#names censored because i don't know if they want to be named
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sheyri · 7 months ago
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We have a birth date!
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Time to get all weird about it and start an annual blood sacrifice. Or something. I mean, the Red Madness has to start somewhere.
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capsiclesteebrogers · 4 months ago
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Bridgerton fandom is nasty because people like you feel they can police other peoples thoughts and content and they are unable to stay in their lane just like you. So go fuck yourself with the moral highground, guess what I saw today - another nasty Nicola fan talking how Simone is arrogant because she is skinny and a curry sniffer. You seee any kanthony fan making posts in the polin and Nicola tag with this bullshit? Grab a mirror and think for a second why you are feeling you can somehow police other people, nasty romanian comunist
I was debating answering this ask until I got to the last part. It is incredibly insensitive to call someone a comunist simply because you do not agree with what they say. My country is still recovering after communism because we did not have the means to progress faster. My parents still talk to me about how they were affected by it and how awful it was. Please check your xenophobia because it is not normal.
I am not policing people's thoughts and contect. I am calling out people who are being (and have been for the past few years) nasty and deranged towards a real woman. People can post whatever they want but being a decent human being is a requirement for all of us. Call out these fans and make your own post. As I have previously mentioned, I have reported and blocked p*lin fans who have attacked Simone but I see few of these people because I try to curate my space as much as I can.
And yes, I have seen fans tagging wrong. I made sure to tag properly and censor both ship names. If my post appeared in the normal tag then it's tumblr's fault because I always make sure to tag properly.
I suggest you grab a mirror and reflect why you think being xenophobic and fatphobic to a person you do not know is ok. I simply made a post calling out nasty fans. I did not insult the actors nor the ship. Do you honestly believe this behaviour is normal? I made one singular post criticizing some shippers and you have already send me 4 asks. Please block me and leave me alone. Or maybe come off of anon and allow me to block you.
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vilevampire · 1 year ago
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I've never received so much psychic damage from reading something in a fic as I have today reading a paragraph referring to f1t as p4c's "best friend and most trusted companion" with no mention to m1ke at all
#names all censored because I don't want this to appear in any search results I just want to complain without affecting anybody#lucasings#and I'm saying this as someone who looves f1tpac like I see them and I go meus pais meus pais !!#I just really don't like the q!m1ke erasure especially when it's to make f1t the most important person in p4c's life#I'm already disappointed every day by the little amount of p4c and m1ke content there is compared to h1deduo#and in general the amount of ppl who sometimes seem to forget m1ke exists at all when talking about p4c's character#which I kinda get bc he's hasn't been able to log on for a good while now#but like. the most important person in q!p4c's life IS q!m1ke and viceversa and there is absolutely nothing that will change that#they've been life partners for over 10 years. their existence in each other's lives is irreplaceable and non-negotiable.#just bc their relationship is not romantic in nature that doesn't make it less significant#and this will not change regardless if q!p4c starts dating someone or not#nobody come @ me ok I'm just an arospec little guy who believes in queerplatonic q!t4zercraft supremacy#I still want q!f1t and q!p4c to smooch and stuff and for the fandom to keep making content of them#I just don't want that relationship to take precedence/priority over q!t4zercraft's platonic relationship#bc you and I both know the reason any of this is happening at all is because there's such a tendency to ignore platonic relationships in#media and favor the romantic relationships as if they're inherently more important#anyway. rant over :3#I'm going to see if I can turn on my pc without it exploding bc of the fucking heatwave. bye bye
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alltimefail-sims · 10 months ago
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Getting online when T Sw**t does literally anything...
