#watch it be because I've got an add blocker or some shit

[springfallendeer]

For the whopping zero people that will see this post because my content doesn’t turn up in the search bar - I’m at over 80k words total for Rebranded. I’m currently working on the 19th chapter (Certain chapters are broken up into multiple parts, with one chapter being a whopping 10 segments!).

[teaveetamer]

I am curious, I've been watching the discourse going on for a bit without getting involved and at this point I feel like I have to ask.

What is the desired result here? Why are you engaging in the discourse at all? Clearly this is not a discussion, so what do you gain from interacting at all?

(I will send this to several people, just out of curiosity)

Alright anon allow me to explain what's been going on with me on my end.

The year is 2019 (yes, we're doing this). FE3H has just come out. I play it and rather enjoy it actually. I've got a couple of ships that I'm into, some fanfic I want to write, etc.

I go onto Reddit to chat with people about the game. Now I don't really like Edelgard, but I'm chill, I'm open to discussing the game and getting alternate viewpoints. Initially it's more or less fine.

Then some posts start coming up. People start getting really aggressive about this. I'm trying to have a conversation, but it feels like their goal is just to shout me down. I get in arguments, I get in fights, I get misgendered, I get called a bigot, I get frustrated, I get ablest rhetoric spewed at me, and I waste my life.

Stop. Take a look at myself. I'm literally sitting here arguing about Edelgard von fucking Hresvelg for hours of my day. I'm annoyed, I'm irritated, I'm always in a bad mood. Ugh.

Now it's 2020, early times I think. I resolve to stop looking at Reddit so much with regard to this game. It's not worth the hassle and the frustration. I should be, like, out doing things and having fun not wasting my time arguing with a bunch of weirdos on the internet. I want to have fun again, not be angry. I delete the Reddit app from my phone and install a blocker on my web browsers, even.

Start using Tumblr for more than just shippy stuff, and find people who agree with me, who are saying the things I've been saying. I stop feeling crazy for liking the game the way I like it. I make a few posts on my main blog but you know what, I don't really want my main blog embroiled in this shit, though I want to add my voice to the conversation. So I make this side blog.

Make some posts. I get flooded with asks from other people about the game, saying they agree with me and they're thankful that they aren't the only ones who think the way I do. I think within like a month of existing this blog had double the posts of my main blog (which has existed since 2016, so for four years at that point), most of them from asks.

The blog was initially for me to vent and throw in my two cents here and there, but I figure I'll keep it around in regular use because people seem to be benefiting from it.

Early on I tried to establish a rule for myself that 1) I wasn't going to go looking in any main tags (e.g. the Edelgard or Edelgard Positive tags) for stuff to reblog or talk about, and 2) I wasn't going to go into any Edelgard specific spaces looking for stuff to talk about (e.g. r/Edelgard or even Dimitri-critical tags). However, anything maintagged that was looking for a fight (e.g. a Dimitri-critical post in the main Dimitri tag) was fair game.

I'm not perfect, but I did try to stick to that rule. I talked about things that happened on the main FE Sub or FEH sub. I did my best to encourage my anons to not go seeking out stuff to bring back to me from Edelgard spaces. After all, this blog was meant for venting and having my own personal space where I could talk about my views without getting accosted. I thought it would be petty for me to go bring back stuff from other places.

Moving into 2021, I was kind of done with 3H. I was still getting like dozens of asks a day about 3H discourse. I'd answer one and five more would pop up in their place. By now we're like, well beyond 3x or 4x the amount of posts I have on my main blog. I'm getting kind of tired of it. It's a lot of the same points over and over and over. We're in pandemic times, so I can't even walk away from it and do something else IRL for a while before coming back to it. I feel like I'm wasting my life again. I feel like I've said anything and everything I could have possibly said about the subject. I ask people to stop talking to me about Edelgard. Eventually, everyone mostly obliges.

I still chat about it here and there, but I'm chatting about other stuff too. This blog is still about venting just about venting about more than 3H. A lot more petty fandom shit in general.

Now we're in, like, 2022. I don't remember exactly, Pandemic Time makes some of this a bit of a blur. I notice a new kid on the block, doing basically what I'd noticed happening on Reddit. Going into the wrong tags. Picking fights. Posting things in the wrong tags. Picking fights.

I'm over it, I'm done, I don't want to deal with this shit anymore. I block the dude. Most people I know block the dude or ignore him. We figure he's new here, he just hasn't learned the etiquette.

He gets increasingly hostile. I'm not really paying that much attention, just getting info about it from the fringes. Again, we figure eventually he'll just go away if we ignore him.

Then Nilsh gets harassed off the platform.

My mutuals are getting increasingly hostile anons and combative reblogs.

At this point I'm relatively unaffected. I guess because I don't tag anything, so he didn't find it.

And you know what? I'm still like "he'll get bored. He'll leave eventually." We were all like "just ignore him, he'll leave eventually."

People try to explain tags to him. Try to help him curate his experience so he quits arguing with people who don't want to talk to him all the time.

Then Moonlitboar gets harassed off of the platform. They take the URL. He's bragging about having done it. He's spreading this vitriol to other platforms and convincing others to join in on the harassment.

