#just wanted to put this on tumblr because i found it while scrolling reddit

[voetballers]

“And I’m not afraid of this world after all” - source

[welivetodream]

Crippling loneliness in the age of the internet:

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)

Let me set the scene:

In a dark room, the only light is coming from the phone of a girl laying on the bed, as she mindlessly scrolls for hours on end. She is typing fast, she is running multiple apps in the background, she is listening to the latest hits while doing all of this, her earphones never leave her ears; even when she closes her eyes, she is still listening to a podcast. Despite all these activities happening around her. The girl looks bored and apathetic, her eyes are blank, no emotions, no thoughts. And for hours to come she stays in that state, waiting for something to happen, even if it doesn't, she doesn't care.

This could be the opening lines of a sci-fi novel but this is actually how I act when I am alone. This is how my life has become. And while people like to blame this on the internet that has made Gen Z mindless zombies; I think the only reason I haven't died is because of the internet. To normal people it's a curse that makes humanity fall to its lowest. To me it gave a purpose, a want and a direction to live for.

The Internet isn't the evil mastermind to me, it's a necessity that has kept me alive and not succumbing to the fact I have no one to talk with.

Internet to me isn't Instagram, Snapchat, Discord,Twi--X (someone stop Elon Musk from cooking), it's the "quirky" apps like Pinterest, Tumblr and Reddit as well as the depths of content that is YouTube. It's the places where I found "my" people who understood me, who accepted me, who appreciated me. Growing up I had no one to talk with, even my own family wasn't understanding, let alone my friends.

During my school life I had always been surrounded by friends or as I like to put it, people I can talk to and have lunch with during school hours. That's what it was, nothing more than that. My idea of friends was just different from others, I didn't want emotional connection or people to hang out with. I wanted friends who would listen to my ramblings and be able to debate and discuss things with.

I don't want to seem pretentious or snobbish and definitely not above others in any way. But....when I am surrounded by so many frustratingly stupid people, I don't have any other words to describe them than "not good enough for me". They may be wonderful people, who are warm and lively. I do not care about being around such people. I am someone that watches video essays on morality, ethics, philosophy and analysis of movies and TV, in comparison to the people I know I am just more perceptive and thoughtful and that alone makes me seem like a stranger to them (INTPs are weird in short form). My dad told me smart people have it hard to make friends because of this exact nature, I wouldn't call myself incredibly intelligent but I know I am far more capable in thinking than my classmates who watch reality TV shows and Tiktok dances. Sometimes I cannot even comprehend how people can even get satisfaction and happiness from something as simple as that and that's when I understand: it's okay to be different than that and it's okay that they are "normal".

I feel like I am Lain from "Serial Experiments Lain", as if my existence is given meaning by the internet and I was born from it. My lack of social interactions in person can be explained by that, but it's the thought of talking with other people that often scares me. I am used to being silent, so much so that even on the internet, I remain quiet, not interacting with people who might understand me. Being afraid of not being understood has stopped me from even trying to make connections when there's people ready to do that.

I don't even reply to comments on my posts, unless I have to and I don't talk with anyone on the internet itself. I just watch and be happy at other people's interactions and feel a sense of belonging.

For some days I decided to stop doing that, to stop the vow of silence. To let people approach me and approach others myself. I want to be friends and it's the only thing that I have ever considered as something I couldn't achieve.

Loneliness isn't as pretty as the movies and books tell you. It's more of a psychological thriller than a show like Euphoria and Skins where these stylised depictions make my depression and loneliness appear cool. It's cool to be alone, to have my own space and not cross boundaries but it's not cool to let the loneliness that shields me, devour me.

[motleyfolk]

Examining How I Use The Internet

Prompted by this page I’ve realised I’m doing a lot of mindless scrolling and procrastinating a lot with the internet. Time to fix that. Mari Kondo’ing this shit.

Reddit: I mindlessly scroll and always gravitate to drama subs like AITA, which just depresses the life out of me and drags me into negativity. 

Solution: Block the bad subreddits with stayfree and use it to put a limit on how much time I spend on there, so I can still access useful and informative subreddits but not doomscroll. Stayfree did heehaw but I found a simple extension that blocked the subreddits and then used Ublock to hide popular posts so basically it’s just my specific feed now. Win!

Tumblr: I also mindlessly scroll here, albeit less. Sometimes on instinct I feel the need to put on a persona or post certain things or overly clarify things to appease spectators I’ve crafted in my head or feel a need to perform. Makes using this site stressful.

Solution: Remind myself this tumblr is my digital journal and while I’m open to making friends this is not something I’m doing to get clout. I am here to collect, learn and explore. 

Twitter: I rarely go on it anymore, and I just don’t like it. The only things that were on it that I liked were cute and cozy aesthetic accounts, but even then nah.

Solution: Delete it. Twitter gone woo crab rave

Discord: I use it the most to talk directly to irl and online friends, have a bookclub and get updates on random stuff. Sometimes it feels like a void.

Solution: ?? Need it to talk to friends. Just meditate or smth. Like tumblr, don’t feel the need to perfom or put on a persona. Vibe only.

Youtube: Also started procrastinating by going on there with the intention to watch this One Specific video and then I’m on the 4th Im Skylar White Yo lego video. 

Solution: See if there’s something that can block the yt homepage and just see subscriptions or smth. ABSOLUTE UBLOCK W HOW IS THIS SO EASY AND I NEVER KNEW?!

Emails: I’m scared to even touch my gmails bc of the amount of spam mail I’ve accumulated since I was 8.

Solution: Buckle up and start unsubscribing to junk mail and clearing them out THEN switch from gmail to literally anything. Done techgirl email

Internet In General: I think I use a decent not centralized browser. I use yt adblock like a champ. But I really need to go over security notes, find a vpn, make sure this browser is cool, download that torrent browser thing sometime. 

Solution: Find vpn, get torrent browser thing, use throw away emails or card info.

I also generally feel like I have to put on a performance. Is this down to that one time I was a microceleb in this one niche shitty instagram community? Maybe. Theres a voice at the back of my head like “Will this get notes? Will people laugh at this? Does this fit? Will this slightly put someone off?” and its exhausting because I’m not here to get clout I’m just wanting to chill!! I do however want to make friends and meet like-minded folks, don’t wanna create an echo chamber for myself. Hm...

Solution: Recognise this behaviour, the thoughts. Listen to them, deconstruct them, let them pass. Do this constantly. Do not engage them or let them influence you. (realising this sounds like some spc lmao)

I sometimes skip posts with hardly any upvotes or notes because unconciously Im only paying attention to bigger posts. This means I miss out on tons.

Solution: Use good ol ublock to hide note and upvote elements.

Spotify: Love music. Like the spotify wrapped thing. Hate spotify, it is evil company. I don’t even pay for it thanks to my bestie. But...

Solution: Compile music elsewhere (where ?)

Instagram: I’m not actually active on it, I just still have it bc it has tons of cool anime edits I’ve saved over the years. But I hate zuckergram.

Solution: Export the sick edits and delete zuckergram. I will do this on my phone.

End Notes

Compared to a year ago I’m much more aware of how I’m using the internet. My phone usage is down to nilch, it’s almost like I never spent 16 hours a day on instagram straight as a kid.

Having a path still ahead to walk down doesn’t negate the mountain I climbed before.

The sites I use most are Reddit, YT, Tumblr, Discord. Thats four I’ve whittled it down to, which is actually an ok number, not too bad. One for solitary reading, one for spooks and funny videos, one for semi solitary blogging, one for communication.

Should come back to this later and re-examine things and not forget to do these things.

