#the rot has a hold of me so time to spam after ignoring this place

[tothestanders]

Trading Places

Summary:

"Why’d you harass me about wanting to play video games instead of talking to my friend? You don’t care about that sort of thing.”

Remus’s grin widened.

“Now Thomas, maybe Remus is turning over a new leaf. In that case, we should celebrate! How about we throw a bunch of Babybel cheese at people’s cars so the wax stains them red in pretty polka dots!

”Thomas stared at Patton. “…That’s vandalism. You want me to vandalize people’s cars?"

Or, Patton and Remus swap roles. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Warnings: canon-typical Remus language

Read on AO3 here

Thomas’s back ached from being hunched over so long, fingers half numb from hours of button pressing. Thomas hardly noticed. He was only one level away from meeting the final Boss. Weeks of gameplay had been leading up to this moment. All the lost sleep and forgotten meals were about to pay off in the greatest, grandest, most magnificent battle of all time –

Something ringing cut through Thomas’s laser focus, jolting him back to the real world. He frantically groped for the ‘pause’ button before tearing his eyes away to read the caller ID on his phone. A friend from community theater. Thomas was disappointed for a moment that it wasn’t just ignorable spam, then immediately felt guilty. He quickly accepted the call.

“Hey man, what’s up?” he spoke into the phone. “Oh! Free to talk right now?” Thomas glanced longingly at the paused video game. “Um, well…”

“Are you really gonna hang up on your friend for a video game? Wow, Thomas, I didn’t realize you were even more evil than I am.”

Thomas nearly threw his phone in surprise. Next to him on the sofa suddenly sat the Duke, his face shifting between maudlin disappointment and a suppressed grin.

“What the heck, man! Why you gotta pop up in my blind spot like that?” Thomas yelled, putting the phone on mute while noises of confusion came through the speaker.

“Why you gotta be a shitty friend?” Remus replied without missing a beat. “What if they’re in crisis? What if their family just disowned them? What if they lost their job and can’t afford rent or food and have nowhere to go and you were their last option for help and now they’re going to spend the night on the streets and get mugged and then murdered and so eviscerated that they won’t be able to identify the body and he’ll be tossed into a mass grave where he’ll get devoured by worms at age thirty…”

“Oh my God, stop!” Thomas tried to command, to no avail.

“…and then he’ll turn into a zombie with his mind trapped in his rotting brain and forced to watch as his body kills people…”

“I hope your friend is doing all right!” Thomas whirled around to see Patton sitting on his other side, expression sympathetic. He didn’t seem to notice that Remus was there or still talking. Or maybe he was just ignoring him.

“Oh, thank God, Patton. Do you think it’s okay for me to play my video game instead of talking? I’m just so close to the boss battle and I really wanna finish it.”

“Well, I think your pal sounded fine, but better safe than sorry. How about you can finish your game, but first we say something to cheer him up just in case?”

“…and once all his loved ones have been eaten alive his zombie brain will come back to life and have to live with the horror of what he’s done…”

Desperate to get the Duke’s morbid monologue to stop, Thomas rushed to agree. “Yeah, sure. Any ideas?”

“Oh, you know I’ve always got something up my sleeve. A dad joke is never a bad joke!” He paused a second to think. “What has two butts and kills people? An assassin!”

Without a second thought, Thomas lifted the phone back to his face, unmuted it, and repeated the joke. He snorted at his own punchline, mentally congratulating himself on the pun. Then realization set in. Patton seemed to have the same realization, judging by the look of self-directed horror on his face.

The sound of laughter came through the phone. “Sorry, that was kind of a silly one. But glad you liked it,” Thomas said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Listen, I was kinda in the middle of something when you called, but I’d love to catch up later tonight if that works for you?” His friend assured him it was no problem, and after setting up a time to chat later, they hung up.

“What the heck was that?” Thomas said.

