#it will be a bunch of forums and a handful of articles talking about how everyone here says pop

[buffintruder]

My Mandela effect is people insisting (and statistics showing) that the Pacific Northwest is a "pop" region of the country, even though I've lived here almost all my life and have only ever heard it as soda

Like there is evidence that soda is perhaps a newer trend here, more pronounced on my side of the mountains. But it's not like I have never interacted with people 30+ years older than me from here?? And people are getting polls from cities near where I live or have lived, plus anecdotal evidence, that say more than half of the people say pop

I feel like I'm losing my mind, where are they getting these people who say pop

[olderthannetfic]

hiii i know you're just a person and not a library but if you happen to have them on hand, i'd greatly thank you for some resources on how social justice topics first entered fandom pre-tumblr-2010s, especially in the 90s or earlier is the period i'm interested in, if fans were very eager on being "politically correct" and went out of their way to find related academic texts or if they sort of had to be "kicked in the butt" to do research by people who were already involved in social justice irl, and also if there was pushback against social justice entering fandom & what the arguments were (i know the japanese had the yaoi ronso, i wonder if there is some clearly traceable event like that for the western fandom, or just some insight into the decades-long process it was and how the arguments have changed overtime, eg. yesterday i stumbled across a forum discussion about how a certain character using misogynistic language is "just how working class people talk", & it's so interesting bc that's a kind of argument which seems to have fallen out of circulation completely, so that got me wondering on what other shifts there could have been👀)

--

I mean... "fans" is pretty broad. But if you want to know about m/m fans in Western fandom, that's a lot more answerable.

Ye olde slash fandom did have plenty of discussion around queerness. There's a certain style that's much more common in older fic where one of them is really struggling with homophobia and doesn't like the idea of being into men and so does something or other awful to create drama in the fic, and even then, some fans would be like "Then he's an undatable jerk!"

The further back you go in that kind of fandom, the more everyone is a mega-nerd and quite possibly an academic. There are certainly things that are openly talked about today that people were clueless about then (trans issues, for example), but you have to do a lot more kicking now to get someone to read an academic article on average.

I really cannot express how much more default-intellectual this hobby was in the 90s and before.

Here's an example of the sort of thing people were coming up with:

Here's a bunch of early 00s meta:

Here's a fanlore article with a smattering of the many long discussions about Why Slash:

Here's a starting point on some rapey stuff in Pros fandom that people had meta thoughts about:

And a common practice of writing fic to debunk/respond to other people's fic that used to be so overt there was a term for it:

You could also just go through the history of Escapade, the oldest slash con that's still running in 2023, and see what the panel topics were:

--

I'm not sure "social justice" is quite the way to look at this. If you're curious about m/m shippers and misogynist language or treatment of internalized homophobia in fic, that will be covered quite well by things like the above. Plenty of individual fanfic people were involved in AIDS activism because that was everywhere back then. But race stuff? Other kinds of social justice? I don't remember those coming up much.

And of course fans were not eager to be "politically correct". Being involved in slash fandom in the 80s was seen as being a pervert and a purveyor of underground pornography. These were rebels, not pearl-clutching line-toers.

They might have been eager to be pro-gay, but they sure as fuck didn't express it in those namby-pamby terms.

[ayanominitrash]

I See What You See (Shoko Ieiri x reader)

You’re a conspiracy theorist geek who believes in aliens. Your quiet friend-of-a-friend, Shoko Ieiri, doesn’t understand your obsession and almost seems to make fun of you for it. Next thing you know, the two of you gape at each other at an anticipated alien sighting event.

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖

Studying at a local college, you’ve recently been adopted by the ever-animated Satoru Gojo into his own friend group. That being said, you’re only closest to Satoru, and only starting to get to know his other friend, Suguru Geto. The last member, on the other hand, was still a total stranger to you - Ieiri Shoko. 

She’s mostly kept to herself. You find the short-haired brunette either reading a book, texting on her phone, or smoking a cigarette out on the school grounds -  sometimes all of the above at the same time. She’d join the group’s conversation here and there, and most of the time she’d scold the two boys whenever they got too noisy over their usual banter or when they were bickering over something stupid. 

Ieiri would only spare a glance at you to somewhat acknowledge your presence. It felt like she was actively ignoring you and didn’t approve of your new membership into their small circle of friends. One time, you did try to subtly leave and distance yourself, feeling unwanted, but Satoru would only rope you back in. And when you tried to befriend the quiet girl, she would only peek at you over her book or over her phone before tensing up her shoulders, offering quiet and abrupt answers to any of your questions for the sake of conversations. 

You feel a little hopeless. 

While this was your situation with your in-real-life friends, the place where you truly feel like you belong to a community is on your online forums for conspiracy junkies. Yes, that’s you. You’d let your eyes burn in radiation as you read through articles and articles of conspiracy theories, alien sightings, documentaries, backrooms, icebergs, etc.! The tapping of fingers against keyboard keys can be heard until the wee hours of the morning as you share your opinions with other members of the forum. You’d only bring up this obsession of yours once in a blue moon with your group of friends because you’re still unsure if they’d find you weird for this, your mission to befriend Ieiri was already on thin ice.

“Hey, I’m talking here y/n. Are you even listening? This is some important hot pipping tea I’m spilling.”

The white-haired boy snaps his fingers in front of your face as you’re seated on his right in the school cafeteria. You finally look up from your phone and see that Suguru is nibbling on his sandwich with a miserable look on his face, while Ieiri is drinking her juice box, looking bored as ever. 

“I don’t think you blabbering about how Miss Mei Mei and Principal Yaga would look good together is important.” You finally say after observing the scene before you.

His eyebrows shot up over his round sunglasses, “You kidding? Everyone’s been talking about it! Why aren’t you guys into school gossip? It can be so boring sometimes with the three of you.” 

“Satoru,” Suguru says once his mouth isn’t full. “It’s not nice to spread rumors, especially about our school heads.”

“It’s not really that entertaining,” Ieiri adds, talking around the straw in her mouth. “It’s just a bunch of old people not having any action cause they’re too busy with their work. How mundane.”

“See, for once though I didn’t make up the rumors this time. I got it through word of mouth. That counts for something right? Y/n, back me up?” When he notices you using your phone again, he snaps his fingers at you one more time. “Seriously, I’m getting hurt. Are you texting with someone?” 

“Hmm? Sorry, Satoru. I’m just engulfed in this article.” You say without taking your eyes off the phone, making Satoru lean closer to you to check out what you’re reading.

He starts to read aloud, “ ‘This Friday, a predicted sighting of an alien time-traveling portal will appear in this address’ -” The tall man leans back to give you an incredulous look. “There you are again. Are you actually planning to go to this event?” 

As the subject of your obsession is brought up on the table, your eyes sweep across the group to assess their reaction. Suguru only raises an eyebrow inquisitively, and when your pupils land on Ieiri, you feel your heart drop to your stomach.

She was pulling a face, as if she was weirded out by you.

You felt like a creep under her gaze. 

“W-well, I don’t know really know, hahaha…”You start to say, pocketing your phone absent-mindedly now that all of the attention is on you. “I mean, I read stuff like that but, I’m not that into it, you know? It’s just for shits and giggles. To kill time.”

Satoru scoffs at you, “Yeah right. It’s basically your whole being. You probably eat the moon landing farce articles for breakfast.” 

You glare at him, internally cursing at him for exposing you even more and making you feel ten times embarrassed. He only shrugs at your hostile look. 

Suguru closes his lunch box as he finishes his snack. “If you’re thinking of going, you should make sure it’s safe. Do you want us to come with you?” 

Before you can say anything, you’re surprised to hear a third voice. 

“On a Friday night with other geeks? I’d rather get wasted.” Ieiri says, staring directly at you. Suguru chuckles at this, making you sink further into your seat. 

“Ah, if you’re going to the bar, at least have Ioiri go with you.” The raven-haired man says, and you think to yourself that he’s the mother of the group with how much he looks out for everyone. “Or maybe they allow drinks at y/n’s event. Do they?”

With the spotlight back on you, your shoulders reach up to your ears in your humiliation as you start to lie, “Don’t worry about it! I’m not going so you guys can go to the bar. I have a paper due next week and I’ll focus on that so, hahaha…”

Satoru throws his head back in boredom, “Borrringggg. I’m not in the mood to do either of those. Suguru, want to play Animal Crossing instead?”

It was Suguru’s turn to be embarrassed, “Who says I play that? Shut up Satoru.”

As your white-haired friend pouts at Suguru, you try to not meet the only pair of eyes left on you, aware of their curious gaze making your face burn.

The weekend rolls in and you find yourself standing in the middle of an abandoned parking lot just on the outskirts of your small town. It was already night time and the stars glittered up above you as if they were dancing at the crowd of the conspiracy theories enthusiasts growing gradually below them. You can see how some of them dressed up for the occasion, with some going for the galactic theme. In comparison to you with your black shirt with a print of some type of Monopoly Mandela Effect, a short purple-checkered skirt with some low boots on. This simple outfit earned you a couple of compliments here and there. 

You purposely arrived an hour early before the predicted sighting of the portal to meet up with the forum members whom you’d constantly chat with. You stare at the screen if any of them have arrived yet. 

[You]: anyone here yet? 

[You]: sent a photo.

[You]: its early but a lot of peeps already here.

[aLiEnSaREreA]: stuck in traffic :(( 

[FeelinCuteMightTripToTheBackrooms]: waitin for this guy @aliensarereals

[FeelinCuteMightTripToTheBackrooms]: then otw

[IeireadyOrNot]:@you im here. come to the back.

[IeireadyOrNot]: sitting by the wrecked cars.

[You]:@IeireadyOrNot aight.

Trudging through the tall grass and through the sea of your fellow geeks, you make your way to the darkest part of the venue, spotting a silhouette of a small person who seems to be smoking a cigarette while leaning against a run-down car. You bring out your phone again to use the flashlight to guide your path. No one else seems to be at that part of the parking lot so you assume that they’re the person you just chatted with. As soon as you’re within earshot, you lift your phone up to light your internet friend and greet them, but you stop in your tracks with your mouth agape.

Your supposed internet friend was wearing the same look you probably have right now, except they have a lit cigarette in between their lips. 

And except it was Ieiri. 

With green alien ears for a headband. 

You almost drop your phone as your eyes widen at the short brunette. You watch as a read streak across her face immediately forms in her realization and you can’t help but bend at your stomach and start laughing. 

Ieiri lets out an exasperated huff, clouds of smoke coming out through her lips along with it. “What’s so funny?!” Feeling self-conscious, she can’t help but remove the headband from on top of her head, which made your laughter die down a bit.

“No - don’t take it off! Y-you look too cute with it.” Your cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling and laughing too hard. Your hands fly up to place her headband back in its rightful place.

She almost wacks your hands away, “Then what the fuck are you laughing about?”

Her crudeness caught you a bit off guard but you brushed it off. How can you bother yourself being hurt or scared of your shorter acquaintance when she’s got those cute little alien ears on? Or at this point, she might as well be your bestie with how long the two of you chat through the online forums you’re always on.

How ironic. 

“Nothing, it’s just…It’s funny seeing you here, considering how you just made fun of me a few days ago.” You say as you hoist yourself up on the car, sitting on the hood while Ieiri remains standing, leaning her backside against the front of the sorry excuse of a vehicle. 

“I wasn’t making fun of you.” She replies whilst she puts out her cigarette under her shoe.

“Then what was with the face?”

“Face?” Ieiri pauses, humming in thought. “I was just…shy I guess.”

“Shy? Right.” You chuckle, obviously not believing her. You think that she’s a quiet person but not because she’s shy. It’s probably because she has so little patience to deal with anything she thinks isn’t important.

The brunette throws a glare over her shoulder at the sarcastic tone of your voice. “I was! I don’t really talk about this stuff because…it’s…weird.”

“It’s not - “

“Plus, those two idiots will never let me hear the end of it. They’ll just tease me ‘till my ears bleed off.”

“But they were kinda nice about it with me though? Suguru even - “

“They were just being nice, y/n.” She deadpans. “You’re new to the group so they’re still testing the waters with how you respond to their, how should I put this, harassment?”

