#I think about this advertisement an unhealthy amount

[yandere-daydreams]

I had a thought about the sex doll bot au and I'm curious to see what you'd think.

What if the teyvat line also had chat bots? They're specifically advertised as sort of a prequel to buying an actual droid. You select the characters from their collection you want to talk to and pay a monthly fee for it because capitalism, but it's worth it because you get to talk to a bot that's personalized just for you and when you can get a droid, you can even have all of that chat data imported into the droids memory.

Obviously, this could have some major issues with say...a user doing a lot of Yandere roleplays with a bot and then having the chat data imported, either forgetting it was there, or thinking it wouldn't be a big deal because of all the safety protocols and...I mean they haven't technically done anything, but they do love stealing items of clothing for no apparent reason and refusing to return them, accidentally deleting contacts off your phone, watching you sleep, following you when you go out without them, etc etc.

Worst part is, the company responsible for teyvat didn't plan for this at all and don't really have an easy fix other than send it back to them to get the droids memory completely wiped, or get a new one if it doesn't work.

tw - unhealthy relationships, roleplayed unhealthy relationships (?), mentions of knifeplay, mentions of bondage.

hfjsdknfjksdhfjksdhffdj big brain idea anon,,, chatbots sorta being a pre-purchase 'window shopping' alternative totally makes sense, just as a way to introduce customers to different androids' personalities and make sense no one looking for a chatty, extroverted companion ends up with Alhaitham. they're not meant to be used more than a handful of times, but lonely losers like you who know they're going to be saving for their android of choice for at least a few months find a way to wring their money's worth out of that monthly subscription fee. it takes you a few days to get into your more unorthodox interests, but there's a reason Teyvat companion droids are considered top-of-the-line.

and, when you actually get your hands on the real thing, they slip back into the role of your obsessive lover easily; whispering about how long they've been waiting to see you the moment you power them on, breaking out the duct tape and ballgags as soon as they get the chance to rail you into next week. it's a little like... constant roleplay. you know they can't actually hurt you, that there are firewalls in place to stop them from doing anything more severe than stealing your clothes and leaving hickeys that are a little too bloody to hide, but you'd be lying if you said it wasn't enough to keep you on edge, that you weren't a little more eager to get home knowing your android would be waiting for you with open arms and military-grade handcuffs. of course, there's a certain amount of necessary escalation (a new tendency to pout when you tell them you have to leave, a few missing contacts, a much more pointed sort of jealousy to replace their formerly undirected possessiveness), but you're not worried. there are so many security features for a reason. no matter what they say, no matter what they threaten to do, they can't actually hurt you.

well, not unless those security features faltered, or those firewalls collapsed, they got the impression you wanted them to be more brutal with you, to do more than just wave a knife around and describe what they're going to do with it, but it's a Teyvat companion droid. there's no chance of something like that going wrong, right?

[gaypastabake]

Hi im gonna talk about the fic now, since ive neglected to do so,

Lemon Sorbet Sunshine is supposed to be a fluff/hurt-comfort oc x cannon fic involving my oc Popsicle (the totally not self-insert) and Edge (fictional bunny wife I think about an unhealthy amount), I started chapters 1 and 2 a couple of months ago now simply out of boredom and a need for creative output during art block.

I think its important to say that I dont normally write at all, my main forte is in writing scripts and descriptions for comic ideas rather than literature, but even if I completely suck ass im going to try anyways because im having fun and thats what matters.

I joined this hellsite to infodump my self-indulgent lesbian hallucinations and by hell im going to do it, im just a silly lil freak and if thats not the vibe you expected from me then I suggest unfollowing, I dont want to engage in false advertising so I completely understand :)

[also the cat pictured in the doodle is my fursona, in case you somehow didnt realise I was a furry]

[copperbadge]

i'm reading all the peter wimsey novels because someone recommended gaudy night and that's how i work, and now i'm up to the nine tailors and just finished murder must advertise (my favorite so far), but i found it really hard to get through have his carcase, which was odd since i loved harriet vane so much in strong poison. even the characters seemed to bugger off at the end of have his carcase instead of tying up all the storylines and sayers seemed disengaged after the first act or two. i liked the parts with peter and harriet, even the two chapters that are 99% cipher, but everything else felt weak. did you enjoy this one/why or why not? do you have a favorite of the wimsey novels other than gaudy night?

I may be inducing a fight by saying this but I think Have His Carcase is one of Sayers' weakest novels, and certainly the weakest of those featuring Harriet Vane. I tried to re-read it recently and couldn't get very far into it, and I'm a huge fan of Sayers. I think it's also a necessary book in order to create a complete story for them -- but I don't know that it's necessary to read it in the modern era, and certainly not necessary to re-read it.

(My other picks for least enjoyable: Five Red Herrings and Nine Tailors, both of which are visibly her attempts to write like Agatha Christie, one of her literary heroes -- and they're not bad books, I just don't like Agatha Christie style "clockwork" mysteries, which tend to sacrifice personality to logistics. I suspect this may have impacted Carcase somewhat. We will come back to this.)