“Great teamwork!” Remus chimed, raising a hand to high-five Patton across Thomas’s body. Patton eyed it nervously, then lightly tapped the palm. Then not so subtly wiped his hand on his pants.

“Sorry, kiddo. I didn’t mean to use potty language,” Patton said, shaking his head. “A dad’s gotta set a good example for his kids! Not my best work, huh?”

“Yeah, that was weird,” Thomas said. “But mostly I meant Remus. Why’d you harass me about wanting to play video games instead of talking to my friend? You don’t care about that sort of thing.”

Remus’s grin widened.

“Now Thomas, maybe Remus is turning over a new leaf. In that case, we should celebrate! How about we throw a bunch of Babybel cheese at people’s cars so the wax stains them red in pretty polka dots!”

Thomas stared at Patton. “…That’s vandalism. You want me to vandalize people’s cars? And wouldn’t that probably make dents and break the windows?”

Patton’s face fell into a look of consternation. “Oh, yes, sorry. That would be very inconsiderate. Definitely don’t do that, Thomas. Okay, instead, we can celebrate with food! I think we’ve got eggs, pickles, maple syrup, and coffee in the kitchen. Sounds like the ingredients for a yummy soup.”

“Soup?” Thomas repeated in disbelief.

Patton tilted his head. “Yeah, soup. You know, a liquid you can eat! We could add cinnamon too if you want.”

“I love it, Patton! Look who’s finally not being such a fuddy-daddy,” Remus said, drumming his fingers against his cheek.

Thomas looked rapidly between the two of them. “Okay, is someone going to explain what’s going on here or am I just gonna stay confused?”

“You could’ve skipped all the confusion in the first place if you’d just listened to me earlier. I knew you liked boys by age 6!” Remus answered, and Thomas groaned. But then the Duke let out a long, dramatic sigh and stood, spreading his arms wide. “All right, killjoy. I swapped us, of course!”

“What? You can’t do that!” Patton reprimanded. “You switch back with Thomas right now, mister! This is Thomas Sanders Sides, not Remus Sanders Sides.”

Remus blinked. “Uh, right. No. I swapped our roles, Patton.”

Patton’s eyes widened with realization. “Ohhh. Well that’s much better.” He nodded to himself. Then, “Hey! You switch us back right now, mister!”

“Oopsie doodles, no can doozies. This is way too much fun! Now, Thomas, about your content.” Remus turned to face Thomas, a manic gleam in his eyes. “You really love to coddle your viewers, huh? Do you think they can tell? Do you think they click on your channel and get whacked in the face with the patronizing ooey gooey BS you sprinkle over their dainty little heads? They’re probably devastated you don’t trust them to be able to handle anything more meaningful and substantial than the trite twaddle you call videos.”

Remus pushed up his cheeks with his fists, lower lip jutting out in an exaggerated pout. “Aw, poor babies. Their favorite Youtube star thinks nothing of them. That’s gotta cut like a machete to the heart.”

“Okay! Got it,” Thomas said. “So what I’m hearing is you’re my morality now?” Horror rose in his throat. “And Patton is my bad creativity?” Remus nodded excitedly. Patton looked nauseous. “Why would you do that?” Thomas asked, desperate.

“Oh, it’s simple. Dear Virgie didn’t like the bloody death threat I left on his wall earlier. Talk about not being able to take a joke, amirite?” Patton grimaced at that idea of a ‘joke.’ “Anyway, then he went off about how I’ll” – Remus adopted a mocking, bored tone to accompany his air quotes – “‘never be an important Side’ because I ‘don’t know the difference between right and wrong.’ Blah, blah, blah. But that was just too good of a challenge to pass up!”

“Too good of a challenge…so you’re trying to prove Virgil wrong? By being my morality? ” Thomas clarified in dismay.

“Yep! And proving that I could gain a whole lotta influence real quick if I wanted. Good little Thomas would never repress his moral drive.” Remus smiled sweetly at him.

