#internet advice

[nudityandnerdery]

I must not click on rage bait. Clicking is the algorithm-killer. Clicking is the little-death that brings more rage bait articles. I will face my rage bait. I will permit it to pass my for you page and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the external eye to see my algorithm. Where the rage bait has gone there will be nothing. Only I and Muppet gifs will remain.

[spiderpanic]

[chaotic-archaeologist]

got a question for ya regarding sex and online safety.

Background; I am an adulty adult. I have been able to and have voted in more than 3 elections. [I know you take interactions with minors seriously]. I am also ace and autistic. as a result I have never felt the urge to date and I normally don't mind having friends close by.

However, I also just moved for the 4th time since 2019 and would like to meet people.

So I downloaded Grindr. already got my first dickpic lol. I have also been chatting with a fellow who I like and would like to be friends with and I also wouldn't mind exploring my kinks with people... but I have never had to worry about safe online sexy stuff before so I don't know the basics beyond normal internet safety.

What do I do‽‽‽

Okay first, thanks for clarifying the adulty part. This is an awesome question, and here's the advice/steps that I personally follow for situations like this.

Have your first meeting in a public place. Go for coffee or ice cream or lunch or dinner or whatever. But don't meet them alone. This way, if you get uncomfortable with anything that's happening, they're much less likely to continue with that behavior after you attempt to extricate yourself.

Make sure there are no expectations. Plan not to have sex on the first date/meet up. Grindr often tends to ignore this rule since it's very hookup centric, but you're absolutely within your rights to insist on taking things as slowly as you want to.

Don't rely on the other person for transportation. If you choose to meet someone, get yourself there and plan to get yourself back. Walk, bike, drive, public transportation, unicycle, it's all good. But there's much less room for pressure if you're not depending on them for a ride home. This segues nicely into my next point:

Do not tell them where you live. At least, not right now. Plenty of people on Grindr are willing to "host" meaning you can come to their place. That's fine for them, but I err on the side of never giving anyone my address until I've had a thorough chance to assess their character and meet them a few times.

Tell someone where you will be. Let someone who cares about you know that you're going out, where you'll be, and what time you expect to return. Establish a time to check in when you're going home/if you choose to extend the meeting. There are also apps like Noonlight that can function similarly.

Be careful about what you consume. If you're going to enjoy and mind alternating substances, be very, very careful. This goes for anything from getting drinks at a bar to any and all of the recreational drugs on the market.

Be prepared for a little bit of awkwardness. Meeting someone in person is often very different than chatting online. If the conversation is awkward or halting, that's okay. Give it a little time (but also don't be afraid to trust your gut if it's telling you something is wrong).

Communicate clearly. If you have any needs—which can range from an allergy, not being able to stand for long periods of time, needing them to speak loudly so you can hear them, safety concerns—the best way to get those met is to be upfront. You don't need to disclose the reason why you need something if it makes you uncomfortable, just state what you need. People worth spending time with will respect that. The same thing goes for your wants.

Use protection. Maybe this isn't applicable for you specifically, but I think it belongs on this list. Condoms. Dental dams. Gloves. Someone on an app telling you they're negative for any number of things is not an actual guarantee they're not lying to you. Not wanting to use protection (not just for anal/vaginal intercourse, but for oral sex as well) is a huge red flag. Decide in advance what your boundaries are and stick to them.

If it sucks, hit da bricks. Fundamentally, you owe this person nothing. There is no consequence for saying "you know what, I'm not feeling this and I'm going to leave." Be as polite as you want to, but put yourself first.

At the end of the day, the only thing you have control over is you. How you react, where you meet this person, what you do—that's what you control. Hopefully any meet ups will be fun and relatively safe, but just in case, set yourself up for success by maintaining what control you can.

From one adult to another, these are all suggestions rather than rules. Many people on Grindr choose not to follow various ones, and that's fine. Take some time to think about what you're comfortable with and make your decisions accordingly.

Also, best practice for someone sending an unsolicited dick pic (if you don't want them) is just to block that person. But sending a return picture like this one is a hilarious option.

-Reid

[blessthosewhocurseyou]

[ao3-shenanigans]

Are you doing well today?

Also how do you deal with hate?

Hello! I’m doing alright— thanks for asking!

On a personal level, I don’t deal with hate or negative interactions very well lol; but I’ve got some advice for dealing with general hate directed at you or your fanworks:

1) Block the user.

