#platform failure

[thepastisalreadywritten]

It was always going to end this way. The truth about Catherine Middleton’s absence is far less funny, whimsical, or salacious than the endless memes and conspiracy theories suggested.

In a video recorded and broadcast by the BBC, the princess says she has cancer and that she had retreated from the public eye to deal with her condition, while attempting to shield her children from the spotlight.

Instead, she had to contend with the internet giggling about whether she’d had a Brazilian butt lift.

My colleague Helen Lewis summed it up succinctly this afternoon: “I Hope You All Feel Terrible Now.”

What is there to learn from such a sad situation? The internet is made up of people, yet its architecture abstracts this basic truth.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, at the center of this months-long story was essentially “a sea of people having fun online because it is unclear whether a famous person is well or not.”

Underneath the memes was always something a little bit gross and indefensible.

Perhaps humans are just wired this way — to gawk and gossip.

There’s nothing new about hounding a member of the royal family or invading the privacy of a celebrity to sell tabloids or go viral.

You don’t even have to be a scold about it: Famous people are wealthy and beloved at least in part because they’re fun to talk about.

Exactly what we do and don’t know about their internal lives is part of the allure — the discourse comes with the territory to a degree.

But Catherine Middleton, of course, is a human too.

During this saga, I kept thinking about the reappraisal of Britney Spears in 2021, as well as the backlash toward past media and tabloid coverage of her rise.

A New York Times documentary dredged up old coverage of Spears from the mid-aughts, showing a young woman clearly in distress, being picked apart by glossy magazines.

Her suffering became entertainment. The response to this film was swift.

Some of the people and institutions that had shamelessly delighted in her pain backtracked: Glamour publicly apologized to the pop star on its Instagram account, noting, “We are all to blame for what happened to Britney Spears.”

Contrast the Spears reckoning with the Middleton drama and, if you’re being generous, you can see some of that newfound attitude in the media.

I was struck by Lewis’s observation that “Britain’s tabloid papers have shown remarkable restraint” throughout this mess.

Progress, perhaps, but what’s also telling is that they didn’t really need to do the dirty work: Random people on the internet were doing it for them.

They recklessly speculated, memed, and used their amateur sleuthing and networked faux expertise to concoct elaborate, semi-plausible explanations for her absence.

Was Catherine’s face actually Photoshopped from a Vogue spread? It wasn’t, but the conspiratorial tweet got 51.1 million views anyhow.

Missing from much of the discourse was the idea that its main character was a person who was likely struggling.

In essence, the internet democratized the tabloid experience, turning the rest of us into paparazzi and addled editors workshopping headlines and cover images — not to sell magazines but to amass some kind of fleeting online popularity.

In my least charitable moments, I see this toxic dynamic as the lasting legacy of social media — a giant, metrics-infused experiment in connectivity that has had a flattening, pernicious effect.

In 2021, I interviewed Elle Hunt, a journalist who’d tweeted an innocuous opinion about horror movies one evening and woke up to find she was trending on Twitter, her feeds choked with thousands of furious replies and threats.

When I asked her to describe the experience of becoming Twitter’s main character for the day, she summed it up thusly:

“You’re repurposed as fodder for content generation in a way that’s just so dehumanizing.”

Three years later, these words resonate even stronger.

What Hunt described to me then as “a platform failure,” feels to me now like a learned behavior of the internet, where people, famous and not, are repurposed as fodder for content generation. The cycle repeats itself endlessly.

This afternoon, the memes about Middleton shifted — from jokes about her whereabouts to jokes about how awful it was that everyone had been making fun of a cancer patient.

Feeling bad about the memes tweets immediately became a meme unto themselves.

Despite the tone shift, the reason for these posts is the same: They’re a way to take a person and repurpose their life for entertainment and engagement.

If this sounds exhausting and depressing, it’s because it is.

But the internet is also too big to be one thing. Clicking through social media this afternoon, I saw dozens of heartfelt testimonials, apologies, and well-wishes for the princess.

For a moment, from my perspective, it felt like watching a collective of people come to their senses.

A recognition, perhaps, of the humanity of the person at the center of the maelstrom.

Then, only a few seconds later, I saw a different post. It was a screenshot from the blockchain platform Solana, where users can create their own cryptographic tokens for others to invest in.

The name of the token in the screenshot is “kate wif cancer,” and its logo is a still of the princess sitting on a bench, taken from this afternoon’s video.

The coin’s market cap briefly surpassed $120,000. Only six minutes later, the price had cratered — the result of a standard memecoin sell off.

An awful thing happened. Some people made a joke about it. Other people made some money. And then everyone moved on.