“Sure, okay. This is not happening.” Thomas turned to Patton. “You’re my real morality. Can’t you, like, take your job back? Please?”

“Afraid not,” the Duke answered for him in a voice dripping with fake sympathy. “Where do you think your Sides comes from, Thomas? We’re figments of your imagination, after all.”

Thomas rested his face in his hand, exhausted by the whole situation. “I’m not following.”

“It’s easy. Imagination is part of creativity.” He did a mirror of Roman’s typical arm flourish at the mention of his function. “Therefore, your creativity created your Sides and is the only thing that can change them as it pleases. As I please.”

“Hold on, does that mean you and Roman are, like, literally everyone else’s dads?” Thomas asked.

“Hey now, kiddo. Don’t go stealing my kids out from under me,” Patton said, pointing a stern finger.

“Don’t worry, I’m a deadbeat dad!” Remus replied. Then his expression turned thoughtful. It was the most terrifying thing Thomas had ever seen. “Huh, isn’t it interesting that we’re figments of your imagination but also kinda not? I mean, we’ve got thoughts and feelings of our own. Yet our whole existence revolves around you.” Thomas braced, not sure where this was going but sure it wasn’t anywhere good. “You call all the shots about what we do, and if one of us wants to do something? Well, better pimp yourself out to get on the Big Daddy’s good side –”

“What?!”

“– and hope he graciously agrees. No autonomy for us. Just wasting away in your brain while you fuck around with the body. Male privilege? Please, let’s talk corporeal privilege, Thomas.”

Remus’s tone stayed casual, gaze idly wandering as he thought aloud. But the wave of guilt that came with his words was enough to nearly knock Thomas over, and made his eyes sting with tears. The Duke actually had a point. Was Thomas a terrible person? Oh, God. Was he abusing his Sides?

“Okay, kiddo.” Patton said, holding out his hands in a pacifying gesture. “That’s some pretty heavy stuff. Let’s not get carried away, all right? Don’t worry Thomas, we love being part of your amazing head!”

“Did someone say amazing head? I was wondering when you’d ask –”

Thomas closed his eyes. He could not deal with this. His Morality was suggesting crime, his Bad Creativity was giving him intrusive guilt, except all that was actually the other way around, now. Too much chaos, too many moral crises jam packed into ten minutes, too much Remus. Frankly, at this point he was just surprised Virgil hadn’t popped up to yell at him yet. Thomas was considering just getting up and walking away, irrationally hoping that no one would follow, when he remembered something.

“Wait a second. You said only Creativity could switch you guys back, right?”

“Yeppers! And don’t bother calling Roman, he’s still black and blue from reading Youtube comments earlier,” Remus replied cheerfully. Thomas made a mental note to check on Roman once all this was done.

“But you switched roles with Patton,” he continued, frown sliding into a sly smile. “Which means that Patton is now my Creativity – well, part of it, anyway. Which means he can switch you back!” Thomas turned eagerly to his father figure figment.

“Ah, I’m not so sure about that, kiddo.” Patton’s eyes were wide as saucers. “What if tapping into a” – his voice fell to a whisper – “dark power turns me evil. Like Ursula from A Little Mermaid.”

“Is that Ursula’s backstory?” Thomas asked curiously.

“No, actually! The real one is much better,” Remus said. “She almost got burned alive when her village figured out she was part octopus. Good thing her dear brother rescued her. Oh, except he thought she was a monster too, so he banished her to the cesspit of the sea.” Remus’s enthusiastic tone only made his darkened expression the more unnerving.

Thomas shifted uneasily. Once again, he was reminded just how much he didn’t know about what went on in his own head. But then again, Remus had told him, hadn’t he?

The unloved brother from the Genesis.

He began to spiral back down Remus’s guilt trip about responsibility to his Sides. Thankfully his thoughts were interrupted by Patton. “Aw, poor thing! People can be meaner than a bully burning a baby bunny in a Satanic ritual.” What? “Uh, I mean! A stuffed bunny. Anyway, I hope Ursula is okay now.”

