#nyc 2023 night one | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

azulpitlane · 1 year ago

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boss' daughter I ln4

pairing: lando norris x brown!daughter reader summary: lando is down bad for zak brown's daughter but shes a little hard to get notes: I know this isn't pt 3 of my other mini series BUT i thought of this idea and had to do it immediately hehe, I really like this one masterlist

y/nbrown

liked by landonorris, zbrownceo and 21,492 others

y/nbrown nyc living

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user i wanna see her at races shes so cute😭🫶

y/nbrown vegas! ill be there🤭 liked by landonorris

user help why's lando in his boss' daughter's likes

landonorris 🤩

user norizzzzz user is this him shooting his shot AHAHHA user NO LANDO SHES MINE

user IT GIRL

user landooo👀

y/bff/n pretty girl

y/nbrown love u babes

posted september 2023

y/nbrown

liked by danielricciardo, landonorris and 19,384 others

y/nbrown college student by day, dj by night😝

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y/bff/n ur so unserious babe

y/nbrown i ate, the people loved me

landonorris as a retired dj maybe you can give me some inspiration to start again

user LANDO??? user he's crushing so hard OMFFFF user zak brown reading this: 🤨🤨

zbrownceo dont have too much fun!

y/nbrown 🫣 user such a dad reply lol

user y/n brown slaying once again

user so excited to see you back in the paddock soon🫶 liked by y/nbrown

danielricciardo you're perfect for him

y/nbrown who???

posted october 2023

y/nbrown

liked by landonorris, danielricciardo and 30,341 others

y/nbrown vegas babyyy

tagged zbrownceo, danielricciardo, y/bff/n

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user gorgeous girl

danielricciardo finally reunited with my favorite brown

y/nbrown was too busy girlbossing sorry danielricciardo what a shame, there's someone who's been waiting to meet you... y/nbrown hm, i didn't meet anyone new🤷‍♀️ danielricciardo next race then user is daniel hinting that lando didn't meet his crush sjsjkskks user wait he hasn't EVEN MET HER?!?! user im guessing not, shes been pictured with other drivers but never lando

user here for landos comments

landonorris maybe you should come to a race where I'm not crashing😅

user norizz strikes again user its the fact that she never even replies and he's still trying HAHA user hes fr out here risking his seat for her just not to respond back

mclaren 🧡

user shes finally back in the paddock!!!

user im surprised she doesn't go to more gp's, her dad's literally the ceo of mclaren😭 user i think she's mentioned shes very busy with uni so her schedule usually never aligns with the races

posted november 2023

y/nbrown abu dhabi, UAE

liked by landonorris, zbrownceo and 25,482 others

y/nbrown escaping cold new york weather

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user OMG shes gonna be at the gp again this weekend!!

user landos got one more chance to shoot his shot before the season ends😭

landonorris hope to see you at the paddock!

danielricciardo thanks for letting me borrow that $10 mil bro I owe you🤝 maxverstappen1 thanks for saving my cats out of that burning building, you're a true hero🤝 alex_albon thanks for paying off my whole family's debt mate🤝 carlossainz55 thanks for gifting me that mclaren, i love it mate🤝

user ALL THE DRIVERS IN HER COMMENTS IMDEAD

user his rizz was so bad they had to step in omg. user and she still hasn't acknowledged lando AHAH user a true girlboss, I love her

user i need to know what zak brown thinks off all of this😭

user next season of dts gonna be craZy

user everybodys focused on the comments and not at the fact that these lyrics sound a little sus...

posted november 2023

landonorris posted a story

dannyyyy🤠 y/n wyaaa im in the mclaren garage rn

y/n aren't you suppose to be in umm idk YOUR OWN GARAGE?

dannyyyy🤠 yeah but I need to do something real quick so come

y/n does this have anything to do with lando?

dannyyyy🤠 maybe...

y/n im sorry but he's exactly why im not in the garage rn

dannyyyy🤠 WHAT WHY pls dont tell me I hyped him up just for you not be interested...

y/n im not NOT interested but he's my dad's driver danny this can get messy so fast and what if he doesn't approve

dannyyyy🤠 oh you americans and your dramatics hes already talked to your dad dummy

y/n wait really?

dannyyyy🤠 you really think he would PUBLICLY hit on his boss' daughter without asking first?

y/n idk never really thought about it

dannyyyy🤠 JUST COME DOWN HERE YOU MUPPET

landonorris

liked by y/nbrown, danielricciardo and 830,391 others

landonorris didn't win the race, but i won her heart

tagged y/nbrown

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user FINALLY

y/nbrown cheeseball liked by landonorris

user HE ACTUALLY GOT HER

danielricciardo youre welcome

y/nbrown you pushed me in front of him then ran away...not the best wingman danielricciardo its not like landos rizz was gonna get you together🤷‍♂️ y/nbrown true landonorris hey! I wasn't that bad... y/nbrown whatever helps you sleep at night hun!

user y/n blink twice if you need help

y/nbrown blink blink landonorris 😔

user obsessed with y/n bullying lando in the comments

user I know I love them already

zbrownceo better take good care of her lando

landonorris sir yes sir🫡

user we can no longer make norizz jokes. sigh.

notes: what did y'all think of this one? I loved making it🤸‍♀️

#lando norris #lando norris fanfic #f1 x reader #lando norris imagine #lando norris smau #lando norris x reader #lando norris x y/n #lando norris x you #ln4 #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #formula 1 #mclaren #lando norris imagines

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago

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Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me FRIDAY NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The Democratic Party Pizzaburger Theory of Electioneering is: half the electorate wants a pizza, the other half wants a burger, so we'll give them all a pizzaburger and make them all equally dissatisfied, thus winning the election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

But no one wants a pizzaburger. The Biden administration's approach of letting the Warren/Sanders wing pick the antitrust enforcers while keeping judicial appointments in the Manchin-Synematic universe is a catastrophe in which progressive Dem regulators (who serve one term) are thwarted by corporatist Dem judges (who serve for life):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

The Democrats – like all parties in two-party systems – are a coalition; in this case, a "progressive" liberal-left coalition with liberals serving as senior partners, steering the party and setting its policies. These corporate dems like to color themselves as "neutral" technocrats with "realistic, apolitical" policies that represent what's best for the country:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This sets up the left wing of the party as the starry-eyed, unrealistic radicals whose policies are unpopular and will lose elections. But for a decade, grassroots-funded primary challenges have made it possible to test this theory, by putting leftist politicians on the ballot in front of voters, especially in tight races with far-right Republicans (that is, exactly the kinds of races that the corporate wing of the party says we can't afford to take chances on).

The 2022 midterms included enough races to start testing these theories – and, unlike traditional midterms, these races enjoyed high voter turnout, thanks to the unpopularity of GOP positions like abortion bans, book bans and anti-trans laws. Jacobin teamed up with the Center for Working-Class Politics, Yougov and the Center for Work and Democracy at ASU and analyzed those races:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/11134429/CWCP-Report-2024.pdf

Their conclusion: candidates from working-class backgrounds who campaigned on economic policies like high-quality jobs, higher minimum wages, a jobs guarantee, ending offshoring and outsourcing, building infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to the US won with a 50% share of the vote in rural and working-class districts. Dems who didn't lost with a 35% share of the vote:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-03-18-how-actually-existing-democrats-run-for-office/

In other words, in the kinds of districts where Trumpist politicians are beating Democrats, running on "left populist" policies beats Trumpist politicians.

That's the good news: if Dems recruit leftist, working class politicians and put them up for office on policies that address the material reality of voters' lives, they can beat fascist GOP candidates.

Now for the bad news: the Democratic establishment has no interest in getting these candidates onto the ballot. Working-class candidates, by definition, lack the networks of deep-pocketed cronies who can fund their primary campaigns. Only 2.3% of Dem candidates come from blue-collar backgrounds (if you include "pink-collar" professions like nursing and teaching, the number goes up to 5.9%):

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-populists-working-class-voters

All of this confirms the findings of Trump's Kryoptonite, an earlier Jacobin/CWCP research project that polled working-class voters on preferences for hypothetical candidates, finding that working-class candidates with economically progressive policies handily beat out Republicans, including MAGA Republicans:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/08125102/TrumpsKryptonite_Final_June2023.pdf

Since the Clinton-Blair years, "progressives" have abandoned economic populism ("It's not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money" -T. Blair) and pursued a "third way" that seeks to replace half the world's of supply white, male oligarchs with diverse oligarchs from a variety of backgrounds and genders. We were told that this was done in the name of winning elections with "modern" policies that replaced old-fashioned ideas about decent pay, decent jobs, and worker power.

These policies have delivered a genocide-riven world on the brink of several kinds of existential catastrophe. They're a failure. The pizzaburger party didn't deliver safety, nor prosperity – and it also can't deliver elections.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/20/actual-material-conditions/#bread-and-butter

#pluralistic #elections #political science #democrats #democrats in disarray #class #class war #us politics #pizzaburger

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chalagoat · 1 year ago

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Well well well....

I'm waiting for some people opinions about this!

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

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sbdskate · 10 months ago

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Laws Of Attraction (Epilogue 1) - DR x lawyer!fem!reader

Summary: Daniel signed with RB at the end of the 2022 season, ending your attorney-client relationship. You decide to give romance a try in the off season.

Pairing: lawyer!fem!reader x Daniel Ricciardo

Warnings (18+): fluff, language, *SMUT*: p in v, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap)

Word Count: 2,291

February 2023

You woke up to his breath tickling the back of your neck, which you had now grown pleasantly accustomed to over the last few months. His arm snaked over your waist with his hand lightly resting just below your breasts. Sometimes his face nuzzled into the back of your shoulder so that you could feel his stubble lightly tickle you. You treasured these soft, quiet moments that were hidden from the rest of the world.

