#you don’t need to advertise your whole life online. also just in general have you forgotten that it’s rude to speculate on peoples gender

[maoist-mizer]

“AMAB or AFAB?” “TME or TMA?” “Boy non-binary or girl non-binary?” SHUT UP SHUT UP NO ONE OWES YOU ANY PRIVATE INFORMATION. MY GENITALS AND GENDER ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE. DIE MAD

[thebestpartofwakingup]

I also think its a little overly generous to have this pressumtive attitude that the morality or legality of AI art must be a 1:1 extension of an existing law to the letter its been sourced numerous times in multiple countries that the internet as a whole has necessitated the need both for existing laws to be reinterpreted or for new laws altogether to be written

When you upload an image to a website there is a reasonable assumption that individuals who view the website may save it themselves and pass it around, there are even laws already in place about how or where those images can be reposted or used. Websites like Deviantart even directly give users features to mark their works with different creative commons licenses to inform people what permission they have to use the pieces with.

However it is NOT reasonable to assume these people assumed that this would extend to their images being saved into black box reference networks for AI to use, partially because it removes the autonomy of the original artists to *revoke permission*

Deviantart cannot stop people from saving or sharing your image files off site but they CAN and DO allow users to *remove their content from the site*

Not to mention AI is NOT the only form of art that takes use of other existing pieces, and there IS precedent for artists to sue when their pieces are recreated or used (like in a collage) in other pieces that do not meet (judicially and individually subjective) standards of transformation.

Its also not JUST about cost/profits, waacom recently used an AI generated dragon to market a sale on tablets. Is the dragon something that could be produced with one of their tablets? Maybe, and they advertised it as such, but it wasn’t. Is that false advertising? What if a job wants to see a portfolio of still lifes as part of the hiring process? What if an individual wanted to generate outrage at a known IP/company by generating false screencaps or official-looking art?

Or even whats already happening in the mushrooming world: what if a company uses AI art to illustrate a children’s book and a parent finds a penis or other objectionable detail in an illustration?

Ai networks are not individuals we do not need to treat them as such

The answer for this also isn’t necessarily stronger copyright or IP laws, just accountability for use of AI. I think one of the biggest objectionable things about how AI is currently used is that public models of AI are being published WITHOUT providing or publishing sources for the content being used. Its understandable for private AI experimentation and development to lack these sources — i wouldn’t object to anyone tracing or editing or using any art however they please in private — but not holding AI publishers accountable for indexing what their AIs are trained on and reference from is a violation of the rights of both users and sourced artists.

Reposting was a HUGE issue in online art communities until about 2014-15 or so when google image source and other resources caught up and were able to be relied on to find reposts of people’s art, causing a feedback cycle where artists were more easily able to call out reposts and people were more hesitant to repost art lest they get publicly shamed. Im not doubting that AI scraping tech will eventually catch up and serve a similar function HOWEVER I am arguing that we are perfectly and judicially able to enforce those guarantees NOW by requiring AI network providers to offer lists and indexes of the pieces used to train their AI.

As mentioned previously i think the current system is also a violation of the rights of those who use AI because they are not allowed the freedom to self select what content is and is not included. Yes yes “well then they should draw it themselves” but I think a kid wanting to see Princess Asha hang out with the Ninja Turtles should be able to so without concern that something objectionable or creepy by generated with it — i don’t think ALL AI reference libraries need to be squeaky clean but given some of the weird “racially ambiguous” generations people have been finding makes me suspicious that what is actually in these libraries and available to the AIs aren’t being checked or cataloged by human eyes at any point, which is a technological marvel to be sure, but not nearly as publicly useful as actual manual checks and filters.

Additionally, you know what else can’t be verified without cataloging all reference material? Author age. Whether or not money exchanges any hands there’s something a little gross about using photographs or drawings done by children for your cool VC tech product. Ive worked in marketing and legal admin, you cannot use AI to collect and store data on children on the legal basis that children are not old enough to legally agree to those terms and services and i think it is extremely arguable (and an argument a number of judges would agree with) that this would extend to pictures uploaded online by children as well, especially to websites like Deviantart that have always allowed users ages 13-17.

the most frustrating thing about AI Art from a Discourse perspective is that the actual violation involved is pretty nebulous

like, the guys "laundering" specific artists' styles through AI models to mimic them for profit know exactly what they're doing, and it's extremely gross

but we cannot establish "my work was scraped from the public internet and used as part of a dataset for teaching a program what a painting of a tree looks like, without anyone asking or paying me" as, legally, Theft with a capital T. not only is this DMCA Logic which would be a nightmare for 99% of artists if enforced to its conclusion, it's not the right word for what's happening

the actual Violation here is that previously, "I can post my artwork to share with others for free, with minimal risk" was a safe assumption, which created a pretty generous culture of sharing artwork online. most (noteworthy) potential abuses of this digital commons were straightforwardly plagiarism in a way anyone could understand

but the way that generative AI uses its training data is significantly more complicated - there is a clear violation of trust involved, and often malicious intent, but most of the common arguments used to describe this fall short and end up in worse territory

by which I mean, it's hard to put forward an actual moral/legal solution unless you're willing to argue:

Potential sales "lost" count as Theft (so you should in fact stop sharing your Netflix password)

No amount of alteration makes it acceptable to use someone else's art in the production of other art without permission and/or compensation (this would kill entire artistic mediums and benefit nobody but Disney)

Art Styles should be considered Intellectual Property in an enforceable way (impossibly bad, are you kidding me)

it's extremely annoying to talk about, because you'll see people straight up gloating about their Intent To Plagiarize, but it's hard to stick them with any specific crime beyond Generally Scummy Behavior unless you want to create some truly horrible precedents and usher in The Thousand Year Reign of Intellectual Property Law

[sirensoftheweb]

Manipulation, Distortion, FOMO, & Nostalgia: Is the use of people as a subject to AI morally right?

By: Hydra 🐍

In response to Gem Fletcher's, "Maria Mavropoulou — How the artist used AI to rewrite her own family history:"

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly taking over the world– and no I am not referring to the humankind-killing AI robot in The Terminator– but the simplicity of having accessible AI engines at our finger tips. Take the app TikTok for instance, not only does it rely on AI to curate a “for you page” unique to each viewer based on their past data, but it also contains many filters that can be used to generate images from simple prompts. When these filters are used to distort ourselves or other individuals that exist in reality, are we negatively affecting the way we view humanity? Does manipulating images of people have any benefits, or are we essentially creating “false advertisements” in hopes to be perceived in a certain way?

Maria Mavropoulou tests these burning questions with an optimistic point of view. Mavropoulou creates AI photographs of events that have happened in the past and speculative “what if” scenarios, to fill the void of nostalgia due to the missed capturing of actual photographs throughout her life. Mavropoulou describes the collection of “Imagined Images” as healing on a personal level. She was unable to look back on her history in visuals, so instead she creates these images to help understand her past and shape her future.

Being a delusional girly myself, I am all for living in a false narrative world created by my own thoughts and fantasies. I also suffer from the commonly caught illness known as FOMO (For Gen X'rs who mistakenly clicked this Tumblr link expecting to prove how Artificial Intelligence is detrimental, FOMO means Fear of Missing Out), which I think Mavropoulou knows all to well. On a serious note, there is something gut wrenching about not having physical evidence of past events. Photographs encapsulate proof that an individual has truly lived. They freeze time to remind us of memories, which don’t always last in the storage of our own minds.

I can’t help but wonder if these images mask as a delusion, a way to distract herself from the hurt of not experiencing or retaining these monumental experiences. Is it healthy to find comfort in fiction? Maybe in the form of a good book, but isn’t distorting your whole past going a little too far? After all, this isn’t The Sims, we can’t actually use cheat codes to go in and completely alternate everyone that lives in our world (the default townies are just so... strange).

Although there are positive outcomes of creating images using AI software, there is also equally as many negatives. A big issue we are facing in this current digital age is the use of deepfakes. Deepfakes have been used to make people say explicit phrases and appear a certain way (usually pornographic material). These photos and videos can be created of anyone active in the digital space. If photos and other user data is available, it can be used. Deepfakes have been an extreme controversy in the past, but have recently regained attention when someone created explicit nude photos of (the iconic, might I add) Taylor Swift, and posted them on X. We now have to live with the worrying thought that people can use our images to unconsensually (and also unknowingly) create pornographic material.

I may be hypocritical because I too am part of the problem. I spend most hours of the day on my devices picking the perfect photos and videos of how I want to represent myself on social media, passively scrolling on TikTok until I am fulfilled– which never happens to be the case – and interacting with posts and filters that I know are obscuring the truth. Maybe we need to share less of our lives online to prevent people from using our information for AI distortion. Maybe if there is one thing we can take away from Mavropoulou’s collection, is the fact that we need to capture the moments in a photograph for personal use. Not a low quality image from an iPhone that constantly over heats because it is used far too often, but a physical camera specifically created way back when to do this exact job. Fuck phone cameras, I want to see someone pull out the heliograph at a bar.

[theblogs2024]

Why And How To Develop a Gamified Simulation Program

Acquiring staff members to interact with schooling and improvement generally is a serious obstacle — especially In terms of People boring matters. You’ll know which subjects I'm talking about mainly because your workforce will be repeatedly looking to prevent them or executing the bare least to have by and go forward. You’ll see their eyes glaze above when the same slide deck appears on their monitor they’ve observed for the last 5 years.

Of course, loads of this teaching can’t be prevented. It’s about compliance. It’s business enterprise-significant. It’s about basically endeavoring to Obtain your workforce to carry out at the highest in their video game.

So Let's say I told you this teaching can actually be entertaining, that your groups can love accomplishing it and that you could see a company impression you could measure?

Making Extra Highly effective Discovering And Growth Systems

Because the marketing and advertising director of a company that gives gamified simulation training options, I think there is a whole lot we will adapt with the gaming sector With regards to education our groups and executing it properly. Should the Sims four, a sport that simulates each mundane Portion of lifetime — from eating and sleeping to washing — can draw in ten million month-to-month active end users, then gamifying your schooling has the potential to remodel small business-important-but-dreaded training into anything your staff will basically choose to do.