“Nope, she died,” Remus informed him. Patton’s lip started to wobble.

“So that’s good news!” Thomas butted in before things could get any more derailed. He’d have time later to worry about sibling rivalry and possible injustice among figments of his imagination. “I mean, Ursula didn’t turn evil from using dark magic. So Patton has nothing to worry about. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“I don’t know…”

“Please, I need my good old morality back. No one else can beat the top pop.” Thomas smiled at the giggle that got.

“Oh, all right. I’ll give it the old college try.”

Thomas sighed in relief and watched as Patton squeezed his eyes and fists tight, brow furrowing in intense concentration. A moment later he cracked an eye open. “Did it work?”

“I don’t know, tell a joke!” Thomas urged.

“Um…oh! Why can’t a nose be twelve inches long? Because then it’d be a foot!”

Thomas groaned, but he was smiling. Finally, his Sides were back to normal.

“Or my dick!” Remus chirped.

Yeah, normal. The thought was far fonder than it had any right to be.

“See, Patton? There was nothing to worry about. No spooky magical corruption – hey what’s up with your logo?” Thomas pointed at the heart on Patton’s shirt. It had turned upside down, its shape now looking a lot like…well.

Remus gasped in delight. “Awesome! Taking style inspiration from your favorite Creativity, I see.”

“You’re not my favorite Creativity,” Patton said, and Thomas couldn’t help his flinch. But then, “I can’t play favorites with my kids! You’re all perfect just the way you are.”

The side-eye Remus gave Patton was truly impressive. “Perfect, huh? Even when I do this?” Suddenly he was holding what looked kinda like a bouquet of pale, bloody flowers. Then Thomas spotted the fingernails. He watched as the entire handful of severed fingers slid down Remus’s throat and disappeared with a loud slurp.

“Of course!” Patton replied, seemingly unfazed. “No matter what you do, you’re still famILY.”

Okay, that was weird. Patton, not bothered by that sickening gesture? But wait a second – was it sickening? Strangely enough, Thomas found he wasn’t all that bothered by it either. Like some of his aversion to Remus had faded.

The suspicious look didn’t leave Remus’s face, but something about him seemed…calmer, than it had a minute ago. Softer.

Patton looked back at his shirt with a puzzled expression. “That’s funny, I could’ve sworn the heart was right-side up. Maybe I need new glasses!”

“I wouldn’t call that a heart anymore. It’s totally a pair of dingle-dangles.”

“A what?” Thomas said, unable to believe the Duke had actually used a euphemism. And a downright cutesy one, at that. His gaze fell to Remus’s belt.

“My eyes are up here, you saucy minx. And here,” Remus added, pointing to the eyeball on his shoulder.

“No, look,” Thomas said, pointing to the logo on the belt buckle. The crescent moon at the top seemed to have morphed into a smiley face.

Thomas head swiveled between the smiley face and the – uh, inverted heart – several times. He thought back to what Patton had been worried about. Lasting effects of the role reversal. Oh no.

Patton and Remus, both still engrossed by their changed logos, seemed to have the same thought. In voices heavy with resignation, all three of them spoke at the same time.

“Aw, butts.”

[freedomfaucet-blog]

  WTF is an Airdrop? A Detailed Guide to Free Cryptocurrency Money can’t appear out of no where… But cryptocurrency can. Polymath did an airdrop (free coins) worth $300 In December 2017, I signed up to learn more about a coin called Polymath. As I learned...

http://markethive.tv/?p=283

WTF is an Airdrop? A Detailed Guide to Free Cryptocurrency

  WTF is an Airdrop? A Detailed Guide to Free Cryptocurrency

Money can’t appear out of no where… But cryptocurrency can.