“Why? Did they say something…er, about me?” There’s a small uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach to think that your friends would make fun of you behind your back.

She catches your nervousness and shakes her head, “Satoru just likes to annoy people. Suguru’s no help either.”

You sigh in relief. When her reply was met with silence, she looked at you over her shoulder and saw you smiling at her. 

“Sorry, it’s just that this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had.”

The red streak on her cheeks doesn’t go unnoticed and you can’t help but chuckle at how you can still see it even though it was dark. 

“We chat almost every day so I don’t think the statement is true.”

“No, I mean, in real life. You’re always so quiet like you’re purposely doing it because you probably don’t like me.”

She whips her head back at you with a startled look. “That’s not true! I do like you!”

It was your turn to blush. Ieiri realizes the weight of her words and buries her face into her hands. “It’s - It’s - “

“Um, hahaha…It sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“Like I said, I’m too shy.” She says with her voice muffled by her hand covering her face. “Or I just kinda like you too much.”

“Like with me being a friend right? You probably had a feeling I was the one chatting with you. Then why are you so cold to me in real life?”

Ieiri looks back at you one more time, her lips in a tight line, the blush on her cheeks still evident. 

And you think you understood what she meant - what she meant when she said she liked you.

You can’t help but be the first one to break eye contact and move your gaze over to the now full venue. The brunette beauty flits her own eyes to the crowd. 

Not knowing what to say, you try to buy time by pretending to check on your GC’s updates:

[aLiEnSaREreA]: car broke down!!

[aLiEnSaREreA]: adjfhdjf hajdhfan vjkg!!

- aLiEnSaREreA is offline - 

[FeelinCuteMightTripToTheBackrooms]: idk if we gonna make it :((

[FeelinCuteMightTripToTheBackrooms]: if u go through the portal

[FeelinCuteMightTripToTheBackrooms]: tell them i said hi

-FeelinCuteMightTripToTheBackrooms is offline - 

[IeireadyOrNot]: this may be like once in a lifetime event

[IeireadyOrNot]: you guys suck

- IeireadyOrNot is offline - 

[You]: :(( 

“Nice screen name by the way. I don’t know why I didn’t think it was you.” You say as you lift your head up from staring at your phone. The short girl stays quiet.

“Ieiri? I- “

“Shh! It’s almost starting.” She says softly without looking at you. 

Your heart pounds in anticipation as you remember what you were here in this ugly parking lot for. The crowd cheers and starts a countdown. You join in at number 4. 

3…

2…

1…

It all went quiet.

No one moves for a couple of minutes before some start to swivel their heads around, checking for any anomaly nearby. 

Nothing. 

Ieiri lights a cigarette.

You bring your knees up to your chest wrapping your arms around your legs in your disappointment. Your friend eventually sits up on the hood of the car with you and wordlessly offers the lit cancer stick to you. You accept.

After you take a drag, you pass it to her. “Ieiri?”

“Hmm?”

“I think…I think I like you too.”

You hear her hold her breath before her face breaks into a small smile at you with a shaky giggle.

“You like me, or do you like ‘Ieireadyornot’?” 

“Aren’t they the same person?” 

She hums, looking at you with soft eyes as content washes over her expression. Suddenly, both of you freeze in your spots once a commotion in the crowd begins.

The both of you spot Suguru and Satoru amongst the crowd, sporting their matching green alien fur coats. The two of you girls look at each other before laughing, clearly seeing that Satoru is upset about the event being a hoax, and with Suguru only looking at him with his own dissatisfaction. 

“I guess you don’t have to worry about their teasing then!” You tell her, finally settling down from laughing, then intertwining your fingers through hers. “Guess we’re all geeks.”

She squeezes her hand in yours.

“You think they’re the other two people in our GC?” Ieiri puffs out.

You can’t help but laugh again at all the coincidences.

Your internet friends are just the same as your in-real-life-friends.

And your internet crush is also your in-real-life crush. 

Maybe you were the alien. Maybe you were the one who had a secret time-traveling portal because right now, everything feels like you’re in another dimension, one that you can only dream of. 

With Ieiri staring softly at you, her eyes holding galaxies. 

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖

(❀❛ ֊ ❛„)♡ reblogs and comments are appreciated//do not repost my work anywhere // I have no idea how I ended up writing for Shoko when I'm supposed to keep writing for Daddy Suguru AHAHAH

[pricechecktranslations]

I was wondering if you knew any more misconceptions or fan theories that were going around in the Evillious fandom? I’m looking to make a video on it so I wanted to see what kind of stuff the fandom came up during it’s peak. Also, thank you for your hard work. You’re one of my inspirations of getting into translating

Oh, anon, there are TONS of misconceptions that have gone around the Evillious fandom. It might not be as big an issue as it used to be, but misinformation has always plagued it.

Here's a few more noteworthy bits from what I and a friend of mine can remember (and dig up) under the cut, though bear in mind many of these are from before my time. You should be able to verify these for your video by looking at very early versions of character/location/etc pages on the Story of Evil and Evillious wikis (the Story of Evil wiki was one made for the Daughter of Evil series specifically, and was abandoned very early on) as well as old forum posts and user articles. Focus on things dated to 2013 or earlier, as most of (not all) the worst misconceptions were cleared up after that point:

People thought Clarith was a Venomania descendant. I assume you already saw the discussion on this, but in short, it was people jumping to conclusions based on some poorly worded translations.

It was believed for a while that the girl in Blood-stained Switch was named IR, and that she was split into two halves--one half becoming Elluka, and the other half becoming Irina. From what I could gather, this misconception was almost entirely based on some off-the-wall theorizing by a person on NicoNico Douga, which was mistaken for being mothy's own commentary based on a misunderstanding of how NicoNico Douga comments work (the splitting in half bit, at least; people thought her name was IR because a different commenter mistook her for IR, and I guess at the time the wiki didn't know that was Irina's name in the Lust novel).

It was believed, back when "Levianta Catastrophe" was called "Levianta Fire Disaster", that Full Moon Laboratory was about Elluka. Specifically, it was believed that she had killed Irina (this bit at least I don't blame them for because I think Irina killing Elluka was supposed to be a minor twist), and then became ruler of Levianta as Ma. As ruler, she created the Department of National Research, and performed a bunch of illegal experiments. She cast the Clockwork Secret Art as a "cleansing" spell, which backfired and blew up the country.

People thought Levianta was a Japanese inspired country, and that it was where Tailor of Enbizaka took place.

People thought Irina was using a variant of the body swap to control bodies (specifically that it was an "incomplete" version of the spell). This was based on a mistranslation.

Before fans really understood the presence of actual, literal demons in the series, it was believed that the voice talking to Kyle through his hand mirror in Praeludium was Prim, feeding his ego or brainwashing him or something.

Due to some slightly more understandable confusion, people thought The Last Revolver was about Gumillia, and (less understandably) that Julia had tasked her with retrieving the Venom Sword from her assassination target (who they thought, for no reason I can discern, worked for the Freezis Foundation).

Note that there are some misconceptions that are, genuinely, a result of mothy retconning (a lot of albums, for example, give false information, though they're often told from the perspective of characters who are lying or misinformed) or pulling twists that people didn't see coming. However, I'm pretty sure the examples I gave above are your garden variety "someone mistranslated and someone else leapt to weird assumptions".

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

[eilf]

"Et tu Brute" is used to mean "surprise at the unexpected betrayal by a friend" working in cahoots with a bunch of people you thought were your friends.

It's said when you have an escalation, in a short time of turning to see one person after another who you thought you could trust doing something untrustworthy.

Something you assumed wouldn't happen to you.

Something you believed your friends wouldn't do.

Something perhaps that outsiders looking on have long said seemed to be the case but you didn't believe them because THEY are outsiders and you have faith in your judgement of who your friends are.

And now you see it. Because it's very public and can't be stopped being Very Public.

So you voice how you feel in an actually smaller forum, but it gets noticed because it's a simple straightforward story and all the evidence YOU can see everyone else can see too.

Now YOU are told you should have silently allowed it. Nobody has a good "see, you misunderstood angle" (Brutus going "Knife? What knife? Oh THIS knife? It's not a knife it's "in development", what you're looking at here is a combination of a tree, a lump of iron and some of your organic matter) so you should have stayed quiet.

For everyone saying that "et tu Brute" was an overreaction you know perfectly well that was the honest man talking.

To the SPN fans who said one of the two shows leads should have said nothing about being treated this way: consider if that was a feature rather than a bug? Your fave and his wife and his writer thought that the other lead would just say "I didn't know anything about it". Because that's who Jensen thinks YOU are and what would make you support his show is him keeping his very long term friend who is integral to the parent show completely in the dark.

Were they really so convinced of the perception by various people (well, I know Robbie was) involved with the show over the past few years that that JA has all the fans and JP only a few? And that that's the way to get loyal SPN viewers for JAs new show? There's been a lot of cynical behaviour over the years within the SPN production arena (including actors) but that's mind-blowing. We'll probably never know now why they thought doing this this way was a good idea..

But, to those who support this primarily BECAUSE Jared was excluded from even knowing about the idea of it's existence, good luck with something you never would have supported except that it comes with a (so far undefended) deliberate side-order of "et tu Brute". Perhaps Jensen understands he has extreme fans better than we've all realised before now?

He seems to have misjudged his normal fans, who have been impressively clear about what happened.

I wouldn't have watched the prequel because SPN spoiled everything about Mary for me on her return and while I don't hate John he is a deeply unsympathetic character who brainwashed his older son to kill the younger one. Watching how he got to be that sort of person has no interest for me, watching a retconned show pretending he *didn't* do that (because the show's new producer & writer will want to whitewash Dean and double down on blaming Sam for what was done TO Sam) would just piss me off. So no, not interested in the prequel.

And I simply don't like pre-stories. They invariably mess with canon.

Jared can do all the PR saving of this he likes, people who are pissed are not (primarily) pissed because we're his fans, we're pissed because we are absolutely clear what happened and nobody who is not Jared has made any effort to deny it. Kripke's tweets and their deletion are an entire book to themself.

I do think it's pretty funny that there's some money guy somewhere going "we're IN DEVELOPMENT here, what's this I'm hearing? Whaddaya mean you came up with this idea 5 minutes before we started posting articles in industry publications about how long you've been keeping it a secret and it's still at the "notes on a napkin" stage?"

I wish I was angry at Jensen. I wish he had just said "oops my bad" because I could have gotten past that then and let it go. But I'm disappointed in everyone involved in causing Jared to be blindsided the way he was, I thought better only of JA but then it was actually Kripke who put his hand up to apologise.

[catbountry]

Weird question: seeing as how you were a former mod, how was Kiwifarms?

Stopped being fun a long, long time ago. Glad I left, though I feel as though I will be haunted by this for a long time, but I'm doing better and trying to be a better person. That's the TL;DR answer.

Null's policy of allowing users to say pretty much anything they are legally within their right to say led to a lot of people coming in from other banned sites or subreddits that had crackdowns on hate speech and general "they're making us look bad" vibes, to flood the Farms, and this drove off many of the older, more moderate users who simply wanted to use the site for internet gossip. It got to the point where randos would be popping up in threads I was a regular in and moderated and just spouting off conspiracies about black people, Jews and trans people with only a vague connection to the topic at hand, and I found myself afraid to do anything more than make fun of them for fear of getting chided by mods higher up the chain. I got a lot of shit for simply moving threads because I didn't ask permission from another mod first. Null knew the flood of reactionary posters was a problem, as those few that still stuck around referred to them as the A&H (Articles and Happenings) posters derisively, since they seemed to exist mostly to leave the worst kind of comments on any thread in that subforum. But Null also holds a lot of those same beliefs, so attempts to curb the problem were limp and ineffective.

