#that doesn't make it a “grift”

[ktempestbradford]

The person above deserves to be tossed into an oubliette for starting this nonsense...

Because, as you'll see from the article, none of the salaries are in any way out of line for the size and type of organization that is the Wikimedia Foundation. As someone on a Slack I'm in pointed out, this is likely someone who worships Elongated Muskrat and is doing whatever they can to get "approval from their god-king."

As someone responding to this nonsense pointed out:

wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet… doesn't host ads, and is entirely free to browse.

Yes, it does have problems. However, Rebecca Watson rightly pointed out that Wikipedia has grown up into one of the best sites on the Internet.

Since Elongated hates Wikipedia, I think the best response to all this is to donate to it.

Piss off the billionaire that has lost the most money ever so he throws another fit and loses even more!

[firebirdsdaughter]

Something that occurred to me this time…

… Is that Eliot deliberately brings Hardison w/ him to confront Moreau the first time. He tells Nate that he and Hardison will do it (don't worry, I also Love Hardison taking the moment to be like 'hey, are you okay?' bc those two usually express themselves through bickering so much that it clearly telegraphs just how off Eliot is being that Hardison is dropping the usual banter to be serious).

Which for one thing, says something about Eliot's confidence in Hardison in general, but also, like… Yes, Parker's probably not the choice for that introduction, it's not her style, but Nate or Sophie could also have played the part. He could have tried to go alone. But he pulls Hardison.

Obviously he's not trying to put Hardison in danger, he makes it quite clear in all other scenarios that he does not tolerate Hardison in danger (visual cues in The Gone Fishin' Job my beloveds), the others are well aware of the fact that he's Done Some Shit and are equally unaware of his connection to Moreau. And to be honest, I can't pinpoint an exact reason why I think he might have done it, chosen Hardison to be the one who finds out first. Maybe he suspected Moreau would underestimate Hardison, making him safer (relatively, if course), then someone like Nate or Sophie. Maybe he thought it would be best to have Hardison's tech skills as back up. Maybe he thought Hardison would roll w/ the punches the best. Maybe he just wanted Hardison there for morale.

I don't know, but it's a moment that didn't really occur to me the first time, but I think is actually quite meaningful in a more emotional way.

[trexalicious]

Thoreau once said "It takes two people to hear the truth--one to speak and another to hear." That's the problem. She only wants to speak and hear her own truth...

[agirlinthegalaxy]

It's been rolling around in my brain the last few days for some reason, but I still hate the family backstory reveals for Sophie and Eliot. I've seen some of the meta for it, but quite frankly, it still makes no sense. If it had been something actually thought of and intentional in the original, I think it could have been so fascinating. I mean, Sophie's willing abandonment of Astrid to contrast with Nate's loss of Sam or Eliot's adoption in contrast with Hardison's and Parker's? Could have been excellent! But they came out of nowhere in Redemption and don't work with these characters.

Sophie was still actively using the fucking alias that she met Astrid under! She met with someone from her past on the show! Like. Quite frankly, that one is unequivocally bullshit that they made up and threw in and pretended could fit with the established canon. (And I'm sorry, but the idea of Sophie abandoning Astrid and never telling Nate about her just... So much of Nate's trauma was rooted in the loss of Sam, and I think that introducing this element after he's gone and unable to respond to it taints Sophie and Nate's relationship in a way bc I'm not exactly sure how Nate would've responded to learning about this but I think that it's something he'd have needed to know. I don't know how to fully express my thoughts on that but yeah.)

As for Eliot, I don't like the adoption aspect literally at all. The way that he would interact with his family and the memory of his family would be different, and I think that it's flat out ridiculous to think that he'd have never mentioned it to the team in the original show, especially when dealing with the kid cases. (I also dislike the biracial adoption as its own element because if Eliot was actually raised by Black parents in the... idk what 80s/90s? That just. doesn't feel congruent with how they write Eliot interacting with PoC, not necessarily in a bad way, but babe, he's written like a white southern man raised in a specific kind of culture that does not jell with that. It also makes Eliot look... really bad that he was apparently raised with the knowledge of how fucked up the military was and his parents' history and made the choices that he did.) Like the show may not have explicitly stated it but the implication of that relationship was vastly fucking different throughout the original show.

