#without the report onto stupid social platforms

[face-palming-fox]

since they turned reblogs off i’ma just post a pic and not their name

but honestly. who cares? LOL i like starry night as much as the next gay but the notion that people actually care about art and artists is actually laughable to me cos no. u fucking don’t. there’s artists NOW struggling to have their art noticed, appreciated, respected because everything is out there ripping off their art or stealing it in some way or form for profit. and hell, a lot of old masterpieces are just cheap merchandise now. u see how much van gogh is on products these days? u appreciate the art and the artist? i bet he’s rolling in his grave that his expressive medium is now tapestries and purses and tshirts and whatever else it’s been printed on. 

but aside from the fact that people are shitting on modern artists on a daily basis (much like all the old masters were also shat on in their time, way of being an artist i guess) the more bits and pieces i’ve learned from the coveted artists of the past is.. a lot of them. were VERY shitty people and their art wasn’t seen as ‘great’ until they died? this feels very in line with the same way people basically worship statues or historical pieces while ignoring what they may mean and wanna keep them around JUST because it’s something old and historical. i can’t say much for van gogh; i think he was just a very mentally sick, depressed man as far as any info i’ve heard about him goes. but still.

you care about art and preserving things of the past. lol. sure. if you really cared about preservation that much, maybe you should put that energy towards preserving things that affect modern day people but some how i feel like y’all aren’t ready for that convo. you’d rather bitch and whine about keeping ancient items as if any of you would actually go view the original pieces and act like people can’t ‘appreciate art’ within two seconds of a click on a device.

[smolvenger]

First Lady (President Loki x fem! Reader blurb)

Summary: It's not easy being in the spotlight as First Lady of the Nation. But your President's Husband knows what to do when your online critics take it too far.

Or "Who did this to you?" with President Loki.

Word Count: 1318 (blurb time)

Warnings: SMUT! 18 + (wall diddling, whee), online bullying and harassment (inspired from my own personal experience, whee) mention of sex. Angst and then fluff and hurt/comfort. I steal ideas from Ana Huang and Sadie Kincaid. Bad grammar. I had writer's block with this one and was stuck so not as revised and polished as I could be bc I just wanted this done, I'm not Shakespeare or Donna Tartt okay? If I miss a warning, please inform me at once. Don't victim blame those affected, Report it! If you see something disturbing or triggering that isn't tagged that I missed, then that is on me to take accountability for it and it is your responsibility to report it!

A03//My Ko-Fi//My Etsy Shop//Masterlist//Wattpad

Taglist: @asgards-princess-of-mischief @jennyggggrrr @five-miles-over @fictive-sl0th @ladycamillewrites @villainousshakespeare @holdmytesseract @eleniblue @twhxhck @lokisgoodgirl @lovelysizzlingbluebird @raqnarokr @holymultiplefandomsbatman @michelleleewise @wolfsmom1 @cheekyscamp @mochie85 @fandxmslxt69 @skittslackoffilter @mischief2sarawr

Dick-Tionary: The exact, more explicit smut begins at “Open wide, my dear.” and ends at "He gently let you down."

Something about the internet gave people anonymity and with that came power. They could say and do what they wanted…even the vilest things.

Comment after comment. Ding after ding on your phone. There were posts about how you were wrong. Irresponsible because they didn’t like your cause of supporting raising minimum wages. Even under posts where you were talking about the importance of your cause, so many people went “Well, to be fair-” 

You couldn’t help but look at more about you.

Stupid. 

Ugly. 

A pig.

And those were the tamer ones. 

The constant bullying and demands from these people. You thought you were qualified for this. That you knew your way around tenfold. Dolled up in your nice dress and makeup…and here you were, crying. Wanting to throw a fit. Wanting to scream and call them vile, horrible things. T sob until you couldn’t breathe and crash down, heels, pearls, lipstick and all.  No better than a little girl playing dress up. Not an adult who handled everything with strength and grace. Not a First Lady of an entire country.

You should be strong. Thick-skinned. “Don’t take it personally” was the advice everyone gave you. Every single time. Without fail. But at this point, it just numbed in your head. What did that even mean? It meant nothing. Like “thoughts and prayers” maybe at once it could help, and has helped but now…it was just a phrase people threw out that fixed nothing.  And how could you not take a comment beneath your post telling you to not take it personally?

You found yourself stumbling onto the Oval Office adn there he was- your husband in folden horns. A crowd of suited men around him.

He noticed your state. You had no time to compose yourself. But he raised a hand and their chatting voices silenced.

“Everyone! Leave- now!” he ordered, snapping his fingers.

They ducked and left. A few careful eyes at your frazzled, pensive state.

He went over and looked at you. Then he put one hand and put it under your cheek so you faced him. His voice was soft, yet subtly angry not at you, but at your tormenters. 

“My darling…who did this to you?”

You sniffed. Then you answered him.

“All of the comments…online…I know I have to. It’s part of the platform. A First Lady has to have social media…but…but…”

He wiped a tear. Then you leaned onto him. His cold buttons grazed your cheek and he let you cling to him. Let yourself break down.

“What am I even doing? Why should I say or do anything online? They just want to tear you apart and spit you out! And they just want a lady who looks pretty and does or says nothing. Even when I wear anything, they tell me I look like cat vomit. I can’t win whatever I do, Loki. And the split second I try to do anything, say anything they…they..”

“Give me your phone,” he said.

You handed it to him. From his pocket, he took out a chip and attached it to yours.

“Firstly,  I’m taking this away from you for now. You will get a new one for communication. I will not have my wife and First Lady miserable.”

 He set the chip in.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping track of them. We’re going to track them down. They’re going to regret every word of it…here…”

He sat down on the chair in the center and tapped his lap.

“Sit.”

How could you resist?

He set you on his lap. He pulled out his personal phone and immediately was making calls. You leaned into him, snuggling him close. 

“Yes, Grant, I want you to hire a Social Media manager for the First Lady. Have the comments filtered and in need of approval before posted. Also, look for security. There are several people we must hunt down. They have threatened the security of the first lady. The tracker is on her phone, we’ll analyze the data on the comments and find each and every one of them- they cannot go on without consequence, don’t you think? Freedom of Speech is overrated anyway…hurry along, do it now- no- Grant, I don’t care if you’re about to get a blowjob from the Black Widow this second, I want you to do it!”

He ended the call.

He held you. And then kissed you. You leaned in more. How handsome he looked- his suit fixed up. His smirk was confident, rakish. You found you were straddling him, his hands on your hips. As you kissed again, he pushed his tongue inside.

“Oh…Loki…”

He raised your skirt some, to feel your bare leg.

“I feel if I make you cum, that would make you feel better…wouldn’t it?”

He slid a hand and saw you weren’t wearing underwear at your hip bone. 

He tilted his head, his voice even quieter. 

“And you followed my one little rule, too. Good girl.”

He held up the phone one last time, pressing a call.

“Barton, cancel my meeting for this hour. Reschedule it. Emergency, shall we say.”

Before the man on the other end could ask why he hung it up.

He smiled at you.

“Open wide, my dear.”

Keeping your legs open, he adjusted them to wrap around him. He backed you up to part of the wall. Not caring about the curtains of the window. Not caring about the security cameras.

 In fact, let them watch if they want.

He kissed you intensely, his tongue inside and out. Tasting you. He lifted your skirt to your hips, backing you up. You hung onto him, shaking with wet, desperate need as he undid the zipper of his trousers.

“I’m going to fuck you. Fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk and live the next week curled up in the lap of luxury, how does that sound?” he asked, his voice husky.

“Please- fuck me, Loki-”

“I’m the President-” he corrected.

“Fuck me, Mr. President-” you quietly begged.

He entered briskly. You let out a loud gasp. But you were already so soaked from him, it was clear. He kissed you again. One hand going to move one of your legs to hook around his waist. 

He only slowed down so he could speak, his eyes intense. 

“Yes, moan louder. I want them all to hear- I don’t care who hears- or sees. I want them-to- to know you’re mine- My little doll. My little toy. My First Lady- my wife-”

Your breasts bounced lewdly as he picked up speed, thrusting in and out of you. He pounded you so much, the portraits shook. You held onto his shoulders, and then his horns on his head. He was grunting like a madman.

He fucked hard, his hand digging.

“I want you to cry out, say what I am as you cum. I am Loki, I am your president, I rule you- say it- say it, fuck, I’m cumming-I’m going to-say it.”

You cried his title, your throat scratchy. Pleasure breaking on you, as well as on him.

He gently let you down. You adjusted his dark curls. He smoothed your dress, though your legs wobbled. The bliss of ecstasy makes you forget what even happened just an hour ago.

“Now…how do you feel now?” he asked.

You took in a deep breath, the blood still rushing and the world spinning.

“Better…” you replied. 

He wrapped an arm around your waist. But he traced a finger down your spine, into your skirt.

“Good. Because I’m going to order some…gifts for you tonight. For you to wear beneath these dresses and skirts and blouses. And I want us to have dinner- just us. And when I rip off your clothes, that lace will be on you. Because, my dear, once this next meeting is done…we are far from over with this.”

[agent-calivide]

I kinda roll my eyes whenever I see posts mocking the whole "don't spam like" "unalive" tiktokification of social media, but not in the genuine "it's a fucking travesty that people have to self censor and think about algorithms that actively tries to screw over the users" way but rather in a "haha, new social media is dumb, I'm a bitter 30 year old" way.

Like, yeah, on Tumblr getting the response of "don't spam like" is fucking annoying because it doesn't do shit other than just show that someone's looking at all of your stuff, but spam liking is not binging a page. It is specifically when someone goes onto someone's tiktok and proceeds to mass-like videos without actually watching them all the way through, it's just scrolling and liking without actually watching the content, which communicates to the algorithm "hey, this person's videos suck because people stop watching at the 3 second mark" and stops pushing your videos.

This doesn't matter for people who are doing it for fun, I don't care personally on my tiktok, spam like away, but when people are trying to make a career out of it by either being an influencer or advertising their small business or trying to show music they've written or just wanna share work they're proud of it's annoying to get screwed by someone showing misplaced love. Especially when there was a window of time were people would spam like as an attack to try and fuck someone over and "shadowban" them.

And the making fun of the censoring is even more fucking stupid. I have posted 2 videos that got dinged for having inappropriate content and got two strikes on my tiktok that I've been running for about 5 years. Anyone who has seen my tiktoks knows I am as inoffensive as you get, I don't do thirst traps, I have Content and Trigger and Flash warnings, I hand-type captions on all of my videos and if I do use the auto-generated ones I watch the video back to make sure they're all correct, I just lipsync to silly audios and basically make video versions of incorrect quotes of whatever my hyperfixation is at the moment.

One was me painting a nerf gun and a nerf crossbow to look like a real gun and real crossbow to be props, which was dinged for showing firearms. My video of me painting a neon yellow gun and bright pink crossbow to black and woodgrain was marked as dangerous content because either someone chose to report me or whatever scanners they use to pick out "dangerous" videos misread and assumed I had real firearms and wouldn't repeal it. My other video, with multiple content and trigger warnings, had an audio that went "For my next trick, I'm gonna fucking kill myself". And while the audio was allowed to stay on tiktok and other people were allowed to use it, because I had a caption and a description that read: TW: Suicidal ideation and properly typing out captions, I got penalized.

But with tiktok, your post isn't just taken down, you have a limited number of strikes and if you get too many, you're entire fucking page is eaten. Just gone, erased, and there is no way for you to get it back. And I have two strikes for: painting a toy black and lipsyncing to a popular audio.