I came to the forum, initially, to comment on strange people online and document a particularly unsavory character that was on Tumblr. But towards the end of my stint there, I found myself being completely miserable every time I checked a thread. I had talked about quitting for probably about two years, before another former Kiwi convinced me to just do it already, since I was doing nothing but complaining about the site. I resigned and Null gracefully accepted my resignation and dissolved the Tumblr subforum. That was on January 5th, the day before the siege of the U.S. capitol building by a bunch of crazy people... people that had a lot in common with the exact same posters that were making my time there feel about as fun as being dragged down a dirt road with shards of broken glass on it. And Jesus Christ, am I glad I got out of there before all the shit with Near/Byuu went down. In the time since I've distanced myself from the Farms, I feel better. I've been working on bettering myself and working my own little projects, and there's a lot of stuff I said on those forums I wish I hadn't, but at the same time, I also made friends there who felt similar to me, friends who just wanted to come to discuss the activity of really weird and dramatic people online. I think I felt a lot of gratitude towards the site in helping me learn a lot about the previously mentioned unsavory Tumblr user who turned out to be way more awful than I ever could have imagined, and that was a big factor for why I stayed on as long as I did, even though I'd been seeing red flags for years.

I'm trying to be more polite and accepting of others even if I don't understand them. I feel happier for it, which kind of fucks me up when people treat me like I'm still there. I don't know what good public groveling and begging for forgiveness would do, since a lot of the people who would hate me anyway would only hold my past over my head only to shove it in my face as soon as me and my big, fat mouth say something that they don't like. I also don't wish to make myself an enemy of Null. Realistically, I don't think he'd really care all that much if I started laying into him in public, but at the same time, I would prefer he at least remain neutral on me. This man runs Kiwi Farms mostly out of spite at this point, to the detriment of his own other life goals. I have a lot I could criticize Null about, but he was also Chris-chan's last line of defense against the trolls, and even then, he wasn't able to stop Chris from raping Barb. He didn't even believe it at first, and given how much time and money Null has put into trying to protect Chris, it's understandable why. Some people might say Null's only motivation was to continue using Chris as a source of discussion on the site, but I really do feel like Null felt a responsibility over Chris's well being and actually wanted Chris to be safe. Sadly, things didn't work out that way.

So, yeah. I'm not going to blow up at people for using Kiwi Farms as a source on some people doing some bad shit because KF users are more likely to use archiving sites that can't have take-downs issued by the thread’s subjects to hide their bad shit. I would definitely advise against joining the forums unless you feel like you absolutely have to, perhaps to clarify on anything as someone who was personally victimized or personally involved. And even then, I would suggest not sticking around. Post the info you have and get out. Many of the fun posters left a long time ago. I'm also not going to yell at anybody still using the Farms if they're not posting the kind of content that drove me away. People have their reasons for being there, and many of the threads have their own mini-communities and subcultures specific to those threads that were very different from many people's preconceived notions of the site. But if anybody is thinking of leaving, especially if they've been thinking about it for a while, I would say to just rip off that band-aid and do it. People just stop posting to websites without any explanation as to why all the time.

There are other places to get gossip on the internet. I still watch YouTube commentary channels and post to my friends about people making spectacles of themselves online... I just don't do it on Kiwi Farms anymore.

This post was originally going to be much, much longer, going into a lot of my feelings on internet censorship and my distrust of a small number of huge websites being controlled by a handful of tech giants, on my current dilemma in regards to how I feel free speech should be protected versus how dangerous I think anti-vaxxers are, and some anecdotes about times that should have been the thing that spurred me to leave, but I stuck around anyway out of some misplaced sense of duty. But this post is already pretty long and I don't want to bore you with a bunch of tangentially related ramblings. Suffice to say, again, I'm glad I left, but at the same time, while I said a lot of things I wish I hadn't and I feel like I've grown considerably as a person since then, I also don't regret having been there. I think what I do regret is not standing up for myself more, not pushing back harder against a culture that was becoming less and less recognizable to the one that was there when I joined in 2014. I don't really think I could have done that much to stop it, though.

It just sucks, man.

[rametarin]

I didn’t want to reblog another long post, so I’ll just say my own thing here.

Gatekeeping fandom is good, ackshully.

Especially since we have a certain pattern of person, call them, “SJWs” if you want, that deliberately creep into a fandom with their values and shamelessly, deliberately, use it as a platform. They CONSCIOUSLY do this. They DELIBERATELY do this.

And then they have the audacity to see false positives and imagine dog whistles everywhere of things outside THEIR orthodoxy in the fandom being -isms, or -gnies. Accusing the people already there of being “out of date” and “toxic”, when it’s neither toxic nor uninclusive- it just isn’t rearranging itself to accommodate Intersectional Feminism or giving Intersectional Feminists voluntary control over everything from how something works to how it’s defined.

That to them is tantamount to being Nazis. And that’s kind of how you can tell they’re the same sort of daft, disingenuous fucks that wrap up socialist or ancom shit in supposed social progress. And if they could they’re reshape EVERYTHING to match their sensibilities, because their sensibilities are, “our way or you die.”

If you spend enough time peeking through academic papers and colleges you even learn there’s a thing many of them do. Which is, “Queering,” characters on purpose, to make them unpalatable or untouchable to cis/het people. That’s culturally like raising a flag on something to annex it and landgrab it.

And if you say, “hands off, this character isn’t gay?” They pivot and declare you’re just a homophobe whom is afraid of change, tell other people that and then talk in the broad bruckstroke about, “society is really so homophobic/afraid of new ideas. :c”

These people don’t even want to be part of that fandom for the sake of being in the fandom. They just want it because they want the fandom to perpetuate their values and parrot their beliefs and spread it to everybody else that wants to participate in that fandom. Do you like this popular thing? Okay, you can have popular thing, but only if you hug this Courtney Love doll and buy it and pet it and love it as part of the package deal!

And as part and parcel of the demanding to not just define the fundamentals and parameters of a fandom, they also demand to reinterpret the history of said fandom based on how out of orthodoxy to their values they find it to their own beliefs. So, was the hobby primarily done by white men in the past? Then naturally they’ll automatically paint it with a broad brush and say, “this hobby was very unwelcoming to non-whites and women in the past because of icky homophobic and misogynistic men!” Regardless of how many authors were beloved by the fandom that were female, regardless of how many women were equal fandom members before- they weren’t the Intersectional Feminist types of fans, so clearly they were “closer to the Daughters of the Confederacy than real people,” right? That’s how that works, apparently.

So yes. We had a taste of this in the 90s, but the feminists/radfems at the time weren’t trying to infiltrate the fandom and take it over to be about feminism. They were shaming boys and other girls for liking the big booby comic book girls as sexist and objectification and trying to get comic fans to abandon comics in order to pressure the companies economically into changing.

“These comics are written and drawn by MEN! MAAAAALE GAAAAAAAAAZE!!! Sexualized girls are only okay when WOMEN are drawing them and writing them for the authenticity!” And there were not many women that either liked comic books or wanted to BE in them, so they’d maintain that impossible standard to try and coerce the boys to FIND women for the sake of having a woman on staff, just to assauge their, “icky boys aren’t allowed to do this without me declaring it wrong” qualm.

And true to form for Progressives, give an inch and within a short period of time they just want more, and declare what was offered before was just to mollify or patronize them. “Oh so women can tidy up and do the low work. Why no female CEOs in the company yet? Why not Editor in Chief?”

But the way the Intersectionals do it is new. Rather than just stay outside the fandom because “yuck it offends my sensibilities, it shouldn’t exist,” they try and appropriate the fandom and then contribute rules and policies for it.

We saw this in the years leading up to Gamergate. The Subverters infiltrated video game journos, got incestuous and buddy-buddy with both Triple A industry people and independent game creators and traded favors, financial, sexual and other, for good reviews. Folks like Anita Sarkesian trying to make a name for themselves by already being insiders and getting plugged by the conspirators to LOOK like she was anything more than a plant for that cause, using other peoples video game playing footage in her critique videos, styling herself a holistic “girl gamer” and waxing poetic about “those awful neckbearded dudebros questioning my gamer cred! Tch!”

And so that romantic boogyman became a thing that they perpetuated. “The gatekeeping, woman hating, manbaby Gamer.” Where they then added in racism and male chauvinism and traditionalism and transphobia because you know you can’t just leave it at “misogynist.” Not, “in this society.”

Gamers protesting and demanding that game journalist magazines state their relationships to the creators for full disclosure got them retaliating asymmetrically, though. The FBI investigated all those, “threatening and trolling social media messages” that supposedly got Zoe Quinn and Sarkesian to leave their houses, “for fear of an attack,” and they got nothing. A few of them were caught doxxing themselves on purpose on 4chan. Quinn herself being part of the SomethingAwful’s Crash Override forums, where they’d do shit like this to troll and harass people for fun. They KNOW how to false flag and make it look like a bunch of angry dudebros did it.

Statistically the number of harassing egg names was far lower than the messages either girl received that was NOT harassment or threats, merely replies they didn’t agree with or didn’t appreciate. And yet they still ran around screaming about “all those misogynistic dudebro gamers” that were “harassing and doxing them.” And that boogyman became the party line. That Gaming and Gamers were full of toxic, misogynistic, racist manbabies SOooOoOooOO intimidated by, “women finally in what they feel are THEIR spaces,” that they’d try to run them out.

That’s how they interpreted it and that’s how the history books they write will repeat it.

They try and make a great big public show about “entering this toxic space” to flip it and civilize it, but what they’re really trying to do is officially own it. As a fandom, as a space and as a culture. And that entails being able to say what goes, what’s acceptable and what’s not, and set the tone and culture for that space. Meaning, to be able to gatekeep the product.

Rather than just decry the product, they decide they’re just going to mutate the product by slow assimilation, until the product doesn’t even resemble the original product anymore. They do this shit with comic books, videogames, and now they’re working on doing it to beloeved novels and their fandoms. It’s like forcibly marrying them to terrible people, so you can never have a fandom WITHOUT those people in your space trying to insist their interpretations of things are original canon, ever again.

And the sickest part is, these people DO NOT stop at fiction. That’s why this shit is called Cultural Marxism. Because it’s not much different from the way communists and socialist guerillas act and operate when it comes to land, resources and industry. They take over public spaces and forums and use a combination of instittional corruption, terrorism and violence and vandalism in order to destroy or silence competition.

They’ve even infiltrated the Linux community and taken over most of that, via Linus Torvalds’ daughter. You can’t have ANYTHING around these people, because they just sit and wait and conspire to come in and make even a simple community mural to revolve around whatever social issue and specifically their philosophy’s take on it being THE only valid take on it that everybody else must now interact with, good or bad, but they can’t ignore it anymore.

This is, also, partially why they hate it when fandoms are gatekept by singularly powerful individuals. Like say, authors of their own works. They don’t like singular owners of enterprise and property, because it prevents the mob from taking them and then dictating TO the creator, “this is the PEOPLES property now. WE decide, as the most powerful clique, what is true and real with it and what isn’t.”

Because like what happened with Frank Oz of Jim Henson Studios. An activist gay writer declared that Bert and Ernie’s relationship was “canon gay,” because he wrote them as canon gay lovers. There was a great big information cascade as all these affiliated journo companies published articles about how “happy they were to see Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop as representing LGBT people in public!”

Frank Oz spoke up, set the record straight, “These characters were made by me and a friend and were meant to depict a platonic male-male relationship. They aren’t gay but I’m glad you could identify with them.”

That poor old man caught so much shit. They called him a homophobe, said he was, “stealing Bert and Ernie from them,” that he should just shut up and “let people have this.”

No. Fucking no. These people are fucking conspirators, believe wholly in dominating and taking shit over by moving their people into a thing until they have the warm bodies and the institutional authority to crowd out oppositional voices, then have the audacity to SCREEEAAAAAAM bloody murder about the dangers of anybody else organizing to contest them because, “The Nazis are gathering to attack us poor innocent minorities!!” Counting on the ignorance and unsuspecting nature of people to not know such a thing is fake or the totality of the situation.

That’s why they’ll keep this shit on the downlow and call anybody that accuses them of doing shit like this a liar or a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Demanding evidence, in bad faith, knowing there’s little to no way to PROVE any of this UNTIL they’ve done it, and then declaring you to be invalid since you can’t prove the conspiracy.

Because if you can’t prove it with evidence, they’ll simply say you’re a Nazi trying to smear “good people.”

