#I had to watch YouTube videos about how to post on Tumblr

[freckliedan]

Wait you reblogged something about dnp getting outed before the height of the careers? Did I miss something lol when were they outed

oh my god. i love that this is not something everyone knows anymore. but it's also absolutely fucking insane to me that this knowledge could potentially be lost. it's the biggest piece of context necessary for understanding them.

they were outed in 2011 on a smaller scale and again in 2012 on a massive scale, both times by the same video.

on september 17th of 2011 there was a platform wide glitch on youtube where, at random, a bunch of videos that had been uploaded and listed as private were suddenly unprivatized.

one of the videos that was unprivatized was a deeply earnest private message to dan that phil uploaded on february 13th of 2010, because dan was in india with his family and it was their first valentine's day together. there are a lot of intimate details about their early relationship in this video.

it gets called the vday or valentine's day video by phannies because it was titled ":3".

it was only up for a couple hours, but there are posts from phannies within that span. they reached out to people asking that it not be circulated with a poor cover story (that it was a prank they thought better of because it would be too mean).

people did not publicly circulate it for a period of time, but on halloween of 2012 it got posted publicly and got spread everywhere immediately. that's the second and more major outing.

in the years of like, 2013 thru the end of tatinof era at least but likely longer than that? if it got posted anywhere publicly it would get copyright struck by phil and removed. i don't have a definitive end date but the copyright strikes aren't still happening.

the leak is absolutely what lead to the peak era of dan and phil's closeting. understanding their need for control and how momentous it is that they trust us with anything requires knowledge of this context, imo.

i don't reccomend watching it. i haven't in some time.

i am open about the fact that i did watch it as a teenager in november of 2012, back when it was still circulating on tumblr. when i returned a couple weeks later to rewatch it, the entire blog i'd originally seen it on had been nuked for copyright infringement, and that wasn't uncommon for the era.

it was a really bad time in the phandom. dan briefly made a "customer service" sideblog & vehemently shut down people speculating on his sexuality/relationship with phil.

all of the archival information we have on dan and phil—the dailybooths, the formsprings, the old tweets, the videos they've taken off their channels, liveshows, vyous, etc? so much of that information was saved despite dan and phil trying to eradicate it in the immediate aftermath of the leak.

it's incredible that we still have it all, and even more incredible that images from phannie archives have made it into their videos several times from 2019 onward. their relationship with us has changed so drastically since 2012, in ways beyond what we could've imagined at the time.

yes, they were outed. that's the context for everything.

[zilabee]

because my dash were being all coy about the 'news' about now and then I had to track it down via men being serious on youtube and dear god

(the only interesting news is that they've apparently used AI to make Paul's voice sound younger, which is kind of the most interesting thing they could do, and I love them for it, because yeurch all the AI bullshit on youtube at the moment, but if paul gets hold of a machine and can make his voice do whatever he wants it to, is that AI bullshit or is that just paul being very paul? what might it be and where might it end? BUT! that is not even the news the serious men of youtube are REMOTELY interested in though! honestly they barely mentioned it. the "news" they care about is that they've used a three way harmony vocal chord from a take of 'because' for backing, and slowed it down to change the key. sounds lovely to me but the men do not think it is lovely, they think it's quite serious, and they're not at all sure how they feel about it, except that it's worrying, if not actually concerning. The news is also that george played rhythm guitar on it, not lead guitar, and that's also something which it's hard to know how to feel about, but probably best to feel very serious about. And george might not sing on it, (apart from in the three part harmony) so how terrible to say it's even a beatles song if george is only playing on it and singing on it, and it's odd, isn't it, that it's all just going ahead when actually the serious men of youtube aren't sure they want it to, and when they're not sure it's what george would have wanted. (it turns out they know just as much as tumblr's george fans what george would have wanted, so that's good, they can all discuss among themselves and perhaps have a little war to decide who is the most upset about literally nothing and who can best protect George from literally nothing, I don't know.) Also the news is that ringo probably didn't even want to do the track and giles martin had to 'talk him into it' so yet again paul was the only beatle who wanted to do the thing, which we all already knew, and which is fine, isn't it? NO. Nothing is fine. incredibly, they seem to think makes it less of a beatles track, when that's the very thing that makes it most beatley, but it would be wrong to just enjoy that, or indeed enjoy anything, it's all very concerning, and we can only assume the very worst and be serious about it. On top of all the "news", it's important you know that they're still not sure we even NEED a new beatles track but it is happening anyway as if their opinion might not matter, and that is very troubling. they don't seem to have even considered just not giving a shit, oh gosh the shit they give. They also seem to feel that it matters a lot whether it's a good song or not? !!! They're so confused. And they're still worried it's not really going to actually even be a beatles song !!! which is extraordinary because obviously it's not a beatles song, is it, they're half dead, so worrying on and on about whether or not it's really a beatles song is a terrible use of time, but they have a lot of time. Also apparently the news is that they're remixing the blue and red albums which also apparently we should have serious opinions on but I had to opt out of those opinions because I died.)

[mossflower]

loki season two has me screaming crying throwing up trying not to get dragged back into the mcu trenches

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

.

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[micer2012]

a reflection on MatPat's plagiarism

Hello, my name is Della, or micer2012, and 2 years ago Game Theory plagiarized three Tumblr posts of mine, making a video that now holds almost 6 million views.

My posts explaining his plagiarism made their rounds on Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter, but despite the Hermits and Pooka commenting on it (generally in support of me or saying they don’t know enough details about the situation to say either way), MatPat and his team have never owned up to anything, and no mention of my name is present on the video. The one Reddit post they made denying it (which was made before my detailed takedown, which they have never responded to (though the mods on the r/GameTheorists Reddit were kind and made sure it stayed up)) didn’t even mention me by name, just referring to me as “a tumblr user”. (Though one of the screenshotted comments in the body of the post does say my name)

This experience was baffling, but it’s overall had a positive impact on my life. r/Hermitcraft gave me a Golden Apple Award (post of the year, 2021). My inbox was filled with excited fans, wanting to ask me questions or pose their own theories, far more than the hate I got. (Though the hate I got from Game Theory fans was VERY funny. I wondered why none of them gave me shit about saying “MatPat misgendered Evil Xisuma” before realizing none of them read that far into the post.)

And getting on a more personal, and much more important note, I met most of my current online friends through this, including my partner. It helped me grow closer with my irl friends as well and gave me an entertaining story that I tell whenever I have the chance. It was one of the first things in my life that really made me feel like my talents, my autistic hyperfocusing and analyzing of things I love, could be valuable. Useful. Exploitable. It blew my mind that MatPat thought an autistic kid’s ramblings about a Minecraft Youtube joke character were good enough to steal. To put an audible sponsorship on. To get 6 million views off of.

And that’s why I’m writing this post, this update years later. As you might’ve been able to guess, Hbomberguy’s Youtube video on plagiarism reopened this wound. It was really hard for me to sit through, it took days of pausing and taking breaks, because I had experienced everything he was talking about firsthand. 

In my 10 page long takedown post, I wrote about how his rewording of my sentences made him say things that were incorrect, just like Filip did. The content farm production style that made big companies like Cinemassacre take one creator (AVGN/MatPat) and turn him and his content into a brand, a voice that reads out scripts by other people with other opinions/theories, is a history shared with Game Theory. What really hit me was Harris talking about how big creators only do this to people they think they can get away with doing it to. How they view their victims as lesser, as not deserving of their words, repackaging them as their own to give to an audience that can gain from hearing them, but deserves better than to have to listen to the original victim.

That’s the thing, I 100% think a video version of my theory to expose to a bigger community than “Evil Xisuma Fans on Tumblr” is a great idea!! Near the end of the video Harris talks about how video adaptations of things could be a great market, even an accessibility tool, and I completely feel that about my posts. I wrote them quickly assuming the reader was someone well versed on Evil Xisuma lore, after not even watching most of the CarnEvil series, and the diagrams I made to explain them are even less comprehensible. Harris makes a joke that I completely agree with, 

“I’m sure some of my videos would do very well if someone translated them into English.”