Far more To suit your needs New Stability Warning Issued For Google s 1 8 Billion Gmail People Congress Introduces A Game Changing Crypto Bill Amid 350 Billion Bitcoin Ethereum BNB And XRP Selling price Pump ‘Anxiety The Walking Dead’ Year eight, Episode 4 Overview: It's possible Enjoy At Double Pace Developing Self-confidence

The Sims has proved it — we appreciate a daily life-simulator game. Exactly what is it which makes us equally as inclined to spend an hour pretending to scrub our kitchens and throw a supper bash as we're to really do those things in true everyday living?

In regards to the psychology of gaming, especially in everyday life simulators such as Sims, I feel It truly is due to the fact we’re offered the present of independence — the liberty for making choices and acquire matters Mistaken as repeatedly as we like with nominal repercussions. We’re not worried to give matters a go.

That’s why gamified 3D simulated environments could be a useful training arena for employees to build skills sustainably.

Mastering And Repetition: Why Exercise Will make Fantastic

There’s a cause that experts hardly ever end practising their capabilities. The sizes in the goalposts as well as the ball don’t change, but that doesn’t stop Cristiano Ronaldo from teaching everyday.

And of course, this doesn’t just implement to athletics. It’s not simply that repetition and follow can result in much better performance; there might be a measurable cognitive impact, also. Especially, analysis indicates that retrieval exercise supports your memory — so far more practice could lead on to better memory precision and precision.

Individual Improvement Plus your Base Line

On the subject of Discovering along with the impact on a company's fiscal general performance, it’s no surprise that 2018 Udemy (via Lifestyle Amp) data observed that top-engagement providers have a tendency to invest more on Finding out. Additionally, the exact same study located that 70% of businesses that extra online Finding out experienced an increase in profits.

But I do not believe employees constantly make improvements to from annual instruction, given that the repetition and apply intervals could possibly be too prolonged. Providing your team the ability to apply as usually as they want implies providing them the equipment they should understand and produce continuously.

Being familiar with Your People today Through Simulated Choices

It might be complicated for leaders to understand the people today they regulate to allow them to encourage them, help them and assist them reach their peak overall performance.

An more mature review carried out by an undergraduate college student discovered proof to advise that the way people behave during the Sims may very well be a projection of their real-everyday living values and temperament qualities. Whenever you’re looking at how your personnel respond and respond in virtual environments, you will be seeing a mirrored image of their temperament qualities.

If you're able to realize people superior, you’ll know how to get the ideal out of them And the way they can get the top outside of Functioning for your personal Business.

Guidelines for Planning A Gamified Simulation Training Software

By creating instruction that mixes psychology, gaming and learning, you can provide corporate learners with pleasurable, partaking and efficient teaching.

You should ensure the gamified simulation situations you employ are separately personalized for your enterprise and produce to lifetime precise experiences from your workplace reality. Ensure your personnel have the opportunity to answer in serious time and match their results against their colleagues to make pleasant Opposition.

One more spot to take into consideration is that you need to assure your teaching offers a safer setting to your staff members to create errors and discover from them.

You may be wondering why, if there’s a prospect of finding factors Improper, there’s any inspiration for gamers (and learners) to receive it proper. The answer could possibly lie in SDT (self-perseverance concept), and why the right know-how and application of behavioral psychology is important In regards to developing gamified simulation schooling with influence.

SDT tells us that humans have an innate require for competence, autonomy and relatedness. Hence, it is best to make certain the schooling you design and style will make personnel feel like they're mastering techniques, that they've psychological flexibility and that they're emotionally connected to Some others.

To make this enthusiasm in your team to keep participating with all your simulated Understanding natural environment, you’ll need to grasp The essential psychological needs that numerous aspects of the sport fulfill. A person 2017 study showed that games that emphasize flexible procedures bring on gamers emotion more capable. Interactional aspects can offer thoughts of relatedness.

It's also advisable to really encourage workforce to learn and play via your modules numerous instances. Then, you ought to use the data from their instruction sessions to determine which areas they wrestle with probably the most. This will likely aid you in supporting your staff grow to be a lot more confident in these spots. Productive education does not merely need the coach to layout the modules effectively but also to be certain they will monitor and assist staff members effectively.

You may say you don’t choose to change the game; you should develop it. And I do think equally your staff members along with your shareholders will enjoy you for it.

Learn more info. check out here: Virtual Reality Training

[stickynotesandstress]

Red Flags in Class Syllabi

Hello, here I am with another post full of advice for university and like most of my posts, it comes from personal experience. A little backstory on this: my first year of university, there was this theatre class I was in where everyone had already become friends or knew each other from high school drama festivals. We always had to do group work where we chose our own groups and I was always alone and did everything in my power to pretend like I wasn’t without the prof noticing. I was miserable and had had multiple panic attacks during or because of that class. However, I was a first year former gifted student who didn’t want to switch classes. I hit a breaking point one night when I was sobbing on the phone to my mom and she made me get up and drop the class. At that point, it was too late to register for one in its place and I am in my third year now, taking 6 courses online during a global pandemic to make up the credits so I can graduate on time. Ever since that experience, if I’ve had any major doubts about a class, I drop it without hesitation as soon as possible so I still have time to register for a new class. In fact, this semester alone, I dropped three classes and switched to new ones. Here are some red flags in course syllabi/things profs say during the first class

1. Group projects. We are in university, everyone, we are paying thousands of dollars for this and we should not be paying that much money for our grades to depend on others. Of course, and this applies to all of the red flags on the list, if the class in necessary for your degree (has happened to me a few times) sometimes you have to suck it up. Still, if you can drop the class without it messing up your degree, I would recommend it, especially right now when most people are fully online because group projects based completely online are even more hellish.

2. If a professor makes a point about how they don’t or hardly ever give As. This one is obvious. These profs like to make shit difficult for no reason and think they’re waaay more important than they really are. Most “I don’t give As” profs that I’ve had have been pretentious assholes.

3. Similarly, if a professor is bragging about how hard their class is/saying that you will likely fail. They are bragging about how bad they are at their job. They are there to teach you and if they advertise that all these people have failed their class, they aren’t trying hard enough. Also usually pretentious as fuck too.

4. If you miss more than two classes, you will fail the class. I’m not talking about profs having attendance policies, that is fine. What I’m referring to is the ones who take it to the extreme. I’ve seen syllabi where profs will fail you, despite all your other hard work, if you miss more than two classes. Like, it’s an automatic fail. It’s not worth the stress.

5. Any class where participation is worth more than 20% (and that’s pushing it). That shit is not fair to the shy students, students with social anxiety, and students who don’t like public speaking. Your work should be the basis for most of your grade, not whatever bullshit answer to class questions you come up with. I’m not a big fan of participation grades in general but to make them worth that much is not ideal (unless you’re not shy and extroverted and don’t have social anxiety, if so, I’m definitely jealous).

6. Workload. I’m not talking about amount of assignments (though if there are a whole lot, you might want to switch, you know what you can handle), I’m talking about readings every week. I dropped a class this semester because the prof said that every week we would have 60+ pages of readings a week which, according to him, wasn’t a lot. These readings for for a polisci class so it was all dense academic articles and government documents (snore) and I didn’t need the class for my degree. When you have a full class load with readings and actual assignments for all of those classes, a class assigning that many pages a week is a red flag especially when the prof doesn’t think it’s a lot. They will pile on the work.

7. Not listing all assignments in the syllabus. This is my pet peeve and I’m in two classes where we don’t know when assignments are due or what they are. This is a red flag as you need to be able to plan assignments and write dates down, especially in university. Surprise assignments and tests are the worst and set students up to fail.

8. Any time a prof/syllabus says “this class will change your life” or some variation of that. These professors are the most obnoxious people and none of the classes I’ve taken that did change my life ever told me so over and over again. 

9. Any class with busywork as homework. By busywork, I mean homework on the online part of the textbook, exercises from the textbook, stuff like that. This is high school level stuff and you don’t learn anything from it. Also because they use the online quizzes that come with the textbook, that means you have to buy a brand new textbook to get that code so there will be no money saving here. I once had to spend $200 on a LOOSE LEAF textbook (they only offered it in that format) just to use the online quizzes. The whole class was like getting in a time machine and going back to high school.

10. If your first class is full of students and your second class has significantly less, that is a warning sign that they might have picked up on something you didn’t. Take another look at that syllabus and pay close attention to the prof that class and make your decision after that. 

11. Check Rate My Professor!!! I cannot stress this enough. Some of the negative reviews are obviously people just mad they got a bad grade, but when students who got high marks are complaining, there is a problem. Take them with a grain of salt until you actually go to the first class, but make sure to read them before class so you know what to look out for. Also, in general, make sure to add your own ratings for profs while you’re there, both positive and negative because it really helps. I go to a really small school so our RMP reviews are limited so I do my best to post about each of my professors to add more. 

12. Know yourself. If you’re first year, this might be more challenging, but you know how you learn best. If all of the assessment methods in a class are things you know you struggle with (multiple choice tests, short answer tests, exams worth 60% of your grade, long papers, research papers, etc.), use your head and make the right decision for you. If you suck at multiple choice tests and force yourself to take a class where that is all you do, it will be hell. If you choose classes based on assessment method, it will help your GPA, I promise you. I get better at selecting courses every year because I learn myself and what I’m best at and I have raised my GPA (not a whole lot, but usually by a decimal point) every semester because I am constantly learning what is best for me. 

[mymoonagedaydream]

Witness Protection (Part 1)

Summary: You'd only been living in New York for a few weeks when Natasha introduced you to James Barnes, the man who’d change your life forever

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x y/n

Word Count: 1.2k

Warnings: Language

Author’s Note: Mamma mia, here we go again

---

You were finally out of the small town shadow. 

It’d taken years, building up the courage to detach yourself from the countryside setting you'd known all your life, but now you were ready to dive into the city. 

Your new flatmate Sharon had, thankfully, turned out to be lovely. After finding her spare room advertised online it took a good few days to convince your parents that not all 'internet strangers' wanted to steal your kidneys. Meeting her and settling into your new home just made you all the more desperate to build a proper, comfortable life for yourself here. 

That's when you met Natasha Romanoff. 

