#uber pool

[chaoticneutraltor]

[uberthemeh]

Group Art I did for a friend server!

it took a bit, but we got there!

[chattahoochiecoochie]

Spare Keys

Summary: What do you do when you fuck before the first date? You skip all the other regular relationship steps right after, just to catch up. 

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: Suggestive Language / Author Thinks She’s Funny

A/N: I exist to entertain myself, and only myself. Part One. Part Two. 

You wake to the sound of Sam’s voice—how’d he get here? Squatting beside you, he’s speaking into the receiver of his phone, smiling softly at you.

“There’s my girl, good morning sunshine.” His hand is on your face, brushing the hair back from your eyes. You falter underneath him, letting your eyes close as he strokes your face. “Someone forgot their alarm this morning, huh?”

Your alarm? Oh fuck.

Your eyes open wide, blinking quickly as you take in the sight before you fully. Sam’s beside your bed, watching you, holding your spare key in hand with his phone. When had you given him your spare? Behind him, your alarm clock is sitting quietly, the digital face reading 8:33, a full half hour after you were supposed to be up. Double fuck.

You sit up, brushing off his hand as you throw the covers off of yourself. You’ve got a meeting this morning. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Yeah, ninth floor. Bring her coffee with you.” Sam hangs up the phone, sliding it into his pocket before taking a closer look at you. You’re rubbing your eyes, trying to organize yourself.

It’s 8:30. You’ve got a meeting in forty five minutes. A meeting you cannot be late for. In a gravely morning voice, you tell Sam as much.

“You guys do meetings?” He raises a brow, moving to the side as you scramble off your bed, wondering briefly if you have enough clean underwear as you make for the bathroom.

“It’s for Ja’Marr’s hip. Treatment plan.” You call over your shoulder, tugging your sleep shirt over your head.

“I thought the medical team did that stuff?” He’s trailing after you, flicking on the light as he walks into the bathroom behind you.

“Yeah, but now his workouts have to change, his warmups and cool downs.”

Stepping out of your underwear you reach for your toothbrush, finding yourself disappointed when you look in the mirror. Your hair is a disaster. You’ll have to shower.

Before you can reach the faucet, Sam is turning it on for you, waving you back to the sink. “I’ve got this, you do that.”

“Where are y’all at?” The sound of your front door shutting echoes through the apartment, followed by the sound of Joe moving through your living room. You watch in the mirror as Sam leans out the bathroom door, waving his arm.

Looking over your shoulder, you watch as Sam moves along the wall behind you to make room for Joe in the small space. The moment the blond appears, you blush. He walks in whistling, eyes wide when he sees you. “Good morning.”

“She look this good when you woke her up?” He leans against the door frame, brow raised as he questions Sam.

“Better. Wearing your shirt.” He points to the crumpled garment on the floor. You blush deeper, turning back to the mirror.

“And you made it all the way to the bathroom in one piece?” Joe raises his brows higher, smirking at your reflection.

“She’s got a meeting.”

“They do meetings?”

Fighting the urge to roll your eyes, you wipe a hand across your mouth and move towards the shower. Later, if you can remember, you’ll explain your job title to them, in full. For now, Sam’s got you covered.

“Something about Ja’Marrs hip.” He says, holding the curtain open for you as you step into the water. “What’s next, baby?”

“Clothes. My water bottle.” You squint underneath the stream of water, second guessing yourself as you speak. “My ipad. I’m not sure if I charged it.”

“I’m on iPad duty. Joey, you got clothes?”

“On it.”

Water rushing over your head, you shut your eyes, sighing with a shaking sense of relief as you listen to them shuffle out of the bathroom. Moments later, as you rinse your face, relief turns into laughter. Joe can’t decide on underwear.

“I’ve got a thong and then, regular I guess!” He’s screaming from your bedroom, and the thought of him standing in front of your dresser trying to decide makes you giggle.

“Thong!” You and Sam both answer, his deep voice drowning out the watery sound of your own.

“Sick. What about a bra?”

Shutting off the water, you reach beyond the curtain for a towel, trying to decide for yourself. It’s a meeting, so a regular bra is probably better for the top you had in mind, but you’re hitting the gym after.

Towel wrapped securely around your chest, you lean into the short hall that divides your bedroom from the living space. Before you can even part your lips to answer, Sam slips into view, pecking at your lips as he walks by with your iPad in hand.

“Regular!” You squeal against him, caught off guard by the rush around you.

Trapped in the buzz of them moving through your space, you stand motionless in the doorway. On your left, you can hear Joe opening and closing drawers, humming at what he finds in each one. To your right, you can hear the fridge opening in your kitchen, followed by loud cursing from Sam.

“Your Brittas empty!”

“Leggings?”

“It’s a meeting!” Sam yells from your kitchen, scoffing as he turns on your kitchen sink.

“So pants?”

“Obviously!”

“Everything looks like leggings!”

“Check my closet!” You interject, heart pounding in your chest as the chaos mounts on both sides of you.

“Jesus!” The sound of stuff falling echoes from your room. There goes that shitty rack. You wince at the sound, wishing you’d remembered to put in that maintenance request the last time it had fallen on you, trapping you under a pile of hangers and tangled clothes.

“Sorry!”

“Don’t worry about him. Let's worry about you, what’s next?” Sam is in front of you again, taking the towel you’ve been clinging to. “It’s 8:50.”

“Fuck, um, hair. Hair and makeup.” You turn to catch yourself in the mirror. Hair, definitely.

“I’m gonna need a brush. You gotta hairdryer?”

You nod, turning your back to him as you rummage through the cluttered countertop until you finally find what you need. You pass him the brush first, fingers grazing him as you hand it over your shoulder. The hairdryer follows, handed back by the barrel.

Without instruction, Sam takes over the room, taking control off your mind as he starts at the root of your head. His hands are firm, and shockingly sure. He’s watching you in the mirror, working off some kind of muscle memory as he dries you off, section by section.

Minutes later, when you’re leaning into the mirror for your eyeliner, and Sam is twisting the brush through the ends of your hair to get a loose curl—what had he said, something about a sister—Joe’s reflection appears behind Sam’s. He’s holding a pair of khakis and a bright pink shirt.

“Are you dressing your mini me? What are those?” Sam raises his brows, hands stopped as he turns to get a better look at what Joe has picked out.

“It’s the pink isn’t it? I second guessed myself. I’ll be back.” Joe shakes his head, shuffling back out of view.

A moment later he returns, this time holding a black quarter zip, looking proud of himself. “I was thinking black shoes?”

“Much better.” Sam nods in approval, and pulls the brush through your hair a final time before shutting off the hairdryer. Can every morning be this easy?

“Perfect. I’ve got these for you.” Joe moves into the room, your outfit draped over his arm as he clutches your thong in one hand and your bra in the other.