Just. These were not backstories that were congruent with their depiction and characters in the original show, and they're also just moves that I don't particularly like or find interesting directions for those characters. There's also something to be said about how it was apparently unacceptable for a woman to not have kids or someone not reconciling with their biological family when that was something that the original show handled a lot better. Out of all the directions to take Sophie and Eliot's stories, that's just not really one that I think was a good idea.

[teaboot]

Kinda gotta admire the tiktok instagram cottagecore tradwife hoes a little bit.

Like. THEY know that the perfect pretty obedient natural-makeup gently-coiffed rural June Cleaver, barefoot-and-pregnant in a sweet little peasant dress, baking fresh bread24-7 housewife doesn't exist.

They KNOW she doesn't exist. They know she CAN'T exist- that nobody can maintain that façade without burning out eventually-

but they also know that the political divide between men and women is deeper than ever in North America, that men as a demographic are getting increasingly angry and conservative and lonely (fuck off terfs and radfems i can sense your bioessentialism coming), and that women aren't legally beholden to them anymore.

This is one of the first generations in North America where women aren't entirely reliant on finding a husband and keeping him happy to survive, to hold a bank account or live apart from their parents, and so what men are dealing with is several hundred years of being told that REAL men have hot fuckable agreeable wives and...a present reality where nobody is lining up to apply for that position.

So what these shills have done- and they ARE shills- is that they've seen that divide, that niche that isn't being filled, that role that's so unpleasant but so desired- and they've constructed a caricature for profit.

Women aren't naturally more gentle, or parental, or submissive. Women aren't naturally, effortlessly smooth and soft and hairless and desiring of simple tasks to fill their time and a big, strong provider to protect them.

But generations of marketing and media have told us it's POSSIBLE, if not for those pesky man-hating feminist libs and their oversensitive woke culture lashing out at Normal Folks for no good reason.

Like- they're selling themselves, the characters they're playing, as an IMAGE, as a FANTASY, and they rely on people BELIEVING in that fantasy to keep the money rolling in.

The people who buy into it sincerely, the women who give up their degrees and careers and financial freedom for this "simple, peaceful life" we ALL desire in some form, away from stress and technology and horrible things on the news... only to get trapped with six children and a partner with all the power who could up and strand them at any moment... they're just collateral.

Like, "Shame it didn't work out for you, have you tried losing weight and trying harder? Maybe some extra Adult Time? He wouldn't have to chase someone younger and prettier if you'd just take care of yourself and put out more."

I on't hate this faux-humble faux-simple wannabe-amish bullshit just because I grew up rural and know it's fucking stupid, hard work and blood and shit and cow piss and placement in the rain kinda crap.

I ALSO hate it because these women are straight-up class traitors, selling off not just their own image as people, but everyone else's, just to make some paper on a grift.

You know Marie Antoinette used to wear sweet little milkmaid-style dresses and play with lambs in the field, just like the poors?

Never mind that she OWNED the land, and the field, and the people, the cute little frocks, and didn't help the sheep birth, or bury the dead premies, or slaughter for meat, or fight off wolves and dogs, ferrets and foxes and rats with a stick in the winter.

It was just fashionable to pretend.

Sweet and coquettish and Quaint.

THAT is why I hate that shit, and THAT is why I give a fuck.

[jonnywaistcoat]

hey jonny, i just thought you'd want to know that character.ai has an ai-generated imitation of your voice and i'm not sure what other websites might have it or where it originated :(

Yeah, it's a fucking garbage state of affairs but, as a somewhat well-known performer with a pretty distinctive voice it doesn't exactly shock me. Needless to say I think anyone who used this is a mediocre waste of skin and if they ever tell me in person they've used it then 50/50 I punch them in the teeth.

I can't wait for a couple of years when it all collapses just like every other niche-but-interesting-technology-with-limited-use-cases-sold-as-a-universal-panacea-to-gormless-CEOs grift (blockchain being the best example). Because the thing is, none of these things actually make any money and cost a vast amount, so as soon as all the dumb venture capital funding dries up and AI is required to actually start paying for itself, the bubble bursts and the whole industry is fucked.

That said, it's gonna be rough when it happens - a lot of companies have invested very heavily in AI and they're going to be hurting badly. I know of more than one media company whose idiot executives invested ridiculous amounts into NFTs and ended up laying off massive swathes of workers when that obvious fucking scam collapsed. I suspect the AI crash is gonna be even worse than that. And by then it will have drowned the Internet in slop. We'll see, I guess.