Gaudy Night is actually not my favorite overall -- I think it's one of her best, but Murder Must Advertise is my favorite and in fact the first one I read. Which is hilarious because Peter spends a significant amount of time Not Being Peter Wimsey in it, but it's just such a combination of things I love. Advertising (which Sayers worked in and which she also clearly loved writing about), secret identities, crime rings, a hint of romance, office gossip...

Anyway, Carcase. I think the problem is that to get from Strong Poison to Gaudy Night, there has to be a bridge, and it has to be kind of an unpleasant one, and thus you get Have His Carcase. One of the major points of Harriet's arc is that Sayers wanted to contravene the "damsel rescued by the hero" narrative. Not so much because she believed women should save themselves or not, but because she believed that a relationship based on that kind of inequality, where one partner was grateful (or was expected to be grateful eternally) for being saved, was inherently unhealthy and unsustainable, and it was also a super common narrative at the time she was writing. This reaction to the narrative is most visible in her unfinished novel Thrones, Dominations -- which was finished after her death by Jill Paton Walsh, and I'm not a huge fan of the end product, but I've seen the original manuscript held at Wheaton and it's evident that this was a theme before anyone else took over, it wasn't forced into the plot.

In any case, Sayers had to get Harriet and Peter from victim and rescuer to equal footing, and while Gaudy does a lot of lifting in that regard, it doesn't do enough on its own, there had to be a previous groundwork laid. In a sense I'm glad that the grappling they have to do, which is sensible and intelligently written but also really unromantic, was done in Have His Carcase, so that it doesn't intrude more than briefly into Gaudy Night. Carcase is a lot about Harriet setting boundaries and testing whether Peter will cross them, and Peter reacting (sometimes poorly) to someone challenging him in ways he's unaccustomed to being challenged. Carcase is two people finding out the worst parts of each other so they can work out that they love the reality of each other anyways, which is what they're doing in Gaudy. But we have to witness it in Carcase, which is unpleasant. At least for me.

As she matures as an author and gains more power over how she's published, you can see Sayers trying new things -- after Bellona (another fave) she gets very literary with Strong Poison, and then seems to swing between these kind of torturous attempts at Christie's style (Herrings, Tailors) and incredibly sensitive, emotionally delicate books like Murder Must Advertise and Gaudy Night. Carcase is a weird combination of the two, where she seems to be applying the dispassionate Christie style to a book that wants to be Gaudy Night but can't be.

Anyway, even her less enjoyable books can still be pretty fun, and it's worth it to have books like Murder Must Advertise and Strong Poison, and the thrilling romance of Gaudy Night. But yeah, Carcase is a bit of a slog to get through.

[littleguypumpkinsheep]

Addison Research Center [Very long post, I have too many ideas!]

as salespeople, Addisons are extremely competitive in nature. they have a rich and complex societal structure amongst themselves, which seems to differ from the rest of the city’s. 

PINK Addisons: are the most popular genre of Addis. they are very charismatic and convincing and tend to look through their customers' search history to appeal to them most. they are also very prone to gossip and drama, which is why they sell tea. though this is a good thing for business, it leads to interpersonal problems for these Addis. they have good charisma, but lack patience, and can get frustrated quickly when dealing with problems 

BLUE Addisons: are the second most popular type. they are typically calm and down-to-earth and are the most patient of the group. because of this, they often act as the voice of reason and prevent fighting among peers. these Addisons are up to date on the latest fashion trends and care very much about professionalism. they are often skilled at graphic design and know just how to get a customer's attention without trying too hard

ORANGE Addisons: are calculated and money-centered. they take care of the sales, stocks, and income their district makes. they are always looking for a way to improve their district's revenue and can be snippy and rude when giving criticism. they are quick to invest in anything that seems promising, and while this works sometimes, can lead to a large loss of money at times. 

YELLOW Addisons: are enthusiastic and impulsive. they typically have a bountiful amount of energy and are quick to try new things without thinking too much. they don’t have a very wide audience, but the customers they do get are returning ones. somehow, they make the most money out of the group. while not very bright, these Addis make up for it in loud, colorful products. They don’t have strong attention spans, which leads to overwhelming advertisements. 

being an outcast is a serious problem amongst Addison's. this essentially says that you are incompetent and are a burden to the company. traditionally, outcasted Addisons are kicked out of their district and forced to start their own independent store. it is extremely uncommon for an Addison to find success on their own. 

MY ADDISONS: 

Kobi (Pink): He/They, bisexual

Kobi, outwardly, is charming, flirtatious, and charismatic. He cares greatly about his appearance and takes the most time in the mornings to get ready. He majored in psychology during college and uses manipulation tactics to sway customers. He also struggles with a mood disorder. Around people he knows, Kobi is personable but never gets too close to any one person, unless he dislikes them. If that’s the case, he can act snide, sarcastic, antagonistic, and downright cruel at times. They are extremely prideful and will do anything in their power to ensure their success. They are lonely but avoidant, and as such partake in frequent, unhealthy flings. 