[dippedanddripped]

In the first few moments of a YouTube video titled “Admitting I Own Fakes In-Front of My Fashion Class…”, Quentin Caruso, better known as Tripping, does just that. “I’m a sophomore in college and I’m taking a class about fashion, and in that class (we) were talking about fakes and replicas,” he explains, adding that he can “throw up some pictures so you guys know I’m not bullshitting”. Asked by his teacher if he knowingly owns any counterfeit pieces, the 19-year-old confirms the sneakers he’s wearing at that very moment – the highly coveted Travis Scott Jordan 1 Lows – are in fact fake. “And how do you feel about that,” she prompts. “I’m fine with it,” he wryly confirms.

Caruso is part of a growing community of fashion-savvy shoppers searching for ways to look runway ready on a high street budget – and, unlike many die-hard hypebeasts, they’re willing to own up to the fact their luxury garms aren’t exactly legitimate. In fact, many take pride in their ability to score a bargain, taking to subreddit FashionReps to discuss new releases, fawn over faux Yeezys, and ask each other for advice on where to pick up the best knock-off Off-White and Supreme styles.

The forum is a democratised, judgement-free zone in which people share a love of high quality replicas or ‘reps’, where members are friendly and even supportive. They help one another to find the best sellers and sites to buy from, while discussing discrepancies between retail items and their counterfeit counterparts – from stitching and logos, to details and finishes. Most users admit they can’t afford head-to-toe designer looks, and at times they even share budgeting tips. "I got into reps cause I didn’t have much money and wanted a few nice pieces," redditor godsip2 shared in August. "Now I have no money at all 'cause I'm addicted to buying reps and can't stop myself."  

While a lack of funds and a taste for luxury streetwear is a driving factor for many, for others it isn’t about the money at all. “Not to brag, but if I want a Dior coat, I can get it retail,” Dennis, 19, tells us. “For the same (amount of) money I can get four reps.” Dennis admitted his breaking point came after a shocking moment browsing resale markets where he saw his ‘grail shoes’ – a pair of Off-White Air Jordan 1s – show up for €3000. “I thought ‘Fuck this, I’m never gonna pay that for shoes that originally retailed for €150.”

It’s been almost three years since he came across the FashionReps subreddit, which he was initially skeptical of. However, since joining he hasn’t just sworn off resale products and full-price retail items, but also introduced his friends to reps. “A €500 sweater wasn’t in their price range,” says Dennis. “When I showed them my reps (compared to) my retail Yeezys, they were instantly sold.”

Historically, counterfeit designer items conjure thoughts of poorly imitated handbags on AliExpress, labels that read, ‘Fashing BALISG’ instead of Balenciaga, and stalls in alleyways, but FashionReps members know where the quality replicas are sold and claim that many knock-offs actually tend to be better made.  “The quality is the same, even better,” Netherlands-based 23-year-old Camiel admits. “I’ve heard of some Yeezys being better and a lot of high-end Louis Vuitton reps being way better than retail.” He believes that “retail Louis Vuitton quality is not so great…”

FashionReps members buy in bulk, spending hundreds of dollars on ‘hauls’ that they break up into smaller packages in hopes of evading customs checks. The risk is part of the thrill, and while some are unlucky and have their packages seized, others rejoice when packages filled with thousands of dollars of ‘drip’ arrive in the mail.

Camiel cites his favourite find to be a Palace red slub-neck, “which you can't tell apart from a real one – which I have one of,” he adds. “The quality is amazing and it's super comfortable to wear, it's my favourite (item) I have gotten so far.” But Camiel hasn’t always gotten away with his thrifty finds.

“In the beginning, I wouldn't wear an item if it had the tiniest flaw. Later on, I noticed that people know (very) little about brands and which items even exist,” he explains. While most people who recognise a rep are likely to ask for the seller or pass on a compliment, Camiel concedes he’s been called out before. “Some high schoolers were at the gym and I was wearing my Nike tech fleece joggers, which have some noticeable flaws, like the black stripe being too short and the cords being too short as well. They called me out on the logo, which I know is perfect. Bunch of clowns.”

For all the people excited about reps, their quality, and believability, there are just as many people out there looking to spot a fake. YeezyBusta, who recently gained prominence for spotting fakes on civilians and celebrities has over 760,000 followers on Instagram. He’s busted the likes of Lil Tjay, Blac Chyna, and Soulja Boy for donning fake Supreme and Yeezys, although his faux-detector has been known to malfunction.

"I got into reps cause I didn’t have much money and wanted a few nice pieces. Now I have no money at all 'cause I'm addicted to buying reps and can't stop myself" – godsip2, FashionReps member

In an episode of Complex’s Full Size Run, hosts tasked the Instagram detective with discerning the difference between fake pairs of shoes from the real thing. After being handed a pair of bone-white Yeezy 500s, YeezyBusta exclaims, “Oh these are real!” Closely inspecting the shoe, he notices “The suede is right…even down to the stitching, the label inside the shoe looks right to me and the insole is right too.” The host, who finds it hard to hide his amusement, blurts out “They’re fake.” Behind his signature black surgical mask, used to hide his identity, YeezyBusta turns bright red.

“I can’t take him seriously,” Tripping admits. In a reaction video to a VICE documentary on YeezyBusta, the fashion student protests his motivation for hunting down counterfeit items so publicly. “It isn’t funny. Does anyone find that funny? To ridicule people online? That isn’t something you should be gloating about.”

Some counterfeit items are so believable that they’ve also slipped past trusted authenticators. The RealReal, one of the world's leading luxury consignment stores, claims that "every item we sell is 100% authenticated by an expert.” However, just last year, Forbes contributor, Richard Kentenbaum claimed the retail giant had sold him a fake Toile de Jouy Dior Book Tote bag for $3,600. What followed was a swift investigation by CNBC, who, after speaking with a dozen former employees and unsatisfied customers, and obtaining internal company documents, revealed that “many of the items on the site were being authenticated by copywriters with limited training.” and those who are doing this work are finding it increasingly difficult to spot counterfeits. Out of 1,400 reviews online for The RealReal, the top complaints are fake items.

It may come as a surprise to learn that this is something FashionReps also stands firmly against. In December, the group came together after Depopuser James’s Closet was spotted selling counterfeit items. Within a day, the subreddit had made efforts to liaise with Depop directly and reported the fake pieces resulting in all the listings being taken down. And this isn’t the only time the forum has rallied against people selling fake items moonlighting as cheap authentic ‘steals’. “People who willingly sell replicas as authentic items are the worst,” Tripping insists. “Knowing that a replica looks so close to retail and not selling it for a lot of profit is challenging for some people.”

Conversely, enjoying replicas as they are comes with its own baggage. Reports indicate that counterfeit fashion is a trillion-dollar industry. "One of the worst stories I read was where they had raided an illegal factory and the children were actually handcuffed to the sewing machines," Ariele Elia, an assistant curator at the Museum at FIT explained in a Complex documentary about the flourishing bootleg industry.

Fashion Revolution, a not-for-profit global movement campaigning for the systemic reform of the fashion industry, notes that there’s an “urgent lack of transparency.” Policy Director at Fashion Revolution, Sarah Ditty, told us that counterfeiting doesn’t usually come hand in hand with good rights and wages for workers. “Factories making counterfeit items are doing so illegally so it’s in their interest to operate completely under the radar and in doing so means we have no idea who the workers are making these products, what they are being paid, what conditions they’re working in, and what sort of poor environmental practices are most likely happening in these factories.”

To them, the moral standpoint is clear: “We would definitely encourage people not to buy fake luxury goods or any other counterfeit items because you’re almost guaranteed to be contributing to human exploitation and environmental degradation.” This is an issue that goes beyond fakes: when you look beyond the manufacturing level at the places where fabrics are made, yarns are spun and fibres are grown, even legitimate brands are guilty of obscuring working conditions.

But Tripping insists it's a media smoke-screen. “adidas and Nike were called out for their treatment of workers in the 90s and early 2000s, so now every factory in Asia is associated with bad conditions and child labour.” Tripping also claims that sellers are in fact increasingly transparent about working conditions, their treatment of employees and factories. “They show what their shop looks like, I’ve even asked sellers to show their shops,” he remarked in one of his videos. “And they’ve posted videos on the (subreddit).” One video posted shows a “top quality Yeezy” factory filled with workers. “Actually looks very clean and cool compared to all of the bad warehouse jobs I used to do here in the US,” Redditor highnnmighty comments.

“That’s like asking if I’ll ever go back to my ex, it was a fun time but in the end, you just feel shitted on” – Dennis, on whether or not he will stop buying fakes

Central to what makes FashionReps a great community isn’t the collective middle-finger to resale culture and hypebeasts or the internet-savvy tips, but the irreverent charm and supportive nature of young people who ultimately just want to look cool, and don’t want money to be the reason that they miss out. It’s rare, if not impossible, to find fashion spaces that aren’t hierarchical, based on wealth, social standing, and nepotism, but FashionReps manages to do all of that, and more. Camiel tells me that recently, the subreddit even banded together to target sellers who began taking higher cuts from sales. “I love how we sometimes work together to get something we want.”

Confronted with the fact that buying reps are taking sales away from workers, brands, and designers, Tripping is unfazed. “Once a limited shoe is released, and sold out in seconds, the company has made its profit. The average cost of manufacturing an Air Jordan 1 is $15-$16. The mark up of that shoe is more than 100 per cent. Nike has no problem with this. If you are wearing a replica of that overpriced shoe (on the resell market), you are basically advertising the brand. The culture side of sneakers is bland and fraudulent, replicas are there to stir things up.”

When asked if he’d ever give up replicas and return to buying retail, Dennis scoffed before saying: “That’s like asking if I’ll ever go back to my ex, it was a fun time but in the end, you just feel shitted on.”

[lookingformytruth]

Medias witch hunt for transgender people and shame over my identity

So for the last year or so, an heated debate have arose in Swedish media regarding gender dysphoria and trans medicine. In the autumn of 2018, one of Sweden's most popular TV shows Uppdrag Granskning (translation mission: examination) aired an episode called Tranståget och tonårsflickorna (trans: The trans-train and the teenage girls) which really stirred the pot. Uppdrag Granskning is a program focused on digging journalism and have been broadcasted by the Swedish television ,SVT, since 2001. In this episode that I’m talking about we meet a bunch of detransitioners and are presented to the monstrous medical field who pray on psychologically unstable teenage girls, convincing them that they’re born in the wrong body and continues to disfigure and mutilate them by force!!1!1!!! In the episode there were a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings (In which Sweden are these young girls getting access to hrt and surgery after minimum assertion? Some as young as 14?? Not in the Sweden I’m living in atleast..)

Anyway, as you can imagine this sparked quiet the debate. My local morning paper started a series of articles this summer which continues to this day. They published yet another article on the topic yesterday, hence why I am writing this. I thought I would translate parts of it so you would get an idea how the media climate is currently;

“The number of young people who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, ie that they feel that they were born in the wrong sex, has increased significantly in recent years, especially among girls. In 2010, 81 girls and women between the ages of 13 and 24 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, in 2018 the number was 446. No one knows what the upturn is due to.

XXXX and XXXX are mothers of children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and initiated hormone therapy to change their sex. They claim that the diagnosis is in many cases made too easy by the clinics. Sometimes more than a handful of meetings are required, they say.”

The mothers are part of a network of relatives whose children suffered from so-called "sudden gender dysphoria" in their teens. Many common denominators exist. None of the children have expressed any doubts about their gender identity earlier in childhood. For many, gender dysphoria have come close to other mental problems. And everyone have participated in various online forums focused on  trans issues.

- Many of these young people have had other problems during their upbringing that make them seek context. To then get the ego-boost, like the one that comes out as trans, for example, gets online, it must be a tremendously comfortable feeling. And it's no wonder. What is strange is that as soon as you turn to the medical experts, no questions are asked, says XXXX.

They claim that the treatment given both lacks scientific support and has very severe side effects.

- It is life-changing and irreversible treatments that are given to people of an age where the ability to think long-term is not yet fully developed, says XXXX.”