Anyway, anyone who uses AI is a soulless fucking husk of a person who cannot tell half-digested vomit from culture, and I would pity them if they weren't making the world such a measurably worse place to exist.

[nitewrighter]

I feel like those "The entire skincare industry movement is a capitalist/social media grift/scam" posts really fail to take people's physical comfort with regard to their skin into account. Like everyone's skin varies depending on genetics, and not everyone is living in the same place where their skin got its traits. Like, if your skin developed over generations to protect you from an arid mediterranean environment but you're currently living in the pacific northwest, you might need a toner or something because your skin isn't cycling its oils the way it would in a drier clime and you don't like how greasy it feels. Sometimes acne is painful and it's not unreasonable to not want painful zits. If your skin feels uncomfortably tight all the time, you probably need a moisturizer, and incorporating that into your daily routine for your comfort doesn't make you a slave of capitalism. Like it is messed up that there's this massive industry around skincare and that that industry is built around fucked up eurocentric beauty standards, but also like... skin is a very individualistic thing, depending on your genetics and potential allergies and where you live, and like... idk, obviously no one needs a million products or a 47 minute routine, but the needs of skin vary and it's kind of dumb to make these big blanket statements about how the only thing you need is sunscreen. (I mean you do definitely need sunscreen though. 100%.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real problem with anonymity

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

According to "the greater internet fuckwad theory," the ills of the internet can be traced to anonymity:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory

This isn't merely wrong, it's dangerously wrong. The idea that forcing people to identify themselves online will improve discourse is demonstrably untrue. Facebook famously adopted its "real names" policy because Mark Zuckerberg claimed to believe that "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity":

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

In service to this claimed belief, Zuckerberg kicked off the "nym wars," turning himself into the sole arbiter of what each person's true name was, with predictably tragicomic consequences:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Facebook is, famously, one of the internet's most polluted reservoirs of toxic interpersonal conduct. That's not despite the fact that people have to use their "real" names to participate there, but because of it. After all, the people who are most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are the ones who choose pseudonyms or anonymity so that they can speak freely. Forcing people to use their "real names" means that the most powerful bullies speak with impunity, and their victims are faced with the choice of retreat or being targeted offline.

This can be a matter of life and death. Cambodian dictator Hun Sen uses Facebook's real names policy to force dissidents to unmask themselves, which exposes them to arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. For members of the Cambodian diaspora, the choice is to unmask themselves or expose their family back home to retaliation:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy

Some of the biggest internet fuckwads I've ever met – and I've met some big ones! – were utterly unashamed about using their real names. Some of the nicest people I know online have never told me their offline names. Greater internet fuckwad theory is just plain wrong.

But that doesn't mean that anonymity is totally harmless. There is a category of person who reliably uses a certain, specific kind of anonymity to do vicious things that inflicts serious harm on whole swathes of people: corporate bullies.

Take Tinyletter. Tinyletter is a beloved newsletter app that was created to help people who just wanted to talk to others, without a thought to going viral or getting rich. It was sold to Mailchimp, which was sold to Intuit, who killed it:

https://www.theverge.com/24085737/tinyletter-mailchimp-shut-down-email-newsletters

Tinyletter was a perfect little gem of a service. It cost almost nothing to run, and made an enormous number of peoples' lives better every day. Shutting it down was an act of corporate depravity by some faceless Intuit manager who woke up one day and said "Fuck all those people. Just fuck them."

No one knows who that person was. That person will never have to look those people in the eyes – those people whose lives were made poorer for that Intuit executive's indifference. That person is the greater fuckwad, and that fuckwaddery depends on their anonymity.

Or take @Pixsy, a corporate shakedown outfit that helps copyleft trolls trick people into making tiny errors in Creative Commons attributions and then intimidates them into handing over thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Copyleft trolling is an absolutely depraved practice, a petty grift practiced by greedy fuckwads who are completely indifferent to the harm they cause – even if it means bankrupting volunteer-run nonprofits for a buck:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

Pixsy claims that it is proud of its work "defending artists' rights," but when I named the personnel who signed their names to these profoundly unethical legal threats, Pixsy CEO Kain Jones threatened to sue me:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

The expectation of corporate anonymity runs deep and the press is surprisingly complicit. I once spent weeks working on an investigative story about a multinational corporation's practices. I spent hours on the phone with the company's VP of communications, over the course of many calls. When we were done, they said, "Now, of course, you can't name me in the article. All of that has to be attributed to 'a spokesperson.'"