[cryptidunknown]

so recently i’ve been kinda having a bad time with my mental health and with christmas break right around the corner i think i’m gonna use this break time to work on my mental health and self care a bit.

there’s a lot of things i need to work on, but the reason i’m here is because one of my biggest problems is social media addiction. specifically tiktok.

i spend most of my day every day hopping from one app to the next, just opening them and scrolling for a bit and not finding anything satisfying and hopping to the next app. i don’t even post on any sites but tumblr, but i have tumblr, tiktok, twitter, facebook, pinterest, reddit, discord, youtube, and snapchat all on my phone and i check all of them several times a day. i don’t even talk to people on discord or snapchat, i just open it compulsively to check the notifications tab (even though i have push notifications on and i rarely get notifs since i don’t actually talk to people) i won’t even watch anything when i open youtube half the time. i don’t tweet and i don’t interact with anyone on facebook. i spend 2-3 hours every day scrolling tiktok and getting nothing out of it. it’s all just escapism and compulsion and, i believe, a genuine addiction. and i think the first step to fixing my mental health issues is to put an end to it.

i’ve tried to stop this before and it hasn’t worked. it doesn’t matter how many times i delete apps or put time limits, i’ll either just find something else to doomscroll or i’ll ignore the time limit entirely.

so this time i'm trying a different tactic. im going to post on here every day (or every other day) to share how much time ive spent on social media that day. I'm hoping this will hold me accountable and give me an actual reason/incentive to spend less time scrolling.

here's the goals/game plan:

no snapchat or discord unless im actually responding to a notification or messaging someone. im leaving them on my phone because i actually do want to use them to make more friends, but im no longer allowed to just open them without reason.

same for youtube, im gonna turn on notifs for my favorite channels so i know im not missing anything and im not allowed to open it unless i actually plan on watching something. same idea with reddit but i might just delete that because the only thing i actually do on there is read r/nosleep

twitter and facebook i actually use to get news and stuff, so im still allowed to check those but i am going to start being conscious of how many times i open them every day

im not deleting tiktok yet because i have a friend or two and my mom who sends me things on there and i like sending things to them. i think for now im gonna just impose a 1-hour time limit on tiktok. this hasnt worked before but i hope it will now since im reporting back to yall. im also required to actually check my dms and the following page when i use it instead of just endlessly scrolling the fyp

tumblr is always allowed because i get actual enjoyment out of it, but i am going to start being more conscious of how many times i open it every day. also am going to make an effort to use it on desktop rather than the app bc i have WAY less problems with scrolling when im on desktop (this goes for all social medias tbh)

a03, my kindle app, podcasts, music, and pretty much anything that involves actually reading or otherwise engaging my brain is always allowed

i think a lot of the reason i turn to social media in the first place is out of boredom and my brain craving easy stimulation. so i think the only way ill be able to successfully avoid compulsively opening social media is to replace it with a less brain-rotting, but still reasonably easy to digest stimulation. I have a couple different ideas for this. ive found that a03 can make a good substitute for that constant stream of content that i crave, and while it may not be the best way to spend hours of my day, binge-reading fanfiction is still better than endlessly scrolling tiktok. so for now at least, a03 is one of my... coping mechanisms is the word i guess. i also picked up the first Heroes of Olympus book from the library and plan to read it over thanksgiving break this week, because it should be easy enough to digest that i dont get bored every few pages and try to open my phone like i do whenever i try to read a book nowdays. my long-term goal is to be able to read properly again, but for now i think a03 and middle grade fiction is a good start. ive also never read HoO and im really excited about it lol. ive also got a knitting project im working on, a podcast im binging (TMA), a few shows i want to catch up on, and games i want to play. im listing these out because they are all easy, digestible forms of entertainment that i can turn to instead of scrolling and get actual enjoyment out of. i know most of them are still just consuming content but right now im just trying to find things to replace endlessly scrolling social media and the things i listed are all things i Actually Enjoy.

this post has gotten very long and sporadic but hopefully i can look back on this post when i need a reminder of how badly doomscrolling and social media addiction affects me and why i need to quit.

im gonna attempt to give a daily update on how much time i spent on social media that day. all posts about this will be tagged as just "#cryptid stops scrolling" in case you wanna block that

and here’s my screen time from last week just to give y’all an idea of where we’re at

[batarangsoundsdumb]

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough

[thelonesomequeen]

Can this anon tell us on details how they managed to stay away? I want a way out but I cant// Me again! (I'm clearly failing at staying away from Tumblr lol but I knew people would respond to my original post so here I am) Gonna tell you how I did it. I did this in January -

I'm lucky enough to have multiple devices (phone, laptop, iPad). I deleted all social media apps from my phone and only allow myself to use them on my iPad. That changed my time spent online significantly. Especially because I don't take my iPad when I go out anywhere so I wasn't finding myself scrolling mindlessly on my phone when I was out. It helped me become more present in my life. At first it was super weird, I kept automatically unlocking my phone and scrolling to where the apps used to be. I also felt a little bit out of touch with reality for a while, I didn't feel like I knew what was going on in the world. I still have twitter on my phone because I use that for my regular news and I never spent too much time on that one anyway

I blocked websites I was using as well (LSA, Discord, Reddit, Tumblr, CDAN etc) changed my settings on my phone and iPad to "limit adult websites" (under Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web Content on the iPhone) and you can add "never allow" so any time I found myself habitually typing in those websites, it would come up as blocked. You can always unblock them but it at least gave me a pause to be like "wait, is this how I want to spend my time?"

Time limits on my iPad. I can't remember how I did it but you can add time limits for things. I'm not sure if it is with the apps or just websites but the websites I put a time limit on per day and when it expired, it expired (you can extend also)

I blocked anyone on IG or Twitter that wasn't serving my goal of cleansing. The trio, Lexniko, Tinx (cause I found her content was all over my page and I find what she pushes toxic). Any time I would see a post on my for you page that would be pushing Selena and Chris, I'd block them etc. I just didn't need that energy on my IG. I started following more body positive accounts and those good news account, cute animal accounts etc and steered away from celebrity stuff. I even blocked OK Magazine after they posted some fake news article cause I was like "why do I need to see this rubbish, there's enough fake news in this world." Now my for you page is baby goats mostly and it's wonderful lol.

I went extreme. And because I cut off so much, I noticed just how much of my day was being consumed by all of this. I sometimes find myself slipping back into the mindless scrolling if I've been stressed or there was nothing else to do but on the whole, the scrolling lasts for 15 mins instead of hours. And I do it and then I'm done for the day.

It's also helped me pull myself out of it and see just how ridiculous a lot of this stuff is. I'll come on and see someone post about a like or a follow and it doesn't affect me. I just have realized just how unimportant social media is in the grand scheme of things and I just roll my eyes like "come on, this isn't even logical". Which 6 months ago, I was one of the people who was like oh but it does mean something. So it helped me get back to reality a little bit.

I'm not saying you have to stop but I will say, it has really really changed my life for the BETTER. I am so much more present. I didn't realize just how much I was NOT living because I was so sucked into this stuff. And I started it because during the pandemic, I was stuck inside, like we all were, and I just needed something to do and then it spiraled. And now, I get to enjoy the content from Chris for what it is - a cute dodger pic or a cool trailer, fun interviews upcoming for the press tour and it has made consuming his content back to how it should be, you know?

I hope this helps someone! It was difficult, it really was, but I'm so glad I powered through that "withdrawal" stage. And the fact that it was so difficult to stop in the beginning made me see how toxic it was.

Thanks for coming back to share! 🦎

[longbobmckenzie]

u toxic subreddit people should stay there why are u polluting tumblr

Hi, anon! First off, I want to share a picture with you:

Alright, now that that’s out of the way…

I’m going to assume you’re referring to the fuseboxgames subreddit, since the only other one I’m active in is the LITGFanFiction sub, which is a very lovely, supportive place. And yes, the Fusebox subreddit is toxic. But I’m not sure why you’re lumping me in with the toxic people, since a) I hardly ever post there, and b) when I do post/comment there, I’d like to think I’m either being helpful (answering people’s questions) or generating polite discussion. I have never attacked anyone for having a different opinion than my own.