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Every tag. Every fandom. Fanfic titles. Retconned characters (this character is a sw***ie, this character is this song coded, this ship is so that song coded and so on). Fan Edits out the ass. Audio clips, lyric quotes, hot takes on Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/YouTube/TikTok. A cruel, unending slew of exposure you did not ask for lmfao
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elytrafemme · 2 years ago
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every single fictional character i like should split and have mood swings like me. "ohhhhh but it's not canotical" "ohh they have good control over their emotions and stable views on the world" i don't fucking care. i see cq in his fake desert i see klavier's control dialogue i see dahlia and her serial murders and komaeda and the gun literally fuck with me right now. we need to stop being cowards about our fictional character headcanons i think everyone should kill people always because i can't
#neg#omg am i having an episode right now is this episode coded is that what we're doing oh my God should we tell all your friends#should we call the president oh my God mare is having an episode right now guys don't freak but it's finally happening aaaahhh#we've been waiting forever but our queen's finally back she's having an episode oh my God we stan like crazy oh my God i'm calling everyone#can we have a cake at the episode tell me we're having cake at the episode i'm buying a cake it's official girls oh my God AAAH#she's so crazy LOVEEE her. oh my God!!!#anyway i think my blond bitch rockstar fave should get to kill the titular character!#sorry i hate the fucking name censoring in tags i'm trying to ween off of it cause it's like not accessible tee bee aych#but like i need to speak my truth so we're doing epithets#he should literally get to kill him and rip his carpet up WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABT IT#they all make him cry or whatever this isn't the right blog for this but i've got images okay#enough crying enough consolation hugging where's my apology only for it to not be accepted and things to be fucking over#where's MY catharsis you know. this barbie needs catharsis!#i'm super light headed i should super stop posting but like who am i going to text in these conditions#the answer is nobody nobody wants to text my phone like they can blow it up it's fine w/e#i'd make instagram stories but it'll be like a whole thing and they'll report me again for mental illness#i'm going to stop apologizing for having breakdowns publicly actually. if you were like this you would too.#actually maybe you wouldn't because you'd be soooo well adjusted well i'm a weak bitch like actually#and my bones are fucking breaking right now so i'm gonna tell everyone about it <3#i licherally don't want to damage public property now and by that i mean my room LMAOOOO#this is nawt public property but the paints so nice
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mememan93 · 2 years ago
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I don't remember where I saw it, but i saw this idea that Zelda and Link in OOT are siblings, because Links mom was running from the hyrulean civil war, into the forest to hide her kid, and zelda's mom is never mentioned, and i just really like that idea.
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saph-yells-into-the-void · 27 days ago
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i know n*gisagi has its fans and while for the longest time I've considered myself neutral towards it, I think I'm realizing that this is the only ship in bllk that truly gives me the ick
which is weird bc platonically, I actually fw it pretty hard. romantically though....
#bllk#I DONT KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE ITTTT#I thinks its just the characterization of Nagi... I just can't ship him with anyone besides Reo#bc while Reo would've likely ended up at blue lock regardless Nagi would have definitely never been there without Reo#his love for Reo is such a big part of his character that hearing him say that he loves anyone else especially isagi just feels so...#I think they can be good friends. the kind of friends where Nagi is openly a pain in the ass and isagi wonders why he even hangs out with h#although tbf I feel like pwc and other official stuff just makes it seem like Nagi is deeply disappointed that isagi's a boring person#and doesn't have a speck of interest in him besides his soccer abilities#i was rereading school zone girls earlier and there's this chapter where matsuri realizes her feelings for kishiya bc it's the complete-#opposite of what she feels around her friend yatsude (aka her emphasizing she feels nothing around her compared to kishiya-#and yatsude starts to feel insulted)#and low-key this would fit the Nagi and isagi dynamic in my head so well#Nagi has feelings for Reo but because he has no emotional intelligence whatsoever he doesn't realize this#until Nagi brings up Reo for the millionth time and isagi's just like 'omfg just ask him out already'#to which Nagi's like '.... huh?'#he hadn't even considered that he just knows that he wants to be with Reo forever#and isagi's says 'thats what I mean. that's romantic love right there. you don't feel the same way about me or any of your other friends no#and nagi's like 'oh god no. I think I would die if that were the case'#and isagi's just like '??? tf ouch😭'#I like to think that Nagi is a lot more careful with his words around Reo bc he cares about him a lot#meanwhile with Isagi or others he isn't afraid to openly insult him and can just be plain rude half the time#reo and isagi have both equally similar yet vastly different experiences with nagi lmao#(for the record I censored the ship name bc I didn't want ngis shippers to find this post dunking in their ship)#(and I was too lazy to add the anti- tag)
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cyanityinsanity101 · 7 months ago
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YOUTUBE STOP GIVING ME ADS OF THAT STUPID COLOR ARCHIVE GAME I ALREADY KNOW THAT IT'S ONE OF THOSE PRO-LOLLIPOP GAMES YOU'RE JUST SHOWING ME SHIT I DON'T WANNA SEE /VERY MAD
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featherymainffins · 9 months ago
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Family is clearly just prolonging my and my mother's misery by forcing me to text her on special occasions and send her gifts, which is giving her false hope that her only boxing bag might come back and endure whatever she decides to take out on it again.