“- The big problem is that they cannot safely say that young people even feel better about the treatment. There is no evidence either that it helps or that it is safe in the longer term,  XXXX says.”

“- It is equated with abuse to call his son, whom you have raised and lived with for 16 years, for him, if the person considers himself a female, XXXX says.”

Ok so I’m sorry about the grammar and spelling, I ran the text through google translate and can’t be bothered to correct it correctly, but I think you get the main point.  I don’t know why I wrote this… I just wanted to share it with someone. It feels like a witch hunt for trans people, It made me feel shame, guilt, doubt. I don’t know how to feel, how to act. Suddently I was’nt a transgender man, I was a confused teenage girl. A failed experiment, a product of former liberal feminism pc war. A laughingstock.  

Is this the end to transness?

[lydiawoodie]

Wealthy Affiliate Review My Advice: Dont Buy

I was issued an affiliate link for Wealthy Affiliate because they automatically issue you one upon enrollment. However, it’s not listed on this article, because I don’t recommend Wealthy Affiliate. Of course, you are your own master, and you’re free to enroll away, but I only want to promote products I believe in, so there’s no link here from me!

There’s nothing revolutionary or informative in Wealthy Affiilate. I’m not mad that I signed up, as I only spent $19 and I did get a little value. The videos are well-made, and I don’t feel like it’s a scam. There’s just a bunch of filler and common sense rolled into this program. If you’re a complete newbie, you may find the material helpful, but there are better information sources out there than Wealthy Affiliate.

[As a note: I will add my recommendation for a similar program here when I find a good one.]

What is Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate is a training program run by Greg Kononenko. I follow him on YouTube under his alias, Caffeinated Blogger, and in July 2020 I decided to sign up for Wealthy Affiliate and give it a try. The membership was $19 for the first month, with a reoccurring charge of $49/month (or $495 for the year) if I wished to continue.

Wealthy Affiliate is basically boot camp for building a niche website. There are several video tutorials broken down into bite-sized lessons showing a few basics of WordPress, SEO, and affiliate marketing. There are explanations about how to build your webpage, how to grow your site, and how to monetize it. There are also a variety of tools for content, including access to a royalty-free photograph database and a keyword search tool (Jaaxy Lite). However, the explanations about building, growing, and monetizing your site are not very in-depth. Any Google or YouTube search will get you better info. And royalty-free images are easy to find. Wealthy Affiliate just pulls them from three free sites. I’m also skeptical about the value of keyword search tools.

Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth It?

Building niche websites isn’t particularly complicated, and I wouldn’t say that I learned a whole lot of new information from Wealthy Affiliate. And I also wouldn’t say that the the program’s information on building a niche website is even close to comprehensive. It’s a starting point. That’s it.

The nicest thing I have to say about Wealthy Affiliate is that they’ve done a good job at building a forum and a community of others who are attempting to build a niche site. It can be good to have accountability partners if you find that sort-of thing helpful. I’m not into social media. I also prefer lectures to group discussions, so the forums were not attractive to me personally.

When I googled other people’s reviews of Wealthy Affiliate, it led me to believe that Greg Kononenko purchased this program from someone else. This review lists Carson Lim and Kyle Louadon as the owners, and there was a lot of talk about how dated the program is.

I wouldn’t say that Wealthy Affiliate is dated, as much as it’s just completely basic. The program teaches the nuts and bolts of building a niche website. Choose niche, buy domain, post content. I don’t think a course is necessary for this. And there were helpful hints about WordPress plugins to add, but the material was actually in a couple different places and it was far from comprehensive.

Who Should Use Wealthy Affiliate?

If I had a loved one who wanted some hand holding while building a site, I would write them a quick list of how to set up a blog. If I didn’t like them very much, I guess that I would recommend Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is very basic. There are ten lessons per category and at the end of each lesson is a checklist. The system provides ample opportunity for help from others on the forum if you’re nervous about website creation, but I didn’t find a whole lot of cutting edge information in this course. It was okay for webpage set up, but the tricks on Greg’s YouTube channel don’t show up in Wealthy Affiliate.

The premise of Wealthy Affiliate is to put up a quality website, optimize the backend for SEO, add blog posts three times per week, and after three months you’ll start seeing results. After one year, you’ll like the results. And after five years, you’ll be crushing it. It is a very long game, and this is SEO at it’s most basic. It’s safe and should be Google update-proof. If you don’t have any experience in these elements, Wealthy Affiliate could potentially be helpful for you.

Thoughts on Solo Build It! (SBI!), a Wealthy Affiliate Competitor

Wealthy Affiliate reminded me of a program I tried over a decade ago, called Site Build It! I Googled to see if they were still around, and saw they’ve changed their name to Solo Build It! They also have a second product called SBI! for WP — Solo Build It! for WordPress. Admittedly, I haven’t tried SBI! for more than a decade, but I’m guessing the premise hasn’t changed. It’s a strategy identical to Wealthy Affiliate’s — niche website creation and a long-range plan for building SEO and site authority.

What I did not like about SBI! was that they wanted me to host my site with them indefinitely. What I saw in 2008 were the outdated websites they were teaching people to create. Their current website says they’ve been around for over 20 years, which makes sense in hindsight. In 2008 they were teaching me how to build a website meant for 2002. However, it looks like they’ve adjusted to the times with their new product, SBI! for WP. I did not order this product, but I’m guessing it‘s be very similar to Wealthy Affiliate and allows you to build your site and leave the platform, as WordPress can be hosted anywhere.

SBI!’s price point begins close to WA’s starting price point at $19.99 per month. However, it looks like a cheaper option year after year if you opt to stay with them. It’s $199 for the first year and $299 for each additional year. Wealthy Affiliate is priced at $495 per year, but they offer incentives to knock 50% off of this price, so I’m guessing they’re competitive. Again, I haven’t tried SBI! in over a decade, which is a lifetime ago in Internet years. When I tried previously, I didn’t fully commit and attempt to build a site in their platform. Instead, I consumed their video content and canceled after my trial ended. But comparing what I saw in SBI! then to what I see in WA now, I’d recommend Wealthy Affiliate if I had to choose one.

Wealthy Affiliate at least teaches you how to build a site with them then move it to your own domain. SBI! taught me how to build a site with them and then rely on them for hosting indefinitely. Building your site in someone else’s platform — Wealthy Affiliate or SBI! — is a waste of time. It adds a layer of dependency that doesn’t need to be there. WordPress is easy and initiative. You can figure it out if you just start trying.

Final Thoughts on Wealthy Affiliate

My final thought is a NO! Google a YouTube video about creating a WordPress blog in Elementor. Spend a couple hours watching and applying your knowledge. You’ll learn more from this than you’d learn in Wealthy Affiliate.

from https://bunnybanks.com/wealthy-affiliate-review-my-advice-dont-buy/

from Bunny Banks - Blog https://bunnybanks.weebly.com/blog/wealthy-affiliate-review-my-advice-dont-buy via IFTTT

[beedaleebjd]

Psssst do you happen to have any tips or beginners links for newbies who are interested in getting in to the BJD hobby? 👀

*SOFT SCREECH* ALICE COME DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE WITH ME... /CLAMBERS FOR

This is a very slap-dash tips post, because a full fledged crash-course would take me much longer than a day to assemble. I think this could get someone started, but I can always answer specific questions if you have them in the future. ❤️

BJD 101: For a rundown of definitions, terminology, and origins of the hobby, I highly recommend checking out the Wikipedia article. (Warning for old vaguely spooky doll photos) I honestly wish I just read this when I got started, haha. It’s not everything, but it’s definitely a start.

Study! Read as much as you possibly can!! Especially terminology and maintenance. I highly recommend watching a bunch of unboxing and review videos- it might seem silly, but they're really helpful to get an idea of scale, how they function/pose, and how they look and feel when handled by a human. I also recommend trying to find owner photos of dolls you’re interested in, because sometimes the store photos are limited!

Join a community! Consider joining a forum like den of angels or a facebook bjd group like BJD Addicts! Exposure to the hobby is really helpful and you learn way faster. It’s fine if you’re shy, you don’t have to interact if you don’t want to- I like lurking DoA for the valuable tutorials and threads on doll brands I'm interested in. Tip: You can view some of DoA’s threads without an account by searching "[subject/doll of choice] den of angels" in google, but i got tired of that pretty fast. Signing up takes a few weeks to get approved but it's worth it for all the knowledge, even old archived stuff.

Window-shop until you drop!! I think the number one regret in the hobby is 'too many dolls, not enough time to love any of them'. So I HIGHLY recommend making wish-lists. These help a lot with avoiding impulse purchases and buyer’s remorse. There are a loooot of dolls out there, so if you've seen a huge majority of them, you'll be more picky.

For me, wishlists include both dream/grail dolls, tentative desires i’m not sure about but want to remember the name of, dolls I could never afford but feel validated writing down somewhere, and also cataloging info- measurements, wig/eye/shoe sizes, resin colors, price, current availability, dealer websites, etc. it becomes such a godsend when you shop for them. you’ll thank me later!!

I spent a lot of time browsing dealer websites like Alice's Collections, Legenddoll, Denver Doll, DOLK Station, etc- I linked some of those here. This is to see what my tastes are. Not EVERY doll company will go through all or any dealers, but it’s a good start!

If you’re the social type, going to conventions or local bjd meetups can help with getting an idea of your preferences! I accidentally walked by one at sakuracon last year and got to hold an MSD and an 11cm tiny, and that was REALLY helpful for me to realize I DID like those sizes. If other doll owners will let you hold theirs, I totally recommend it! (Always ask first, of course! Not everyone is comfortable with it!)

Go!! Slow!!! if you think you're taking it easy, go even slower. i'm so serious. it's so easy to get dazzled, over-eager, or totally overwhelmed by this hobby. especially if you have a habit of hyper focus/special interest tenancies like i do. 

Patience is a virtue anyway: If you’re not buying second-hand or in-stock dolls, you will be waiting a while for your doll. Anywhere from a few months to a year, depending on the company and how backlogged they may be at any given point. Dolls are usually pre-order and take time to be made.

Some people like to just buy sculpts and let a character ‘come to them’, which is absolutely valid so if you wanna just go on a feeling that’s great!! i totally can’t afford that route most of the time, so I spend a lot of time mood-boarding for my potential dolls using pinterest and my own art to see just how in love with an idea i am and highly recommend it. I’ll ramble about this in another post soon.

Budget! They are not very cheap like 10-20$ fashion dolls at wal-mart, so those new to the hobby may be shocked.This hobby is an investment and an indulgence/luxury, as with most Nice Things. But don’t be discouraged! There are affordable dolls out there, a lot of Dealer websites offer layaway plans, and the second-hand market is always circulating things!

Here is a DoA list of dolls that are under 300$. 

Note: Size of dolls often scale with price, so the bigger it is, the more expensive (and HEAVY) it will be. Some videos on BJD sizing here and here, but Flickr is crawling with height comparisons as well.

Craft or Not To Craft: Are you team 'i'm gonna sew/craft stuff/do wigs/eyes/faceups for my doll' or team 'i'm gonna buy clothes/props/faceups/wigs/etc from other artists!'? I know most people end up being a little bit of both, but these things both cost time or money (or both) so you wanna think about that in the overall price when you're considering a doll. It seems intimidating, but really, it’s the responsible thing to do. I’d rather plan for it than have a naked sad doll to feel bad about. Some personal recommendations below helped me get started:

Wigs: Monique Gold Collection wigs are affordable in the 20 dollar range, and have incredibly soft fiber! (You can find a lot of these available through ebay sellers as well)

Eyes: Lemonjellyshoppe and CandyKittenEmporium have some incredible eyes and also do custom orders!

Sewing Patterns: DGRequim on etsy and SproutyDoll have both been very nice to use and easy understand and modify to fit your doll!

When you’re savvy on the sizing of your dolls and if you’re comfy with secondhand sales, Facebook groups like BJD Addicts Sales & Commissions, BJD Lovers Sales, and BJD Adoption has a lot of people selling BJDs and accessories, oftentimes discounted for de-stashing or collection overhauls!