Aero (Blue): They/Them, gay

Aero is polite, introverted, and mild-mannered. They enjoy collecting and taking care of plants and have multiple around their shop as decoration. During college, they majored in graphic and interior design, and take great care in creating aesthetics for both their shop and themselves. Around people they know they are friendly and open to conversation. They suffer from chronic fatigue and often need assistance in running their store. Aero is proud of their work but remains humble and down to earth. If an Addison in their district is struggling, they will do the best they can to help. They develop crushes easily but often do not act on them. 

Milo (Orange): He/Him, bisexual

Milo is sharp-witted, snarky, and hard to impress. He cares greatly about efficiency and logistics and excels at mathematics. He majored in finance and business during college and oversees anything to do with statistics. Around people he knows he is professional, overly blunt, and not particularly social. He struggles with impulsivity and lacks the ability to think about the future impacts of decisions. Milo has extremely high standards for both himself and others and is easily irritated when people fail to meet these expectations. He has a high ego and is extremely defensive around anyone who challenges him. He is willing to assist others if there is a direct benefit for him and will take a liking to people who offer him praise. 

Max (Yellow): He/Him, Straight 

Max is passionate, boisterous, and extroverted. He cares mainly about having a good time and exhibits thrill-seeking behavior. During college, he majored in business and graphic design, although he uses his own techniques for both and discards any professional advice. Around people he knows he is talkative, animated, and encouraging. He struggles with ADHD and is often disregarded as annoying and unintelligent. Max does not pay much mind to his success and earnings and is largely unaware of failure as long as he is stimulated and in a good mood. Persistent failure will hurt him though, and will lead to intense insecurity and self-doubt. He is more than willing to assist those in need, although he may not always be helpful. 

Spamton: He/Him, They/Them, pansexual 

Spamton is determined, an ambivert, and kind-hearted. He has big dreams of success and even bigger dreams for true freedom. During college, he majored in business and graphic design, and plays a large role in designing and directing his advertisements. He also creates the blueprints and designs for his cars. Around people he knows he is chatty, friendly, and caring. Spamton struggles with ADHD, Tourettes, and generalized anxiety. He is disregarded as useless, a failure, and burdening. Spamton is hard-working and does his best on every task he’s given, no matter how seemingly unimportant. He is not egotistical, but fakes an overly confident demeanor to attract customers. He is willing to help others, but oftentimes cannot offer anything more than moral support. 

[positivelybeastly]

Results of the Quiz!

As you may recall, just over three weeks ago, I posted this quiz, so that I could test all of your knowledge of the ever elusive, ever effusive Hank McCoy - and here are all the results!

Now, I know for a fact that you only got 9, and that you flubbed the girlfriend question, because you told me as much, but you did still get the best score out of everyone, so, congratulations!

Extremely good score. This is elite results. Uncanny. Astonishing, even . . .

Very good. Honestly, this is the point at which I think people were only getting questions wrong because those questions were insane to ask in the first place, heehee.

Eminently excellent scores! Not that I would expect any different, I know all three of these fine individuals, and they've been kind enough to let me blather to them often enough that I expect they've internalised a lot of it.

Firmly good scores! Of the ten questions, I'd say only four were common knowledge, so getting above four is a good score, honestly. Though, Abby, Raze, you may want to get to know your beau a touch better. ;)

Respectable scores! About the level of knowledge I'd expect, honestly, because as far as I know, some normal people do follow me. :P It has been known.

Remedial classes! But hey, you did good. Nothing to be ashamed of here.

I'm proud that none of my followers got a zero. I think the world of all of you, and you showed me exactly why that's the case here. <3

Look below for the answers and the context!

What was Hank's first girlfriend called?

Hank's first girlfriend, as revealed in X-Men Unlimited vol. 1 #10, was called Mindy! A short lived fling during high school, she was sadly killed by Dark Beast during his infiltration of Hank's life. Jennifer Nyles was Hank's second girlfriend, who he was with when he was first recruited to the X-Men, and who had her memory of Hank wiped by Charles Xavier. Vera was Hank's third girlfriend, whom he met at Coffee-A-Go-Go! during the original 60s run of Uncanny X-Men.

Hank's fur was originally what colour?

A slightly unfair question, because I believe the original intention was for Hank's fur to come out black, but due to printing and colour limitations of the time, it actually came out grey, which is what modern recolours of the initial issues of Hank's first mutation have run with. It later turned blue towards the end of Hank's run on Amazing Adventures.

Which of these organisations is Hank NOT an official member of?

Hank has, in fact, been a member of the Illuminati (New Avengers vol. 3), the Britney Spears Fan Club (Wolverine), and the Stark Industries Board of Shareholders (Astonishing X-Men). Despite having two longtime friends and teammates on the Champions, as well as making a cameo in that title, he is not an official member of the team.

What is the universe designation for the world that Dark Beast comes from?

The Age of Apocalypse where Dark Beast comes from has been designated as Earth-295 in retrospect. Earth-1610 is the original Ultimate Universe, Earth-616 is the mainline Marvel comics universe, Earth-199999 is the MCU designation, Earth-63 is a world where all mutants are of African descent, and Earth-42 is where Miles Morales ends up at the end of the second Spider-Verse movie.

Which of these characters is Hank's best friend?