People aren't arbitrarily using "sewer-slide" "grapist" "unalived" and "pew pew" because they wanna infantilize this serious issue, it's because they want to talk about this serious issue without being silenced and, like it or not, tiktok is where word travels fast and to the biggest audience these days. Being "shadowbanned" and having all of your messages get strangled because you used the proper terminology, if not getting kicked straight off the platform, is too high a risk for someone who uses that platform. Especially if they do also use it to advertise, to squeeze a few pennies from the creator fund, to try and make it big or even just to fucking have fun.

I don't know if shadowbanning ever was actually a thing, I just do silly costumes to songs for fun, but there were many people who'd be trying to get traction to show work or get sales or speak out about a bad situation and suddenly they'd go from getting hundreds of thousands of views on every single video to maybe a couple hundred because they had the audacity to say "this shooter is a fucking monster" rather than "this [pew-pewer] is a [bad bad person]"

And if TikTok was their first social media platform, of course they're gonna think other platforms are also ruling with an iron fist. I still feel weird being allowed to say shit like gun and murder on Tumblr because there's a voice in the back of my head that says I'm gonna get my entire blog taken away for daring to use the proper words.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but I think the most well known and most encouraged to use platform of these last few years is also one that's so highly regulated that people are pre-emptively trying to figure out how to talk about important things without it totalitarian-ly beating them into a fine paste with the algorithm so people just see the silly little dance videos tiktok would rather push over the people communicating real world problems is more fucked up than Stacy saying "unalived" on Reddit out of habit.

[ap-sadistics]

jung qvq [erqnpgrq] naq [erqnpgrq] ba yzxgjg qb? bgure guna or naablvat v zrna

ohhhhhh its funny really. "funny".

its technically more than two. i hate their entire friend group. its a bunch of bnfs (big name fans) on twitter. its absolutely certain you know at least one of them if youre in the fandom.

the thing im most irked about how they leverage their popularity for create a biased narrative against me. when i technically did no crime. i never even Spoke to the person. never interacted with them once. what i did. is vague them. for having the most wretchedly ooc characterizations for the sake of shipping a rare pair. and you see. i didnt have a problem with the ship itself. no! my issue. was that their characterization fucking SUCKED. i dont care if they called it "redemption" or "character development". it. was. out. of. character. straight. up. so i tweeted about this kid. i didnt mention their name. i mentioned the ship. and how i was sick of seeing it on twitter. i also i looked at their carrd and saw that this (this is a screencap of a screencap sooooo its old)

and i was you know what. im gonna do that. and that was the end of that

(i also was like was the hell does a kid have like 2000 followers that gives me fucking hives. bc lets be real. having a large social presence on the internet at that age when your a developing person is like. not ideal. im essentially antisocial and the idea of having that many ppl follow me for my stupid thoughts is fucking TERRIBLE. ive softblocked followers before to drive the number down. anyways i was thinking about it from that perspective. being conscious of numbers is Bad.)

flashforward a few hours and i noticed it wasnt the end of that. somehow the kid found my tweet and then supremely misinterpreted it and then sicced their followers/their friends onto my account. that tweet had a Large amount of pqrts (the stupid twitter culture thing where you essentially put on masks and stone the apparent criminal. and i was like. well this sure is a thing thats happening. and they def were twisting my words bc they screencapped my tweet and was bashing me about it. with absolutely 0 reading comprehension. well my course of action was to just go on private to cut off the engagement. what am i going to do? acknowledge what was happening with a tweet for them to twist and play the victim again? im not fucking stupid.

its really funny that after i privated i got 5 follow requests. THE STUPIDEST FUCKING IDIOTS I EVER SEEN. blocked immediately. it was really funny.

thats not the funniest thing that happened tho. you might think that *i* might be playing the victim and that what happened wasnt that big of a deal. it wasnt. but also it sucked still. anxiety causing. but anyways it wasnt just a the qrts. after i privated, one of them reported my account for suicide

this was the funniest fucking thing that happened to me. i was livid during this whole incident but this was the funniest fucking part of this ordeal. it was HYSTERICAL. for the record there was none of that kind of content on my account! this is the most mentally healthy ive been bc i wasnt in my old uni anymore. not that i ever even posted about the kind of stuff ever.

this is clearly a petty attempt at harassment right? because they couldnt stand having someone think they are annoying and that their ship sucks (i didnt before but i do think it does now bc this incident made me hate the ship actually. because im petty too! but at least im self aware about it.)

someone also sent a bad faith ask to my fucking art blog because they haaaaaad to chase me down to a different fucking platform to harass me more

and like. what happened to me only proved my point. that teens shouldnt have a large following. this teen definitely abused their power didnt they.

who do you think had the worse experience. me or them? whose the real victim here.

if you think im problematic for fucking saying i dont like a person in public without once mentioning a name? get fucked.

also this happened again. it happened a second time. bc i found out there was a l/m/k zine going on and i said im not joining it bc they were a part of it. once again unnamed. LIKE OBVIOUSLY? IM NOT GONNA JOIN? it wasnt like i was going to fucking make it explode. but people toooooooook issue. i dont get how they find the tweet so fast im convinced one or more of them or their lackeys is stalking me. i could be paranoid tho.

anyways bc this is a friend group, the kid is a friend of a certain somebody. a very well known somebody. and bc they fed all their biased retelling of the incident to this somebody. im blocked by a very funny account.

super inconvenient really

you see theres more to it than this incident tho. i have an issue with how these people engage with their follower base. but honestly its a product of the kind of social media platform that twitter is. they clearly value the number of followers they have and to say it doesnt go to their head would be a lie. theres other specifics tho thats old news. that im not willing to divulge to an anon. who are you and why are you asking about a tweet from 3 days ago anon. you have me fucking paranoid. im gonna trust the fact you used rot13. out of courtesy. but im wary.

you might be able to deduce who the pricks are from the things ive mentioned here. but im not gonna say who they are to an anon. i dont trust like that.

[aahsoka]

So having been on tiktok for a bit I wanna talk a little about it.

What I like

It’s actually rather entertaining to scroll through up to 30 second videos one after the other. Sometimes the humor falls flat or it’s not your taste, but the algorithim is quite good at recommending the kind of content you will like.

I joined right when there was a big trend going around about sharing your culture, and soon after a Blackout trend where non-Black creators stopped posting for a day & spread/supported videos by Black creators. So I ended up with a fairly diverse fyp or “for you page”. It also quickly gathered that I am bisexual, so I get plenty of lgbt+ content. There’s some art mixed in there, some cosplay, some historical costuming/seamstresses, lots of avatar jokes lately, musical theatre content, fashion, girls in bikinis on rollerskates (in outer space), commentary on political issues, body positivity, all the kinds of stuff I like. To get a feed that caters to your interests you just have to watch & like videos you’re interested in & eventually it gets a feel for what you’ll watch and what you won’t.

Theres a trend where people say which ‘side’ of tiktok they’re on and I get ‘science side of tumblr’ flashbacks but I’ve mostly avoided the “straight” and conservative sides of tiktok. I would be considered a part of “woke”, “alt” (as in alternative) and lgbt+ tiktok (there are separate ones for each letter of the acronym). Possibly also “theatre” and “cosplay” tiktok. These categories are nebulous and you’re usually part of multiple communities; its just as arbitray as ‘science side of tumblr’ was.

The format reminds me of snapchat a little, and I love to talk to myself on video & post dumb thirst traps for my friends (none of which I’m attracted to so idk what my goal is there) and make stupid jokes. So this app is kinda perfect for my attention seeking side & hyperactive tendencies. Its very easy to consume on a short attention span, though not as easy as vine was.

Being in quarantine, its a way for a lot of people to engage in hobbies that involve community. Cosplay is pretty popular, as its a fun way to show off a costume & dress up & have fun without having to attend a convention. I enjoy the way lip synced audios can be used to emulate the character someone is dressed as; that’s something you couldn’t really do unless you were really good at impressions. Its a nice succinct way to show the process of creating a cosplay as well.

Those who enjoy theatre, but cannot perform in shows at this time, are able to create mini-monologues & sketches as well as sing parts of their favorite songs. Its an avenue through which to perform without putting anyone at risk of the virus. It’s also an easy way to show off your talents without having to go through the audition process & actually get cast in a show as a prominent enough role that someone will notice it.

It’s a convenient format for discourse and educational videos. Nice, short, easily digestible tidbits that stay in your mind. This extremely catchy song, for example: “Black neighborhoods are overpoliced, so of course they have higher rates of crime, and white perpetrators are undercharged, so of course they have lower rates of crime. And all of those stupid stats you keep using are operating off a small sample size. So, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up”.

As well as other videos where people take the time to explain historical events, satirize racist arguments to demonstrate why they are wrong, talk about prevalent tropes in movies, teach a few signs in ASL, share facts about their culture, etc, etc. I have found there are quite a lot of people there from unique and fairly unknown cultures and backgrounds- and this is a place where they’re able to share their culture & existence with people all over the world. There are a thousand different viewpoints. Their videos are doing far more for diverse representation than any other platform, I’d argue, as everyone is extremely visible on the app. (‘Their’ as in the creators, not the app itself).

I also have enjoyed coming across new artists on the app. It’s really fun to watch the process they go through, as most art videos deal with the whole creation of a piece. It’s inspiring. I have also come across a painter who’s work I’m in love with, and a woman who makes and sells the CUTEST ceramic mugs, and I need to purchase some stuff from them both.

Now onto the bad:

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have much in the way of a filtering or warning system. I talked about that tiktok of the kids coming across human remains? That was just on people’s fyp. Just popped up. No warning. No reason for it to still be up. Traumatizing.

You can click on a video and say ‘not interested’ (I do this to literally every video I get where some girl is thirsting after kylo ren 🤮..... like I want the star wars videos just not THOSE videos). However, it doesn’t seem to know exactly why you weren’t interested, because I still get those videos from time to time. There’s no content filter where I can blacklist the kylo ren or any other hashtag.

There’s some very shitty content. There are racist conservatives. Misogynistic teen white boys. Really weird thirst traps. Videos where people lip sync to something with a straight face and tag it with #acting. Harmful body image trends. I thankfully stay very clear of this, but this kind of content makes me worry for the minors on the app. The one’s who don’t have enough of a concept of self yet to realize they don’t need to be able to do the newest pointless beauty trend to be beautiful, to realize it’s ok for them to be gay, to realize how predatory some adults can be, etc etc.

It is extremely easy to come across minors on the app who don’t look like teens. One time I went to a girl’s page and it said she was FIFTEEN. I’m usually good at guessing ages but something about this app messes that up. I wish there was a way to separate people under 18 and adults. Where I don’t have minor’s thirst traps popping up on my fyp. Where pedophiles don’t get a chance to curate that fyp intentionally. If anyone reading this has kids, I highly recommend they make their tiktok private or only viewable to friends.

Just like any site, there are plenty of bigots. Lots of racist comments. Plenty of transphobia. Any hatred you’ve seen elsewhere, of course it exists on tiktok. I have actually zero clue if you can report people & if it works. Most people seem to send a video commentary to their haters or duet a video of a racist pointing out their racism. I’ve heard of creators blocking people, however. I remember a tiktok of a Black woman who’s video somehow went fairly viral in Poland and now she gets a lot of racist comments from this large group of random racisf Polish followers she has and its extremely time consuming to block them all, as there’s no mass block feature.