By a miracle, your budding relationship had not yet been sniffed out by paparazzi or investigative fans, but you knew it wouldn’t last forever. The distance was hard, as expected, but ended up being more manageable than you originally thought. Of course it helped that one of you had almost unlimited resources. He ended up spending a good chunk of time at his property in Beverly Hills which at least got you in the same continent and country. You would make up excuses to work out of the LA office for a week or so and The Firm suspected nothing of it or didn’t care enough to ask why. During the day you worked on other client matters while he hung out with Scotty and other friends, allegedly figuring out plans for the next Enchante drop. At night you stayed with him, cooking dinners together, throwing small parties, watching the sun set over the hills.

When you weren’t on the West Coast, he occasionally stayed with you in your small NYC apartment in the West Villiage. At first you protested that he should stay somewhere else, that there wasn’t enough room for the both of you, and that your accommodations were far too modest for the extravagant lifestyle he had become so accustomed to. Fine, you book the hotel, he would say with a smirk knowing full well you wouldn’t be able to afford the reservation to override him. But he so desperately wanted to a glimpse into your home that you could hardly say no.

It was easier for him to explore the city in the dead of winter where he blended in with everyone else on the street, bundled in at least four layers to keep warm. With a hat and scarf covering most of his face, he went about his day with the rare freedom of being unidentified and anonymous. When you were done with work you would sneak into the diviest dive bar you could find, consisting of dark basements with dark liquor. Or you would order takeout for dinner and eat it out of the container on your couch with a beer or glass of wine.

The two of you relished these moments of normalcy. Including moments like now, in that tiny apartment, on a chilly Friday in February where you bathed in the rays of sun that began to poke through your curtains in the light of morning. He had been on Stephen Colbert the night before and you watched in awe from the comfort of your couch that the man on the screen, in a suit you picked out, would be coming home to you at the end of the program.

Your eyes fluttered open before your alarm went off, Daniel’s breath making the hairs on the back of your neck stand. You smiled to yourself, still unable to believe this was your new reality. Just to be sure, you gently grabbed the hand positioned on your upper abdomen to move it to cup your breast. Perhaps you should have let him sleep, but you couldn’t pass up the chance to have extra time with him. You felt his breath pattern change as he slowly woke from the delicate touch. The silver lining of long distance was that neither of you were lacking in libido. Granted your relationship was still in its infancy, of course you couldn’t keep your hands off each other.

He pulled you in close flush against his chest and gave your shoulder a kiss.

“Good morning,” he mumbled, voice muffled by skin. You held your hand over his, squeezing it.

“Mmm good morning.” The crook of his nose caressed the path that followed the trails of kisses along your shoulder blade. He began to move his thumb over your sensitive nipple, feeling as it puckered under his touch. Your breath hitched as you squirmed, molding yourself into him. You partially turned your head to face him without disrupting your position. He propped himself on his elbow to meet you halfway and planted a messy kiss on your lips.

“Have I told you how beautiful you look in the morning?” You used to think he was joking, not that you could blame him if he were. There were people who were elegant sleepers, but you knew you were not one of them. Your hair almost always ended up looking like it could home a few birds or small rodent. Your eyes were puffy, slightly crusty, and every now and then there was some dried drool for good measure. Now that you had been at this for nearly two months, it was evident he was very serious each time.

“You have, but you can tell me again,” you mumbled as a smile grew on your face and stretched your limbs.

“You’re beautiful.” It came out muffled as your lips pressed together again, as his thumb continued to lazily graze your nipple.

You gently dragged his hand from your chest to the growing heat between your legs. You pressed against him again, feeling his hardened member against your ass. You smirked, satisfied with the results of your minimal efforts.

He kissed the crook of your neck as he drew tiny circles around your clit with his middle finger. You reached your arm behind you to gently scratch his head as little moans escaped your lips, breath becoming uneven with desire.

“Are you going to be late for work?” Ever the gentleman, you could tell he asked to be polite but it wasn’t actually a point of concern. You grinded into his groin in frustration.

“Not that I care at the moment, but no.” You moved his fingers even further south so he could feel your neediness. “I have twelve minutes and I don’t want to think about responsibilities until then. Do what you will with that information.”

A husky groan escaped his lips feeling how wet you were for him. His hand left you momentarily to stroke himself a few times before aligning with your entrance and you reached down to help guide him.

Two months, and it still took your breath away how full he made you feel. Your back arched into him and he caught your hips in his hand. Laced with sleep, he held on as he dragged in and out of you in deliberate, languid motions as though time didn’t exist. His hand moved slowly up your body, to your waist, over your soft stomach, the swell of your breast, where it snaked over your chest and enclosed around your throat with a gentle firmness that made your core clench. It was equally delicate and possessive. It delighted every surface of your body but his leisure pace now maddened you.

“Faster,” you choked out. He smirked as he slowed down the roll of his hips, tightening his grip around your neck. If he wasn’t awake before, he was now. Daniel was fascinated – you ordinarily enjoyed lazy morning sex but today you were extraordinarily needy for some reason. Not that he was mad at it. Your eyes twisted shut and you moaned through gritted teeth, simultaneously aroused and frustrated. “Fuck you.”

“Happily,” he taunted. “What’s the magic word?”

“Please.” He felt your body quiver around him as you begged for more of him. He closed his eyes and prayed that he would last for the remaining six minutes.

He obliged your pleas, only letting go of your neck to lift your leg up.

Right there

His thrusts deepened with the new angle and watched excitedly as your arm moved down. He couldn’t see you playing with yourself but knew you were as your moans became louder and more frequent and he felt your walls squeeze and twitch. The image seared into his brain and he knew he was done. He inhaled the scent from your hair in his face and he wished he could see you. But you were warm and tight and wet and perfect and he couldn’t stop himself.

“Fuck, I’m-”

“Yes”

Your hips stuttered and muscles spasmed around him. He spilled into you as his fingers sank into your skin, his vice grip unable to let go. You both laid limp for a moment, panting to catch your breath. Eventually you pulled yourself away from him to roll over.

Your hair was knotted and your flushed face was adorned with a shit-eating grin. You were stunning. Glowing.

“Good morning,” you said cheekily.

“Good morning,” he responded. He lifted his arm, inviting you to use his chest as a pillow. You did so gladly, intertwining yourselves in each other once more like vines. It was nice for all of forty-seven seconds before your alarm went off. He pulled you tighter before you could try to get up.

“Now I have to get going.” He placed a kiss at the top of your head.

“What if we just stayed in bed all day instead.” You groaned in silent agreement, but nonetheless peeled his arms off you.

“I would love to but I have to work. And so do you.” You kissed him before hopping into the shower.

Right. Daniel had almost forgotten that today was his first official day back as a Red Bull employee. His presence was requested for the livery launch set to happen in Midtown in a few hours. He laid in bed and smiled to himself as he listened to you sing I Just Had Sex by The Lonely Island.

“I still can’t believe it’s in New York,” you said casually as you poured yourself a cup of coffee. He hummed in agreement. “Suspiciously convenient, really.” You glanced at him through your peripheral to gauge his reaction. Nothing. Though he did look oddly pensive. You turned suddenly to confront him. “You’re sure you didn’t say anything to Christian?” He laughed at your skeptic accusation.

“Not a peep.”

“You swear it?” You held out your pinky.

“I swear it.” He linked his with yours.

“Kiss it,” you demanded. He rolled his eyes but obliged lowering his lips to his knuckles as you did yours, his focus on you never wavering.

You continued getting ready, though you couldn’t shake the sense that there was an uneasy intensity to him this morning. At first you thought it might just be nerves about the livery event, but then you caught him staring at you in the mirror while you were brushing your teeth. You spit and turned around.

“Ok you’re being weird. What is it?”

“I’m not being weird!” he said defensively. You brandished your toothbrush at him threateningly.

“Yes, you are. You’ve barely said two words since we had sex.” He scoffed.

“I’ve said lots of words. That was five just now –“

“There’s nothing wrong with being nervous, you know.”

“I’m not nervous –“

“Then what is it?”

He both loved and hated that you could read him like a book. You seemed to be intuitively aware of all of his deepest thoughts - though maybe not this one. He watched as you walked into the kitchen to pack your work bag. You filled your travel mug as you patiently waited for his response. He took a deep breath before jumping into the metaphorical deep end.

“Since things are official with Red Bull as of today, I figured we should be too.”

You snorted coffee through your nose. A not-so-subtle tomato hue dusted your cheeks immediately. Yet again, you weren’t sure why you were so surprised. The man was traveling half way around the world for you. With the amount of time, effort, care, and money spent, how could you ever believe he would lull you into something as malignant as a situationship? As it was in the beginning, you were the stop-gap preventing things from progressing. He had been respectful with taking things at a glacial pace, as you kindly requested. He had given you the proof you needed that there was a way to make the relationship work when you weren’t traveling constantly together. When you considered that you had now existed in each other’s orbits for nearly five months, he really had been as patient as a saint with you.

But he misconstrued your stunned silence as confusion, so he rephrased his proposition.

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

Your timing was impeccable as always, as you choked on your own saliva before breaking into a coughing fit. He sighed and poured you a glass of water, slightly disgruntled by your antics.

He had been putting this off. He had wanted to wait for the right time, for it to be romantic and dreamy, everything you deserved. But each time the opportunity arose he lost his nerve, and now here you both were: in your kitchen, before you had to go to work, choking on thin air, decidedly unromantic.

“I’ll take that as a no.” You shook your head ferociously before attempting to sip the liquid. He frowned “Well shit, you don’t have to be so enthusiastic about it.” You shook your head again, then nodded. “Yes, that’s right, you’re not interested?” You decided that this was the worst game of charades, ever. You shook your head again.

“Yes,” *cough* “I want,” *cough* “to be your,” *cough* “girlfriend.” Despite the fact that you were barely breathing, Daniel’s thousand-watt smile appeared before you.

“Drink your fucking water and stop coughing so I can kiss you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: Please don't be a ghost reader and thank you for reading! I'm happy I've been on a roll with my posting schedule but I know the next Epilogue part will not be ready by next week, so expect a little bit of a break after this (hopefully not four months again).