One thing I like about reddit is that even though it’s still anonymous, you still have an actual account, so all of your interactions are with a person with a username, and you can look at their profile and see what other stuff they’ve posted. Whereas on tumblr, you have the option (if enabled) to leave anonymous comments/questions in someone’s inbox. That means that if people want to send hate, they can do so anonymously and not suffer any consequences for their actions. That opens up a lot of possibilities for toxicity on tumblr, something I’ve seen a lot of other people deal with in my few short months on this platform. I haven’t dealt with much of it myself, but every once in a while it happens.

Anyway, the reason I joined tumblr in the first place was because the toxic subreddit was cracking down on fanfiction updates, and since I’m a fanfiction writer, I was invited by other fanfiction writers to join tumblr and share my work here. So, I did! That’s why I’m here polluting tumblr. And can I just say that this place is the biggest hellhole I’ve ever seen? Wow. I thought reddit was bad, but this place is something else. I’ve seen a lot of shit go down, mostly because of people hiding behind anonymity to spread hate. It’s kind of weird that those same people would accuse a different platform of being toxic, but oh well.

As far as polluting tumblr is concerned, boy, the amount of content I see in my feed each day that I really couldn’t care less about is astounding. It’s impossible to avoid, and it makes scrolling through the app/site a pretty big chore. I personally don’t post that much, I just share my fic chapter updates (W&S is updated once per week, EOTW is a bit more sporadic) and reblog stuff I like. I don’t really think that’s polluting, but I guess we all have different opinions.

Maybe it’s fanfiction updates you have a problem with? I try to tag all my stuff, so maybe blocking certain tags would help? Or you could just block me, pretty sure that’s an option, too. I dunno, I’m pretty new to this and haven’t had to block anyone yet. And as a fanfiction writer, I can appreciate how much time people put into writing their chapters, so I like to support them by reblogging. It’s funny how art gets so much love (I see the same art reblogged in my feed all the time), and headcanons, and other game-related asks, but fanfiction gets ignored and actively shit on. It’s pretty sad, especially since all the problems that people tend to have with the game itself usually get fixed in fiction. Is it because there are no pretty pictures? *sigh*

Anyway, if you’d like to discuss this further, feel free to reach out! My DMs are open both here and on reddit (veritas_11 over there).

I also decided to start polluting twitter. Why not, right? I can be found there @longbobmckenzie.

Taking over the LITG fandom, one platform at a time.

[permian-tropos]

diary entry sort of thing. personal. content warnings under the cut 

cw: mentioned suicidality

I’m trying to look with a clearer head at like... how, if it is possible, to heal my passion and relationship to this fandom, and I keep going back to this really early incident that was an obvious bad omen.

Last summer I got in the habit of exercising and it was really fun, me and my brother were really building muscle and it felt great, and I actually got into Pathologic specifically because I put playthroughs on in the background. I’d be holding planks and trying to do dips while watching the funky plague game on my tiny iphone screen, it was pretty great. 

So I watched parts of playthroughs of both games, I’d already started consuming some fandom stuff, funny youtube memes mostly, and met a few people while poking around on tumblr and reddit, and the endorphins I got from exercise put a rosy tinge this experience. 

And then I saw the first thundercloud of discourse on a blog I was scrolling through, where someone was trying to stir up trouble against a particular content creator for associating with ~gross kink~ and there were several other gut punches when I saw people I recognized whose fanwork I’d begun to admire joining in. 

The next exercise day came around and in the middle of it I genuinely started crying from stress. If you think this is cringe then like... you’re wrong lol, people have feelings. But whatever. I was worried that the handful of friends I’d already made would abandon me if they found out I didn’t approve of policing ~gross kink~ and that I’d be dragged into a) admitting the dark kinks I do have and getting people to treat me like shit or b) hiding it but having to witness constant discussion of kinks that do squick me out, conducted in a manner to deliberately exacerbate the disgust, which is super awful for someone with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Because that’s how these discourses always go. 

I couldn’t finish the day’s exercise routine because of the emotional distress and that was the last time I worked out. I couldn’t go back to it, the routine just fell apart. And that was probably quite bad for my long-term mental health. The discourse was kind of a hypervigilance trigger, where I couldn’t release pent up stress physically because my body feared it would leave me too exhausted to deal with the Looming Threat of social rejection or trying to figure out who was safe to interact with.

But with that in mind it especially sucked later on to have troubles with the people who sort of innocently advertised “safety” to me because the “safety” was only in the form of not being judged for your fiction, and for a collection of reasons it wasn’t safe for the problem of being neurotic in fandom. In letting out their frustrations with being treated badly, in trying to protect themselves in an unideal situation, even if they were being hyperbolic and didn’t intend to do anything untoward, people were communicating their own hypervigilance. It was clear that being in the fandom meant being scrutinized on all sides. Almost every conflict I got into was about this issue of keeping tabs on others, because I would be thinking, “oh god, if I wasn’t here in this conversation, people would be scrutinizing me, and some of the stuff they’re reacting badly to seems like stuff I could hypothetically say/do... maybe? I don’t know”. 

People found that I was triggering their neuroses by reacting badly, because now I was scrutinizing them back. Well, fuck me, if it isn’t my old friend the mortifying ordeal of being known. Plus, their perspective of “I genuinely feel unsafe” was being greeted with what seemed to be “don’t worry so much”, so that felt insulting. But it wasn’t really that I didn’t want people to worry or be upset about being wronged. It was that I had no way of communicating or fulfilling a need I had for a fandom space where none of this was necessary.

I didn’t want a choice of what to be neurotic about. I didn’t want to be neurotic at all. 

I said in a now deleted post that I regretted socializing at all, but the thing is that’s not true, I really did need to try to socialize. Except... well... this fandom was kind of a toxic fucking minefield (especially back then) and there was no way for me to engage with it without something going wrong.

That moment when I felt like I couldn’t exercise anymore because all my spare energy was inevitably going to go towards ruminating and fixating on how not to let things Go Wrong in some way... that wasn’t the point where things started to go bad because almost everything good came after that too. But it was still pretty indicative of the problem to come. 

In the end of summer 2020, after battling through the horror and ennui of the early pandemic which definitely was not easy, I was starting to find ways to be consistently happy, and briefly I was physically healthy, creatively inspired, eager to make friends. A year later, I took a long walk in the woods at night, heard a creaking tree branch, and imagined the sound was my body hanging from a noose. 

There’s no one cause for that. There’s other stuff I haven’t mentioned. This is hardly a full picture for anyone on the outside. I’m not assigning a villain, I’m just saying... yes, something obviously went wrong. 

It really didn’t have to be like this. But as a reassurance: yes, I’m well aware that the person I was a year ago would not want me to feel this way, and in a way I’m inviting them to come back from the past and take charge of how I’m going to care for myself moving forward. Maybe I’ll try working out. 

[tes-trash-blog]

ElaborTe

So if you like Nords or stan them or cherish them as much as I do the Snow Elves, you might wanna skip this one.

TW: White supremacy, Neo-Nazism, the trash blog going completely off their shits

From the early days of the Elder Scrolls, the Nords have always been.. Well, Norse-coded. As far as races and their lore-evolutions go, they’re the only ones who have held steady in their Nordy McNordness throughout the series. They’ve always been hardy, fair-haired men and women from frozen reaches of Skyrim. They’ve always had a foothold in that tundra, as early as the days of Labrynthian, first featured in Arena. They’ve always preferred axes and steel over magic and guile, and before anyone says anything about Project Tamriel or out-of-game lore or whatever Kirkbride said about robots and wasabi, I’m talking explicitly about canon here, as canon is what most gamers see in these games.