In addition to the other dealer sites I linked before, Dollmore (which also has an ebay shop) has a lot of options on everything! 

Rec@sts and the community- This is a veeery hot button topic, but you’ll probably see a lot of it the more you get into the hobby. I don’t want to talk about it a lot because of the negativity it attracts, but to sum it up: BJDs are essentially commissioned art pieces. They are hand sculpted by an artist or small group of artists, and then cast in resin and refined and strung by hand. There are people that will cast copies of them and sell them for a very cheap profit. To put it simply, it’s theft, and it effects the livelihood of people that make a living of their art. A lot of companies stop making dolls because they can’t compete anymore. Most official doll/art related conventions (LDoll, Resin Rose, etc) ban rec@sted dolls, as well as DoA and several of the facebook groups. Be sure to read all the rules of groups/forums you join them.

A lot of people come into this hobby unaware of this and buy a bootleg doll on sites like Ebay or Aliexpress, and then get turned away from the community without understanding why. There are understandable circumstances that cause someone to end up with a bootleg doll, but it’s also important to respect the artists and creators that share their art with the public.

On that note: Sometimes people will resell 2nd hand dolls as legit when they are not. Be careful about who you buy second-hand dolls from. Also, keeping certificates of authenticity (CoAs), receipts, and original packaging is must if you ever plan to resell your doll!

I... think that’s everything major I can think of... at least enough to get someone started? I know a lot of it is a bit vague, but if you wanted my opinion on a certain brand or size of doll or budgeting tips if money is tight, I’d be happy to give my personal preferences on that separately!! But otherwise, good luck and happy treasure hunting! ヾ(＾-＾)ノ

[paradeparty94-blog]

Just how Perform I Find Distributors Up For Sale?

Just how Perform I Discover Suppliers To Buy?

So you have eventually gotten up coming from the imagine possessing an on the internet retail company. You understand that it is actually time to start constructing your very own online retailer and also you do not intend to wait any longer than important just before getting started.

How do I discover vendors? Properly, you possess many possibilities readily available to you in this particular instance. It will be actually a good idea to choose a trustworthy as well as professional supplier instead of jumping into a brand-new business without carrying out some investigation or reading up on your choices.

Who do I ask for referrals? One option would certainly be to talk to family members, pals, associates, or even friends who may know of companies that can help you along with your brand new project. You will certainly obtain several names of different suppliers of several products, but one or two may accommodate your service version wonderfully.

On-line testimonials will definitely also assist you in your hunt for suppliers. Searching online for the business you aim to launch is a great tip since numerous providers and company owner can be found by searching for organisation testimonials. However, are sure you browse through all the customer reviews, not merely one or two.

An excellent location to start exploring your suppliers are going to be to use the economic sites to provide business as well as products you are looking for. Some internet sites will allow you to explore by certain products and/or brand names, while others will just enable you to explore through particular distributors. If you are unclear of which provider to decide on, take a trip to the closest furnishings retail store and also find if they hold some of the items you are actually thinking about. If they do not, after that this could be a sign that their company is an inadequate option for your business.

One way to find distributors is to view ebay.com. ebay.com is going to certainly not only let you browse through distributor, but it will also allow you explore by items. This is a great method to recognize what products your competitors are selling. You may also go to internet forums and also seek recommendations. Forums are actually a wonderful method to find suppliers, but beware of those that are actually currently in service on their own.

Call the Better Business Bureau to find the connect with info for companies near you. Beware of businesses in your condition and examine all of them out. If your business remains in violation of the rule, carry out certainly not aid all of them to run legally.

A handful of organisations will definitely use to match your needs along with various other companies in your location. You may at that point contrast prices as well as companies offered. For example, a regional equipment retail store can match your retail necessities along with a providing provider, an interior designer, or even a basic contractor. These organisations might additionally possess equipment you need for the form of job you are actually running.

How do I locate distributors for certain product? Some providers are going to possess reps in your location that can easily market your product straight to customers. Discovering a credible supplier who is going to work with you are going to save on your own a ton of time and stress in your seek a source of that details item.

Check with a provider to observe if they have a circulation network for a certain product you require. If they carry out, that will be an excellent source for you. Simply make certain to follow the producer's suggestions prior to buying a product coming from them.

No matter how you pick to address the question of exactly how do I find distributors, there are a number of means to locate them. From searching the world wide web, to talking to friends and family, to contacting a manufacturer, or consulting with a dealer, it is possible to locate the appropriate firm to purchase your products.

The key to possessing excellence in your online store is actually to follow your suspicion as well as perform your analysis. If it experiences right, it possibly is.

What's the Difference In Between Provider as well as Provider?

Perform you understand what's the distinction between seller and provider? Do you understand which one you favor? If you don't, this article is for you.

Vendor implies someone that is actually chosen to offer products and services for a service. A provider offers his/her product or services directly to the client.

Distributor means someone who is hired to supply services and products for a business. A supplier markets his/her services or product to the customer. A supplier has no connection along with the firm, it offers.

The partnership in between provider as well as distributor is actually various. Supplier does not have the services and products it offers. As well as a vendor does not have the products it provides. Both possess a deal that permits them market the service or products.

Is use this link correct that the provider is a lot more costly than a provider? Yes, this is actually the honest truth. In most cases the cost of a provider is actually greater than the cost of a provider. A vendor provides a certain rate for a specific quantity of a product in order that if you acquire in multitudes you can easily receive even more for your funds.

Alternatively, if you need to obtain product in sizable amounts then you need to purchase from a provider. The amount of product that a provider offers might not suffice for you to purchase each device. So the vendor pays for the distributor to get his/her item to you.

Does it make sense to tap the services of a tools distributor instead of a provider? Properly, this depends on what you require. If you require a bunch of tools for your service then you will possess a hard time discovering a provider.

Along with a merchant you can easily possess a particular budget plan and buy that specific equipment in sizable quantities. A vendor has to take care certainly not to spend too much thus he will definitely in some cases work out a savings agreement with the distributor so you do not overpay.

Nonetheless, as mentioned previously, there are actually some companies that perform certainly not require that much of devices and the fastest as well as most reliable means to carry out business is to choose a provider. This is terrific for much smaller companies given that it minimizes the lot of hrs that you invest operating to accomplish all the different jobs that you need to accomplish so as to operate your company.

Perform you still intend to build a significant storehouse to house all your service products? If this is the case then you are going to require to find a vendor. Commonly there is actually a sizable room to rent for rental fee.

It is a good idea to tap the services of a professional product installer to place all the items in the effective spot. This belongs of the tapping the services of method.

Perform you recognize the variation between merchant as well as supplier? After that listed here is actually a bonus question for you:

[12miraenie]

Quandary

🎃Paring: Baekhyun x Reader 

🎃Genre: Fluff, Ghost AU 

🎃Word Count: 3k 

🎃Summary: What happens when you can suddenly see the ghost who’s been living in your house longer than you have? 

A/N: Part of the Month of the Supernatural prompts, where you can request here. This is for anon, enjoy! 🎃

🎃 Link to Masterlist 

🎃Request here 

“Bye, mom!”

The forced smile on your face disappeared the moment her taxi sped past the gate of your house. You tucked both hands into the back pockets of your jeans and sighed. Seriously, what kind of mom abandons her kid when they are about to turn 20 for a business conference? For over a month you’ve been thinking about this birthday when all of your families can finally be together to celebrate you passing the legal drinking age and joining the rest of your family for a drink.

That was the plan until your brother was called in for an internship and your dad miraculously lost his passport abroad. And now, your mom too. It’s not like they don’t love you or don’t care about you, judging from the pile of gifts on the table and the brand new car in the driveway that your brother got for you. You don’t want to sound like a spoiled brat complaining about not getting enough attention, but honestly, you just wished that you can have a conversation together on the same table instead of texts and things that you probably won’t ever use.

“Right, this means…takeout.” You mumbled to yourself and shut the door behind you.

You remember the look on your dad’s face distinctively whenever you craved pizza or chicken. After he forbid you and your brother from eating junk food, you were disheartened for a while until one night you found your brother munching on a chicken leg while watching a movie at 2 am. Where did your brother hide the takeout posters? 

“Aish, this jerk!” Your fisted your hair in frustration after opening probably the tenth drawer in the kitchen.

Suddenly one of the top cupboards above the stove cranked open slowly and then shut close with a loud slam. You jumped at the sound, a small yelp came out of your mouth. Putting a hand on your heart, you could feel its rapid beating.

“What the heck?” You turned to the side only to see the tightly shut windows. You froze and listened carefully, but the house was quiet like nothing happened just now. Shaking your head, you tried to get rid of the sudden shock and opened another drawer.

Bang.

You snapped your head up only to see the same drawer being opened and closed again. You hesitated for a second but still reached up to open the cupboard. There on the side laid a bunch of takeout flyers. You let out a shaky breath and sat on one of the chairs.

Are you surprised? Not really. Since you could remember, there has always been something weird going on in the house. The cereal you put on the table would be on top of the fridge, the jacket you tossed on the couch would be in your closet the next day, or the curtain would be drawn at as early as 7am on Saturdays.

One night your brother came home and shouted from the foyer, “Yah! You finally learned to put your shoes right!”

Did you? Why did you remember kicking them off and heading to sleep the moment you came home? When your parents and brother were asked if they have similar experiences, all you got was blank looks, a sigh, and “Y/N, we are not 5-year-old children.”

Reading through articles online and scrolling through forums only got you one conclusion. You are haunted.

You laughed, as long as the moon orbits around the earth, ghosts don’t exist. You probably put the cereal back, hang your jacket, and put your shoes back in their places without noticing. And your brother must have opened the curtains to annoy you on the weekends. The more you think, the more you were convinced.

Nothing is going on. You are overthinking, Y/N.

It was an hour later the food arrived. Putting the bags down in front of the TV, you smiled as the heavenly aroma attacked your nostrils. You ran like a giddy child to get utensils from the kitchen. However, when you returned the previously tied bags were open, revealing the takeout boxes.

Right, you opened them before getting up.

You bit into a piece of the heavenly fried chicken and almost sucked in a breath. It is undoubtedly the best thing you’ve ever eaten since you were born. What your dad’s deal with it? You shook your head and turned your attention back to the Mission Impossible marathon. You thought back on your brother and parents. Their loss for missing this.

You woke up face planted in the pillow and fished for your phone on the bedstand. Turning your head to the side, you squinted at the bright screen full of Happy Birthday messages from your friends and relatives. It sucks to be born in summer when everyone’s out on vacation. You couldn’t even go out with your friends.

A yawn left your mouth as you stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around your body. You had the best sleep ever, without waking up to the bright sunlight from outside the window. You couldn’t even remember the last time you woke up after 10am.

You brushed your hair and plugged in the hair dryer. Humming a familiar tune, you start drying your hair and looked into the mirror. From the reflection, you could see a man was leaning on the wall behind and staring at you.

You blinked your eyes and rubbed them, fully believing that he will be gone and the only thing you would see is the bathroom wall. When you opened your eyes again, you wished you hadn’t. Because the man was still standing behind and looking at you, only this time, he had his arms crossed.

The realization came too quick for your liking, your hands started trembling as your heartbeat picked up its rate, going off the chart in no more than two seconds. Despite the stoic face, on the inside you were more scared than you ever thought you could be. Breathing through your nose deeply, you unplugged the hair dryer and hit the guy the second you turned around.

Baekhyun’s POV

He hasn’t felt anything in a long time, but the burning sensation on his left arm felt more real than anything else. Before he can even take a look, something heavy hit his head. Baekhyun yelped and shielded his head with both hands, “Aish! What-Yah, stop!” But you were calling him all kinds of colorful names in a loud voice that easily covered his. He knew things being thrown to him, but they went past him that air and he couldn’t feel them like before.

“What the fuck?” You cursed, and then it was silence.

Baekhyun dared himself to open his eyes and came face to face to you staring at his mouth and eyes wide open in shock. You had one hand clutched around the towel and the other grabbing on the dryer tightly. Baekhyun came-no, floated-one step closer and you dropped the dryer to the floor.