And thank you @thef1diary for your help

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arimiadev · 1 year ago

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why does aniplex want mahoyo to fail

I love visual novels. being a long time fate/stay night fan and only having heard of mahoyo from hushed whispers about its cinematography, I was super invested when it was announced to be coming to the west and I could finally play an official version of it.

however, a lot of people interested in type-moon works had never heard of mahoyo, let alone it getting an official english translation. but how? aniplex is publishing the game and they're one of the largest anime distributors in the world.

with the console release of mahoyo being almost exactly a year ago and the steam release being just 10 days away, I want to look over some of aniplex USA's bizarre and nonexistent marketing for one of my favorite visual novels.

let's clear up a few things, first.

mahoyo is the shortened form of mahoutsukai no yoru (not to be confused with mahoutsukai no yome, i.e. the ancient magus bride), which has been localized as witch on the holy night. mahoyo was a linear non-eroge visual novel released by type-moon in 2012, being one of the first scripts kinoko nasu (co-founder of type-moon) wrote back in 1996 and adapted into a VN many, many years later.

in April of 2022, a console remaster (switch, playstation 4) was announced with HD assets and voice acting, to be published by aniplex. notably, this console release would contain an english translation and was later confirmed in June to be sold in the west via online retailers. this was huge news, as this meant mahoyo would be the first type-moon visual novel (not including gameplay-oriented titles like fate/extella or fate/grand order) to be officially released in the west, as despite numerous fan translations, their more recognizable visual novels tsukihime and fate/stay night still had not received a localization.

type-moon is the developer behind mahoyo and aniplex is the publisher, meaning that type-moon made the game and aniplex is in charge of distributing (and marketing) the game worldwide.

timeline:

April 11 2022: Mahoyo rerelease announced for consoles (Switch & PlayStation 4), including English translation

July 4 2022: Aniplex confirms Mahoyo will be available to the West, localized under the name Witch on the Holy Night

October 14 2022: 2nd trailer released, more voice actor info announced

November 3 2022: physical pre-orders launched, demo version available

November 18 2022: Aniplex attends Anime NYC with Mahoyo

December 7 2022: Mahoyo released digitally on Switch / PlayStation 4 (Dec 8th in Japan, Dec 7th in America)

December 12 2022: Mahoyo reaches 110k units sold worldwide

January 27 2023: Mahoyo physicals release

July 5 2023: Mahoyo reaches 150k units sold worldwide

September 10 2023: Mahoyo announced for Steam via a now unlisted Aniplex livestream

December 13 2023: Mahoyo will be released on Steam (Dec 14th in Japan, Dec 13th in America)

some of the dates might be a little fuzzy, especially the release dates, as some sources go by japanese time and some go by american timezones, so just be aware of that.

now, let's talk a bit about mahoyo itself.

mahoyo is a masterpiece. it's a niche game not meant for everyone. its cinematography is top notch among visual novels. its writing style can be off-putting to people who want faster-paced stories. it's one of my most beloved visual novels I've ever played, and I've been in this field for almost a decade and have played well over 100 VNs.

mahoyo is a completely linear visual novel—meaning it has no choices or gameplay—that follows aoko, a high schooler mage trying to balance her perfect school president facade with her secret life as a mage, something she has to keep secret at the risk of death. this is one of the lesser known type-moon works but it's well beloved because of the care put into it.

if you've ever heard someone talk about it, it's almost impossible for them to not mention the visuals. mahoyo is one of the most visually impressive visual novels I've ever seen, with its inspired use of artwork and in-game animations. I cannot recommend this VN enough if you like modern fantasy and don't mind linear VNs.

before we dive into aniplex USA's marketing, I want to clarify a few marketing terms for people who don't market visual novels as a job. marketing is not just advertising—it's everything related to how a product communicates with potential users, including its branding, its packaging, its everything. when marketing a game, you have several different avenues: social media, press & influencers, trailers, store pages, and more.

today I want to show you how, based off what I have researched after a long, manic day, aniplex USA has failed mahoyo on all of these accounts.

so let's go back to its western release.

mahoyo has a few official english channels:

website

twitter

facebook

aniplex also has an official english twitter with almost 500k followers where they shared mahoyo very rarely—only 9 tweets about the game ever.

well, surely their other pages are more maintained right—

both accounts stopped posting July 10th/11th, with their last post being about mahoyo going on sale on consoles. let's look at their posts prior to this, though, starting with the twitter.

we can see that the twitter account was made in december of 2022. if we scroll down far enough (it's not hard, given they only have 33 tweets), we can see that their first tweet was on december 6th 2022:

let's go back to our timeline. can you tell me when mahoyo's remaster released digitally?

yes they made both of the english mahoyo social media accounts the day before the game launched

we can very easily add up the entire social media posts for the game thus far:

mahoyo english twitter - 30 tweets and 3 retweets

mahoyo english facebook - 27 posts

aniplex english twitter - 9 tweets

aniplex english facebook - 2 posts

no other english social media accounts were tied to the website, so these are the only ones I looked at. this means in total, there were only 68 social media posts for the console release of mahoyo by the publisher for english audiences.

but what about the steam release? after the game sold over 150k+ units on consoles, surely aniplex was ready to market it a bit more for pc users—

neither account has made a post about the upcoming steam release.

if we look at the twitter, they have 3 tweets since July that do talk about the upcoming steam release- however, these are retweets from the japanese mahoyo account.

we know that this twitter and this facebook account are the official social media for mahoyo as they're linked on the website, so they're definitely meant to be followed for game updates in the west. well, maybe the english aniplex twitter has posted about it—

none of the english aniplex or mahoyo accounts have made a single post about the steam release

that's right, the social media posts I counted above are the only posts for mahoyo on their english accounts, all dating back before the steam release was announced. since then, they have not made a single original post even mentioning the steam release.

meanwhile, the japanese mahoyo twitter has been hustling hard to promote the upcoming steam release—reposting trailers, character bios, and more almost every day with pretty good numbers.

in fact, the japanese mahoyo twitter did such a good job at marketing it that the aniplex USA twitter never mentioned the english mahoyo twiter, instead only @ ing the japanese one in tweets (despite the english one being linked on the website).

why they even bothered making social media accounts and then not running them despite being one of the largest anime distributors in the world I have no clue.

well, maybe they didn't need to rely on social media presence. maybe they were going for the in-person approach and marketing it at conventions.

mahoyo had basically no anime convention presence

the only reference I can find to aniplex notably promoting mahoyo at any western convention is this tweet of them at anime NYC. from someone who was at anime NYC, I've been told that they pushed the game heavily at their booth with TV screens promoting the game.

however, anime NYC is only one anime convention. you cannot hope to sell a game by just attending one anime convention. mahoyo might have had a presence at other american conventions, but I'm unable to find any images or news about this.

maybe they don't understand type-moon

aniplex is the publisher for fate/grand order, one of the most successful mobile games ever created. they're also the distributor for a majority of type-moon related anime, ranging from fate to garden of sinners to side series. aniplex's marketing team should have lots of experience with type-moon properties.

maybe it was promoted in other aniplex titles

I was also unable to find a news post in fate/grand order related to mahoyo's release, despite news posts for other type-moon series (namely fate but also things like melty blood) getting news posts in fate/grand order. I might've missed the news posts when looking back through FGO but I don't believe there was one.

maybe it sold well in other regions but not western ones

(I'm going to be referring only to the console release for these stats, keep in mind)

mahoyo released December 7th/8th 2022 with an english, japanese, simplified chinese, and traditional chinese translations. at the end of the release week, mahoyo's japanese twitter announced the game had sold 110k copies worldwide and famitsu reported that 66,344 of these units were sold in japan. this means we have around 43k units unaccounted for.

we know the game was available in english, japanese, and chinese languages but we don't know what regions. mainland china has a very large visual novel playerbase (I say this as someone who sells visual novels), which means if it were sold there then it's easy to say that a big chunk of that 43k units could be attributed to them—this also means it would be easy to believe that aniplex saw mahoyo selling worse in western countries and took this as a sign to not promote the game any more there.

but was it ever sold in mainland china? from what I could tell—no.

looking at pricing charts for the nintendo eshop and the playstation store, china is not listed on either. furthermore, searching the game's chinese title on the chinese playstation store does not bring back any results. it looks like the only predominantly chinese-speaking regions that were able to buy it are hong kong, taiwan and possibly singapore (the playstation store page for it doesn't look like it's available for purchase anymore).

so what does this tell us?

without any other numbers it's hard to tell how many of the 43k launch week sales came from english-speaking players, but even if we conservatively say that only around 20k of the 110k launch week units were from western countries, that's still almost a million in revenue (and remember, the physical limited edition of the game was available in english for $60, which is $20 more than the digital base version).

maybe the store page is so good they don't need to market it

here's a little secret: store pages matter a lot more than you'd think. there are entire job positions dedicated to tailoring store pages (like a steam game page) to make it perfect for the game's target audience. there's a science to it that includes the artwork, descriptions, tags, screenshots, and more.

let's see what aniplex did for the steam page of mahoyo.

A tale told with vivid colors and rich sound in a classic TYPE-MOON visual novel.

I don't know how to describe this short description charitably other than to say it sounds like a person who's never heard of a visual novel has been tasked with describing a visual novel.

this tells me nothing about the game other than it's a visual novel. I hope you know what type-moon is, because if you don't then you've learned nothing else from this. alright, well, let's look at the screenshots—

there's only 1.

currently as of writing this, there's 10 images uploaded as screenshots (no trailers, they keep adding and removing the trailers for some reason). 9 of these images are just the full artworks from the game while 1 is an actual screenshot.