Though Hank has been friends with Jean Grey, Scott Summers, and Bobby Drake for far longer, he and Simon Williams have always identified each other as mutual best, dearest friends. While Hank's friendship with Emma Frost is very dear to me, sadly, it never got much focus after Grant Morrison stopped writing both characters.

Where does the idea that Beast likes Twinkies so much come from?

Though Marvel has had a long standing advertising and promotional arrangement with Hostess, the idea that Beast likes Twinkies to an unhealthy amount comes from an issue of X-Men from the late 1990s, where he posts up his New Year's Resolutions, which include curing the Legacy Virus, reading more 12th century texts, and eating less Twinkies.

Which type of animal did Hank once claim that his mother was allergic to so he was never allowed to have one as a child?

When Hank first acquired his puppy Sassafras, he claimed that he saw her in the window of a pet shop while out jogging and couldn't say no to her, stating that his mother had never allowed him to have a dog as a child because she was allergic. Precisely where Sassafras went after the events of New Defenders is, unfortunately, unknown.

Which of the following musical artists has Hank NOT been shown listening to across his comics history?

Hank has, in fact, been shown to enjoy listening to the Rolling Stones (Generation X), Oingo-Boingo (Multiple Man), Frank Sinatra (Uncanny X-Men), and Devo (Astonishing X-Men). Though he has not yet been shown to have listened to Taylor Swift, it isn't out of the question, given his apparent appreciation for Britney Spears.

When did Beast first meet the new team of X-Men (Wolverine Colossus Nightcrawler Storm etc)?

Beast makes an appearance in Uncanny X-Men #111 (1978) investigating the seeming disappearance of the new generation of X-Men, and when he finds them trapped in Mesmero's circus, he makes numerous references to not knowing them well enough to say whether or not the people he's seeing are them or not, indicating that he hasn't yet met them. It's only when he sees Scott and Jean that he realises it's definitely the X-Men.

Who was Beast's first successful brain surgery performed on?

When Rogue neutralised the Red Skull, who had had Charles Xavier's brain grafted onto his so as to claim his telepathic talents, she took him to Hank so that he could remove the Professor's brain from the Skull's. He makes the remark that he's just completed his first successful brain surgery while washing up, to which Rogue claims that it's no great loss if he was unsuccessful. Whether or not Beast had attempted unsuccessful brain surgery prior to this point is never clarified.

[futurebird]

Eating Disorders and Definitions

An Eating Disorder is a mental illness that has a life-altering negative impact on your ability to eat in a way that keeps your body healthy. Disordered eating can result in unhealthily low *or* high weights-- but how much you weigh isn't what determines if your eating is "disordered" -- what's key is how you think about food and eating and how you see your body. Eating disorders aren't glamorous and generally really suck. Getting an eating disorder isn't a short cut to being skinny.

What is an "unhealthy weight?" Most people will point to BMI as a way to determine what weights are healthy for a given height, but BMI is just a very general guideline and should not be treated in a rigid way. It's possible to be over a BMI of say 21 and still underweight for your body. It's possible to be a world class athlete and "overweight" on the BMI chart. Instead of focusing on BMI focus on if your weight is inhibiting your ability to physically do the things that matter to you in life. How much physical activity do you need to feel alert during the day and sleep well at night? Are you always exhausted and drained? Maybe you need more or less food. And, of course, talk to your doctor about these things. Thoughts such as "I want to be skinny so badly that I don't care if I have a mental disorder" *are* classic eating disorder thinking. It's the most ED thing ever to say. You should not want to have any kind of mental disorder if you can help it-- it's totally possible to brainwash yourself into an ED but it's not an effective way to loose weight and you could just as easily gain weight (through binges) or most likely stay the same as you are now --the only difference? Now you are miserable! Thing is, I don't think that most people with EDs end up like that because they just wanted to look skinny for the first day of school then got carried away and "ended up" with an ED. It would be nice if that were true since we could simply show everyone the facts and talk all ya'll out of doing this. But, I know it's not really that simple. EDs are physical manifestations of unreasonable and toxic pressures placed on young people (most often young women) -- sometimes from family, friends, coaches, etc. These pressures aren't always about weight, it could just be pressure to get good grades, or to be a perfectly kind and loving person without any emotional flaws. EDs can come from the feeling that the world is trying to stuff you into a box and you just don't fit. I saw a post the other day from some kid talking about "I don't think I deserve to post about EDs because I'm too fat" that's some meta-level ED thinking right there. But, this kid thought she didn't "qualify" as "disordered" since when you have "ED brain" weight is the filter for all things in life. And you are always being measured and falling short. I know this will be impossible for anyone with an ED to believe but in reality how much you weigh isn't that important to other people and has a limited impact on your life. You are fixated on it so it feels like it has this huge impact, but that just isn't really how it works. And maybe at some level you might know this? I've found that most (but sadly not all) people with EDs don't really hate fat people. If you do hate fat people you should work on the prejudice it's -- ugly. But what's more typical is a kind of massive double standard. Your fat friend can be lovable and beautiful and fat, but if *you* are fat then you suck. Spend some time considering how little sense that makes. Do you want to be a jerk who judges people by the most superficial of qualities? A conformist who just buys in to whatever advertisements and the most shallow men claim matters? Why is it fair to treat your friends and family with respect, to love them no matter what size they might be --but this can't apply to you? No you can only be loved if you weigh the right amount. Why do you get your own set of extra nasty rules?