“I’m gonna get her water then, if you’ve got this?” Sam drags a hand across your back as he steps away, nodding with approval when Joe gives him a thumbs up.

Moving to the side as Sam exits the bathroom, Joe holds out your thong, smirking. “For you, milady.”

You blush, looking at the floor as you take it from him. Feeling his eyes on you as you pull it up, you blush deeper, cheeks bright pink when you reach for your bra next.

“Fuck, I cannot wait to get those off you later.” Joe groans, sounding strained as he holds out your khakis. “You really wore my shirt to bed?”

Of course, you think. Could hardly bring yourself to take it off after they brought you home from the bar in it, Sam handing back your beer soaked shirt as he kissed you goodnight.

“Sorry, for spilling on you in there.” He’d said as he watched you take off the dirty shirt in the front seat of Joe’s car. “You did look really good in Guinness, though.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Joe had answered for you, eyes locked on your chest as you changed into one of his spare workout tees.  

“Every night this week.” You answer him with a smug face, tugging the pants over your ass before putting out a hand for your zip up.

By the time you pop your head out of the collar a long minute  later, he’s half hard and swallowing slowly when you catch his eye.

“Black shoes, you said?” Reaching up on your tiptoes, you brush your lips across his, trying not to smirk at him when your hand shifts over the front of his shorts. Was he that big in your hand the last time? The first time?

“I put them by your purse.” His voice is tight. Striking you swiftly on the ass, he shifts from your path to let you out of the room before him. With a shrill giggle, you run into the hall, beyond his reach as he begins to pull his hand back a second time.

Bounding into the kitchen, you run almost head on into Sam’s chest. Wrapping his arms around your middle, he catches you mid stride, preventing the collision.

“Ready?” One hand holding you by the arm, he lifts the other to your chin, tilting your face to his, catching the spark in your eye. “What’d I miss?”

“I—we���are gonna fuck her stupid after this meeting of hers.”

“So much for taking it slow, then.” Sam laughs over your head, hugging you to his chest. This is slow? They’re organized like a Nascar pit crew. And they’d fucked you before the first date. Was that a date? You’re sleeping in Joe’s shirt–this is not slow.

“It's 9:07 now.” Sam’s voice cuts through your thoughts. He glances at his watch, smirking when he looks up. Behind you, Joe is standing with his chest pressed against your back, heat pouring from between his legs. “You think you can live, what, an hour and a half without her?”

Grunting, Joe lets out a sound that's neither a yes or a no. Nuzzling his nose against your ear, you feel him breathing on your neck, the spot quickly covered by his mouth as he nips at you. This isn’t slow, but fuck that feels good.

“I’m supposed to be there by now!” You squeal, shivering between the two of them. It’s not that important, is it?

Joe groans against you, finally coughing slightly as he picks his head up behind you. “Hour and a half.”

“Hour and a half.” Sam parrots him, grinning at the two of you. “Let’s get going.”

Gently, he guides you both to the door, checking over your belongings as he ushers the two of you into the hall. He’s got your iPad and your purse, Joe’s on water bottle and key duty. All you’ve got to do is hold Joe’s hand and look pretty,  Sam says to you, a glint in his eye. There's an innuendo in his words, but you’re out of time to dwell on it for now.

Later, on the walk into the training facilities, you’ll spend the spare minute going over it in your mind, blushing inappropriately by the time you step into the conference room. For now, you do as he says, letting Joe wrap his large hand over yours as he locks up the door to your apartment, using your keys instead of the spare you’d seen earlier. The spare.

You look to Sam in front of you, wondering where he’s put it. You watch him closely as he presses the button for the elevator, left hand shifting inside the pocket of his shorts.

“You want this back on your lanyard?” The gold key dangles from his ring finger as he pulls his hand free.

He’s not looking at you, rather over you, at Joe.

Joe squeezes your hand. “Nah, you keep it.” He had it? “I’ll make a copy of it later, if that's okay with you, baby.”

The memory floods your mind when you look up at him. “You gotta spare? Make it easier for me to help get you out of here in the mornings.” Sam’s hand is out, gesturing to the keyring in your hand.

You don’t give out keys, as a rule. It keeps things tidy. But he’s looming over you, seeming so earnest. It’s like you make the sales pitch for him. They’ve been coming to get you for work in the mornings for nearly a week, carrying your bags to the car, holding your hand in the elevator. It would make it easier, if you didn’t have to buzz one or both of them in each time. What a great idea.

“Yes.” You say, eyes lost in his as you lean against the door, mesmerized.

“Sure.” You say now to Joe, the word sounding so easy on your tongue. “Makes things easier.”

A/N: Part four is here.

[wall-maria-around-ba-sing-se]

Never really liked the Spoons metaphor because all the versions I've seen start with "ok, so neurotypicals/non-chronicaly people have infinite spoons" which is just. Objectively Wrong. Who put this idea in y'all's heads that neurotypical=infinitely working machine that requires 0 down time.

Infinite spoons is an impossible bar to hold yourself to not in the least because it doesn't exist, you're just making things harder on yourself by uncritically accepting this as a fact

[april7th2002]

Looked cute af today

[effemimaniac]

I am cutting it Fine as fuck with this uber pool please let me make this train I'm not even thinking abt alternatives rn lol

[fionarara]

still randomly remembering that one time i attended the creator of Minecraft's annual house party even though i've never even played that video game lmao and after getting to watch Skrillex dj in such an intimate setting (surreal), we all hung out and he had like a harem of cute girls surrounding him on the couch, haha it seemed super platonic though and he was really respectful,,, literally he was so kind to me and everyone,, by far the nicest celeb i've ever met besides elijah wood.

[taahko]

every so often im struck by the memory of one of my college professors getting very angry with our class (art history of pompeii 250) because when she excitedly detailed the ingenious roman invention of heated floors in bathhouses via hearths in small crawlspaces, we asked who was tending the fires. she said "oh, slaves i suppose. but that isnt the point". and we said that it actually very much was the point. she had just told us that in roman society there were dozens of people, maybe hundreds, who spent every day of their enslaved lives crawling in cramped, hot, smoky tunnels to light fires to warm pools of water (which they were not allowed to swim in). how could that not be the point?

she wanted us to focus on the art, on the innovation of heated plumbing, on the tiles and decorations of the bathhouses, and all we wanted to do was learn more about the people under the floors. and she didn't know anything more about that. in fact, she said she thought we were focusing too much on superfluous details.

it feels almost hokey to put too fine a point on the idea im getting at here but i will anyway: There are a lot of people who are still under the floors. all these beautiful, convenient, brilliant innovations of modern society (think fast fashion, chatgpt, uber, doordash) are still powered by people working in inhumane, untenable conditions.

the people who run these systems want you to focus on the good - who doesnt love warm water? - but if anything is going to improve or change in our lifetimes, you need to examine these things with an attentive, critical, and empathetic eye. and for fucks sake stop ordering from amazon

[unicotaxi-app]

Tips to Start your own Taxi Aggregator business model like Uber

Do you want to know how the Uber taxi model works? Find the expert's tips from UnicoTaxi to start your own Taxi aggregator business model like Uber in your city.