I don’t think I would’ve ever made my posts if I didn’t have autism, and a special fixation on Evil Xisuma and Hermitcraft. I made them because I felt the character was being done an injustice, and because I wanted to share with other superfans this theory that might explain it away. I do think that MatPat plagiarizing me was ableist. I used to wonder a lot if this would’ve happened if my posts were articulated better, if they had been peer reviewed, if the posts themselves had been spread to a wider audience before MatPat made his video. At one point when the discourse was fresh (before I had the time to write out my 10 page rebuttal), a bigger YouTuber (100k subs at the time) messaged me and started talking on Discord, interested in possibly making a video on the discourse, but I think my style of typing and general enthusiasm drove him away. You can tell by a single look at my blog (or my original 3 posts!) that I don’t usually type like this. This post you’re reading now has been peer reviewed and edited, and took me hours to format correctly. That video could’ve been huge, the entire outcome of this MatPat situation would probably be much different.

I also used to stress a lot about “being the one who ruined Evil Xisuma’s story”. If you didn’t know, to me S8 Evil Xisuma’s story got wrapped up pretty quickly and unsatisfying (in my personal autistic opinion). (though this might’ve been due to s8 being experimental and ending early with moon big) There was no real culmination of the plot points and arcs going on, and I don’t want to blame myself, but when Xisuma said on stream (when the MatPat thing was first going on) that he didn’t want to focus on the discourse or draw more attention to it, it makes a lot of sense to me that he just wanted to wrap it all up as quickly as possible. For a while I beat myself up about it, of ruining the story of this character I love, but it’s not my fault. If anyone’s, it’s MatPats, but I don’t think it’s useful to just blame someone else. That’s how the story ended up going, and that’s fine. This is Evil Xisuma we’re talking about, their inconsistent lore is what made them such an interesting character. And notably, Pooka made an animation with an awesome culmination of Jeff, the Dreamer, Evil Xisuma, and his own sona’s story, and it makes me so happy to watch. Whatever Pooka does is of course his own choice, but I’m glad he got to give this personal story his own ending (if it is an ending, and not just the start of a new chapter!). 

Typing this all out and getting it off my chest has made me feel a lot better. For a while I wanted to make my OWN video essay about Evil Xisuma’s lore and CarnEvil’s lore, actually going episode by episode to explain it instead of just assuming you knew as much about Evil Xisuma as I did. That idea is still not off the table, but MCYT isn’t something I’m that into right now. Maybe if something else comes out about Evil Xisuma I’ll get back on it, but for now I’m fine with letting that go. But I want to make other videos, share other theories and analysis… if I have the freetime I’d love to make YouTube videos, and if I don’t have the time I’ll continue posting to my tumblr and infodumping to my friends. Apparently my infodumping is valuable enough “content” to steal! Writing this out has made me feel a lot better though, I’m really glad I got it out.

If anyone ever wants to talk to me about the things I’m obsessed with, or reach out to me as a source in a bigger discussion about Game Theory or other channels, my inbox is more than welcome :] Thank you for reading! 

Sincerely, a tumblr user.

[0sbrain]

here's a list of mozilla add-ons for all of you tumblrinas out there to have a better internet experience

also, if you like my post, please reblog it. Tumblr hates links but i had to put them so you adhd bitches actually download them <3 i know because i am also adhd bitches

BASIC STUFF:

AdGuard AdBlocker / uBlock Origin : adguard is a basic adblock and with origin you can also block any other element you want. for example i got rid of the shop menu on tumblr

Privacy Badger : this add on will block trackers. if an element contains a tracker it will give you the option to use it or not

Shinigami Eyes: this will highlight transphobic and trans friendly users and sites using different colors by using a moderated database. perfect to avoid terfs on any social media. i will explain how to use this and other add-ons on android as well under the read more cut

THINGS YOU TUMBLINAS WANT:

Xkit: the best tumblr related add on. with many customizable options, xkit not only enhances your experience from a visual standpoint, but provides some much needed accessibility tools

bonus: if you are into tf2 and wanna be a cool cat, you can also get the old version to add cool reblog icons

AO3 enhancer: some basic enhancements including reading time and the ability to block authors and tags

YOUTUBE

Return of the YouTube Dislike : pretty self explanatory

Youtube non-stop: gets rid of the annoying "Video paused. Continue watching?" popup when you have a video in the background

SponsorBlock: gives you options to skip either automatically or manually sponsors, videoclip non music sectors and discloses other type of sponsorships/paid partnerships

Enhancer for YouTube: adds some useful options such as custom play speed, let's you play videos in a window and most important of all, it allows you to make the youtube interface as ugly as your heart desires. I can't show a full image of what it looks like because i've been told its eye strainy and i want this post to be accessible but look at this <3

PocketTube: allows you to organize your subscriptions into groups

YouTube Comment Search: what it says

FINDING STUFF

WayBack Machine: you probably know about this site and definitely should get the add on. this allows you to save pages and access older versions with the click of a button. while you can search wayback using web archives, please get this one as well as it allows you to easily save pages and contribute to the archive.

Web Archives: it allows you to search through multiple archives and search engines including WayBack Machine, Google, Yandex and more.

Search by Image: allows you to reverse image search using multiple search engines (in my experience yandex tends to yield the best results)

Image Search Options: similar to the last one

this next section is pretty niche but... STEAM AND STEAM TRADING

SteamDB: adds some interesting and useful statistics

Augmented Steam: useful info specially for browsing and buying games

TF2 Trade Helper: an absolute godsend, lets you add items in bundles, keeps track of your keys and metal and your recent trades, displays links to the backpack tf page next to users profiles and more. look it tells me how much moneys i have and adds metal to trades without clicking one by one oh may god

IN CONCLUSION: oooooh you want to change to firefox so badly, you want to delete chrome and all the chrome clones that are actually just spyware and use firefox

HOW TO USE MOZILLA ADD-ONS ON YOUR PHONE

if you already use firefox on android, you'll know there are certain add-ons compatible with the app, some of them even being made just for the mobile version such as Video Background Play FIx. while most of them are pretty useful, some more specific ones aren't available on this version of the browser, but there's a way of getting some of them to work

you need to download the firefox nightly app, which is basically the same as the regular firefox browser but with the ability of activating developer mode. you can find how to do that here. once you've enabled it, you need to create a collection with all the add ons you want. i wouldn't recommend adding extensions if the creators haven't talked about phone compatibility, but XKit and Shinigami Eyes should work

also, don't tell the government this secret skater move, but you can try using both the regular firefox browser and nightly so you can have youtube videos in a floating box while you browse social media.

see? i can block this terf while Rick Rolling the people following this tutorial. isn't that tubular?

[lilbit-of-kizzy]

Hey YouTube did a stupid!!

Y'all know Ann Reardon? The woman who does all those fantastic debunking videos?

Well she posted a video on the extreme dangers of fractal wood burning (don't effing do it) annnnd YouTube, in their infinite wisdom, took down the video because it "promoted dangerous actions"......hello????

Did they take down other fractal wood burning videos? Nope! Did they wait until she was #3 on the search for it, and had many many comments about how she just saved someone's life or thanking her because the commenter knew someone who had died? Yep!!

So if you wouldn't mind helping to raise this video up the ranks, she explains what happened and how much good the other video did, before basically telling YouTube to suck it (and risking a channel strike) by reinserting the footage telling why that type of wood burning is so dangerous.

I'd post the video in this post, but I'm not sure how views are calculated when watched through Tumblr. And algorithmically it's better if you also could like and comment on the vid (I know it's ridiculous but hey it helps stick it to YouTube's insanity)

Here's the link again!! It's also just really informative and deserves a watch!

Edit: The video is back up!!! Great job everyone 😄😄

Edit the 2nd: I can turn off reblogs on a post that already has reblogs o.O that....will probably be happening tomorrow!! I adore the fact that this blew up because it definitely needed to but my brain and notes are suffering 😅

[fred-the-dinosaur]

ok, I started writing this in response to someone in particular but it felt unfair to single them out when the reason I was moved say something was because they were like the seventh person saying the same thing in a day.

To all the people like me, who had never heard of those YouTubers. Yeah, I get the vibe. I'd never heard of him either! Or any of the others. But so what ? Firstly, someone else you like is probably doing the same thing, and Secondly, on this scale? You probably HAVE HEARD of him. You just didn't know.

As turns out, I HAD heard of him.

I was so sure I hadn't. Lucky me for being so disconnected from the internet zeitgeist that I am insulated from its fallout! lol. Except I had read @vaspider 's post rejecting his spreading of Leibowitz's statements about 'boring people dying of aids', someone who at the time was struggling uphill against public opinion. Someone else I follow had a Hannibal video plagiarized last year by a big youtuber who turned out to also be him. My wife and I love watching verilybitchie, guess who also got a video ripped off by somerton?