I really hate this, as you're not actually shown what the game looks like unless you look at the very last screenshot. this will absolutely lead to some people not understanding what they're getting into. what's worse is that some of these CGs are spoilers, especially one in particular featuring my wife touko.

why are we spoiling people instead of showing them screenshots? why not show people what mahoyo actually looks like??

there's also absolutely no use of the announcements section on steam. each game on steam can post announcements related to the game, including upcoming releases, new updates, and more. it's customary to post a steam announcement when a game has a release date announcement. mahoyo's steam page has none.

well they probably released the trailers in english for hype

I wish I had that much hope.

on mahoyo's english website, all of the videos listed are from the official type-moon youtube, which is their japanese channel. type-moon went through the effort to translate these videos. aniplex didn't upload these to their own youtube, where they already upload everything related to the fateverse and nasuverse.

searching up witch on the holy night brings up no results for the trailer—aniplex never uploaded the trailer to their channel.

maybe they got influencers to play it

according to steamdb, the max amount of viewers mahoyo streams have had on twitch was 71 viewers.

furthermore, if we check twitch and look for vods attached to mahoyo, we only find 4 videos total, all of which were posted in the past week. it looks like they didn't even reach out to streamers to play the console release, much less pay them.

over on the press side, it does look like they reached out to at least a few reviewers. for example, on the review by noisy pixel, they clarify that a review copy was provided by the publisher for review purposes. we can add that to the bare minimum of marketing—reaching out to press.

however, they did get for some other influencers to share the game! ...twitter game sale influencers, that is.

there's actually a lot more of these types of tweets for mahoyo than I was expecting when I searched it on twitter. as a friend pointed out, just because it says "#ad" doesn't necessarily mean these were paid for by aniplex—a lot of these links look to be referrals, which means they're getting a cut of any purchases.

let's recap

mahoyo released over 110k copies in the launch week for it's worldwide console release despite very, very limited marketing efforts from its publisher aniplex. now that the game has proven it can sell very well despite being a lesser known linear visual novel, aniplex has done no marketing for the steam release- no tweets, no influencer outreach, no localization of trailers, no announcements via steam, nothing.

so why?

why does aniplex want mahoyo to fail?

even after all of this, I still do not know why. to me, it's clear that the marketing team at aniplex were (most likely) given no budget for this game and just couldn't do anything with it, deciding to spend what little money they had on press outreach and an anime NYC booth.

but why? why didn't aniplex give them a budget, even a small one? why was their budget so tiny they couldn't even afford to tweet? to RT more posts from the japanese twitter? to share the already translated trailers to their own accounts?

I've heard a few excuses like "type-moon hates western fans and probably caused it" but this doesn't make any sense either. why would you authorize a translation of your game and allow your publisher to sell the game overseas but specifically make them not market the game (and what publisher would agree to that)? I've even heard excuses like "they just forgot it was coming out", to which I ask "how does an entire marketing team (a company the size of aniplex absolutely has a team(s) for marketing and not a singular person) forget a release for a game that's already sold over 150k copies?". the only excuse I've seen that I somewhat buy is that they did not have much faith in the game and relied almost entirely on fans doing word of mouth marketing for the game.

I don't think we'll ever get an answer. while I do believe the marketing team at aniplex was most likely given no budget for mahoyo, it still begs the question of why. why did someone at aniplex not want to give mahoyo a marketing budget? why are the japanese accounts for mahoyo and type-moon the only ones doing the marketing?

I hope the information I've provided here is accurate—if it's not, I'll try to update with corrections. I don't want this piece to cast hate towards the staff at aniplex or anyone involved with this projects, I'm just trying to assemble the pieces on what feels like a game being left to word of mouth. I've tried to include as many links to my sources as I could so you could come to your own judgements about what has happened regarding mahoyo's worldwide release.

mahoyo is a visual novel that's dear to me and will absolutely sell well on steam—with an estimated 50-80k wishlists, it's going to have a solid launch despite the zero marketing for its steam release. if you love other type-moon works or want to see an absolutely visually stunning visual novel, please check it out.

— arimia

#visual novel #visual novels #mahoyo #mahoutsukai no yoru #witch on the holy night #mahoyosweep #type-moon #visual novel game #anyway please play mahoyo #my articles

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alexturner2005 · 5 months ago

Text

Arctic Monkeys @ Forest Hills Stadium, NYC 8th Sept. 2023, By vlkovicpics

#alex turner #arctic monkeys #am7 tour #nyc 2023 night one #m

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dannyricsmirrorball · 1 year ago

Text

1989 • dr3 ੈ✩‧₊˚

ੈ✩‧₊˚ pairing || daniel ricciardo x singer!reader

ੈ✩‧₊˚ genre || social media au

ੈ✩‧₊˚ summary || y/n is releasing a new album!

ੈ✩‧₊˚ a/n || daniel is in the red bull 2023 seat in this btw! ahhh this was so fun, i’m so excited for 1989 tv and obsessed w daniel x 1989 edits so i had to make this.

liked by danielricciardo, scottyjames31, and 420,781 others

yourusername welcome to new york

tagged danielricciardo

username1 daniel.jpg in action

danielricciardo it’s been waiting for u 😉

username2 best couple back at it

username3 WE NEED NEW MUSIC

charles_leclerc that is so unsafe y/n!

⤷ yourusername ok grandpa lame

⤷ danielricciardo yeah grandpa

⤷ charles_leclerc look who’s talking 🤨

carmenmmundt pretty girl 😍

dianasilverss new york loves u

⤷ yourusername i love u

username19 patiently waiting for more music

georgerussell63 rogue australian w a camera

⤷ yourusername do u know him? he won’t stop following me!

liked by jackdoohan, jensonbutton, and 1,161,630 others

danielricciardo you can hear it in the silence

tagged yourusername

username23 y/n and danny in new york supremacy

scottyjames31 lookin fresh DR

⤷ danielricciardo just for u 😘

⤷ yourusername yeah ok.

yourusername you can hear it on the way home

⤷ danielricciardo can u see it w the lights out?

⤷ username41 um… are these… lyrics?!

username56 in love w their love

username43 smth bout danny is that he will ALWAYS be repping his own merch

marcusmumford sexy man

⤷ yourusername very 😮‍💨

⤷ danielricciardo i’m blushing 😘

liked by aarondessner, sukiwaterhouse, and 192,428 others

yourusername the best people in life are free

username11 guys i think we are entering a new era

username12 i’m calling it. new album coming.

lilymhe i miss u. come see me.

⤷ yourusername come see me!!!!

⤷ lilymhe nyc girls night out?? 👯‍♀️

⤷yourusername alex_albon make it happen

⤷ alex_albon booking flights 😐

username13 guys do we think that this is a lyric…

⤷ username14 we’re so starved

francisca.cgomes 🌟 girl

⤷ yourusername loml 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

⤷ danielricciardo 🤨

⤷ pierregasly 🤨

gracieabrams in love w you

⤷ yourusername in love w YOU

username42 LIVING for ny y/n

liked by landonorris, wearephoenix, and 342,093 others

yourusername kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats

tagged danielricciardo, landonorris, lilymhe, alex_albon, georgerussell63, charles_leclerc

username34 obsessed w her being friends w the grid

landonorris cute danielricciardo

⤷ yourusername lay off my bf 🙄

username83 y/n’s obsession w new york lately has to mean smth

⤷ username45 RIGHT like even danny is posting so much of new york

⤷ username83 and the weird captions… like lyrics??

⤷ username72 or they’re just enjoying being in new york during the off season?

⤷ username83 ur no fun 🙄

lilymhe u + me 4eva 🤭

⤷ yourusername umm yes? 🤭🤭

⤷ danielricciardo ??

⤷ lilymhe what abt it?

⤷ alex_albon ??

⤷ yourusername square up albono

⤷ alex_albon it’s ok i’ll just shake it off

⤷ yourusername 😳

charles_leclerc i don’t remember what we were looking at

⤷ georgerussell63 🎤🎤

⤷ charles_leclerc ohhhhh yes!!

⤷ alex_albon i’m sure she admires ur subtlety george

⤷ yourusername yeah thanks guys 😐

⤷ username62 UMMMM GUYS?? MUSIC???

liked by mickschumacher, enchante, and 183,801 others

daniel3.jpg been getting down to this sick beat 🎧

tagged yourusername

username87 WHAT SICK BEAT DANIEL?!

yourusername 👏👏👏

⤷ daniel3.jpg ❌🙋‍♂️🎁👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨💁‍♀️😱

⤷ username53 um ok…

username72 eating up any scraps of hints to new music

username91 obsessed bf talented gf peak

lando.jpg tell y/n to let me play 🥁 on the album

⤷ yourusername what album??

⤷ lando.jpg oh yk just like whatever one comes next yk like lollollol

⤷ daniel.jpg not looking likely mate

⤷ username57 uhhhh album???!??!!

username82 she’s so girl boss

username73 their matching ugly shoes 🥹🥹

⤷ username88 LMFAO they make it work

liked by sam_fender, chloestroll, and 980,284 others

yourusername tangled up with you all night 🪩

username56 OMFG SHES IN THE STUDIO

username98 NEW MUSIC NEW MUSIC NEW MUSIC

username92 WE WERE RIGHT ODNFHRUEJ

username24 NEW FUCKING MUSIC LFG

landonorris OMGOMGOMG

⤷ yourusername 😐

⤷ landonorris 🤷‍♀️

isahernaez that skirt 😍😍

⤷ yourusername omg complimented by the fashion god 🤭

username3 another lyric caption fs

scottyjames31 does he go anywhere without that damn camera

⤷ yourusername no.

⤷ danielricciardo photography is my passion 😍

liked by landonorris, chloestroll, and 342,510 others

daniel3.jpg high tide came and brought you in 🌊

username56 ok now the captions are just obviously lyrics

username92 he’s so obsessed 🙄 i love them 🥹

landonorris enough of the y/n dedicated jpg posts. mine next??

⤷ yourusername in your wildest dreams

⤷ daniel.jpg ofc 😚

⤷ yourusername oh.

⤷ daniel.jpg oh… 😳

⤷ landonorris AHAHHAA owneddddd yourusername

username72 the way he captures her. they’re so perfect.

username46 the seagulls on the beach??? like y/n’s post as well… this means smth

⤷ username81 someone’s getting delirious

liked by danielricciardo, gracieabrams, and 2,309,451 others

yourusername new album out 01/03/23 🌟

tagged jackantonoff

username63 OH MY FUCKING GOD

landonorris LFG

username12 WHAT WHAT WHAT

username23 IM NOT READY. MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED.

carlossainz55 ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

username46 she used the pics danny took of her. im so fragile rn 🥹

lilymhe THE MUSIC INDUSTRY EVERYBODY

⤷ yourusername i love u w my whole heart

georgerussell63 mega mate!!

francisca.cgomes so excited lovey!!! 💖💖

⤷ yourusername ily kika baby 💘

pierregasly let’s goooo

charles_leclerc congrats y/n 👏👏 can’t wait for evryone to see!