[thestarmaker]

Doing a wake and bake at 10:14 pm bc I just had the fattest fucking nap

[psqqa]

just had to wake myself up from what felt like a fucking four hour dream that simply would not let me get home

[pinolitas]

I think that's a sign that I need to leave my house more though 😐 like if I haven't encountered a tourist in so long... god damn

[roosterforme]

Mr. Right Now Part 1 | Hangman x Reader

Summary: When Jake picks your ID up from the floor at the Hard Deck, he has no expectations that he's about to be in for a wild ride. But when he learns that you're looking for Rooster and why you're at the bar in the first place, he starts to feel more possessive than he should. You're young and stubborn and about to get yourself into trouble. Maybe he would prefer it if you got into it with him instead.

Warnings: adult language, mentions of sex and virginity, 18+

Length: 2800 words

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Female Reader

Why is Jake on my masterlist!? Mr. Right Now masterlist

It was a typical Friday night with the typical Hard Deck crowd, and to be honest, it was a bit exhausting. Jake knew if he picked up a random girl to take home, it would all feel pretty pointless the next morning. He should probably just head home now before he ruined some desperate girl's night by kicking her out of his bed in about four hours.

"Jesus, it's not even ten o'clock yet," he muttered to himself as he checked his watch. He'd only had one whiskey sour, but he was ready to leave. The two girls in matching pink dresses had been eyeing him up all night, and they both looked like the type who would cry if he suggested getting them an Uber after hooking up, no matter how clear he made it that he only ever kept things very casual.

He hated when girls got it twisted. Jake loved women. He loved their bodies. He loved making promises to them and then delivering. He loved the little noises they made when he fucked them. But that was all he had time for. He wasn't going to meet anyone that made him think it was worth pursuing more when he spent all of his time at work, at the gym, or at a bar full of tag chasers. 

He signaled for Penny to close out his tab, and even she looked surprised. "You're heading out?" she asked, glancing at his friends who were still playing pool with the girls in pink. 

"Yeah," he said with a sigh as he signed his name on the receipt and collected his credit card. "Thinking about an early night and a long run on the beach first thing in the morning."

"Right," she said, giving him a little smile. "Be safe."

He winked at her and turned just in time to see a young woman drop something as she tried to squeeze through the crowd. "Hey!" he called out as he picked up her driver's license and held it up in his hand. "Leather mini skirt!"

You glanced over your shoulder, your eyes questioning as you turned away from the pool table to face him. He watched you look around to make sure nobody else was wearing a black leather skirt before you faced him all the way. 

"Yes?" you asked a little cautiously, and Jake took in the sight before him. You looked pretty young and a little out of place here. You had paired your little skirt with a black tank top and some Converse sneakers, and even though you didn't look like anyone else, you certainly didn't look bad.

Then he remembered he was holding your license, and he glanced down at his hand only to realize it was literally the worst fake ID he had ever seen. Your name was pretty, if that part was even real. The photo actually was you, but it looked like it had been taken in bad lighting, and according to your date of birth, you were thirty just like he was. One more look at your face told him that was a blatant lie.

"This yours?" he asked, holding it up between his thumb and index finger.

You rushed forward, clearly embarrassed, and you tried to take it from him with a muttered, "Thank you."

But he pulled it out of your reach, and your hand grazed his chest instead. "Nice fake, kiddo. Don't get drunk, okay?"

You shot him a look of vexation, clearly having no idea who he was or that he was one of the best fighter pilots in the country. "I'm not here to get drunk, okay?" When you reached for the plastic card again, Jake held it a little higher just to see what you'd do. "Seriously?"

He glanced up and looked at the first and last name once again before saying them out loud. "Then why are you here? And with the world's worst fake ID to boot."

You eyed the card, still out of reach, and placed your hands on your hips. "Not that it's any of your business, but I'm actually looking for someone named Rooster, if you happen to know who he is?"

Jake lowered his hand slowly, and you snatched your card back and tucked it inside your little purse. "What do you want with ol' Rooster?" he asked, eyeing you a little closer while you were glancing down. You were cute if not a little too innocent looking for him, but your words once again had him engaged.

"That's classified, sailor. Now do you know who he is or not?"

Jake laughed. "Yeah. I know who he is. But I'm not a sailor. I'm an aviator. Got more air to air kills than anyone else on active duty."

You gave him a bland look. "That must be very nice for you, aviator. But I'm on a bit of a mission here, so if you don't mind..." As you turned back toward the pool table, Jake followed behind you. 

"He's the big one with the mustache and hideous shirt."

You stopped, and he bumped into you, steadying himself with his hands briefly on your shoulders. "Oh," you replied. "Wow. I mean, it's not going to be a problem for me, that's for sure. I just hope he's into it."

Still confused, Jake said, "I wouldn't bother him in the middle of a game of pool unless you come bearing the gift of a beer or a nice set of tits."

You spun around and looked him right in the eye. "What exactly is wrong with my tits?"

"Nothin'," he replied, trying not to look at them in your snug top. "Just trying to give you the lay of the land is all." 

When you glanced over your shoulder, he let his eyes dip down below your neck. Certainly nothing wrong there. "Is that his girlfriend?" you asked, turning back to Jake and jerking your thumb in the direction of Phoenix where she stood near Rooster.

"No," he laughed. "But I'd also avoid interrupting her without a beer or your tits ready to go."

"Well, thanks. You've been very informative. One more question," you said, just inches away from Jake in the crowd. "What kind of beer does this Rooster guy like?"

He studied your face closely. He considered himself something of an expert when it came to women, and things weren't completely adding up for him right now. Your words and posture seemed bold and sure, but your eyes were giving you away. There was a nervousness behind them that made him anxious to get answers from you.

"I'll tell you if you finally answer my question."

"What was your question?"

"Why are you here? And what do you want from Rooster?"

"That's two questions," you said with a smirk, leaning a little closer, and Jake just wanted to wrap his arm around you and yank you all the way in. 

"You're a real smartass, kid. And I like that in a person. But just humor me with an answer, and I'll buy you the beer myself."

Your lips parted as your gaze drifted down to Jake's chest. Every time you blinked, your eyelashes brushed your cheeks, and it was taking all of his willpower to keep his hands off you. With a deep breath, you almost met his eyes as you said, "I'm here to get laid."

Jake cocked his head to one side until you did meet his gaze. Your eyes still looked unsure. "Explain."

You just shrugged. "What is there to explain exactly? I'm looking to have sex."

He closed one eye and squinted. He could have sworn he only had one drink, but nothing was making sense right now. "With Rooster?"