And, like, you're right about how the fuck did people not take more issue with the 'nazis so hot' shit. But lots of people believed him, and spread it wide enough that you might have seen it. I am sure I've seen other, less explicitly awful takes of his crossing my dash, even passed them on, takes that were not even particularly horrifying, just misleading or untrue or stolen and taken out of context. Takes that are distorting the narrative of queer history on tumblr, beyond.

I'm not pointing fingers, just worried the impact of the video is getting lost. I wish someone who could write better and sound less grumpy doing it had written this instead. I just hadn't seen anyone else say exactly this yet. Specifically that, like me, you probably have heard of him, or more importantly his influence. Lots of other people you like got their stuff stolen by him.

And if you really have never met him or the consequences of his actions. then you've met someone else just like him.

I'd never 'heard' of him. So what?

[robbie-wallis]

I need to vent about Watcher, endure it if you can

Relax, this isn't a parasocial thing, but it is a long ass post, which suits me as a long ass human.

I need an outlet to discuss the terrible business decision Watcher has made by announcing their plan to leave YouTube, and this long-forgotten Tumblr account reached from its grave to grab at my ankle.

If you didn't see their video, good for you. It's extremely cringe-worthy in its sentimentality and editing, with blurry shots, pensive pauses and obligatory sad piano.

But at least there's no f'ing Ukulele.

Although, I think we might get the Ukulele in a few months.

Even though anyone who reads this is probably familiar with what the "Ghoul Boys" have done, I feel as though I need to add a little history.

WATCHER HISTORY

You can skip this part if you've been obsessively following the shenanigans, this is for the noobs who were never a "shaniac" or a "boogara".

Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara used to work at Buzzfeed. They hosted the successful Buzzfeed Unsolved shows. In 2019 they followed in the footsteps of the Try Guys and Safia Nygaaard and left Buzzfeed to create their own YouTube channel named "Watcher".

They brought along Steven Lim, another Buzzfeed person who is most known for the "Worth It" series. This series followed Lim and his friend/s spending obscene amounts of money on obscenely overpriced and indulgent products.

Think of it as being similar to the $100 V's $10,000 Sidemen content, only without the self-awareness and British "bad lads" humor.

Notably, even the Sidemen seem to have cut back on those adventures, perhaps understanding how bad it looks when so many people are struggling to pay their essential bills.

Steven became the CEO of Watcher while Shane and Ryan continued to create and present for the new channel.

They were wildly successful by YouTube standards. At the time of their self-spanking on Friday they were close to achieving 3 million subscribers, in just 4 years, based on basically only 2 cornerstone shows. If Social Blade is still a reasonably trusted source in everything but estimating income, they were gaining thousands of new subscribers every week.

Their most successful shows were Ghost Files, Puppet History, Too Many Spirits and Mystery Files.

Ghost Files is the only one of these shows which requires heavy investment, travel, a large crew and impressive production costs. These videos are shot on-location and require a lot of work. The rest are basically Good Mythical Morning style, just the two hosts and their banter.

Aside from Ghost Files, their content could be created with 3 cameras, 2 lapel mics and a good editor.

They were massively successful, solely because of Ryan and Shane.

THE DEMISE

So, what did they do on Friday 19th April? They decided to announce the launch of their own subscription platform.

Not a Patreon for extra content, behind-the-scenes, audience interaction etc, (they already had a Patreon with 6,000 paying subscribers earning them at least $50k a month), but a bespoke streaming platform which looks like a clone of Netflix.

The cost is $5.99 a month, or $60 a year.

Comparable to Netflix.

And by that I mean the price is comparable to Netflix while the content is comparable to a 4 year old YouTube channel.

Don't get me wrong, their production quality is incredible. The quantity, however, is not.

From the end of May viewers will have to pay to be a subscriber on their own platform in order to watch their shows.

They'll still be posting their trailers on YouTube, and the first episodes of new shows, but to watch it all you'll have to pay up or miss out.

Edited to add: Variety originally reported the Watcher crew were planning to remove all their existing content from YouTube to monetize it on their own platform. It's since been confirmed they will not be removing their old content. Fans are undecided whether this was a back-track after the announcement or a misunderstanding by Variety. You be the judge.

Of course, they're entitled to do this. They are creating a product and you can either enjoy it or not. No one is entitled to see it, for free, whenever they like.

Why did they do this?

Half of the sombre video gushes about their "humble beginnings" as "struggling young guys in a big harsh world", which comes across as extremely self-indulgent and ego-stroking.

A quarter of it explains how insanely successful they've been on YouTube and how this is all thanks to the fans who stuck with them after Buzzfeed, how it's allowed them to hire 25 people, how it's given them the freedom to create what they enjoy making and what the viewers want to see, and - most importantly - how it's allowed them to increase production quality on Ghost Files.

The final quarter of the video explains that this isn't good enough, the quality isn't high enough, the finish not glossy enough, it's not "TV caliber" enough! They want more, they need more, you have to give them more, mostly (apparently) because their CEO Steven Lim wants to bring back his show where he flies around the world with his bestie sipping Champagne and eating gold-leaf-covered lobster.

In short, they want more money to make even bigger things, even though their audience never asked for that.

WHY IT WILL NOT WORK

Oh my goodness, this is going to be a ride so strap in.

I'm not a YouTube creator so there are a lot of things I do not know. Having said that, I know a little about business.

This ain't Buzzfeed, y'all

Watcher became successful because of Ryan and Shane. It was their friendship, their personalities, and the content we loved to watch featuring them at Buzzfeed, that brought us along for the ride.

The audience they poached from Buzzfeed is there for them and Ghost Files. It's not there for Steven Lim and "Worth It". His show worked under the Buzzfeed umbrella only because they had numerous sub-categories in that community to support it.

The Try Guys left and created their own channel from their Buzzfeed fans.

Safia Nygaard left and created her own channel from her Buzzfeed fans.

Shane and Ryan left and created Watcher from their Buzzfeed fans.

Steven Lim left and became the CEO of Watcher. He didn't take his audience with him.

The audience of Watcher is not the audience of "watch me fly around the word with my pal and spend $100K on hand-reared, Whiskey marinaded, diamond-encrusted Kobe steak".

And... IN THIS ECONOMY?

Steven chose to become a CEO instead of a presenter. He's missed the opportunity to take that Buzzfeed audience with him.

This is made clear by the Watcher channel itself. Their "man eats food" content rarely breaks 500K views while their Ghost Files breaks 2 million consistently.

If a million of their viewers followed them from Buzzfeed to Watcher, the other 2 million have joined them since, based almost entirely on their spoopy content.

Not only did they base their channel on this genre and format, they have distilled their audience further ever since the creation of their channel and no matter how hard they try to diversify into "man eats food" it's just not working.

This ain't Netflix, y'all

As mentioned, the $5.99 charge is comparable to Netflix and just about every other streaming platform. Only Watcher can't give you even 5% of what a competing platform can offer for that price.

Other platforms also tailor their content and their pricing based on geographical location and localized economics.

You're paying far less than $5.99 a month if you live in an economy where the median household income is $300 a month. YouTube has a global audience. Their subscribers don't all live in a stable economy where $5.99 is considered disposable income.

We don't know the numbers, but I would guess only 60% of their subscribers are based in the USA, Canada, and the UK.

Even for those who do live in a stable economy, their audience is predominantly young adults and students. Most young adults are currently facing the reality that they will possibly never own their own home, they're living day-to-day trying to budget.

They've instantly priced-out a large % of their audience.

I confidently predict that diehard fans who can't see anything wrong with this will sign up for $5.99 a month, binge watch for a couple of weeks, realize there's no new spoopy content and cancel.

They'll come back when a full season of Ghost Files has arrived, pay again, binge it and leave.

Steven Lim thinks they're gonna get $5.99 a month, every month, from thousands of subscribers. In reality they're going to get maybe $12 a year, from people signing up to binge watch what they want, then leaving.

This will then decline naturally as attention wanes during the months where there is no spoopy.

This ain't good marketing, y'all

They're going to be posting "trailers and season pilots" on YouTube.

Sure, I bet YouTube is gonna be totes okay with a channel doing nothing but trying to hijack traffic for an external site.

Posting nothing but trailers and season premiers will mean maybe one full video per month during busy seasons. That's not enough to remain relevant for the algorithm.

If 80% of those posts are also just trailers saying "leave YouTube and come here", the channel will be smacked down quicker than a crypto scam using an AI generated Elongated Muskrat.

Their channel was growing steadily, but that was with full content regularly posted. When the schedule drops off, and when most of it is considered spammy by YouTube, it's going to collapse like a flan in a cupboard.