#if it were up to me I'd block her number and never even hear anything about her again#she made her choices and I swear to god i tried to be a good daughter and take them#when university told me that we should try to stay in contact with people in cults because it's much harder to get out without#a support system i tried to take it because of that if nothing else. i told myself that I'll take it. that I'll take it because maybe one#day she'll want out. i tried to.#maybe I didn't try hard enough I don't know. and if that's right then the universe can add it to my endless list of sins which makes me#not a human. the universe can add it to the list of reasons for why I'll never lead a happy life and why I'm better off dead.#that's what I've been told when i was growing up after all.#i tried to but it's just. it's her life or mine. and if she were mean just to me I'd let her take it. if it were just me I'd let her say all#those horrible things to me and I'd stand there and let her punch my limbs until they go numb like i always have#and I'd let her tell me that nobody will ever love me and I'd let her do her invasive checks of my body and I'd let her have those#episodes of searching through my entire room and breaking into my accounts to see if I'm saying anything about her ever to anyone#and calling my doctors and telling them that I'm crazy and not to believe a word i say.#I'd let her do all that as i always have. but she's horrible to my friends and horrible to strangers and it's just too much for me.#I don't want to hear that my friend killed herself in vain and I don't want to hear that you'll never use her name because#'it was just a year before he offed himself so it doesn't count.'#I don't want to hear any of it. i don't want to hear that all my friends hate me and I don't want to hear how horrible they are#and i don't want to hear slurs you use against them and I don't want to hear you say those things about random people you#meet on the street and i don't want to hear you passing moral judgement on strangers because of the way they do their hair#or the way they dress or the way they were born.#I don't want to hear that all my friends with tattoos are rotten and that cancer awaits them as punishment#I don't want to hear any of it. I'm sick of it. i don't want to hear 'youre a censoring bootlicker' whenever i say that i would like you#to tone it down. 'its my opinion. i have a right to free speech.' free speech is not saying that my friends should die.
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lesfruitsdores · 10 months ago
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I've posted about this before, but let's take a look at 0lly Al3x@nd3r's E$C journey, shall we
Instead of showing solidarity with the victims of the October 7 pogrom, sign a defamatory letter saying Israel is an apartheid state and say you hope it gets kicked off the silly music contest that it has participated in for decades (and won 4 times)
Realize Israel will still compete, refuse to withdrawl because that's a great career opportunity and you're getting great exposure
Be relentlessly harassed by the "fans" you gathered with such an empty gesture once they realize you aren't one of the Good OnesTM
Give a teary-eyed interview about how hurt you are upon hearing you are complicit in genocide and that you aren't qualified to speak on a conflict that started long before you were born
Throught this whole time, don't do a single thing that will actually help palestinians - such as organizing a benefit concert to raise funds or reach out to palestinians living in the UK to see if there's anything you could do for their community. Going to the press to give ridiculous statement and having all the attention on you is more important
Such clown behavior
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paganinpurple · 2 years ago
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AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED
Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.