"Yes. I'm going to try to get him to take me home."

Jake burst into laughter, and you took a small step away from him. "You're not going to have to try very hard, I can tell you that much for sure." You were actually cute as hell; any guy you had your sights set on would be ready to leave at the mere mention of such activities. 

"That's what I'm hoping for," you muttered before pressing your lips together.

"Wait, wait," Jake asked with his hands held up in front of his chest in surrender. "Why Rooster?"

You looked a little embarrassed now as you switched your bag from one hand to the other. "My friend told me he was good in bed," you muttered.

"I am so confused," Jake replied, pushing his fingers through his hair. By this point, you were starting to look annoyed, and he didn't want to push, but he wanted to know. If you were going to parade around the Hard Deck in a mini skirt with a fake ID, he needed to know that you were okay. "You're young and attractive. Why did you come here of all places to acquire a hot fuck?" And that's when he got the answer that surprised him as you finally snapped. 

"Because, if you must know, I'm a disgrace of a twenty-year-old virgin, and I'm trying to get Rooster to take care of that for me."

"What?" Jake's mind was reeling. He looked from you to the aviator at the pool table and then at your face once more. Then he jerked back a step. A virgin. Huh. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen one this close up before. Not around here, anyway. And, frankly you were hot enough that it did surprise him a bit, even though you were young. 

"You heard me," you muttered, playing with your skirt. "Don't make it into a big thing." You shook your head and glanced toward the bar. "What kind of beer does he like? It looks like he has a bottle of Stella."

You were definitely nervous right now, and Jake didn't like that one bit. "Oh, no. You don't want to hook up with Rooster."

"Yes," you insisted, clutching your little purse now. "I do. Because he won't even have to know about any of it. He'll just fuck me. And then I can get on with my life."

When you took a step toward the bar, Jake reached out for your hand. "He's drunk. You want your first time to be with someone who won't have the mental capacity to make sure you enjoy yourself, too? Make sure you come?"

Instead of pulling your hand free, you stopped and looked at the place where your fingers were connected with his. "I'm not worried about coming. I just want to get this over with."

Gently he pulled you closer until your chest bumped his, and then Jake took your chin carefully between his thumb and index finger. "How old are you, really?"

"I'm twenty."

He stroked your lip with his thumb. It was soft and plump and more than kissable. "Twenty," he echoed. "That's not too old, you know." 

You smirked. "Thanks. But I'm just trying to be sensible here. I don't need to be in love or anything like that. I'd rather have the experience. Rather get it out of the way so it doesn't hurt when I'm with the guy who keeps asking me out. And this way I'll know what to do."

Once more he touched his thumb to your lip and said, "Show me your real ID."

"Why?" you asked, frowning as his hand fell away. "That was my actual name on the one you saw."

"Just humor me, kid," he said firmly, holding out his hand. If you were only eighteen or even younger, he was going to have to ask you to leave or maybe even get Penny involved before you did go home with one of these horny assholes. 

With a huff, you handed it to him. According to the real one, you lived in San Diego. You turned twenty about two months ago. And that really was your name. "When you get a fake, you're supposed to fake the name, too. Everyone knows that. You're in college?"

You snatched it from him and tucked it away with the other one. "Yes, I'm in college."

"Then why the hell are you here right now?" he asked. "You want to lose your virginity so bad tonight? Go stand outside a dorm, and the guys will be lining up for a cute thing like you."

The annoyance and apprehension left your face and were replaced by something different. "Do you really think that's a better alternative than a slightly tipsy, attractive man in his 30s? Because I do not. I'm going for Rooster. But thanks for calling me cute."

Jake was getting so used to your smirk that as soon as you turned away from him again, he missed it. You were heading off toward Bradshaw, and for some wild reason, he was just unwilling to let you do this with him. Rooster wouldn't ask if you were a virgin, and you certainly wouldn't tell him. It might be good for you, and it might not, but Jake thought you should at least be with someone who would try.

"No no no no." He had his hands around your waist, pulling your back against his front. "It's not happening," he muttered next to your ear. "I can call a ride for you, or I can drive you home myself, but that's not going to happen."

You spun around and glared at him. "You said I was cute. I can handle this."

Jake sighed and tipped his face toward the ceiling for a beat as he held you in place with his hands at the middle of your back. "Not with any of those guys," he practically growled through gritted teeth. "I don't know how to make myself any more clear."

You weren't struggling in his grasp, and he knew he should let you go anyway, but he wanted you to agree to letting him get you an Uber. But then you leaned in a little closer with a glint in your eye and asked, "Who's going to do it then? You?"

"Me?" he asked, wide eyes slowly drifting down to your lips. He could feel the leather of your skirt against his pinky as his fingers flexed with the need to keep you close. He could smell your skin and see your pupils growing wider. Your softly parted lips were right there.

You nodded slowly and said, "I mean... I don't even know your name, but I'm sure you could show me the ropes, aviator."

He swallowed hard, eyes never leaving yours. "I'm Jake," he said, his voice lower and needier than he anticipated. "And I need you to tell me what you're going to do if I say no."

Your smirk was back. "Well, Jake the aviator, if you say no, then I'll go ask Rooster and keep my fingers crossed that he's into it."

It wasn't that Jake wasn't keen on the idea of getting his hands all over you, because he was. And that was the problem. He wasn't any better than the rest of the guys. Not really. He didn't deserve to get to have you. But the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he'd make it good. He wouldn't hurt you or do anything you didn't welcome. And he wouldn't kick you out after a few hours. 

"It's a bad idea," he said, and then your lips were on his. You caught him off guard, and after that one gentle kiss, you started to pull away. Your eyes were wide and innocent, and he couldn't stop himself. He chased you for another taste, and it was the sweetest thing he could ever remember. Your hand crept up to rest on his chest as he drew your tentative lips back to his, pulling you snug against his body. Soft kiss after soft kiss left his nose bumping against yours as he whispered, "I said it's a bad idea."

Then you were kissing him again. Harder this time. Your hand went around the back of his neck, and he took a palm full of leather as he squeezed your ass. Oh shit. You were a nice handful for him. Honestly, he could get hard for you right here, and now you surely felt it as he rolled his hips forward against yours. 

And then you moaned into his mouth as your fingers slipped up into his hair, and Jake knew it was hopeless. You nibbled on his lip before you pulled a few inches away, looked at him with desire filled eyes, and whispered, "I think it might be a good idea."

"God damn it."