⤷ yourusername 🤍🤍 thanku for ur help charlie 😉

⤷ username16 no way…

⤷ username5 are we getting y/n ft charles OMFG WE ARE SO BACK

username3 AHHH SO EXCITED but also why’s it called 1989?

⤷ username78 this is just a guess but im 99% sure it’s bc that’s the year danny was born

⤷ username3 omg a y/n album named after/dedicated to danny, my heart can’t take this

username63 why is no one else talking abt the fact that the release date is daniel’s bday?!

⤷ username3 OH MY GOD IT IS

maxverstappen1 congrats y/n/n 💙

jackantonoff let’s goooo

⤷ yourusername absolute legend

danielricciardo so proud of u baby ❤️

⤷ yourusername i love u forever

lewishamilton 💜

gracieabrams proud asf

f1 ready for 1989 era

danielricciardo random release date 🤔

liked by arthurleclerc, gangofyouths, and 390,647 others

yourusername nice dresses, sunsets

username12 ugh i need to raid her closet

danielricciardo more of this 😍

lilymhe my girl 🤤😍😘💖💘

⤷ danielricciardo i’m sure u meant MY girl

⤷ lilymhe get ur own girl

⤷ danielricciardo i HAVE my own girl

⤷ alex_albon and SO DO U

⤷ yourusername calm down ladies, there’s enough of me to go around for the both of u 😘

⤷ username23 alex is lily’s bitch confirmed

jackantonoff red lips and rosy cheeks?

liked by danielricciardo, enchante, and 5,609,183 others

yourinstagram celebrating my person today! danny, thanku for being my rock, my heart, my everything. happy birthday my love, i am yours forever and always.

my new album 1989 is now yours! i am so proud of this album, thank you to everyone involved in creating my newest baby. most importantly, thank you to my most special muse. this album is about life, love, friendship, and everything in between.

daniel this one is for you 🤍

enchante x

tagged danielricciardo

danielricciardo the best present i could ask for ❤️

⤷ username41 nobody speak to me

danielricciardo so so proud of u, forever my girl

⤷ yourinstagram forever ❤️

landonorris hbd lover 😍😍 oh yeah and congrats y/n 🙄 so extremely proud 🧡

⤷ yourinstagram stop tryna bust the moves on my boyfriend - thankuu landini 🩷

jackantonoff PROUDEST

⤷ yourinstagram my partner in musical crime 🤍

maxvertsappen1 WOOOH LETS GO Y/N!!! happy birthday daniel 😘

⤷ yourusername thanku maxxie 🩷

⤷ danielricciardo love ya maxxie

lilymhe ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS OUT

lilymhe THATS MY BEST FRIEND!!!

⤷ yourinstagram I LOVE U

alex_albon absolute LEGEND

⤷ yourinstagram so sweet albono

username42 THIS ALBUM IS ACTUAL POP PERFECTION

username43 WE WERE RIGHT, MOST OF THE CAPTIONS WERE LYRICS

christianhorner congrats y/n 👏👏 happy birthday daniel 😊😊

francisca.cgomes so proud of u my talented sweet amazing girl 💘💘 (happy birthday danny!)

⤷ yourinstagram 🥹 love u sm kika

username63 THEY NEVER GO OUT OF STYLE!

ausgp it’s y/n and danny’s world, we’re just living in it 👏🥰

username13 how u get the girl??? floored by her genius

charles_leclerc congrats mate!! proud 🖤 happy birthday daniel 😘

⤷ danielricciardo thanku charlie 🥰🥰

⤷ username16 um ig we were wrong abt the charles x y/n song

⤷ yourusername 🤔

⤷ username16 oh?

oliviarodrigo masterclass in pop perfection 😍

⤷ yourinstagram 🥹

marcusmumford two absolute legends!!

joshallenqb hbd danny 🤤 congrats y/n!

scottyjames31 YES MATE! love ya y/n so proud ❤️ happy birthday danny boy 😘

⤷ yourusername thanku scotty 💘

⤷ danielricciardo see ya soon mate love ya

oscarpiastri congratulations y/n!

⤷ yourusername thanku oscar 🤍🤍

redbullracing happy birthday to our honey badger ❤️ and congrats y/n!

liked by yourusername, jackdoohan, and 1,927,038 others

f1 you’re looking at your australian gp pole sitter 🔥 for the first time in formula 1, the honey badger takes pole position at his home race.

tagged danielricciardo, redbullracing

username63 LFGGGGGG

username82 back where he belongs 👏👏

username9 he went back home and got that shine back

yourusername let’s gooo baby

redbullracing back on top 📣

ausgp 🍯🦡 is back baby

username47 i just know he was listening 1989 in those fuck ass beats the entire lead up to quali

aussiegrit 👏👏

scottyjames31 bring it home danny boyyy

username52 he was defs singing shake it off to zak beige in his head

username13 love to see it 🇦🇺🦘

liked by charles_leclerc, lorenzotl, and 1,209,839 others

yourusername it’s our home gp. it’s race day. danny’s on pole. 1989 deluxe is out.

after all the love for the album, i’m so excited for you guys to hear these three new tracks; wonderland, you are in love, and new romantics.

big love to my big bro jackantonoff for your inspiring dedication to your craft and being a masterclass act.

a huge thanks to my favourite pianist charles_leclerc for playing piano for the most special track - you are in love.

i hope you guys love it 🤍 big ups dannyric today everybody! 🇦🇺🇦🇺

username92 the best wag ever

username02 her releasing the album on his birthday and then the deluxe version on his home gp, she’s so in love.

danielricciardo i am in love, with you, forever and ever and always. thanku baby, my best good luck charm.

⤷ yourusername 🥹

redbullracing on repeat in the garage y/n!!

⤷ mercedesamgf1 same

⤷ scuderiaferrari same

⤷ alpinef1team same

⤷ alphataurif1 same

⤷ astonmartinf1 same

⤷ williamsracing same

⤷ haasf1team same

⤷ alfaromeostake same

⤷ mclaren same

⤷ username3 who invited them 😒

username13 AND YOU UNDERSTAND NOW WHY THEY LOST THEIR MINDS AND FOUGHT THE WARS AND WHY I’VE SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE TRYNA PUT IT INTO WORDS

⤷ username3 YOU’RE IN LOVE TRUE LOVE

⤷ username85 their love is one of a kind

⤷ username93 a forever kind of love

⤷ username2 her pen goes fucking crazy but it goes even crazier when it’s abt daniel

charles_leclerc it’s finally out! so grateful to work with you y/n/n, thanku for trusting me w this special special song. so proud to be even a small part of this brilliant project. see u tonight!

⤷ yourusername charlie 🥹 thanku thanku thanku! i couldn’t think of anyone more perfect to collaborate with for such a special song. good luck out there today!!

⤷ username16 i’m so not okay

lilymhe daniel is so lucky (don’t tell him yail is actually abt me)

⤷ yourusername 🤫🤫

⤷ danielricciardo i wanna be mad but im too happy rn

landonorris BABY WE’RE THE NEW ROMANTICS COME ON COME ALONG WITH ME HEART BREAK IS THE NATIONAL ANTHEM WE SING IT PROUDLY WE ARE TOO BUSY DANCING TO GET KNOCKED OFF OUR FEET BABY WE’RE THE NEW ROMANTICS THE BEST PEOPLE IN LIFE ARE FREE

⤷ yourusername i’m glad u liked it lan 😭

⤷ mclaren he’s blasting it in the garage

⤷ oscarpiastri can confirm (not complaining)

⤷ username81 he’s just like me fr

liked by christianhorner, yourusername, and 9,025,727 others

f1 DANIEL RICCIARDO WINS THE 2023 AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 🇦🇺

for the first time in his career, home hero, daniel ricciardo wins the australian gp!

for the first time in formula 1 history, an australian driver stands on the podium at the australian gp!

for the first time in formula 1 history, an australian driver wins on home soil, at the australian gp!

big congrats to the honey badger as well as red bull for their legendary 1-2 at this years australian grand prix.

tagged danielricciardo, redbullracing

username82 say australian gp one more time

username92 LETS GO DR

username2 DANNY RIC IS BACKKKKK

yourusername LETS GOOOOOOO

yourusername BIG UPS BIG RIC

yourusername HISTORY MAKER

yourusername OHHHH DANIEL RICCIARDO OHHHH DANIEL RICCIARDO

yourusername LOML

yourusername HE NEVER LEFT BITCHES

username94 y/n going feral in the comments is so me coded. she’s down so bad for that man.

redbullracing the honey badger is back baby

jackdoohan yeah brotherrrr 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

ausgp YES WOOHOO DR3

scottyjames31 LFG DR! BIG MOVES BROTHER ❤️

christianhorner that’s our driver! congrats daniel, big moves 👏👏

landonorris ricky bobby is back

georgerussell63 yesss dannyric 👏👏

daxshepard let’s go danielllll

jensonbutton good job danny 👏

aussiegrit brought it home 🇦🇺🇦🇺

liked by danielricciardo, f1, and 14,092,283 others

yourusername race winner. history maker. legend. my boy. he won’t apologise. prouder than imaginable.

tagged danielricciardo

danielricciardo no one id rather do it w by my side ❤️

danielricciardo the best people in life are free 😉

comments on this post are limited

hope you enjoyed 🤍🤍

#daniel ricciardo x reader #daniel riccardo imagine #daniel ricciardo #f1 imagine #taylor swift #1989taylorswift #charles leclerc #formula 1 #lando norris #alex albon #george russell #dr3 #max verstappen

969 notes · View notes

sgiandubh · 1 month ago

Note

Oh my you have it all wrong (again) regarding Lee Schrager. In no way he met him after the birthday party in Miami! After that birthday party he went straight to NYC promoting LA. And wtf are you babbling about BCAC going on about a ballerina? The nonsense you spread - smh

Just take a good look back, or maybe just use BCAC's timelines, than it would have save you half an hour or more, and prevent you from making these mistakes.