I was baffled. Nothing this person said was a secret. They weren't blowing the whistle. They weren't leaking secrets. They were a corporate official, telling me the official corporate line. But they wouldn't sign their name to it.

I wrote an article about for the Guardian. It was the only Guardian column any of my editors there ever rejected, in more than a decade of writing for them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/05/14/anodyne-anonymity/

Given the press's deference to this anodyne anonymity, it's no wonder that official spokespeople expect this kind of anonymity. I routinely receive emails from corporate spokespeople disputing my characterization of their employer's conduct, but insisting that I not attribute their dubious – and often blatantly false – statements to them by name.

These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity.

Mark Zuckerberg claimed that "multiple identities" enabled bad behavior – as though it was somehow healthy for people to relate to their bosses, lovers, parents, toddlers and barbers in exactly the same way. Zuckerberg's motivation was utterly transparent: having "multiple identities" doesn't mean you "lack integrity" – it just makes it harder to target you for ads.

But Zuckerberg couldn't enshittify Facebook on his own. For that, he relies on a legion of anonymous Facebook managers. Some of these people undoubtably speak up for Facebook users' interests when their colleagues propose putting them in harm's way for the sake of some arbitrary KPI. But the ones who are making those mean little decisions? They absolutely rely on anonymity to do their dirty work.

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/2024/03/04/greater-corporate-fuckward-theory/#counterintuit-ive

[sunderwight]

Demon Shen Jiu is such a fun idea though.

Especially if he himself doesn't know. Like imagine, Yue Qi finds this abandoned baby and the baby is REALLY OBVIOUSLY not human. But this also enables Shen Jiu to survive being abandoned at such a young age -- a human baby would die without adequate nutrition or care, but demons are a little more resilient. Baby Demon SJ has a way more forgiving digestive system and can move under his own power from a much earlier age. By the time he's a year old he's hunting his own rodents and small birds, and has to be stopped from biting and mauling anyone he doesn't like. Which is most people. Qi-ge develops amazing reflexes.

Why do the slavers tolerate a demon baby hanging around? Maybe it's really not all that uncommon. Demons come across the borderlands from time to time, and are as liable to abandon their kids or die or etc as anyone else. It's maybe an open secret among slavers that demon-blooded kids are a better investment, even, because they can survive for longer on less. The only downside is if they don't ever look human enough to pass as human, because that limits potential buyers, but that's only relevant when the slavers are trying to sell them. For the purposes of having a network of street kids stealing and grifting and spying and etc, it's fine. A lot of the slavers themselves started out as demon-blooded street kids with no other options.

But in SJ's case, he pretty quickly starts passing as human. Mostly because he's quite strong, and he's convinced that he's the same as his Qi-ge, so he makes himself the same. Makes his hands look the same and his teeth look the same and etc. It's largely subconscious, and once he starts doing it, it becomes automatic. SJ forgets that he's a demon in the way that most people don't retain their earliest childhood memories -- although he remembers that some of the slavers were demons.

Then of course there's the question of why didn't the Cang Qiong cultivators notice?

A few options. One is that whatever kind of demon SJ is, it's really good at mimicking humans. Another is that he's only part demon, and like Luo Binghe, fully capable of handling both kinds of cultivation. So once he starts learning spiritual cultivation, even from a heretic like Wu Yanzi, he doesn't seem different from any other recruit with a patchy education on the subject. Anything else odd about him could be easily attributed to his exposure to Wu Yanzi and his wicked practices.

Although full demon SJ is a fascinating idea. (Also, it could contribute to all those qi deviations -- he's trying to cultivate AND "fake" human cultivation at the same time, I doubt Qing Jing's techniques are totally compatible with everything going on there even without the psychological turmoil.) Like I'd imagine Airplane wrote that SJ was abandoned on the streets as a baby, and the system was like "hmm he probably wouldn't survive that?" and then in some nine billionth wife arc, Airplane also creates a variety of demon that can fully pass as human (for some identity conflict with a prospective wife), even to the point of fooling human cultivators and demon-detecting tools. So the system just ties these two disparate pieces of world-building together in order to patch a critical plothole (Airplane doesn't know anything about babies). Which has the side effect that Shang Qinghua doesn't even know that SJ became a demon!