------------------------

Is Jake actually any better than the rest of the horny guys? Is this a bad idea or a good idea? The problem is Jake likes stubborn girls who give him a hard time. Thanks @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 2

@blahehblah

@sotalife

@desert-fern

@furiouspiespytaco

@rosiahills22

@daggerspare-standingby

@je-suis-prest-rachel

@callsign-joyride

@theharddeck

@withakindheartx

@roosterscockpit

@whatislovevavy

@hangmanbrainrot

@neferpatra

@sehnsuchts-trunken

@averyhotchner

@thedroneranger

@cherrycola27

@mygyn

@hoyaharper

@tallyovie

@gennyanydots

@callsign-magnolia

@whisperofsong

@seriouslyseresin

@hotch-meeeeeuppppp

@katiebby04

@supernaturaldawning

@chassy21

@tylerjones98

@captainjaspenor

@gigisimsonmars

@fanboyswhore9

@angel-w0nderland

@abaker74

@idontcare-11

@isaebellaa

@bringnattolife

@xoxabs88xox

@djs8891

@hufflepufftruffle

@cottagecori

@lex-winchester

@schoollover

[planet-hwa]

: ̗̀➛ immunity to my charms ✧༺♥༻∞

୨୧ summary your friendship with wooyoung blossomed at the start of university, and being friends with him came along with his charming and flirtatious personality. even if you flirted back, you always believed you were immune to his true charms… god were you so wrong.

pairing fratboy!wooyoung x reader genre university/frat au, best friends to... undetermined. a small plot with a lot of smut hehet.. word count 4.7k

‧˚₊•┈┈┈┈୨୧┈┈┈┈•‧₊˚⊹

warnings MDNI !! petnames/nicknames, teasing, mentions of vomiting, alcohol consumption, mentions of previous hookups, swearing, unprotected sex (wrap it up irl!!), breast play, cunnilingus, accidental overstimulation, aftercare

   ↳   navigation  ◦  full masterlist  ◦  wooyoung masterlist  ◦  requests

i'm not immune to you, i'm only human now playing   moonlight magic ; ashnikko ⇄  ◁  II  ▷  ↺

⋮≡  in queue     ◦  all mine ; plaza     ◦  dangerous ; thomas larosa     ◦  igloo ; kiss of life     ◦  make you mine ; madison beer     ◦  more than friends ; isabel larosa

The library sat in silence, the only sounds being the clock ticking on the wall and the whispered conversations between well focused students. Flipping the pages of your ‘Crime, Criminality and Criminal Justice’ textbook, you jot down crucial notes needed for your end of year exams. Your knuckles were stained in red and blue colours due to the amount of time you had spent writing, which by now would have been at least a few hours. Soft tunes were playing through your headphones, never being able to truly focus on work without having some sort of musical stimulation. The volume lowered quickly, followed by a ding of message notifications.

woo ♡ hey darling, what are you doing tonight? i’m assuming nothing because you have no friends, other than the one and only 😏 y/n that’s weird, i don’t remember calling us friends woo ♡ you’re right. you called me your best friend!! y/n and i’ve regretted it ever since woo ♡ 😘 y/n 🤢 anyways, i’m not doing anything tonight except rewatching criminal minds and shoving copious amounts of junk food into my face woo ♡ wow boring… and low-key depressing, do you need therapy again? whatever. does that mean you don’t want to come to the frat house tonight for a little party? y/n what’s the occasion? woo ♡ to get drunk and make bad decisions 🫡 y/n okay, i’m in.

As the uber drove down the street, music became visibly louder until you were sat outside the large frat house. Even before entering the house, you could feel your ears prepare themselves to be ringing the next day. There were crowds of people conversing, all holding random alcoholic beverages in their hands. Some people were behind bushes either vomiting or peeing, it was best not to find out which one. Making your way up the front stairs and through the crowded hallways, you eventually made it to the living room, scanning all the drunken faces for any familiarity. Now realising that what Wooyoung meant by ‘a little party’ was actually one of their monthly ragers they throw.

The ATZ Frat House was known to throw the best parties amongst all the colleges in the area. They always remained the talk of the town for the passing month until the next one occurred. Whether it was because the police were called, or because Mingi and San were jumping off the roof and into their backyard pool, there was always something that people couldn’t stop boasting about.

Still studying the room, your eyes finally landed on two friendly faces, Mingi and Yunho, the two tallest members of the frat. Both had beers in their hands and were bopping along to the music, Mingi screaming incoherent drunk lyrics into Yunho’s ears, and him trying to save himself from hearing loss. Pushing through the dancing bodies, you reached your hand out and were welcomed in with a spin from Yunho, slightly losing balance and falling into his chest with a laugh.

“Y/N! You made it!” Yunho shouted, trying to get his voice higher than the music levels. He held out his drink and offered a taste, quickly accepting the liquor.

“Of course! Wooyoung said this was gonna be a lot smaller though.” Taking a small sip and grimacing at the bitter taste, you’ve never really been a beer drinker. “By the way, where is he?”

“Not sure, but there’s drinks in the kitchen and he put some in the fridge for you.” Yunho smiled brightly at you, still swaying with the music.

“THIS THAT GAME OF THRONES, YEEZY, NOT THE CLONES!!” Mingi yelled behind you, aggressively jumping up and down like he was at a middle school dance. 

Sending him a quick smile and a small chuckle, you ventured through the crowd again to enter the kitchen. There were only two or three people in there, most either outside or snug in the living room. You opened the fridge to find your favourite alcohol staring back at you, a small sticking note with the words ‘Y/N’s, no touching!’ written on it.

“I chose right, didn’t I, love?” A voice breathed into the crook of your neck, two arms wrapping around your waist tightly. Two very familiar arms. You grabbed one of the bottles and spun around to face your friend, a cocky smirk curled on the corners of his lips. He wore his favourite red hoodie that hung off his shoulders slightly, unzipped enough to reveal a peak of his bare chest. “I know you so well.”

“Do you own any other clothes or just that one hoodie?” You raised an eyebrow, taking a quick sip of your drink which he was quick to snatch and have a sip himself.

“Don’t lie, you love it.” He smirked, his hands still resting on your waist. He was telling the truth, you did love the way he looked in that specific hoodie, the way he would wear it so it fell enough to show off the top of his muscular pecs. But you would never admit that and risk feeding into his already enormous ego. His hands fell from your waist, his fingertips leaving a light trace of your curves as they met your hand, unwarranted goosebumps arose on your skin to the touch. Gripping tightly, he led you both back into the living room to join the majority of dancers, surrounding yourself with his other fraternity brothers and the girls some had on their hips.

You hated to admit it but there was always a part of you that wanted more from Wooyoung. More flirtatious remarks, more feather-light touches… more intense touches. There was always the dream of moving up from a friendship. You heard the way the girls on campus would talk about how Wooyoung was in bed, you heard about the ‘sex god’ he was from him himself, but the overheard whispers from the people he slept with were more confirmation that he had a reason to be so confident in his work. It’s not that he had never made a move on you. He consistently attempted it at the beginning of your relationship, but as it grew to higher levels of friendship, it died down. Flirty comments that were laced with sexual intent became closer to simple compliments, body language remained physical but grew more casual. There was always underlying teasing but it was a part of your usual friendship banter. You adore your best friend and the relationship you two have and want nothing more than for it to remain the same, but if you could go back in time; would you have accepted his advances better?