Once you’d gotten to know each other well enough, Sharon offered to take you along to her yoga class. You didn’t give it a second thought. However, much to your surprise, on arrival she immediately recognised an older lady there and pretty much left you to your own devices. 

Nat took the spot next to you and the two of you got chatting. She was confident and bubbly, exactly the type of person you wanted to surround yourself with. After a couple more classes, meeting for coffee and then getting sloppy cocktail drunk a few times, you felt like Nat was already a close friend. Like you'd known her for years. So you decided to invite her over for drinks. 

---

A couple of hours before she was due to arrive, you were frantically trying to get a red wine stain out of the couch, when she messaged you.

-Is it alright if I bring a few friends? They're dudes.

-Sure, the more the merrier. 

-Oh also, your flatmate Sharon, the blonde- she's single right?

-Think so, why?

-Got someone I'm trying to get laid. 

-Brilliant. You classy bitch. 

-See you later.

You figured you should probably warn Sharon what she was in for... Then again, Nat’s in special ops. All the guys she knows should be hard-bodied stallions, right? 

Yeah, she'll be fine. 

When you opened the door you genuinely thought she'd brought two bodyguards with her. On her left was the predicted Action Man, with neatly coiffed hair and a thousand-dollar-smile. The other wasn't as traditionally good-looking, with longer dark hair and a slightly reluctant look on his face, but for some reason you found your eyes lingering on him a fraction longer. 

With a bottle of wine in each hand, Nat gave you a tight hug. 'Good to see you! This is Steve and Bucky.'

You moved aside and waved them in, taking the wine off Nat as she passed you. She already smelled like liquor, but you guessed she'd probably just shared some Dutch courage with whichever of her backing dancers she was going to set on your flatmate. Hearing the commotion, Sharon came out of her room. 

‘Oh hey, this is my flatmate, Sharon.’ You pointed towards her with an elbow whilst trying to uncork one of the bottles. 

Nat raised her eyebrows towards her entourage, before realising she'd left an uncomfortably long silence. She swiftly launched into an attempt at unbiased introductions, but it became obvious within seconds that it was Action Man she was trying to get laid. Sharon seemed into it, at least. 

You motioned them all towards the sofas, noticing Nat engineering their order so that Steve and Sharon ended up cosy on the two-seater. She took the seat closest to them on the big couch, prime wingman position. Bucky sequestered himself to the armchair on the other side of the room, seemingly uninvested in Nat’s mission, and in friendly conversation generally. 

Oh lord, you were a sucker for the quiet broody ones. 

‘Does everyone want wine? I have a load of beers too.’ You announced, taking everyone’s orders and then carrying the drinks over.

‘So, do you two work in specials ops too?’ Sharon tried to stoke conversation with your guests. 

Steve nodded, but you noticed Bucky smirk and raise an eyebrow at Nat. She returned a wide-eyed glare and quickly changed the subject to how much Steve could bench-press. Clearly something was up, but after a few more drinks you didn’t really care.

The first couple hours went well, Steve and Sharon chatted while you and Nat got steadily more wine-drunk. Bucky piped up whenever he was spoken to, but otherwise he just brooded in the corner. The more wine you had, the more appealing this dark, handsome stranger was becoming to you. Maybe Nat was trying to get them both laid? Wishful thinking. 

At some point, Nat decided to crank up the music and you commenced some impressively haphazard drunk dancing. You looked over to see Sharon grinning as Steve tried to waltz with her to Basshunter. 

The next thing you knew, Nat was attempting to yank Bucky up by the arm. He must’ve had at least eight beers but he barely even looked tipsy. After a few seconds of aggressive persuasion he stood up, almost immediately going to lean against the closest wall.

‘You are no fun, Barnes.’ Nat pointed an accusatory finger. ‘When was the last time you let go and had a proper laugh?’ 

‘1944.’ Bucky replied, casually. 

You laughed, quickly stopping when you noticed you were the only one doing so. Steve and Sharon were preoccupied with each other, but the other two seemed to catch themselves in their silence and force some laughter for your benefit. 

Weird as hell, must be the booze. 

Not long after, you found yourself wondering if maybe you’d be able to make broody dance. You eventually decided fuck it, worth a shot. 

You sauntered over and reached out for one of his hands, only then realising that he’d been wearing one glove for the whole evening. A fashion statement? He really didn’t seem like the type. No matter, you went for the other hand anyway.

He moved away from the wall with surprisingly little resistance, dropping his beer bottle on one of the end tables. You smiled at him, probably looking like a sweaty maniac by this point, but he didn’t seem to mind. His arms snaked around your waist and after a few seconds his chest was the only thing stopping you from tumbling onto the floor. Soon enough, you and Bucky were swaying silently alongside Steve and Sharon.

Nat collapsed onto the sofa, proudly surveying her handiwork before dozing off. 

---

You had no memories of what happened after that, but someone must’ve put you to bed cause you woke up fully clothed underneath your duvet. Not daring to sit up or move your head, you reached your arm out and fumbled for your phone on the bedside table. The light from the screen almost blinded you. You texted Nat. 

-What happened last night? I don’t remember anything after dancing...

-You fell asleep on Bucky’s shoulder, he carried you to bed. 

-Ah. Shit.

You threw your phone down and rubbed your eyes. You’d obviously made an absolute tit of yourself. On the plus side, needing to apologise profusely was a pretty good excuse to see him again.

---

Part Two

---

[themalhambird]

Growing Up Broken: I Talk About My (A)sexuality For 4 ¼ Pages.

I am asexual.

No, this doesn’t mean that I’m some form of plant budding off copies of myself if I get enough water and sunlight. It’s a shame. I could do a lot with multiple copies of myself- get someone else to do the dishes, the cleaning, my schoolwork…

I am asexual.

Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, would possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do.

I am asexual, and it’s almost Pride Month, and so I want to untangle some of the thoughts in my head and spin them out on to paper, to try and lay out my feelings about my sexuality, or lack thereof, and what it’s like growing up when no one bothers to tell you that not experiencing sexual desire like, ever, is a thing. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

It’s 2014. Puberty has doing stuff to me for the last two years or so: periods (urgh), breasts (neat!), underarm hair (why do I have to shave this? no one’s gonna see it), growth spurts (I’m getting taller than my older sister. I want to keep going till I’m taller than mum). The only thing not happening is wanting to have sex, something the nurse who came to Talk To Us All About Growing Up back in 2009 assured us Year Sixes would definitely happen as soon as puberty hit.

Still. It’ll happen soon, probably. Sixteen is still a bit too young to be having sexual feelings, right? The boys…really not interesting at all, but the other girls are pretty. I like their hair. I like the shape of their bodies. I just don’t fancy any of them. When we’re told to imagine our future husbands or wives in class (don’t ask my why, I’ve long forgotten the point of the exercise, I just remember that) I picture a wife.

(Lesbian is the first label I apply to myself. I stick it on tentatively- keep peeling it off my shirt and putting it back somewhere different like I’m not quite sure where it fits. It’s not wrong, necessarily. I’m just not certain it’s right. I like girls a whole lot better but I’m not saying I could never love a guy. I’m just not attracted to them. I’m not attracted to women, either- but I feel like I will be. When I’m old enough to feel that kind of thing. )

Sex Ed lessons are mortifying. We’re asked to list all the sexual terms we know on an A3 sheet of paper. I don’t know what half the things other people say mean- blowjob, 69, masturbate, porn . I don’t know how other people know these things either. We’re sixteen. It’s too young.

That summer I play Sebastian in an abridged version of Twelfth Night and it convinces me to take Drama at A-level, although I didn’t at GCSE. The drama classes teach me two things. First of all, I don’t like acting women. I prefer breeches rolls. I don’t know why. We’re talking about my asexuality, not my gender confusion, so let’s put a pin in that and move on to point two. My drama class teaches me that everyone my age is having sex, or wants to have sex, or is planning on having sex soon; sex is a constant, every class, every conversation. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. So apparently sixteen (seventeen) isn’t too young after all.

It’s like this. One day you wake up and you realise that everyone else is speaking a language you don’t understand. Suddenly, sexual feelings aren’t something that no one your age is having but you’ll all develop soon- it’s that sexual feelings are something that everybody your age is having apart from you. People your age are dating, kissing, fucking, and it’s not something you’re interested in doing, necessarily, but you still feel so horribly left out. Like you’re missing some kind of major milestone. You try not to let it bother you- you watch Buffy every Monday you get to see your dad. (You watch loss of virginity be portrayed as growing up). You read. (The books you pick up all involve love and love always seems to at least imply sex). You- google things. You google the words you didn’t understand in that sex ed class. You google “how to tell if you’re attracted to someone” in case there’s some secret signal your body sent you that you missed. You feel like you should know if you’ve ever felt sexual attraction but then maybe you’re just really, really dumb. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. The NHS website reckons that if you’ve got a low sex drive you ought to see a doctor. The girls in your drama class keep talking about boys and sex and sex and boys and you aren’t really interested in either of those things. You cling to the thought, lesbian and hope that when you get to university, you’ll stop being so repressed. Girls are pretty- but the ones at school are either your friends or kind of mean. Of course you don’t fancy anyone there. University. University will save you. (Boys are sometimes pretty too. There are boys at school whose personalities are nice enough- who are the type of man you wouldn’t mind dating one day maybe- but you can’t ever picture yourself having sex with one. Dicks seem weird and really not the kind of thing you’d want inside you. I mean for fuck’s sake- why? You can’t even get a tampon in.)