And I'm like. Okay. This dude isn't leaving. This is what he wants. His goal isn't to talk about this game—his goal is to hurt us.

I unblock him and respond. We go back and forth. He stops... for a time.

Here's the thing. I didn't re-block him after that, and I didn't do that for a couple of reasons. First, because at this point I'm still hopeful that he's just unaware of what he's doing, and that he'll acknowledge how messed up it was and apologize. I'm all for second chances. The second, because he's dangerous and I'm worried that if I don't keep tabs on him, he's going to try to hurt me.

It's not long until he's doing the same shit again. He tries harassing BWIIDT, he tries harassing FantasyInvader, he tries harassing Ezra, he tries harassing RandomNameless, he tries harassing Emblemxeno, he tries harassing Gascon, he tries harassing people I've literally never even heard of. I keep calling him out, and he tries harassing me. He calls me hysterical, accuses me of acting like a victim. Tries to make me feel stupid and small by saying I don't have anything worth his attention to respond to.

(By the way dude, my point about that was that you were being misogynistic but treating discourse like it was only worth responding to if it came from a man. See, I noticed that you only liked to attack people you thought were cishet white men like yourself, even if we were saying basically the same things at times. The fact that you continue not "debunking" any of my posts doesn't upset me; it proves my point)

He blocks me. I can't say for certain why, but my bet is that he realized people were actually listening to what I had to say, and having a queer woman question the actions he purported to be for the benefit of queer women wasn't a great look for him.

He's still trying to harass me. He's taking screenshots, he's using my name, he's @ ing me. He's casually lying about me. He's using sexist rhetoric implying that I shouldn't be listened to because I'm just too ~in my feelings~ and he's the true victim of my hysterical victimized martyr complex (geez, you sure a a feminist ally for that one, aren't you?)

You know, I did actual research when one of my anons accused him of being a trump supporter and tried to lie about him? I burned an entire evening on that, because I didn't want to be spreading lies about people. Meanwhile he lets his anons casually and repeatedly misgender me without so much as a passing correction, and he hangs out with people who spread lies and slander accusing others of heinous crimes.

And you know what? If I knew it was going to be like this? I'd still waste that evening and correct that anon. It's not about getting a petty win or convincing people he's a bad person for me. It's about being respected.

So to get back to your question. Why am I doing this? Because I have to. Because I know that if I don't he's going to hurt someone else, just like how he hurt Nilsh and Moonlitboar. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, after all. We ignored him and he didn't leave, so now we have to say something.

What's the desired result? I want to be respected, like I've tried to respect them for almost the entirety of this blog's existence. I want my boundaries acknowledged. I want him to stop hurting people for no other reason than to hurt them, because they don't agree with him.

When will I stop? When he stops.

[nutterwithasolderingiron]

Ok. So 100% honest but during lockdown, I finally got an ad blocker. Why? BECAUSE THE ADS WERE FUCKING CONSTANT. For those that don't know. Many YouTubers had extra midrolls stuck in their videos by YouTube to make up as revenue without the YouTubers permission. This was also shortly after YouTube let record labels/media companies put ads on YouTubers videos for using their content. So, if you're someone like me who watches a lot of music related YouTube channels (Adam Neely, Todd in the shadows, crash Thompson, rick beato, tantacrul, trash theory) you were getting absolutely bombarded with ads. I was watching a Rick beato top 20 video where every entry and example had an ad. Most of which were not put there by him. Some cases were him just playing the part on guitar.

I've also taken a zero tolerance policy on channels with endless plugs and sponsorships that take up 20% or more of the video runtime. So here is a breakdown of a sub 15 Min video I watched recently.

2 15 second unskippable ads. A 10 second plug for the YouTubers merchandise store. His 20 second fancy video title graphic. 1 min of the youtuber introducing the topic. A 1 min paid sponsorship for raid shadow legends. Then 2 unskippable 15 second ads. Then finally we get 2 mins of the contents we came here for. A 30 second long reminder to like and subscribe and ring the bell, also follow them on social media and that he has merch. Then 3 mins of the topic. Then another 30 second reminder to like, comment, subscribe and also 70% of his views are from non subscribers, also ring the bell. Then another 2 15 second ads. Then we finish off the topic at had in like 3 mins. But there's still 1 min of the video left which is just him saying "I'd like to thank raid shadow legends for their sponsorship, id like to thank my patreons for supporting me, patreons get special perks. You can join my patreon today. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe and ring the bell, follow me on social media, here's some more videos you might like and also don't forget to check out their merch store. Then a final set of ads.

So 12 mins and 30 seconds (roughly) of video. Add another 1 min 30 to that view time with ads. So 14 mins of content and 5-6 mins of that is advertisement for patreon, merch, raid, his social media, YouTube channel or everything else.

I get it, you gotta hustle to get places. YouTube isn't the money maker it was 5 years ago. But if you make interesting content that stands out to me, I'll support you, I'll like your videos, I'll subscribe, I might even consider merch. But you gotta stop treating your fans like idiots. Your making YouTube a worse place for the viewers. I've got to the point where I just try to skip past all the shit to the actual content.

My point? YouTubers and YouTube? Stop taking the piss.

anyone else feel like youtube is getting too fucking comfy w/ the multiple ads before every fuckin video??