It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:
As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.
If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.
No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).
Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.
There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.
For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.
The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.
Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.
If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.
Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.
Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.
People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.
Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.
Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.
It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.
The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.
I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.
I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.
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teaandspite · 6 months ago
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The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 1)
Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)
Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.
"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"
"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."
"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"
"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."
"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."
"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."
"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."
"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."
"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."
"The author is a pompous windbag."
"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."
"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"
"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."
"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."
"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."
"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."
"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."
"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."
"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."
"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"
"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"
"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."
"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."
"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."
"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around.”
Part 2
Part 3
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porcupine-girl · 3 months ago
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Hey, kids
Yes you, the Gen Z-er with your legal first name and diagnoses in your bio, who has never made any attempt to disentangle your fandom identity from your IRL identity.
Now is the time to start doing that. In some ways, it's too late, the internet is forever, etc, but you can start being safer going forward.
I've seen plenty of young people say they don't care if their IRL name is connected to their fandom activity because "they have nothing to be ashamed of" - which is very true, BUT it's not always about shame.
We don't know yet how far this administration will be able to push things. We don't know how heavily, if at all, queer or explicit content will be censored online. We don't know if or how people will be targeted (whether by the law or by other people going on witch hunts) for having created it.
But don't wait until we have a definite answer. Act now. You can't erase your wallet name from people's memories, but you can erase it from your social media. You can sign up for a fandom email account that only has your pseud and not your real name. (I am always shocked at the number of people we have participating in @fandomtrumpshate who use an email address that is their full legal name. We don't even require you to give us that on your donation receipts, please don't.) You can switch your AO3 account and all your fandom social medias to that new email account. You can stop telling people identifying details about yourself unless it's someone you know well enough to trust them not to tell other people.
I know, you don't want to cower. You don't want to run and hide. But you don't need to take unnecessary risks, either. If, once all the new laws etc come down, you look at the landscape and decide yes, I want to put my real name on this and deal with the consequences, that's great! But since we don't actually know what we'll be dealing with, you cannot make an informed decision on that yet. So I strongly suggest you lock it down for the moment, at least until we have more information.
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godivaghoul · 8 months ago
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Sorry I am censoring your name but I did not want anyone bothering you just in case...
I just wanted to say I appreciate your sentiment but I strongly do not agree that body hair are a "flaws",
obviously you know I'm gonna say: "you shouldn't be ashamed of your own body no matter what" and don't compare it to what you see online, even to my art because even if I draw more "natural" bodies I still strongly idealize body proportion and feature to adhere to my erotica fantasy...
also I mostly draw what my body hair looks like, (I do not have chest hair though I wish lol) but I also think all different type of body hair are hot...
sorry I wanted to write something more aspirational but I am not good at this... I love you ♡
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fullhalalalchemist · 2 years ago
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🚨🚨CONGRESS SECRETLY TRYING TO SNEAK IN EARN IT ACT COPYCAT INTO MUST PASS SPENDING BILL (PLEASE READ EXTREMELY IMPORTANT)
July 20, 2023 Congress is right now determining what is included in a must pass spending bill the NDAA. Often congress will sneakily add as amendments their bills that they can't pass in a normal setting.
If you remember, I made a previous post about EARN IT being reintroduced here.
The EARN IT Act and it's copycats are bipartisan bills that will greatly censor if not completely eliminate encryption and anything sexual and LGBTQ+ from the internet, globally. Anything the far-right doesn't like will be completely gone. The best way to stop them is to use https://www.badinternetbills.com/ to call your senators.
Following it's initial introduction earlier this year was massive opposition from human rights, LGBT, tech, political groups, and grassroots groups. Bc of this, the senators decided to remake the bill but give it a new name, so they can still pass Earn It without actually passing Earn It. Those bills are the Stop CSAM Act (yes really, they actually named it that), and the Cooper-Davis act.
