, she killed people, i don’t even think she talks about that, she definitely talks about other widows. but she goes back to be the same thing she was freed from.

“sometimes, stealing or committing other crimes”

obviously, self-exploratory.

“lying for personal gain”

i don’t think we’ve seen her do that, but that is tying into the whole manipulation thing, so i wouldn’t be surprised if she had done that or was intending to in the future projects.

[donnerpartyofone]

Big digression ahead, but: One result of the kind of highway hypnosis you can get from your dash, alongside the feeling that you are seeing ALL of Tumblr, is that the more polluted your feed is with the unintended consequences of following a lot of people, the more you start taking it for granted that there is just a lot of crap out there and you have to kind of passively put up with this because that's just the way it is. Blazed posts and ads go a long way to increasing this sensation, and for me that has meant that sometimes I'm seeing a whole bunch of fandom garbage and uninspired AI detritus and it doesn't always occur to me to stop, look, and unfollow whoever is annoying me.

Without getting into any of the ethical implications of AI imagery, my most immediate problem with it is just that it's ugly. Once in a while I see some images that are amusing in a funny, quirky way, but I just hate the basic image quality. The textures, the colors, and the usual styles that I see are all bad, so even if the concept is interesting I'm just not down. For now, the idea of the mass extinction of analog artists is just as fictitious as the idea of AI art that is powerful enough to stand up to its analog predecessors.

So anyway, this morning I realized that I'd scrolled past a certain image a few different times, and I had been letting it slide because I assumed it was one of those proliferating YA fiction ads. Finally I realized that someone I follow for more academic-type stuff had switched over to AI fantasy images, and I could just unfollow them...but I mean please look at this. I feel a little weird leaving their name in here while I'm being rude about their thing, but it feels weirder to repost their thing without credit, so...

And for reference, here is actual James Joyce, influential author of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and inspiration to countless writers ever after:

I mean why, WHY did they do this to James Joyce? Did the prompt say "please yassify him" or did the program say "according to everything I am trained on, every human always has to look sexy and horny in the dullest way possible, so here ya go loser"? This is totally baffling to me, and from the rest of the blog's content, I promise it is not meant to be funny. I kinda like the pen floating in the pint of Guinness though, they got me with that part.

Tumblr is a funny thing because I think we each have some kind of generality about the character of this platform that we assume is universal, which it really isn't. The other day someone I follow said something about this being the social media site where everyone has tech jobs, and I thought Oh huh, I thought this was the chronic unemployment website! Then I saw a post where someone was saying that she didn't believe that anybody REALLY ruminates on embarrassing experiences forever, she thinks that's a completely made-up unrealistic emo pose and in real life everyone just gets over all their shit in a matter or days or weeks, and several of that person's followers piled on in agreement, and I was like...I mean not only is neurotic ruminating a real and common mental problem, but I definitely thought "everyone on Tumblr" ruminates on their humiliating experiences forever! I thought this was the clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder website.

But anyway this thing happens where you join Tumblr and you follow whoever looks good to you, and then after seeing that cohort's reblogs and interactions with strangers for a while, you can start to forget that almost everything you see is in some way triggered by your own editorial choices, even if indirectly. It can start to feel like what's on your dash is "everything", it is representative of the entire usership of Tumblr. And then one day you find yourself criticizing this conceptual monolith you created, and you start using that hostile, performative Tumblr "y'all" to address the crimes of a mass of people who you imagine to be simultaneously a) attentively following your blog, and b) in opposition to everything you stand for. You think to yourself People on Tumblr are fucking crazy, why are they all like this?, forgetting entirely that the whole thing is chiefly defined by your choices and you are in no way experiencing objective reality.

This diatribe has been brought to you by a blazed post I just saw featuring a wedding photo of a guy in USMC dress blues, where the guy is saying that he wants to make Taylor Swift say hi to his wife for their 10th anniversary but he doesn't know how to get in touch with her, so he has come to Tumblr where he thinks there are people who know how to get the most famous person on the Planet of Earth to do personal favors for randos. This was so divorced from the reality I'm familiar with on every single level, I just sat there staring at the post for minutes trying to pick a reaction to it. And then after that I saw another blazed post of a girl taking a selfie in a fancy hotel, and I found that her entire blog was just stock photos of hot rich people gently making out in luxury settings. And I remembered, ah yes. This, too, is Tumblr.

[starprincessart]

high key WANT to make an art instagram but I feel like especially when it comes to fandoms, Instagram is art theft central :/ hmmm

[markantonys]

Lil dumb question lol,but how y'all make gifs?i mean,I know people use photoshop and all,but do you pay for anything? And how long it takes?

not dumb at all, i’m happy to help! i do use photoshop, which normally is super expensive but i managed to find a free and pirated download of it wayyyy back in like 2012, so i can’t help you with finding current links to download photoshop since the one i used is long since defunct haha but i’m sure there are photoshop resource blogs out there on tumblr who may be able to help! there are a lot of versions of photoshop, i don’t know the differences between them but my version is cs5

as for how long it takes to make a gif, it really depends. for me the longest part of the process is usually picking out which shots i want to use in the gifset - if i’ve got a specific moment or scene in mind then obviously this isn’t an issue, but if i’m just making a general character/ship/aesthetic-y gifset, it takes me forever to pick my shots bc i’m very indecisive haha

then the actual creation of the gif doesn’t actually take that long (i did a tutorial on my process here if anyone is curious). coloring is the second longest part for me, depending on the scene (some scenes color nicely and easily, whereas others with bad lighting or weird color palettes take a lot more fiddling to get right)

so, i can pop out a gifset like this one - only 4 gifs, a single specific scene with easy-to-color lighting - in only 20-30 mins, whereas this labor-intensive gifset took me about 6 hours! but these are both extremes, and i’d say that on average, one gifset would take me around 1-3 hours to make

which [climbs on soapbox] is exactly why making gifs is so frustrating these days with a) rampant stealing & reposting to twitter without credit - i put a lot of care and time into making that gif, and now some asshole on twitter is getting a bunch of rts/likes for MY work, b) tumblr users not reblogging content as much as they used to and instead only liking it, which is a nice way to show appreciation but does nothing to help share the content with other users and give it more exposure, and c) tumblr’s unreliable tagging system (made so much worse by the july update) where you never know if your gifset will show up in tags or not, and the way they sometimes stealth-flag a gifset as nsfw without actually giving you the official notification, thus making it so that your gifset won’t show up on anyone’s dash or in tags, but you also aren’t able to click the “appeal” option to take the restriction off if it was given incorrectly (which, 99% of the time, it was)

this is exactly why so many content creators are getting frustrated and leaving tumblr, and why there are so many less gifsets and original content floating around than there used to be years ago. i personally am not going anywhere anytime soon bc i love making gifs and this is the only platform where i can post them, and since i primarily gif for a tiny obscure fandom (medici) i’ve long since accepted i won’t get many notes, but i can certainly understand why so many gifmakers have given up. well this reply turned into an unintentional lecture lmao but the bottom line is, respect your gifmakers, kids!

[murdocklovespage]

One more note on plagiarism

This is an answer to a Karedevil Squad ask. I figured since these are very much my opinions, I should answer it here so that people could come at me directly if they want, especially since I’m calling a specific person out. 

I’m sorry if this is long-winded or redundant in places. Blame it on the rage. 

I’ve had a few people ask me about my anti-plagiarism comments. They stem from this message, which several people received in their inbox a little over a year ago.

Dmcreif had been a slight annoyance pre-plagiarism explosion. He sent many of us dozens of asks, (frequently the same asks) and was clearly obsessive. He liked to mansplain things like “fridging,” “toxicity,” and why Matt Murdock was somehow not deserving of the fallout from the mistakes he made. That I could deal with because I enjoyed reading people’s differing ideas about the analysis I was writing. Dmcreif does not. He loves to argue. He loves to hear his points validated. And he loves to harass people.