The rumors about what works with the algorithm and doesn’t abound. I’ve heard well lit videos get more views. Many people suspect they have been shadowbanned for speaking out about current events. TikTok will remove the audio from videos sometimes if they deem it controversial enough. Most of us know they were criticized recently for intentionally keeping Black creator’s videos from being seen (a catalyst for the Blackout, actually). Or you may also recall when it was criticized for widely removing lgbt+ content. Those creators are fighting to be seen the same amount as straight cis white creators are allowed to be seen with no effort.

The effects some trends could have on teen girls. So many of them are already so uncomfortable in their own skin simply because of societal standards, but the absolutely meaningless challenges people come up with on tiktok make it so much worse. One trend was based around whether your finger touched your lips when you put it in your nose. Or if you could get your clasped hands around the back of your legs and over your butt (if they get passed, you have a flat ass, if they get stuck, its big). These completely arbitrary signifiers of the things you need to have in order to be pretty, are far more ridiculous that anything I have seen yet in my life. I worry about little girls taking these ideas to heart. There is a very kind body positive community on the app & I hope more people can find that.

There’s also that thing where they steal your data. Like most apps. But apparently they got a lot more invasive than usual, so I would look into it before making an account; if you want to do that.

I think the apps users can be great & its a pretty intuitive set up. It certainly deserves its popularity solely as a creative form of social media. That being said, its owners are so so insidious & do the worst things. Just like all other social media, its controlled by the worst kind of people. Who can never figure out how to effectively get rid of nazis or keep kids safe from adult content.

These are my less serious gripes with the app:

1) Lip syncing

When people lip sync and don’t do any kind of skit, joke, etc, just look as if they’re saying what someone else said; I hate that. I have to go back and find the original tiktok so I can like it instead. You literally did nothing interesting by ripping off someones audio and moving your lips along to it. So many people on this app are creative and so many others lack any semblance of creativity.

Also people are too easily impressed by lip syncing to kinda-fast songs. I lip synced to like....10 seconds of the devil went down to georgia and two people praised my lip syncing abilities. Like, I can also sing and talk fast, out loud, isn’t that more impressive? more skillful? The fiddle playing in that song is impressive, not the fact I can lip sync ‘the devil went down to georgia, he was lookin for a soul to steal, he was in a bind, cause he was way behind.’ Have you ever seen someone play Johnny’s fiddle solo????? It’s insane!!!

Rather than see someone lip sync to the verse in Stressed Out 2x faster than normal (which is, extremely simple and the song was overplayed and ingrained into our collective consciousness) and go WOW what about someone.....doing the verse out loud. You can litterally just mouth random words and look like you’re saying the right ones. It’s driving me crazy lmao. I’m set to become a God of tiktok because I have a repertoire of fast songs and rap verses memorized. It’s not even an uncommon skill to speak or sing quickly, people literally make rap music for a living! Listen to it maybe.

2) “Acting”

I am begging you to stop making me sit through those horrible POVs. I cannot take another girl not quite fake crying towards the camera as she lip syncs the words from a song that apply to the random situation she decided she was in. I cannot take another boy who thinks its sexy to stare into a camera and smirk in every single situation he creates.

Back to lip syncing, making facial expressions along to words isn’t really acting. Try saying the words out loud perhaps? The inflection you use with your lines is a pretty big part of acting. Like you can lip sync all you want, just stop tagging it with #acting.

3) Comedic timing, or lack thereof

You don’t need the entire intro to sit there looking at the camera waiting until the first line starts and you can lip sync to the part that’s the joke. You could cut off at least 15 seconds. Brevity is the soul of wit.

When your joke involves both reading text on screen and listening to the song for the punchline, if it isn’t done prefectly, its so difficult to follow. I can’t read a paragraph in 5 seconds. Paraphrase.

4) self deprecating artist audio

the audio thats like ‘this wont get views’ ‘I suck’ ‘you probably won’t see this anyway’ LOVE YOURSELF

It sucks when people dont enagage with your art but it sucks worse when your value in yourself and you art is based solely on receiving that validation. Please find a healthy medium.

Also you’re asking for pity, and you don’t want that. You want people who genuinely love your art for what it is.

5) editing videos is really hard how do you make such cool & smooth transitions????

please help me I don’t understand

Finally

here’s my account if you’re interested

[maptoourescape]

Hi 😉 I was wondering what was your take on Heidi being on tour with the guys and everything that happened since she joined them aka fans reporting she has this cold face when watching the show and the lack of interaction between her +her parents and the twins’ mother? I really loved your piece on the summercamp last year I thought you nailed it, thank you in advance and have a nice day/evening/afternoon 😊