NOTE: Edited

[genericpuff]

on the closure of MochaJump, and why we're our own worst enemies in this industry.

"MochaJump? What was that?" is probably your first question, and I'm gonna simply respond with, "Exactly."

MochaJump was a small startup platform made by /u/nunojay2 and a second site engineer (whose name I am not informed of) on reddit. It wasn't anything extraordinary, just a startup site that aimed to offer a more viable alternative to Webtoons and Tapas, with a focus on offering equal visibility to creators, focused recommendation algorithms, loosened restrictions on NSFW content, and bigger cuts for creators on their generated revenue.

Of course, such promises are a tall order, but the creator did their best to host regular discussions with creators in art and webtoon communities to get feedback on what creators really wanted out of their platforms, and they researched what they would need to make in order to keep the site afloat (it came out pretty low at $2 per user per month). Hopes were high and the site launched with a small but eager userbase.

It stayed small. The site shut down in November 2022, just 6 months after launching in May 2022.

Now, I'm not gonna sit here on some soapbox and blame anyone for the site closing down. I unfortunately didn't get much chance to use the site myself so there's surely more I could have done on my own part to help it gain traction. But this is a regular occurrence for start-ups like this, especially in an industry that's as notoriously unprofitable as webcomics. We've seen titans such as SmackJeeves and Inkblazers fall, and MochaJump was merely an infant by comparison.

But it makes me think of how we view and treat these startups as a whole. How we as readers and creators alike have become so trained to exclusively use corporate platforms like Webtoons and Tapas on the promise of "bigger gains". Unlike these bigger companies, platforms like MochaJump depend on building a strong userbase as quickly as possible, and need to find ways to generate revenue to keep things running, otherwise it's only a matter of time before they close down. They don't have a massive conglomerate like Naver or Kakao to pad their pockets through their failures. They don't have the money or reach to inject themselves into society through bus terminal ads and convention sponsorships. They don't have the investors to sink money into their platform until it becomes profitable in return.

So we don't use them. Readers don't use them because we don't see the point in using a platform that has no content... and thus creators don't use them because we don't see the point in publishing our content on a platform with no userbase. Creators seek a place that's "tight knit" and "easy to get seen", but will only post to places that come pre-loaded with massive audiences; because it's not enough anymore to have a couple hundred followers, we're in 2023 now, in the year of consumer bloat, where we expect to now pull in thousands if not millions to be considered a "success". And readers seek a place that offers high-quality high-amount content at the tip of their fingertips, but don't want to pay for the access to these works, and in the case of apps like WT, have given up in trying to support these creators through the platforms themselves because they know that those artists they want to support will likely never see a dime.

The fact of this problem is simple, yet many people seem to ignore it - we cannot expect to have a platform that is tight knit, profitable, and sustainable. These places do not exist, not so long as we continue to raise the bar on what makes a "successful" subscriber count, not so long as we continue to patronize platforms that exploit their artists and writers, and not so long as we keep chasing the dragon of "what these websites used to be". These platforms never used to 'be' anything, they merely existed in one point of time that is now long gone, when owning a smartphone was a luxury and not a need, when online video content wasn't being tethered together by ads, and when the Internet wasn't owned and entirely managed by the same three corporations, the likes of which we haven't seen since cable TV.

Platforms like Tapas and Webtoons are - besides unsustainable - unable to exist and profit in the way they do without undercutting someone along the way. Whether it's underpaying their creators, undercutting their communities, or underexposing the works that have been buried, someone will get the shit hand in the deal and that someone is usually ALWAYS someone who will rarely ever stand to gain anything in the long run from using these platforms despite their issues. The 1% got theirs, and the 10% are barely getting by, while the remaining 89% are pushing onwards, because they have faith in the systemic online enshittification that demands conformity to a single formula for "success".

We are our own worst enemies in this industry. Webcomics are one of the few online mediums that still truly belong to the people - anyone can make them, anyone can find joy in them, but we're letting platforms like Webtoons and Tapas and all the other massive corporate apps rob us of that joy and accessibility in the pursuit of "success" and profiting. Webtoons was never the sole way to profit off this medium and yet I still see people every day who underestimate the existence of legitimate publishing houses and self-publishing, who think that publishing on Webtoons and landing an Originals deal is the only way to find success in this industry. This is meant to be the era of creators, of self-starting and self-actualization, and yet we're still handing all of that control over to corporations that only seek to exploit our art, bodies, and labor, while convincing ourselves that this will somehow all be worth it. We stick with Webtoons, despite the numerous controversies it's been involved in and the lack of support it's given even its own hired creators. We stick with Tapas, despite the undercutting of its most core components such as its community and the outlier genres it used to be known for hosting. We find new ways to justify using platforms that are steadily going downhill - Patreon, Twitter/X, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook - because we've been convinced that these are the routes to success, so if we acknowledge their failures, then "success" can no longer exist.