The bass was blasting through the room, the floors vibrating under everyone’s feet. The night hadn’t slowed down, everyone still dazed with energy and alcohol. You were dancing with some of your friends who all had someone connected to them. San, another member of the ATZ Frat, was behind you. His hands rested on your hips, guiding your movements to fit with his rhythm. Your bodies were glued together, grinding against each other to the music. You and San had a small history of hookups, but always stuck to being good friends, though it didn’t stop the two of you from having fun every now and then. Mingi was still bobbing up and down, yelling and throwing his hands up childishly, Yunho next to him but too preoccupied by swapping saliva with a brunette girl from the year below.

You were a few drinks down now… three… maybe four, plus the additional ten or so shots, but you had never felt better. All your worries about school and life problems vanished into thin air the moment liquor had hit your tongue. All you could think about was San grinding against your ass, silently wishing it was someone else. Your eyes surveyed the room, searching for your best friend, eventually landing your gaze on him. He was on the opposite side of the dance floor, his lips locked with someone the girl you didn’t like. Ever since you started college, she has hated you for no reason. You never even spoke to her but the death glares she would shoot your way made it clear you would never be friends. And Wooyoung knew how she was towards you, so why would he be making out with her? Of course, you had no control over who he could hook up with, but you would think he would choose any of the other girls who throw themselves at him every party over this bitch. The worst thing was; you couldn't tell if you were upset he was making out with the girl who tries to make college a living hell for you, or the fact that it wasn’t you…

Wooyoung’s eyes met yours in a piercing stare, sharply watching you over the girl’s shoulder. He had never targeted you with such an intense look in his eyes. They were glistening with emotions, some harder to depict than others. One thing was certain; there was anger in them, with an unknown emotion underlying it. His glare was sending chills through your entire body, the hairs on the back of your neck spiked up. Though his lips were attached to someone else, his gaze was set on watching your every move with San. It was confusing and was making your head begin to spin out of control. The true state of your intoxication was preparing to spill, your cheeks began to go numb and you could feel the vomit creeping up your throat. You swiftly left San’s grasp, receiving an unappeased reaction, until he processed the state you were in and let you go without retaliation. Fighting your way between sweaty dancers and passionate make outs caused your brain to rapidly beat in your skull, your eyes began to paint themselves black and you were sitting on the brink of passing out. The sudden cool air of the empty kitchen slapped you in the face, eyes closing at the refreshing feeling. You made your way to the sink, grabbing a plastic cup and pouring yourself some water. chugging down the cool liquid quickly, it felt as if you had been dehydrated for weeks. The nausea feeling subsided the moment the water hit your lips, the drums in your head became quieter and your vision became more clear again. You pushed the cup aside and lifted yourself onto the bench resting your head on the upper cabinets.

The kitchen was empty, leaving you in complete silence, the only noise being muffled music from the other room. This was the most peace you had felt since arriving. Your mind drifted back to Wooyoung, there were so many questions that needed answering. Why would he hook up with her? Why was he looking at you the whole time? Why was he angry? The constant overthinking had the band in your head begin to play again. You sighed and slowly rubbed your temples, trying to focus on the solitude of the room and not on…

Music filled the room in a haste, bouncing off the walls and leaving just as quick. Quiet footsteps could be heard entering the room, the door sliding shut behind them.

“Y/N?” The voice, all too familiar, held by the one person you didn’t particularly want to see at the moment. You didn’t lift your head or open your eyes, sending silent prayers that he would get the message and leave. But it’s Wooyoung, of course he wouldn’t leave.

“Y/N.” The sternness in his voice came as a shock. You glanced up and were met with an annoyed expression masking Wooyoung’s face.

“I’m fine, I just needed a break.” You sighed, reapplying pressure to your temples. “Go back to your little hook up, I’m sure she’s missing your company.”

Wooyoung scoffed, pushing his hair back with his hand just for the front strands to fall back to covering his face. “Is that why you looked so mad just now? Because I was hooking up with her?”

The emphasis on the last word proved he already knew the answer. He knew how you felt about her and how she felt about you. He knew that you usually didn’t care about his hookups, but because it was with her; you cared. He knew that you being upset wasn’t just because of her.

“Why would you even go for her when you could get any girl you want?”

“Because the girl I want doesn’t seem to want me back.” He slowly drifted towards you, settling himself in between your knees and resting his hands on your thighs. “Don’t you?”

His thumb started to swirl small circles on the sides of your thighs. The simple touch mixed with Wooyoung’s alcohol rasped voice caused butterflies to flourish in your stomach. Lifting your gaze to meet him, his deep brown eyes were filled with emotions as they looked back at you. Fully processing his past comment and realising he had never been this forward with you, with anyone you've seen him with.

“Woo, we can’t.” You breathed, barely coming out as an audible whisper. “Because we’re-”

“Because we’re friends, I know.” Abruptly interrupting with his usual sass. “But you can’t say that and then go and hook up with San, again, as if the two of you aren’t friends as well.”

“That’s different.”

“Why? Because he’s not your best friend?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” was all he could spill out. An uncomfortable silence filled the room, so silent that the muffled beats in the background sounded as if they were miles away. Wooyoung’s thumbs ceased their movement, his eyes now staring at his hands on you. “If you truly have no feelings for me, none that exceed friendship, then tell me and I will leave it alone. We can go back to being best friends and forget this whole conversation. Just tell me.”

‘No feelings that exceed friendship’ 

Those five words rattled around in your head. You couldn’t deny that your feelings for Wooyoung did exceed friendship. You tried for so long to push it down thinking he never felt the same, but he just proved you wrong. The overthinking began to creep in; did he actually mean it, was he just trying to get laid, and if he was then why didn’t he stick with the blonde, did he just want to play with you? Your breath hitched and your heartbeat was as prominent as ever, it felt as if it was about to tear out of your chest.  

The silence that followed you was concerning to Wooyoung, thoughts of uncertainty were filing into his brain. Had he crossed the line by suggesting anything? The tension between the two of you that was obvious in every room, was it truly one-sided the entire time? He lifted his head, your eyes instantaneously connecting, as he searched for any sign of hesitancy. Your gaze shifted around his face, examining every little detail; from his sharp features to the mole under his eye and on his bottom lip, his lips holding a small pout at the corners. The dim kitchen lights caused shadows to cascade around his face, he had never looked more beautiful.

Were you really about to do this?