Many of us didn’t see what he was doing until the anon message. I still feel like people are pissed about us validating him by answering his questions/talking to him, but if you weren’t following a ship, or you just missed it, you didn’t always notice this shit. I follow hundreds of people and didn’t see his harassment until a couple of weeks before it blew up.

You’d see a post where he made some asinine Kastle or MattxElektra comment and tag it. You’d see veiled comments about how a “certain Karedevil user” is back at it again. I messaged several people asking about what it meant and they were always classy, just referencing someone who upset their ship. I jumped into an argument he’d started about Elektra’s toxicity saying Matt Murdock was a grown ass man and defending Elektra and I got the nicest message saying the OP appreciated my saying it. They were dealing with this shit on and off Tumblr and I didn’t know it. Not until the anon bomb went off and I started combing through his tumblr and reddit posts.

I realized that I wasn’t the only one he was doing this to and it was much worse than I thought it was. I never received the message, but I found 1200+ word posts I’d written directly copied and pasted under dmreif on reddit, as well as other words I’d written reposted in the comments of other posts. I saw specific users directly pointing out that he stole entire posts without crediting people. Numerous times. My blog name was mentioned in one of these comments on a site I had never used. He knew what he was doing and he kept doing it. It was infuriating. I was shocked.

Here are some examples posts that he stole from:

Mine    “His” Trombonesinspace’s    “His”

Those are the easiest examples and are just a drop in the bucket (dude posts a lot, so don’t waste too much time.) 

After being confronted (and this wasn’t the first time, apparently,) he wrote this “apology” which had been forced out of him when he came to a justifiably pissed individual with his tail between his legs.

There are some wonderful users who noticed these things pre-“apology” and post-“apology”, but he ignored them (once he apparently added quotes, but that doesn’t make it better in my opinion.) People also reported him for copyright violation, but reddit only allows you do that after so long, so in my case, I was out of luck. Check this reddit user’s comment history for some enlightenment.

After this blow up, people stopped talking to him. And responding to his asks. And many blocked him. It didn’t matter. He created a new blog (georgiakaredevilfan) and started sending asks from that. And if people didn’t respond, he’d send anons. His questions are pretty obvious and many of us have recognized when it was him. 

Since you are the person who sent this message, @evs14u , I will give you an example. Here are three of your anon asks with a link to a VERY similar question he asked on reddit.

Your “anon” ask    His post

Your “anon” ask    His post 

Your “anon” ask    His post 

Here is one specific thought he took from you and re-worded - you can find it in the coments of the first “’his’ post” link above. Yours:

“his”

Maybe it seems small, but that only took me twenty minutes to find. He posts to reddit like crazy and I don’t have your words memorized. So it’s more difficult than say, finding 1000+ word posts I wrote and he stole in their entirety.

It’s gotten easy to figure out when a new blog is his. Obsessed with Karen Page? Check. Obsessed with the core three getting back together and Karen having to be their secretary (thanks to DDS3, he’s upgraded that role slightly)? Check. Obsessed with hating Olicity. Elektra being “toxic.” Matt Murdock’s mistakes being somewhat his fault, but mostly the fault of the people he wronged over and over again? Getting the group together sooner? Everything coming around to Karedevil? Check, check, check. And finally: false-ignorance when it comes to harassing people who aren’t in his ship and at the same time blatant harassment and baiting to get reactions while still thinking he’s a good guy. Check.

He makes comments about wanting the ships to get along and how certain “bad apples” spoil the bunch. He is the bad apple. He is the one who stirs up shit when he disagrees. He is obsessive. He makes people hate Karedevil shippers (and we’re a lovely bunch), and he made people want to leave this site altogether (me included.)

He needs your validation. He needs your thoughts so that he can repost them - as @significantowl pointed out, it seems like he’s harvesting opinions that he can use. He’ll send you asks where he tells you something instead of actually asking something. Sometimes there will be a question attached to a tangent (which he likely stole), but most of the time it’s just a statement. He wants you to tell him he’s right. There isn’t much of a way to escape him. He is obsessed. It doesn’t matter when you join this fandom, if you have views that are similar, or if you have the complete opposite, he will bother you.

So yeah, this isn’t just about plagiarism, it’s also about harassment. I care more about the latter, to be honest, so I’ve paid attention. I’ve stopped writing meta because of him, but I’m not going to ignore the blatant crap he’s continuing to pull. He is a gaslighting sonofabitch and he makes us all think we’re paranoid. We aren’t.   

[redsunsetxiii]

**Please do not repost without credit**

[TRANS] 2018.02.28 SONE JAPAN SONE NOTE LIVE vol 14 with Hyoyeon

Staff: You tried out more physical activities like flying yoga and horseback riding before. This time you tried making natural cosmetics that focuses on using your fingers, so how was it? Please share if there were any difficult or creative points. 

Hyoyeon: I’ve always been interested in natural cosmetics so I really concentrated and had fun! It’s very delicate work where the scent can change drop by drop, so concentration is required. I concentrated so much that I almost lost track of time!

Staff: Do you normally do this kind of detailed work?

Hyoyeon: I’ve always like knitting, handicrafts, and cross stitch, etc., though I don’t think people can really imagine that (laughs). I have very dry skin, so I can’t wear clothing with coarse fabric. Because of that, I often choose good quality threads by myself and make clothes. Once I think about it, it’s the same with cosmetics. I think I can safely use cosmetics if I check the materials directly with my own eyes while making them. I carefully look up cosmetics and then buy them because of my dry skin, so this was a very meaningful time for me. I always carry around hand wash with me, so I was happy to be able to make it with good materials. Since skin lotion directly touches the face the most, I use one that moisturizes and doesn’t irritate the skin. I tried my best directly making my own skin lotion that I’d like to use in today’s experience. 

Staff: What was a difficult step?

Hyoyeon: I had to measure how many grams drop by drop and that needed more concentration that I thought. The weight changes with just a drop, and I heard that it can affect the scent from the instructor, but it was interesting since I used my sense of sensitivity. I tried to bring out a good scent.

Staff: Do you normally use perfume?

Hyoyeon: Instead of choosing one perfume to use, I choose various scents that match the clothing or that day’s concept or feeling. Among them, my favorite is baby powder!

Staff: A lot of different materials were prepared to make natural cosmetics, so were there any favorites or points why you chose the materials you used for each item?

Hyoyeon: The natural aroma oils! They’re organic and from natural origins so I believe they cause less irritation and they’re good for the body. I’ve always been interested in things that are good for your body, and even today I love “natural” things. I made solid perfume not just for myself, but for SONE JAPAN as a present. Since perfume is something that can change your mood with that scent, I included a favorite natural aroma oil with the name, “Happy”. The instructor told me that the scent is to bring out a positive mood like it’s name. I chose it to express my feelings for everyone in SONE JAPAN to always be cheerful and have a positive mind, and to support SNSD with that kind of mindset. It’s filled with my gratitude for everyone’s constant and cheerful support. 

Staff: You made skin lotion and solid perfume this time, but is there any item that you want to try making next time?

Hyoyeon: I want to try to make something nice that’s a moisturizing cosmetic. With the changing seasons, especially winter when it’s very dry, I want to try making a moisturizing body oil and cream!

Staff: If you could make another solid perfume, what kinda of perfume would you want to make?

Hyoyeon: I want to make a solid perfume with my favorite scent, baby powder.

Staff: If you were to make a handmade cosmetic and give it to a member as a present, what would you give? Please share the reasons for that item and member!

Hyoyeon: First, I want to give hand wash to Sooyoung. She always carries around hand wash to the point where I would borrow and use hers. When washing your hands outside, sometimes there is no soap or hand wash, so I’d like to try making portable paper soap as well. I think my favorite scent baby powder is nice, but I think jasmine would really suit Sooyoung (laughs). Also, I want to give Yuri a solid perfume as a present. She loves perfume and is very sensitive to the scents that she immediately knows what scent I’m wearing. She knows a lot about perfume, however I feel some pressure to give her perfume as a present...but I’d forcibly make a baby powder solid perfume and give it to her. I wonder if she’d use it (laughs).