“You…can see me?” Baekhyun asked in a timid but hopeful voice, his eyes shined brighter than before. Finally, after thousands of years, someone is able to see him! Excitement took over him as he went even closer.

Baekhyun watched you take small steps backward until your body touched the opposite wall. A triumphant smile took over his face, “You really can see me, right?”  

“Get away from me.”  

Baekhyun’s smile faltered. “No! Please, I promise I’m not a pervert or a stranger or even a person! I can’t harm you anyway.”

Gesturing wildly, he tried to convince you that he’s perfectly harmless, which did the opposite thing that he hoped for. Baekhyun punched the wall on his side, watching your eyes bulge into the size of glass balls.

“See? I can’t touch anything, they just go through me.” Baekhyun shrugged and put on the best smile he could muster, “Now can-“

Before he could even finish his sentence, your eyes rolled to the back, and you passed out.

Your POV

“Now that we are past introductions, we can be friends! Ah, it feels good to have someone actually hear you speak.”

You had a blanket wrapped tightly around you as you slipped on the cup of hot tea, watching the man-no, ghost dancing and twirling in the kitchen happily like he just got a hundred million dollars. There is no way that you could imagine any of this is true, that ghosts actually exist, that he’s been living here longer than you have, and the fact that you can actually see them.

“I don’t even know your name, ok? Can you please just sit down so we can talk?” Being this calm in front of a supernatural creature was not what you had imagined. The fainting probably took away all the shocks and scared you got from him. Your voice isn’t even trembling.

“My name is Baekhyun.”

You bit your lip watching the man who looks like he comes from the ancient Joseon era. Discarding everything else, you can’t help but notice how good looking he is. There’s no point denying that the blue silk robe weaved with golden threads accentuated his flawless features, and the sheen of slightly shining transparency makes him look ethereal. He just seems so different from all the Joseon people you learned from history class, who all had long beards, wrinkled faces, and bad money habits. Baekhyun, on the other hand, looks more like an actor in a historical drama.

Oh god, what are you thinking?

You cleared your throat, preventing “So, umm…who are you? I mean, are you a Joseon emperor or something?”

Baekhyun shook his head, “I am more like the general type.”

You arched an eyebrow, from the way he acts like a 5-year-old kid you would never have guessed that. Maybe the doubt is your eyes was obvious enough for him to explain, “I know, my brother thinks the same too.”  

“So um…do you just roam around here? Don’t you have some kind of mission or things to do?” You thought back on the ghosts or spirits portrayed in popular media, wondering if they are true or not.

Baekhyun laughed humorlessly. “Mission? You want me to live my life? My life has been over. For centuries. I’m dead. Yes, I am stuck between life and death because I couldn’t revenge for my brother, but you kind of stop thinking about it after 7 hundred years.”

Even though his face didn’t show it, the look in his eyes betrayed him. They were filled with sadness and the kind of nostalgia and missing someone that breaks your heart even from justing looking at him.

The atmosphere was becoming too tense for your liking, it felt like all the air molecules were pushing down on you. Baekhyun looked like he had just woken up from a bad dream, but he covered up quick enough for the pain in his eyes pass in a fleeting moment.

“So…last night the cupboards….it was you, right?”

Baekhyun nodded, the silk headband moved up and down with his head.

“So I am not ill after all. You said you’ve been here for the last 21 years, so you’ve been doing this all the time?“

He crossed his arms and jumped down-no, floated closer. That’s the only thing you still can’t get used to, the fact that he has legs and doesn’t use them to walk or at least, appear walking. Baekhyun looks surprisingly real, his skin has a normal color, and the texture of his silk robe looks intricate enough to touch, and every detail of his face is clear.

“The cereal boxes?“

“Yep.”

“My shoes?“

“Yep.”

“My clothes?”

“Yep. It’s gonna be the same answer to all the other questions you have. Yes, I also breathed down your neck whenever you got a wrong answer at your history homework.”

You sighed and pinched your nose, _it all makes so much sense now._ You thought back to the times you convinced yourself that you just have a good intuition in for history, ”That’s why I always get an A in history?“

“Then why didn’t you do that to all my homework?”

Baekhyun cleared his throat, “You wouldn’t have guessed that even after hundreds of years there are people still bad at counting numbers, right?“

You burst into laughter at Baekhyun who started to blush. Different from humans, the pink on his cheeks looked more transparent, almost a jelly-like color.

“Yah! At least you had a free housekeeper for twenty years. Don’t be a brat.” Baekhyun pouted, the annoyed frown on his face made him look more adorable ever.

Baekhyun feels like the long-lost best friend you never had. The fact that he’s been with you since birth felt creepy before, but you can tell that Baehyun is genuinely nice to be around with. Well, except times he’s annoying as hell.  

“Y/N…I want that.”

You shivered when Baekhyun breathed down your neck. Turning around, you gave him a hard stare.  

“No, Baekhyun. I need to finish this paper today. Plus you already have clothes. Go away.”  

Baekhyun huffed loudly when you closed the tab on a shopping site. Just when you thought he had gone to somewhere else, the screen of your computer glitched and went black.

“Yah! Byun Baehyun!” You fisted your hair in irritation, “I didn’t even save that paragraph!“

“Is something wrong?“

Your brother’s head appeared from behind the door and the pen you threw in Baekhyun’s direction magically hit his head instead.

“You were loud enough for me to hear through noise reduction headphones.”

Your eyes darted to Baekhyun, who was standing a few inches away from your brother and watching with a satisfied smirk on his face.

“Sorry. I was just annoyed with my _nuclear proliferation timelines. _”

He shrugged, “That’s why I told you to study business in college.”

You picked up the pen on the ground after your brother left and threw it to Baekhyun again. The plan to ignore him didn’t go well the moment he looked at you with those puppy eyes. The natural downturned shape didn’t help with your resolution as well. How come that it’s so hard to refuse him?

You rolled your eyes and sighed, “Fine.”

Somehow you ended up in Gucci. Somehow Baekhyun pointed to that 600 dollar sweater you think is absolutely disgusting and said he wanted it.

You let out an exasperated sigh and turned to the shopping assistant with a forced smile.

”I’ll take this, thanks.”

Baekhyun floated next to you happily while you stared at the receipt with a painful expression.

“Do you know how much I spent on you already? You are gonna get me bankrupt in no time.”

“But you love me. And…“ Baekhyun whispered in a sing-song voice, “I help you with your tests in school.“

You sighed. There’s no way you can argue with that. Ever since Baekhyun figured out he’s no longer bound to stay in the house when he’s with you, he’s been tagging along wherever you go. And soon comes the perk of being the only one who can see and hear a ghost when Baekhyun shouts answers to multiple choice questions to you during tests in exchange for food or clothes. You still jump sometimes because of how loud he can be as if other people can see him as well.

You set up the fire in a remote spot of the riverside park, where you burn everything for Baekhyun. Tearing apart the carefully wrapped box, you dropped the sweater into the fire watching it lit on flames. You sighed, people would think you are crazy if they see you like this.

“Happy?”

You turned around to Baekhyun when everything was reduced to black dust on the ground. Your breath hitched as you took him in. 

How comes he still looks good in an ugly sweater like that? He looks more like a runway model than anyone else. Your heart started going crazy watching him under the afternoon sunlight. It made him glow even more. Your eyes caught on the details of his face, the amber of his eye, the small scar on the side of his cheek, and the strands of hair covering half of his forehead. They looked more real than usual, almost like solid colors.

You stepped closer and looked him over once again. Where did that transparency go? He should look more invisible under strong light, but  Baekhyun looked completely the opposite. 

“Is it alright? Yellow looks nice, huh?”

You pointed to one side of his body, “There’s a ruffled edge on the left side.“

“Where?” Baekhyun turned his head back and forth but couldn’t get it right. You knew that he couldn’t touch anything, but at that moment something propelled you to reach out your hands to him.

Baekhyun jumped back like he was burned by a candlestick the moment your fingers touched the now straighten sweater. When you realized it, you froze too.

He looked down in confusion, why didn’t your hands go through him like everybody else?

“You were able to touch me just now, how?”

You stared at your hand in shock, the texture of cashmere still felt real on the tip of your fingers. Did you just touch Baekhyun?

You sucked in a breath when you reached out again, but this time to his hand. The slightly cold but unmistakably real sensation of his fingers against your palm scorched you like a fire. Your hand was shaking when Baekhyun reached out, but this time he felt your hand for real.

Your head snapped up to meet Baekhyun’s when his fingers were wrapped around your wrist gently. The coldness from where the tip of his fingers met your wrists reminded you that everything is real, that you and Baekhyun are actually able to touch each other.

“Am I…becoming human?”

[trashassassin]

How to Smut 101: Getting Over the Hump (heh) and Just Doing It

Hello friends! This little guide comes to you from someone who has literally been creating original stories in some form or another since before they could hold a pencil. So well over a decade. And yet, I’ve only really delved into the land of smut writing in the past few years. This was a genre that I, and many creators I’m sure, were scared to touch. It was too difficult, too embarrassing, too easy to get wrong.

And yet, I believe I’ve gotten a pretty good handle not only on writing it effectively but also dissolving the embarrassment surrounding the subject, at least in my own mind. Obviously everyone’s methods for writing are different, so this will be less of a guide and more of an outline full of things to help you prepare for your jump into the world of smut for the first (or maybe twentieth after a bunch of scrapped attempts if you’re like me) time.

The first thing that really helped me was changing how I thought about smut.

Sex scenes always had this mystical, untouchable quality to them whenever I thought about writing them. They were set apart from the rest of the story, placed on a sort of pedestal, a pedestal that had my thought processes heading places like “alright, now it’s time for the Sex Scene™”. Sometimes I would just throw random sex scenes into a story because I felt as thought they had to be there. Which brings me to my first real point.

Sex scenes must have a reason to exist!

Unless you’re writing a plot-what-plot situation, a sex scene must be in your story for a reason! This applies more to published novels or longer fics, which is why I’m posting it first as this one in particular won’t apply to many of the people who clicked on this post.

Imagine this a bit differently. What if your story was progressing along normally when, all of a sudden, you threw in a random, pointless scene about your characters stopping to get coffee? Nothing plot-relevant happens; no important characters interactions happen; there are no special items hidden in the coffee shop. Your characters just decided that they needed a pick-me-up and sit around quietly sipping coffee for 1,000 or so words. This would be really boring, right?

Well, an unnecessary sex scene is the same way. I’m not naming any names here, but there is an exceptionally popular series of erotic novels out there that makes this mistake all the time! If you have pointless sex scenes sprinkled into your story every chapter, it’s going to become boring and grating in a hurry.

Sex scenes must be consistent with the tone of the story, happen naturally over the course of the plot, and/or teach us something important about the characters involved in order to have a true place. If these things are not present, I find it’s best to reconsider if it’s really best to have a sex scene during this point in the story or in the story at all.

Sex scenes are just like any other scene!

Going back to the whole stopping for coffee analogy, a sex scene is just another scene in your story. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “well, duh!”, but this realization was actually a big turning point for me.

I realized the main responsibility we have in writing is to take mundane, everyday activities and present them in a new or interesting way. Think of an adventure story. A group of characters going on an adventure to find the Golden Sword of Wisdom is the exciting version of you and your friends driving down to your local Walmart to obtain Golden Magnum Ice Cream Bars.

Or, consider the Harry Potter series. It takes going to school, something every person within its targeted age group is required to do, and turns it into a fresh and, dare I say, magical experience.

Instead of simply providing a blow-by-blow (pun intended), textbook-style retelling of a sexual encounter, it’s important to put your own unique spin on it.

Play with your readers’ senses.

A huge part of what makes any scene great is the ability of the reader to immerse themselves into it. And you as the author can make this much easier for them by describing it to them in as much detail as possible, how everything contained within it looks, feels, smells, and tastes.

And sexual scenes are certainly no exception to this. In fact, I’d say creating an enjoyable sensory experience is of the utmost importance.

Consider things like how does your character’s partner smell? How do their surroundings smell? Are there any candles burning, a window through which fresh, or perhaps not-so-fresh, air is streaming? Have their clothes or sheets just been washed and smell of a particular scent of detergent?