From their appearance to their armor and weapons to the draugr and ancient gods, the Nords are very much the Elder Scrolls’ answer to the Fantasy Viking, which in itself is based on the Vikings of yonder year.. Give or take a few embellishments. Their axes have harsh-but-intricate carvings, their armor is lined with fur and made from honest steel, they have names like Hulda and Sigrid, Roggvir and Thongvor, their voice actors hail from Sweden or can put on a Scandivan-esque accent. They look, sound, act, and dress Norse.

In media studies, this is called coding, a relatively new term in academia and so far still largely used in queer studies. Unlike allegory, which is an intentional one-to-one comparison of something vis a vis Lion Witch and the Wardrobe or Ender’s Game, coding is by and large unintentional, or at least unclaimed and not explicitly stated. It is a byproduct of beliefs, biases, and bumbletyfucks the writer possessed as they created a work, and left unchecked it can lead to problematic elements.

This isn’t to say that coding is terrible, or Bad, or Problematic (though it often is at least one, and sometimes all three), but rather, it is a limitation of being human. Most writers are human as are most of the audiences the media reaches out to, and as such are bound by their worldview and preconceived notions and biases. Just because it can be problematic doesn’t necessarily mean it always is going to be problematic. A skilled writer can recognize this and work around it, or even play with the preconceived notions the audience has. I’ve seen very few white writers accomplish this, even fewer that were cisgendered men, but it’s doable.

However, if these notions are left unchecked, unchallenged, and uncritically accepted, you end up with uh, things. Things like, oh, the Khajiit who steal and deal drugs and travel in “caravans” (oof), the Bosmer who are the only brown Elves in the game and are also cannibals (yikes), the Reachfolk are dressed in untanned animal skins and wear antlers and do guerilla warfare and fucking yikes Bethesda what were you thinking???

You also end up with the Nords, who really took a nosedive from Fantasy Vikings into Gleeful Killers with Magic Shouting come Morrowind, where the Snow Elves had a proper introduction if only to show that the Nords of old were mass murderers, but, y’know, felt kinda bad about it after a child soldier killed their leader. It makes for a sad story, but it’s a cheap, Ender's Game-esque out so the viewer doesn’t have to feel bad about rooting for them. “They felt bad, guys! It’s okay!”

These deeply problematic aspects of Nords-as-homicidal-maniacs only became more apparent with the arrival of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.

Here’s where that white supremacy warning I gave earlier comes into play. You still got some time to check out and enjoy your day.

Still here? Alright.

It was a perfect storm. As I said in a previous rant, Skyrim came about in a time of unprecedented White Anxiety. I cannot stress enough how much white people lost their damn minds when Obama was elected president. There were threats on the then-President’s life, on his wife and daughters, on a daily basis. Gun sales reached record highs out of fear that the boogeyman Democrat would take their guns away. Libertarianism soon became a shorthand for a white supremascist who likes to smoke weed. The so called Tea Party screamed about “freedom of religion” while openly applauding anti-Islamic hate crimes and calling the President by his middle name/dogwhistle “Hussien”, white supremacist hate sites saw an influx of traffic; Stormfront, the oldest of the bunch, saw a jump from 23,000 users in 2004 to over 100,000 in 2008, and this was before bot users were a thing admins had to weed out, this was before a certain foreign power took a keen interest in installing a useful idiot.

This was home-brewed vitriol.

All the while, right wing media went batshit. Fox News had their Mustardgate “scandal”, a dogwhistle to their populist audience that their leaders weren’t like “the average American”. Conspiracy theories sprung up right and left (pun intended) about the Obama administration and “the shadow government”, of which those neo-Nazi sites, with their surge in fresh-faced users,  were a wellspring for. Being the Internet, their memes and “facts Big Media doesn’t want you to hear” spread like a cancer to the greater Internet-- Reddit and its subsidiary Imgur, Tumblr, Twitter, 9Gag, countless other pockets of blogospheres and forums and media platforms. It was, and still is, fucking inescapable.

And of course, Nazis love them that Norse aesthetic. They love the cold where only real men could survive, unlike those weak-willed patsies and *checks notes* dijon-mustard lovers. They love the pale skin and light hair of the people as that’s their idea of genetic purity. They love the runes, the affectations, how the Norse folk of old just invaded and pillaged and were so strong, they did Blood Eagles and were so masculine.

And therein lies why I hate the Nords. I hate how they went from Generic Viking to Murder Men, I hate the direction Morrowind and onward took with them, I hate how no one had the foresight to either tone down these aspects or put a spin on them like they seemed to do with other races. I hate how quickly actual racists took to this fake ass race, I hate how they tried to pull a “both sides are the same” in that stupid Civil War questline when one side is an actual ethno-nationalist paramilitary cult. 

I hate how the writers of Skyrim were cowards, and I hate that they apparently looked at Ur-Fascism and saw a checklist. I hate that they gave the Nords, and by extension you, the player, a moral justification for rallying against a “high-brow”, “elitist”, “globalist” “oppressive”, distinctly non-Nordic and non-Mannish group of people because they “threaten the Nord way of life”. But let’s make the Elves the Nazi allegory so there’s no qualms whatsoever about siding with the Fantasy Republicans. I hate that every other stereotype of non-Nord races can be found in that game, from the skooma dealing Dunmer to the thieving Khajiit to the bootlicker Imperial to the fucking High Elves. I hate that they only expanded on the morally-justified genocide of the Snow Elves with Songs of the Return, and then further reinforce how “good” that was by having you meet the guy who slaughtered children. I hate how, barring one easily missable side quest that still uses bothsidesism there is no challenge to this bullshit way of thinking. I hate that a sizable chunk of Stormcloakblr are also very clearly racist. I hate that my Ysgramor/Pelinal shitpost started to gain traction after someone with a rage face icon reblogged it with a “Kill All Elves” tag. I’ve deleted it since. The meaning is lost on those wastes of breath, and was 100% the cause for this rant.

I hate how the writers could have done better, but didn’t.

[diarybutablog]

Yesterday I had an amazing day!

I’m sorry I didn’t post anything since May but I really felt like I didn't had time to post anything and many things happened and I'll try to write the most important things in the other posts and now I'll try to say what happened yesterday.

The day before yesterday my father told me and my brother to got to sleep before midnight so we could wake up early. He wanted to go with us on a trip to Brighton because i wanted a comic from a Graphic Novel Shop that was there near the train station and also go somewhere to eat. Yesterday I woke up at 11 AM and he wanted to go with us on 10 AM… ALRIGHT. He opened our door to our room (i live with my younger brother in the same room in UK) and just said "So we're not going to Brighton?". To which i responded "Hello :>"… I guess he didn't like that because he just closed the doors. I waited in my room scrolling through Reddit on my laptop and seeing the same jokes reused with different images. I saw a meme where someone said the if you add Mr Bean to anything it will automatically become funny. It was so stupid that I felt weird because I wanted to chuckle for a moment when I saw this stupid picture.

Suddenly 12 AM came on a clock and I decided to dress up. After I did that I went and washed my hair. I think I was washing it for really long because I came out of the bathroom an hour later. I decided to go to the main room.

It’s not living room because it’s too small.