I don’t like looking back on this. Sixteen, seventeen year old me was starting to get pretty freaked out. I like looking back at the first year of uni even less, because if seventeen year old me was freaking out, eighteen year old me was buying alcohol. That’s how it goes, right? Sex and alcohol. You see it all the time on T.V. Fictional people get fictional drunk and fictional cheat while they’re on fictional breaks with their fictional partners. David Tennant is pretty. A man at work is handsome and more importantly intelligent, into Shakespeare, into good conversation. The label switches from lesbian to ‘bisexual but heavily skewed toward women’ and I cling to that as tightly as possible because after that, I’m out of options. It is impossible that I’m not feeling sexual attraction: the whole world screams about sexual fucking attraction all the fucking time, I’m obviously just too uptight, I obviously just need to relax-

I once drank a whole bottle of wine in what was essentially one go. I paused for breath, but that was about it- I don’t think I even bothered with a glass. My goal was to get myself drunk enough that I could feel sexual attraction. I thought that the best way to go about things- to finally ‘grow up’- would be to get super drunk, and then leave the flat and find someone who would screw me. I reasoned that I would enjoy it once I was doing it- after all, the whole world pushes sex as this wholly desirable thing for any normal adult to want, even need- so I would like it once I was doing it and then I would be fixed. Fortunately, drinking a whole bottle of wine when you’ve never had more than a single glass of champagne or a couple of glasses of rum and apple juice before in your life gets you past “lowered inhibitions” to “can’t walk straight or upright” very quickly. I got as far as the bathroom, threw up, a lot, and staggered back to my room. I woke up at 3 pm the next afternoon feeling stupid for drinking, and mad at myself for still being a virgin.

I had a lot of problems in my first year of university and not all of them were about my sexuality crisis. I was isolated, fairly friendless, and not really cut out for socialising with my housemates who were probably all lovely people, but I find new people painfully difficult and hiding away seemed easier. But the feeling that there was something broken inside me because I wasn’t experiencing what everything seemed to be telling me was one of the most vital parts of the human experience- sexual attraction to other people- contributed to my general feelings of self-loathing and disgust. I attempted to induce sexual desire in myself by drinking on several further occasions, although never quite to the same extent as the first time. I’m not sure whether this counts as self-harm, but it certainly wasn’t healthy.

I didn’t know asexuality was a thing.

I knew I wasn’t straight- I’d known that for a while. I learnt that I enjoyed reading, talking, even writing about sex, as long as it was sex between people who weren’t real, but fantasising about fictional characters having sex and fantasying about myself having sex are two very different things. The former happened fairly frequently. The latter didn’t happen once, and still never has. My second year at university was better than my first: I was living with friends, I was further away from campus which meant I had to walk more, which probably helped, I had also started to make several friends online with whom I could happily chat even when I wasn’t in the mood for ‘actual’ people. I used bisexual to describe myself because on the rare occasions I thought about romance, I couldn’t really see myself ruling out anyone who was willing to put up with me.

I’m not quite clear when I first heard the term ‘asexuality’. I became aware of it gradually. Someone I followed on Tumblr identified as ‘grey-ace’. Characters from my favourite fantasy series were being headcanoned as ‘asexual’. At some point I must have learnt properly what that meant.

It sometimes feels like there ought to have been a lightbulb moment- like I should have seen the word, seen the definition, and instantly seen myself. But it is very, very hard to delete the message- ‘sex is important- sex is what grown-ups do- sex is what you should want to do’ – that the world constantly sends to us: in advertising, in entertainment, in the conversations of a drama class that always circled back to that topic, to the detriment of the sole seventeen year old who wasn’t really bothered. To embrace asexuality seemed like I was giving up on trying to fix myself, on waiting for the right person to come and make everything better. On the potential of their being a right person. I can wrap my head around people having casual sex very easily. It’s romantic love without sexual desire that I’m scared won’t work- how am I supposed to know if it’s love without there also being physical attraction? No romance arc that I had ever seen was without an element of sexual tension. So, no lightbulb moment for me. No switch going off- “aha, at last, that’s what I am!”. Just a gradual thought washing across my mind every now and then, like the tide rushing up a patch of sand and drawing straight back, leaving only dampness to show where there had been a good half-inch of water only a moment ago.

I might be asexual?

And ‘I might’ becomes ‘I think I am’, and the tide starts coming in. ‘I think I am’ became ‘I am’ at some point or other.

I am asexual.

I find reassurance in knowing that there’s a word for what I am, for how I (do not) feel. I am asexual. Not broken, or damaged, or too uptight to properly feel, or too dumb to recognise what I do feel. I am asexual- I have an absence of any sexual desire for others and that’s perfectly okay. I might fall in love one day. I might not. I don’t know how you’re supposed to know if you have the capacity to fall in love before you find yourself doing it. It might be nice to have a wife. It would also be nice to have a cat. I could cope with it just being me, a cat, and good friends for the rest of my life. If I fall in love- if I am capable of falling in love- it will just mean I am asexual, but romantic, and I will have learnt something new about myself. The point is-

The point is, I am incredibly lucky that I stumbled across Asexuality before I got myself hurt trying to force something that wasn’t there. The point is, this world assumes that sexual desires are the norm, and maybe they are, but that just makes it all the more important that people know that they aren’t abnormal for not experiencing sexual desire. To all the people who need to hear it: You are not broken. You are not alone.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up. I feel like I should say something profound or something. But I think I’m just gonna leave it like this:

I am asexual. Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, and possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do. I am not broken. I am not ‘going through a phase’ or ‘looking for attention’ or ‘trying to be special’. Everyone’s special, fuck you. Knowing that I am not the only person to feel how I feel makes me feel like I’m standing on solid ground. May all people experiencing the same confusion and distress over their sexual orientation that I felt growing up find their way safely to the same solid ground: you are not broken. We’re not broken.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

@lacrymarial replied to your post “any thoughts on fandom culture?”

I would like to hear your thoughts, actually!

Well, I'll start by saying that my exposure to Fandom culture is limited, and I can't speak to it in a position of expertise or authority. (I think people in the Fandom sphere will probably want me to clarify that, and in some places I will do so; I'm doing it now)

I think I've been in some small parts of the Fandom sphere at various points in my life, maybe in person, maybe online (and I don't mean just Tumblr). But I haven't been able to get the deep feel for it (at least when I remember it clearly). I've tried watching some live "Web Series Fridays" stuff (which tend to involve very few people) and it's just not my thing. (I have been an avid consumer of web series, and I can assure you that they tend to involve way more people than a Web Series Friday)

So I'll try to come at it from an empirical perspective.

1. Fandom is for nerds

I feel like I'm going to need to point out here that this is part of what Fandom culture is. The Fandom culture, in its current state, is not for the mass audience. It has not been marketed or advertised toward you. It is primarily for people who are already interested in its topic. In general, the Fandom culture seems to take people of a certain age, temperament, and "satisfaction with status quo" level. The Fandom sphere seems to have its own jargon, its own cultural tropes, a set of internal aesthetics, its own sense of humor (though I don't think it's a "bad" one, more like it's "one's sense of humor, but on a much smaller scale"), its own ways of thinking and talking. It is a very insular, small, close community of mostly like-minded people.

In particular, the Fandom sphere has developed its own particular tropes, and these are the tropes that Fandom culture is for. There are probably words for some of these, but if I'm using the wrong ones I'll be happy to do some googling about the specific topic. For example, Fandom culture (again, as of this moment) is very interested in, and has many elements of, a sort of anti-modernist "retro-futurism." This is also a thing that people sometimes talk about when they want to talk about other parts of Fandom culture.

The anti-modernist, retro-futurist elements I'm pointing to are "post-modern" in the sense of being "against the modernists." On the inside of Fandom, there are various critiques of mainstream culture, but the point of these critiques is not to promote their ideas or make the audience go out and be anti-modernists (which is, e.g., exactly the point of "Mainstream media," by the way). It's to understand why this modernist viewpoint is inadequate, to be comfortable with it, and also to reject it. It isn't to create an alternative viewpoint that they want to force on people, but to learn something about the Fandom culture that is the "other side," to become better-informed, comfortable with the modern world, comfortable with the possibility of being wrong, and to reject the "modernists" when they become wrong (as, indeed, they very often do).

Fandom is less interested in the material world than in itself. I'm not sure I can come up with a metaphor for this, but it isn't as much about the real world as it is about the world of ideas. Part of this is that Fandom is a very small culture, and small cultures tend to be like-minded in a lot of ways. Another part of this is probably the nature of the Fandom sphere as a whole. It's like fandom but more extreme, in the direction of having opinions. You have a small group of people, each of whom has a very different and very specific opinion about the Fandom sphere's version of the world, and all of these people like the same things (and also dislike the same things, but it's much easier to "get it" if you agree with all the right things), and they spend most of their time on the Fandom sphere talking about Fandom and not about anything else.

It doesn't help that Fandom has a reputation as a culture filled with edgy teenagers (which is, of course, true, in the sense that many people do not understand the world until they're old enough to be a teenager). That's not an anti-modernist point in itself – teenagers are a bit like this, after all – but it does make the Fandom sphere seem more like a place for weird kids to be, and it makes it harder to imagine yourself in that space as a normal person, since that would require believing in many weird things. Fandom culture is for weird, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, but it tends to be for weird in a way that is a bit like being an edgy kid.

In sum, there's a reason that "the Fandom sphere has its own jargon, its own cultural tropes, its own sense of humor (though I don't think it's 'bad'," more like 'one's sense of humor, but on a much smaller scale'), its own ways of thinking and talking" is a summary of the Fandom sphere. People are into the weird, the obscure, the obscure again. The space is full of things that you can't really understand without being a part of it. And it's really good at producing stuff that captures that stuff, and good at creating the right kind of stuff to get it. It's a world that's a bit like the world of Harry Potter but a bit less cool, and where no one cares about Harry Potter itself. The cultural tropes there are mostly the same as in the Fandom sphere, with some extra emphasis, and some extra focus on "being a weird kid" and all of the weird shit that comes from that.

Also, Fandom culture does not have a sense of humor. It is not a joke culture. Fandom culture is serious about something and you should not be (in Fandom culture, this includes "shouldn't be a funny person" and "shouldn't be a weirdo," as some people seem to think). But "serious" doesn't mean "boring." Fandom culture is about what it is about, not about how it seems from the outside. (See above point about "understanding," not "being better informed" and "getting it.") But at the same time, it's serious about not really caring about being informed or getting it. You need to be serious to be in Fandom. But it is not a world where a person who is serious tries to understand.