A streaming platform needs a constant flow of new subscribers just to replace the gradual drop-off (maybe ask Rooster Teeth about that). When your global audience at YouTube is gone, where are those new subscribers coming from?

The platform is also an additional overhead. It's going to cost thousands a month to keep the servers going.

This ain't good financial management, y'all

I don't know if they've already spent hundreds of thousands of $s on Lim's "men eat food" gamble, but I suspect they have.

I know they have spent hundreds of thousands of $s on a new season of Ghost Files, flying to the UK to host live events while filming those episodes.

This means they've over-extended their finances just at the moment where they've cratered their opportunities to see a return on investment.

Just that, on its own, is enough to destroy a production company.

They do not need 25 employees any more than I need an editor and proof-reader for this long ass post.

They do not need a production studio in Hollywood any more than I needed an office to write this.

They do not need to spend tens of thousands of $s on glossy graphics that appear on screen for maybe 4 seconds in one episode any more than I needed to add screengrabs to this painfully long essay.

By leaving YouTube they've lost:

Adsense revenue (which might not be much on a per-video basis but adds up with a back catalogue over years of productions)

Sponsorship deals, which allegedly contributes almost 50% of their annual revenue.

Merch sales, which is about to crash if the only people they can promote merch to are already paying per month in their smaller ecosystem.

Patreon. Why would someone pay $5.99 twice, for the same or less content?

And they've abandoned all of this for maybe a few thousand people who will probably end up paying just $12 a year when a new spoopy season arrives for them to binge.

I'm no Will Hunting, but no matter how hard I try to make the numbers work they just don't, and I don't need Robin Williams to tell me it's not my fault.

This ain't nice, y'all

Some of you are feeling like Ned's wife right now, and some of you will have no idea what that's in reference to.

Most of you will hate that I made that reference more than you hated the SNL skit.

I get it.

Maybe the worst part about all of his, from a viewer's perspective, is the dismissive nature of their sign-off.

They didn't mention the Patreon members once, not one single time in the whole video. It's like they consider the Patreon "too YouTube". They're the deformed cousin locked in the attic. They're the relative who wasn't invited to the wedding because they can't afford a Tom Ford suit. They're the colleague who isn't invited to the staff night out because they only work in accounting and no one has anything in common with Janice anyway.

These are diehard fans who were actually paying them extra to support them and enjoy a little bonus behind the scenes, and the boys didn't even consider them worthy of an utterance.

They also finished with "If you don't follow us and pay up it's been real, peace out". I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what it was.

They spent so much of the video saying how awesome and great it was that the fans and YouTube got them to this point, but they didn't thank their Patreon members, and they ended with a blunt suggestion that if you don't follow them and pay more then you're not a real fan anyway and they don't really need you.

"Thanks for getting us here, sucks to be you, bye now!"

You made them wealthy, you helped them hire 25 people, you helped them increase production value to "TV caliber" even though you didn't ask for that, but your job is done and now you're superfluous. Only the real fans are wanted.

In the words of the great George Carlin - "It's a big club, and you ain't in it".

They're okay losing the vast majority of the people who got them here if a few thousand of those are comfortable enough to be able to pay $60 a year for a YouTube channel.

Can it get worse? Sure!

We've had a weekend to enjoy the constant heat of this bonfire and it's predictably worsened with each hour of silence from the company and its employees.

The fact that they haven't back-tracked, despite almost unanimous agreement that this is badder than the baddest thing that could happen to their company, suggests they're okay with it.

Consensus seems to be that they knew it would be this bad, and they're cool. They predicted 90% of people would scream "Boo to you good sirs! Boo indeed!" and they could still survive on the 10% who don't see a problem here.

The lack of response reinforces the narrative that they're totally fine with discarding almost their entire audience if they can just squeeze the cash they need out of whoever is left.

This ain't fixable, y'all (maybe)

Note: I don't want this to be mean, but it's going to sound a little bitchy no matter how I try to say it.

If they'd brought out the Ukulele on Saturday, or even teased Ukulele's on their socials before putting out a video on Sunday, they probably could have survived this with much hand-wringing and a little groveling.

But now I think they've grilled this Kobe steak for far too long.

They've lost 100K subscribers, and counting. The venom among Patreon members is allegedly worse than the public comments section under the video, which is startling. Dozens of YouTubers are torching them harder than a $100 crème brûlée.

People are scraping their channel content in case it's nuked.

Shane "eat the rich" Madej's sentiments over the last few years look disingenuous, to say the least. To shamelessly steal someone else's comment: "Imagine being all 'eat the rich' right before throwing yourself on the plate". He's silent while his McMansion burns down, at his own hands. "Why not!?" indeed.

Steven "I drive a Tesla" Lim's socials now make him look like a tech-bro try-hard and his use of words like "early adopter" and "soft launch" in the video only compound the belief that this was all his brainchild. He is the CEO, and that comes with responsibility and the associated blame. You can't steer the ship into the Bermuda Triangle and then disappear without looking like the bad guy.

Okay, you can disappear, but that convoluted metaphor is a mystery for someone else to solve.

Ryan "TV caliber" Bergara now sounds like an elitist who thinks YouTube is "too pedestrian" for his big plans, not big enough to meet his artistic vision. You see, he's more James Cameron, while YouTube is more like your student film club. He's grown beyond this pesky platform with billions of daily hits offering exponential growth with almost zero financial risk.

Even if they released a video today admitting they messed up big time it's still going to be hard to get the taste of this Ghost Pepper Warhead out of the collective mouth of their viewers.

This hasn't just burned their shared brand, it's singed their individual reputations among an audience upon which their careers rely.

What they should have done, on Saturday, is release a video (Ukulele or no) confessing their error. They should have announced their new platform will instead just be a bigger and better Patreon, with early access to everything, behind-the-scenes content, extra features, audience interaction etc.

They should have reversed to make clear their YouTube channel will stay the priority, their main source of revenue, but that you could get more on their own platform if you want it.

And, maybe, over time, people will pay for that. If they grow their channel to 6 million subscribers in the next 4 years there will be a couple hundred thousand of them willing and able to pay $5.99 a month for 8 years of shows, 8 years of behind the scenes content, 8 years of community involvement and regular early access to new episodes.

Maybe then they could try out their "privileged guys eat expensive food in expensive places" show and see how it does? Maybe a majority of people won't be living on the cusp of poverty by then and it won't look as tone-deaf as a 13 year old YouTuber trying to cover Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah"? Maybe then they could hire another 50 people and make Bergara's "TV caliber" (I still don't know exactly what that means) game shows and reboots?

The clock has been ticking since they hit that "publish" button on their career ending video, but that clock is about to count down to zero and silence will permeate throughout their previously lively community.

That 1980s basement set needed someone crying in the corner, right?

The problem is, their own platform is not a terrible idea. Really, it's not the worst thing they could do. The badness came in the timing, the switch, the middle finger and the f you. They could have released this as an extra, their own Patreon alternative, waited, developed it over time into something sustainable and established.

They could still try to do that and hope this dark chapter is forgotten.

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe Lim is a financial genius with more skill than the management of Rooster Teeth and their corporate parent company combined? Maybe this gamble will be wildly successful despite all streaming services down-sizing or just going bankrupt? Maybe they won't be back on YouTube in 3-6 months begging for views after having to lay off 20 of their employees?

I know this... if I were one of those 25 employees blind faith would not be enough to stop me from looking for another job.

I suppose this will, for now, remain... a mystery.

EDIT:

I'm not writing another essay about this, but I'm glad to see they've backtracked and made the right choice to use WatcherTV as any sane creator would - to host early access and exclusive content in addition to their YouTube channel.

Over time, while promoting it in every video, building up that trust and fan base, it can be a secure and long-term financial bonus helping them to expand their business incrementally as finances allow.

Why this wasn't the plan all along is anyone's guess. Gambling everything on this was never the sane decision.

I still think they need to scale back on costs. I still think the food content is not currently a viable source of income while being a serious drain on resources. I still think they need to stop hiring all their friends and they need to hire one person who doesn't have personal relationships with everyone there and can make the tough business decisions.

No one likes firing people, it's ten times worse when it's a friend. But this is a reality of business and just wishing it wasn't so isn't going to make it go away. It would be awesome if we could all run a business where we can hire all our friends and family, never have to rely on any outside funding, make whatever we want, make a great living in one of the most expensive cities in the world and continue to grow.

That's just not the reality.