Hey there!Oh man anon, where to begin? You’re in for a treat, because I think I’llunleash much more than what you’ve bargained for, for the simple fact that Ihaven’t really ranted out everything that I wanted on other social mediaplatforms lol. I guess I should start off by saying that my opinion on thismatter is still unaltered. If anything, the points I have made within my SummerCamp essay seem to only get more and more probable with each passing day.Whatever little hope I might have been harboring that maybe (by some miracle)I’m wrong – that she is actually nota rotten individual – just keeps disappearing with every horrendous attitudeshe decides to present next. And boy oh boy is she set out to be horrendous.Big yikes.Let’s get one thing out of the way first, (because some people still can’t grasp this concept, and Iwant to clarify it before I dwell any further): the reason why I’m bothered byKlum is not because of any pettyjealousy people claim I must be feeling towards her. I feel like it’s sounbelievably superficial and sexist to claim that – what is saidbetween the lines – I “must dislike this specific vagina, simply because I wantits rightful penis”. Literally what the fuck? I quite honestly wouldn’t touchTom with a ten foot pole (no offense to him, but I really would not). Evenentering their personal bubble for pictures makes me feel uncomfortable,because I don’t want to be perceived as one of those predators who give thewhole fandom a bad name after they dry hump them as soon as they’re in their radius,so there’s that. What I feel towards this band is just so pure, and so muchabove any petty groupie fantasy others try to project onto me, that theargument of “me being jealous” makes literal bile rise up my throat. It’s revoltingto me. Not only me, but to many other people as well – people who also don’tfit the mold of what those “higher-moral-ground-wannabees” claim they are.The reason why a shit ton of people dislike Klum is very simple: we all see thesame red flags rising when we observe her attitude. It most definitely hasnothing to do with anyone’s attraction towards Tom himself. I just cannotcomprehend this stupid narrative. Most of the fandom doesn’t consist of twelveyear old girls anymore, so give me a break (albeit I personally never thirsted after any of them at all, ever, so whatever).Some people who see that Heidi’s problematic are gay, by the way. Some peoplewho see it are happily married. Some even have children for crying out loud.Are they all jealous too, according to that narrow point of view?Noticing someone’s reappearing toxicity – especially when it is masses of very different people all noticingthe very same destructive behavioralpatterns – is simply concerning. Yeah, I know the popular counter argument is “why should you care then, youhave no ties to him?” Well of course that’s true. No, I’m not the band’simmediate family. I’m not their friend and neither do I work for them. But themen of this band have had a huge impact on my life, and their art has helped methrough so much shit over the years of my adolescence and beyond. If notanything else, it feels fair to thenat least be honest about when I think they might be getting into some deep shitthemselves. An act of reciprocated gratefulness and respect, if you will. Thekind of “you helped me, and now, even though I can’t exactly help you per sebecause we are strangers, the least I can do is to be sincere in my thoughts ofgenuine concern”. I mean, look, I said it once, and I’ll say it again: at the end of the day, marryingsomeone like Heidi is Tom’s choice to make – or well, in my opinion and forlack of a better wording, his own mistakein the making. I’m pretty much the last person in the world who can changethat, and don’t worry, I’m aware of that. And sure, at the end of the day, it’snot me who’ll have to live with her. It’s not me who’s gonna suffer the immediate consequences of it.But although it’s not going to be me ending up being potentially hurt, Tom’sproblems will, by default, extend to damage anyone who ever cared for him aswell. And we, as a whole (well, most of us), do care for this fucking band. Goddamn we do. Just like we cared whenBill had to get his surgery; just like we cared whenever any of them had a caraccident; just like we cared when Gustav got into that bar fight all those yearsago; just like we cared when we saw them being stalked and burning out in frontof our very eyes – just in the same way, we care now, because we see someonewho appears to be absolutely venomous protrude not only their personal lives, but the band as a concept as well.The very same band that was always a sort of escapism resort that EVERYONE (theband AND the fans) could always come to when everything “in the real world” wasgoing astray – now being quite literally invaded by outside forces withoutfacing any proper resistance.Honestly, at this point, I should probably stop being so surprised by whateverHeidi Klum does next. But I’m apparently too naïve, or maybe just simply toogood natured to actually expect half of the disgusting things she does. I couldhonestly keep my mouth way more shut if it was just a “behind the scenes Tomthing”. As said – it’s his mistake to make, and even though I’d still roll myeyes way into the back of my head at the lack of brain functioning he’sexemplifying on a daily basis, I’d still be able to not be this vocal about it if it were just a “Tom thing”. The problem isthough – this isn’t just a Tom thing any longer (if it ever was at all). Thefact that I’m furious and ranting about it left and right openly is because Tokio Hotel lets Tom’s girlfriend involveherself into the band’s affairs. That’s the reason I even wrote the entireSummer Camp Essay, and I see now that it was a sort of foreshadowing of graverthings to come.Can you believe it, I’m finally getting to your point lol. Now let us address thesestupidities one by one.Tokio Hotel may have started as a hobby, something that all four of them lovedto do above everything else and “just happened to turn into their job”. But atthe end of the day, a dream job is still a job. I’m pretty damn sure it isfrowned upon in any other setting or situation to just drag your “significantother” to your workplace, and let them effectivelyinterfere with your job policies. Seeing how the nature of their job is, I’mhonestly fine when it comes to family/girlfriends/friends or such visitingtheir concerts. If I would be in their shoes, I most definitely would have donethe same. Pretty sure most anyone would – who doesn’t want to share their art not only with strangers, but withpeople who are closest to them in life as well! I know I would! What I would never, though, is stoop as low as tobreak my professionalism and have my family/girlfriends/friends or such 1. SIGN MY DAMN POSTERS.Not only did she do that, she also clearly provocatively and without anyreasoning whatsoever signed the poster with hissurname and not even her own, even though she clearly keeps on signing hernormal everyday autographs with her “established” name. Anyone who has thebrain capacity to count to ten can understand that such is done for thepurposes of drama, and portrays nothing less but a toxic possessiveness of ateenage girl who needs to “mark her territory”. And such is coming from a supposedlyestablished 46 year old woman. The behavior exhibited just leaves mespeechless. And I am all the more concerned when I see people defending such occurrenceswith the adjectives of “cute,” stating furthermore that it’s “not a big deal”.How about you tell that this “isn’t a big deal” to a potential someone who wasonly on a VIP once, when this is the sort of memory they’d be left with at theend of the day?Of course some of us – a lot of us – come to the gigs more than once, andactually have a shit ton of VIP packages. But not everyone is that lucky, andnot everyone is willing or able to spend that much money on the band. It isdistressing for me to think that someone might have gotten this one opportunityto meet them, but then at the end of the day took home a poster that was signedby, quite honestly, a random person who has nothingto do with the band or their own personalexperience with the four men. It is beyond my understanding how the members canclaim to be oh-so-professional, but then let something like this slidecompletely.Half of me honesty hopes that she’s done it in secret. At least in that versionof the events, the band would have a “redeeming way out”, seeing how it wouldhave been done behind their backs. Somehow though, I kind of doubt that is thecase. And that’s what honestly gets me pressed the most. The sheer thought thatthey’d be willing to – in any way, shape or form – give a complete outsider any sort of autonomy when it comes to“band things”. And it would be even worse if they’d find such to be “funny” atthe end of the day, if we ever addressed the matter with them.See, realizing that Heidi Klum is toxic is one thing, because (newsflash) Idon’t care about Heidi Klum. It is,though, entirely something else when the guys let her maneuver her way insidethe band. Even if manipulated into it, they still most likely seem to give herthe freedom of doing almost whatever the fuck she wants, and to think of them – the people I actually do care about – to be this misguided, and this unprotective when it comes to all matters Tokio Hotel… see that’s what actually gets me going.At this point, it really feels as though Klum’s just testing her limits to seehow far she can go before someone within the band circle starts to question hermotives, and tell her that she maybe shouldn’t get too involved with their business(not that it matters, because people like her have a prepared victim card theycan play at any time, so she’d get out of it as soon as she notices she’sreached said limit by claiming to be but a poor soul who meant no harm).Apparently, she can push fairly far though, seeing how2. HER KIDS WERE BROUGHT ON STAGE.This one seemed to have stirred up even some heated Pro!Heidi people out there,and albeit I’m sad it took this long for people to realize there’s muchfishiness attached to the smell she emits, it was still good to see it was awake-up call at least for some. Now whoever’s defending this is, in my book, honestly just gross. It would be one thing ifthe kids would express the wish to go on stage themselves, but judging by theirreactions – so from just standing there awkwardly not knowing what to do, tostraight up hiding from the crowd – didthey really? But you know what, scratch that, for the sake of theargument, let’s pretend no adult person is as disturbed as to suggest such athing themselves (cough)… Even if this wasa longing of the kids’ own free will… who in their right fucking mind wouldever allow that? Who thought itwould be a brilliant idea to throw on stage some (give or take) ten year olds,only to be screamed at by a mass of people in a language they do not understand, being surrounded bypeople they do not know. Not tomention no-one could have predicted thepublic’s reaction??? Of course the general consensus is that it would becompletely disgusting to boo at actualkids, because at the end of the day, none of what the adults surroundingthem do is their fault at all… but it stillcould have happened. And given how everyone most likely knows that Klumisn’t really popular in our community, shouldn’t they have thought about the repercussionsof their actions before putting sucha plan in gear? This lack of brain function is completely beyond me.Whether it was the kids themselves asking for it and no one rejected them;Tom’s idea for wanting to please Heidi; Heidi’s own messed up concept; orsomething else entirely… my question is still all the same: how about someone thinks of the children’s wellbeing,instead of parading them around like circus animals? Yeah, people mostly complained about this because the VIP’s were coldly toldoff as secondary as soon as the kids got involved. But I just wanted to saythis honestly goes well beyond the argument of “people paying a 1000€ to beable to have the best day of their lives, only to be told they have literallyno priority above the kids who were there out of what seemed to be pressurefrom Heidi Klum to get the spotlight she so desperately thinks she keeps lacking”.It’s not just about money. It’s about so much more than just money. To prove a point and for the sake of this essay though, I’ll still bring thisother argument up too:Look, I am of a firm belief that buying a VIP buys you – first and foremost – anexperience, and only then (assecondary) the contents of whatever the package one chooses to do includes. Andexperiences as such can obviously vary. Sometimes you’ll see the band be in agood mood, but sometimes you’ll get the vibe that they seem kind of down and uninterested.Honestly, all of those are fine by me personally. Even if I meet the band onone of their “down” days, I’d still find it beyond interesting, because Irealized at the very beginning already that I’m investing in something that iswell beyond just “a purchase,” and has many differentials in its equation – asmany as there are human emotions. You can’t exactly purchase good mood, and so youcan’t ever expect everything to be perfect and smooth, because you’re buyingyourself quality time with real life, actual, flesh and blood people, who canexperience all and every single emotion you toocan experience yourself: from despair to complete euphoria and everything inbetween. I think most people actually realize this and don’t mind it too much if theguys are moody – mostly because they rarely show it anyway, keeping up theirprofessional mask and making sure everyone is enjoying their experience to thefullest. That’s honestly such a tough part of their job, and we probably don’ttell them enough how much we appreciate that they do their best all the time to“meet everyone’s expectations,” even when they could honestly just say “fuckit”. Only… they kind of said their deepestand ugliest “fuck it” when they allapparently in unity agreed, that they have no problem if some individualsinterfere with their fans’ experience. Individuals to whom the concept of beingthere literally meant little to nothing. Because it’s not like thoseindividuals were on stage with their four favorite people in the whole world.Because those individuals haven’t been saved by their music again and again for15 years straight. Because to those individuals – even if they ended up havingfun (which they actually did not, so that’s even WORSE) – standing there wouldonly mean two minutes of semi-fun and euphoria, while to some of the fans,those two minutes would mean the wholeentire world, an experience they would never forget and always cherish deeply.So no matter how you take it, this is about way more than just one grand. It’sabout what the band was conveying to its fandom when they allowed this tohappen. It’s about how it felt as though they themselves don’t grasp theconcept of how much this means to some people. Of being ignorant on how much ofan impact they truly had on us in the years of our lives that we devoted tothem. About marking a clear void between the two fractures of “us” and “them,”putting themselves on a higher pedestal. Not to mention the fractures seem tobe opening up in between themselves as well, with other3. PEOPLE THAT ARE CLOSE TO THE BAND NOT BEING THAT ACCEPTING OF KLUM EITHERThe following includes both my personal experience, as well as experiences offriends that have been to concerts with and without me though the entire tour.While I have not seen Klum in Munich, (because I did not want to see her in Munich, and didn’t bother to turn my head evenremotely, because I just wanted to enjoy my time), my friends have all told mewhat I would suspect would be the case anyway, so you’re completely right onthe cold bitch-facing throughout the concert. Klum only ever cracks a propersmile when someone pokes her to ask for a selfie, finally satisfied that she’dgotten her share of the attention she so much craves and desires. Not even forjust the gig I’ve been to, but for the rest of them that are happening rightnow – people have all been telling me pretty much the same thing, again andagain, and there’s even been videos of her during the concerts to support theseclaims. Claims of “film, bitch-face, rinse and repeat”. Occasional jump andclap to not seem too out of place, maybe, but ones that aren’t even remotelyovertaken with any sense of pride or overflowing joy.One would expect of Mrs.ObsessedWithTheSurnameKaulitz to at least sing alongwith the songs, but she can barely manage Melancholic Paradise lyrics out ofher throat. Not to be prickly now – I’m not saying that that knowing TokioHotel songs by heart would or should be an indicator of the “true love” sheclaims to be experiencing towards Tom, but seeing the contrast between her andGustav’s wife or Georg’s girlfriend in this regard is just baffling. Not evenfor the fact that the two of them don’tseem to possess an apparently unstoppable itch when it comes to oversharingtheir enthusiasm on social media, but for the pure fact that they just plainobviously don’t have to create a social media hoax in order to portray theirgenuine happiness. Such namely always clearly shines on their proud faces,while Klum is the living example of what those girls who get front row looklike, who spend literally 2 hours of their ENTIRE concert just filming Tom fromup close, because apparently having 200gb of HD thirst footage of your iphonejust means so much more to some individuals than just enjoying and feeling the actual music seep through theirveins. But I digress.I didn’t really think too much about what either side of the parenthood isdoing – like you, I have heard mixed reports on that regard, because I know forsure the both mothers got along pretty well when they visited the concert inCologne, while on other occasions, fans have reported it might’ve not been likethat at all. All in all, I’m not bothering with them a lot, because no matterwhat their perceptions of their kids’ relationship is, it doesn’t seem to methey’ll have any sort of proper influence over it. The only thing I think I canpretty confidently claim is that both of the Gs partners aren’t all too fond ofher. You always see them separate from her on the gigs they do happen to attendtogether, and I haven’t seen them interact even once on Camp where there wereplenty of opportunities for them to do so.Besides that, everyone else is honestly still a damn mystery to me. All the wayfrom Bill and Andreas, to the Gs themselves – I still have no idea if they’rereally just that dumb to not noticethe very clear toxic patterns she is exhibiting, or if they just choose toignore the matter and let it slide again and again because Tom is, as of now,pretty much untouchable when it comes to the topic of her. Anon, I’m honestly dumbfounded, when it comes to this, Ireally am. Because even though I have pretty solid theories as to how Tom endedup being in this situation he’s in, I have still yet to find explanations forothers to not point out how disturbing it all is in retrospective.My options? They’re either:a) all just as manipulated as he is,b) all really lacking in the department of any sort of emotional intelligenceorc) their hands are actually tied, as they let him ride off his inexplicable exhilaration.But let’s be honest, what are the chances that everyone is faling for her tricks? What are the chances that everyone is emotionally backwards? My bet is that at least someone is seeing what’s going on here, but they just can’t do shit because Tom is so set to be stuck in his idealism.While we’re at this “undying euphoria” of his, can you just let me quicklybarge in with a major pet peeve I’m experiencing with Tom recently? Namely thefact of how he keeps glorifying Heidi as his “one and only true love,” and “somethingthat’s never happened to me before” and all the talk about how “the happiestday of his life is yet to come”. Ex-fucking-cuse me? I love Tom’s not-all-that-quirky-little-twelve-year-old-humorpersonality he pulls sometimes, but exclaiming all that just makes him seem beyond childish. In a way that is, to mepersonally, just very unpleasant. Irealize that he might have been fucked over and hurt more than we can possibly imagine,but to claim so impulsively and nonchalantly that “this is the first time he’sever been in love,” while being in a longass relationship before and even marryingbefore is just beyond disturbing. You can never take lessons from yourpast if you don’t learn to accept it, and this gives me all the more proof thatTom never really did processwhatever has happened between him and his ex-wife (which honestly doesn’t comeas a surprise). I’m stuck between being disappointed, because I though he hadit in him to work through his demons, sad for him that he doesn’t seem to havethe ability to do any sort of soul-searching, and just plain angry that he hasthe audacity to just ignore such a huge chunk of his life as if it didn’thappen whatsoever. Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I guess I might touch up on the fact thatshe4. SEEMS TO BE RANDOMLY INTRUDING VARIOUS Q&ASWhich people surprisingly also seem to be “okay with,” simply because the Gs’partners are both also sometimes present. Well guess what, even when the othertwo are listening in to a Q&A, it really isn’t the most professional. But atleast they have the decency to notshowcase a moment that was meant to be private to 6 million people. Weunderstand, the mighty Klum is above the petty rules of the peasants, no need to keep on ruining the only possibleprivate moments fans ever get to have with the band. “But what’s beenruined? You still get your Q&A, you still get your picture, what are youcomplaining about?” I hear people ask. I mean, first of all – the picture to meis just a little extra cherry on top which I can totally live without anyway(especially if it’s a solo one, seeing how they are really pressed about group picturesthis time around, and that’s the only one actually worth having in my book). Theactual reason for which I’m buying these VIPs are the Q&As. I love to talkto the guys, and I love it when they are raw, and completely unfiltered, anduncensored, and sincere with their fans, and when their appreciation for usactually sitting there and giving them good conversations comes through. Throw in a Heidi, and what do you get? Do peoplereally think their answers wouldn’t sway from what they could have been withouther presence? Do people really think Tom would be as genuine in his answers ifshe’d be lurking from the shadows? Do people really think she wouldn’t start pullingtheir attention from fans towards her eventually if she so wished? I’ve seen ithappen once on Camp, so I’ve no doubt she’d do it again if she simply felt likeit. And that’s just purely a no-go. Let them work. It’s half an hour of a day.Let the fans have their moment with their favorite artist. Stop intrusively insertingyourself in every situation that is humanly possible of inserting yourselfinto. This fandom doesn’t care about you. Get over yourself.I bet I’ll be able to give you way more emotionally charged info in that regardafter Saturday, where she’s almost bound to make a scene, seeing how it’s herbirthday.Ah, Saturday. A thought that should genuinely excite me. A Tokio Hotel concert,a meet and greet even! Tomorrow! Precious moments with the band that I’ve beenfollowing for more than half of my lifenow. Meeting people that have inspired me to become what I am, taught methat being me is enough.And so tell me, why do I feel anxiousnesswhere there should be happiness? Whyis my first thought “oh no,” instead of “fuck yes”? Why do I just keep thinkinghow “I don’t want this to be made into a random circus about a random assperson,” and how I desperately “crave to simply enjoy my show, with my music,and my band, nothing else”. What is the reason behind me being concerned about going to a TH concertinstead of being out of this worldexcited to the point of denial as I’ve always been?Well, your answer has a name and a surname. And she’s pushing this fandomfurther away from the band, one person at a time.I won’t even go into the stealing a M&G photo and editing out the fan part.I’m exhausted. If by now people haven’t caught up on her sheer deranged stateof mind, then it’s beyond me. All I can ask of you now, anon, is to cross yourfingers for me, and hope that I end up this tour on that same high note that Iwanted it to end, even if I picked the utmost worst date to do so. And crossthem then some further, in case it all goes south and they bring her out onstage and want to make me sing happy birthday to her, making everyone feelactually obliged and required to give two flying fucks about her. Because then,I’ll need all the willpower in the world to not get drunk and just tell themoff, speaking honestly about how what they’re doing is plain unprofessional,and that I want my 4 member band back, because I never fucking signed up for a5th one.Sorry if this is too much of a mess or didn’t exactly go into any psychological-research if that’s what you were expecting. If you have further sub-questions (want me to further elaborate on the manipulative behavior maybe), or want me to have a go at specifically just the parent issue, do let me know, and I’ll be sure to give it some more thought and answer further. But right now, it just really felt good to vent, so thanks for giving me that opportunity nonnie! And thank you for appreciating my posts!