Because we need to pay rent. Because we need to eat. Because we need to survive. Because it's a lot more complicated than just "stepping away". Because the startups just don't have any of the surface level potential for us to immediately identify and get on board with, so we don't give them a chance.

I realize this post got very existential and depressing. I've been creating comics for well over a decade now, largely unnoticed, and I've fallen victim to these same limiting mindsets that we have to stick to one way, one "formula" for success - a formula that changes with the wind and only works for those who get in on the ground floor. It's been slowly killing me from the very beginning, robbing me of my joy to create, of my reason to even do this in the first place - to tell and share stories with others, to express myself creatively, to live my life surrounded by art and stories and creations made by and for others. It's made me tired and miserable, and I can tell it's done the same to those who have shared that boat with me.

But there's one silver lining I can always be sure of, and it's one I was reminded of after realizing I was still in the MochaJump Discord, with one announcement post that I hadn't yet read.

Webcomics are one of the few online mediums that still truly belong to the people. Corporations are trying their hardest to take that power away. Let's not continue to let them.

If you want to help sustain, patronize, and contribute to the growth of sites that are still being operated by small teams (or even one man armies), please, consider checking out the following websites, some of which serve as platforms or publishers, others which operate as link directories for independent sites run by creators.

ComicFury GlobalComix TopWebcomics The Webcomic List The Webcomic Library Hiveworks SpiderForest SmackJeeves Archive Inkblot.art And whoever wants to use the GitHub source code used for MochaJump (RIP)

Let's do our part to decentralize webcomics again. We may not be able to leave the platforms that weakly sustain us, but we can still support those that strengthen and support us.

[viperwhispered]

I kept on talking about it, now I finally did it: put together a few outfits for Emi to wear outside the school uniform - once she has the reason to start filling out her wardrobe in Twisted Wonderland, at least.

Ngl, these pull heavily from what I wore at that point in life, with a dash of wish-fulfillment for extra pizzazz.

First of, the casual - when she doesn't feel like dressing up and is just throwing something on:

Add an extra hoodie or something for colder weather.

The strappy - feels a bit extra but like... she would:

Also works with a dramatic blouse with some flowy sleeves (think Morticia Addams).

(There's also a variant of these two known as the "the boyf's not here and I miss him" with one of Jamil's hoodies, probably the one with the flames that he wears with his school uniform. Particularly prevalent during Emi's third year, when Jamil’s away doing his internships.)

Dressing up, tartan edition:

Dressing up, waist corset edition (prob with the prev shoes, I couldn't bother with repeating elements):

Also works with some long, flowy sleeves and thicker tights.

Also like... feel free to throw in spiked wrist bands and belts and things in there, they're definitely part of the assortment, too.

And like, not to say these are the only things Emi has (there's definitely more of like, basics in her wardrobe too, and cozy oversized things to get wrapped up in), but I feel like these gets the general vibes across, especially for the more standout things she likes to wear.

So yeah, it's like... You can often hear Emi coming just from the clatter of chains, especially when she's taking a seat, lol.

Tagging @scint1llat3 @diodellet @moonyasnow @bibi-cha

If you'd like to be tagged for Emi things, just let me know!

[lilyveselka]

excited for every liberal i know to turn into passionate racists because their special blue guy didnt win

[lovedtogekiss]

hey this had better be some obscure fucking bug because if spotify wont even let free users do something as simple as *start a playlist again from the beginning once youve played all the songs* im going to leave. im taking my 1000 song 8 hour playlists and im porting all of them somewhere else manually. fuck this shit

[razreads]

The only way to failure, dear boy, is not to try.

Clare Pooley, The People on Platform Five

[asinglesock]

just realized my fatal flaw and the great struggle of possibly the rest of my life. while watching a cdrama.

[3416]

actually now im bothered but i shant say why

[cringefailfagcat]

i loveeeeeee public transport

[welcometogrouchland]

It's definitely not the most widely held belief in online fan spaces (at least not at it's full potency, I think a watered down version is more widely felt imo) but I do think some fans approach art and fandom with this weird idea that because a bad story disappoints or even hurts the fans of a work, it's like. A personal and/or moral failing of the creator for making that bad story. And it should be treated with the same gravitas as something with more far reaching consequences and implications. Yknow?