My dad was as always on his phone on Facebook when I came out of bathroom and I told him that I am hungry so I made myself two toasts, one with butter and pate, and the second with pepper cream. I ate them and drank some soda. My stomach hurt because I don’t usually drink sodas. Anyways, my dad told me that we could go together without my younger brother because he's asleep, so we did. My dad bought 4 tickets for us. Each one of us had one for return and one for going onward. My dad was telling me to keep the tickets somewhere like my right back pocket so i won't lose it heh. When we were riding we discussed Poland and UK as well. After the gossip about horror and thriller movies we arrived. First we went on an expedition to find the Graphic Novel Shop to buy me a comic book but so we were walking and walking and… we found it.

(Kinda i did it because my dad was totally lost)

I was broke but my dad had some to buy me a gift up to 20 pounds. I was searching around and found some cool comic books like the ones about Scott Pilgrim and based on D&D. Also i saw the 13th volume of a series called Giant Days which chapters are called troubles.

(I don't know why they call them troubles heh)

After searching for a while i noticed the comic section called LGBT and i wanted to check if something interesting was there AND THERE WAS! I really liked She-Ra and the Princesses Of Power and I noticed a book written by it’s creator Noelle Stevenson which is called The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures.

It’s basically her diary but she adds her doodles and thoughts to it. I highly recommend it to anyone and I think I might do a Twitter thread describing my day but that’s not important now and probably won’t happen. I also saw a little comic book that was about tweets from our lovely Donald J. Trump but ilustrated as satirical pictures.

Basically boomer humor.

I showed it to my dad and he told me kindly that he wasn't interested in buying that for himself or for anyone. After that me and my dad came out of the store and we went to get something to eat for dinner but… my dad wanted to buy a bag and something to put a gift in. We were walking around the stores and he was stopping like every 5 SECONDS to check the next store and see if they sell something to put a gift in. We entered the Pride Shop or something like that and I wanted to buy the mug that was on the exhibition which presented Batman and Superman kissing. Also I was looking at the pride flags and pride pins but I didn’t give any signs about them to my dad because I don’t want him yet to know that I’m trans, or I think I am. When my dad was coming to these shops, I was coming with him to some of them, but if I wasn’t I was just standing outside waiting for for. In one of them there was a Moomins Handbag which I really wanted but my dad told me that he only would buy it if it costed up to 3 pounds but it was worth 8 so I didn’t get it… When I left the Moomins Handbag store I heard and saw two goth kids coming right beside me and I only heard them say that the girl in this conversation had a Moomin faze and collected everything related to Moomins… 

Does that mean that I’ll become a goth kid as well?

We were looking for a place to eat for a couple of minutes and I noticed a place where last year I saw a dude that was playing drums very nicely and it was cool to listen to him. We didn’t stay there for long because we still went to the restaurant to eat something but before we went there a random lady gave FREE COOKIE ICE CREAM to us! While I was walking I held my book without it’s cover because it’s pink and I don’t really wanna go out with pink stuff because I feel like I am showing too much of my secret side with this color. Me and my dad ate these ice creams before we went inside the restaurant but my dad got angry because instead of physical menu to pick up we had to scan the QR code but he was too much NOT FRIENDS WITH TECHNOLOGY that he just came out of the restaurant and I went after him. We were walking and found a pizzeria that we went to last year and ordered two pizzas. Before we got our pizzas we got plates filled with olives, potatoes with onions and cream, eggplant parts and some weird green vegetable.

(Probably a zucchini slices)

Also I got apple juice with 4 ice cubes in it and my dad got one beer like a dad. We were eating our pizzas peacefully and suddenly something amazing happened. A obese young adult lady with red dyed hair FUCKIN’ stole my pizza and tried to run away… and she did, but one of the stuff workers chased her and saw her coming into another pizzeria and… did the same thing, but the whole thing wasn’t only STEALING MY PIECES but also taking someones pizza slice and throwing it at them, scratching one of the stuff ladies arm and when leaving this pizzeria blocking the exit doors and not letting the stuff member that was chasing her leave the restaurant. Instead of being sad because someone took my pizza I started to laugh under my nose quietly so others wouldn’t notice. My dad only saw my smirk and asked me if I feel alright and I said „I think it’s the most entertainment I had in UK so far”. I think I kinda understand why this woman took MY piece of pizza. It was probably because me and my dad sat on the seats next to the exit so it was easier for the crazy lady to take something that was near exit than at the back of the restaurant. One of the stuff members came and told us „I’m sorry but these FUCKING… I mean stupid people will not bother you anymore”. After that she left with the rest of my pizza and gave me a new one FOR FREE! I ate the one piece and we asked the stuff to help us pack the pizza to take it outside so they gave us a pizza box to take with us. My dad before coming out of the store with me asked the Scratched Girl if everything is fine and she said that it’s just a scratch and also asked where were we from, so my dad said „We’re from Poland” and she said „Well… I’m from Russia”. I have no idea what was the rest of their conversation but my dad made a joke that the EASTERN EUROPE was being attacked. If I was good from history I would make a historical joke or a meme now, but I’m not… so not joke for today. Before we left police came to check if everything was ok, but they weren’t stopping us from leaving so we… left. On the way back we were looking at the city of Brighton and right at the train station my dad checked if he had his train ticket and… IT WAS GONE! My dad started to panic but had an idea how to fix this problem. He took his ticket receipt and tried to show it to the woman that was standing next to the ticket receiver. Surprisingly it worked and we waited for our train. When our train came my dad wasn’t sure if it was the right one so he asked me to ask the conductor if we’re in the right one and he said that we were in a right one.

TONGUE TWISTER

When we were heading back to Hastings I decided to start reading Noelle’s book. It was very touching and nice to read. When we arrived to Hastings I was on the 132nd page and I had to close it for a moment and when we came back home I needed to use a toilet and also I used this situation so I could continue reading this amazing book. I finished the entire 194 paged book in a day but everyone probably would do that. After finishing reading it I wanted to tell my friends about my day because I think it was great. After telling some of my friends how was my day I decided to eat my supper and watch with my dad the second episode of Beastars. My dad did like this episode and the whole show. We watched it because we made a small tradition while I am in UK. One day I read one chapter of one of my Warrior Cats books, and the other day we watch a singe episode of Beastars. After all of that I decided to sit and write my day down as a Tumblr Blog post.

Thank you for reading my summery of my day. 08.08 was an amazing day I probably won’t forget because of this post and maybe because I told my friends about this. As I said I'll try to post tomorrow how my other days have been because there’s so much stuff I wanna get off my chest.

[princepondincherry]

Joining Tumblr

Obviously many, most, or all who see this have joined Tumblr, so this is likely a boring post, but the whole point of this is to give my perspective on things, so I might as well write about it.

Why now?

I’ve been lurking on Tumblr for many years at this point. Didn’t join at first because of the instinctive fear of putting things up on the internet. Of course, at this point I have accounts on FF.net, AO3, and Spacebattles with fics I’ve written (under Prince Pondincherry), as well as a Reddit, so that ship has sailed. I guess I just read enough posts complaining that nobody reblogs and felt a bit guilty, combined with wanting to actually be able to interact with some of the blogs I’ve been reading.

For whatever reason, I found the concept of making a “blog” a lot more intimidating than those other things. Probably because “blogs” can include really professional things, which isn’t really an implication I get from Reddit or the various fanfiction sites.

As a bonus, now I get to rant about some stuff.

Tumblr Formatting Rant

My God, some Tumblr formatting is AWFUL. I don’t know if this is the blog’s fault, Tumblr’s, or something I can fix now that I have my own, but a lot of blogs I want to read are either virtually unreadable or literally impossible to read, particularly on my iPad. I’m talking about the fancy skins that place the actual posts waaaay off to the side of the screen, where scrolling just puts the posts behind the summary and title for some reason, and sometimes I have to zoom out just to make them visible. But then the text is tiny. Why is this site such a shit-show? (Now that I have my own blog, I’m justified in complaining, right? Eh, maybe I should wait until I’ve posted some meaningful content.)