Their apology was genuine, in my opinion. I just hope they can work out the right financial balance.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for making a YouTuber feel uncomfortable? 

Here me out please, before you all make assumptions. 

A couple months ago, I(19F) began following a YouTuber that I quickly began to love. I won’t be saying the YouTuber’s name for the sake of protecting their privacy, obviously. I started to watch their videos(which were mainly about a story that she came up with, featuring her ocs) and enjoyed them all, enjoyed the ocs, too. This YouTuber is a relatively unpopular one, but not so unpopular that they’re obscure or completely unheard of, they’re just not one of the big names in the YouTuber community. I made a few amazing friends due to us being in the same fandom and both enjoying this YouTuber’s content. One day, I decided to write a fanfic for this person’s story featuring her ocs. I uploaded the fic to AO3 and made sure to credit the YouTuber with creating these amazing ocs. I then showed it to my few friends, who all loved the fanfic. However, one day I made the mistake of showing the fic to a mutual friend(now an ex-friend but that’s a topic for another discussion) that me and the YT both share, and she sent the fanfic to the YT without my permission. Now before y’all get up in arms, I didn’t mind at all that she had sent it to the YT, in fact, I actually wanted the YT to see. However I really wish that she had asked me first, because I would have been more than happy to show it to them! Unfortunately, a few days after I sent it to her, my other friend(let’s call her M) showed me an announcement the YT made on her Discord, in which she complained about people writing fanfictions of her ocs and “using” them in her stories without her permission. She also stated that she felt like she was losing control of her story when other people wrote fanfics of it, and that whoever wrote the fanfiction “didn’t understand boundaries”(even though she didn’t have this boundary before and also wrote in the announcement that she used to be okay with fanfics of her work, but now no longer is). I deleted the fanfic the moment I saw the post from my friend, but I was a bit disappointed since I never meant to make her feel uncomfortable and only wanted to show my love and appreciation for her story, and possibly get more people to check out her story as well. Still, I deleted the fanfic from AO3. 

Now, here’s where things get interesting. A while later, I joined the YouTuber’s Discord server, where I met many people that I got along quite well with and quickly befriended. I often engaged in conversations with them about the story, and often drew fanart of my favorite character and posted it to the art channel in the server(she’s okay with fanart of her ocs, just not fanfics). Now is probably a good time to mention that while I was in the Discord server(and even before that) I often talked about the story with my friend on Tumblr(not M, these are two separate friends) who did not have Discord but loved the story just as much as I did. We often talked about the story and how much we enjoyed it, and often came up with jokes and headcanons, basic stuff like that, that any fan would do. Anyway, back to the Discord, one of the rules of the server was not to be disrespectful or rude or malicious towards other people, and another was that if you received two warnings about your behavior in the server then you would be quickly banned from the server and no longer allowed to come back. I understood this and tried to conduct myself to the best of my ability. However, one day, I found myself mysteriously unable to access the server, and when I tried to rejoin, I was again unable to. I found out that the reason I couldn’t access the server was because I had been banned due to “disrespectful behavior”, “engaging in arguments”, and making the YouTuber(who ran the server) uncomfortable. I was confused, because I genuinely don’t remember ever engaging in rude behavior with anyone. The few instances(according to them) in which I had been allegedly rude or disrespectful to people were both genuine misunderstandings, and both times I had apologized for them and did not repeat the behavior. I also did not receive any form of warning before being banned, despite one of the rules being that you will receive two warnings before being banned from the server. Still, I apologized for my alleged hostility and asked if I could come back, however the YouTuber said no, and went on to add that not only was I rude to people in the server(which, again, were both genuine misunderstandings), but that she had seen my Tumblr conversations with my friends in which I talked about her story, and said that she was “wildly uncomfortable” with how “obsessive” I was with it as well as my favorite character in the story. This bewildered me to no end because the YouTuber did not have Tumblr and had never once ever mentioned being on or having access to Tumblr, so I did not expect her to see my posts(and even if she did, I did not expect to get banned for them as they do not violate the rules of the server). It made me wonder why she didn’t just talk to me and explain to me that she was uncomfortable with me posting about her work instead of just banning me altogether and not giving me a chance to defend myself. I ended up sadly and reluctantly deleting all of my posts relating to her story, and requesting my friend to do the same. I told M about this scenario, and she was enraged on my behalf, saying that the YouTuber probably was actually upset about my having written a fanfic for her ocs, and said that she didn’t understand me being called obsessive because I acted like a normal fan would(which I agree with). Some of my other friends have sided with me as well and told me that the YouTuber was acting petty, however some of my friends have taken a middle ground. None of them entirely condemned me, but that may just be because they are biased and don’t want to hurt my feelings. The mutual friend/now ex-friend(of course) merely told me to “self-reflect” and move on from the story. Regardless, the YouTuber now has me blocked, not just on Discord, but on Instagram as well, where I also reside. 

Reasons why I think I might be the asshole: I will admit that I have a tendency to really hyperfixate on things and get especially attached to fictional characters that I adore and resonate with, so I can see why that would make them uncomfortable. That being said… 

Reasons why I think I might not be the asshole: I genuinely wasn’t trying to make this wonderful YouTuber feel uncomfortable or be “obsessive” with the story. I merely wanted to show my appreciation for it in a way that I thought was normal for online fans, which included writing a fanfic, drawing fanart, and geeking out about the story with my friends(admittedly publicly). I had no idea that these actions would turn the YouTuber off, and merely wanted to show how much I enjoyed the story. I also was never rude to anyone in the server and apologized whenever a misunderstanding rose up. I never tried to be aggressive with anyone or cursed anybody out or tried to have arguments with people, so I have no idea where that came from. 

So, what say ye, oh wise people of Tumblr? Am I the asshole or not?

What are these acronyms?

[muffinrecord]

Current Plans + Musings

I don't plan on playing Exedra to the degree I did for Magia Record, or playing it at all. Because of that, I won't be taking an active role in the community and archiving anything for it. Of course, if Exedra has like amazing gameplay and stories then this is all subject to change, but for now I think I'm done with phone games.

The two youtube channels will stay up and I'll check em periodically to make sure there aren't copyright strikes against the content. I've saved all my raw files, especially for the battle animations, so I can remake them in the future if the music ever becomes a problem for some reason.

Google Drive will stay up until Google rots away. I haven't recorded footage in a long time (as in stories, I do for the character doppels and such), but I'll upload things if they're sent to me.

Magia Union Translations still plans on translating things and making videos, especially leading up to the end, but also for after the game is over for whatever wasn't made in time. I'm not sure what form this will take in the future-- if it'll be manual captions added to the videos or not, but I know it WILL happen.

As for this blog, I'm not going to delete it or anything. However I'm going to be taking a step back. I'd like to say that I'll do liveblogs but I mean... *gestures at blog* I've been saying that for years and the only one I really did successfully was the Oriko one lmao. Ahhh oh well.

I'll have more words later, but it was really fun to be part of a fandom experience like this. I'm excited to work on my own original story projects though and quiet down a bit.

...

When I started this blog, I never expected it to have people actually read it. Or look at it. I just wanted a place to gush about how much fun I was having. I didn't even want to tag the posts with "Magia Record" at first because I was terrified people would be mean at me, haha.

But I'm glad I did. I made so many good friends through this game. I'm glad it existed. And it made me happy to have a place where people cared about what I had to say. Some folks actually got their news from here, can you imagine that? They had notifications turned on for this blog. My god.

Anyways, I'm going to be here for the next two months, and tomorrow I'll start reblogging fan projects and initiatives, plus general news. Maybe this blog will turn into a dumping site for art and fanfic reblogs, who knows. I might watch the remaining stuff and add various thoughts here and there.

Otherwise, you can find me on my main blog @malignmuffin, which only reblogs stuff (I don't talk much if at all there). I have another tumblr blog for my comic, but I think I'll reshare the name once I actually have content you can look at on it. It's pretty bare bones for the moment.

Actually it'll be funny if the end of this game is what makes me finally work on it again. I was in the process of working on it when NA came out, and it totally derailed me. Stopped writing, drawing, just focused on this silly little phone game. Now it's like those five years have gone by and I'm going back to where I started, except I think my lil comic is going to be a bit better than it was before. If I actually make it, that is.

If I ever do actually make my comic and start posting it, I'll be sure to update y'all here. hah

Anyways, thanks for being on this wild ride with me. The memories have been great, and I'm glad I had this experience, even if it had to end.