He met Lee Scharger on December 5th 2022 after his first bottle signing in Miami December 3rd 2022, not after his birthday party with the guys in 2023. As said after the b-day he went to NYC for LA promo and right after that back to Belgium for TCND filming. No time for Mr. Schrager

If he had been smart he already participated at NYCWFF last year, but hey a comped vacay to Nevis was more important!

Get your facts straight before you start bullying other bloggers who do post facts.

Dear Get Your Facts Straight Anon,

I am not very sure what you do hope to achieve with this submission to my account. Because I am a Stupid, Stupid Shipper, I can only think of two possibilities:

A - you probably thought I was about to burst into tears, not publish a word, throw in the towel and disappear for ever from your obsessive screens. Something that would have perhaps ingratiated you to Marple until the end of time

B- you probably thought I would publish it and look like a zero credibility, lying idiot and lose all my readers and throw in the towel and disappear for ever from your obsessive screens. Something that would have perhaps ingratiated you to Marple until the end of time.

Same objective. Placing people between a rock and a hard place. Killing them quickly and brutally with venomous words and be done with someone that you perpetually seem to choke on from June 2023 until the end of time.

At any rate you were wrong, 'Anon'. There are better, more civilized ways to correct people, there are more subtle ways to ridicule them. No doubt, this is what you tried to achieve, here. And well, there we are: you are still Anon and I am still owning my game. How about that, pumpkin?

The first post about Lee Schrager has been published by me exactly one (fucking) year ago: https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/730746701530431488/labor-of-love?source=share. During all this time, there have been zero comments or corrections about it (I have even blocked an Anti, @justagirlwithspirit, but NOT about that point). You waited. Fair enough. I owe you a corrigenda and I also owe @bat-cat-reader and all the people who commented under those posts about Schrager my deepest apologies. I have diligently scoured the socials, checked my archives, relistened to Mark Gillespie's podcast and no, I could not find any trace of a lunch with Lee Schrager end of April/early May 2023 (I arrived in this fandom on June 18th 2023, mind you - that does not excuse anything, but perhaps it could explain a bit).

You were correct to point out December 5th, 2022, as the day of 'a quiet Sunday night dinner' with S and the SS team. For anyone with a bit of time on their hands, this is obvious - why disingenuously deny?

For the life of me and with the best intentions in the world, I cannot remember how did I incorrectly connect those two episodes. I don't know what happened, how it happened and I feel quite angry at myself, to be honest. Again, you (all of you!) have my deepest apologies, knowing that it doesn't really change anything in the great scheme of things. It greatly pisses me off, surely. But it will not make me stop. You are not that powerful.

Your accuracy stops here, however. The ballerina (or 'dancer', as she called it) was something Marple heavily insisted upon, when she posted that footage from the restaurant where S was celebrating 'with the guys'. I hope you can read, Anon:

Perhaps it's her humor. Perhaps she has zero humor, as I tend to think. In any case, this kind of insinuation lacked class and taste. It was unnecessarily disparaging and could even be construed as downright cruel by some. But if three posts on the same totally irrelevant topic in the span of two hours and a half do not resonate as 'heavily insisting' with you, then I certainly can't help you see her intentions, here.

'If he had been smart, he would have already participated at NYCWFF last year, but hey a comped vacay to Nevis was more important!' Grammar will always betray you, 'Anon'. Always. But rest assured, your dirty little narcissistic secret is safe with me. I won't give you more time, nor space than basic ethics allow. The rest is your problem. It is absolutely clear the Nevis trip was not 'a comped vacay', as you so carelessly write. I have posted at length about this #ad hashtag, not once, but twice. In the hope you guys across the street would write less garbage about it - to no avail:

[October 25th, 2023: https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/732163733760163840/y-seguimos-para-bingo?source=share]

[October 29th, 2023: https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/732463933939728384/bigotry?source=share]

I am many things, Anon. I am a short-tempered woman and I take no prisoners. But I am no coward and I am no fool. I might sometimes mix up my 'timelines', but I am not a vile, obsessed troll, with a big grammar problem. Ask your Caporegime why did she insist I have no legal education, until the day I got angry enough to post one of my well, several diplomas from Paris? How is that called, Anon?

It's not just 'spreading nonsense', no. It's calumny.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

#anon #fandom #shitshow #apologies all around #Southern Glazer's #business #legal

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finelinevogue · 2 years ago

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Finelinevogue Masterlist ‘23

get lost in a world where harry styles is the main character in your life.

navigation

Harry Styles:

Fics

Fluff

the midnight game show -

you and harry partake in the midnight gameshow with michael mcintyre

birthday boy -

harry’s birthday party ends up with cake frosting in his hair and your eyes

tears of love -

a whole bunch of tears and a whole bunch of love for the album of the year grammy winner

in this world, it’s just us -

you and harry attend the Brits, drink a little and love each other a lot

valentines day gift -

you purchase a gift for harry like never before

take a break -

you and harry arrive at your nyc hotel for a little getaway

he’s just harry -

a couple of fan interactions with harry on the streets of london

when in rome -

just a few random clips from a holiday to rome

i love you more than dino nuggets -

the night before the final show

love in photos -

a sum up of love on tour in a few instagram posts

ring shopping -

a tiny blurb about engagement ring shopping

spread the love -

harry’s fans LOVE you

firsts -

it’s your first date out with harry

a montage of love -

a fan has put together a small video of some of your best moments together

the eras -

harry is the best boyfriend ever and not just because he has taylor swifts number

Angst

first kiss of the year -

a new year’s eve kiss, with a few tears and tipsy friends

jealous wife -

you can’t help feel jealous when people stare at harry for looking so good

you are the love of my life -

you go to harry’s listening party and are reminded how he is the love of your life

family will get you through -

you go through a life changing operation but you have a strong family to get you through it

parisian love -

you are a little self conscious of your feelings in the city of love

paparazzi nerves -

you get nervous around the paps

lost n found -

you are lost in italy the night before your wedding

life goes on -

just a tiny blurb of post tour engagement talk

love her stupid -

you are jealous of harry’s new bandmate, when you really don’t need to be

kisses on tour -

harry always chooses a fan to kiss at the end of his concert shows and you attend his next tour date

labitule -

you have an obsession with harry’s hoodie collection

starry eyes -

harry’s the captain of the ice-hockey team and there’s a house party to celebrate their win

interesting enough? -

you spy an attractive man at the bar, but you’re too shy to say hello

the best thing -

you hate harry after that one night together, but when you need someone the most he will always be there

Series

love island universe

harry’s house

UNIverse

love on tour blurbs

christmas fic

Other

instagram concepts

fic rec 2023

fic rec masterlist

masterlist ‘21

masterlist ‘22

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fanfic #ask finelinevogue #harry blurb #finelinevogue #harry styles concept #harry oneshot #fic rec harry styles #masterlist harry styles #masterlist finelinevogue #harry styles blurbs #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles smut

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austinslounge · 2 months ago

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The KRAZY Kaustin Relationship 🤡 Circus (2024 Timeline)

(Hey everyone! 👋 Since I was starting to get mixed up and confused with all of the dates and drama going on in this ghetto situationship, I figured I would create a timeline so we can track this craziness. It might also help make clearer some of the things going on in this clown-show 🤡 of a "relationship" lol. 😂 **PLEASE feel free to let me know if there are any relevant things missing that you feel that I should definitely add to this year's timeline. I will continue to update as time goes on.)

2024:

December 2023/Jan 2024 - Austin went to Cabo with Kaia and her family for their annual Christmas Holiday and New Year's vacation. Link 1 Link 2

January 5, 2024 - Kaia posts a cringey Instagram story where she's crying because Ayo wins the Golden Globe that night, and some shippers swear that it was Austin filming her.

But Callum and Austin both state (twice, in two different interviews for MOTA press) that they were watching the Golden Globes together, "just the two of them", at Austin's "pad", and one article even mentions that "no girlfriends" were around. Link

January 10, 2024 - Life & Style posts an article stating that Cindy Crawford "doesn't want Kaia to wait for a commitment from Austin Butler". This seems to be one of the first few times the couple has ever received any type of negative press about their relationship. Link

Austin has the MOTA premiere in LA. The L&S article came out on the same exact day as his MOTA red carpet premiere.

March 13, 2024 - Austin and Kaia are spotted at the gym in LA looking just as bland together (as always). Link These pictures were taken the day right before Kaia's "Palm Royale" red carpet premiere night on March 14th. Link

Presley posts a picture of him with Austin at the Palm Royale premiere.

May 25, 2024 - Kaustin did a NYC Pap Stroll where they both look miserable. Link 1 Link 2

May 26, 2024 - Austin kicks off "The Bikeriders" press tour with Jodie at the Indy500 race. Fans immediately notice that he looks way happier with Jodie than he looked with his gf Kaia just a day ago in NYC. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

May 27, 2024 - People.com posts an exclusive from a source that claims that Austin and Kaia are "still happy and in love". Many fans strongly suspect that this was a message put out from Kaia's team because they both looked so miserable in NYC, and perhaps the media reached out to ask what is going on, or perhaps her team herself reached out to People.com to put out this fluff article. Link

May 31, 2024 - Life & Style posts an exclusive story from a source that claims that Austin and Kaia "have nothing in common and they know it". Link

June 4, 2024 - Fans noticed that Austin liked a post on Instagram (Posted on May 24th) about girls "with two A's in her name". The post was tagged #toxicrelationships Link 1 Link 2

June 9, 2024 - DeuxMoi posts on her "Sunday Spotted" a message from a sender that says they supposedly saw Austin, Kaia, Camila Morrone, and her boyfriend Cole in the Cayman Islands together. The sighting seems strange (and fake) since Austin has been on a Bikeriders Press Tour the whole entire time. Link

August 3, 2024 - Kaia is in Montana for a Gerber Family Wedding (Cousin). Austin was not in attendance.