The entire point of these bills is to mass surveil and censor everyone and I don't know why more people or senators speak out against it. There is a direct timeline from when the Attorney General Barr (under Trump) said he wanted to do this to it's initial introduction in 2019, and how the senators explicitly knew they couldn't actually say that so they lied and said it was about "stopping CSAM" or "stopping drugs" for Cooper-Davis Act.
These bills essentially do the following:
they gut encryption, the one thing actually protects you from having your data seen by anyone. Do you want republicans to know you're trans? that someone had an abortion? that they spoke out against the govt? to see your private photos you have uploaded to the cloud? to see what porn you watch? if youre a journalist, or an abuse survivor, any hacker or abuser can see your stuff and track you.
they gut parts of Section 230, the one thing that allows anyone to post online and birthed social media. Previous gutting into 230 gave us the tumblr nsfw ban and killed that site.
they create an unelected commission with some already established govt body (DOJ, FTC, etc) that will include law enforcement and people from NCOSE or other Christian conservative groups who will decide what is and isn't lawful to say. no citizen can vote who's on this commission, and the president gets to pick. it's like the supreme court, but for the internet.
lead to mass censorship and surveillance because of the above
We have until the end of the month to stop this, but this can be added literally any moment until then. It's literally code red. If this is added it goes into effect immediately. The BEST way to stop this is to drive calls and emails to the senate. https://www.badinternetbills.com/ connects you directly to your members of congress & gives you a call script.
It is ESSENTIAL to call the Senate leaders who can stop this. Here's a more precise call script you can use: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1huD5Ldd1lPTECYTEb9Gg2ZzrqW6Y9tryHT-MdjOl8kY/edit
All these people expressed concern over Earn It, so we need to press them hard to not allow it's copycats Cooper-Davis or Stop CSAM into the NDAA. This is URGENT and needs all hands on deck. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (202) 224-6542 Maria Cantwell (D-WA) (202) 224-3441 Jon Ossof (D-GA) (202)-224-3521 Alex Padilla (D-CA) (202) 224-3553 Cory Booker (D-NJ) (202) 224-3224 Mike Lee (R-UT) (202) 224-5444
Please please please spread this message and blow up their phones.
TLDR; The Senate is trying to quietly push the Earn It Act's copycat bills into the must pass NDAA, which will lead to mass censorship and surveillance online by gutting Section 230 which is the entire reason you can even be on tumblr and why the internet exists, killing encryption which put everyone's lives in danger, and appointing far-right people to a supreme court-esque commission that the president has direct control over. They could be added in ANY DAY and we need to push hard to stop it before it gets to that point. CALL YOUR SENATORS **NOW** BY USING https://www.badinternetbills.com/ AND CALL THE SENATE LEADERSHIP AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!!
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vyva-melinkolya · 4 months ago
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we all agree that the push towards short form, vertical video (tiktok/reels/shorts) is ruining fucking everything right? Tiktok has been useful for the dissemination of political information (e.g Gaza) i’ll give it that, but that feels moreso a result of meta and twitters algorithms being just a little *more*’evil and censor happy. And i want to make it very clear that my hatred for tiktok has nothing to do with the fact that it was a product of a Chinese company, because i see a lot of critiques relying on some sort of sinophobic conspiracy. On the contrary, it’s what tiktok has become in the vacuum of western popular culture and marketing that makes me fearful.
I know that every generation faces a new, polarizing technology and inevitably, there are those among said generation who will critique it. That is the nature of things. However, there is also something to be said about how, with the acceleration of technology (running parallel to the acceleration of capitalism, acceleration towards collapse etc), each coming generation faces an increasingly more malevolent “advancement”. TLDR, i’m going to talk my shit.