This is a great go-to because it a) doesn’t need any justification and b) can be done with out further interacting with the user. I can block someone because their vibes are off or because I think their takes are bad or annoying. Most of the time user are not notified when they are blocked and so they often don’t realize, and if they do, there’s not much that they can do about it.

2) Report the interaction.

If you don’t feel like blocking the person in question is enough or that they are violating a terms of service agreement (ie: harassing in a way that is more than the average heckling), or for whatever other reason, you can always report the individual and the interaction. Just about every platform that folks have the ability to argue on, also has the a place to report other users.

On Ao3, you can go to their Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page to submit a report. They have more guidelines on their specific report guidelines there. Also note: While very dedicated, Ao3’s volunteer team is quite small compared to the massive number of ao3 users, and as such, it may take quite a while for them to get back to you.

These are my best two options for getting things delt with on the online side of things and they apply to almost any virtual interaction — fanfiction or other wise. I think aside from that, my biggest pice of advice is to engage as little as possible with the user who is presenting the hate. Block and report them and move on as best you can.

Take time to spend doing things offline that you enjoy such as making art, taking a walk, being with friends, playing with pets, doing personal writing, clean your space — whatever, as long as it’s something removed from the situation that can help recenter you and to remember the world is bigger than that particular issue.

You got this! I hope everything works out! 💕

[internetsafetyposts]

aaaahhh i forgot about my project here!! well since im here, here's...

Internet PSA #2, Scams!

Whether it be via email, social media, or tumblr asks you should be suspect of offers of money, or requests to donate to causes.

Unfortunately people who would like to exploit you are out there! And this isn't something new either! Scams over the internet have been going around ever since the public first had access back in the 90's.

How can you protect yourself? Well, for example, if you get a ask on tumblr, (or dm on other media platforms) requesting to donate to an urgent cause, perhaps someone claiming they need help buying their insulin, do some investigating into their account.

Look out for inconsistencies with their name/family member names.

Look at date stamps on posts. Does it look like they posted 50+ things in one day? Are reblogs/reposts coming from seemingly random points in time?

Is there a lack of other posts? or do they perhaps reuse the same post over and over?

Look into the site they use for donations, does the location match with where they say they are? (eg: "I'm close to g@za" but the donation site says texas.)

And same goes for offers of money

Do. Some. Digging!

And remember, NEVER give someone your debit/credit card numbers, and never give someone the password to your paypal/cashapp/chime/etc.

And definitely don't donate to someone without verifying first that they're not posing as someone else/a made up person.

As much as many of us would like to have faith that people are genuine, do look out for people with not-so-honest intentions.

That's it for today! See you next time and remember,

Be safe while you browse!

[thatquietkid108]

Just found "myadcenter.google.com" where you can adjust what ads you see. Gonna change some things and see if it works

Edit: Just turned off personalised ads

[uncle-fruity]

You do not have to save people on the internet.

You do not have to correct someone's bad opinion on the internet.

You do not have to explain yourself to strangers on the internet.

You do not have to justify your existence on the internet.

You do not have to reblog hateful posts to make a counterpoint against them on the internet.

You do not have to disclose any personal information you're uncomfortable telling to strangers just to make your point on the internet.

You do not have to be the most morally pure person on the internet.

You do not have to tell people why you're blocking them on the internet.

You are not obligated to destroy your mental health to prove that you're a good and/or open-minded person on the internet.

If the people in your internet life are scrutinizing your every move (and/or other people's every move) just waiting for you to mess up, that's a red flag.

If the people in your internet life are making you feel afraid to speak your mind about important things that affect you, so much that you worry they will stop talking to you -- or worse turn their ire on you when you disagree with them -- that is a red flag.

Alternatively, if the people in your internet life are trying to make you feel guilty about not talking about something you don't feel comfortable weighing in on, that is also a red flag.

If the people in your internet life only ever criticize you and never have anything constructive or educational to offer, that's a red flag.

If people like that are your only internet friends, or your only friends online or offline, please know that there are other people who will care about you and show you genuine kindness. There are other online communities you can involve yourself in. Please try to seek them out.

Please try to avoid dynamics like these, because while it may be comforting to feel like someone, anyone wants to associate with you, these are the behaviors of people who will try to take advantage of you and drop you as soon as you stop serving their own purposes.

You deserve better. And the internet is not where you should climb your hills to die on.

[virtualgirladvance]

Anyone know a good way to rip Spotify playlists or so I gotta do it the manual way? Pls DM me ??