Staff: Please share if there are points you pay attention to when it comes to cosmetics or skin care items! 

Hyoyeon: I make my own facial packs. Mixing yogurt and honey, or mixing oil to grated vegetables, etc., I use things that are found around the house and easily make facial packs. However, I’ve never made skin lotion before, but I got to try making them with this experience! 

I’m usually concerned with moisturizers for skin care. There is a lot of cosmetics for whiter skin and anti-aging, but I choose based on the moisturizing effect. Like I mentioned before, I have dry skin so I usually choose items with lots of moisturizers. Dryness is a cause for wrinkles.

Staff: Do you have any preferences for facial cleansing? 

Hyoyeon: There’s a lot of times where I wear a lot of makeup for work, so I’m always concerned about washing it all off. To counter dry skin from cleansing, I mix aroma oil with the facial cleanser. Soon I want to try growing my own aloe (laughs).

Staff: What skin care item do you always have for winter?

Hyoyeon: Oil and milky lotion. I mix them, so natural coconut oil is a must have. Dry skin won’t immediately absorb just oil, so I think mixing it with milky lotion will slightly raise the moisturizing ability.

Staff: Do you have any make up points to share with SONE JAPAN?

Hyoyeon:  Before, I did one point makeup with using colors as points, but recently I’ve come to think that natural skin tone is important. In order to not look unnatural, it is best to match with your own skin color. There was a point where I liked skin lightening makeup, but if you overdo it you can see the border lines on your face and neck (laughs). I believe that natural makeup that isn’t overdone is the best. Also, in order to understand your own skin type, you should try a lot of tests. I failed a lot, but that helped me understand my own skin tone. I’ve finally come to understand that natural makeup suits me the best (laughs).

Staff: During the last shooting, Taeyeon said that she would like to try peach makeup. Is there a makeup that you would like to try? 

Hyoyeon: Peach makeup is nice and feels so lively! I want to try a more dimensional, shadow makeup. And that’s also natural looking and doesn’t look like I’m wearing makeup. But shadow makeup is difficult without specialist skills. It requires delicate skills to shape the outline of your face, make your face look smaller, and make your cheekbones stand out less... Actually, I practice at home sometimes (laughs).

Staff: Do the members recommend each other cosmetics or exchange beauty tips? Also, please share if there are any episodes of members giving each other cosmetics as presents.

Hyoyeon: When we find something nice, we share it in the group chat and recommend it to each other. Also, we’ve given cosmetics as birthday presents, for example when giving a cute colored lip balm, we decide on a color like pink and then collect a lot of pink lip balms then give a whole bunch of lip balms as a present.

Then when we give it all we say, “Use all of this” (laughs). I’ve received presents like that before, and when I asked how they chose it, I was surprised that they said that they tried all of the lip balms and decided on these. I thought that they bought it after just looking at the sample colors, but they really tried out all of the various pink tones and then bought them. I was so moved! Then, there’s another present that’s memorable; I received lip balms of pink, orange, and purple that I would normally never use from the members. Like you would use these on barbie dolls (laughs). They must have thought that I would never buy these by myself, so they conversely bought them. 

They wanted me to use them during times like member birthday parties that have a set concept. I was happy that they really thought it out for me. When giving myself a present, I mostly give myself a manicure. I would match the concept of the activities at that time, or do the usual white and skin tone, or a series of browns. I have to select colors that are easy to use, otherwise the manicure gets inflexible (laughs).

Staff: Please share if there’s anything that you’re into right now or recently begun to collect.

Hyoyeon: I have a long dance history, but music is the most important part of dance. The fact is, music is the one performing on stage. Whether it’s song or dance, I love listening to the beat of the music, so I’ve recently been learning about DJ mixing and making music. While thinking about matching the music to the stage I want to show, I produce a beat. I listened to a lot of remixed versions of songs during the end of the year shows, but I want to mix my own song and I think it’d be nice to stand on stage with that song. I’m still learning, so I think that it will be awhile before I can show everyone.

Staff: Among all your activities up to this point, what is an achievement that left an impression on you?

Hyoyeon: I can say that SNSD’s 10th anniversary is the most memorable for me. I heard that a 10th anniversary for a girl group is very rare. That’s why I feel even deeper emotion, and I just think it’s a wondrous thing. All the members are amazing and all the staff that supported us for 10 years are also amazing. Of course, there are staff members who weren’t with us for all 10 years, but everyone who worked with SNSD are amazing. Also, it is all thanks to the strength and love of the fans that brought us here, and it is precisely because of that that all of the moments were wonderful. With all of that, I believe that this 10th anniversary is the most impressionable. Looking back on everything up until now, it gives me encouragement and energy to move forward. With the 10 anniversary, I feel like I can walk into the future with even more energy than before.

Staff: Please share if there are points where you changed as a group or individual, or felt that you’ve grown.

Hyoyeon: I really feel that I developed a lot. 10 years ago, I still can’t forget the moment when I debuted. My readiness is different compared to now, and I feel that I really grew with each action, no matter how small, step by step. Living together with the members let me learn a lot from them. Also, meeting a lot of people has helped me develop. Activities within Korea helped of course, but in other countries learning those languages and being active overseas has allowed me to reach even bigger dreams, and I believe I was able to gain lots of world experiences. I want to meet many many more people in this big, huge world from now! Is that dream too big!? (laughs) There are countless things I’ve learned and grown from through SNSD activities. Personally, I used to have a relatively short temper, but now I’ve calmed down a lot (laughs).

Staff: Finally, a message please for SONE JAPAN!

Hyoyeon: Recently I’ve been letting you all know about what I’ve been up to recently through SNS and the SONE JAPAN blog, but I read a lot of your messages through your projects and SNS comments. Although I say that my Japanese is still rather bad... During group activities, I often relied on the other members, but now I’m making the effort to use a dictionary and be able to read your Japanese messages now. So while studying Japanese and reading all your messages, I feel as if I can communicate with SONE JAPAN even more! I’ll go see you all again, so please give your support!

Translation by RedSunsetXIII source: SONE JAPAN website

**Please do not repost without credit**

[smol-selkie]

-

This is probably the most personal thing I ever posted on here and I feel like I’ll go to hell for it: When you’re raised in a Jewish family and have different beliefs than them but you were constantly told that Hebrew isn’t a religion and if you don’t obey every little whim the Bible tells you, you’re a demon and you only have two choices so if you break one sin you break them all and you’re constantly told that you’re rebellious or sinful for being a teenager and liking metal music even though that’s the worse thing you’ve done...So then you truly start believing that you’re the bad seed of the family and no matter how much you read Scripture you will never be redeemed and your parents will go to heaven while you won’t because you betrayed their family bloodline by having doubts of Him and everything you enjoy is sinful so you slowly start believing that He’s cruel enough to send anyone into the pit if they sin once in their life regardless of virtues. – my-life-is-a-downed-system

[Reposting as a combined post so I can relate and share my experiences as well.]

Alright, [possibly long-ass] story time under the cut.

I come from a pretty weird family; my mother and brother are staunch Christians and my father claims that he's Atheist (though he does subscribe to/practices some familial Buddhist/ancestral folk religion). Me, I'm definitely the 'black sheep' in my immediate family, though I lean towards my father.

It all started sometime around third grade when my mom was trying to convert me to Christianity. She brought me to this one play that terrified the shit out of me, IIRC, it was two families got into fatal car crashes, one went to Heaven and the other went to Hell (and damn, I give the producers credit for doing one hell of a job making shit terrifying, especially on children at an impressionable age).

From there, she regularly took me and my brother to church, with me out of fear because I didn't want to go to [someone's interpretation of] 'Hell'. I tried to take in and believe what was being taught at Sunday School, studying/memorizing Scripture and such. This went on until about junior high.