[ofhowls]

PSA – on myself !

hi, okay, i’ve had a good night’s sleep and in my dreams and the rest of the morning, i have reflected. and, i’m gonna be honest with all of you, my habit of giving my two cents when it isn’t needed is… stupid, to say the least. i would’ve liked to think i did more good than harm ( especially when it came to my whole slave rp crusade, which i’m realising might be the only thing of value i did for this community ) but that appears to definitely not be the case. i posted an apology for some things said about a year ago though i can’t find it now with my blogs gone. i’m also assuming it was a subpar post regardless. 

so, whether you like me or not, i still feel the need to apologise – so if you feel that some of the things i’ve said has had a negative affect on you or the community, then click below. 

i won’t bring up everything i’ve ever said because honestly, i can’t remember it all. but i will mention some things that have been mentioned last night.

i. tw pedophilia // i’m not good at words. i’m very bad at them, actually. i have a whole lot of trouble articulating my thoughts and usually, most of the time, it comes out completely wrong. i won’t defend my pov ( like i did last night ) because it is a topic i haven’t thought of in ages and an opinion i shouldn’t have stuck with without proper reconsideration. i’m always quick to defend myself, you know? but in this political climate and the way “ minor attracted people ” ( saying that with the most sarcastic of quotations ) are attempting to be apart of the lgbt community… my previous opinion on the matter is absolutely whack. sure, i think help should be offered by therapists and psychologists and all of the professionals in the world. but my previous point was maybe not crucify people with paraphilias in general areas such as tumblr and twitter and whatever. because it will keep them from getting the help needed, but most importantly, prevent any children getting hurt if they don’t. 

but that was wrong. like, completely. clearly, shaming and ridiculing and reporting is the only way to deal with those who see no wrong in their doings. my attention was always shifted towards that do and that was because of a documentary i watched sometime ago. it’s obvious the former, those who think their attraction is valid and healthy, make up the majority of these people. my point of view was skewed based on a singular source and that’s messed up. i realise now that those who know their attraction is wrong will seek help without me coddling them, and my posts would only encourage those who don’t, to be more open & proud about it. i apologise for it seeming that i was accepting pedophiles and their attraction into the community, because that was most definitely not my intention. i have no excuses for this and i will educate myself more, with recent and relevant information, before i ever try and speak on the matter again. especially on a public forum. 

ii. ableism tw // i was diagnosed with autism when i was about eighteen years old. that was very late. and up until that point, i was dealing with a tons of misinformation regarding the people on the spectrum and my own shock & confusion over the diagnosis given. and though that’s not an excuse, it’s also not the reason i said what i said. if you know me, at all, you’ll know that i’m very much obsessed with being an individual and getting a rise outta people. way more back then than now. but that’s who i am. i hopped onto a trend i deemed stupid and attacked it from every angle, not quite thinking of the implication behind the words that i said. 

i realise, later, that why i choose the autistic example might be because of my own issues with it. at the time. over the past two years, i’ve grown so much regarding my identity and i finally feel comfortable, and proud, in my own skin and with my autism. there used to be a time where i hid it and made comments on how ~ i was different ~ , somehow, and i can gladly say that’s not me anymore. i’m very sorry for what i said because i realise how hurtful that must’ve been to the rest of the community. me being autistic myself is no excuse and i know what kind of effect a commentary like that would have on others. especially those who were struggling with it like myself.

iii. every tw under the sun // i’m gonna be honest with y’all, once again my edginess came into play. my need to open my big fat mouth for no other reason other than i could. that post, especially given just how ignorant a lot of the community is on issues mentioned, myself included on some, is bad. it’s a bad take that is bad. and it’s quite possibly the stupidest thing i’ve ever written/read. i know so many writers who have refused to do research and me going up there and saying “ that’s okay, you can do what you want! ” … no. i still believe there’s freedom to write whatever you want, though – but to an extent. there’s a limit that shouldn’t be crossed and that’s the limit i attempted to bend in the post i made. at the time, i think, i felt entitled to have this opinion due to the minorities i’m myself included in. but that’s also a real bad take. i did see people’s point of views then but i think i failed to apologise once more. i’m bad at that, and it’s something i’m working on. 

anyways, to the topic at hand. we need to make people take more responsibility in this community and although i’m getting a whole bunch thrown at me at once, at the moment, i’m a bit grateful for it. i’ve realised thanks to these things being brought back up, that i didn’t apologise and i didn’t take responsibility – and i should’ve. i said things on a public platform that actively reassured people, who should not have been reassured, of their place in this community. racism, homophobia, TRANSPHOBIA, and pedophilia, are among the things that have no place here. i fought so much against the slave roleplays and their opinion on how ~ it’s writing, freedom of speech, and yadada ~ was WRONG. yet, i turned around and wrote a post like that? it was a bad, and hypocritical, take indeed. and one i thoroughly apologise for. 

vi. racism tw // once upon a time, i defended a friend’s roleplay without much knowledge other than ‘ it’s my friends, i have to ! ’ i have the lowest of iq’s, if you can’t tell. anyways. i think it was called siouxfalls, or something like that, and we found out that it was the name of a native tribe. i thought, personally as a white little bitch, that it was no big deal. who cared! ( lots of people, but i really only paid attention to the anons i got… which was… stupid ) and thus, i went out of my way to defend a friend of mine. i didn’t read the plot, i barely looked at the roleplay. i involved myself in a situation i had no clue about, and took it from there. i used a large following and a huge amount of traffic on my blog, to shit on people with genuine concern. there’s no excuse for that! i kept this up for hours, and anons swarmed to my inbox to poke fun at it, too. and i thought, hey, if anons are cool with it – that must mean i’m in the right. i wasn’t. 

there came a time where the other admin of the roleplay, the one i hardly knew, leapt to their roleplay’s defence. in their, very, long post about the matter – they mentioned that, hey, we aren’t forgetting about natives! in fact! there’s gonna be a plot drop about all of those slaughtered there! and that… was yikes. i backed out of the conversation when that happened. and that also a bad decision! i should’ve stuck around, spoken to this person i actually had access to – and 1. realised my own wrongdoings for the night, and 2. used the audience i had to correct myself and draw attention to an even bigger issue. i didn’t. i let it go, hoping no one would remember. i was in a shitty position of allowing racist subtext into the community and diminishing the concern of people of color, and i sincerely apologise. i was a 15 minute of fame whore and i didn’t bother with the feelings of others. i was, in all honesty, a garbage person. and i take full responsibility for that. 

v. no tw because this is more of a general statement // i am sure there are more specific things that i’ve done and that i’ve said, but with the sheer amount of garbage that came out of my mouth, i have trouble recalling anything significant. i would gladly accept receipts and reminders from everyone and anyone. i’m not asking you to coddle me, but i really do wish you’d help me take some responsibility. memory like a goldfish and like 5k posts of bullshit just don’t add up. anyways. since my latest ‘ jayden said something fucking stupid ’ discourse was about a year ago, i feel like i have grown. tumblr, for me, was a very bad place to be in many ways. i’m not saying the community is toxic but it was to me. i like attention and i like getting asks and i like putting my two cents out there. it created a whole bunch of issues and it gave me a bigger platform than i should’ve had. with my absence, which i’m also a bit grateful for, i spent more time on other social medias and i learned more about issues i never even began reading about on here. 

i’m not saying i’m the brightest now, either, but i’m definitely smarter. i didn’t come back to the rpc, with the exception of one or two posts, because i don’t feel like i should have an audience to barely formed opinions. and i’m not apologising now because it was all brought up but because it being brought up reminded me of damage i’d caused. i’d be an idiot to think it should be swept under the rug, because it shouldn’t! if it weren’t from the backslash of the rpc, i never would’ve second-guessed my opinions and reevaluated them, and that’s extremely important. it’s important to hold people accountable and it’s important to make sure apologies are made. i’m not asking for anyone to forgive me, because let’s be real, this was long overdue. though, i hope this has made it clear that my opinions aren’t the same as they once were and i genuinely am apologetic for damage done.

i don’t know if any of this was remotely coherent, but i hope it was? the anon feature is back on, and hopefully instead of racist commentary, it can be used for things more constructive. once again, no need to hold my hand, but if you feel like i’ve missed out on anything that should be addressed – please let me know! like i’m not the same dimwit i was a year ago. that’d be too freaking sad. anyways, once again, i apologise for what i’ve said and many lessons have been learned. believe me. 

[random-stitches]

Today has been a very, VERY long day. I’m going to forget several issues because frankly they’ve been buried under the pile of awfulness that was Today.

Work. Work was exhausting. It was one of those days where it feels like no one else but you is doing their job. Station staff not assisting wheelchairs on and off trains, so I had to. If I get off the train, you can bet your life we’re going to run late. 4 minute delay per wheelchair, because station staff weren’t doing their jobs. I just get so ANGRY because customers in wheelchairs NEED HELP. They can’t just step over the gap between the train and the platform. They need the ramp and they are entitled to assistance. Station staff don’t have many duties, and one of the most important is assisting less mobile customers. One poor older gentleman sat there, looking so lost and worried, like he thought the train was going to leave without him and he had no way of knowing who to talk to. Turns out he hadn’t been in a wheelchair long and he was just SO GRATEFUL I held the train and helped him on. He nearly cried. I did cry once I got back to my crew compartment.