And SJ himself doesn't know. The only person who knows is Yue Qi.

Obviously this wouldn't come up much in PIDW, but it could be pretty funny in the SVSSS timeline. YQY just sitting there through the whole Luo Binghe being a half-demon reveal, wondering if he should say something. Subsequently being the most absolutely chill about the whole demon reveal thing anyway. Like he's definitely not upset that Luo Binghe is a demon, or part demon, and the multiple people who try to make a point about it just run afoul of his impenetrable smile and get nowhere.

Then eventually Yue Qingyuan decides that he should probably tell Bingqiu that Shen Qingqiu is a demon. For like, safety purposes if nothing else. He's kept the secret so long also for safety purposes (even if someone put Shen Qingqiu under a truth compulsion he wouldn't be able to admit to being a demon, because he himself doesn't know!), and he's done tons of stuff to prevent anyone ever finding out (although Xiao Jiu is so talented that he didn't have to do much), but Luo Binghe is the demon emperor. That changes things. If Shen Qingqiu is going to be visiting the demon kingdoms regularly then there's a chance something could reveal the truth unexpectedly, and that would probably be worse.

So Yue Qingyuan sits down and has a very serious discussion with Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe about how Shen Qingqiu is actually a demon, was just the cutest little demon baby in fact, here he drew a picture from memory of what Xiao Jiu used to look like before he learned to look more human, and also how a lot of slave kids and slavers and people who fall through the cracks in society have demon ancestry, some more recent than others, and Shen Qingqiu always retained a certain discomfort around his own kind because of the adult slavers who sold him off, and etc etc.

[wis-art]

The worst period of my life was when I was a self hating teenager in denial about being transgender. I grew up in a deeply abusive household and my father expected me to be his manly son and I tried to conform despite it driving me insane, I fell down many nasty rabbitholes because of my insecurities rooted in deep hatred of my body and deep hatred of what I should be, I have always felt uneasy looking at men in cartoons and movies thinking to myself how much I don't want to become that, always envying the girls and always dreaming about waking up as a girl. This all lead me online because I felt so isolated from the world and I couldn't relate to anybody. Of course an unmedicated self hating teenager, with grand delusions about being god's little special soldier, seeking ANY validation is bound to fall into some horrible places, i am one of the victims of the alt right pipeline, and it did drive me into suicidal spirals many times over how much I hated myself for being transgender. Eventually I snapped out of it and grew out of it but the taste in my mouth of ever associating myself with that kind of community is really disgusting and never seems to wash off from my tongue, which I suppose is good since I never want to be back there mentally. I despise the right wingers, seeing and experiencing their beliefs first hand, it's all just driven by hate and insecurity, the only reason why it's so popular is because these people prey on lack of knowledge and insecurity of any kind, offering easy solutions and quick fixes, putting an easy target to direct your hate towards just to deflect the hate away from yourself. It is not a valid or real solution or even political ideology, it's a grift and a worldview sold to people who know their future is uncertain, it's harnessing the societal instability and crisis for political and financial gain, and I was a sucker for it in my teenage years for which I apologize. Nowadays I am unapologetically a leftist, with flaws and gaps in knowledge, like any other human on this earth but fundamentally different and changed from when I was a kid, and I am proud of myself and I am proud to be the bad transgender bitch that I am. It took so much effort, medicine, therapy, help from my family, help from my friends for me to realize that I was wrong and that I need to change. I did not do it alone. And I'm glad I did it, and I'm happy to ve fortunate enough to receive help and support despite being a toxic unpleasant person to be around. All so I can just be Wis in peace a weird transgender woman on the internet, drawing trans women who despise the fascists and nazis. It's also why I so deeply believe in people changing and why I am so adamantly against harassing people for their mistakes for years, it just doesn't help, all it does is makes one ashamed and all shame does is drive one further into the abyss of self hatred. As corny as it sounds love has saved me and it is love and patience that helps people change

[faorism]

every once in a while, when it's a quiet moment between him and one of his partners—could be anything from a stake out to a long drive in lucille to the warm moments between making love and sleep—eliot will turn to them and say, tell me something i don't know.