Polymath did an airdrop (free coins) worth $300

In December 2017, I signed up to learn more about a coin called Polymath. As I learned more about it, my interest peaked and I wanted to learn how to get my hands on some of the coins. Turns out, the coins weren’t available yet; in fact, the team wasn’t even doing an ICO. Instead, they were conducting an airdrop. I signed up for it, and didn’t have to pay a penny (only enter some identifying information to comply with KYC regulation). A month later, 250 POLY showed up in my Ethereum Wallet. As of the time of writing, that’s worth around $300.

What is an Airdrop?

The simple answer: it’s literally just free coins just waiting for you. The method behind the madness, though, is a decision regarding marketing strategy. As a way to spread awareness to the relevant audience of potential investors and eventual enthusiasts, coin teams will, from time-to-time, do airdrops.

A Brief History of Airdrops

Coins have been doing this for a while — pretty much since the first Ethereum ICO. If you check your wallet on Etherscan (which I totally recommend doing — never open your wallet with a private key just to check your balance, it’s riskier than necessary), you’ll know there’s a row up top named Token Tracker. If you see it, then there are also tokens in your account; if you don’t, then you don’t have any tokens or airdrops — yet. Some of you ETH wallet holders that have had wallets with balances for a while now might’ve noticed this — one day you just see an extra random token in your Token Tracker. No, someone didn’t randomly deposit some obscure token into your wallet address on accident; instead, the coin’s team decided to send a small amount to a population of Ethereum wallets in order to spread the word.

After getting the token, one of the first things you might’ve done is Google what the coin is. Or you might’ve taken it a step further — asked someone else if they knew what the token was. Also, you could just choose to ignore it. Of course, in the last scenario, the airdrop failed its intention. But scenario 1 means that you have now learned about the coin, and scenario 2 is even better — you’ve just told your friends about the coin, too. In both of those scenarios, the airdrop did its job for a small price (well, potentially a larger price if it moons).

Eventually, airdrops became a method beyond marketing. As a method to pump coin value, coins would announce airdrops where coin holders would receive bonus coins proportional to the amount of total coins they hold. Coin investors that wanted to get the airdrop would have to buy the coins if they didn’t have any yet, or buy more if they wanted a larger proportion of the airdrop. That being said, I want to emphasize that this airdrop strategy won’t be examined further in this article, since my article is focused on how you can get coins for free, not on how you can get coins by buying coins.

Recently, with Facebook’s new advertising policy explicitly stating bans for ICOs, many ICOs have turned to airdrops as an alternative method for pay-per-click advertising. With many ICOs being consumer-focused products, they focus on one metric: viral growth through the network effect. In layman’s terms, they want to spread the word to you and hope that you spread the word to your minions, too. They address this by using a strong referral system method.

Participating in Free Airdrops

The Tools You’ll Most Likely Need

Here’s what you need to catch airdrops like a stud

An Ethereum Wallet: Not one that is on an exchange. It has to be a personal address that is ERC20 compatible because most of the tokens that are airdropped are ERC20 tokens, which are or were originally Ethereum-based ICOs. I suggest using MetaMask or MyEtherWallet to get started immediately, but in the long-term I always recommend getting a hardware wallet like the Ledger Nano S.

The Ethereum Wallet Must be ACTIVE. By active, I mean that you have to show at least some human use of it. Lots of airdrops have checks in place to make sure that you aren’t just randomly generating a bunch of addresses and signing them all up to unfairly obtain more coins. This means that if your wallet doesn’t show activity, it might not receive the airdrop. Sometimes, coins will be explicit in what they look for, including some type of balance in the account.

A Telegram Account : I’m sure there are amazing reasons why Telegram is the chatting tool of choice for many of these ICOs. The coins want to boost the audience count. Usually, these airdrop coins will also require you to sign up for their Telegram accounts. Until you receive the coin in your Ethereum wallet, do not leave the Telegram accounts or you risk disqualification for the airdrop.

A Twitter Account : Similar to the reasons behind the Telegram account, many of the airdrop coins will also require you to follow them on Twitter. Some of them will even ask you to retweet some tweet.