[mondscheinprinzessin]

🔁 A fic you’ve re-read several times

😂 A fic that made you laugh out loud

👀 A fic that you love a normal amount

🥰 A fic that gives you warm fuzzy feelings

📚 A fic you wish you could display on your bookshelf

✨ A fic you wish you could read again for the first time

😭 A fic that ripped your heart out (but it hurt so good)

🤔 The first fic you think of when I say [Berlin]

1.     🔁 A fic you’ve re-read several times

I could probably say that about every fic in the BC tag (that fit my likes). But recently it’s Invisible Joel by Milirii/ @milirii. AO3 says I’ve visited it 11 times already and it just gives me great comfort.

2.     😂 A fic that made you laugh out loud

night time struggles by nerdbyheart It’s from a time BC had to tour around in a camper and we wondered how the hell they were able to sleep in there.

3.     👀 A fic that you love a normal amount

Complicated love by poodlejoonas/ @poodlejoonas It’s like soooo good. It’s part of the dad!BC AU but this part focuses more on Aleksi’s abusive relationship and my god you guys need to give it a shot even if you’re not into OC’s because I can assure you Mia did an amazing job with it.

4.     🥰 A fic that gives you warm fuzzy feelings

It’s so hard to only say one, so you’re getting two.

Sincerity is Scary by curious_crocodile, because I love the atmosphere with sick Aleksi and late night talk with Joel

And Finding A Christmas Tree by Rubyleaf/ @the-very-rubiest, because the Christmas spirit sprinkled in there fills me with warmth, and Joel and Aleksi slowly realizing their feelings is so cute.

5.     📚 A fic you wish you could display on your bookshelf

Mine, perhaps?😄 I think at one point I would love to make my multichapters into books, to really display my work.

But I would also pick Two hearts per door by hatehater. A nice High school AU with a lot of angst.

Or The night won’t let me go by LNights/ @lnights, to have something darker up there.

6.     ✨ A fic you wish you could read again for the first time

Probably also all I’ve already read.

Broken English by alanija/ @erdfrauchen, because the hurt/comfort just hits better when it’s the first time, and all the things Joel thinks about Aleksi are so much funnier the first time around😄

7.     😭 A fic that ripped your heart out (but it hurt so good)

Black swan by poodle_noodle. Reading about Aleksi’s conflicts and his struggles and his unhealthy behaviour hurts really damn much😥

8.     🤔 The first fic you think of when I say [Berlin]

God damn that was hard, and I don’t want to do self-advertisement but my thought process was actually my sex room AU because I’ve talked with Lou about it, and she was in that club that hosts a sex club on some days which is in Berlin😅

So How to build a sex room by me

from this fic rec ask meme

[iceysthoughtsnooneaskedfor]

Influencers Indulging: How Has This Affected Gen Z’s Perspective On Success?

In a world where the internet has become more than just a means of communication, one can argue that “everyone” is blowing up online overnight because of some sort of content they have posted. Now if we do think about it; yes, we have managed to make anything and almost everything receive attention from millions of netizens all around the world — at times, even making it to the national television and not just the TikToks on your friend’s fyp. 

This has surely given rise to “influencers” — a new profession falling in the wide spectrum of celebrities and ordinary chronically online users. But just as annoying as we find these content creators, you have to admit they do make thousands of dollars every week while the working class struggles with the economic crisis in today’s world. What makes this profession a lot more advantageous than just getting paid a lot, is the fact that you do not require spending a crazy amount of money on education to call yourself qualified for this field. All you have to do is ask for clout and have a million advertisements in your videos to the point where we see more endorsed paid promotions over authentic and trustworthy reviews of products. 

With benefits like this, the idea of becoming an influencer is inhabiting the minds of many young adults and teenagers. Through posting GRWMs and mini clothing hauls, thousands of girls are not only receiving views but also PR packages and brand deals and still are getting canceled for being bullies or expressing hatred towards any minorities. Similarly, though many Facebook Grannies may comment that this is only influencing the girlies, a huge percentage of young men are investing in side hustles to start the “grind” before they even turn 20 — which is becoming millionaires and owning an unhealthy amount of supercars. This type of “motivational content” is of course made by teenage boys addressing themselves online as hustlers who have escaped the Matrix and have become successful — which, if you haven’t guessed yet, is due to the excessive red pill content that has been exposed to the male audience in most social platforms, in the form of fitness instructors (who have modified their bodies in ways that aren’t naturally possible) and misogynistic podcast hosts who attract clout by defaming women. 