parker will usually tell him secrets. the bits of history that only exist between her, bunny, and now eliot. there's a lot from living on the streets, when she was young. she tells him about training with archie; eventually, she tells him what it felt like. she tells him about loneliness and not understanding and frustration and how her hands hurt when she wants to flicker them around; when he asks her why she doesn't let them, she says to ask another night. that's too big a secret to share when another's been revealed already. he does ask, and she does answer. once, she says in a shaking voice, i love you and hardison so much, and parker feels silly because duh eliot knows that, hardison knows that, but eliot heard something deeper than she could express, so he held her tight and kissed her hair as she shivered through the weight of her confession. after sharing with eliot, sometimes parker feels comfortable enough to share with hardison, peggy, sophie, or a client who needs to know they are not alone in the mess and hardship of the world. much later, the fact that parker has shared something once makes it easier to tell her shrink as she gets on SSRIs, which she seeks out after confessing to eliot that even if it had been based on a lie to grift hurley, maybe there was something to her treatment at the second act rehabilitation center that she missed. occasionally, she'll tell him about art. he listens just as patiently as anything else she decides to divulge and she loves him all the more for it.

hardison infodumps. parker didn't press eliot for what he meant the first time he asked; hardison did. eliot had shrugged, anything you wanna share. hardison nips out a testy, so if i go off about (he paused thinking of something that would surely turn eliot off) optimal simcity street design strategies, you wouldn't mind? eliot didn't back down, even when hardison went into a two-hour spiral that branched into different iterations on the concept, including rollercoaster typhoon. eliot made a few comments here and there, asked some clarifying questions now and again, but otherwise let hardison rail on. the next time, the question was framed as what you working on? but the effect was the same. eventually, hardison stopped hesitating and started looking forward to these monologue sessions. hardison doesn't think anything of them other than he's got some quality time with his partner, until one day on a job with some leverage international trainees, eliot manages (elle woods style) to untangle the lie at the heart of a condo scam with a few pointed questions about the plumbing. when one of the trainees asked how the hell he knew that, hardison expects to hear over the comms how eliot once dated a plumber or an architect; instead, eliot scoffs, you met my partner. genius knows a little of everything. which is when hardison remembers once infodumping about sprinkler systems. eliot gets the tightest of hugs when he gets home for truly listening to hardison.

[trexalicious]

Very interesting about the UnSussexfulls being part of the censorship of the American media...

THE CARNIVAL OF CLOWNS need to come to an END in 2024

[shithowdy]

Your tags on the 'hormones' post are illuminating! I can only imagine how hard it is to keep desperate, entitled people from hurting themselves when their need is so high for help but their finances (or reluctance to trust Big Medicine) relegate them to seeking that help from supplements. It's kind of how I feel about pet products: I was the lead on customer care for a Big Brand for like 4 years and I'm scarred for life. All that to say, your viewpoint on it is one I tend to look for when I see those essential oils/vitamin/fad supplements posts come around so thanks for sharing!

Yeah, even when they can be really self-righteous and weird about it, it's hard to not still think of people deep in the alternative medicine bog as victims. Despite largely being a monetary grift that at best does very little and at worst poisons you, miracle supplements are still an accessible grift to most people. In America particularly where healthcare is hidden behind not just financial but often also bureaucratic barriers, it's easy to lose faith in the system and turn to something that promises to fix what ails you and all you have to do is drive to the crunchy grocery store once a month and pay them $50.

Of course, the people refusing to regulate dietary supplements are the exact same ones refusing to do anything about the medical insurance industry, cashing out on both ends of the problem. It takes complete advantage of how many hurdles you have to go through by design, and that doesn't even touch on the shaky faith many minorities have in particular surrounding medicine for completely different systematic and legislative failures. Historic trauma (from James Sims' experiments, to Tuskegee, to Henrietta Lacks, and everything in between) combined with an enduring and overwhelming dismissal by doctors regarding symptoms has sown mistrust in pharmaceutical medicine among many black americans, leaving their communities particularly vulnerable to miracle cure grifts (irish sea moss is a big one right now). The proliferation of wellness MLMs among church congregations also helps to easily seed these beliefs in many minority communities, where community pressure is high and language/economic barriers make researching the claims a hurdle itself.

We often think of gaunt white women with birkenstocks and an ominous rictus as who mostly falls into the alternative wellness pit but that's honestly because they're usually the ones selling it on social media. Their audience, the ones who came to me showing me their tiktoks and asking if I sold this miracle pill, were largely minorities over 50 years old, usually women. The people who slip through the medical cracks the most.