Anyway, a lot of this is slightly unintuitive or requires more creativity and/or effort than I’m willing to devote, so expect my page to be pretty boring for a while (or forever). Hopefully I don’t screw up the formatting and become what I hate.

[chariot313]

Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started. 

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

Reddit

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Pinterest

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21

[shameforskam]

exactly a year ago today (oct 30th) was the day i first found skam

im kinda surprised i remember it, i was scrolling through tumblr and saw a gifset with four couples in it all from different shows, all of which i recognized except one, it was a gif from hjernen er alene (of course) and the op had tagged skam so i immediately googled it which at this point in the fandom… didn’t get me very far, i found the skam page and nrk tv which had the shittiest google translate ever and really nothing else, i don’t think the wikipedia article even exist yet (at least on the english wiki), but it gave me the basics: skam was norwegian, in its third season, and it had no official english subtitles yay!

while randomly searching for a translated version of the episodes (i’d found the srt files but i wasn’t sure how to use them yet) i found a youtube channel that was uploading only the isak and even storyline (so also missing a lot from s3) with english subs. i remember avoiding it for a bit because i wanted to start from s1 if i was gonna start at all but upon finding no other translated videos i wound up back there and figured i’d see if it was worth going to the trouble of figuring out how to watch the rest. i watched all the videos in one go and i knew i’d found something i was going to fall in love with, i remember particularly loving bånder and the call your girlfriend scene and not having any idea who the girl with the suitcase was. i needed the backstory on these characters asap. i went back to tumblr and found a post suggesting an extension i could use to overlay the srt files on the episodes, so that's what i did for the next week. that was super fun because anytime i had to pause the show i had to pause both the program playing the subs and the video and keeping them synced up was such a joy lmao. but it was worth it. i loved this strange niche show with such beautiful characters and such rich storylines and dialogue and i felt so excited by what i’d found 

as i was catching up on s1 and s2 i was figuring out how to follow along with s3, the format of skam has always been the thing that intrigued me the most and there’s no way to describe exactly what following the story in real time feels like, but you all know that. i watched the next two clips uploaded on the youtube channel but it got taken down on nov 1st. i consider pause to be the first clip i watched in real time. that was when i’d started getting the translated clips from shametv and getting the texts and everything as well on tumblr. that was the first clip i remember seeing had dropped and known i’d need to wait a few hours for subs. i remember i’d just got settled into how the process was working when the show went on hiatus

i’d been all over the skam tag and stalking the fandom every day, loving everyone talking and all the theories (some just hilariously wrong). i have the first post i ever reblogged about skam [x] (a great one) and the first reaction post i ever made [x] i remember being so sad just trying to process the incredible relationship and show i’d just found out about ending in a heartbreaking moment and then leaving me while trump won the election, it was too much devastation for one week! during all this i was in my first semester of college, living with 3 roommates who are now my best friends. i don’t remember talking about skam to them too much to begin with (they’ll probably say different) but one of my roommates also found out about it on tumblr and i showed her how i watched the first seasons. skam came back and on nov 15th we were all out to eat when ingen lever lykkelig alle sine dager dropped. it was exciting every time a clipped dropped but this one was special because we were at dinner and i told my one roommate there was a new clip and we translated the title word for word on a napkin while our other roommates were like ‘what is happening??’ and the title was sad! and i didn’t want sad! and i spent the next few hours trying to avoid thinking about what it could mean and running around the city with my friends and hoping the translation would be up when i got home 

that was the night i created this blog. it started simply as a place to put all the posts i wanted to save and to write down my thoughts so i wouldn’t talk my roommates’ ears off. that was the night i committed to actually being involved in the fandom, something i hadn’t done in a few years and not close to the same extent. but skam was special, still is special, it’s the reason i’ve talked to so many people from all around the world now. i never thought that this blog would get followers or that i’d make posts that people would find interesting or that i’d learn to make gifs or that i’d have any influence on the fandom at all. it’s the weirdest thing stumbling on my posts linked to on twitter or used in discussions on reddit when i’m looking through the parts of the fandom i don’t regularly interact with. there’s a lot of aspects about being heavily involved in and up to date with a fandom that i’m still grappling with, and there’re the aspects i hope i never get use to, but i’ve found so much more joy in this show and with this fandom that i would always choose to be a part of it. i don’t know how long i’ll stay, i don’t know if i’ll eventually archive this blog but i’ll be here until my interest with skam fades, until there are no remakes to critique, until i lose track of the cast, until there’s no one left translating and nothing to talk about but i don’t see any of that happening soon

i’ve loved this show for the last year. even with it’s flaws at the root of it all i still love it. i love what i’ve learned from the show and from the fans, i love that the show made me believe in where i want to go. i’m in college studying film and watching skam during that first semester made me 100% sure this was what i wanted to be doing with my life, making media people could believe in, something that touched their soul and made them think, something new and inventive, something people could find themselves in and fall in love with, something beautiful, and that’s really why i’ll always be grateful for this little show, i’ll always be grateful for the people that translated it and the people that continue to translate, to everyone that made me realize something i never would have and think about something in a brand new way, to anyone that’s sent me questions and enjoyed hearing my thoughts, to everyone that made me laugh with some ridiculous post, to everyone that sent me comforting words when i asked, and to everyone that created content that made me love skam even more, it’s been a great year 💙💙💙

[bentonpena]

Influencers are fighting for attention as Instagram tests removing likes from its platform: 'There’s no audience applause at the end of a performance' (FB)

Influencers are fighting for attention as Instagram tests removing likes from its platform: 'There’s no audience applause at the end of a performance' (FB) http://bit.ly/2Lm4jTS

Instagram has been testing in some countries what its platform would look like without likes appearing on posts.

The removal of likes is designed to improve the lives of consumers, but influencers are starting to feel the impact of the change on their accounts and their brands.

But brands value "authentic" influencers who are their "true selves" more than engagement metrics such as likes, influencer marketers tell Business Insider.

Influencers say it's a catch-22: Instagram's built-in algorithm values engagement for curating the posts that show up first in front of users, meaning that influencers — especially those that Instagram chose to remove likes from — have found their content is getting much less reach than ever before.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The easiest link that brings together social media's wide range of consumers and influencers is a simple need: validation.

Instagram — one of those places for likes, comments, followers, and reblogs — has recently tried to curb that need. The platform has been testing out what it would look like without the "like" feature, claiming the feature will help to reduce its associated impacts on mental health and societal pressure. The "like" feature won't be hidden completely; users can see the number of likes on their own posts, but not on others' pictures and videos.

The results of the tested removal of likes are still being collected; the test only rolled out in July to some users in seven countries. But some consumers have started to share their reactions to the change. In a recent article for Huffington Post, affected users said they appreciated the less pressurized, more carefree version of Instagram without likes.

Read more: Instagram is starting to cut off its most addictive feature, and it could have huge consequences for teens' mental health

But for influencers in those countries, response to the change has been different. Although influencers Business Insider talked to haven't seen significant change yet to their business and brand deals, the idea of a like-less Instagram makes many of them nervous. Affected influencers have already noticed their posts are getting fewer likes and less engagement, pushing their posts farther down in Instagram's algorithmic feed. Some have expressed concerns it'll affect their reach and ability to grow on the platform.

Others say that the popularity-contest-style pressure associated with Instagram likes will just shift to another one of the many metrics measured on the platform.

"I really think that likes are just part of the platform," Canadian influencer Jess Grossman told Business Insider. "What can I do? It's a platform I'm using for free."

SEE ALSO: The life and rise of Lil Nas X, the 'Old Town Road' singer who went viral on TikTok and just celebrated Amazon Prime Day with Jeff Bezos

Fewer likes, more authenticity

The removal of likes rolled out two months ago in seven countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. Almost immediately, influencers noted that their posts are accruing fewer likes than they used before the test started.