This isn't what the Fandom sphere does, in most cases, but I suspect it was what it was for. At some point in their lives, many people go into the Fandom sphere and say "this isn't what I want." And the people who make Fandom are fine with that. That's why I started my last post with the sentence "When I say that I think I'm not very much of a Fandom person, and that's okay, this is not an attempt to argue that the Fandom sphere is bad"

It's also why, if you're trying to get your kids in Fandom, you can't say "this is exactly what your kids need right now." In fact, a lot of the time you can't say "this is what your kids need right now" because it is not what your kids need. (I said something similar at the end of the last post, when I ended by noting that people who are new to Fandom may want to avoid it. That is exactly correct, as far as it goes. But again, the reason is something that makes sense in Fandom culture, not just in Fandom.)

2. What is Fandom?

As I said earlier, there's a lot of terminology

[rpbetter]

Anyone doing the Post+ Protest this weekend?

Anyone want to, but you're not sure what you'd do without tumblr for 48 hours?*

Here are some suggestions:

work on your drafts off of tumblr - gather what you owe (it doesn't have to be everything if you owe a lot or do very lengthy replies, but it's better to grab more than you end up needing than running out) and write them using google docs or whatever program or app you like best outside of a browser. Then, you can move them over and format them as usual when the protest is over

work on your inbox - same deal! Just take what's in your inbox and write your replies off of tumblr (if your mutuals don't send the whole prompt or just looking at it, you can't remember what the full context was, find the memes and copy that, too, first)

get some headcanon prompts - pull them from memes, character development questionnaires, writing prompts, etc. and paste them into a doc to pick from and write later while logged off

write down headcanon topics until this weekend - just that, be thinking of things you'd love an opportunity to talk about but usually don't have the time or drive to tackle over the remainder of the week, and write them up while logged off

grab some writing prompts - use them as inspiration for writing some open starters or stand-alone things like doing the full month's worth of spooky, October prompts this year starring your muse, getting a head start this weekend

have a canon or an OC in specific fandoms? Of course, you do! And, I bet there are some thoughts you have about those universes and/or events involving your muse. You can write some meta, some discussion on how your muse differs from canon, or even a one-shot to fill in gaps with your muse or revisit an event from their perspective

make/learn to make those icons, edits, or graphics you've been meaning/wanting to do

anything you need to get caught up on or have been wanting to work on for a while, this is a great time to do it! Most of the things you do on tumblr as a RPer don't actually require you being logged in to work on

What happens when you have the impulse to check tumblr, though?

it's habitual, that's how habitual things work, don't feel bad about it or anything! You're not critically addicted to tumblr, and even if you are, it's not meth, it's okay

message friends instead - see ahead of time which friends/mutuals/writing partners are intending to do the logoff, you can help each other out by being around to DM each other instead

find something else ahead of time that satisfies the same habitual sort of needs - browser games are great for this, they often have the same elements of click, scroll, refresh

games games are great, too, it's just that we often still check tumblr on mobile while playing them and that might also be habitual for you

decide you're going to learn how to do something this weekend - make it something you can accomplish, but that is personally complex enough to be occupying for you while not being boring or feeling excessively like work

I've seen a lot of suggestions, this time and the last time around, but they're not specific to RPers...and a few of them are at least mildly insulting with an attitude that this is your time to realize that you're addicted to tumblr and need to go outside, this will be a life-changing experience for a healthier you.

Yes, totally read a book, have a movie weekend with friends, do various social activities (that are safe and responsible for you to do in your area, obviously), go on a walk, go biking, whatever the hell you want to do. However, I'm not comfortable implying that no one does this shit regularly as it is, or that everyone is physically or psychologically capable of doing it. Honestly, if you simply don't have a driving need for "a healthier life" and/or do not feel like you're leading an unhealthy, unhappy one because you have online hobbies, you're 100% valid as well.

So, I'd rather give some suggestions specifically geared toward RPers, that might be closer to normal for your downtime online, that are not negated by real-life limitations, and that aren't things that are your actual, daily responsibilities (studying, engaging with your pets, laundry).

If you participate in the protest, it's best to have some ideas before you log out, so I hope this helped!

*by the way, if you can't make it that full 48 hours, just fully logging out for as long as possible makes a difference! While the full 48 is the best and would be great, the whole point is demonstrating that we're really serious about how not alright with many aspects of this we are - if you never log off of tumblr or are usually logged in for several hours a day, logging off for as long as possible during the hours you're usually here does say something. Please remember that it is important to actually log out! Not simply not visiting your dash or interacting with posts, but literally logging out of your account(s).

-No one is judging you for not being able to participate, either, and there are a variety of reasons why you might not be able to. Maybe, if you have to remain logged in for the duration, you could help out friends who are protesting by keeping them busy, saving things for them to view on tumblr until after the protest is over so you're not reminding them, and generally being supportive of the effort in whatever way you can. This post is a suggestion post, it isn't meant to guilt or push anyone into protesting or shame them for not doing so. Neither is it a perfect listing of everything you could do - you can and should consider what will work out best for you as an individual!

-if you have questions about the protest, the link in the first sentence takes you directly to the blog for it. In the pinned post, they have information like what date and specific timezone time the protest will run for. They also have answered numerous questions, so, check out the blog, please! However, if you want to ask me why anyone is doing this: it is neither about tumblr or content creators making money, everyone is realistic about the former and supportive of the latter. The issue is tumblr advertising this feature to fandom content creators, refusing to listen to its userbase ever, and offering no legal protection will assuming no legal risks with this feature. There are other issues, but these are the primary ones, that the feature is incredibly harmful and legitimately dangerous to those it is being marketed to.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Winning at Life

As long-time readers will know, my life has, historically, been something of a car crash. I started writing this blog over a decade ago when I started university- an institution that I expected to be a hotbed of rebellion and independent thinking, but which turned out to be a factory for stamping out interchangeable, social-climbing, affluence-chasing berks. After awhile, I lost any sense of what I was doing there and just sort of drifted. I then spent my twenties pinballing between ill-advised relationships (often in budget hotel rooms) and getting my heart broken. During that time, I also stumbled into three jobs, all of which I hated and quit in spectacular fashion. Online, I spent the majority of time inviting the ire of very large sections of the populations and laughing at their frustration (who remembers that time I pissed off every Beyoncé fan on the planet- that was a personal highlight). I commanded a loyal audience, but beyond that little circle I gloried in being universally reviled. The right-wing hated me because I’m a socialist and generally believe that people deserve better treatment at the hands of their civilisation and because I’m quite liberal and also believe that, outside of supporting the welfare state where possible, people really should just be left alone. Liberals, however, also hated me, because I’ve never had any patience for virtue-signalling or folks who hide behind their oppressed status (real or sometimes imagined) as an excuse for being bullying, shouty cunts- and let’s be honest, modern liberalism is mainly about finding excuses to be cunts. Which seems redundant. The right-wing already have the monopoly on being fucking appalling, despicable people. But I digress.

My point is that I wrote well and entertainingly in large part because my life was kind of a wreck and because I was a belligerent walking anachronism, eternally odds with the society in which I lived. However, the reverse is also true. I have less to write about nowadays because I’m, er, happy. I mean, I’ve never really been unhappy for a sustained period, but my emotional spectrum was delineated by degrees of savage joy and blind fury rather than more normal, humane feelings. Nowadays, things are different. Quite a lot has happened since we last spoke dear reader. Not least, I’m engaged to be married.

I’ll give you a minute to wipe the look of slack-jawed yokel incredulity off your face, then I’ll explain what I’m on about. Done? Okay. Well, between COVID waves, I met an incredible woman- a tremendous geek with a penchant for binge-watching sci-fi nonsense and Agatha Christie’s Poirot; an adventurous soul who wants to take trips with me and see all the strange beauty my native isle has to offer, from the Northern lights playing over the Scottish Highlands to the brilliant blue waters of Cornwall and the hilariously misnamed English Riviera; a clever-clogs with a love of word-games like Scrabble who encourages me to write and improve my own fiction. She’s a joker, she’s a smoker, she’s a midnight toker, and she’s mine. It doesn’t hurt that she’s nearly 400lbs of hotness, either. To cut a long story short, I went up to visit her before I knew that another wave of COVID was going to hit and ended up unable to return home due to transport restrictions. Over a year later, things are finally getting back to normal, but we just work well together- well enough that I want to spend the rest of our lives together and so does she.

Another reason for my unaccustomed happiness is that I’ve now moved out of London to be with her. London was a cesspool and being there meant I was near the epicentre of British culture. Everywhere I looked, I was continually reminded of everything wrong with our dying, lunatic society. Sometimes it was something major: seeing a whole street that was no longer a public thoroughfare but a privatised domain with its own security staff who could move on anyone they didn’t like the look of. Sometimes it was something minor, like spotting Jodie Whittaker’s talentless fucking face adorning a billboard advertising the latest post-shitgate era of the once great Doctor Who (no, I will never fucking drop that). It was like having a splinter in my brain. Everywhere I looked, there was a fresh reason to be angry. I’m currently living in a small town on the edge of the Durham Dales. Nowadays, everywhere I look there’s rolling hills and bleak, barren moors. The sky at sunset here is the purest amber, streaked with pinks and reds. I’m told that, on the clearest, most moonless nights, I should be able to see the Milky Way, not just a scattering of individual stars. Here, I’m reminded that the stupid, mean-spirited, lowest-common denominator bullshit of the human race really doesn’t matter. Nature doesn’t give a fuck and it will remain breathtaking and hostile in equal measure no matter what we do. That soothes my soul in ways I can’t begin to describe. It’s possibly a sign of insanity that I take comfort in the knowledge that if I walked off the road in the wrong direction I could die of exposure before anyone found me, but there’s a rationale at play. I’m not being morbid. Rather, the fact that the landscape is so indifferent to me means that I can be truly isolated if I so choose. I’m not hemmed in by fences and warning signs and the subtle nudges of human expectation. I’m not one to take the foolish risks that would render my environment dangerous, but it’s liberating to know that I could. I may be a socialist who believes that the state should extend a helping hand where required, but I still understand the need not to be taken care of, sometimes.

Of course, there are days when I miss London. I miss its impersonal monumentalism. A curious side-effect of living in a small town is that the few people there are seem to feel more comfortable inflicting their company on me. There seems to be a rule in human nature that the smaller the group, the more it interacts with itself. I sometimes miss being able to walk down a street and not have someone wave to me or strike up a conversation. But I guess that’s what the Dales are for. The mildly annoying friendliness of the locals is a small price to pay for my bride-to-be- my Tess- and my freedom from London and its constant, grating reminders of the dubious achievements of mankind.