[crickwater]

I don't have any strong feelings abt matt mercer dming for d20. I am enjoying seeing the intense reactions of everyone else tho

[rustedpipe]

🫧🛝🤸🚇🏺

[otatma]

This SHOULD be good news...

But it doesn't fucking work @staff

so I now have no way to get rid of tumblr live. Which I still don't want. I'll finally have to install xkit on mobile. Well done!

[corpsebrigadier]

I had a long think yesterday about having a long think about how the rise of digital journalling/socmed might make it harder to resist misinformation even with meticulously curated feeds that manage to avoid most instances of it--how much of our logging of our experience has become digital and how having increasingly poor digital archiving options to locate one's own past writing makes it hard to track down confirmation of one's memories.

I keep an (admittedly somewhat irregular) pen and paper journal, and being able to flip immediately back to a labeled date and track my reaction to ____ event in a physical object is so much easier than trying to locate my reactions in virtually every type of digital feed. I can see what I thought about the 2020 election and about the beginning of the pandemic. When somebody attempts to revise the narratives surrounding them, I have at least one historical anchor back to my own impressions and I can make my own decisions as to whether they were correct. If somebody mentions the perpetual war in Eastasia, I will have an inked and dated reminder of the time I noted "War declared against Eurasia today.

[mister13eyond]

Twitter be like "oh? Oh? You have 'rape', 'raped', 'raping' and 'rapist' muted already? Why, have you not considered muting 'rapes' too? POW!" and radiate the tweet right into your face

Meanwhile tumblr will take your hand gently and go "oh. You sweet innocent child. You have muted the word 'ntr' I see? Why, I will hide this one post talking about a 'country' in it! Heaven knows, you might see the Bad Word and we cannot allow that!"

And then it will show you like "HEY THIS POST CONTAINS THE WORD NTR! WATCH THE FUCK OUT" and you will be left wondering, "why the fuck is my mutual who has never once talked about ntr in their entire LIFE is suddenly talking about it?", until you check out the post in question and turns out that no. It has just been country all along

Meanwhile on Twitter, the yearly #Rape[character]Week week has already started and there's nothing you can do to stop the sudden and imminent influx of retweets from that one mutual of yours who's crazy into that kind of stuff

Oh and another thing, despite how overprotective tumblr can be with its muting system, the best thing that has ever happened to it was having separate mute tabs for words appearing in tags AND words appearing in posts

Like, you love a character but people have the coldest fucking takes about them? You like a ship but its haters are justifying their hatred of it with fallacies that would make even the ancient Greeks, CEOs of arguing, to shame? Why, just mute the word itself! Leave the tags intact because it's more likely that those who genuinely love the character/ship will merely tag it, meanwhile all the flaming trash about them will stay muted, because they're only named inside the post itself! It's so easy

Meanwhile twitter, the dumbass that it is, might hide the muted words that appear on your TL, but it absolutely will NOT hide them in search results and on people's pages. So if you're browsing your beloved mutual's profile then oh no, despite their careful and dedicated TWing, you will STILL get slapped with the tweet having "rape" in it

God anon you are SO FUCKING RIGHT, it's one of THE worst things about twitter and one reason i love tumblr's tagging & muting functions SO much. Sometimes I have friends who simply have kinks/interests/ships that I just cannot do, but I still love those friends and want to follow them and see their other work! I am so so SO pro "curate your own experience & attend to your needs, block filter & mute so that you have the ideal experience" but twitter is just a HORRID platform to do that on. Especially not being able to append tags to retweets without QRT-ing them- it's so hard when the only way to add a filter-able word to another person's art/post is to QRT it, which ESSENTIALLY makes an entire separate post (and is considered poor manners for many artists who don't like their work QRT'd)

It's SO nice to be on here and simply, filter things and know that if there's anything I need to filter I can simply ask my mutual to append a tag to it, which is easy to do and does not affect the original post in question. And being able to click through and check on muted posts means that if something DOES get caught by the overzealous filter, I can still check and see (plus getting a warning I am going to see something before I see it is often all i need to keep a trigger or squick from bothering me; i have time to prepare myself, hit 'ok' and then engage, with the extra resilience that a simple warning gives me. after all, most of the time, when i'm given a content warning for a movie/show/etc, i still consume the piece of media, just with a little extra delicacy/awareness/preparation to take breaks if i need)

anyhow you're so correct and this is another reason i cannot stand twitter and am glad i'm seeing more people revisit tumblr

[twilighttowntormentnexus]

i finally beat the boss in wonderland today, because 1. i was underleveled and 2. im bad at any video game that isn't minecraft or balatro