My stupid piece of shit mobile phone has been fucking up all day while I was trying to chat to friends on Tumblr. The phone, combined with the shitty, buggy Tumblr ap made for a very frustrating experience. I keep threatening to factory-reset it. I will when I have a day off to fix it all back up again. But this is why i’m so reluctant and slow to RP, i don’t have decent equipment i can take with me on trains all day, and i get maybe three hours leisure time at home, during which i will be constantly interrupted by my parents.

Once I got home, I got a phone call from a friend of mine at work. Turns out some silly bitch has started a rumour about a friend and me. He’s engaged. But apparently a 30 second hug was a “lover’s embrace” that went on “easily ten minutes”. Firstly, ew. Secondly, 30 seconds cannot be stretched to ten minutes, I don’t care how unhinged you are. Thirdly, baseless rumours and accusations will get you reported. I’ve reported it, so has my friend. Apparently his face was “buried in my tits” when it was actually resting on my shoulder. The silly bitch obviously has nothing better to do than start hurtful rumours and start bullying people who don’t have any effect on her life whatsoever.

I put up with incessant bullying all the way through high school, I will not put up with it at work.

So I think I finally have a few minutes to myself to check social media on my laptop. BIG mistake. HUGE.

Plebiscite for Marriage equality. $122 MILLION. Our government has a spare $122 MILLION to spend on a non-binding postal opinion poll, but it doesn’t have money to pay the elderly a decent pension. Or fund drug/alcohol rehabilitation programs. Or do anything to help the homeless. The Marriage Act was changed in 2004 to be solely “between a man and a woman”. It took half an hour, and the Prime Minister did it himself. But to give people a basic human right; to give a significant portion of our community the right to get married? Ooohhh no, we can’t just CHANGE it, oooohhhhh no, we have to ask everyone’s opinion first. With a spare $122 MILLION that we aren’t going to do anything else with. Despite the fact they KNOW 70% of Australians will vote in favour. It’s already a foregone conclusion. We are also lagging behind damn near every other developed country in the world on this.

Email from the Electrician installing the lighting for my new house. I had attempted to pay an invoice via direct deposit a month ago, and it hadn’t gone through. No notification about it. Nothing. The electrician didn’t even bother to follow it up for a month. So that explains why the electrical work hadn’t been finished in my house. So I ran to the bank to get them to check my transaction history. Nothing. I somehow fucked it up and nothing went through. So I had them pay the invoice for me.

It has been an incredibly long, mentally and emotionally draining day. So fuck it, I’m not cooking. And the noodle bar across from the bank should have been open. I stood around waiting until ten minutes after they were supposed to open. Nothing. 

Starving, exhausted, upset, emotionally raw, I just sat in my car and checked Tumblr. Re-read a lovely message from a friend and just bawled my eyes out for a good ten minutes. All i did was send them enough money to get dinner out, but something so small to me meant so much to them and I just could not stop crying... So apparently all it takes to make me bawl after a long day is a few nice words.

Noodle bar still not open. Went to the thai place near my house instead. Got takeaway because i didn’t want anyone else looking at my blotchy awful face.

Got home, ambushed by my mother, who wanted to know why I had been crying, so I explained the whole lot to her, briefly mentioning the high school bullying thing (”I was bullied the whole way through high school, this is nothing new”), which she latches onto, missing the point entirely. She now wants to write a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper about it, despite the fact that her advice back then was “just ignore them and they’ll stop”, which she denies. Making a fuss about it now serves no purpose, I’ve already gone through therapy over it. Which Mum has also forgotten all about. And the high school bullying thing wasn’t even the POINT but of course, it’s useless trying to tell her that.

 So i am exhausted. I haven’t done any RP replies or anything fun for myself. I’m giving up on today and going to bed early. I’ll try to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow. God i need a holiday. 

[ramrodd]

Marco Rubio is the Poster Boy du jour for the Stupid Watergate

COMMENTARY:

The way to tell if a Republican was recruited by Newt Gingrich is that they are often very pretty, in a Barbie Doll kind of way, number one, like Marco Rubio and, two, in the final analysis, they were either dumber than dog shit before they were recruited and selected on than basis and/or, the process of becoming a Tea Party crypto-Nazi useful idiot, have become dumber than dog shit because they buy into the politics of Steve Bannon or they are really smart, like George Conway, but have found it expedient to pretend they are dumber than dog shit in order to make a lot of money.

Lindsey Graham falls into this category.

What about people like John McCain?  

I think, after the Keating 5, he was woke, in a #Blacklivesmatter kind of way. He didn't really understand how Supply-side economics works, but he has the typical Harvard religious faith in the theological righteousness of Capitalism, as opposed to the godless commie cocksuckers who embrace the economics of the Anti-Christ, Marxism. It was easy for him to connect the dots between the faces of the North Korean patriots who tortured him and Marxism. I feel his pain, but it's a connection he needed to undo, in “The Undoing Project” kind of way that Michael Lewis talks about. It's the business I am in, human high performance. Human peak performance is really outside my focus. I know how to coach for it, but its a bit too retail: my stuff is geared for a wholesale/community aspirational population. People who work their KSA's and burning desire to the point where they need coaching in peak performance began to focus on high performance as a state of being at the level of performance technology I offer. It's Ranger School stuff geared for small unit leadership in a purposeful community.

McCain is considered a RINO by the people in the MAGA hats. That's what those hats mean: you've bought into the Trump Program lock, stock and barrel and if you aren't letting asshole crypto-Nazis like Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh and Steve Bannon or asshole femi-Nazis like Kellyanne Conway, Laura Ingraham or Betsy Devos pull you around by your dick, then you are a RINO.

That the category McCain falls into in contrast to the House Freedom Caucus and asshole crypto-Nazi thugs like Jim Jordan and Stephen King and Newt Gingrich and Roger Stone. McCain wasn't afraid of anybody. Period. That's the thing that drew Lindsey Graham into his orbit: in a culture that operates like a Super Max captive audience, Tootsy Roll Graham sought out the baddest dog in the yard, because McCain had been there and done that. His problem was, he didn't know how to fix it.

I do. The final product is the Green New Deal, but there is a whole lot of undoing needs to be done by the American voter, regardless of ideological inclination before we can get to the Green New Deal in the 117 Congress. The 116th Congress is the Undoing Project and AOC is the way forward.

Here's the thing about Marco Rubio that demonstrates his core dumber-than-dogshit skill set required to work for Newt Gingrich, Steve Bannon and Mick Mulvaney. First of all, Mario is pretty in a Ricky Ricardo latin lover kind of way and he can be relied on to come out and promote the party line in some fairly predictable way. The party line is now turning against China because President Xi  isn't going to do a trade deal with Trump until he, Duck Ass Don, keeps his promise to Chairman Kim to get a GI haircut like Elvis as a personal performance surety to implement Lady Trump's Task Force Δ to her perfect satisfaction as a precondition to doing business. The GI hair cut. An outward sign that he, Trump, was engaged in the Memorandum of Understanding phase of a serious process of the zero-sum contracting you do with Marxists.

And Donald Duck Ass left Hanoi because he isn't about to get a GI haircut just to please his new girl friend: Kim Jung Un is no Delilah but Duck Ass Don is all Samson and intends to keep his super powers. He has a superstitious belief that he is invisible behind his hair and nobody can touch him.

So, any denuclearization and China Trade deal needs to wait to the 117 Congress, when the Green New Deal kicks in and Duck Ass Don is kicking those things to the curb and shifting his focus on invading Iran, which is the deal he made with Netanyahu at John Bolton's insistence. Bolton's relationship with the assassination of Kaddahfi is a big reason why Chairman Kim accelerated his nuke/ICBM programs during the Obama administration. Obama inherited Robert Kagan's “Liberal Interventionist” neo-con foreign policy and the Clinton State Department continued to implement regime change. Trump's connection to the Kremlin reassured Chairman Kim that he, Trump, wasn't going to implement's Obama's foreign policy, and Chairman Kim wants to do in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea what Vietnam has done, in terms of modifying their original Soviet Marxism into a Free Market Marxism that works very much like Hong Kong: different from the PRC's Harvard Marxism and naturally entrepreneurial from their French heritage.

And that's why Marco put out this statement. They are scrambling to find anything to recover the leverage they had over Obama and Nancy Pelosi before the Mueller Report emerged in the mix. The hard-core MAGA hat crowd in Congress are a lot like the Nazi submariners after the Happy Times, soldiering on but being sunk, one by one, by their own embrace of dog shit stupidity as a political agenda. And China is now an enemy, especially since Putin has gone long on the Yuan and dumped the eurodollar/green back, the favorite currency to the vast right-wing conspiracy working out of the cesspool of the GOP Deep State. Putin did this to pop the Trump Bubble driving the Bull Market on the NYSE. He doesn't want Trump re-elected unless he keeps his promise to Chairman Kim.

But here is the important stupidity contained in Rubio's commentary: the Belt and Road Initiative and the Green New Deal are the same thing: President Xi wants to import the Green New Deal to upgrade his Harvard Marxism to Democratic Socialism because that actually what Marxism had in mind without realizing America was already the leading edge of the on-going social engineering of the US Constituion that was evolving the Democratic Socialism FDR stumbled into in 1933 and Eisenhower doubled down on with his 1956 Presidential Platform.

A difference between McCain and Eisenhower is that Eisenhower knew his accusations of socialism against Truman were pure right-wing dog whistles he needed to use to get elected while McCain really believed socialism was evil. It's was a difference between USNA and USMA before Ayn Rand spoke at USMA. Things seem to have gone a little sideways at the Point since 1974. But that's a different problem.

President Moon in the Republic of Korea and President Xi in the PRC want to introduce Green New Deal by way of the PRC's Belt and Road Initiative. The one very smart thing Chairman is doing is going everywhere by train. He's not afraid of flying: he's making the point of his design for connection the dots between Seoul and Bejing with mass transportation. America needs to do exactly the same thing: restore the rail-road right-of-ways to a strategic grade sufficient to move armor anywhere between our boarders, a serious Trails-to-Rails/Trails upgrade. It will be good for the tourist business, among other things, to provide extensive public transportation as well as heavy cargo in order to shift about 25% of the throughput load on the interstate system onto rails. The interstate system was never intended to replace the railroads, but to augment their capacities. For various reasons, this has been neglected since the 60's and purposefully ignored since Reagan began to replace the Democratic Socialism he inherited with the Tory Socialism Rubio Marco and John McCain both represented.

Marco earned his place in Newt Gingrich's crypto-Nazi All Stars line up by being able to deliver this sort of drivel without having to think about it. In fact, actually thing about it, and not parroting the party line coming out of the Oval Office, is how you can become identified as as RINO or a progressive socialist terrorist. Bolton and Pompeo are using the sanctions against the Iranian oil to punish President Moon's South Korea for not forcing Chairman Kim to make a deal, but President Moon backs Chairman Kim 100% and the 117th Congress is only 633 days away.

Here is the message the adult leadership in the GOP needs to hear from Adam Schiff: if Duck Ass Don is re-elected, he will be impeached by Labor Day 2021. There is no hurry on this: as an Eisenhower Republican, Bill Weld is the sort of adult leadership the GOP had when I was growing up and I'd vote for him, Otherwise, I like Jay Inslee, because he is already implementing the Green New Deal as governor of Washington.

Marco Rubio is the Poster Boy du jour for the Stupid Watergate .

Personally, it's a toss up as to whether the National Review or Breitbart is the journal of record for the Stupid Watergate. Of course, FOX News is the voice of the Stupid Watergate.