I’m going to speak on the aspect that is most relavent to me, as a musician. I am petrified by what short form video is doing to music and to musicians. I think that tiktok provides the illusion of making music and being a musician more “accessible” while actually pouring gasoline on the fire that the pop music machine had already started. Standards for what popular culture “expects” from music are being doubled and tripled. Let’s talk about song length. Success and marketability favoring shorter songs is not something new, it has been the trend for decades. But with short form video, it goes even further. You’re not just hearing the same song over and over on the radio, you’re hearing the same 15-30 seconds of the same song over and over again. This in-turn, starts to influence the way people write music, persuading people to make songs that *could* have that 15 second appeal. There is an art to pop music, there is an art to writing a catchy hook—this is something else. We weren’t meant to hear or understand music like that. There are so many songs from reels that i found annoying, until i heard them in their full context. It’s insidious. It makes everything feel like a fucking commercial, even if nothing is being advertised.
I’m going to pull directly from someone else’s experiences, someone who’s music seems to be everywhere on short form videos. The ambient musician My Head Is Empty has a hundred million streams on the song “i was only temporary”. Despite that exposure, they experience “never ending copywrite issues” and have “received death threats” by people who refuse to credit them when using their song. Pulling a quote here, from a comment on their own post
“vyva_melinkolya unfortunately it just gets worse. i saw a bot content page that steals pod cast footage and spams dozens of videos with my song stolen, comment on a "motivation" spam content , who actually made a post telling people the name of my song, and the previous page i mentioned, the pod cast spam commented on that video saying "Bro stop don't give out the sauce. this audio helps me pull numbers brooo" - so people are actively INTENTIONALLY stealing it and telling people to not credit me. like. u can't make this stuff up”
Beyond this, My Head Is Empty feels frustrated that despite all this exposure, the rest of their work (nine albums) as a musician remains under appreciated, and i think that frustration is 100% valid. People cannot fully appreciate music, or even understand it as a work of art created by another human, when it’s taken so far out of its context. Again, the soul being sucked out of art by “the machine” isn’t anything new but, this is a whole other level. Being a musician is more expensive than ever, streaming earns you fractions of a cent etc, it all feeds into itself.
When a song or a musician i love deeply finds its way on to tiktok (let’s use Duster’s “Stars Will Fall”, one of my favorite songs ever as an example)I am not upset that i cant “gatekeep” it anymore. I’m not upset by the idea of something I love and hold dearly finding a larger audience. I AM upset in the manner in which it is being disseminated. I’m upset with art I hold dear to me being chopped up and used as “trending audio”. When I saw Duster in concert recently, lStars Will Fall” was the song I was most looking forward to hearing. It was the last song they played, and it was the song seemly everyone chose to talk loudly over. The audience was mostly people my age and younger. This complaint might come off as petty or pretentious or cliche, i frankly do not give a shit.
Let’s talk about how musicians are expected to promote music on tiktok/reels. This is a matter of opinion, at the risk of sounding very pretentious: the “POV we are x band from x” “My label says i need x followers before x” “posting this video until c musician notices me”. I understand that some of it is in jest but, what the fuck? When did this become the norm? I do not blame anyone for promoting their music like this, but we should want more for ourselves. I’ve always said being a musician is deeply embarassing, inherently. If being a musician is inherently embarassing then what is this? I dont have a solution for this, and the music industry has always been ugly and bloodthirsty and seldom fruitful— but i feel like the very small amount of dignity we had as artists is now lost and I cant fucking stand it. Artists seem to promote the same single with dozens of reels over the course of months, hoping that something sticks. I dont want to sound like i’m shaming or, again, sound like i can provide a solution. I’m just very fucking sorry that it seems like this is “the way”. And personally, i’m scared that if i dont “get with the program”, im going to fail.
Again, all of this speaks to larger trends in entertainment industry and even larger trends in capitalism. But i’m just airing specifics right now because frankly? I cant take it anymore.
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