I’d like to get into a better schedule for writing and posting blogs, but please don’t be alarmed if some of my fire seems to be extinguished. I haven’t changed my views- they’re no less recondite, complicated and offensive than they ever were- and I make no apologies for the things that I said in anger. It’s just that I’m not angry right now, and so my commentary is liable to be less inflammatory. Until then, bugger off.

[howtodownloadgta5installer8]

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As GTA V go back to Xbox's prominent Game Pass from Thursday, it has also been exposed that the game will certainly now be usable on smart phones also. Make an entrance directly right into the activity ofGTA 5 Mobileby downloading the records at this moment! You should merely get snap for Android catch and you're great to go. Try not to squander your time on remote recurring communications or emulators with different designs.

The video game is presently offered for consoles as well as Windows PC. It will be released for PlayStation 5 and also Xbox Collection X in late 2021. There is also an on the internet multiplayer mode where up to 30 gamers check out the open world where each gamer can engage into a cooperative or competitive communication in between themselves. This video game series is very well-known by players and reviewers for it having a flexible story and also packed with activity. This GTA 5 for Android has the very same feature as the COMPUTER variation and PS3/PS4 variation have. The only thing that differs in this variation is you can not play this video game on your android devices in the first-person setting. We are still attempting to make it possible on this variation.

Keep in mind, you'll be play the prominent video game just by means of Heavy steam Web link, which is the electronic distribution service. Superstar additionally stated that although it may shed some "functionality", it will get new functions also. Rockstar explained it as being a modern phone, with Dan Houser claiming that the player will utilize it for points like "accessing the internet",.

The other one is created apples iphone, iPads, as well as various iDevices that are suitabled for boosting the video game. GTA BOOM is the original source for all points Grand Theft Auto. We are the only web site committed to posting day-to-day GTA information and have the largest collection of GTA video game overviews available anywhere. Making use of the invincibility cellular phone cheat codePlease read our FAQ if you experience any concerns using these cheats, or if you have any type of questions.

More information was released on the internet site on 24 August, 6 September, and also 13 September. Superstar Gamings first confirmed the video game's existence on 25 October 2011 in a news on its main internet site as well as Twitter feed. Take-Two Interactive's share cost subsequently raised by 7 per cent. Journalists claimed the announcement ignited substantial anticipation within the gaming industry, which they owed to the series' social value. The game did not meet its original projected March-- May 2013 launch day. By 30 October 2012, advertising posters had spread to the Internet, as well as a listing by the store Video game had actually leaked the projected release date.

Superstar Games made their fortune from this highly popular along with questionable franchise. The whole series redefined the benchmark of open globe video gaming. Grand Theft Auto V is the most up to date entry in the schedule, initially released on PlayStation 3 as well as Xbox 360 in 2013.

If you bought the video game from one more Store, you would certainly need to include the executable data of the game to Heavy steam. The designer did an excellent job on their criteria and pictures. The programmer attempted to keep all the features as well as move the video game to Android phones and also tablet computers without shedding performance. If you have not attempted the video game yet, after that we advise that you do it today. This video game is not a main advancement of Rockstar Gamings. The game is badly enhanced, so it will be difficult to run it on the majority of mobile phones.

These two games are additionally quite prominent till now in the whole Grand Theft Auto collection as a result of a selection of factors. In this modern-day pc gaming age, Graphics decide how effective any type of game is. There is no contrast between the graphics of GTA 5 and GTA San Andreas, GTA 5 features superb and top quality graphics that look much more practical than GTA San Andreas. We understand there is a major distinction in between the release date of both of these video games, yet to be extremely truthful GTA 5 is a clear victor based on facts as well as logic. Thousands of individuals are now able to play this GTA 5 on their Android devices.

If you remember i have posted GTA 5 Lite 100MB variation prior to however this game is various. This video game is created by MikeGaming who has a working YouTube Network. You will reach play Its GTA5 mod apk Mission with nearly all main video game information on it Grand Theft Auto 5 was launched in 2013 as well as is still among one of the most played games, many thanks to its ever growing on-line mode called GTA Online. And also while the game does not have a mobile version, it's really possible to play on your Android phone if you want. The video game very first released on the Xbox 360 as well as PlayStation 3, after that made its means to PC.

We will certainly upgrade brand-new functioning download links immediately. Do not hesitate to ask your any kind of question pertaining to this tutorial with remark area, we will reply you shortly. After seeing lots of passion of Android users in the direction of GTA 5, Rockstar has determined to make this video game feasible to run on Android OS. SO they had developed as well as introduced GTA 5 Apk in beta variation.

Superstar really made it out of the park from the GTA franchise. With the introduction of mobile pc gaming, they have actually additionally launched several ready Android as well as iphone devices. Darrell is a blog owner that suches as to stay on par with the most up to date from the tech and finance world.

The video game invites you with wonderful affection to realize you for quite a long time or even months. If you have ever before play GTA 5 on your Computer after that I don't think there is any need to tell you features of this video game. But you are playing it for the first time after that let you recognize what amazing functions are added in this brand-new video game of Rockstar Gamings.

Yet is is time to take pleasure in GTA V for all Android Gamings enthusiasts. One of the most distinguishing characteristic of GTA 5 APK is an upgraded tale play consisting of 3 differed lead characters. Michael De Santa, an ex-con who escaped being incarcerated and also set himself in a spacious manor where he fights with locating a meaningful way of living. That intro of 3 separate personalities is most definitely something brand-new as we practically have different stories as opposed to one prolonged plot gone for one personality advancement. In this manner the gameplay of download GTA 5 is way extra appealing.

Substantial modifications have actually been made with the rise in the variety of tools modifiers and the capability to take turns. Consequently, you can proactively change guns and highly versatile resources whenever you go anywhere. This video game's new functions make it much more practical and challenging than previous Grand Theft Auto video games. And also like in other video games of this kind, you will be given several choices in terms of clothes, hairstyles, as well as faces.

The story contains weaves, and also it's quite incredible just how the whole video game plays out. I never ever get tired of skyrocketing mobsters, driving about in my personal Lamborghini, and viewing the residential property of the rich as well as famous refute around you-- all while making money for it. First PC variation development started in parallel with PlayStation 3 and also Xbox 360. PC growth later on paved the way as focus shifted to the console releases yet ultimately resumed. Due to the fact that the team had actually prepared a PC version from early on, they made technological choices ahead of time to help with later on advancement, like assistance for 64-bit computing and also DirectX 11.

The web sites declaring to supply you the mobile variation of GTA V are phony. We can only wait for Rockstar Games to ultimately re-release GTA V for mobile phones. Till after that, we can delight in the various other titles they have currently released. To get the full version of the video game, you need to obtain the OBB file along with the information file. The GTA V APK data alone is inadequate to enable you to play and take pleasure in the premium variation of the video game on your smart phone.

The initial point that you were mosting likely to require to do is confirm that your device hardware is established as well as effective enough to run the video game to begin with. If you  would certainly love nothing greater than to have the possibility to play this groundbreaking game on your favored Android gadgets, you're going to require to get your hands on a correct GTA 5 APK. No, the GTA 5 APK is not established by the official GTA engineer. Some game engineers have actually created the mobile APK variation.

However, with the rising passion of players in GTA V, it projects to discover an option to download and install GTA V on smart phones. Before downloading as well as setting up, you need to guarantee that you have actually entirely gotten rid of the previous variation or totally free version of GTA5 from your Android device. If you missed this action, your installation will certainly be stopped working at any moment and also you will not able to set up as well as play the game properly. Pavlovich located that while Superstar designated the team objectives to create songs for, some of their arbitrary creations influenced other missions and also sparked motivation for further rating development. He reviewed a "stem-based" system utilized to make songs fit vibrant video game aspects where the team would certainly make up songs to highlight results gamers could make right away after finishing objectives.

That song is a streamlined version of the GTA I motif's history music. It was also the pager's ringtone in GTA III, as well as remained in the GTA Vice City introduction under the retro Rockstar Gamings logo design. If the gamer switches or discharges weapons after a call, the phone will certainly not disappear on CJ's hand. Switching to other weapons, or entering an auto would after that remove this technique. If Carl has his phone out as well as encounters water being splashed from a Firetruck, chances are that if he is simply completing a conversation as well as is about to put his phone away, he instead will keep it in his hand.

[imxkid]

Beginner Affiliate Marketing To Start In Day 1- For 2021

Isah Abubakar

9 hours ago·15 min read

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to make money online. In this Ultimate Guide, I will go with you step by step to help you start today your online business with affiliate marketing and make your first revenue Online.

To be honest with you, I don’t do 6 figures with Affiliate every month, but I do make a good recurring revenue, and what’s more important is that it’s almost 99% passive income!

What do I mean by passive income?

Passive income means that every month, I earn a couple of thousands of dollars without doing anything. so even if I take OFF the whole month, I will still earn almost the same number every month. Nice Haa!

In this article, I will share with you what I do exactly and give you some tips that may help you to start with affiliate marketing, and then I will show how to scale and reach 5–6 figures after a year or so.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Simply, affiliate marketing is promoting products and services for other people and companies and earning commission per sale.

So, what’s nice is that you will not worry about creating and buying products, you will just promote an existing product. this is why it’s easy to start with. and even you can start with a 0$ budget as you will see later.

So Affiliate marketing is a great choice for anyone who wants to start a business online and make money without investing or even without having that much skills online.

Let’s Start!

Simply, affiliate marketing is based on two things:

Selecting the correct product to promote.

Promoting the product.

It’s that simple, select a product, promote it, earn money!

Let’s start with the first part, which is Selecting the correct product.

1. Select the correct product to promote:

It’s very important to understand and learn how to select the best product or service to promote because simply, with the same effort and time you will make much more money if you select the correct product.

Example: Let’s say you are promoting a service that costs 200$ and your commission is 60% per sale.

You promoted this service and you were able to get like 50 sales each month.

Simple calculations:

50$ * (200*0.6) = 6000$ per month. Nice!

And your advertising costs (In case of running paid Ads) are 3000$. Then you earn 3000$ every Month.