[gibsongirlselections]

The Right Needs Their Own Boycott: Social Media

Usually we have to wait until the end of Lent for the torrent of articles by journalists flagellating themselves over their social media addictions. Easter came early (or is it late?) this year, however. Over at The Spectator USA, columnist Bridget Phetasy published an article aptly titled, “Twitter Has Stolen My Life.” In it, she meets her aged self on her deathbed. Bridget the Elder asks, “How do you feel about the time you spend on Twitter?” Bridget the Younger gives a mixed report. On the plus side, much of her professional and personal success is owed to social media. She’s an expert at promoting her “personal brand” in the digital age.

But there are downsides:

Well. Where do I begin? Like everyone, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. To be honest, I’ve always been skeptical of it and never really wanted to join in. Twitter is my fix, but you can insert any other social media platform you’re addicted to and what I’ll say will probably be true with minor variations.

The downside is that it robs me of joy.

That was my experience, too. I couldn’t have said it better myself: Twitter robbed me of my joy. That’s why, about three or four years ago, I decided to delete all of my social media accounts.

I haven’t looked back.

I’ve written about my opposition to Big Tech here and elsewhere. In short: social media makes you mean, stupid, impatient, and depressed. It takes a serious toll on your social, physical, and mental health.

Even the upsides given by Ms. Phetasy are cyclical. Sure, Twitter allowed her to flourish as a journalist in the Age of Twitter. But wouldn’t it be better if there was no Age of Twitter at all?

When it comes to social media, we all suffer from a weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome. We accept Twitter as a given and dare not imagine life without it. The most we can do is thank Big Twit for occasionally showering us with its favor. It’s like hearing some apparatchik say, “Yes, the Communist Party killed hundreds of millions of people and stole my humanity. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have gotten that cushy job in the Politburo without it!”

These confessions by social media addicts are always well-received by their readers. Ms. Phetasy’s article is currently the second-most read article on the Speccie website, and I expect it will overtake the first before it disappears into the blogosphere’s vast elephant graveyard. It’s obvious that many (perhaps most) Americans resent social media. But it’s as if they’re stuck in an abusive relationship: they want out, but they’re too afraid to change the locks.

***

Now, if this were only a matter of personal wellbeing, I’d be happy to keep playing up my Luddite schtick. The problem is that Big Tech, having successfully privatized the public square, uses its power to advance the progressive agenda.

Like the averse health effects of social media, this isn’t exactly breaking news. From censoring campaign ads to biased “fact-checking” to curating search results, Silicon Valley is openly working to undermine conservative and Republican causes. Surely, then, the sane thing for conservatives and Republicans to do would be to boycott social media.

And yet we don’t. We have voluntarily handed them the right to censor our political discourse. We know it’s wrong, both for ourselves and for our country. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to do anything about it.

This is why—despite my admiration for folks like Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren, who want to break up the Big Tech monopolies—I can’t endorse their efforts. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram aren’t really monopolies. They don’t use price controls to maintain their market dominance. The service they offer is totally, completely, 100 percent free to consumers.

What Senators Hawley and Warren (like Ms. Phetasy) actually resent is Americans’ total lack of self-control. Almost three-quarters of American adults use social media. If they wanted to, they could simply walk away. But they won’t. They lack the willpower.

Every time I turn on some right-wing television channel or log onto some right-wing website, I hear the conservative masses wailing at the lack of “free speech” on these social-media sites. Guess what, folks? Facebook and Twitter are private companies. So far as they’re concerned, you have no free speech. They’re not bound by the First Amendment. They have no Constitutional duty to represent your “viewpoint.” That’s like walking into a Catholic Church and demanding the freedom to give a sermon praising same-sex marriage. It’s like sitting down at a vegan restaurant and insisting on the right to BYO filet mignon. Private property doesn’t go away just because you find it inconvenient.

In fact, Jack Dorsey could ban Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, and Ben Shapiro from Twitter if he so chose. Why not? It’s his website. If that awesome power alarms you—and it absolutely should—then deactivate your account.

Herein lies the bitter truth. Conservatives lack any whiff of self-discipline. That’s why we can’t organize a boycott to save our lives, even though progressives have been delivering our business leaders’ heads on silver platters for at least sixteen years. It’s why we completely gave up the fight for traditional marriage the moment Obergefell v. Hodges was handed down. (In fact, Dear Leader has been assiduously marketing himself to the LGBT voting bloc in the runup to 2020.) We’re all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

***

Let’s draw a line in the sand. If we conservatives can’t bring ourselves even to delete our Twitter and Facebook accounts, we deserve to lose. If we can’t reclaim the public square from progressive oligarchs, then they ought to rule the day. If we can’t break the ties that bind us to those Silicon Valley moguls—at no cost to ourselves—then we’ll get what we deserve.

“I have not yet begun to fight!” cried John Paul Jones in 1779. Nor have we. We’ve not allowed ourselves to suffer the slightest inconvenience in the defense of our way of life. If we continue giving our implicit consent for the Dorseys and Zuckerbergs to police our political discussions, then we may as well surrender now.

If you God-fearing, freedom-loving patriots really wish to “reclaim the narrative” from the Left, then stop giving them carte blanche to set the parameters of acceptable opinion. And don’t switch to some “alternative” platform, like GAB or Parlor. Stop choosing the lesser of two evils. Make a rule for yourself now: no evil, at any time, for any reason.

Then, delete your accounts. Swear off social media forever. If we can’t make this one small sacrifice—not only for our own good, but for the good of our country—we will lose battle after battle in the Culture Wars. And we will deserve every humiliating blow.

Michael Warren Davis is the editor of Crisis Magazine. He is the author of The Reactionary Mind (Regnery, 2021).

The post The Right Needs Their Own Boycott: Social Media appeared first on The American Conservative.

[endenogatai]

Data experts on Facebook’s GDPR changes: Expect lawsuits

Make no mistake: Fresh battle lines are being drawn in the clash between data-mining tech giants and Internet users over people’s right to control their personal information and protect their privacy.

An update to European Union data protection rules next month — called the General Data Protection Regulation — is the catalyst for this next chapter in the global story of tech vs privacy.

A fairytale ending would remove that ugly ‘vs’ and replace it with an enlightened ‘+’. But there’s no doubt it will be a battle to get there — requiring legal challenges and fresh case law to be set down — as an old guard of dominant tech platforms marshal their extensive resources to try to hold onto the power and wealth gained through years of riding roughshod over data protection law.

Payback is coming though. Balance is being reset. And the implications of not regulating what tech giants can do with people’s data has arguably never been clearer.

The exciting opportunity for startups is to skate to where the puck is going — by thinking beyond exploitative legacy business models that amount to embarrassing blackboxes whose CEOs dare not publicly admit what the systems really do — and come up with new ways of operating and monetizing services that don’t rely on selling the lie that people don’t care about privacy.

  More than just small print

Right now the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation can take credit for a whole lot of spilt ink as tech industry small print is reworded en masse. Did you just receive a T&C update notification about a company’s digital service? Chances are it’s related to the incoming standard.

The regulation is generally intended to strengthen Internet users’ control over their personal information, as we’ve explained before. But its focus on transparency — making sure people know how and why data will flow if they choose to click ‘I agree’ — combined with supersized fines for major data violations represents something of an existential threat to ad tech processes that rely on pervasive background harvesting of users’ personal data to be siphoned biofuel for their vast, proprietary microtargeting engines.

This is why Facebook is not going gentle into a data processing goodnight.

Indeed, it’s seizing on GDPR as a PR opportunity — shamelessly stamping its brand on the regulatory changes it lobbied so hard against, including by taking out full page print ads in newspapers…

Here we are. Wow, what a fun thinking about all these years of debates with fb representatives telling me ‘consumers don’t want privacy rights anymore’ and ‘a startup (sic) like facebook shouldn’t be overburdened’. #GDPR #dataprotection #privacy https://t.co/gowYVvKjJf

— Jan Philipp Albrecht (@JanAlbrecht) April 15, 2018

This is of course another high gloss plank in the company’s PR strategy to try to convince users to trust it — and thus to keep giving it their data. Because — and only because — GDPR gives consumers more opportunity to lock down access to their information and close the shutters against countless prying eyes.

But the pressing question for Facebook — and one that will also test the mettle of the new data protection standard — is whether or not the company is doing enough to comply with the new rules.

One important point re: Facebook and GDPR is that the standard applies globally, i.e. for all Facebook users whose data is processed by its international entity, Facebook Ireland (and thus within the EU); but not necessarily universally — with Facebook users in North America not legally falling under the scope of the regulation.

Users in North America will only benefit if Facebook chooses to apply the same standard everywhere. (And on that point the company has stayed exceedingly fuzzy.)

It has claimed it won’t give US and Canadian users second tier status vs the rest of the world where their privacy is concerned — saying they’re getting the same “settings and controls” — but unless or until US lawmakers spill some ink of their own there’s nothing but an embarrassing PR message to regulate what Facebook chooses to do with Americans’ data. It’s the data protection principles, stupid.

Zuckerberg was asked by US lawmakers last week what kind of regulation he would and wouldn’t like to see laid upon Internet companies — and he made a point of arguing for privacy carve outs to avoid falling behind, of all things, competitors in China.

Which is an incredibly chilling response when you consider how few rights — including human rights — Chinese citizens have. And how data-mining digital technologies are being systematically used to expand Chinese state surveillance and control.

The ugly underlying truth of Facebook’s business is that it also relies on surveillance to function. People’s lives are its product.

That’s why Zuckerberg couldn’t tell US lawmakers to hurry up and draft their own GDPR. He’s the CEO saddled with trying to sell an anti-privacy, anti-transparency position — just as policymakers are waking up to what that really means.

  Plus ça change?

Facebook has announced a series of updates to its policies and platform in recent months, which it’s said are coming to all users (albeit in ‘phases’). The problem is that most of what it’s proposing to achieve GDPR compliance is simply not adequate.

Coincidentally many of these changes have been announced amid a major data mishandling scandal for Facebook, in which it’s been revealed that data on up to 87M users was passed to a political consultancy without their knowledge or consent.

It’s this scandal that led Zuckerberg to be perched on a booster cushion in full public view for two days last week, dodging awkward questions from US lawmakers about how his advertising business functions.

He could not tell Congress there wouldn’t be other such data misuse skeletons in its closet. Indeed the company has said it expects it will uncover additional leaks as it conducts a historical audit of apps on its platform that had access to “a large amount of data”. (How large is large, one wonders… )

But whether Facebook’s business having enabled — in just one example — the clandestine psychological profiling of millions of Americans for political campaign purposes ends up being the final, final straw that catalyzes US lawmakers to agree their own version of GDPR is still tbc.

Any new law will certainly take time to formulate and pass. In the meanwhile GDPR is it.

The most substantive GDPR-related change announced by Facebook to date is the shuttering of a feature called Partner Categories — in which it allowed the linking of its own information holdings on people with data held by external brokers, including (for example) information about people’s offline activities.

Evidently finding a way to close down the legal liabilities and/or engineer consent from users to that degree of murky privacy intrusion — involving pools of aggregated personal data gathered by goodness knows who, how, where or when — was a bridge too far for the company’s army of legal and policy staffers.

Other notable changes it has so far made public include consolidating settings onto a single screen vs the confusing nightmare Facebook has historically required users to navigate just to control what’s going on with their data (remember the company got a 2011 FTC sanction for “deceptive” privacy practices); rewording its T&Cs to make it more clear what information it’s collecting for what specific purpose; and — most recently — revealing a new consent review process whereby it will be asking all users (starting with EU users) whether they consent to specific uses of their data (such as processing for facial recognition purposes).