Then junior high swings around, and some pretty awful harassment starts happening (to make it worse, said bully was once a good friend); it got to the point where my parents were threatening to sue the school district because the administration did fuck-all to mitigate the situation. At that point, I would go to church, crying a lot and praying and pleading to God to help with my problems.

No help ever came. I spent two years in complete misery, literally dreading each day of school.

This is where my doubt began; where was God when I was suffering? I was a goody-two-shoes, straight-A student all the way through grade school and junior high. Fuck, I even thought words like 'crap' were awful swear words, and that the littlest sin would send me to scary, scary Hell forever.

Was it the summer of 8th or 9th grade that this happened? I can hardly remember. But my mom took my little brother and I to the Church's summer camp. I also recall this was when I was really getting into sketching, and listening to metal/hard rock (mostly Black Sabbath and Disturbed). This comes into play in a bit. I had my two CD's (We Sold Our Soul to Rock and Roll and Ten Thousand Fists, for anyone who was curious was I was into at the time) to listen to on my CD player on the way to and from camp (CD players weren't allowed during camp, so I kept it in the shared dorm room).

One night, after some 'rousing' sermon about 'seperating oneself from earthly (therefore, evil) things', the counselor and the girl group I was assigned to decided to take all their 'evil earthly' things and destroy them, defacing, trampling, stomping, and breaking all of it. I was both horrified and terrified. I ended up cowering in the far corner of my bunk, clutching my sketchbook and music with dear life, lest the hysterical, wound-up girls and/or counselor got their hands on them to destroy them.

Thankfully, nobody noticed me hiding.

I did a complete turnaround in 9th grade as far as my personality went. Out went the goody-two-shoes façade, in with as 'hardcore, tough-ass goth and metalhead' as I could get away with, which was (is!) pretty damn laughable when I look back on it. Still a straight-A student, but I started hanging around with a pack of guys who were pretty bad influences, and started getting into 'dark' things.

This went fine and dandy for the first three years of high school. I actually started getting a rep as the vicious bitch who wouldn't hesitate to literally claw someone if she was in a foul mood. Pffft, lmao.

Things started going to shit in Senior Year. On top of five college applications (three of which required extensive portfolios), like four(?) full-on AP classes (two in Art/Design, so tons of work there), and extracurricular activities, I'd pretty much bitten off more than I could chew. For some unknown reason, a whole bunch of people (outside the group of guys I hung out with) started in on bullying me, which, long story short, I got three days of out-of-school suspension (which, tbh, the punishment was racist bullshit; I knew someone who got the same punishment for fist-fighting, and I did nothing of the sort). So, there was all this major stress going on (and I suspect my anxiety and depression was developing then), and by this time, my faith in God had dwindled to basically nothing.

So, I gave religion one last shot, and I realized after all the shit had gone down, it was not God, but me who pulled through, mostly out of spite. From then on, I considered myself Agnostic Theist (which seems weird, I know), where the gist of it was 'Maybe there's a 'God' or higher power/being out there, but until someone provides concrete, irrefutable proof of [its] existence, then I highly doubt it'.

To top it all off in cementing my becoming an ex-Christian was the incident with my mother one summer between college years (though I forget which). She insisted that my dad and I attend my brother's Baptism at the same summer camp in which I was traumatized at, which both my dad and I agreed that it would be better without the two of us because of our non-belief. She got extremely verbally violent with the both of us, nearly taking it to a physical fight. My dad ended up begrudgingly taking the four of us to the ceremony only because he had the car, though he and I spent lunch together awkwardly, as a couple of areligious people in a sea of religious people.

I guess what drove me away from [organized] religion was the overall sheeple mindset (if you don't believe what we believe in, and do as we do, and fit in, you'll go to 'Hell'), and the constant guilting that comes from its adherents. I don't want to spend my entire life feeling guilt-tripped and eternally paranoid; I'd rather be a filthy hedonist that lives life up and dies on my feet feeling satisfied.

TL;DR – These days, I just claim that I'm an Agnostic (leaning towards Atheist) as a short answer. I have a totally different set of beliefs now, but that's better left as another story for another time.

[formulakay]

Tumblr Tag Game

Thank youuuuu :) to the lovely @jedivszombie for tagging me! I love talking about myself so here we go.

1. Why did you choose your url?

Formula 1 + Kayla = formulakay. I’ve considered changing it and have a few good urls saved but I feel like this is my brand now so I’ll likely stick with it!

2. Any side blogs?

Yarp!

Harry Styles (inactive) - @tpwkay

I also have a locked private side blog where I reblog resources and tutorials to save for later.

I’m considering making a Star Wars/Mandalorian side blog but idk if it’s worth it or not just yet.

3. How long have you been on tumblr?

Probably 13 years now? At least? I’ve been through the following fandoms: Supernatural -> NCIS -> Hunger Games (Josh Hutcherson) (spent A Lot of time here) -> WWE -> was an ~aesthetic~ blog for a while -> back to Supernatural -> hockey (also spent A Lot of time here) -> F1. I did most of that on one blog but started from scratch with this blog.

4. Do you have a queue tag?

Not yet, but I don’t queue things often enough to have one. I like posts to go back and tag/draft to post later most of the time. Unless I schedule a post (like a fic dropping), if I’m posting, I’m here!

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

This blog started because my sister @allgood-allways influenced me - I had been working in marketing for a couple years and when she got into F1 she said it could be a fun creative outlet that wasn’t my job.

Before, I think I had joined because it was the edgy, “cool” social media to use? Not many people that I knew irl had one and I liked it for that.

6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

George is one of my favorite drivers and I think the picture is goofy and cute.

7. Why did you choose your header?

On desktop, I’ve got a few different images on my theme - I’ve got an icon of Toto on the phone which is an outright reference to my ongoing fic series Texts with Toto and then I have the main header which is the Williams FW43B, and my sidebar pic is another one of George! Is is obvious who I support each race weekend yet?

On mobile, my header is a gif I made as a part of an edit set!

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

I have two that are neck and neck!

George Russell as Michelangelo’s David

Intersection presents Daniel Ricciardo (just passed 700 which is insane!)

9. How many mutuals do you have?

A bunch - 75+. I haven’t updated my list in a while though.

10. How many followers do you have?

377 lovely lil beans! Idk why they’re all here but I love them for it.

11. How many people do you follow?

165 - I’d love to follow more though!

12. Have you ever made a shit post?

Just once! It was worth it. I should do it more often. I get scared to shit post cause I never know how it’s gonna be interpreted.

13. How often do you use tumblr a day?

Way more than I should. I work from home right now and we’re in a very slow period, so it’s near constant during the day.

14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog?

Not that I’m aware of. I really try to stay out of drama - it doesn’t do great things for my anxiety so I just keep my mouth shut. I am, however, blocked by a few people I’ve never interacted with, which is interesting! (I block back 🤷��‍♀️)

15. How do you feel about the ‘you need to reblog’ posts?

As someone who creates content (edits, gifsets, fic), I’m enraged constantly by the like-to-reblog ratio on my own posts and on the posts of other creators in this community it’s. That’s not to mention the fad of saving/reposting/sharing without credit that a lot of people do (this will also get you blocked btw!) both here and on other social sites. If I make something and it doesn’t get notes, that’s fine, but if it gets a ton of likes and no reblogs, it’s incredibly discouraging. Reblogging is the only way to spread content - liking literally does nothing. I’ve seen people stop creating because of it - cause what’s the point? Yeah, the appreciation of getting a like is nice, but if you don’t enjoy something enough to share it with your followers, just don’t interact with it at all. I hate the ~aesthetic~ vibes that so many blogs tend to stick to - I can guarantee you that the percent of your followers that actually look at your blog as a whole is very, very low. We see what’s on our dashes for a very short period of time- if you don’t reblog it, and your followers don’t reblog it from you, people don’t see it. I want content creators to be selfish and reblog their work over and over again, to continue exposing their followers to it, especially if no one else is sharing it for them. They deserve the recognition and attention.