And like... it's not going to change unless the process of getting proper healthcare stops being the arcane fucking ritual it's become, and education for doctors of all economic classes becomes more accessible. And unfortunately, as I post this on Jan 21 2025, I know it will only get worse before it gets better.

[purpledemonlilyposting]

I feel so bad for red van buskirk (robobuddies), they've had to deal with weirdos bothering them about Lily's shenanigans ever since her SU video came out. I agree with your point tho that Lily shouldn't be handled with kid gloves just because she's trans. Red is lucky enough to have enough separation from the situation to just not want anything to do with it, which I can admire.

Yeah honestly I thought this was just a Lily thing, using being trans as an excuse like she does so many other things. Before this she was sending herself asks calling her a "squaw", a pejorative no one has used since 1912.

Like, um, sorry, being trans doesn't put you above the social standards everyone else abides by? It doesn't make you immune to internet clownery? You're a regular ass person like everyone else.

This is how terrible, dangerous people like Lily Orchard, Patricia Taxxon, Poppy Diabolique, Keffals, and Ava Chris Tyson get so much cover. These are all people who repeatedly get excused for their grifting, lies and sexual predation cause there's a big enough crowd out there willing to go: "But they're trans tho!"

Stop enabling awful people in the LGBT community. Who do you think their prey primarily tend to be?

[weebsinstash]

have you thought about.. mammon

I know Mammon is canon ace which doesn't really stop me but there's also a certain charm in imagining he's greedy for... purely your presence and company. Dude doesn't even want a blowie from you or nothing, you could just be settled beside him helping him devour a bucket of chicken wings and he's happy as a clam

The dude clearly indulges his each and every whim and doesn't feel the need to justify and rationalize his actions for fuck all nothing, not to mention he's a Cardinal Sin. Who the fuck would or could or want to actually stop him if he just started dragging you around, forcing you to spend time with him like some sort of, combination partner/pet?

I try to think of what would make Mammon more unique in comparison to some of our other crazy boys around here and, I feel like Mammon is kind of a hard spot because, his greed would want him to have total ownership and possession of you, but clamping down on your autonomy and happiness also deprives him of, seeing more of you and your character and all of the little things he likes, so I think he'd be this kind of, "nasty sweet spot" of being extremely possessive and jealous but also doesn't mind spoiling the Hell out of you, because, I mean, greed is his whole entire thing, so watching YOU get to be greedy is sort of like a double bonus for him! He gets to feel like a big strong man making his bae happy and providing for you while also like, idk, enjoying the act of watching you overindulge

Do you think Mammon would be into feeding and feederism, whether sexual or not? I feel like whereas Beelzebub wants people to indulge in gluttony safely, Mammon representative of greed would encourage you to eat and drink and smoke and do as much of whatever you're doing as you want, a real kind of "just keep eating until you throw up" kind of guy. Dude just hand feeding you little treats and getting off on how he's got you eating out of his hand and keeps pushing you to eat more and more until you're actually ready to puke, and THEN he wants to cuddle as you're lying there with an aching tummy that he's running his hands all over, and if you throw up, we'll, that just means you have room for more, right?

Mammon's the kind of guy to get you so fucking wasted you're stuck in bed all day the next day puking into a mixing bowl and he drags you to a couch to at least scromit your guts out next to him while he's watching trash TV. Giving you "personal space" does not quite fit into his whole system of being a living symbol of greed, know what I mean?

Goddddd considering his whole lowkey "grifting entertainer" shtick where he was formerly an actual guitarist, I can just picture him making you wear, like, his merch as pajamas and shit. You're going to bed in the oversized band t-shirt + lime green panty combo and you'll like it, AND, you're tripping if you don't think he wouldn't force you to share a bed with him like some sort of stuffed animal (I bet he snores like a goddamn bear, too 💀💀💀)

I bet his tastebuds amd his palette are legit fucking garbage too so honestly you don't even have to be very talented in the kitchen before he's insisting he wants to try something you've cooked, and from then on in, serving him food becomes a regular thing. It's just so... intimate and sensual for him, that he's got you actually cooking and feeding him (and then maybe he can shag ya later). He has to find a balance between working you versus spending time with you since, he doesn't get to spend as much time with you if you're over a hot stove, and he likes watching YOU eat and indulge and do all of that as well.