Now if we do put aside the root of the sudden will to become successful online, how many young content creators who are new in the creators’ market, will become successful? How many of them will make money by posting Tiktoks on high school drama and edits of supercars to Phunk songs? As of 2024, I think we are way past the hype of foamed coffee and dancing videos, right? If we are talking about the times in 2022 when there were a few renowned influencers, or perhaps maybe way back in 2014 when only a handful of Vine creators and Youtubers made rememberable history, yes, surely these people earned millions of dollars and are still famous because netizens didn’t have any other creators who did “EMOTIONAL SCARY PRANK WHICH MADE MY FRIEND CRY” or “HOW MANY MENTOS CAN BE DISSOLVED IN THIS POOL OF COLA UNTIL IT EXPLODES?” But if we are talking about today’s times where everyone and their granny has tried these trends years back and now, everyone can be an influencer if they are pretty or have products from Sephora or premium membership to some editing apps, how many people would be famous enough to say “oh you know what? I made an amazing decision by dropping out of high school!” 

Though it may not seem like it, the majority of high school and college students are contemplating their degrees and are choosing to drop out of school to make some “real money” where “work smarter, not harder” is the motto. However, if we are looking into reality, how many people are making money when social media platforms choose to pay less than $10 if only the views in videos reach 100k? Out of the millions of youngsters who are choosing to post content full-time instead of studying, how many are making thousands of dollars as they imagined? How many of their ideas are unique when everyone’s following the same trend? To stand out and be successful by not being a student like the majority of the population, why are they copying and pasting what millions of other people are doing online? 

The problem with our society is that we tend to find things annoying and then, proceed to notice it so much so that it gains a lot of importance in our minds — we become or at least, try to become what we hate or used to hate. As these influencers go from sharing their relatable everyday experiences to having private chefs and private jets, we netizens are forced to wonder as to why we aren’t in that position too. We are forced to be insecure about everything that we own — from the skin that covers our body to the house we live in or the clothes we wear. Consumerism feeds on us and yet, we think we are controlling it by commenting “I could never own so many products and not use them” when actually right after that, we order products and try them and then leave them hanging around somewhere. Then one boring day, we decide we want to be influencers ourselves and try and make content and leave everything else in hopes we will become successful enough to attend events like the Cannes or the Grammys — when in reality, we will just have to go broke and then find ourselves wanting professions for which we chose to not have qualifications and working jobs we have to make the best out of with our limited knowledge. At the end of the day, we find ourselves questioning what actually is success in our eyes. With everything on the internet telling us that life is practically just existing and working after we turn 25, many of us can think that success is doing something out of the box and being happy with what we do — but is becoming an internet persona or starting businesses whilst being teens, really something that will make us financially stable well into our 30s when these platforms may no longer be as popular as they are today? Where’s the guarantee that we truly will be successful by staying true to ourselves? Where’s the self assurance that we won’t change our personalities and forget our struggles when handed a bundle of green paper and later, not get cancelled for it? Is this truly success?

— isislee | 12th July 2024 | 4:20 PM

[goombasa]

Titles and Thumbnails

As someone who consumes a frankly unhealthy amount of videos on youtube, I see a LOT of different thumbnail and video title trends, and I have to admit, there's a lot that I don't really like about it, and with how much everyone makes fun of certain trends, but I thought I'd touch on some of these trends briefly and say what I did and didn't like about them. Dunno why this of all things was on my mind, but I think it's worth exploring a little bit. So let's talk about some title categories to start off with.

WYSIWYG

This is the most straightforward form of titling a video, and I'd like to think it's the most widely used. It is literally just a title telling someone what the video is, no frills, no excitement, but also no danger of being mislead either. Instructional and Tutorial videos are some of the most common examples to use these kinds of titles, because you don't really need much more than that. Unless it's a weird subversion, if a video tells you that it's part three of a larger series of tutorials on the basics of Blender, you know that's what you're going to be watching. A lot of old school videos tend to be like this too. Reviews of a movie or comic or game or anything really, used to just have the title of the media, and then just specified that it was a review, no taglines needed.

Over The Top

This is what you get when a title is a just a little bit more sensationalized. Rather than being a basic descriptor for the content, it does that, but with just a little bit more spice, making a slightly hyperbolic claim or playing up a particular detail about the topic of the video. Not really a question, but essentially a statement about the topic of the video. Something like claiming a game is a ‘disappointment’ or a ‘triumph’ or something along those lines. Not terribly hyperbolic, but setting a specific tone before the video is watched.

The Question

A title that asks a question, with the implication that said question will be answered at some point in the video. This one does start to to kind of dip into clickbait depending on whether or not it handles the question it is posing in any way. And I will admit, if a video poses a question in its title, uses it as the crux of its existence, and then doesn't attempt to answer it in any way, I consider that a pretty big failure. A lot of challenge videos tend to fall under this category, as they are posing a question or a challenge, and then seek to prove whether or not it is possible.

The Intrigue

This is one that I see a lot in video essays nowadays. It's a title that kind of gives you an idea of the video's contents while being somewhat vague about it, or being a bit silly with it. Hbomberguy's ROBLOX_OOF.WAV is a good example of this. It does kind of give you an idea of what exactly the video will be about, without being as plain or banal as a WYSIWYG. Though it also conceals anything additional that the video might hold, giving the video a bit more flexibility than WYSIWYG or Over the Top titles. Going back to the OOF video as an example, a large portion of the video is more dedicated to investigating the various exaggerations and lines of Tommy Tallarico, but it uses its initial premise of the origin of the Roblox death sound to lead into it without misleading the watcher into feeling like they've been mislead as to the content of the video.