Per Year: 3000$ * 12 month = 40000 $

Great! BUT in this case, you will need to promote every month, pay for advertising every month, effort and Time every month!! Yes?!

NOW, Let’s Tweak the scenario!

We selected a product at the same price: 200$. Your commission is only 40% and not 60%.

But what is different here, is that the product you selected gives recurring commissions, so you will get 40% every month without promoting again and again.

Let’s say now, you promoted this service and you were able to get like 50 sales in a month.

Simple calculations:

For 50 sales per month:

50$ * (200*0.4) = 4000$ / First month

And your advertising costs are 3000$ then you earn only 1000$ for the First Month.

But then, 4000$ for the next months without any advertising or efforts (It’s recurring!) Did You Get It!

So the next months you will earn 4000$ without paying anything!

Per year: 1000$ + ( 4000$ * 11) = 45000 $ with much more less effort and time!

Which scenario you go with??

I think, Obviously, you will go with the second (recurring commission), which will become 90% passive with the same revenue or even more!

This is a small example, of how selecting the correct product (even with lower commission) may be critical in affiliate marketing.

Of course, I am not saying that you should not go with 1-time commission products! NO.

I am just showing the importance of selecting the correct product and how it may reflect on your work!

Small advice: select at least two products to promote, one recurring, and the other is 1-time commission.

Top Affiliate Products And Networks to choose from.

Ok friend, after we knew the importance of selecting the affiliate product, the Big Question now is: “Where can I find affiliate products to start promoting?“

To make things simple for you, I will go over more than 10 Affiliate programs and products that you can join even if you are a total beginner. and I will show you both recurring and single commission products and services.

Single Commission Affiliate Products.

I will share with you know what I think the top 5 affiliate networks that you can start with and find different products to promote.

1. ClickBank: probably you heard about, Clickbank is not a product, it’s an affiliate network where you can find thousands of products to promote.

There is only a small drawback here, that it’s not available in all countries.

2. CJAffiliate: CJ is also one of the largest Affiliate Networks available Online. I do work with CJ, and I promote some Web hosting services like Contabo and Other products.

3. JVZoo: It’s also a large trusted affiliate network with thousands of Affiliate products to start with.

4. Warrior Plus: This Network is Great for beginners, simply because it’s simple to join, and it’s available anywhere worldwide.

by the way, if you like to see in action how you can start with warrior plus and make money online almost from the first week, you can watch my video here:

In this video, I showed an online business strategy that allows you to make money online with no money or investment and you can earn and see results from the first month, or even from the first week!

5. Envato Market: One of my best, and I already work with this network to generate a couple of hundreds of dollars each month (100% Passive)

This company provides digital products and assets like website themes and templates, audio, video templates, source codes, and much more. you can check it here and choose whatever product you want to promote.

here is a sample of my earnings:

Also if you like to see this in action, you can check the following video and see how you can start and how I started and made money from the first month.

[ Case Study 2020 ]

I think this is enough for affiliate networks. Let’s move now to my preferred list of recurring commission affiliate services and products.

Recurring Commission Affiliate Products.

Here is the best part, working with recurring commission products and earning 10X more money per year with the same effort!

1. ClickFunnels: The Clickfunnels affiliate program is one of the most generous commissions for a Service As A Service (SAAS) company. They pay 40% life-time affiliate commissions on all purchases.

They also have something called a “sticky cookie”, which is a bonus to affiliates because if your share your link to a customer it follows them across all of their devices. This keeps people you refer attached to your affiliate account, no matter where they are.

Aside from their software, Clickfunnels also comes up with new products all the time that you can also earn money on such as live events and training courses.

2. SEMRUSH: It’s also an awesome Service to promote with a 40% commission rate, SEMRUSH is an SEO tools company that helps anyone rank their websites and get more free organic traffic. Here is my affiliate dashboard:

3. Tube Buddy: You can earn up to 50% Recurring commission when you refer people to Tube buddy.

Tube Buddy helps content creators, brands, and networks save time and grow their channels. So you can market and advertise it to content creators to help them grow their YouTube Channels.

4. Get Response: One of the Top Email Marketing Services out there, and offers an awesome Affiliate program.

As you can see it offers to programs, one is a single 100$ commission per sale. and the other is 33% recurring commission every month.

What’s nice about Get response and similar services, that it’s hard for users using such platforms to leave it, since all their mailing lists, data, analytics will be saved in the system, so migrating will be somehow a problem.

This is a great thing if you think in terms of recurring commission, so when you refer someone, its like 95% he/she will be a long term customer.

Anyway, almost all products and services have an affiliate network, so you can check whatever product or service you want, contact them, and ask for their affiliate program.

5. SendinBlue: one of my best, only because it allows you to earn per signup! Yes, it pays 5 Euros on each sign up you refer to SendinBlue.

It is also one of the Top Email Marketing Services outthere.

For a full list of affiliate programs and products, please check this post.

Promoting The Affiliate Product.

After we learned what is affilitae programing, and the importance of choosing the correct products to promote, and I showed you some of the best affilitae networks and programs that you can start with. Now it’s time for the real work!

Choosing the product or the service may take like 10 minutes or a maximum of 1–2 days. But what is essential now is How to promote?! It’s all about Marketing.

When it comes to marketing, we have two paths:

Free Advertising.

Paid Advertising.

Free Advertising.

Let’s start with Free promotion, and see how we can promote affiliate products and services for free.

1. SEO: Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the best way to promote affiliate services and products and to turn this online business into almost 99% Passive Income. why?

Before, I say why, Let’s explain SEO in brief.

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is simply a method, or a techinique used to rank your websites and articles on Top of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

You know, when people wants something on the internet, they search for it on search engines, and usually people will open results from the first page only.

So your goal with SEO is to make your website rank on the first page for certain search queries. so you can get a lot of free organic traffic to your website.

Let’s take this simple scenario, You wrote an article on your website about an affiliate product, for example, “Top 10 Microphones for YouTubers” and you ranked this article on the first page of Google.

Now you can imagine how much money you will make with the amazon affiliate program promoting “Microphones affiliate links” and getting free traffic from Google, It’s money on autopilot!

Now you may say, Ok Great! But how do we rank our articles? in other words, what the hell is SEO!! and how do we do it!?

Of course, Going through SEO in deep is out of the scope of this article, but at the same time, I will try my best to help you understand how to start and work with SEO in few lines. I will not let you go out of here missing anything!

The Idea is Simple, we mainly have three steps to go through in the process of ranking your articles:

Know what people are searching for (Keyword Research)

Optimize your article for these keywords (On-Page SEO)

Off-Page SEO (Building Trust, Social Signals, and Link Building…)

To Make things Simple, Let’s go with a simple example from my blog here. If you go now to Google and search for: “postal smtp” you will see the following results:

You will see that my article is ranking as the third result on Google after the Ad. and the first two results are the postal owner’s main page. so practically I am the first result here.

so anyone searching for this keyword he will definitely check my website.

So how I did this?

Firstly, I wanted to write an article (full guide) about “setting up postal SMTP and sending unlimited emails“. So I Simply wrote it!

but when I started writing the article, I optimized it on a certail keywords, so you can see in the title the keywords mentioned:

Keywords like “free smtp”, “SMTP server setup”, “Postal” , “Guide”

This is a simple example for On-page optimization, which is mentioning the keywords in the post title which will be the H1 tag on your website for this article.

Then if you read this article, you will see that I mentioned these keywords several times in it, so Google and search engines can know that this article is about this Topic.

You may ask, from where I get these keywords, and How can I know the best to choose? SIMPLE! use a keyword research tool.

You can use free keyword research tools like H-supertools or maybe some advanced SEO tools like SEMRUSH.

So open the H-supertools free keyword research tool and just write the topic you want in the box, and press search. here is an example:

The tool will automatically give you keyword search volume data and help you choose the best keywords.

Then the last step is off-page SEO, which is trying to get some backlinks and social signals to your website. as an example, I link to my blog from my Udemy Courses and my social profiles.

I hope this gives you an idea of how SEO works and how to start with it. Let’s move now to the next strategy in promoting affiliate links which is YouTube!

2. Promote Affiliate with YouTube.

YouTube is one of the best sources to promote anything! not only affiliate services. You create videos about your affiliate product and link back to it.

Now the Big Question is How to Grow Your YouTube Channel and get more views?

In general, there are two ways to grow your channel.

1. YouTube suggestions: where YouTube will start suggesting your videos on the top of other popular videos.

Ex: you pick a trending video or topic and you create a similar High-Quality Video, and optimize the metadata (Title, Thumbnail, Description, and Tags)

2. Video SEO: which is ranking your videos on top of YouTube search results by optimizing your title, and metadata for a specific keyword. you can use tools like Tubebuddy, Vidiq, H-supertools, and others to grow your channel.

My Videos Rank on Top of YouTube for certain keywords.

If you would like to see exactly how do I rank my videos on top of Youtube, You can check the following video:

3. Forums and Q&A Sites.

Search for forums related to your content and help others by sharing what you know and link to your article or page where you are promoting the offer (DON’T SPAM).

Also, don’t forget, Reddit, which is a great place to get free traffic.

Now, In my case, I started my own Forum and this helped me get more traffic by letting people ask questions on my own forum.

Also, Quora Q&A, which is one of the fastest methods to get traffic. It’s by answering questions and linking back to your site.

( I do get thousands of views on Quora every month from my answers. It works)

My Quora Profile

Check this video to see how I to use Quora and get more traffic from it:

5. Social Media

If you have some followers on Facebook, maybe Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Twitter, all these helps you to get traffic, (you can automate posting on all platforms using a social media management software, I do use Content Studio. you can get Lifetime access with this special offer here).

Of course, when I say social media, I don’t mean to spam groups and people, NO, just try to build connections, give value, build trust, and then you can link back to your pages.

6. Free Ebooks and Courses

You can also create small free ebooks and publish on ebooks sites like this to get traffic or even you can publish a free course on Udemy which has millions of students out there and link back to your site. if you are following my Udemy courses, you probably have seen the links I mention in my courses.

7. Email Marketing.

8. Email Marketing, always make sure to build your email lists, which will be one of the top sources of traffic for your websites by sending newsletters to your Subscribers.

Check the video below, to see in action how I send a campagin and get 56% open rate:

Check Also: How I moved from 1K $ to 10K $ 18 Months Case Study

Paid Advertising.

When It comes to paid advertising, we have several networks and places to market on like:

Facebook Ads.

Google Ads

Native Ads

Quora Ads

Going through all these requires a 300-page book each! So I will go over each one, in brief, to put you in the right direction.

Promote Affiliate products with Facebook and Google Ads

If you are looking to promote affiliate products with Facebook or Google Ads, Keep in mind the following:

First: Don’t run ads directly to your affiliate link. Facebook and Google are generally not a huge fan of affiliate links, and doing so too much could end up getting your ad account shut down.

Instead, you want to send them to your landing page in between the Ad and the Affiliate product page.

Secondly: make sure that all of your landing pages are compliant with Facebook and Google GuideLines.

Create Your Landing Page.

Now, what you have to do is to create your landing page. This could be a simple page where you pre-sell whatever it is you’re promoting…whether it’s a piece of pre-launch content or the sales page…and invite them to click through to download it.

Or, even better, you can use this as an opportunity to grow your list by turning these people into subscribers to YOUR list, and then sending them onto the content or offer you are promoting.

Run your Campaign.

A small note to consider is whenever you start your campaign, be sure to select the correct audience and narrow down as much as you can to target specific people. You can also use AD retargeting, which is a great weapon when running paid Ads.

Here is a small video, showing how important is retargeting with a small example:

Also, Don’t forget to start your campaign with low bids and different Ad sets to test, and to know which is the best to scale with.

Promote Affiliate products with Native Ads.

For affiliate marketers, native ad networks like Outbrain, Taboola, Mgid, and others are an ideal platform, proven to bring great results.

Ads on search results (like Google) and social media (Like Facebook) are not the same as ads on native networks. Why?

Simply Because there’s a big difference between scrolling a social feed, searching for something specific on Google, or browsing a favorite news site (where Native ads are shown). With the latter, users are in “discovery mode.”

They are primed to discover content that interests them.

Check out this case study I made like a year ago with Outbrain network promoting my own product and not an affiliate, but I think it will give you an idea on how things work:

Promote Affiliate products with Quora Ads.

Even though, I recommend starting with Quora as a free source of traffic by answering and sharing your knowledge as I explained before. But you can still run paid ads also on Quora.

I created a showrt video showing the power of Quora Ads, you can check it here:

I hope this article gave you all the information that helps you with your online business journey as an affiliate marketer.

[dunitask]

15 Best Ways To Earn Money Both Online and Offline

Once you're able to turn your enthusiasm to generate money, chances can be endless! Just have a rest and think profoundly about individuals living around you. Which services do they really want daily/monthly? In those, which solutions can you provide to them? The epic earning suggestions lie inside your mind! Happy earning! Dunitask is here with the 15 best ways to earn more money both online and offline. Here we go.

 Trading electronic stuff & used phones:

If you have a used mobile phone or game station system (PS4/PS5), you can sell it on sites. You can look into a trade program, which pays participants and offers money for your gadget. Direct Selling Method: Usually, you capture photos of your phone, confirm ESN (Electronic Serial Number) is pretty clean and post your listing. Some sites will review and approve postings, where the time is negligible. You will be paid as fast as the item is sold. Selling to Reseller Method: At first, you need to ship your mobile phone to the reseller party. Inspecting is required before payment, usually done via check or online paying procedure depending on the reseller.

Ride-Sharing:

Join ride-sharing companies and gain money by driving passengers around. These companies can pay instantly via debit card or transfer your income to your bank account very quickly. You have to keep few things in mind as – -  Loading fuel (gas, octane, diesel, etc.) and maintenance costing.  -  Owning a functional car, -  An agreement with the company for background checking, -  Sharing a review of your driving history with the company.  -  Don’t forget to notify the car insurance company about start driving. 

Making deliveries: 

Nowadays the delivery trend is overgrowing, and you can be part of this to make some side income. You will be paid for every delivery, and sometimes you may earn tips a bit! If you’re thinking about making deliveries, you’ll have to keep in mind a few things such as –  -  You will have to sign up for a service.   -  A smartphone is essential to accept and process deliveries.  -  You’ll need a means of transport to deliver products. It could be a bike, scooter, or car, depending on the company. To make deliveries, few companies will allow you to use a motorcycle or scooter.  -  Payment procedure varies by companies like daily, weekly or twice a week.

YouTube videos:

A smartphone is very available today. With some videography skills, you can use your smartphone to make videos for YouTube. You can film from anywhere with high-resolution cameras. Usually, smartphones contain high-resolution cameras. These videos can be about any topic in which sphere you are skilled, like sports, gaming, cooking, Tech related, educational, etc. You can receive donations on Youtube! Did you know? By adding this feature, receiving the donation is an extra way to generate passive income. In live streaming, you will notice the amounts rise significantly. You will have to build a large number audience firstly. So, you can assume that they will give you something. Isn’t it cool? Say, for example, you do a one-hour live stream in which you have a Q&A session (answering questions). Here you can earn a pretty extra cent with this. Besides, you’ll be able to view the live stream again later, where you can place advertisements all over again. If you repeatedly merge regular videos with live streams, you’ll be able to earn money in two ways simultaneously.

 E-book writing:

Do you have a passion for writing? If the answer is yes, then you can use your love to earn money from the internet. You can sell your own written book via your website. On the other way, you can sell your own written book on e-reader sites. There remain possibilities that you will get up to seventy percent of the whole profit! You may write about any topic, but you must know a lot about that. By the way, make sure that your e-book is worth reading! Happy writing! 

 Sell your Photos & Video footages:

If you are good at taking pictures or recording footage, then you can gain money from this passion. There are lots of sites that allow you to upload your photos and footage. These sites have massive user bases. People usually do visit, and if anyone does license your photo, you will be paid! At a point, you'll create your stock portfolio, where you need to spend a lot of time. You may browse through the marketplaces above to find the most popular styles. Finally, you can create your niche and upload frequently. Make a better portfolio, increase chances of success! It's not only about making money; it's a matter of honor also. Using your good-quality video clips and photos, you can build a fanbase for your work.

Customer Support Jobs:

The Internet makes the world connected. With the progress of internet-based businesses, people are becoming more independent. They are earning plenty of money from the internet nowadays. Besides, these jobs can be both online and offline. You can support the customer services from home or being at an office following company policies. Both day & night shift exists for this type jobs. Find which shift and company suits you, make your career fruitful!

 Supermarket Jobs:

Whether you're a student searching for the easiest ways to how to earn money offline to start a career, grocery stores provide a spread of employment prospects. Open schedule availableness will increase probabilities for hire, as several grocery stores keep open late at midnight or throughout weekends and holidays. Entry-level grocery positions typically don't need candidates who hold previous work expertise or high school diplomas, although some employers might favor pursuing candidates with formal educations.

 Tutor:

Whenever it comes to earning money as a student, tutoring jobs are a way to make income without a long-term commitment. In this case, whether you’re a college student or a teacher, it doesn’t matter much.  For tutoring cases, the academic background is needed for the subject you want to tuition. Patience, communication skills, and minimal experiences are required for tutor jobs.

 Teacher’s Assistant Jobs:

If you’re studious, disciplined, and brainstorm about the best ways to make passive income, the Teacher’s Assistant job is perfect for you! What does a teacher’s assistant do? A teacher’s assistant informs a lead teacher and insists the lead teacher runs smoothly by taking on everyday classroom tasks in the lead teacher’s way.  An assistant teacher’s daily tasks include performing clerical duties like recording attendance, grading exams, and home tasks. The payment system depends on university policies.

 Developing online courses:

This is the most trendy way to make money online. Amongst online passive income ideas, conducting online courses is both smarter and honorable. If you're dynamic at something, making an online course for this is more stylish. Out there remains a lot of websites with millions of students looking for new online classes every day. You can conduct a study plan for these guys as well as sell courses. There are plenty of sales channels to sell an online course; use Google to find what suits you best and earn money with that. You can also categorize your programs as free, standard & premium by fixing these packages' reasonable prices. In this way, people will quickly grab courses by their capability. See also: How to deal With Stress For Students - What are the best foods to eat when studying? - Top 20 Interview Questions to Ask a Software Engineer - 11 Best Reasons Why Students Ignore Computer Science

 Stock Investment:

Buying stocks is also part of passive income online for a long period. Here the process is - you buy shares and claim a part of the profit after a certain period. If you’re about to buy shares, keep in mind that you are buying shares from reliable companies which are likely to generate fruitful profit! Your earnings depend on the amount of money you have been provided. When you become a master at how stock markets working, your predictions will be more appropriate.

 Virtual Assistant:

If you're dynamic at doing the plan and organize stuff, then a virtual assistant might be the appropriate choice for you. A virtual assistant's work responsibilities include general bookkeeping, entering data, managing emails, research, etc.  This profession can be an excellent way to earn money online and contact essential people as well. Nowadays, a bunch of small business owners is dropping the idea of taking full-time team members. They prefer virtual assistants for their tasks.

Teaching University/College students:

During university or College break time, students pass their free time by gossiping, chatting, gaming, etc. You can pick that time and teach students in that free time. At first, you need to reach them in your convenient way (online or offline), convince them to learn (the subject you will conduct), and advertise yourself. If you don't want to waste your valuable time, You can get ideas to earn money in university life.

 Delivering Accessories for University/College projects:

Those who always think about how to earn money offline, It's the best idea for them. In every educational institute, there happen many projects like DIY projects, microcontroller-based projects, science projects, etc. You can provide equipment for these projects as a circuit board, ultrasonic sensor, ready-made projects, etc. You can collect products from wholesale or retailers and give parts to students with a convenient profit.  

Conclusion:

You can always do a brainstorm and find a suitable way to how to earn money offline. Just make sure that your works are worth reading/watching/learning. When you can turn your passion to make money, possibilities can be endless!   Just take a break and think deeply about people living around you. Which services do they need daily/monthly? In those, which services can you provide for them?  If you think about these through virtual reality, find out which online services you can provide. The epic earning tricks lie within your brain! Just find it out and hit it. Happy earning!    Read the full article