16. Do you like tag games?

I love them! I have some incredible friends that always tag me in them and I am so appreciative (like, someone Thought Of Me! I was On Their Mind!) each time it happens. Plus, I’m not a very openly ~sharing~ person most of the time so it’s nice to have an opportunity to do so that doesn’t feel awkward or forced.

17. Do you like ask games?

I love ask games too but I always end up feeling guilty for clogging my followers’ dashes with answers - I think that guilt of over-sharing is something I need to work on! It’s my blog and I can post what I want to!

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

I have mutuals that have a ton of followers and mutuals that don’t have many - I myself am definitely not tumblr famous so who am I to judge.

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I have a lot of friend-crushes on mutuals - mutuals that I seriously would love to be friends with but I’m too shy/feel too annoying to reach out.

I think it can be hard sometimes on tumblr too to approach people that already seem to have a close-knit group of friends. It’s like wandering over to the popular table at lunch in the hopes that they won’t turn you away.

20. Tags!

Just a few! @race-me @mushroomlance @sunshine-ricciardo @p1tstop and @ricciardosmile

[the-connection]

Image: Daniela Cadore

My Instagram Story persona could not be further from the real me. 

She's chill, constantly smiling and laughing, and always living her best life in some far-flung place that looks as if it were built with the 'gram in mind. To be quite honest with you, I sometimes prefer her to my IRL self. 

Scratch the highly-curated veneer of the 2-dimensional version of the life I purport to lead, and you'll see someone struggling daily with severe anxiety and low self-esteem.

This gaping chasm of difference between these two identities became a source of anxiety for me this summer. "Will people be disappointed when they see I'm not as fun as my Instagram self?" I worried as I returned from a summer holiday in France, which I'd documented on my Story.  

SEE ALSO: How a vacation and a digital detox app helped cure my iPhone addiction

I knew my Instagram Story wasn't telling the full story. And, I'll wager yours doesn't either.

A new book by journalist and influencer Katherine Ormerod explores these very feelings that the social media generation experience every single day — and, crucially, the impact social media has on our wellbeing. 

Its title — Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life — might sound a little scaremongering, but Ormerod's well-researched book is packed full of wisdom that will not only make you feel less alone in your worries, it offers advice and tips to help you armour up against the all-consuming force that is social media. Given that one in three young women feel a pressure to portray their lives as "perfect" on social media, according to recent research by Girl Guiding, this book couldn't be more needed. 

"There was a moment where I sat back on my sun lounger thinking: what am I projecting here?"

Ormerod is no stranger to the feeling that her Instagram persona doesn't measure up to the reality of her everyday existence. A journalist and social media influencer with 46K Instagram followers, Ormerod tells Mashable she started to feel "quite complicit in a lot of the messages" that social media can disseminate. But, one moment made her "sit back and take a moment," she says. 

"I was on holiday in Tulum, which is obviously the Instagram destination, with a bunch of other amazingly successful hard-working women," says Ormerod. 

"None of us had come from loads of money, we'd all made our own businesses, and worked really hard." She says that while they were all having a "lovely time" they were also "fielding calls from the office" and managing a variety of things that come hand in hand with running your own business. 

View this post on Instagram

Tonight’s first instalment of realz captions comes in the form of this monochrome summer shot. People often ask me who takes my Instagram pictures and more often than not it’s my boyfriend. Everyone laughs about the ‘Instagram husband,’ but for me it’s actually a thing and over the years has caused more than its fair share of rows. The cataclysmic argument which followed this shot was focused on the fact that I wanted to take a picture when he was hungover and not in the mood - which really is fair enough. Without Hade snapping me on his iPhone pretty much everywhere we go, there would be no pictures on this account and I’m unendingly grateful for his patience. But that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes have flare ups and a worrying amount of time it’s because of pictures for Instagram. So while it may seem that this account is all me, there are actually two of us behind it, generally getting on but sometimes arguing about how he’s managed to make me look like I’ve got 17 chins #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

A post shared by Ｋａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ Ｏｒｍｅｒｏｄ (@katherine_ormerod) on Sep 11, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

But, the way the trip was presented on social media couldn't have been further from the hustle and grind that went on behind the scenes. "The pictures we ended up posting from that trip were sunset views, five star hotel rooms, designer bikinis, and there was a moment where I sat back on my sun lounger thinking: what am I projecting here?"

"You aren't insulated from tragedy. It's part and parcel of life and no one's life is as perfect as it looks."

She says the story told on Instagram didn't accurately represent "what success is really all about" — or the hard graft that not only leads up, but runs concurrent to success. "I truly feel that social media is only representing the rewards without showing the graft that goes into getting to that place," says Ormerod. 

She decided to set up a website called Work Work Work and she began interviewing friends and fellow journalists and influencers about the "less photogenic sides of their lives." These conversations formed the basis of the idea for the book. 

"We discussed mental health issues, eating issues, miscarriages — all the universal issues women go through no matter how ritzy your life might look on social media," says Ormerod. "We've all got parents, we've all got health issues. However privileged you are, you aren't insulated from tragedy. It's part and parcel of life and no one's life is as perfect as it looks." For those of us who've posted glamorous-looking selfies during some of the most difficult moments of our lives, Ormerod's words ring very true. 

Ormerod says that while being an influencer might look like you're leading the most lavish, luxurious life imaginable, the reality is anything but. "I come from a really modest background, but it looks like I'm really rich on social media," she says. Armed with the knowledge of just how much it took to get to this point in her career (doing several low paid jobs in order to be able to work for free for two years on a fashion magazine) Ormerod is under no illusion about the 'glamour' that comes with life as an influencer. 

But, that's not to say she's immune from social media's influence on how she sees herself. 

"It's such a relief in the unbearable pressure cooker of perfection and social comparison to hear that actually it is a fantasy."

 "I'm just coming up to 35, I thought by this time I'd be married, I'd be in a nice family home, I'd be really secure financially," she says. "Instead, I have a baby and I run my own business but a lot of those tick-boxes have remained unticked, or have veered terribly off path." 

Ormerod puts this down to "benchmark anxiety." "You think when you look on social media that everyone has hit these standards that you have been socially conditioned to think you're meant to have hit by a certain amount of time," she says. One thing that has helped her counter these feelings is the realisation that "it's all bullshit." Once you realise this, she says, "the edge of social media comparison does wear away." 

There are two sides to the story and many of us — myself included — are only sharing one side with our followers. But, Ormerod wants to change that. 

"Obviously I do put pretty pictures up online because I love fashion and shoes and beauty and I'm not ashamed of that — that's part of who I am. But, I do really believe it's important to show both sides," she says. As part of her book launch, she's started a digital campaign encouraging people to tell the real story behind their supposedly perfect pictures.

View this post on Instagram

I’ve shared the story behind this fashion week in a few places, but in short, my husband had just left me, I’d found out that thousands of pounds were no longer in my bank account and I was struggling to get my landlord to let me out of my lease. As an addition to this, as a total rebound I’d also had a fling with an American guy who had persuaded me to come early to New York before fashion week to see him. On a crazy whim I decided to go and booked the hotel room - which he said he would pay for - on my credit card. I had so much anticipation, had decided to use the money I did have left to get a wax and left feeling like I was about to start the next stage of my romantic life. But then I arrived and he stopped answering my messages. Finally at midnight I got a text saying he couldn’t actually make it as had to go to a hockey match. A HOCKEY MATCH. I never heard from him again and all I was left with was my Brazilian wax and the hotel room bill. Then I had to do fashion week having not only just been left by my husband, but also the rebound guy. It was BRUTAL. But this was the picture I posted. #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

A post shared by Ｋａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ Ｏｒｍｅｒｏｄ (@katherine_ormerod) on Sep 11, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

She's reposting old photos and sharing the no-holds-barred story behind those images. "My husband had just left me, I’d found out that thousands of pounds were no longer in my bank account and I was struggling to get my landlord to let me out of my lease," reads one of the captions to Ormerod's reposted 'gram. She then details that not only had her husband just left her, but she'd flown to New York to spend time with a "rebound guy" who promptly stopped replying to her texts the minute she arrived. "I never heard from him again and all I was left with was my Brazilian wax and the hotel room bill," she wrote. 