Kate Weiland, a Canadian influencer known for matching family outfits, said it's been a "bummer" to post a picture and not be flooded with the droves of likes and comments she's used to receiving. It's affected how she's able to evaluate her audience's interest in a post, which she uses to figure out what content she should keep posting or move away from.

Weiland's wildly intricate outfits and poses with her three kids and husband can take time to set up. But Weiland says she's found it a harder to put as much effort into the content when she can't get a good idea of what her fans even want.

"Likes are a motivation factor," Weiland told Business Insider. "Now here's no audience applause at the end of a performance. It's kind of like crickets in the background."

A recent research survey, conducted by Canadian influencer agency #paid, found that more than half of influencers affected by the Instagram test have seen the number of likes drop on their posts. Over 50% of surveyed influencers have seen the growth of their follower counts slowed.

But while influencers are starting to worry, influencer agencies that secure brand deals and marketing campaigns don't seem to be as concerned about the effects of likes disappearing. Likes are only one of the several metrics used to evaluate an Instagram post's performance, says Mike Blake-Crawford, Social Chain's strategy director. Likes are only "surface-level," while metrics like engagement and click-throughs of URLs in posts show more about the relationship an influencer has with their audience.

"Likes are the currency of social media," Blake-Crawford said. "It's going to separate influencers who have trigger-happy followers ... versus the ones who have a real connection with their audience and have the trust element."

Instead of likes, influencer marketers say they care more about "authenticity." Sideqik CEO Jeremy Haile said the most important part of working with influencers is seeing who can actually build relationships with their audiences, and who can get fans to click on ad campaigns and purchase products that influencers put their backing behind.

So far, affected influencers who talked to Business Insider have not seen their partnerships with brands and request for ads decrease or disappear. But that hasn't stopped them from wondering how the removal of likes could stymie to growth of their brands as their engagement numbers continue to fall.

The catch-22 algorithm

A grievance raised in conversations with influencers revolved around a discrepancy between what Instagram has taken away with removing likes, and what the platform intrinsically values: engagement. 

It's been more than three years since Instagram changed its order of posts in users' feeds, shifting from reverse-chronological to a feed based on what Instagram's algorithm thinks you personally want to see first when you open up the app. The algorithm, which dictates what appears first in your feed, is based on three things, according to Instagram:

The likelihood you'll be interested in the content

Your relationship with the person posting

The timeliness of the post

Instagram's reason for changing its feed was to put a greater emphasis on users seeing posts from "friends and family," although it's not clear exactly who that group is. Instagram told Recode last year that users see 90% of posts from "friends and family" as a result of the new algorithmic feed means, compared with seeing only 50% of these posts in the reverse chronological feed.

But on the flip side, the Instagram algorithm de-emphasizes posts from brands and accounts you don't typically interact with. Instead, the way to get put in front of more people's eyeballs during the precious moments a user scrolls through their Instagram feed is through engagement, comprising of likes and comments.

"You're not getting the likes and you're not getting the reach, and your content is not going as far," said Grossman, one of the Canadian influencers. "You're taking away one of those pieces that is driving engagement, how is that algorithm going to work?" 

Engagement, which includes likes and comments, are more important than ever in the algorithmic feed. That's where the catch-22 comes in: The "likes" feature is built into the fabric of what gets seen on Instagram, so influencers caught up in Instagram's experiment — who are getting fewer likes in turn — are seeing less reach and growth on their posts than ever before.

"Any artist's goal is to create work that people will see," Canadian influencer Reza Jackson told Business Insider. "By limiting that, it's jeopardizing our businesses."

Although influencers are the ones who could be most heavily impacted, a trickle-down effect of a like-less Instagram looks imminent. Influencers told Business Insider that without seeing likes on their own posts, they feel less incentivized to like and interact with other users' posts as well.

"I've started liking less, because what's the point?" Grossman said.

Read more: Instagram is mulling a new feature that would hide from others how many likes you get on your posts

The social media-depression connection

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, told BuzzFeed News in April that the purpose of the like-less test is to create "a less pressurized environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves."

However, the "like" feature, and the issues surrounding it, aren't something that exists solely on Instagram. It's something that plays out on essentially any social platform: Twitter favorites, Tumblr notes, Reddit upvotes, or TikTok hearts.

Instagram isn't the only platform to weigh the effects of like counts on users' mental health. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has said if he had to go back and redesign the platform, he "wouldn't even have a like count in the first place." Dorsey has floated the idea before of getting rid of the "like" button to ensure the platform is "incentivizing healthy conversation," but Twitter has denied that will happen anytime soon.

Facebook and YouTube have both also recently made moves to eliminate some popularity metrics from their platforms.

Several studies and numerous psychologists have found a link between the amount of time teens spend on social media and depression. Celebrities such as Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato have publicly spoken out about needing to take breaks from their social-media accounts in order to care for their mental health. Gomez has said social media has been "dangerous" for both herself and for teens.

Any number of people who have spent time on social media can attest to its addictive qualities, which are even apparent in this viral video of a chimpanzee mindlessly scrolling through an Instagram news feed. 

Many have compared the battle for Instagram likes to an online popularity contest, and everyday consumers aren't the only ones who have noticed how much of a toll the constant comparison of likes can take. Savannah Mak, who describes herself as the "anti-influencer," has experienced first-hand the feelings of "worthlessness and not-enoughness" that can come with Instagram.

"You're not living the life you're supposed to be. You start to question whether you're good enough," Mak told Business Insider. "Being an influencer is asking a human being to show the world only the perfection of their life and who they are, at all times."

Tech via SAI http://bit.ly/2ZZpEbV September 5, 2019 at 12:53PM

[kintsugi-sheep]

Folks Love My Boss

I admit to getting a little glossy-eyed when I'm looking over my monitor. Just letting all the information wash over without a thought.

Another rock fell into the Yellowstone Caldera and pushed the magma a billionth of a millimeter up.

The plastic straws in the trash bag thrown out by Juniper at Café Deluxe on 5th and Dakota were going to skewer ten fish and three turtles in about two weeks.

One blade of grass in Larry Whitmoore's lawn was going to be a centimeter shorter than the rest because the angel whose job it was to encourage it to grow was taking a longer-than-standard smoke break.

The sun, as he usually did, was screaming about how hot it was.

I’d been watching for three months, essentially just getting into my shift, and I was starting to find my zen. Just take it all in while my mind went somewhere else for a while.

"Hey, Mike!" I jumped a bit, spilling my coffee on the robe my wife just pulled out of the dryer before I left for work. She wasn't going to get off my ass for a week.

I spun around in my chair. "Yes, boss?"

"Beautiful morning right?" he said, tapping on the side of my cubicle and he started to slide in.

"As you always make it, sir."

"Right, right."

He slid his hand down his face and kept walking over. He slid a finger over the picture of my wife I kept to the wall. I hated when he did that. Not as much as I hated him plopping onto my desk, though.

Which he did next.

It was fine. I didn't necessarily need to put my mug down yet.

"Is there anything I can help you with, sir?" I pulled my mug to my lips again.

"Well," he mused, coquettishly, like he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say. Like he didn't know how this entire conversation would go and hadn't already experienced it more than a hundred different times in this very moment with me alone. "I was actually on Reddit earlier."

This threw me off so much that I, again, spilled my coffee on myself. "God damn it," I muttered.

"You got it," he chuckled, pointing his fingers at my robes and igniting the stains

In that moment, each drop of the coffee was blessed with cognizance. They had fond memories of being planted, grown, harvested, packaged, brewed. Every bean they met along the way had been given a name, face, and a life of their own. The previously insignificant coffee staining the robe, that my wife cleaned and gave to me before I came into the office, had awoken to a new state of existence.