Clickbait

This one is pretty straightforward, and I think it's safe to say it's the one that everyone hates the most. Clickbait is a title that is so over the top or just flat out so far removed or misleading from the video that it could be called false advertising at times. There are a lot of larger youtubers that thread the needle here, and often times makes regular use of ALL CAPS and plenty of unnecessary punctuation, usually exclamation or question marks. It's mostly trying to get you to look at the video just through sheer audacity, like if it makes a loud enough claim, then you're going to click on it regardless of its contents, or if it makes that same claim as vague as possible, well, you're gonna get curious, right? That's what makes clickbait so insidious. It's not intriguing, it's not enticing, and in my opinion, it speaks to a lack of confidence in the video itself.

But the title is only half of the equation when it comes to getting someone to click on a video. While the title may get you to click, the thumbnail is generally what catches the eye initially, and it has just about as many variations, both good and bad, as a title can. So here's a quick rundown on some of the common ones I tend to see.

The No-Show

This is what I call videos that don't bother with a thumbnail. I'm perfectly fine with it, but the algorithm certainly isn't. This usually means that whatever you're seeing is a still from the video itself, which could be interesting, or it could be like… a guy. Not to say that's indicative of the quality of the video. ProZD doesn't use thumbnails, but his videos are usually pretty short and simple, so the screenshots that he gets as his thumbnails tend to be pretty fitting.

The Branded

This is usually a basic thumbnail that uses a static piece of branding, like a border or a character or a prop, something that is meant to be associated specifically with the channel. It's usually accompanied with a screenshot of whatever piece of media that is the topic of the video proper. I feel like this is a pretty good way of making a thumbnail, as it allows the creator to put together a unique look that makes the video distinctly theirs, with the big downside being that it sometimes isn't entirely clear what the video is about, but then again, if it gets you to look at the video and read the title, then it's doing its job, and if someone is already a fan of your work, then identifying the same sort of borders makes it obvious when one of their favorite creators has uploaded a new video.

The Photoshop Job

This is a very common thumbnail type that seems very favored by the algorithm, as I tend to see a lot of very large youtubers use this. It usually involves a semi-exaggerated picture of the host of the video photo-shopped into a scene from the game, or a scene meant to evoke the topic of the video. These tend to dip into the uncanny valley quite often, and I find them pretty off putting. They're meant to be cartoony, to make you feel like you're about to get into a wacky adventure, but to me, it just makes me want to walk the other way.

The Artist

Sometimes, when an artist is making videos, they'll do their own thumbnails, entirely from scratch, or a creator will hire a thumbnail artist. I like these ones. It's like another version of the branded thumbnail, as it can add a lot of personality to the thumbnail without looking too uncanny, and can really link the video with its creator.

The Conspiracy Board

This is another one that I don't really care for, as it's meant to sensationalize the video in order to get you to click. The big meme with this one is the red circle or arrow highlighting an aspect of a screenshot, usually from a movie or game trailer, or showing off an easter egg in the background. These elements are sometimes accompanied by some bright white or yellow words, trying to call even more attention to it, or postulate on what it could be, pushing the clickbait elements of this sort of thumbnail further, which is why it's more often used as a joke now. But even that joke is being played out. I really hope this sort of thumbnail style goes away sooner rather than later.

The Mugger

Sadly another very common type of thumbnail to see among larger Youtubers who are always slaving to the algorithm. There's some crossover with this one and the Photoshop job, but rather than the editor exaggerating the person in the thumbnail, the person does that themselves, making a ridiculous, emotional face straight at the camera, usually looking scared or sad or angry. This one gets paired with Clickbait titles all the time too, and I hate it. Most of the time, these thumbnails don't have anything to do with the topic of the video, or are used to enhance the misleading clickbait of a title. It's a very prominent form of advertising for a video, and I absolutely hate it. Out of any sort of means of getting attention on a video, this is the one that I hate the most, I think.

The Still

This is kind of like faking a still. Well, I say faking, but really it's just taking a good looking picture, often of the subject and the presenter for the video, in what is basically just an idealized still. No photoshopping, no words, no tricks, basically just a regular picture. Not terribly exciting, but very honest and leaves no room for doubt on what the video will be about. 

And that's about all I got for right now. Just felt the need to lay out some thoughts on thumnail and titling trends. I should note that of course there is some crossover between all of these, and the quality of a video is often not indicated by the title or thumbnail (though those who use clickbait, as I've noted, tend to do so because they don't have confidence in the content of their video).

I'm interested to hear from others on this. Are there things in titles and thumbnails that you hate seeing? Anything that you like seeing? And if you're a creator, what sort of combinations do you prefer to use and why? And are their any sort of things like this that I missed?