"There's a picture of me at Glastonbury saying 'yeah, everyone loves going to Glastonbury but I fucking hate festivals and I was just there for the content,'" Ormerod tells me. "I came home after one night but I didn't put that on Instagram." 

View this post on Instagram

Here’s another picture of me from that year - this time at Glastonbury. When you look at social media everyone seems to be on endless once in a lifetime experiences and constantly having fun. But sometimes living for content - or going places and doing things just so you have something to talk about/ appear to be having an interesting life can mean you waste a lot of your time doing things you don’t much enjoy. I fucking hate festivals. There is nothing casual about me so it takes all my strength to pretend Im ok with camping. I don’t particularly like the countryside, hate being around people doing drugs and never know any of the bands or the words to the songs. I ended up leaving Glasto after one night sodden, drenched and totally, totally over it. But I didn’t write that on instagram #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

A post shared by Ｋａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ Ｏｒｍｅｒｏｄ (@katherine_ormerod) on Sep 10, 2018 at 12:04pm PDT

Based on the responses she's been getting, Ormerod feels that this double-sided stories are something that people are "dying to see." "It's such a relief in the unbearable pressure cooker of perfection and social comparison to hear that actually it is a fantasy," she says. 

Of course, telling yourself that it's all "bullshit" is far easier said than done. But, Ormerod's book identifies on a granular level the myriad thoughts and feelings one experiences when social media begins to skew our perceptions of ourselves. 

"How close is your online identity to your offline identity? Are you merely tinkering with the digital version of your life, or is it pure fiction? Take a long, calm look at what you are curating online and be honest with yourself," reads the book. "Does it feel like hard work to keep up the pretence?" 

For many of us, the answer to that last question is a resounding yes. But, rather than giving us a rap on the wrist, or telling us to delete all our apps, or labelling us self-obsessed narcissists (as many headlines do), this book offers a realistic step-by-step approach to taking back control over social media's place in our lives. 

"I think there's nothing wrong with social media, there's nothing wrong with technology," says Ormerod. "But the way we're using it and our perspective on it is something we need to reframe and that's really what this book is about."

View this post on Instagram

This was a very popular picture - taken at my mum’s in France. But what I wasn’t mentioning was that I was 9 weeks pregnant and PUKING MY GUTS up about 15 times a day. I’m holding my bag in front of my tummy and have got a lot of bronzer on, so masking the fact that I was in actual hell. The second picture is actually what I looked like every day for the next month and a half. Friends have asked me how I was so stylish through my pregnancy - the truth is I was mainly in oversized t-shirts with my head in the loo, but that look, strangely, did not make it on to social media #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

A post shared by Ｋａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ Ｏｒｍｅｒｏｄ (@katherine_ormerod) on Sep 11, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

Reading that I'm not alone in feeling like my Instagram persona is like having a prettier, happier, more successful twin sister is reassuring. Having the tools to do something about that feeling? Even better. 

Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life is available from Sept. 20 for £12.99. 

WATCH: Chrissy Teigen made a transfixing Instagram story about a snail's journey to safety

Read more: http://mashable.com/

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

If you prefer the Instagram version of yourself, read this book

My Instagram Story persona could not be further from the real me. 

She's chill, constantly smiling and laughing, and always living her best life in some far-flung place that looks as if it were built with the 'gram in mind. To be quite honest with you, I sometimes prefer her to my IRL self. 

Scratch the highly-curated veneer of the 2-dimensional version of the life I purport to lead, and you'll see someone struggling daily with severe anxiety and low self-esteem.

This gaping chasm of difference between these two identities became a source of anxiety for me this summer. "Will people be disappointed when they see I'm not as fun as my Instagram self?" I worried as I returned from a summer holiday in France, which I'd documented on my Story.  

SEE ALSO: How a vacation and a digital detox app helped cure my iPhone addiction

I knew my Instagram Story wasn't telling the full story. And, I'll wager yours doesn't either.

A new book by journalist and influencer Katherine Ormerod explores these very feelings that the social media generation experience every single day — and, crucially, the impact social media has on our wellbeing. 

Its title — Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life — might sound a little scaremongering, but Ormerod's well-researched book is packed full of wisdom that will not only make you feel less alone in your worries, it offers advice and tips to help you armour up against the all-consuming force that is social media. Given that one in three young women feel a pressure to portray their lives as "perfect" on social media, according to recent research by Girl Guiding, this book couldn't be more needed. 

Ormerod is no stranger to the feeling that her Instagram persona doesn't measure up to the reality of her everyday existence. A journalist and social media influencer with 46K Instagram followers, Ormerod tells Mashable she started to feel "quite complicit in a lot of the messages" that social media can disseminate. But, one moment made her "sit back and take a moment," she says. 

"I was on holiday in Tulum, which is obviously the Instagram destination, with a bunch of other amazingly successful hard-working women," says Ormerod. 

"None of us had come from loads of money, we'd all made our own businesses, and worked really hard." She says that while they were all having a "lovely time" they were also "fielding calls from the office" and managing a variety of things that come hand in hand with running your own business. 

View this post on Instagram

Tonight’s first instalment of realz captions comes in the form of this monochrome summer shot. People often ask me who takes my Instagram pictures and more often than not it’s my boyfriend. Everyone laughs about the ‘Instagram husband,’ but for me it’s actually a thing and over the years has caused more than its fair share of rows. The cataclysmic argument which followed this shot was focused on the fact that I wanted to take a picture when he was hungover and not in the mood - which really is fair enough. Without Hade snapping me on his iPhone pretty much everywhere we go, there would be no pictures on this account and I’m unendingly grateful for his patience. But that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes have flare ups and a worrying amount of time it’s because of pictures for Instagram. So while it may seem that this account is all me, there are actually two of us behind it, generally getting on but sometimes arguing about how he’s managed to make me look like I’ve got 17 chins #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

A post shared by Ｋａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ Ｏｒｍｅｒｏｄ (@katherine_ormerod) on Sep 11, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

But, the way the trip was presented on social media couldn't have been further from the hustle and grind that went on behind the scenes. "The pictures we ended up posting from that trip were sunset views, five star hotel rooms, designer bikinis, and there was a moment where I sat back on my sun lounger thinking: what am I projecting here?"

She says the story told on Instagram didn't accurately represent "what success is really all about" — or the hard graft that not only leads up, but runs concurrent to success. "I truly feel that social media is only representing the rewards without showing the graft that goes into getting to that place," says Ormerod. 

She decided to set up a website called Work Work Work and she began interviewing friends and fellow journalists and influencers about the "less photogenic sides of their lives." These conversations formed the basis of the idea for the book. 

"We discussed mental health issues, eating issues, miscarriages — all the universal issues women go through no matter how ritzy your life might look on social media," says Ormerod. "We've all got parents, we've all got health issues. However privileged you are, you aren't insulated from tragedy. It's part and parcel of life and no one's life is as perfect as it looks." For those of us who've posted glamorous-looking selfies during some of the most difficult moments of our lives, Ormerod's words ring very true. 

Ormerod says that while being an influencer might look like you're leading the most lavish, luxurious life imaginable, the reality is anything but. "I come from a really modest background, but it looks like I'm really rich on social media," she says. Armed with the knowledge of just how much it took to get to this point in her career (doing several low paid jobs in order to be able to work for free for two years on a fashion magazine) Ormerod is under no illusion about the 'glamour' that comes with life as an influencer. 

But, that's not to say she's immune from social media's influence on how she sees herself. 

 "I'm just coming up to 35, I thought by this time I'd be married, I'd be in a nice family home, I'd be really secure financially," she says. "Instead, I have a baby and I run my own business but a lot of those tick-boxes have remained unticked, or have veered terribly off path." 