August 16, 2024 - Presley Unfollows Austin (AGAIN) lol

August 17, 2024 - Austin's Birthday Pap Stroll. Link 1 Link 2

August 18, 2024 - Pictures of Austin hanging with Dylan O'brien at the Joyface bar/club in NYC surface on DeuxMoi "Sunday Spotted". It was stated that there was "No Kaia". Link 1 Link 2

August 21, 2024 - Austin spotted with Channing Tatum and Zoe Kravitz in NYC Manhattan at the "Blink Twice" after party. The difference between how happy and lively he looks with them, vs how lackluster and bored he looked just the night prior while out with Kaia is not lost on fans.

Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

August 27, 2024 - Austin spotted in Muskoka with Kaia and the Gerbers Link 1 Link 2

On this same day, Kaia posts the "Dear Dickhead" post to her Instagram while on vacation in Muskoka. Link

September 4, 2024 - Kaia's birthday at Disneyland. Actress Ayo Edibiri and Presley's gf were also in attendance, but Austin was not present. Link

Presley posts a birthday tribute to his sister Kaia on Instagram, and in it, he posts a picture of Austin with them at a Halloween event last year. Link

September 9, 2024 - Austin begins filming "Caught Stealing" in NYC around this time.

September 10, 2024 - Kaia and SNL movie co-star Corey Michael Smith do an interview on the red carpet that raises a few eyebrows. She appears to be flirting with him. Link 1 Link 2

September 15, 2024 - DeuxMoi's "Sunday Spotted" post mentions Kaia and Marcello were spotted at The Odeon restaurant in NYC, and were "all over each other". They were supposedly "ignoring everyone else at their table", and one point went downstairs together for 20 minutes.

September 16, 2024 - Kaia and Marcello appear to be at a friend's party at Victoria Bar (NYC) getting kind of close for a woman who's supposedly in a relationship with another man. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

September 19, 2024 - Marcello untagged himself from the photos with Kaia at the party in NYC.

September 20, 2024 - Life & Style posts that Austin is "outgrowing" his relationship with Kaia, and that Kaia is "trying to stay interesting" in order to keep him interested. Link

September 21, 2024 - Kaia is in LA celebrating her best friend Travis' birthday. Link 1 Link 2

Austin attends the "Dune: Part 2" FYC event in NYC with Timothee, Zendaya and Denis. Link 1 Link 2

September 29, 2024 - DeuxMoi posts portions of her podcast that deal with Austin and Kaia, and she swears that Austin and Kaia are still together. She also posts (for the first time) a supposed Kaustin "sighting" that said that Austin and Kaia were spotted together getting coffee on the weekend (14th) and that they looked "happy" and "in love". She never posted this sighting until now. Link

On DM's Sunday Spotted, someone reported that they saw Austin and Kaia at iSodi restaurant in NYC. Link

October 1, 2024 - Kaia is spotted out at a play in NYC with Camila Morrone's boyfriend, Cole Bennett. Link 1 Link 2

The Daily Mail posts the outing with Kaia and Cole to their website. Link

Marie Claire also posts about the outing, and even claims that Austin and Kaia have broken up. Link

Earlier this day, DeuxMoi posted a supposed sighting from one of her followers that said that they "worked with Kaia during TIFF" and saw that she was FaceTiming Austin at one point, and that they were "incredibly loving" and "happy" over the phone.

That evening (Oct 1st), Kaia is spotted with Cole Bennet (Camila's bf) going to a play in NYC, and the outing looked like a date, so much so that Marie Claire and The Daily Mail were even speculating about Austin and Kaia breakup rumors lol. 😅

October 2, 2024 - Kaia is featured in Time100's issue.

Page Six puts out an article showing Kaia out to dinner with Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth the night before, and claiming that Austin and Kaia are still together, and that there is "no trouble in paradise". Some feel that this is only damage control since it seems very odd to many that Kaia has been spotted in pictures (paps and citizen photos) all over NYC with everyone but her boyfriend. 👀 Link

The article goes on to mention that Austin was supposed to join them for dinner that night, but he got tied up with work and couldn't make the dinner. Some feel that's really strange, especially when signs stated that "Caught Stealing" was having a night shoot on October 1st, so why would he have committed to having dinner if he knew he was going to be filming that evening? 🤔

October 3, 2024 - The Daily Mail posts pictures of Austin and Zoe kissing on set for "Caught Stealing", and makes sure to let everyone know that they are just acting, and that both are in "serious, real-life relationships". 🤣😅😂 As if we the reader is dumb and didn't know that lol. 🙄Link

October 5, 2024 - Austin and Kaia attend Kaia's friend, Gracie Abram's concert in NYC together (looking miserable as usual). Link

This was their first public outing where they're papped together since the whole Marcello thing and breakup rumors. Some fans and people on the general public aren't buying it anymore though. Link

October 11, 2024 - Life & Style yet again puts out another article stating that Austin and Kaia's relationship has been having issues "for weeks", and that Cindy thinks that Kaia needs to try "harder" to "keep Austin interested", and even suggests that the couple should go to "couples therapy" together. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

The article also hinted that Austin's career is what is most prioritized and on his mind, and that Cindy is a little upset that Kaia has been acting flirty with other guys instead of working hard to keep Austin interested in her.

October 13, 2024 - Kaia follows actor Nicholas Chavez on Instagram. Link

October 16, 2024 - The Daily Mail posts an article stating that the Gerbers are giving Austin a "fierce warning" and want him to commit to their daughter Kaia with an engagement 💍 Link

October 21, 2024 - Actor Nicholas Chavez follows Kaia back on Instagram. 👀 Fans notice that he liked a bunch of Kaia's pics -- even posts from 2017. 😏 Link 1 Link 2

November 2, 2024 - Kaia attends the LACMA Hollywood event in LA, and is overheard in a video talking to fellow actress Laura Dern about a "breakup" and how it came as a surprise to her. 👀 Link

#the kaustin circus #2024 timeline #the timeline will be updated as new things appear #feel free to let me know if you feel that something needs to be added #the Kaustin Karnival

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theanticool · 10 days ago

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Watch Women's Boxing: Katie Taylor vs Amanda Serrano 2!

In 2022, we were treated to the biggest women's boxing match of all time (in the US at least). Ireland's pride and joy Katie Taylor faced off with one of Puerto Rico's greatest fighters of all time Amanda Serrano in front of a sellout Madison Square Garden crowd in NYC. It was a historic night for the sport that has yet to be matched. You can watch the fight on YouTube.

It has taken two years, but we are finally getting a rematch. This Friday (Nov. 15), Taylor and Serrano are set to meet again in Texas as part of the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul (stupid ass fight) card on Netflix. And to help emphasize why this is so important, let me lay the careers of both fighters.

Depending on who you ask, Katie Taylor is the reason women's boxing got added to the Olympics in 2012. The Irish star actually participated in the first ever sanctioned women's fight in Ireland at the age of 15. A standout amateur, she was a multiple time European Games, European, and World Champion as well as an Olympic gold medal in 2012. All together, I think she's won 18 amateur gold medals. While her efforts came up short at the 2016 Olympics, she took that drive to the pro ranks. She quickly racked up wins before winning a world title in her 7th fight. She then proceeded to unite all 4 major belts to become the undisputed champion at 135lbs and climbed to P4P #1 in the sport. A last second change of opponent back in 2023 led her up a weight class to 140lbs. There, she faced off with the undisputed champion Chantelle Cameron. The fight was Taylor's first ever as a pro in her home country of Ireland. She would lose but was given a rematch for later in the year where she picked up a controversial decision win. She now has claim to being a two division undisputed champion.

Puerto Rican sensation Amanda Serrano is a long time veteran of the women's pro scene. Her career started in 2009. She has plugged away at this sport methodically for 15 years, picking up an insane 47-2 record. Most impressively, Serrano has been a world champion in 7 divisions. There is only one other boxer in history who has that many divisional crowns, Manny Pacquiao (8). She also is the only Puerto Rican boxer to have the title of undisputed at a weight calss (featherweight) in the four belt era. She is a truly generational talent in women's boxing and it's been incredibly gratifying to see her finally get the big paydays and media recognition she has deserved.

With both Serrano and Taylor getting up there in age, we do not have many chances left to see them compete at a high level. So we shoudl all definitely be tuning in to watch them fight now while we still can. I can honestly say this is arguably the most important women's fight boxing has ever seen and I'm excited to see these two square off again.

#Watch Women's Boxing #Amanda Serrano #Katie Taylor #Boxing #opinions

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago

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Why Millennials aren’t leaving Tiktok

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The news that Gen Z users have abandoned Tiktok in such numbers that the median Tiktoker is a Millennial (or someone even older) prompted commentators to dunk on Tiktok as uncool by dint of having lost its youthful sheen:

https://www.garbageday.email/p/tiktok-millennials-turns

But "why are Gen Z kids leaving Tiktok?" is the wrong question. The right question is, why aren't Millennials leaving Tiktok? After all, we are living through the enshittocene, the great enshittening, in which every platform gets monotonically, irreversibly worse over time, and Tiktok is no exception:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

To understand why older users are stuck to Tiktok, we need to start with why younger users relentlessly seek out new platforms. To some extent, it's just down to youth's appetite for novelty, but that's only part of the story. To really understand why people come to – and leave – platforms, you have to understand switching costs.

"Switching costs" is the economists' term for everything you have to give up when you change products or services. Switching from Ios to Android probably means giving up a bunch of your apps and purchased media. Switching from an airline where you're a high-status frequent flier to another carrier means giving up on free checked bags and early boarding.

In an open market, rivals have lots of ways to lower these switching costs (it's an open secret that you can call an airline and say, "Hi, I'm a 33rd Order Mason on American Airlines, will you make me a Triple Platinum Diamond Sky-Baron if I switch to Delta?"). Of course, big incumbents hate this, and do everything they can to increase their switching costs, finding ways to impose high switching costs that punish disloyal consumers who have the temerity to go elsewhere.