Can you even imagine it. Having to like. Spoonfeed waffles into his gaping maw, holding the fork for him while he's moaning and groaning and shit, maybe even having you in his lap as you feed him, and-- oh God I just really hate being sticky like on God I fucking hate being sticky and touching sticky things like viscerally and i just got the most like detailed mental image of him getting fucking syrup everywhere and then thinking it's hot and wanting to fuck like that and lick it all off of you and I swear to God I think I'd rather be waterboarded

Can you imagine Mammon wanting to make merch of you because he's so legitimately infatuated he can't conceive of a world where you wouldn't be immensely popular as some sort of celebrity and he just gets PERSONALLY OFFENDED if people don't like you or think you're cute or something. His company starts selling like, genuinely innocent innocuous little plushies of you and only so many sell and he's raging that people are just fucking stupid. Do you think Mammon would release product lines to the public to justify making shit of you for himself. Like. You discover a hidden room one day and it's filled with an ungodly amount of your merch and he tries to lie and say it's backstock that never sold and he's just hanging on to it. Like sir what do you mean you released that line of posters officially just so you could have my picture on your fucking wall--

Similar to concepts with Valentino I also think it's just, cute but also funny if you think of Mammon bending his own rules to be more possessive and greedy with the Reader as an extension of his property/lover. You just come into the office one day and there's Fizz, "holy shit im having such a rough fucking day. The new trend is "anatomical accuracy" and Mammon just made me sit through having someone take close ups of my taint to model it on the sex robots. So how is your day going, where's Mammon, I never really see you two separated" and there's just a drop of sweat falling down your forehead, "oh, um, Mammon is having some quiet time because he just spent the last several months developing this new plushie of me and he got this idea of giving it voicelines when you hug it and now he's really mad because he doesn't actually want anyone else to have a doll of me that says I love you so he's just, sitting in the warehouse like, sitting in a pile of them being mad he wasted so much money. But he told me I did a good job and it wasn't my fault and he gave me a new credit card to go to the arcade with"

You just have to awkwardly stand there as your clowny coworker gives a thousand yard stare into the distance like he just personally trekked through the jungles of 'Nam only to find out you got a short cut on a private jet. Consider yourself lucky, Fizz; at least you don't have to bathe with him when he doesn't want to stop snacking long enough to get himself clean and keeps dropping peach rings and suddenly you have a yeast infection from getting sugar water in your coochie-

[corviiids]

lawlight concepts im contemplating to break me out of my creative block

buzzfeed unsolved / ghost hunting au where light is the hard skeptic who jumps at small noises even though he does NOT believe in ghosts and L doesn't believe in ghosts but could be convinced with evidence but is not remotely fazed by anything they see at all. btw this is the only situation i can conceive of where lawlight can work without killing each other because they're getting a healthy amount of enrichment arguing and fighting as part of their job so they can be friends without committing murder

they do nyt puzzles. there isn't really a plot for this one i just want to see light yagami lose his fucking mind at the mini

does anyone remember my au where L is a video essayist and light is his editor and L makes a video of like "i uncovered kira's identity" and partway through he's like it's my editor who i can't fire because he pays for adobe premiere pro. sorry light that you had to find out this way (editing the video)

au where they are both just like. chickens? on a farm. there are no bad ideas. we're spitballing here

unfortunately now that im out of law school i dont really want to put characters in law school anymore but like there could be a law school au where L is selling all his old textbooks for dramatically above market price and light is buying them because he's going on secondhand textbook sites and sorting by price high to low just so he can flex on his classmates something that nobody has ever been impressed by and everyone would in fact be disgusted by and then L sells him the textbooks still wrapped because nobody reads them. also L dropped out of his degree and this is just a straight up grift

uhhhhh god what's something else i could do. warrior cats au? they're warrior cats? light is a conniving warrior aiming to become clan leader by killing the deputy? L is a medicine cat? they have an illicit romance and it doesn't matter because L can't get pregnant and as far as im aware the cats dont have any law against being gay. being gay cats that is. in warrior cats. is it illegal to be a gay cat in warrior cats i haven't read these books in a while

some kind of social media or fandom au where hold on i just found a really bad post i have to post about this. this post is on hold while i post that bad post