#trans freelancer supremacy

[xdolls-crownx]

So there was this one time I was sick and coming out of it but I was super congested

the best part of being sick the way I was was the fact that my voiced dropped and I sounded like I was in T

I took a video of it and every now and then I go back to look at it for some happiness

[wirewitchviolet]

Twitter is dead. Get off it. This is an intervention.

So, back in... what was it, November? Elon Musk was forced via legal action to make good on a boisterous offer to buy Twitter. At the time, the reaction of literally everyone I know was roughly “oh damn, that’s the end of this place, that idiot’s going to kill the whole site. Where are we bailing to?” I feel like if there was a clear answer to that, maybe people would really have done it, but... a dozen people came out of the woodwork with really hastily thrown-together Twitter clones which all had weird quirks that one could be leery of, regarding security mostly, and thanks to choice paralysis, the general consensus seemed to shift to “watching this idiot try to speedrun killing this website is comedy gold, I’m going to ride this sinking ship to the bottom of the ocean, then deal with ditching it.”

The problem though is, that already happened. I guess people thought the metaphorical ocean was maybe deeper than it is, but that site really is on the bottom of it, and it really is time to move on.

Clearly, there’s some benchmarks people were waiting to see that just aren’t ever going to happen. A lot of people really expected there’d be a point where they’d just try to load up the site and get a 404 page because the servers are all permanently disconnected. Mostly people figured this would happen because Musk would realize that the site is absolutely bleeding cash like there’s no tomorrow and there’s no way it’ll stabilize again, but that’s not going to happen. He didn’t buy it to make money, he bought it to pressure bootlickers to pretend they think he’s cool, and that’s totally been working out for him. It’s costing him an absurd amount of money, but he has basically infinite money and doesn’t care.

Some people also thought this might happen because, well, he immediately fired like most of the staff and started randomly deleting huge chunks of load-bearing code and breaking contracts and not paying rent and stuff but.. yeah somehow that didn’t do the trick. A skeleton crew is mostly keeping the lights on. A lot of stuff keeps breaking temporarily but it’s held together with duct tape and someone seems to be restraining Musk from finishing the job. It’s as broken as it’s getting.

I’ve seen goalpost moving like “I’ll drop the site when it gets to the point where marginalized people are getting banned en masse and it’s just wall to wall nazi propaganda. That happened already. In November. Countless leftists, many celebrities, got taken out like day one. I got knocked off literally for the crime of being trans within the first week or so, as did a ton of other people. These are all bans that can’t be repealed. You’re hanging out in an online country club that doesn’t allow in a bunch of “undesirables” and that’s you actively propping up white supremacy if we’re really being honest about it.

I’ve seen the argument made that freelance writers and artists “need to be on twitter” in order to get commissions, and there’s a few ways to approach this one. First, do you really? Have you not reached a point in your creative career where there’s regular clients who hit you up, and don’t need to see you actively posting on Twitter to remember you exist? Do you not get any work from anywhere else? If it has traditionally been just Twitter, ARE you still getting work there? Because they don’t let you post off-site links to promote your stuff anymore, and they murdered all the discovery algorithms to instead promote far right conspiracy theorists and weird Musk sycophants to everyone instead of people whose stuff they might be interested in.

If though we live in a world where with all that being said, and all the massive bleeding of users we’ve already seen, you still want to insist that Twitter is the only place in your field one can get work offers though, then in sticking with it for that reason, you ARE kind of uh, you know, actively benefiting from your status as someone the open bigot running the place doesn’t have it out for? Again, would you join the whites-only country club? Would you apply to work at the business that refuses to hire any women or queer people? Some of us out here are literally facing homelessness because we ALSO rely entirely on commissions, and we aren’t allowed to be on that site, so, the longer that site remains the place you get commissions from, we can’t find work. Please hasten it’s fall for our sake.

Setting that aside though, there’s also the moral argument that you really should not be supporting what is quite plainly at this point a site maintained by nazis, explicitly to cater to other nazis. Like, the easy joke here is that the people who previously ran Twitter were cryptofascists, while the guy running it now is instead a crypto fascist. This of course ignoring the powers that be at Twitter also going all in on that, remember the hexagons? But seriously, with no investors to keep happy and no interest in keeping advertisers happy, Musk and the policies of the site both official and unofficial are just... full on mask-off nazi stuff now. Everyone who’s ever been kicked off the site (which traditionally had a bar of like, actually personally trying to have someone killed or personally threatening a celebrity) is back. There’s some stated transphobic policies on the books, Musk is personally posting a bunch of weird George Soros crap and hardcore propaganda like “nearly all crimes are commited by black people” and hardcore anti-vax stuff, and not only is none of this going anywhere it’s being actively pushed into everyone’s feeds constantly. You’re basically hanging out on a mirror of Gab, and your very presence there is feeding it, not financially per se (I mean, what income Twitter does have IS still advertising based, which in turn directly translates active users to dollars, but again, Musk has basically infinite money), but like, the nazis don’t just hang out on Gab is they need the attention of non-nazis and the legitimacy of hanging out in the same spaces.