Without hesitation, your hand moved up to his face, gently cupping his jaw. Gravity pulled his face gradually closer to yours, lips mere inches apart — so close that your warm alcoholic breaths mixed in the air between. Wooyoung was quick to notice that you weren’t in a hurry to pull away from him, and even quicker to crash his lips into yours. Before letting the regret burn through your body, you fell deeply into the kiss, his soft lips caressing yours in a synced motion. His hands gingerly held your face, fingers lightly tracing your jawline as his body moved closer. The kiss immediately grew fiery and needy, Wooyoung’s tongue tracing your bottom lip and slipping in to explore your mouth. Your tongues danced rhythmically together, alcohol lingering in the taste you shared. Butterflies fluttered around in your stomach once again as Wooyoung’s hands wandered around your body, shifting from your waist to your hips, reaching for any part he could touch. Pulling away for air, you watched as Wooyoung chased your lips, concentrating on your moves through hooded eyes. “Let’s go to your room.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” He smirked, taking hold of your hand and leading you out of the kitchen. As you walked through the crowded room and towards the stairs, the girl he was previously making out with ran up to you.

“Wooyoung, come dance with me again!” She whined pathetically. Her gaze — turned to a glare — went to your connected hands, face screwing at the sight. 

“Not interested sweetheart.” Wooyoung dismissed and continued up the stairs, ignoring her scoffs.

“You’re not seriously gonna hook up with this whore, are you? She wouldn’t be as good as me and you know it-”

“I said fuck off, didn’t I?” He shouted, knowing she’d hear even over the music. His grip on your hand tightened before pulling you away and into his room, leaving the girl in shock.

Wooyoung’s lips pashed into yours once again as soon as the bedroom door closed, this time with more desperation, his tongue instantly clashing with yours. After all the years of wanting to kiss you and now finally getting to, he was addicted in an instant — hypnotised by your touch. Your back pushed up against the wall, trapped between it and Wooyoung’s frame, hands tangled at the nape of his neck and lightly tugging on the hair. He groaned into the kiss, sending flutters straight to your core, his hard-on pressing tightly against his jeans and poking you in the thigh. Guiding you to the bed, lips still relentlessly fixed on each other, your clothes began decorating the bedroom floor leaving you both in your underwear. Your knees hit the edge of the bed, gently falling back, Wooyoung crawled up your body not wanting to miss a second of your touch. He lust-filled eyes stared deeply into yours, looking for any uncertainty, only to be matched with the same desire he felt. His lips traveled your body; from yours, to your jawline, your neck and shoulders. Anywhere he could reach, he placed butter soft kisses, suckling on the sensitive skins and molding small hickeys into it. Fingers began to fiddle with your bra straps, Wooyoung’s free hand traveling around your waist and to your back, lightly lifting you and unclasping the band in a swift motion. His eyes were glued on your tits the moment they bounced out of the lace bra, it being thrown to an unknown corner of the room. Without hesitation, his mouth connected to your nipple, harshly sucking and rolling his tongue over the bud. Teeth tearing at your bottom lip in an attempt to keep your moans hidden, unnecessarily worrying that others might hear — as if they could over the bass of the speakers. Not leaving the other unattended, Wooyoung circled your nipple between two fingers, pinching and lightly twisting, earning a small whine from you. As he continued his actions, you began letting yourself go, hushed moans falling through your lips. A sudden poking developed between your bodies, Wooyoung’s hard-on now prominently pushing into his boxers as he groped at any part of your body he could reach.

“You know,” He purred, petaling kisses from your chest and down to your belly, falling lower and lower until he sat between your legs. “I’ve always dreamt about this; how you’d look… how you’d feel… how you’d taste.”

A red blush began arising under your cheeks as Wooyoung watched you through hooded eyes, his fingers slipping beneath the band of your panties and dragging them down your thighs. Smirking proudly, he stared at the affects he’s had on you tonight, your body unable to hide the fact with your glistening folds. Lips brushing against the plush skin of your thighs, moving dangerously close to where you wanted them the most but always avoiding direct contact. Your hips subconsciously followed Wooyoung’s movement, a mocking chuckle answered as he watched you desperately aching for his touch. As much as he wanted to keep teasing you, he too was yearning for your touch. Whimpers instantaneously furnished the room the moment his tongue flicked over your clit, plump lips sucking deeply at the surrounding skin. Coating his muscle in your essence, Wooyoung drunkenly lapped and swirled at your delicate bud, alcohol not being the only intoxication in his system. You were sweeter than he could have ever imagined, honey incomparable to the syrup that spilled from you. His low groans vibrated through your body, a completely new sensation electrifying beneath your skin, a man had never made you feel this good before. 

Your walls missed the absence of replete, hopelessly clenching around nothing. It was as if Wooyoung sensed it, immediately inserting a finger deep inside you, a second one quick to follow. Embracing his digits as they pumped in and out of you, lewd wet sounds sloshing over them, he began curling them and pressing on that delectable gummy spot.

“Woo- fuck… feels so good-” You cried out, hips starting to buck into him as the pressure built in your stomach. He gazed up at you, a smug smirk masking his face as he watched you begin to lose yourself beneath him. 

Feeling your body lightly tense, his fingers began to plunge harder into you, still lavishing your clit with thirsty slurps. Your climax was creeping closer by the second, body slightly trembling around Wooyoung as he devoured you. Your moans heighten — almost as loud as the music — so close to the edge that the stimulation pained you. Fingers curled inside of you, your clit racing like your heartbeat, your orgasm crashed down on you in a tsunami. Wooyoung moaned gutturally into your core as he felt your arousal drip down his chin and coat his fingers like a glazed donut. He never thought he’d experience that from you, and he was savouring every moment. Hungrily guzzling every drop of honey, he got so caught up in his cravings that he couldn’t stop himself, leading you to a state of overstimulation. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, one escaping and sliding down your cheek. Another tidal wave crashed through your body, this one more painful and pleasurable than the last. Wooyoung followed you down from your second high, slowly his motions and removing his fingers from you. He watched as your essence slid down them, irresistibly pushing them through his lips and licking them dry.

Your chest rose and fell, fighting for the ability to breathe once more. Wooyoung moved back up your body, apologetic eyes looking into yours as he wiped the tear stain from your cheek, laying peppered kisses on your lips. The softness didn’t last long, escalating to the need to be inside you once more. His pleading eyes met yours, the message conveying quickly, his boxers being discarded even faster. His length flung out lightly hitting his abdomen, precum leaking from the reddened tip. Wasting no time, he slid the tip through your drenched folds, the sensitivity hitting you both and causing him to hiss lightly. Lining himself with you, he slowly pushed himself in, your walls stretching at his size and pulling him deeper, breaths hitching as he bottomed out. “Fuck love, you’re so warm.”