[kitkat-the-muffin]

Important advice for all you young’ins on the internet:

Never set your phone wallpaper to a funny error message. I did that once and my dad thought my phone was broken, so he broke it trying to fix it

However. If you want to convince your family to buy you a new phone. Do that I guess. Cause I got a new phone out of it

[bookmark-extraordinaire]

I feel like people on the internet nowadays can't even tell what's a troll and what's not. Like I've seen way too many instances of people feeding trolls without even realizing because they were saying something that personally stung them. And guess what? That's what trolls do!

You see someone being obviously contrarian under a post? 90% that's a troll. And even if they aren't, you're not doing anything good in giving them attention. Just ignore completely or even block them.

Like, someone is saying women are inferior to men in the comments of a feminist post? Probably a troll. Someone saying slurs under a pro-LGBT post? Probably a troll.

And before anyone comes at me saying "but people like this exist!" I KNOW. I am aware that genuinely shitty people exist, and that they'd do anything to be assholes and spew their hate on anything they don't like, but you're not doing yourself any favors by replying to them. You're just giving them attention and shining a spotlight on their bullshit, giving them an even bigger platform. Don't fucking do that.

"But if we don't speak up then we'll never educate them!" that's not your problem. They're already going out of their way to be contrarian, and it's not Internet User #2945839 that will make them change their mind. Save yourself the fucking effort and focus on something actually important.

Ignore and move on. Don't feed the trolls. Do the both the internet and yourself a favor.

[slosher-dlx]

UPDATE

We found another guy asking about the same problem as you. There is one reply on the post: "Google it"

Uh Oh, The One Other Guy Having The Same Problem As You Got Zero Replies To His Post On Reddit That He Made 5 Years Ago

[internetsafetyposts]

Internet PSA #1

For our first psa, I will start with the topic of location.

So what's the big deal with sharing your location? A lot actually.

So many of us have at least a friend or two that shares everything including where they are and where they're going. which seems harmless, right? Wrong!

To you, the close -or decently close- friend, it doesn't mean much. I mean what are you going to do with your friend's location? But what about the internet? That's where things can get not so safe.

Say, you post a picture of a route on a map you're going to take. You zoom it out and cross out the city names. seems good to you! but that location dot on screen is enough. Your city, and the part of it you live in can be found -and easily too!

Why's it important to keep your location secret? Because cyber stalking exists and is very hard to predict. And you don't want a cyber stalker to become an irl stalker.

What information tips people off? Well a lot of simple, little things so I would suggest you avoid posting:

Maps screenshots.

Street signs.

License plates.

Names of local businesses.

Landmarks.

Your town/city name if it's a small area.

Location data from photo geotagging.

and more.

You can protect yourself by refraining from posting personal information online, and to remove such data from images, preferably with an app for photo editing. I suggest ibis paint x if you're on a phone. Also make sure that you turn off geotagging.

That about wraps up our first ever PSA! Feel free to reblog and share.

See you next time, and remember:

Be safe while you browse!

[roabythecow]

Girlies (gn) word of advice, if you're going to avoid someone for whatever reason with the excuse of "I'm going to be busy with (insert) so I won't be online much" then don't be Online Much outside of DMs in chats they're in 💀 Fully commit my guy (gn)!! You aren't fooling anyone /lh

[lavendulachronicler]

Block Early; Block Often

As we get closer to Hazbin Hotel's release I would like to drop some general internet advice and beg everyone not to engage with the haters/antis/whatever we call those unserious people. If you see them, the only button you should be hitting on their posts is 'block'. It'll be happier for everyone involved. 'But they need to know they're wrong!' Sorry to say this but I promise you there is nothing in the world you can say to them that will change their minds. The combination of words simply does not exist. There is a way to do it, but unless you know them personally, you do not possess it. Block them, move on, forget they ever existed. Trust me. You get the internet experience you curate. You can get away with not knowing what they say or think at all and it's so much better. Put your own enjoyment first.

[smartsmears]

It's genuinely alarming when I see someone who's around 18 and under and they have 15K followers. Other than a select few people either your fans enable the worst kind of behaviour in you or you get torn down from insane harassment due to having a spotlight on you, or both.

This is especially the case on twitter, so many ironic shitpost accounts that pick fights with people all the time and do toxic memes are 15 year olds that far too many people felt like it's fine they follow. So many harrassment campaigns are just a hundred thousand people getting mad a 16 year old drew something a little cringe (or not cringe at all peope just got mad at nothing)

best internet advice is do not get popular at all like. at all when u are 15. do not.