[detailtilted]

In Search of Supernatural Fans from the Early Years

Hi! I’m looking for the legends who originally recorded old Supernatural convention panels featuring Jared or Jensen, or possibly Misha. See "What I'm Looking For" below. If you know one of them, or if you're a member of a community with people who were in the fandom in those early years, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could let them know about this post. I can be reached at DetailTilted@gmail.com or here on Tumblr.

If you aren’t familiar with my project, see the “Project Background” section below. This is not a low-effort exercise to merely repackage old videos. I’m putting many hours of work into each video to improve their watchability and accessibility. I will always credit my sources unless you wish to remain anonymous.

Even if your videos are on YouTube, I’m likely to have more success upscaling them if I can get the original video files. Thanks to the videos AgtSpooky kindly sent me, I've learned how big of a difference it can make when I have the original files to work with. That's why I’m putting more effort into finding those elusive original video takers.

The problem is that they all seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Most of their YouTube accounts, LiveJournal accounts, and whatever other accounts I’ve dug up haven’t had any activity in 10-15 years. I’ve left a few messages on some of them, but I doubt they’ll be seen on dormant accounts. I’ve also gone down some crazy and twisted Googling paths trying to find current contact info for them, but without much success. In one case I even messaged the wrong person, who was at least kind enough to reply to the psycho asking for videos to let me know she wasn't the person I'd hoped she was. Oops!

What I’m Looking For

I’ve already finished CHICON 2007, Comic-Con 2008, and CHICON 2008, so I don’t need videos from those events, but I’d be happy to try to upscale your videos for your own collection if you have some you'd like to send me.

Actually, I could use CHICON 2008 Breakfast videos if you have any. I plan to attempt to redo that video either late this year or early next year.

I’ve been trying especially hard to reach people with original video files from either LA 2009 or Asylum 3 (2009), and I’d also be ecstatic to get some from LA 2008.

Any other old con videos you’re willing to share that have Jared or Jensen in them would be awesome. I hope to get to all the old conventions eventually. I haven’t yet defined “old”, so I don’t have a specific cutoff point.

Even if you just have audio files without video, those could be helpful too.

Length doesn't matter. Both long and short videos are welcome. Maybe I won't end up using them all, but the more options I have the better. Even if I don't put your video in my final edit, it would still be used because I always listen to every single video I can find when I'm finalizing my subtitles. Each video sounds at least a little different, and sometimes just hearing the audio in a slightly different way lets me catch a subtitle I'd missed or misheard.

Also, just to be clear, it isn’t necessarily my intent to exclude Misha. I’ve watched and enjoyed many of his convention videos and I liked Castiel for the most part, especially in the earlier seasons. I’m just not obsessed with Misha like I am with Jared and Jensen, and these videos do take quite a lot of work, so I’ve been putting my energy where my greatest interests lie. I’ll absolutely be including him when he’s in panels with Jared and/or Jensen, and in the future I may consider doing some of his solo panels.

So if you have original video files of Misha's solo panels that you’d like to send me, I’d be happy to add them to my stockpile for future possible use. If your videos turn out to be mostly complete, and if they upscale easily, then I might go ahead and do his panel at the same time I do the other panels from the same convention. If they'll take more effort to work with, I’ll probably skip them for now, but I may come back and tackle them if/when I run out of old Jared and Jensen videos to work with.

For any con videos you send me, regardless of whether I use them or not, I’d be happy to try to upscale them and send them back to you for your collection. I can’t always get things to upscale, so I can’t promise success, but I’ll definitely try.

Project Background - Enhanced Edition Con Videos

You can find my videos on my YouTube channel. (If you're already familiar with my project, skip to the next section -- there's nothing new to see here.)

I started this project in December 2023 to enhance old convention videos. My goal is to make them easier on the eyes and more accessible to both new and old fans from around the world. The videos on YouTube from that time can be difficult both to watch and to understand due to a combination of the older technology used to record them, the difficult recording conditions the fans were working with, and the lack of subtitles that make any sense.

I’m enhancing the videos as follows:

Visual Improvements: I’m upscaling the videos if possible, making color corrections if needed, and adding some slight stabilization to reduce the jitteriness. The end result is far from perfect because there’s only so much that current technology can do, but it's noticeably improved if you compare it to the originals.

Subtitles: I’m adding good, color-coded, English subtitles that can be turned on or off through YouTube’s CC button. The color-coding makes it more clear who's saying what when multiple people are speaking, and YouTube can auto-translate them into other languages to improve the accessibility.

Multiple Sources: If one video has gaps in it, then I'll try to find another that I can edit in to fill those gaps so the end result is as complete as possible. If I have more than one source that captured the same portion of the event, then I'll cut to whichever video I think had the best view of the action. In a few cases I’ve added a split screen with two different videos showing simultaneously so we can see action that's taking place in two separate areas. For example, when Jared and Jensen are on opposite sides of the stage. (There were also the infernal talking head bubbles on my Comic-Con 2008 video which nearly made me throw in the towel, but taught me a lot. 😅)

Extra Content for Context: These older videos don’t take up the full width of a modern video frame, so I’ve taken advantage of the extra space to display some still images with text to add extra context for many of the things they discuss. Some things are a lot funnier, or at least a lot more relevant, when you know exactly what they’re talking about. I clarify Supernatural episode references and pop culture references among other things. Sometimes I’ve also inserted short video clips, usually just a few seconds’ worth, if I thought it would add worthwhile clarity or entertainment to the topic at hand.

Current Project Status

If anyone has been wondering how I’m doing on my current video and what’s next… I’m almost done with the last video from CHICON 2008, which was Jensen’s solo panel. I should be ready to publish it on YouTube this Friday, May 24. I plan to use the same schedule as last time and put the Tumblr post up the following Tuesday when it’s a little more likely to be noticed here.

The next sequential conventions are LA 2009 and Asylum 2009, but I haven’t had much success in my attempts to upscale the available videos. If I were to work with what I have now, I know I could turn out something better than what’s on YouTube today, but the end result wouldn’t be nearly as good as what I might be able to achieve if I can get some original videos to work with. So I think it’s more logical to skip over these conventions for now and give it some time to see if I get any responses, in hope of a better end result.

I do intend to come back to the skipped conventions eventually, even if nobody sends me anything. Once I run out of conventions for which I can upscale the videos, if I still don't have anything better to work with for the ones I skipped, I’ll just do the best I can with what’s available. Even if I can't upscale, I can still do color corrections and stabilization, plus the subtitles and extra content. Some of these panels are split up into a bunch of very short videos, so it would also add value if I can combine them into something more sequential and cohesive. (I found 130 videos from the Jared and/or Jensen panels at LA 2009, and most of them were under 2 minutes long. 🤣) I don’t know if there’s enough footage to cover the entire panels seamlessly, but I’m itching to get my hands on that jigsaw puzzle of videos to try to make sense out of them.

So… the next videos I intend to work on will be from Vancouver 2009. This is one of the conventions that AgtSpooky attended and sent me videos for and they upscaled very well. Her breakfast video had already found its way onto YouTube, but wasn't properly credited. Her main panel videos aren't on YouTube as far as I could find, so that version may be new to newer fans. I'm only just starting to play around with upscaling the other sources out there, but my first attempt at the other main Breakfast source came out well. Both breakfast videos were taken from extreme opposite angles, so that should provide some useful editing opportunities. I’d still love to get more videos of this event if anyone has them.

If you made it this far, I am in awe. Sorry for putting this wall of text on your screen! 😅

[simmerianne93]

[Simmerianne93]Action_poses_09

Hello guys!!! How are you today??

It's been a while since I posted an action pose pack and I'm so glad to bring you this pack today.

Last month I was thinking about what kind of poses I could bring this month and it occurred to me that some action poses would be nice, however, I had two options, do a girl/boy fight or do a girl/girl fight. I did a poll on Twitter and one on Instagram and in the end, adding the results of both polls, the winner was girl/boy, so I ended up making this package that you are seeing right now. However, this doesn't mean I won't do the girl/girl poses, it will just take a little more time.

Then, when I was going to start making them, I said: why not do a livestream showing how I make them? and that's how I dared to do my first live. If you want to see the process of creating these poses (well, most of them) you can go to my YT channel (link down below with all my links) and watch a couple of videos where I show how I made them. The videos are a bit long, so I recommend watching them in fast motion.

BTW, I'll try to choose another pack to make some lives next month, I haven't decide yet what to make but I'll be letting you know on my socials. I have to plan my time with the power outages and all that (main reason i haven't made more lately e.e).