An email address. Sometimes airdrops will ask for your email, too. If you don’t feel comfortable with giving them your real email, just create a spam one. Remember the password, though; some of them actually ask you to confirm your email.

Obtaining and Withdrawing Tokens

Usually, it takes about 1–2 months after the end of the airdrop before you receive your tokens. This is primarily due to the fact that many airdrops occur before or during token sales, in conjunction to spread awareness. And tokens are not distributable until the end of a token sale anyway (I’ll write a separate piece on Token Sales, or ICOs).

To check your wallet info and see if the token has appeared in your wallet yet, just go to Etherscan (https://www.etherscan.io). Type in your ETH address into the search box.

Circled in Red is the area you want to look. If the token is available in your wallet already, it will show up in the token tracker dropdown. If you don’t have a token tracker appear on your result, then you don’t have any tokens in your wallet yet, and it also means you didn’t receive it. Once you actually obtain the tokens, you can withdraw them directly through a services like My Ether Wallet (MEW). All you have to do is access your wallet (through MetaMask, Ledger Nano, or some other way — direct private key pasting is not recommended) and select the token you want to withdraw.

Don’t Get Scammed

With all the promises of free coins out there, it’s easy to lose track of everything and just start a clicking frenzy. Here are some tips to avoid getting scammed:

Never send any private keys. No one needs to have your private key in order to be able to check you wallet balance. They can do so very easily with tools like Etherscan.

Don’t send any money to any addresses. Remember this — airdrops are free. Whether it requires you to be holding a certain coin, or if it’ll just appear in your wallet, an airdrop will never ask you to send any amount of some coin to some type of address. If they ask for this, steer away immediately.

Check official sources. If a coin is actually doing an airdrop, it is likely they’ll have announced it on their official social media accounts, such as Twitter. Check there to make sure that the airdrop is official; otherwise, you might be subject to a scam with scammers trying to collect your data.

  This is an example of a scam airdrop. The first red flag is the fact that the Twitter account is asking you for an amount. But these scammers have become pretty sophisticated. If you check the comments, you’ll see there are 8 responses to this. 7 of them are from fake Twitter accounts pretending to have participated and being “super stoked” about receiving their coins. The other one is from me, tweeting that it’s a scam to try to warn people.

If you look at the Twitter account, you might see that it has 3,000 followers (or maybe even more) but the tweet history is less than 24 hours long. Does that make sense? A coin that just supposedly raised 8m euros has only tweeted for 24 hours? If the story seems fishy, there is a disgusting, rotting corpse somewhere. Don’t believe it.

The image is a terrible Photoshop job with font that doesn’t match the rest of the announcement. This scam is a metropolis of red flags. A simple Reverse Google Image Search shows that the logo actually belongs to Thrive. As a best practice, always look for reasons why an Airdrop would be a scam. With that mindset, you are more likely to be able to sniff out the rotting fish from the sushi.

Resources to Help You Find Airdrops

There are many communities and newsletters available to help you with identifying airdrops as they come along. I definitely recommend signing up for them (they’re free), rather than trying to look for them yourself. That’s because there are many scammers out there, and they make themselves very present and legitimate-seeming. These resources that you subscribe to have (hopefully) already screened the airdrops.

Let Cosmic Trading help you find those awesome Airdrops

If you’re looking for one to join right now, take a look at Cosmic Trading. Members post airdrops in that channel that they’ve already verified are legitimate. Furthermore, the community is just a huge group of cryptocurrency traders and enthusiasts with experience levels ranging from years of trading and HODLing to people who just started yesterday.

Article Produced By Kenny Li

A Blockchain and Fintech Enthusiast. Founder of Worthyt, Managing Partner at Empyrean Global Advisors. MIT Sloan Class of 2020.

https://hackernoon.com/wtf-is-an-airdrop-a-detailed-guide-to-free-cryptocurrency-e70e8777dd83

Susan Benitt