Creating a steady rhythm, he began to pump in and out of you at a painfully slow pace, the stretch causing an uncomfortable pleasure. Your arms wrapped around his neck pulling him into a burning kiss. Lips crashing together like thunder, lightning electrified between your lightly sweat coated bodies, a mixture of desperate moans and the sound of slapping skin surrounded the room in a warm atmosphere. He struggled to hold himself back, so desperate for you to cum around his dick. His movement started to quicken the moment your legs wrapped around his waist urging him closer, your bodies sticking together like glue. Hips started rutting immeasurably deeper into you, your cervix being bruised by the second. Moans singing in his ears, he lifted his gaze and watched your face contort in pleasure, eyebrows furrowing and eyes rolling as he bucked desperately into you. His eyes shifted between your face and where you were connected, infatuated by the view he believed he’d never get to see.

“Woo, I’m so close.” The pit in your stomach tightening once more, ready to explode.

“Ah- me too, love.” His raspy voice shattered in your brain.

As climaxes were building closer to the edge, his thrusts became uncoordinated and his kisses hopelessly messy. Feeling the pressure in your belly begin to burst, you bucked your hips upwards to match his movement, his cock hitting that sweet spongy spot . His hand squeezed between your bodies, fingers circling your clit with purpose and pushing your third orgasm to wash over you. Lewd moans and curses fell through your lips along with a song of Wooyoung’s name, your gummy walls tightening around him and milking him to his own orgasm. Sloppy uneven thrusts rode you through your high, Wooyoung growing more desperate to chase his own. A guttural groan vibrating through the room, white ropes of cum warmed your insides, filling you up and leaking out as his thrusts softened. 

Falling from your highs, his body collapsed on top of yours, head burying itself into the crook of your neck. Your body wrapped around him like a koala, his length still deep inside you, twitching from sensitivity. Unmoving, both bodies were in no hurry to disconnect, sitting in the comfort silence, the smell of sex heavy in the air. 

A few minutes passed by, both of you falling back into normal breathing patterns. Wooyoung peppered soft kisses on your neck and lifting his face to meet yours, his sleepy eyes adoringly staring into yours before connecting yours lips in a velvety kiss. 

“Was that okay?” He asked, uncertainty lacing his voice. You had never seen him lack confidence in anything before, especially not sex and the way he constantly brags about how good he is in bed. Your opinion mattered more to him than anyone else’s, and to finally have you wrapped around him in more than a friendly movie night way, he needed reassurance.

Your hand cupped his face gently, a soft smile curling at the edge of your mouth. “It was perfect.”

A simpered smile appeared on his face before leaning back into your lips, delicate but filled with passion.

He slowly pulled himself off you, the cool hair grazing your tender core sending chills up your spine. Climbing off the bed, he walked into the bathroom without saying a word, seconds later reemerging with two glasses of water and some clean towels. Placing the water on the bedside table closest to you, he moved himself back between your legs, spreading your knees slightly as he began wiping away the mess you both made. The towel gently brushed over your folds causing you to wince from the sensitivity that lingered. The soft music from downstairs played in the background, you had completely forgotten that you were still at a party, but it wasn’t important to you.

Wooyoung discarded the towel across the room, it landing perfectly on the edge of the laundry basket. Once again crawling off the bed, he held his hand out for you, lifting you up. Your legs slightly trembled underneath you, your body feeling a sense of weakness.

“Let’s go take a shower, love.” Leading you to the bathroom, the water already running and a mist fogging through the room. There was no worries with you in this moment as you both stepped under the warm water, body’s tightly knit together in the small shower. You weren’t thinking about how this could affect your friendship once tomorrow came around, whether or not regret would overshadow the night. All your focus was on living in the current moment — on Wooyoung.

Tomorrow was in the back of your mind, without regret.

author's note hey darlings !! this is my first full fanfic, i hope its up to your expectations — it was a little rushed towards the end — if you enjoy it, i might make a part 2 ?? i think i might also make a san version since i mentioned hookups between them.

tag list @morethingsfandom @dreamsoffanfics @butterflydemons @youmeandwords @hwascutewife @e3ellie (people who reposted the teaser)

[mrsparrasblog]

Tf 141 and their kinks 

Price: Breeding kink 100%; he loves fucking you raw even when you take the pill. "Going to fill you up, nice Love" "going to fuck my baby into your cunt" calls you very often Mrs. Price, while fucking even when you aren't married yet. 

Daddy Kink: He always thought it was weird until you looked at him with dear eyes as your legs lay on his shoulders. "Please, Daddy, make me cum," and he was lost. God, he loves the power he holds, but also how well he takes care of you. John Price is the King of Aftercare; I stand by that. He is the perfect Daddy—rough but a sensual lover.

Gaz: cuckolding God, he loves watching you get fucked by someone else (especially the captain). He always sits like a good boy in the corner and strokes his hard cock lazily; he can't do it too fast since he cums in seconds. 

Another kink of his is fucking you in public, car, cinema, pool, and changing room. Name it; you did it. He especially loves the nights when you have these cute sundresses on and you're sitting in a restaurant, trying so hard not to moan while his long fingers work you open. He insists on walking you home instead of taking an Uber. "If you didn't want it, love, you wouldn't have worn that filthy sundress." He loves free access, and who are you to deny a wish to your pretty boy? 

Gaz is the best cook out of your whole team; he always experiments with different foods, so don't wonder when there is a bit of cream or frosting on your body and he licks it clean; it's only right to taste your own creations, right?

Soap: Don't judge me, but I think he has a lactating kink like that. The boy gets off on sucking on your nipples, even though you aren't even lactating. He is whining and begging like a sweet mess. Bonus points if you call him a good boy. 

Bondage: He is a switch, so you got shackled in ropes on the bed, unable to move as he edges you for hours until a slow breeze of air on your clit makes you cum undone. 

Bonus: I think he would be open to a foot fetish. He never thought he would be, but one day you put your feet on his clothed cock as a joke, and he squirmed like never before.

Ghost: Somnophila: Of course, only with consent, because he would never do something against your will. But, God, you look so sweet and innocent when you sleep. You even feel better when your mind doesn't think about how you look or how you sound—he loves fucking you awake. How your eyes open when you orgasm—his version of breakfast in bed—eating you out like a starved man until you're awake.

He loves a little breathplay on both ends; he loves choking you with his massive cock and how you gag and cry, but even more when you sit on his face, he would die between your legs, so you need to make sure not to suffocate him.

A hidden kink he never thought he had was when you rubbed yourself on his boots and he cums untouched in several seconds. Simon was embarrassed at first; you needed to reassure him that it's hot and nothing to be embarrassed about. 

Just a random thought again, lol. I know Ghost's kinks are almost fanon, but I wanted to give him different kinks that fit more with my headcanon of Ghost because I don't think he is a sadist; he is definitely strong enough and has tried it, but I think he also loves his Reader way too much and is afraid of hurting them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Disenshittify or Die”

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad�� business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

Image: https://twitter.com/igama/status/1822347578094043435/ (cropped)

@fak3r@mastodon.social (cropped)

https://mamot.fr/@fak3r@mastodon.social/112963252835869648

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt