tomwambsmilk

[tomwambsmilk]

can everyone reblog with the interest of theirs that was the most intense or continued for the longest because i’m so curious

[tomwambsmilk]

using the bus tracker app is like. oh it's going to be here in three minutes. now it's five minutes. oh the bus has killed itself

[tomwambsmilk]

Fr tho it’s amazing how reliably good dropout content is. Like obviously there are standouts, but if I want something relatively light to watch while doing a boring or repetitive task or while eating or even just to unwind I can pick almost anything from the dropout catalogue and be relatively certain that it’ll be interesting and hold my attention for 30 minutes. That’s crazy. Name one other streaming service where that’s true (you can’t)

[tomwambsmilk]

Someday I hope to experience the same kind of overwhelming unadulterated joy my dog does when he finds a really good stick in the snow

[tomwambsmilk]

*flirting with an older man* when i was born you had already attempted suicide once

[tomwambsmilk]

[tomwambsmilk]

[tomwambsmilk]

there’s nothing film majors love more than hating movies

[tomwambsmilk]

btw while people continue to fight the system don't forget about Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt), a charity that buys and forgives medical debt. on average a donation of $10 will forgive $1,000 of medical debt.

[tomwambsmilk]

“hapless” shareholders??????????? Bruh. Many people were exploited by Brian Thompson but the UHC shareholders are most definitely and decidedly NOT some of them

[tomwambsmilk]

Redditors crashed the website with donations over $25k and 0 wishes left. via /r/MadeMeSmile

Click here and follow to get more daily positivity on your dash!

[tomwambsmilk]

the santa poll and the reactions to it remind me about how last year I was at a christmas party and one girl there asked us if our parents told us santa was real and how we felt about that now. it turns out her parents always told her explicitly that santa wasn't real and they told her that the reason they did this was so that she wouldnt feel betrayed or confused when she found out they lied to her. which, fair enough - but when she asked us we all went 'yeah we're totally fine with it. I get why my parents did it and when I found out it became a fun secret I was in on. most of us figured it out on our own and were kind of proud of it, and the one or two who got told were only upset for maybe. a day. and then moved on'. and the more we talked the more obvious it became that she really really really wanted somebody to say that they were deeply traumatized by this and it had a huge impact on our adult life and we wish our parents hadn't told us. because the way her parents talked about it to her, 'the santa lie' was this massive traumatizing thing that psychologically warped people well into adulthood. and the longer we talked and the more we insisted that it simply was not a big deal the more visibly dismayed she became lmao

[tomwambsmilk]

You guys are all missing the best part

nothing could prepare you for the opening of the second paragraph (source)

[tomwambsmilk]

to be more explicit. there's an assumption that the only valid reason someone has to delete a fic is that they don't want to be associated with it anymore. which is the only situation where orphaning (theoretically) works just as well. and frankly there are many many other reasons an author might want to delete and I don't think the readers get to rule on whether or not those reasons are valid

also tbh I really dislike this discourse around fics where a fic is almost considered a sort of public good once an author has published it, and so consequently removing it from public view is a cruel and unfair act. demanding that people orphan their fics rather than deleting implies that the reader has greater rights over the work than the author does. personally, I think someone absolutely has the right to remove their own work from public access if they no longer want it publicly accessible. now obviously, if something's been accessible for any period of time, there will be downloaded copies and wayback machine links etc., and you don't have the right to complain about that because it is the cost and risk of making your work accessible, period. but you absolutely have the right to take down your work for literally any reason, even if its just 'I no longer like this work and I'd prefer if people didn't read it anymore'. I get that it sucks when a fic you like disappears, but the author did you a service by sharing the fic in the first place and its rude at best and entitled at worst to demand they leave it up in perpetuity

[tomwambsmilk]

also tbh I really dislike this discourse around fics where a fic is almost considered a sort of public good once an author has published it, and so consequently removing it from public view is a cruel and unfair act. demanding that people orphan their fics rather than deleting implies that the reader has greater rights over the work than the author does. personally, I think someone absolutely has the right to remove their own work from public access if they no longer want it publicly accessible. now obviously, if something's been accessible for any period of time, there will be downloaded copies and wayback machine links etc., and you don't have the right to complain about that because it is the cost and risk of making your work accessible, period. but you absolutely have the right to take down your work for literally any reason, even if its just 'I no longer like this work and I'd prefer if people didn't read it anymore'. I get that it sucks when a fic you like disappears, but the author did you a service by sharing the fic in the first place and its rude at best and entitled at worst to demand they leave it up in perpetuity

[tomwambsmilk]

i'm not deleting or orphaning anything, this is just because i came across another "why do popular fics get deleted.... orphan don't delete!!" posts

if your fic is popular, there's not much point in orphaning it

depending on the reason you don't want to be associated with the fic, maybe that doesn't matter, but for a lot of people i think it does

people already know you wrote it. if it's very popular, it's appeared on rec lists, in reddit posts, people associate you with the fic and orphaning it might stop new readers from knowing it's yours but the association is still there and easy to find

deleting at least means people have to work for it, that the only people who find it are those who are searching for it specifically. when i hid ngawb, it took approximately two seconds for someone to post a wayback machine link and for pdfs to get passed around reddit and tumblr and whatnot. even with the fic gone, i was linked to it, orphaning wouldn't have done much of anything. which is fine, that's the nature of the beast, i'm not upset at anyone for that or saying they shouldn't have done it

it's just that there's a tipping point where orphaning isn't the solution you think it is

[tomwambsmilk]

do children like earnestly and truly believe in santa claus ever? from my earliest memories i just thought it was kind of a fun idea but i never regarded it as strictly true, just like...an unspoken ritual we did on christmas that was a way for my parents to make our christmas presents more exciting. but i did pretend to believe in santa for a long time because i wanted them to have fun with it.