Ormerod puts this down to "benchmark anxiety." "You think when you look on social media that everyone has hit these standards that you have been socially conditioned to think you're meant to have hit by a certain amount of time," she says. One thing that has helped her counter these feelings is the realisation that "it's all bullshit." Once you realise this, she says, "the edge of social media comparison does wear away." 

There are two sides to the story and many of us — myself included — are only sharing one side with our followers. But, Ormerod wants to change that. 

"Obviously I do put pretty pictures up online because I love fashion and shoes and beauty and I'm not ashamed of that — that's part of who I am. But, I do really believe it's important to show both sides," she says. As part of her book launch, she's started a digital campaign encouraging people to tell the real story behind their supposedly perfect pictures.

View this post on Instagram

I’ve shared the story behind this fashion week in a few places, but in short, my husband had just left me, I’d found out that thousands of pounds were no longer in my bank account and I was struggling to get my landlord to let me out of my lease. As an addition to this, as a total rebound I’d also had a fling with an American guy who had persuaded me to come early to New York before fashion week to see him. On a crazy whim I decided to go and booked the hotel room - which he said he would pay for - on my credit card. I had so much anticipation, had decided to use the money I did have left to get a wax and left feeling like I was about to start the next stage of my romantic life. But then I arrived and he stopped answering my messages. Finally at midnight I got a text saying he couldn’t actually make it as had to go to a hockey match. A HOCKEY MATCH. I never heard from him again and all I was left with was my Brazilian wax and the hotel room bill. Then I had to do fashion week having not only just been left by my husband, but also the rebound guy. It was BRUTAL. But this was the picture I posted. #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

A post shared by Ｋａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ Ｏｒｍｅｒｏｄ (@katherine_ormerod) on Sep 11, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

She's reposting old photos and sharing the no-holds-barred story behind those images. "My husband had just left me, I’d found out that thousands of pounds were no longer in my bank account and I was struggling to get my landlord to let me out of my lease," reads one of the captions to Ormerod's reposted 'gram. She then details that not only had her husband just left her, but she'd flown to New York to spend time with a "rebound guy" who promptly stopped replying to her texts the minute she arrived. "I never heard from him again and all I was left with was my Brazilian wax and the hotel room bill," she wrote. 

"There's a picture of me at Glastonbury saying 'yeah, everyone loves going to Glastonbury but I fucking hate festivals and I was just there for the content,'" Ormerod tells me. "I came home after one night but I didn't put that on Instagram." 

View this post on Instagram

Here’s another picture of me from that year - this time at Glastonbury. When you look at social media everyone seems to be on endless once in a lifetime experiences and constantly having fun. But sometimes living for content - or going places and doing things just so you have something to talk about/ appear to be having an interesting life can mean you waste a lot of your time doing things you don’t much enjoy. I fucking hate festivals. There is nothing casual about me so it takes all my strength to pretend Im ok with camping. I don’t particularly like the countryside, hate being around people doing drugs and never know any of the bands or the words to the songs. I ended up leaving Glasto after one night sodden, drenched and totally, totally over it. But I didn’t write that on instagram #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

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Based on the responses she's been getting, Ormerod feels that this double-sided stories are something that people are "dying to see." "It's such a relief in the unbearable pressure cooker of perfection and social comparison to hear that actually it is a fantasy," she says. 

Of course, telling yourself that it's all "bullshit" is far easier said than done. But, Ormerod's book identifies on a granular level the myriad thoughts and feelings one experiences when social media begins to skew our perceptions of ourselves. 

"How close is your online identity to your offline identity? Are you merely tinkering with the digital version of your life, or is it pure fiction? Take a long, calm look at what you are curating online and be honest with yourself," reads the book. "Does it feel like hard work to keep up the pretence?" 

For many of us, the answer to that last question is a resounding yes. But, rather than giving us a rap on the wrist, or telling us to delete all our apps, or labelling us self-obsessed narcissists (as many headlines do), this book offers a realistic step-by-step approach to taking back control over social media's place in our lives. 

"I think there's nothing wrong with social media, there's nothing wrong with technology," says Ormerod. "But the way we're using it and our perspective on it is something we need to reframe and that's really what this book is about."

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This was a very popular picture - taken at my mum’s in France. But what I wasn’t mentioning was that I was 9 weeks pregnant and PUKING MY GUTS up about 15 times a day. I’m holding my bag in front of my tummy and have got a lot of bronzer on, so masking the fact that I was in actual hell. The second picture is actually what I looked like every day for the next month and a half. Friends have asked me how I was so stylish through my pregnancy - the truth is I was mainly in oversized t-shirts with my head in the loo, but that look, strangely, did not make it on to social media #whysocialmediaisruiningyourlife

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Reading that I'm not alone in feeling like my Instagram persona is like having a prettier, happier, more successful twin sister is reassuring. Having the tools to do something about that feeling? Even better. 

Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life is available from Sept. 20 for £12.99. 

WATCH: Chrissy Teigen made a transfixing Instagram story about a snail's journey to safety

[amfmstudios]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title=”Interview by Paul Salfen” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-pencil” i_color=”custom” style=”shadow” border_width=”7″ add_icon=”true” i_custom_color=”#ff0000″][interactive_banner_2 banner_title=”Tyler Shields: Provocateur” banner_desc=”Edgy. Dark. Controversial. Risque. Shocking. These are words often used to describe the work of “Hollywood’s Favorite Photographer” Tyler Shields. But when the man behind it appears to not be living in theme with his work and has a rather sunny disposition, how his mind works seems even more intriguing. For a man that calls Marilyn Manson a close friend and often creates suggestive and thought-provoking work, one might expect a brooding or odd creature to be behind it. Instead, the 34-year-old is charming, engaging, and quite funny. ” banner_image=”id^31383|url^http://www.amfm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/TYLER-SHIELDS-Orchid.jpg|caption^null|alt^null|title^TYLER SHIELDS-Orchid|description^null” banner_style=”style7″ image_opacity=”1″ image_opacity_on_hover=”1″ banner_title_font_family=”font_family:Abril Fatface|font_call:Abril+Fatface” banner_title_style=”font-style:italic;,font-weight:bold;” banner_title_font_size=”desktop:70px;” banner_desc_font_family=”font_family:Abril Fatface|font_call:Abril+Fatface” banner_desc_style=”font-style:italic;,font-weight:bold;” banner_desc_font_size=”desktop:30px;”][vc_column_text]Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1982, Shields didn’t get into photography until 2003 – but then published a book just two years later. Since then, his work has been shown in exhibitions all over the world. After starting a decade ago directing music videos, he moved on to photos and has done striking work with the likes of starlets Emma Roberts, Lindsay Lohan, Ashley Greene, and Abigail Breslin.

His next endeavor is film. He directed the thriller Final Girl and has another, Outlaw, that is finished, and another called The Wild Ones in production.

In between those, though, his bread and butter are these art gallery exhibitions like the one currently at the Samuel Lynne Galleries in the Design District in Dallas. “I actually lived here a bit when I was a kid,” he reveals. “There was a skate park that I used to come to Eisenberg’s. So Arlo Eisenberg, who was a big pro skater, was a friend of mine, so I uscalleded to come see him and I met JD [Miller, the gallery owner and fellow artist] and them and they wanted me to come do a gallery and I met Gina [Ginsburg, entrepreneur and Dallas socialite] and I just kept coming back.”

But it’s not just a full gallery he desires while in town. “I like to eat about my body weight in steak. I’ve eaten enough steak to feed a small army at this point,” he laughs. “Literally last night I got off the plane and I said, “Steakhouse. Let’s go!” We went to this place, Al Biernat’s. Gina takes me there every time.”

Shields then looks around at his work surrounding him and begins to recall the great moments with a proud look on his face.

AMFM Magazine: I can’t imagine what it takes to get one of these images to happen, much less a gallery – or a book – of them. Which shot pained you the most?