Also consider how things feel. Is your character in a cold or warm place? Perhaps you could describe a feeling of goosebumps rising on the skin or of sweat dripping down their back. How do the sheets feel beneath their fingertips? How does the brick wall feel at their back? What is it like to be pressed up against a window pane?

What sounds are present, besides the obvious ones? Is there music playing? A fan going? Cars outside? Perhaps the sound of footsteps are present as they desperately try to keep quiet in a crowded place.

Also consider your characters’ own personalities, as well as how much experience they have in sexual situations. How do they feel about their partner? Are they excited or apprehensive? Are they overwhelmed with love or simply looking to get their rocks off? All of these are important things to consider when creating a well-rounded scene.

Your scene does not have to be vulgar, but it can be!

You may think that every sex scene must be contain levels of vulgarity reserved for professional porn movies, but this is simply not the case. As I said before, take into account the personality of the characters involved. A shy character would not likely use words like “cock” and “pussy”, where as a more bold or experienced character very well may.

And if you’re not comfortable with using such words in your writing, well, now is the time to step outside of your comfort zone! As long as it is appropriate for the characters involved, of course.

But regardless of boldness or levels of experience, some are simply just not into super vulgar dirty talk. This post by Smut 101 is a perfect example of dirty talk of a more romantic sort for the more hopeless romantic types that may appear in your stories.

Keep things accurate but not necessarily realistic.

You always see people criticizing sex in books and movies for not being realistic enough, for not involving vagina-having characters taking a piss afterward to prevent UTIs, for a lack of condoms, for both characters reaching orgasm at the same time. You know what I say to that? I say that sexual scenes are meant as an escape, as a fantasy, and that such realistic touches would ruin the illusion of the perfect scenario the reader is looking for.

That being said, if everything is sunshine and rainbows all the time, you’ll once again find yourself with a boring scene on your hands. It’s alright to include moments where your characters knock their heads together or say something so ridiculous it makes the other person laugh. Sex can and should be fun and, when the moment calls for it, a bit goofy.

Something that you cannot compromise on, however, is accuracy. If you’re delving into a particular fetish or act you’re not familiar with, it’s best to do your research beforehand, something else that the author of the aforementioned exceptionally popular series of erotic novels seems to have neglected. Watching videos, reading articles, and browsing forums can all be useful in familiarizing yourself with the subject.

Even if you’re a virgin, this does not bar you from writing well-written sex scenes, I assure you! If someone was required to experience something in order to write about it, the vast majority of authors would be up shit creek without a paddle.

As with any genre, it never hurts to familiarize yourself with it before you start writing it. Reading highly praised romance novels and other peoples’ erotic fics is a good place to start if you’re looking for inspiration or guidance.

Don’t be afraid to draw from your own experiences.

If you have had a bit of sexual experience, it’s not a bad idea to draw inspiration from this. Remembering specific sensory experiences you’ve had and applying them to your writing can help enhance the realism of a scene.

It’s also not forbidden to include your own personal fantasies in your stories. Just be careful that all of your erotic stories don’t turn out exactly the same. While we all have our own individual tastes and preferences, it’s good to step outside of that to keep your stories fresh.

Some general tips for you as a writer.

Writing smut is going to feel awkward if you’re not used to it. And even if you are used to it, feelings of embarrassment may still come up on occasion. This is normal. Do not let it dissuade you from pursuing your creative endeavors. Even if the embarrassment over writing lewd scenes never fully goes away, it will get easier with time. I promise.

Whenever I’m writing any kind of scene whether it be exciting, emotional, or, yes, lewd, I always like to select some music to set the tone in my mind. Spotify and YouTube are my go-to sources. If you’re settling down to write a smut scene, find yourself a sexy playlist to get your brain in the zone.

Your mood is important as well. Obviously you don’t have to be dripping with lust to write this sort of scene, but being upset, tired, or ill can definitely put a damper on your ability to get into the proper mindset.

Never try to force writing of any sort if you’re not feeling inspired. As that old saying goes, writing is like a fart: if you have to force it, it’s probably shit. The original quote pertains to relationships, but I think it’s pretty fitting here as well. Should this happen, don’t scrap the project entirely. Simply take a break, play or watch the property involving the character(s) you’re writing about, read some of your favorite authors or fic writers, read some guides like this one. And then come back when you feel suitably inspired.

In conclusion...

As I said before, this is less of a guide and more of an outline. Everyone has different methods for putting out their best content. Perhaps listening to music distracts you or the writing of others sticks in your head and hampers your ability to create original work.

And that’s completely fine.

That being said, I hope that you guys found this useful in instilling you with the confidence you need to finally begin writing smut! There can never be too many smut writers in the world. If there’s something in particular that you’d like advice on, leave a comment and I’ll try to address it as soon as I can. Thanks for reading, everyone! Now, go forth with the faith that you can finally do the thing !!!

[realtrafficsource]

The Best SEO Tips For Quick And Fast Results

If you’re looking for the best SEO tips to get you started down the path towards quick results and efficient website strategy then here’s what you need! I’ve put together the best information, gathered from years of hands-on experience, testing different tactics and trying various strategies. These are the best practices that will enable you and your website to reach a new level, or to get off the ground running right away.

Our best SEO tips

1. Keyword Basics: The most important thing with keywords for your website is that you have to begin the process with proper research. Take advantage of free tools and services at your disposal such as the Google Adwords tool, and consider paying for more advanced and detailed programs.

Remember that keyword density is a thing of the past, there is no density you should be opting for. Instead, focus on natural inclusion of your targeted keywords, working them in where possible without doing it excessively.

Note: The fastest results are seen in targeting a larger number of lower level competitive terms.

2. Create Great URLS: There are many steps that go into creating great URLs. Starting from the beginning, you should pick a domain name that is short, memorable and includes your most important keyword phrase. While hyphens are acceptable, more than two begins to get excessive and spam-like.

For your individual page names, also include a relevant keyword, so that each URL looks something like www.your-main-keyword.com/targeted-page-keyword.html. When possible, avoid using session IDs and other dynamic page variables that add a lot of unnecessary junk to your page URLs.

Note: If you already have a site that you cannot adjust the page structure to accommodate keywords in your URLs, then consider buying additional domains (building mini sites) to support various segments within your niche. These additional mini sites will drive traffic to your main domain.

3. Find Long Tail Keywords: Long tail keywords often are the secret to great search engine rankings. Long tail keywords include at least three words, and when you find ones related to your niche you will be facing much less competition. Additionally, the traffic you see as a result will be much more effectively targeted, ensuring you see better results.

Note: Add longer tail keywords into your URL will help as well (see #2). Do a quick search and you will see most “experts” agree that the buyers are found with the Long Tail Terms. Boost your earnings through driving more of the right type of traffic….buyers!

4. Use Latent Semantic Indexing: Latent semantic indexing, or LSI, is the process of including related keywords and phrases to your main phrases in order to boost your site’s value in the search engines. So if your site was about coffeemakers, you can include other related words, ranging from coffee makers to iced coffee and organic coffee and on down the list to help boost your rankings. This will also keep your site from appearing as spam, as you won’t just be reusing the same keywords over and over again.

Secrte best SEO tips: The more content you have on your site about the general topic, the better your site will do for the specifics within that niche. That’s how a site becomes an authority on a topic.

5. Get Smart with Internal Links: Many websites don’t properly use their internal links to their own advantage. However, it’s an easy way to help each of your pages gain a higher and more targeted ranking in the search engines. Be sure to include each page’s main targeted keyword or phrase in internal links pointing to it, and always be sure to reference your other pages with links within your site’s content when appropriate.

Example: You sell a type of Coffee maker. Make sure that anyplace that keyword is found on your site that it is linked to the specific product profile page. This helps the individual profile page rank higher in the search engines.

6. Dive into PPC: Whereas other SEO strategies take time to work, pay-per-click advertising is a great way to see instantaneous results. Start running a campaign for your website, backed up with all of the keyword research you have already done. Begin small, as costs can quickly get out of hand if you don’t know what you’re doing. Experiment with different ads, different bidding strategies and different targeted keywords until you start to see consistent results, then pick up the pace and run larger campaigns.

Note: One sure way to confirm that the keywords you’re targeting with your SEO efforts will drive the right type of traffic is to pay to get them their 1st. If they don’t buy then target a different keyword phrase.

7. Optimize your Images: Always include an ALT tag for your images that describes what the image is – with targeted keywords and phrases. This ensures that people who can’t see images see something in their spots, but this also helps you get found in image based searches. Additionally, try naming your images with a keyword in the filename, as in, targetedkeyphrase1.jpg.

Note: Don’t overdo it. Some people will read that and then force a bunch of keywords in every image on their site. The idea is to do what you would typically do but this time do it “right”. If the image is relevant – name it something relevant. Oh, and also, if it is a button or something else that isn’t relevant to your niche, name it something with numbers, as in, 1010101.jpg.

8. Optimize your Title Tag: Many people think that anything they put in their title tag will be sufficient but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your page title provides an excellent opportunity to boost your rankings, as well as draw people into your site to see more visitors.

To begin with, your title should be kept short, no more than 60 or 70 characters in length. Also, ensure that every page has its own unique title, instead of merely listing your site’s name on all of them. Work your targeted keywords into the title and be sure to be more descriptive and exciting than just labeling a page as “Home” or “About Us”.

Secret best SEO tips: When giving each page its own title, try and include product model or product names to help drive targeted traffic..

9. META Tag Notes: The META Keywords tag is no longer used by Google for ranking, although other search engines may still make use of it. More important are the META Title and META description tags. Keep your title to 70 characters or less, and keep your META description to 160 characters or less, anything more will just get cut off by the search engines. Of course, remember to include your targeted keywords in these META tags.

Secret best SEO tips: The META description is what the searcher will read in the organic listing so try and make it sound compelling and give the searcher a reason to click on your site.

10. Link Building, What Not to Do: Many people go in the entirely wrong direction when it comes to link building. For example, buying links or participating in a link farm is a strategy that’s doomed from the get-go. You should also avoid low quality, spammy directories and you must understand that tactics like link exchanges, blog commenting and forum posting have all been devalued as compared to how they used to be viewed. Also remember that when you build thousands of links in a few days, you will stand out as unnatural.

Note: It’s best to build links over time from high value sites. Think of sites that are in your niche that you consider the highest value and work directly with them to get a link to your site (can link out to them – see below).

11. Link Building, What you Should Do: Submitting to high quality, respected directories such as DMOZ (it’s very hard to get accepted), Best of the Web and others can pay huge dividends. You should link out to your niche authorities to help boost your own reputation, and you should focus on providing catchy, unique and engaging content that serves as “link bait” for your site. Social networks can be beneficial when used in the right fashion.

Secret best SEO tips: Link Bait is content that is so good that people want to talk about it. One way to do this is provide content that is controversial.

12. Don’t Forget Canonicalization: If you want to maximize your search engine results while also improving your ability to track your site’s traffic, then you need to ensure that your pages aren’t being counted more than once. Your home page may be coming up in different ways as http://yourdomain.com, http://www.yourname.com and http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html. This can confuse the search engines and impact your tracking stats. Use 301 redirects to move your pages to one home page, and fix any issues with other pages on your site as well.

Secret best SEO tips: Talk to your techie about implementing this strategy. WordPress has a great plug-in for this that makes it really easy….yet another reason why I LOVE WordPress.

13. Stick with HTML: The benefits of JavaScript and other program languages are lost when they aren’t searchable in the search engines. Everything you do you want to be helping your cause of ranking highly, which means sticking to easily accessed HTML for your website. Avoid overcomplicating your site with excess forms, frames of any kind, or any code that isn’t searchable.

Note: As I stated in #12, I love WordPress. Why, well one of the main engineers at Google said it best, “WordPress does 80-90% Google loves without changing a setting”. If you haven’t already I would look for ways to use WordPress in your business.

Like I said at the start of this list. Go through each item and check it off. If you are doing each of these then you’re doing most of what’s required to get good SEO scores. Stay tuned for our next email with more tips and strategies on what you can do to boost your SEO rankings!

View best SEO tips article here:

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