Only to scream in agony as each molecule was engulfed in flames and evaporated.

And now there was a gaping hole in my robe.

That was fine. "So, yeah, I was just scrolling through Reddit and I found this niche little SubReddit with, like only a few million subscribers."

"Yeah," I said, pretending that I wasn't talking to my boss with a freshly smoking hole right above the crotch of my clothing.

"Basically, you put in a writing prompt and other Redditors make little short stories based on it."

"Sounds like fun."

"Yeah, yeah..." He trailed off a bit there.

He looked somewhere else, and, when I noticed it was right back to the picture of my wife, I called his attention back to me. "So, uh, what's got you so upset, Boss?"

He plopped all the way across my desk, elbows firmly on my keyboard as his hands held up his head. The images on my monitor spun through everything currently happening in existence, dream, metaphor, imagination, and goat reality. "So I put up a prompt that was basically my life story and waited for people to respond, but no one wrote anything."

I tried to keep my face under control, but I couldn't help but look at the most intelligent and wise being in the multiverse like the most stupid thing I'd seen in my entire existence.

And I'd watched the Crusades.

"Sir, it doesn't sound like that's what that SubReddit is for. If you feel like blogging, maybe try Tumblr? Reddit isn't really the most welcoming place online for personal discussions."

He wasn't there anymore. He didn't disappear in a poof of smoke, or fade out, he just wasn't there.

He was in the entryway to my cubicle again though, smiling, leaning against the frame. 'Wow, thanks, Mike! I knew I could count on you to point me the right direction."

"Anytime." I tried to turn back to my screen, but he continued.

"Still..."

I turned back around.

"Maybe write a short on my Reddit Post?"

I took a swig from my mug. "Can do."

"And upvote it?"

"You got it."

"Maybe give it a medal?"

"I...don't use Reddit enough I don't know how you even..."

He cut me off. "That's fine, that's fine. Keep up the good work." And he walked away.

I popped over to Reddit and managed to find his prompt pretty quickly:

"[WP] Your All-Powerful Creator Will Grant You Infinite Wisdom If You can Guess and Recount, in Written Form, Within a Realm of Twenty Percent Accuracy, His Birth, Childhood, Upbringing, Romantic History, and Career Choices (No Gore, No Rape, Try to Make it Funny)"

I palmed my forehead. "Christ."

My neighbor popped over the boundary wall. "Yo."

Prompt: [Got Deleted Pre-Post; Sent Directly to Poster] God creates a writing prompt on Reddit and no one clicks it.

[consilium-games]

New File Frontiers!

First, Some Admin

For those of you who still haven't abandoned ship, I have not yet selected a new blogging platform, and don't yet know if I'll even leave Tumblr. If you have good suggestions and actually read this post, by all means send me a message here or by e-mail, or even stop in the IRC channel! I have considered expanding into Reddit, but still exploring my options, since Reddit can get . . . unruly, and my resources for moderation more or less don't exist. I'd like a place where maybe I could have something like a community, people making games together, to make stories together, but right now I at least need a place to put down Big Important Thoughts About Game-Design (if only so I can tell myself I'll laugh at them later). But, who knows, maybe my post on hermeneutics might get someone thinking about something cool, too.

And with that out of the way and no further comment on our corporate overlords and their . . . actions, on with the real topic!

New! Improved! Obscure! EPUB!!!

I really, really should have known three years ago what I figured out a month ago: making ePub documents doesn't have to sap one's will to live, and with my ideosyncratic workflow (HTML in Emacs, import into LibreOffice, swear for hours doing layout), ePub can even work pretty smoothly! So get over to my publisher page and see the shiny new ePub format option!

If you've bought any of my books, and didn't get an e-mail about this, firstly you didn't leave an e-mail address so DTRPG didn't know to send you anything, so don't complain. Secondly just so you know, DTRPG does not tell me anyone's e-mail address. That doesn't really matter but I like people knowing what happens with their data when I can answer, and in this case "they sure don't tell publishers". Thirdly: just send me an e-mail at consilium.games@gmail.com, tell me which book you bought, and I'll e-mail you an epub of that title.

Basically I consider it a failure on my part to not have offered an epub edition from day one. I know the many, many technical benefits epub has over PDF: data accessibility (it's just a zipfile), user accessibility (screen-readers don't work as well for most PDF readers), and biggest of all, reflowable text. This matters a lot for anyone wanting to read on a small screen.

You can stop reading now, the rest just kind of rambles

Lately I've been reading Chuubo's Long Title, a bewildering masterpiece by Jenna Moran. I have . . . thoughts about what I've managed to understand of what I've read so far, but they need to anneal a bit. Saliently though, I saw how astonishingly readable the epub was on the pocket typewriter I write my RPGs on now, especially over trying to read PDFs on that thing.

See the default, built-in PDF reader on modern Android phones . . . well, it works, sure. It just about displays one page of a PDF at a time and doesn't output gibberish. But it doesn't recognize any links in a document, and if the document uses printer-size formatting for pages, the only thing the PDF renderer can do is show you whatever will fit on your screen and let you zoom in if that's too small.

With epub files, though, the program can increase text size, increase paragraph spacing and margins, can even change the font, without the reader ever, ever, ever having to scroll sideways or pinch-zoom. A good program will even display a nice table of contents anywhere in the document letting the reader jump where they like. And even for the stingy short documents I crank out, I consider that a significant benefit.

In pretty much every respect, epub beats the snot out of PDF on mobile devices. And I should have pieced together that I have an unfair advantage making them, should have realized it three years ago. But, now I know better, and though the past few weeks have had a lot of headaches poring through my old documents and trying to ensure they match what I've actually published and then formatting and testing and tweaking . . . I finally finished.

Curiously, in my research on how to do this whole project most effectively, I found that only a very tiny few RPG publishers even offer epub as a format! But, that shouldn't come as too much of a shock: "file formats" just in general fall under the purview of "technical considerations" and most people in general do not consider themselves "technical people". So when I tried to figure out "would any meaningful number of my readers benefit from easier reading on their phone", I got some strange and unhelpful answers. No one reads RPGs on mobile devices because no one has anything but PDFs of RPGs (and mobile devices don't handle PDFs well).

But, I then found out that if I exercise a bit of diligence in the future, "make an epub" becomes trivial. And--well, it only took me a couple weeks to epubbify my catalog after not exercising such diligence (because I didn't realize I would need it). And with the 'cost' of epub at basically zero, the question shifted to "does anyone read epubs, at all", and that I can conclusively say yes to! Which leads to here, offering epub editions like I should have, because it's pretty easy.

On that note, I did rush a bit. I tried as best I could to match the text of the epubs to the published PDFs; where my existing HTML differed in wording, usually I wanted to say that, and edited it in the PDF, almost always for formatting and layout reasons. So if you spot a really minor difference in wording--that's probably the reason!

But, if you find something actually wrong, please send an e-mail! Likewise, if you think you're using a really common popular epub viewer and the formatting seems broken, let me know what viewer and what issue you find, and I'll try to fix it! And while I can't actually pay for "crowdsource open-beta free testing", and feel kinda sleazy about it, I simply cannot test on any device but my own, and I'm more than happy to give a free copy of a book in exchange.

That wraps up what I wanted to announce, so I hope your holidays pass enjoyably and I hope this next year treats you well. Look forward to my next book, it'll be a pay-what-you-want follow-up to Lovesick taking the gameplay in a very new direction. And if you've read this far--hey, send an e-mail just to say hi. I've been play-acting at "game-designer and publisher" for three years and change now, I'd like to know how I'm doing, and what I could improve on!