Anyway, I hope you like these poses, I wanted to add a little bit of "romance" so that's why it ends up with a kiss, apart from the fact that they will be some poses that will work very well for one of my stories in the future and I needed it to have a kiss at the end haha... Oh and there are 2 face reactions to pose #10, but they are the same poses, that's why I named them as 10 V-A and 10 V-B. V-A: is Angry (female)/ Smiling with eyebrow raised (male) V-B: is Surprised and insecure (female)/ Serious (male)

And that's it. I'll leave you with the description of the pack:

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What is on it?

13 Duo poses  (Made with a female rig and a male rig) + 2 all in one for each sim.

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What do you need?

Andrew's poses player 

Teleport any sim by Scumbumbo or Mccc by deaderpool.

Instructions in the original post.

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TOU

Do not claim my creations as your own.

Do not re-upload or modify my creations.

Do not make money of my creations.

Do not include my creations in Mods folders to download.

Please follow my Term Of Use.

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Download it now here — [Early access until June 21st, 2024]

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If you want to support me:  Patreon | Ko-fi

All my poses overview: Pinterest |  Wix | Tumblr

More in-game preview pics of all my poses: Instagram

My socials: Twitter | BlueSky | Instagram | Tumblr 

Lives and videos: Youtube

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I really hope you like them and I will say in advance: Thank you so much for using them.

@ts4-poses

[siredtosturniolos]

First of all I’m sorry if this is the wrong place to send requests in. I’m new to tumblr so I have no clue how to use this platform 😭anyways I have a request I’m begging on hands and knees for a chris fic where reader is 18 and he’s 23. reader is a influencer (u can make up where they met) ENEMIES TO LOVERS KINDA and SMUTTTTTTT with praising (lots of praising and pet names) u can make up the whole story it should just be based off these things thank uuuu

Enemies

Paring: Chris Sturniolo x reader 

Summary: You had socially climbed the ladder to fame and gotten your very own spot on the Vidcon lineup. Freshly 18 meant you were fully able to go on your own, and meet some of your favorite content creators yourself. And Chris. You didn’t particularly like him, as he had been rude to you ever since you met him. You confront him and things turn a different direction than you thought.

Warnings: Smut! Praising, pet names, enemies to lovers(kinda? Maybe this means part 2?). Read at your own risk and mdni! (First pov) 

Authors note: thank you for requesting this! I hope you like it. <3

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Walking the halls of VidCon the day before the event took place really helped me ground myself. I couldn’t believe I was here, let alone someone thousands of fans wanted to meet. I started a YouTube channel in October of 2021, and it’s only gone up from there. Posting various forms of content such as vlogs, get ready with me, makeup tutorials, and even a couple cooking videos. 

I just hit 5 million subscribers, so on top of doing VidCon I was also hosting my own meet and greet the day after. I was hoping to make some connections and see if anyone would want to come celebrate this milestone with me. 

Even though I have been successful for a while now, I had just moved to LA last month. I’ve been to a party here and there, making a few friends along the way. I take a seat on a bench outside to soak up some sun, and so I can really reflect on what my life has become. 

Jake, Johnnie, and Tara are supposed to be here today as well and I couldn’t be more thankful. They had introduced me to so many of their friends in the last few weeks, most of them being welcoming.

Larray and I had clicked instantly and had hung out a few times, but he wasn’t set to be here this weekend. He had already made plans with other friends so he couldn’t come keep me company. He promised me that Nick Sturniolo would be down to let me hangout with him until I was comfortable, and I was super appreciative of that. 

Chris Sturniolo though? Not so much. I’ll never forget the way his eyes raked down my body, stopping at my chest for a moment before he looked back up at my face. 

“Hey baby, I don’t think we’ve met before?” 

I rolled my eyes at how corny he was, slightly drunk and incredibly stupid. Once he realized he wasn’t getting in my pants he had completely ignored me. I also met Nick and Matt later on, and they were absolute sweethearts. 

Ever since that night any time a fan would bring me up in a live stream of his, he’d ask them to either stop talking, or call me boring and move on to the next question. I had reached out to him asking him to stop, as his fanbase had jumped to my socials and started going insane. 

Every time I messaged him, he’d read it and not respond. Nick would occasionally bring me up in videos and it was clear as day Chris didn’t like me, and his fans made it known. Clipping it and tagging me thousands of times nearly made me delete TikTok all together. 

I had come to find out Chris was actually really nice to everyone, just not me. I’m not quite sure what I could’ve done to make him be so rude to me, but it’s not like I see him all the time. Maybe I’ll have a chance to speak to him in person, and make him really hear me out. 

“Y/N!” A voice called out to me, making me jump. I watched as Jake walked up to me, “Tara has been looking for you, yapping about getting ready for tonight.” He explains, shrugging his shoulders. 

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion, “Tonight?” I ask, standing from the bench and letting him lead me to Tara. “They’re hosting a party tonight for us at the hotel apparently. Something to kick off the event? Fuck if I know.” Jake laughed. 

The next few hours flew by and before I knew it, Tara and I were letting loose and dancing to Just Dance by Lady Gaga. I had a few drinks in me, just enough to stop worrying about everything. Tara on the other hand, is gonna have a hangover from hell tomorrow. 

“I have to pee!” I yell to Tara as the song fades out, she nods and gives me two thumbs up before I begin to head towards the bathroom just outside the ballroom the party was in. 

Just as I’m about to enter I hear snickering behind me, making me turn around. I come face to face with none other than Chris. His eyes were burning into me, as he slowly approached, a stupid smirk on his face. 

“What are you laughing about?” I ask him, letting out a deep sigh.

He shakes his head, “You look ridiculous.��� He states, like it’s a known fact. I glance down at my outfit, a simple black tube top and cargo camo pants. My black and white Nike’s were clean and uncreased, so what the hell was he talking about? 

I look back up to him as his 5’8 frame slightly towers over my own, “What did I do to make you hate me so much?” I calmly asked him, as surprise flooded his features. Apparently he wasn’t expecting me to call him out in person. 

He stood there for a second, staying silent as he didn't know what to say, “Oh so you just hate me for no reason? Nice.” I scoff, before turning around to enter the bathroom. I was stopped by a gentle grip on my arm, making me look over my shoulder at Chris. 

“Look, I don’t really know why I act like this, okay?” He sighs, dropping his hand as I turn to face him again, “Ever since I met you at that party, I just can’t get you off my mind.” He explains, taking a step closer to me. Now I can smell his cologne and I hate to admit that it’s doing something to me. 

“Don’t make fun of me.” He continues, making my eyebrow raise in curiosity, “When we locked eyes that night it felt different to me. It felt like more than just two people meeting for the first time.” He says quietly, looking me in my eyes so I knew he wasn’t lying, “It scared the shit out of me.” 

I start to smile slightly, making him roll his eyes, “Are you telling me you fell in love with me at first sight?” I tease him, making him throw his head back and groan. “Just stop being rude Chris, we could’ve been something this whole time you know?” I tell him, watching as his eyes meet my lips before looking away quickly. 

“Wanna make up for lost time?” He suggests, making me glance around the hallway we were in. There were a few people scattered around, but none of them were paying attention to us. I look up at him to see that sexy smirk on his lips, “Fuck it.” I shrug, before I drag him into the bathroom with me. I lock the door before I’m pushed up against it, Chris pressing kisses to my cheeks before going down my neck. 

I let out a soft moan, lifting my hands to slide them into Chris’ hair and tugging slightly as he found my sweet spot, “No marks please.” I plead him, feeling his tongue lather the area before he moves lower. His kisses get harsher the lower he gets, looking up at me slightly before he returns to his full height and slams his lips on mine. 

I moan into the kiss, the tension between us coming to a peak, “Jump.” He mumbles into my lips, wrapping his arms around my waist. I use his shoulders for stability as I jump and wrap my legs around his waist. He pulls back so he can walk me to the sink, and I waste no time trailing kisses down his neck. Chris sets me down on the counter and spreads my legs so he can stand in between them. 

“Gonna make you feel so good baby.” He rasps, tilting his head back as I continue my assault on his neck. I make my way back up to his lips, taking him in for a split second before we kiss again. His hair is disheveled, his lips swollen from our kissing, and his eyes. They’re full of lust and determination, and I can’t help but try to clench my thighs. 

Chris smirks at me, playing with my top, “Can I take this off pretty girl?” He asks, to which I rapidly nod. Chris’ fingers slip underneath the fabric of my shirt briefly, before he snaps the band against my chest making me gasp. He wastes no time as he quickly takes it off, setting it somewhere behind me. His hands instantly cup my breasts, his lips slotted back onto mine. 