Tyler Shields: Oh, man. The Marie Antoinette shots took a long time because we built everything. The sets, they made the champagne glasses, the wigs – I had a team of 20 women making wigs. Then we took sledgehammers to it at the end. That one took the most time. The most interesting one was the KKK one [where a naked black man appears to be hanging a Klan member]. I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone this: when we were doing it, we were doing it in a swamp and I’m in the swamp as well but you can’t see me because there are all of these bushes because there was a hill above it. But there was a family hiking and so they’re hiking by and my assistant and everyone is hiding in the bushes so they can’t be seen in the shot. I’m literally up to here in the swamp and I see the guy and the guy holding the rope says, “There’s a dude up there. What do I do?” and I said, “Act natural.” It was so ridiculous that I said that that he just didn’t do anything and so he’s still holding him up. Because if he lets the rope go, the guy is just going to fall down. So the guy is hiking and he looks down on us and he looks down and he goes, “Come on! Come on!” and he’s got kids out there. So somewhere out there there’s a guy that got an eyeful of us taking that but not me – just that moment. Imagine him calling the park ranger: “I don’t know what is happening but…”

AMFM: You’ve got a lot of people talking about your work with each new set. How do you continue to top yourself?


TS: Well, when we did “The Dirty Side of Glamour” my friend said, “Well, we did it. You’re not going to top that.” We did the next thing and he said, “Alright, you’re not going to top that.” And now he doesn’t say that anymore. He just says, “OK, do that. You’ll figure it out.” There are so many ideas. I had the idea for the Marie Antoinette stuff so many years ago but it just takes time to get it together sometimes – like the orchid shot. It took three years for me to get that right – the color and orchid.

AMFM: How many frames would you have to go through to get that shot?

TS: Oh, no…there’s only, like, two. Once we had it – I probably spent 30 minutes getting her just to play with the tongue before I even took the picture. And then shoot a couple and that’s it.

AMFM: So where do you find your inspiration? Do you find it just walking around and you just see stuff different than, say, I do?

TS: One hundred percent. It’s interesting because people say, “Oh, you must have seen this from this” and they’re always trying to connect it to something but I just…I remember with this one there was a girl I was shooting and it looked nothing like this but she was just blow-drying her hair and I thought it would be funny if she put it in her mouth and was blow-drying her hair. Those two things had nothing to do with each other at all, but that’s just what I see when I see that and then with the car one I always loved the idea of the woman kind of crushing the car but I saw a Lambo and a woman walking by with her dog and I thought, “Oh, what if the woman could just take her heels and smash the car?”

AMFM: It is amazing how many images we see and ideas we have in our heads in a day and sometimes it’s hard to tell where the inspiration comes from after a while, right?

TS: Of course. And now we’re so inundated with images. When I started out, I didn’t know much about photography or photographers and most of them didn’t have websites or a photography book collection so every once in a while you would see a Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, or Vogue cover but you wouldn’t see stuff like this but now every day so many photographs are just posted alone on Instagram, so there’s just so, so much out there.

AMFM: Is it interesting to see when people post and repost your photos and what they say about them?

TS: Yeah. It’s really cool to see when people repost what they actually say about it and the ones that take on their own life. I’ll get messages like, “Oh, Gigi Hadid posted this photo.” And she doesn’t even know that I took it but they’re just posting it because they love the photo.

AMFM: And some become memes. Is that an honor?

TS: Yeah! I think if you make something that gets turned into a meme you’re hitting a certain point of the zeitgeist, which is fun. I’ve seen the ballet one and the one of the girl that’s got the really crazy attitude and there’s like 20 memes for that one, which I think is awesome.

AMFM: In your book, the celebrities aren’t credited underneath the images. Most people would want to use their names to help create interest but you don’t do that.

TS: You could take a photo of Kate Moss and they would buy it because it’s Kate Moss but the idea for me is to use people that create the photo I want to create and they’re acting in it but it’s not about who’s in it. That’s when you really hit the best thing. [Points to an image of a naked woman covering herself but with no face shown]That girl is an actress. I’m not going to say who she is but she was just playing that part. It doesn’t matter who it is – it’s about the photo. That being said, I’ve shot people where it’s all about them but the stuff in here, it’s not the goal.

AMFM: Which photographers influenced you?

TS: It’s weird because like I said, I knew who Annie Leibovitz was, Ansel Adams, but when I started doing the auctions, that’s when I started to understand the power of Helmut Newton, the power of [Robert] Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, [Richard] Avedon, and people started comparing to me to Helmut Newton back in the day and I thought, “OK, let me look this guy up” and he’s a character. He’s hilarious…one of the funniest people. As you see what these people do – we’re awarded so much more now. Helmut was great and he worked for such a long time and did commercial stuff but didn’t want to do that anymore and he just started shooting for himself and that wasn’t really a thing back then. You couldn’t make a living selling prints in the ‘60s and ‘70s whereas if he was doing it today, he wouldn’t need to work for anybody.

AMFM: But now you can do it and you don’t have to shoot Super Bowl commercials or anything.

TS: Without those guys like Mapplethorpe…those guys forged the way for this kind of value in photography – which I obviously appreciate! [Laughs]

AMFM: You have a lot of aspiring photographers looking up to you. What advice would you give them?

TS: You know, one of my assistants – I explained it to him like this: when you start out in photography, you see what you can be – but it takes time. You could pick up a camera today and you could copy an Instagram style and have a bunch of followers on Instagram – you could have 10 million followers on Instagram and not sell one print. You just have to understand who you’re making the work for. You’re making the work for a gallery, for a wall. I have some photos that may not get the most likes on Instagram but people buy them. You have to figure out what you want and make the work that people want. I’ve talked to a lot of people that say that’s what they want but they’re afraid that their mom won’t like it or they’ll be judged for it and that’s the worst.

AMFM: And sometimes you just need to get out of LA and see what everyone else says about your work.

TS: Yeah! I just did a show in like this Ohio and we had 800 people come on opening night and they’re excited I’m coming there.

AMFM: I know I’d never be a subject of yours but how do you find the subjects? Do you just look at someone and know that’s who you want to use next?

TS: It’s funny because you’ll meet someone sometimes now but it’s usually a referral. “Oh my God, you gotta shoot my boyfriend,” “You gotta shoot my friend,” and sometimes people are emailing you and sending you photos. Sometimes I’ll see someone and it doesn’t look anything like what I would do with them but that’s part of the fun of it. You have to see the potential of what someone can be rather than who they are. You can use anybody for anything if the theme fits.

AMFM: And now it looks like your next medium is film. Of course we saw Final Girl, but you’ve got a few pending.

TS: I’m working on film that will be done I’ll say at the end of February and I’m working on a script that my company got that was on the blacklist – so I’m working on those now and I’m doing a new project with [Marilyn] Manson. He’s a wild man. He’s funny – but the nicest guy. Literally we talk every day. He’s the funniest texter. Just ridiculous.

AMFM: What do you want people to get out of this exhibition when they walk out?

TS: My biggest thing with making this type of stuff is I want to allow someone to form their own opinion. I had some people ask – one in an interview – “You did this because of this, this, and this” – they were so sure of it and I said “I’m not going to argue with you” and they said, “Because I’m right” and I said, “No, it’s not because you’re right and that’s your opinion.” I make stuff and I won’t think it’s controversial at all and people will freak out and I’ll say, “What’s the big deal? It’s a flower! I don’t know why you think it looks like something else. To me it’s just a flower!” But that’s part of the fun – you allow the interpretation of it.” When you start to explain it, you take away the fun of it because the conversation is why you make it. When the KKK image came out, this guy came up to me and said, “This image really affects me” and I said, “OK, that’s awesome.” And he goes, “Yeah, it’s crazy that the guy is saving the guy” and I hadn’t heard anyone say that that before. If I had said beforehand, “No, this is what it means and this is what you have to think about it,” there’s no fun in that. You have to leave mystery.

The Tyler Shields: “Provocateur” exhibition is on view at the Samuel Lynne Galleries in Dallas through February 11, 2017.

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Tyler Shields: Provocateur Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1982, Shields didn’t get into photography until 2003 – but then published a book just two years later.