With social media, lock-in comes for free, thanks to the "collective action problem." Getting people to agree on a given course of action is hard, and as you add more people to the picture, the problem gets harder. It's hard enough to get half a dozen people in your group-chat to agree on where to go for dinner or what board-game to play. But once you're reliant on a social media service to stay in touch with friends, relatives around the world, customers, communities (say, rare disease support groups), and coordination (like organizing your kid's little league car-pool), the problem becomes nearly insoluble. Maybe you can convince your overseas relatives to switch to a Signal group, but can you do the same for your small business's customers, or your old high-school pals?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

Taken together, switching costs and collective action problems make platforms "sticky," and sticky platforms inevitably enshittify.

Platforms, after all, generate value. They connect end-users with each other (say, little league parents) and they connect end-users to business customers (you and your small business's customers). That value needs to be parceled out among end users, business customers, and the platform's shareholders. A platform can make life better for business customers at its end users' expense by increasing the number of ads (hello, Youtube!), and it can make life better for its shareholders at its business customers' expense by decreasing the share of ad revenue given to publishers or performers (oh, hello again, Youtube!).

From a platform's perspective, the ideal state is one in which end users and business customers get no value from the platform, because it's all being captured by the platform's shareholders. But if Youtube interrupted every 30 seconds of video for ten minutes of ads and paid the video creators nothing, both users and creators would ditch the platform – and advertisers would follow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dab8sKg8Ko8

So platforms seek an equilibrium: "what is the least value we apportion to end-users and business customers without triggering their departure?" Maybe that means giving more value to end-users (for example, keeping Uber fares low by suppressing wages), or to business-customers (crowding more ads into your social media feed).

Every business – including brick-and-mortar, non-digitized ones – wants to find some kind of equilibrium between the value going to its suppliers, its customers and its owners, but digital businesses have an advantage here: digital systems are flexible in ways that analog, hard-goods businesses are not. Digital businesses can alter pricing, payouts and other dynamics from moment to moment – second to second – and make a different offer to every supplier and customer. They have a bunch of knobs, and they can twiddle them at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Well, not quite at will. Businesses face constraints on their twiddling. If they get too greedy, users or business customers might weigh the cost of staying against the switching costs and decide it's not worth it. But the more expensive – the more painful – a platform can make leaving, the more pain they can inflict on the people who stay.

In other words, there's two ways to keep a customer or supplier's business: you can make a better service so they won't want to leave, or you can make leaving the service so painful that they stay even if you mistreat them.

There's three ways a digital company can make things worse for their customers and users without losing their business.

First, they can eliminate competition (think of Mark Zuckerberg buying Instagram to recapture the users who'd fled Facebook to escape his poor management):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Second, they can capture their regulators and avoid punishment for trampling their suppliers' or users' legal rights (think of how Amazon has raised the price of everything we buy, both on- and off Amazon, through its "most favored nation" deals):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Third, they can use IP law to prevent competitors from modifying their services to claw back some of that value (think of how Apple used legal threats to block an Android version of Imessage, blocking Apple customers from having private conversations that included non-Apple customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Companies can't just use this tricks at will, of course. Antitrust laws can block companies from making anticompetitve acquisitions or mergers. Regulators can punish companies for cheating their customers, workers and users. Technologists can come up with clever ways of modding or reconfiguring existing services with "interoperable" add-ons that let users bargain for better treatment by refusing to accept worse:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Day in, day out, the decision-makers at tech companies test these constraints, twisting the knobs that shift value away from users to shareholders. Their bosses and boards motivate them with "KPIs" that dangle the promise of huge bonuses and promotions for any manager who successfully enshittifies part of the company's products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Decades of pro-corporate, pro-monopoly policy has loosened those knobs. 40 years of lax antitrust meant that companies had a lot of leeway to buy or merge with rivals – that's changing today, but it's tough sledding:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

As sectors grew more concentrated, they found it easier to capture their regulators, so that they no longer fear punishment for price-gouging, spying, or wage-theft, so applying the same amount of torque to the "break the law" knob cranks it a lot further:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Once you've captured your regulators, you can aim them at your competitors. A monopoly-friendly policy environment has transformed IP law into a bully's charter, allowing powerful companies to strangle would-be competitors who dare to offer their customers tools to shield themselves from enshittification, like scrapers, ad-blockers and alternative clients. Big companies can crank the enshittification knob all the way over and know that smaller rivals knobs won't turn at all:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

At one point, bosses faced one more constraint on knob-twiddling: their workforce. Many tech workers genuinely cared about their users' welfare, something bosses encouraged as a sneaky trick to get techies to put in long hours without exercising their leverage by quitting rather than destroying their lives to meet arbitrary deadlines. These workers would fearlessly slap their bosses' hands when they reached for the enshittification knob, threatening to quit rather than allowing the products they'd given so much for to be enshittified. Today, after hundreds of thousands of tech layoffs, tech workers are far less like to challenge their bosses' right to twiddle, and far more likely to get fired if they try:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

All this means that tech bosses don't have to change their approach at all, and yet, their services will grow steadily worse. The boss who twiddles the enshittification knob in exactly the same way as he did a year or a decade ago will find it turning much further, because his customers are locked into his platform, his regulators won't protect them, the same regulators will stop his competitors' attempts at countertwiddling, and his workers fear losing their jobs too much to speak up for their users.

That's the contagion that produced the enshittocene: the forces that constrained companies (competition, regulation, self-help and labor – all melted away, allowing every company's MBA-poisoned knob-twiddling leaders to shamelessly caress their knobs with every hour that God sends:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which is why people want to leave platforms. When a platform loses its users, those users have weighed the switching costs against the pain of staying and decided that it's better to bear those costs than to stay.

So why have Tiktok's younger users found the costs too high to bear, and why have their elders remained stuck to the platform?

For that, we have to look at the unique characteristics of young people – characteristics that transcend the lazy cliche that kids are easily bored, fickle novelty-seekers who hop from one service to another with unquenchable restlessness.

Whether or not kids are novelty-seekers, they are, fundamentally, a disfavored minority. They want to do things that the platforms don't want them to do – like converse without being overheard by authority figures, including their parents and their schools (also: cops and future employers, though kids may not be thinking about them as much).

In other words, kids pay intrinsically lower switching costs than adults, because a platform will always do less for them than it will for grownups. This is a characteristic kids share with other supposedly technophilic, novelty-seeking "early adopters," from sex-workers to terrorists, from sexual minorities to trolls, from political dissidents to fascists. For those groups, the cost of mastering a new technology and assembling a community around it is always more likely to be worth bearing than it would be for people who are well-served by existing tools:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#sex-tech

Pornographers didn't jump on home video because of its superiority as a medium for capturing flesh-tones. Home video was a good porn medium because it was easier to discreetly get into the hands of porn consumers, who could, in turn, discreetly view it. The audience for porn in the privacy of your living room is larger than the audience for porn that you can only watch if you're willing to be seen marching into a dirty movie theater.

Every new technology is popularized by a mix of disfavored groups and neophiles, who normalize and refine it – and yes, infuse it with their countercultural coolth – until it becomes easy enough to use to become mainstream. As more normies drift into the new system, the switching costs associated with leaving the old system declines. It gets easier and easier to find the people and services you want in the new realm, and harder and harder to find them in the old one.

This is why tech platforms have historically experienced sudden collapse: the platform that gets more valuable and harder to leave as it accumulates users gets less valuable and easier to leave as users depart:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

If you're a Gen Z kid on Tiktok, you experience the same enshittification as your Millennial elders. But you also experience an additional cost to staying: as late-arriving adult authority figures become more fluent in the platform, they are more able to observe your use of it, and punish you for conduct that you used to get away with.

And if you're a Millennial who isn't leaving Tiktok, it's not just that you experience the same enshittification as those departing Gen Z kids – you also face higher switching costs if you go. The older you get, the more complex your social connections grow. A Gen Z kid in middle school doesn't have to worry about losing touch with their high-school buddies if they switch platforms (they haven't gone to high school yet – and they see their middle school friends in person all the time, giving them a side-channel to share information about who's leaving Tiktok and where they're headed to next). Middle-schoolers don't have to worry about coordinating little league car-pools or losing access to a rare disease support group.

In other words: younger people leave old platforms earlier because they have more to gain by leaving; and older people leave old platforms later because they have more to lose by leaving.

This is why Facebook is filled with Boomers. Yes, their kids bolted for the exits to avoid having their parents (or grandparents) wading into their sexual, social and professional lives. But the reason the Boomers were late joining younger users' Facebook exodus – or the reason they never joined it – is that they stand to lose more by going. Facebook deliberately cultivated this dynamic, for example, by creating a photo hosting service designed to entice users into uploading their family photos while disguising how hard it would be to take those photos with them if they left:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The irony here is that tech has intrinsically low switching costs. All other things being equal, a new platform can always build a bridge to ease the passage of users from the old one. There's no (technical) reason that moving to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or any other platform should mean cutting ties with the people who stayed behind.

A combination of voluntary interoperability (where old platforms offer APIs to allow new services to connect with them), mandatory interop (where governments force tech companies to offer APIs) and adversarial interop (where new companies hack together their own API with reverse-engineering, scraping, bots, and other guerrilla tactics) would hypothetically allow users to hop between networks as easily as you change phone carriers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Tech platforms tend to offer APIs when they're getting started (to ease the inward passage of new users) then shut them down after they attain dominance (locking the door behind those users). The EU is tinkering with mandatory APIs through the Digital Markets Act (though bafflingly, they're starting with encrypted messaging rather than social media). Restoring adversarial interoperability will require extensive legal reform, which is getting started through Right to Repair laws:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/13/oregon-passes-right-to-repair-law-apple-lobbied-to-kill/

The people who are stranded on social media platforms shouldn't be mistaken for uncool, aging technophobes. They're not stubborn, they're stranded. Like the elders who can't afford to leave a dying town after the factory shuts down and the young people move away, these people are locked in. They need help evacuating – a place to go and a path to get there.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/#evacuate-the-platformsr

#pluralistic

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