His large palms squeeze my breasts, his thumbs brushing over my nipples making me let out a whine. I tug at his shirt and he pulls away to take it off, “Fucking incredible.” He mutters, letting his eyes fall onto my chest as I pant. He leans down, taking my nipple into his mouth, and my hand flies to the back of his head, arching my chest into his chest. 

“Fuck Chris.”  I moan, my hips bucking as that’s where I really want him. He switches sides, letting his hand trail down my body to pop open my pants, pulling away to look at me. “I’m about to ruin you, sweetheart.” He lowly speaks, making me bite my lip as I begin to help him remove my pants. I kicked off my shoes and Chris played with the band of my underwear. 

“Please Chris.” I beg him, already tired of his teasing. 

“Good girls say what they want.” He replies, using one hand to tease me through my damp underwear, the other dancing across my inner thighs. 

I let out a huff, “Please touch me.” I plead, reaching down to move his hand exactly where I want him, “Make me feel good.” 

Chris smirks at me, “Good girl.” I gasp as his hand suddenly slips lower, finally giving my body what it’s been craving for. His fingers collect my wetness, spreading it down to my opening, making my back arch with need. I open my mouth to beg him again but I’m cut off by him slipping a finger inside, his thumb connecting with my pulsating clit. 

“Chris!” I gasp, his fingers work mercilessly, the coil in my stomach already building. I let out whines and moans, already feeling fuzzy as he continues to work my body closer to my climax. 

“Look at me, baby.” Chris demands, making my eyes flutter open, “I want you to look at me as I make you cum.” He continues, working another finger inside my core. My jaw drops in a silent moan as his eyes bore into mine. I feel myself begin to clench around his fingers as he hits my sweet spot over and over. 

“There it is.” He smirks down at me, and half of me wants to tell him to stop, that the pleasure is too much. The other half of me wants to be greedy, and welcome the waves of ecstasy as they flow through my body. 

“Feels so good.” I whine out, watching the way Chris glances down at his fingers as they disappear inside of me, “So close.” I moan, feeling the coil twisting tighter and tighter.  

“Yeah? Gonna be a good girl and cum for me?” He asks me, and that's all it takes. The coil snaps and I fight to keep my eyes open as I release all over his fingers. Chris lets out a groan, mumbling praises left and right as I come down from my high. 

I’m still in a daze when he helps me off the counter and spins me around to face the mirror. He lifts his hand to my neck, tugging my body to be flush with his. I gasp as I feel his hard dick pressing against my ass, I didn’t even notice he took off his pants. 

“Gonna watch me while I fuck you, baby?” He asks, meeting my eyes in the mirror. I nod rapidly, “You look away once and I stop, got it?” Chris speaks, as he helps me bend forward and kicks my legs apart further for him. 

“Yes sir.” I reply, a small smirk on my lips as I back my ass further into him, making Chris grin. “Keep that up and you won’t make it to the event tomorrow.” 

He takes hold of his dick, running his head through my folds, bumping my clit making me whine. He pumps himself a few times before he’s teasing my entrance. I pout up at his reflection, arching my back even more to show how impatient I was. He takes that as a sign to slowly thrust into me, making my jaw drop at the burn from the stretch. 

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” He groans, one hand resting on my hip, the other coming to hold onto my shoulder. He waits a moment before he begins thrusting, my body shaking each time he fills me up. “Feels so good.” Chris moans out, his hand leaving my hip to deliver a harsh smack to my ass, rubbing the now red area soothingly afterwards. 

At this point, I can’t even form words and of course Chris took notice, “Got my baby all fucked out already.” He states, smacking my ass again. “Can’t wait to wreck this pussy.” He grunts out, his thrusts getting quicker and harder. 

My mouth hangs open in a silent moan, my eyes never leaving his. “Such a good girl, keeping your eyes on mine.” I feel the coil in my stomach reappear, and I can’t help but try to squirm away from Chris as the pleasure builds, “Don’t you fucking run away from me.” Chris spits, lowering both arms to grip my waist as he plows into me.

“T-Too much!” I finally whine out, clenching on him as his head nudges that sweet spot within my core. 

Chris shakes his head, “You can take it baby.” He lets out a rather loud moan before his thrusts start to get sloppy, “Be a good girl and take it.” He grunts out, sliding a hand to my front, quickly finding my clit and rubbing fast circles. 

My legs begin to shake, “I’m-” I’m cut off by a rather loud moan as Chris angles his hips upwards, bringing me even more pleasure. “Me too baby, fuck.” Chris moans, lowering his Chin to his chest as he watches himself slide in and out of me. 

“Cum with me.” He demands, my legs begin to shake as he meets my eyes as the coil within me finally snaps. I can feel myself pushing and pulling him in as I cum, and the feeling of his shooting out makes it all the more pleasurable. Chris finally halts his movements, staying buried inside. 

He gently pulls out, both of us wincing. He quickly cleans himself up and slides his pants back on before he turns to me. He rubs my cheek lovingly before he helps me clean up and get redressed. I quickly check my makeup and fix it, before turning to face him. 

“You’re staying with me tonight.” He states, holding out his hand for me to take. I take it with a smile on my face. 

“I planned on it.”

[what-even-is-thiss]

Changing people's minds on major things is actually a very long and difficult process for both parties. I didn't actually believe that pedestrian-centric city design would be better for people that drive cars until I spent almost a year living without a car and watched hours of youtube videos explaining the issue to me. Turns out that traffic actually does go down and driving does become more pleasant if you make it harder to drive a car and easier to walk. I just straight-up refused to believe that for years. Because people just talked about it like it was obvious. But it wasn't. Because I had spent my whole life in a car-centric city going around in a car and also I was an English major in college who did not study urban planning. You can't expect me to change my entire mindset around transportation all at once. I did reach a eureka moment like two weeks ago but that was after like three years of getting exposed to these ideas periodically and living without a car for 11 months.

And yeah this post is about my big dumb animal brain accepting the science behind narrow roads and the evils of certain types of zoning laws, but it's also about stuff in general. If you don't know why someone isn't changing their mind on something, it's probably because the information they're getting hasn't reached a critical mass in their monkey brain yet. Whenever you hear stories about people changing their minds on things or leaving a certain ideology the story never goes "A person on the internet did a slam dunk on me and then I changed my mind."

It's usually a long process that happens over the course of months or years. Seeds planted here and there that coalesce eventually into a new thought or ideology over the course of years or snap together or send someone down a new path after a certain event. Same with me about pedestrian-centric cities. For me the tipping point was finding this video, which isn't necessarily super special or the best and the guy who runs the channel, in my opinion, isn't the most qualified or the most sympathetic towards every city in every situation, but it was the feather that tipped the scales in my brain to "Oh, wait. Maybe everything I thought I knew about how cities work is wrong actually." But that video alone didn't change my mind. With the amount of stuff and people that have gradually and gently been giving me information over the past couple years, something else was bound to eventually change my mind.

People on Tumblr yelling about abolishing the car, if anything, slowed down me changing my mind. Every time I saw a person saying that driving cars is stupid and that cars are bad I took a step back into my old way of thinking in defense. Because I grew up only ever using a car to get around. Rhetoric like that felt like a direct attack on my family, who I know to be loving people who care about other human beings and who drive cars literally everywhere.

And you might say, posts and videos like that aren't actually an attack on people that drive or have to drive. Okay then. Why are they phrased like that? Because that makes you feel good? Because you're angry? Alright, your anger at how it's currently impossible to get around if you don't own a car and how people who don't actually want to drive are being forced to drive is reasonable. And now I understand why it exists. I'm kind of angry too now that I get how this stuff works. However, is calling the people you're trying to convince stupid to their face and immediately bombarding them with your most radical ideas that might be completely detached from their reality and how they understand the world really the most productive way to channel your anger?

What about a guy with a knee problem that lives in rural Appalachia? Do you think he is gonna be convinced by your angry rants about bike lanes? No. He lives on a mountain that he can't climb or bike up because he's disabled and has only ever known getting around in a car. What about a person who overheats easily living in a suburb in the middle of the desert? Do you think she is inspired by your green lush pictures of trolleys running through parks in The Netherlands? No. If she leaves her house for too long without ice water she could literally die and you're going on about getting rid of, in her mind, the only thing that lets her go to the grocery store and not faint.

And again, this post is about my inability to comprehend walkable cities, but it's also about everything else you might ever want to convince someone of. The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.