So far this is me making moral arguments, but also, like... are you getting anything at all out of being on that site these days? I’m banned but private windows are a thing, and there’s still people I care about who adamantly refused to just like, be present on Discord or something so I can check in, so I do glance at people’s feeds now and then, and literally all I have seen from ANYONE in the past uh... 7 months from anyone on Twitter is just people’s live reactions to the site dying, the owner being an idiot, and having nazis shoved in their faces.

In the before time, one of the things that arguably made it worth having a presence on that site was people setting up a bunch of automated accounts to like, give weather reports and such (which you can just look up on a dedicated weather site/an app on your phone you don’t even need to open by the way) and stuff like those accounts that post a cute picture of a cat/wolf/fox/skink/whatever every hour on the hour. Those are all dead now I believe, because the idiot in charge heard someone saying that hated “bots” and thought people meant actual automated accounts, not the fascists shilling crypto and shrieking at marginalized people from their hundreds of burner accounts.

The thing though, that I’ve heard from quite a lot of people, is that not only did those feeds go poof (also anyone who hasn’t logged in in a month- dead friends, old joke accounts, etc.) but if you look for a replacement by just searching the site for say, “dog” or “cat,” because it is now a site by and for nazis, you get domestic animal snuff film gifs. The sort of thing nazis pack all their favored haunts with to deter people whose souls aren’t dead from looking at what they’re posting. I saw a lot of that stuff back in the day helping get other dedicated nazi sites offline, and that crap’s been haunting my dreams since. Why the hell are you there still?

You could jump ship and flee to some mastodon instance or whatever else is out there, or hell, you could also just... not. People had web presences before freaking Twitter. I’m just posting stuff on Tumblr here. I’m on some forums with people I’ve known for years. I’ve got Discord for live conversations (although wow, it’s really looking like it’s time to scout out the next thing there), there’s e-mail to randomly shout at people. You don’t need a doom scroll site replacement, honest.

And like, I get it. You don’t want to just be trickling out one by one. You want some oomphf, some momentum. So here’s the plan, share this around: You post whatever “here’s where to find me” stuff you need to now-ish. Then you wait... about 3 weeks. Then the date is going to be 6/9. You wait for the date to roll over, you make a single post where you just say “nice” and then you never touch the site again.

Oh and meanwhile, hey, again, I really do live off commissions, and I’ve had a hard time getting new ones since... well some former clients decided to not work with trans women anymore apparently, really, so I kinda need to beg for money to live, if you want to maybe toss some my way? Also there’s a new Zelda game out and that weird Bayonetta prequel thing, and I’m literally putting every single cent I can get my hands on towards paying my rent and utilities (the government’s covering groceries). I can’t even afford one of those streaming services. So uh, anyone feel like maybe doing the wishlist thing?

[cyanidas]

About Cyanidas

Gabriel Merchant

Digital Freelance Illustrator

He/They pronouns

FtM and Gender Non-conforming

27 years old (July 23rd, 1996)

is Autistic/ADHD, lives with PTSD

White US American, living in Michigan

Special Interests: MCYT fanlore, Batman villains, Invader Zim, Portal, and TF2

Although I am a beginner in many aspects, I’m no stranger to what I do.

I’ve always had an interest in art and storytelling, but my journey to hone my skills began when I was 14, where I spent two years in a specialized art school. Since then, I’ve moved around a lot while self-teaching up to what I know today.

I hope to master storytelling and world-building, art and animation, and character and set design - as well as many other creative skills, even outside of visual art. Learning as much as I can, about as many things as possible, and spreading that information to others to improve both our lives and our creativity, is a goal that’s near and dear to my heart.

--

My Values:

Black Lives Matter

Stop Asian Hate

All Cops Are Bastards

Representation Matters

I am not exempt from Fuck Em

Destroy white supremacy, and spare others white tears/guilt

I hate pedophiles, nazis, trans-exclusionists, and transmeds/truscum

Respect nonbinary people and their pronouns

Support Red Instead not Light Up Blue, Autism$peaks is a hate group

Kindness costs nothing, care for others and care for yourself

I’m trying to lift marginalized voices and if I’m doing the opposite of that then please call me out. I’m always looking to learn.

Although I have Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, which makes it very difficult to receive healthy criticism, I wanna make my best efforts to change where ever needed. Cushioning the blow is appreciated but never necessary, I'm ok with however you need to word things - my emotions are not anyone's responsibility but my own. Don't feel bad about correcting me.

I may not publish responses, but that's a behavior I'm trying to change. Despite that, no matter the circumstance, I will always listen and read what you have to say, do my best to sort through my issues, and reach out to helpful resources and professionals where ever I can.

[xdolls-crownx]

Prompt idea (based off my Gavin and Freelancer): Gavin: Hey Deviant?

Freelancer: Yeah?

Gavin: I umm.. I think I'm Agender

Gavin's mind: they're gonna hate me now Freelancer: Ok

Gavin: W-What? Freelancer: I said ok. Gavin, I don't care what you are as long as you're you.

Gavin: You seriously don't care?

Freelancer: No! I thought I was gender fluid once and it turned out I was actually trans. I seriously don't care what you are as long as you're still Gavin, or whatever else you want me to call you. *queue them cuddling on the couch*