As my TC colleague Josh Constine wrote earlier in a critical post dissecting the flaws of Facebook’s approach to consent review, the company is — at very least — not complying with the spirit of GDPR’s law.

Indeed, Facebook appears pathologically incapable of abandoning its long-standing modus operandi of socially engineering consent from users (doubtless fed via its own self-reinforced A/B testing ad expertise). “It feels obviously designed to get users to breeze through it by offering no resistance to continue, but friction if you want to make changes,” was his summary of the process.

But, as we’ve pointed out before, concealment is not consent.

To get into a few specifics, pre-ticked boxes — which is essentially what Facebook is deploying here, with a big blue “accept and continue” button designed to grab your attention as it’s juxtaposed against an anemic “manage data settings” option (which if you even manage to see it and read it sounds like a lot of tedious hard work) — aren’t going to constitute valid consent under GDPR.

Nor is this what ‘privacy by default’ looks like — another staple principle of the regulation. On the contrary, Facebook is pushing people to do the opposite: Give it more of their personal information — and fuzzing why it’s asking by bundling a range of usage intentions.

The company is risking a lot here.

In simple terms, seeking consent from users in a way that’s not fair because it’s manipulative means consent is not being freely given. Under GDPR, it won’t be consent at all. So Facebook appears to be seeing how close to the wind it can fly to test how regulators will respond.

Safe to say, EU lawmakers and NGOs are watching.

  “Yes, they will be taken to court”

“Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment,” runs one key portion of GDPR.

Now compare that with: “People can choose to not be on Facebook if they want” — which was Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer, Rob Sherman’s, paper-thin defense to reporters for the lack of an overall opt out for users to its targeted advertising.

Data protection experts who TechCrunch spoke to suggest Facebook is failing to comply with, not just the spirit, but the letter of the law here. Some were exceeding blunt on this point.

“I am less impressed,” said law professor Mireille Hildebrandt discussing how Facebook is railroading users into consenting to its targeted advertising. “It seems they have announced that they will still require consent for targeted advertising and refuse the service if one does not agree. This violates [GDPR] art. 7.4 jo recital 43. So, yes, they will be taken to court.”

Facebook says users must accept targeted ads even under new EU law: NO THEY MUST NOT, there are other types of advertising, subscription etc. https://t.co/zrUgsgxtwo

— Mireille Hildebrandt (@mireillemoret) April 18, 2018

“Zuckerberg appears to view the combination of signing up to T&Cs and setting privacy options as ‘consent’,” adds cyber security professor Eerke Boiten. “I doubt this is explicit or granular enough for the personal data processing that FB do. The default settings for the privacy settings certainly do not currently provide for ‘privacy by default’ (GDPR Art 25).

“I also doubt whether FB Custom Audiences work correctly with consent. FB finds out and retains a small bit of personal info through this process (that an email address they know is known to an advertiser), and they aim to shift the data protection legal justification on that to the advertisers. Do they really then not use this info for future profiling?”

That looming tweak to the legal justification of Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature — a product which lets advertisers upload contact lists in a hashed form to find any matches among its own user-base (so those people can be targeted with ads on Facebook’s platform) — also looks problematical.

Here the company seems to be intending to try to claim a change in the legal basis, pushed out via new terms in which it instructs advertisers to agree they are the data controller (and it is merely a data processor). And thereby seek to foist a greater share of the responsibility for obtaining consent to processing user data onto its customers.

However such legal determinations are simply not a matter of contract terms. They are based on the fact of who is making decisions about how data is processed. And in this case — as other experts have pointed out — Facebook would be classed as a joint controller with any advertisers that upload personal data. The company can’t use a T&Cs change to opt out of that.

Wishful thinking is not a reliable approach to legal compliance.

  Fear and manipulation of highly sensitive data

Over many years of privacy-hostile operation, Facebook has shown it has a major appetite for even very sensitive data. And GDPR does not appear to have blunted that.

Let’s not forget, facial recognition was a platform feature that got turned off in the EU, thanks to regulatory intervention. Yet here Facebook is now trying to use GDPR as a route to process this sensitive biometric data for international users after all — by pushing individual users to consent to it by dangling a few ‘feature perks’ at the moment of consent.

Veteran data protection and privacy consultant, Pat Walshe, is unimpressed.

“The sensitive data tool appears to be another data grab,” he tells us, reviewing Facebook’s latest clutch of ‘GDPR changes’. “Note the subtlety. It merges ‘control of sharing’ such data with FB’s use of the data “to personalise features and products”. From the info available that isn’t sufficient to amount to consent for such sensitive data and nor is it clear folks can understand the broader implications of agreeing.

“Does it mean ads will appear in Instagram? WhatsApp etc? The default is also set to ‘accept’ rather than ‘review and consider’. This is really sensitive data we’re talking about.”

“The face recognition suggestions are woeful,” he continues. “The second image — is using an example… to manipulate and stoke fear — “we can’t protect you”.

“Also, the choices and defaults are not compatible with [GDPR] Article 25 on data protection by design and default nor Recital 32… If I say no to facial recognition it’s unclear if other users can continue to tag me.”

Of course it goes without saying that Facebook users will keep uploading group photos, not just selfies. What’s less clear is whether Facebook will be processing the faces of other people in those shots who have not given (and/or never even had the opportunity to give) consent to its facial recognition feature.

People who might not even be users of its product.

But if it does that it will be breaking the law. Yet Facebook does indeed profile non-users — despite Zuckerberg’s claims to Congress not to know about its shadow profiles. So the risk is clear.

It can’t give non-users “settings and controls” not to have their data processed. So it’s already compromised their privacy — because it never gained consent in the first place.

New Mexico Representative Ben Lujan made this point to Zuckerberg’s face last week and ended the exchange with a call to action: “So you’re directing people that don’t even have a Facebook page to sign up for a Facebook page to access their data… We’ve got to change that.”

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 11: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. This is the second day of testimony before Congress by Zuckerberg, 33, after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

But nothing in the measures Facebook has revealed so far, as its ‘compliance response’ to GDPR, suggest it intends to pro-actively change that.

Walshe also critically flags how — again, at the point of consent — Facebook’s review process deploys examples of the social aspects of its platform (such as how it can use people’s information to “suggest groups or other features or products”) as a tactic for manipulating people to agree to share religious affiliation data, for example.

“The social aspect is not separate to but bound up in advertising,” he notes, adding that the language also suggests Facebook uses the data.

Again, this whiffs a whole lot more than smells like GDPR compliance.

“I don’t believe FB has done enough,” adds Walshe, giving a view on Facebook’s GDPR preparedness ahead of the May 25 deadline for the framework’s application — as Zuckerberg’s Congress briefing notes suggested the company itself believes it has. (Or maybe it just didn’t want to admit to Congress that U.S. Facebook users will get lower privacy standards vs users elsewhere.)

“In fact I know they have not done enough. Their business model is skewed against privacy — privacy gets in the way of advertising and so profit. That’s why Facebook has variously suggested people may have to pay if they want an ad free model & so ‘pay for privacy’.”

“On transparency, there is a long way to go,” adds Boiten. “Friend suggestions, profiling for advertising, use of data gathered from like buttons and web pixels (also completely missing from “all your Facebook data”), and the newsfeed algorithm itself are completely opaque.”

“What matters most is whether FB’s processing decisions will be GDPR compliant, not what exact controls are given to FB members,” he concludes.

US lawmakers also pumped Zuckerberg on how much of the information his company harvests on people who have a Facebook account is revealed to them when they ask for it — via its ‘Download your data’ tool.

His answers on this appeared to intentionally misconstrue what was being asked — presumably in a bid to mask the ugly reality of the true scope and depth of the surveillance apparatus he commands. (Sometimes with a few special ‘CEO privacy privileges’ thrown in — like being able to selectively retract just his own historical Facebook messages from conversations, ahead of bringing the feature to anyone else.)

‘Download your Data’ is clearly partial and self-serving — and thus it also looks very far from being GDPR compliant.

  Not even half the story

Facebook is not even complying with the spirit of current EU data protection law on data downloads. Subject Access Requests give individuals the right to request not just the information they have voluntarily uploaded to a service, but also personal data the company holds about them; Including giving a description of the personal data; the reasons it is being processed; and whether it will be given to any other organizations or people.

Facebook not only does not include people’s browsing history in the info it provides when you ask to download your data — which, incidentally, its own cookies policy confirms it tracks (via things like social plug-ins and tracking pixels on millions of popular websites etc etc) — it also does not include a complete list of advertisers on its platform that have your information.

Instead, after a wait, it serves up an eight-week snapshot. But even this two month view can still stretch to hundreds of advertisers per individual.

If Facebook gave users a comprehensive list of advertisers’ access to their information the number of third party companies would clearly stretch into the thousands. (In some cases thousands might even be a conservative estimate.)

There’s plenty of other information harvested from users that Facebook also intentionally fails to divulge via ‘Download your data’. And — to be clear — this isn’t a new problem either. The company has a very long history of blocking these type of requests.

In the EU it currently invokes a exception in Irish law to circumvent more fulsome compliance — which, even setting GDPR aside, raises some interesting competition law questions, as Paul-Olivier Dehaye told the UK parliament last month.

“All your Facebook data” isn’t a complete solution,” agrees Boiten. “It misses the info Facebook uses for auto-completing searches; it misses much of the information they use for suggesting friends; and I find it hard to believe that it contains the full profiling information.”

“Ads Topics” looks rather random and undigested, and doesn’t include the clear categories available to advertisers,” he further notes.

Facebook wouldn’t comment publicly about this when we asked. But it maintains its approach towards data downloads is GDPR compliant — and says it’s reviewed what it offers via with regulators to get feedback.

Earlier this week it also put out a wordy blog post attempting to diffuse this line of attack by pointing the finger of blame at the rest of the tech industry — saying, essentially, that a whole bunch of other tech giants are at it too.

Which is not much of a moral defense even if the company believes its lawyers can sway judges with it. (Ultimately I wouldn’t fancy its chances; the EU’s top court has a robust record of defending fundamental rights.)

  Think of the children…

What its blog post didn’t say — yet again — was anything about how all the non-users it nonetheless tracks around the web are able to have any kind of control over its surveillance of them.

And remember, some Facebook non-users will be children.

So yes, Facebook is inevitably tracking kids’ data without parental consent. Under GDPR that’s a majorly big no-no.

TC’s Constine had a scathing assessment of even the on-platform system that Facebook has devised in response to GDPR’s requirements on parental consent for processing the data of users who are between the ages of 13 and 15.

“Users merely select one of their Facebook friends or enter an email address, and that person is asked to give consent for their ‘child’ to share sensitive info,” he observed. “But Facebook blindly trusts that they’ve actually selected their parent or guardian… [Facebook’s] Sherman says Facebook is “not seeking to collect additional information” to verify parental consent, so it seems Facebook is happy to let teens easily bypass the checkup.”

So again, the company is being shown doing the minimum possible — in what might be construed as a cynical attempt to check another compliance box and carry on its data-sucking business as usual.

Given that intransigence it really will be up to the courts to bring the enforcement stick. Change, as ever, is a process — and hard won.

Hildebrandt is at least hopeful that a genuine reworking of Internet business models is on the way, though — albeit not overnight. And not without a fight.

“In the coming years the landscape of all this silly microtargeting will change, business models will be reinvented and this may benefit both the advertisers, consumers and citizens,” she tells us. “It will hopefully stave off the current market failure and the uprooting of democratic processes… Though nobody can predict the future, it will require hard work.”

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