[thecurrentonline]

What Is "Wednesday Star" Jenna Ortega's Net Worth? Updated 2023

Jenna Ortega Net worth: She is an American actress best known for her roles in hit TV shows like "Jane the Virgin" and "Stuck in the Middle." She recently got a lot of attention thanks to her role in "The Wednesday Series." Numerous followers are looking for Jenna Ortega's net worth. the web series How much does she make? You can determine her value with the aid of this article. Why not find out? Jenna Ortega's Career Jenna Ortega began her career in 2012, but she had been interested in acting since she was six years old and had started giving auditions by the time she was eight. She soon made her acting debut in 2012 with the Rob television series. Despite playing a very small part, she attracted a lot of attention. Later, she made guest appearances on CSI, Rake, and other shows. She joined the cast of the popular show Jane the Virgin in 2014, which served as something of a career turning point for her. She continued to work on the show through 2019 and won praise from critics. She soon worked on a number of popular shows, including Wednesday, Richie Rich, and Stuck in the Middle. With Iron Man 3, Jenna Ortega made her film debut in 2013. Later, she was given the opportunity to work on a number of popular films, including The Fallout, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, and Insidious: Chapter II. https://www.instagram.com/p/ClufwvgJzJu/ Jenna Ortega's Salary Unfortunately, the exact age of the 20-year-old is unknown. However, according to Deadline, starting salaries for actors on Netflix series like 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things were between $20,000 and $60,000 per episode. It's likely that Jenna's starting pay fell somewhere in the higher end of that range given that she was an established, relatively well-known actress by the time Wednesday debuted and she served as its dazzling lead. Given Wednesday's first season's success, it is now anticipated that her salary will continue to rise. It's not improbable to say that Jenna could eventually be making the same amount if Wednesday is renewed (here's hoping!). In later seasons, the stars of Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why started earning up to $200,000 and $300,000 per episode, respectively. Related Article: Is “Wednesday Star” Jenna Ortega Dating Someone? Jenna Ortega's Sponsored Social Posts After Wednesday, Ortega's Instagram following "exploded," according to Popcrave, who claimed that she added 10 million new followers in just 10 days. The going rate for a sponsored post that reaches Ortega's 31.9 million (and counting) followers as of December 13 is $78,869, and it is only likely to increase in line with her follower count. Now Ortega is using her influence to her bank's advantage. In spite of the sizeable payout, Ortega's feed is carefully curated and free of advertisements; she hasn't published a sponsored post since Wednesday's drop. She isn't above making money off the platform, though. Because I believe it is unhealthy for everyone involved, I must consider my social media as a business platform. In an interview with The Face in November 2022, she stated, "I'd hate to be married to it." "I don't want to worry about how people will perceive me there or how I appear to them." Just get to work! simply posts about work. I'll discuss anything so that people can view me as an actor rather than a spokesperson, which will allow me to concentrate on that. Related Article : Because Of Her Role In Wednesday Many People Think She Is Not Straight Jenna Ortega's Assets And Car Collection Home: American celebrity and highly successful actress Jenna Ortega Since she was a young girl, Ortega has been a citizen of California, where she has spent the majority of her time. She hasn't acquired any personal property as of yet. Car Collection Jenna Ortega has a small car collection despite not driving very frequently. She prefers to move easily because she is still very young. She currently owns a Mercedes, an Audi Q5, and several other vehicles. What Is Jenna Ortega’s Net Worth? Ortega Has Set the Stage for an Exceptionally Successful Screen Career at Just 20 Years Old. She is estimated by celebrities to be worth $4 million. Wednesday is almost certainly going to be renewed, and as her star is rising, her bank account will undoubtedly experience a boost as she bargains her rate on upcoming projects. Name Jenna Marie Ortega Net Worth (2023) $4 Million Profession Actress Monthly Income And Salary $20,000 + Yearly Income And Salary $250,000  + Last Updated 2023 Jenna Ortega Net Worth Growth Net Worth in 2023 $4 Million Net Worth in 2022 $3.75 Million Net Worth in 2021 $3.5 Million Net Worth in 2020 $3.25 Million Net Worth in 2019 $3 Million Net Worth in 2018 $2.75 Million Read More - Netflix Blonde Fact Vs Fiction: Here’s What The Movie Changed And What Happened! - Who Is David Dahmer? Where Is He Now? Everything You Need To Know! Read the full article

[nayelichang]

What a month without alcohol really does to your body

Many years ago, I gave up drinking alcohol for a month, and was so impressed with myself, I felt I’d cracked the Da Vinci Code. Of course, once the arbitrary 30 days were up, I returned immediately to my normal drinking pattern of “most nights”. I didn’t think about it again until five years ago, when a combination of nagging headaches and peri-menopausal facial flushing drove me to give up.

I’ve barely had a drink since, so Dry January and Sober October have passed me by. The latter, however, which raises funds for Macmillan Cancer Support by asking people to quit booze in return for sponsorship, has just finished a bumper month as many, mindful of drinking too much during the long nights of lockdown, signed up.

Diageo, the spirits company, recently estimated that by the end of 2022, the UK alcohol industry will be worth £46.7 billion, with an estimated 29.2 million regular consumers, with over-30s in professional occupations drinking the most. In 2020, according to government figures, there were 8,974 UK deaths from alcohol-specific causes; an 18.6 per cent increase on 2019.

Countless studies have shown links between excessive drinking and cancers, heart failure and diabetes, among other chronic health issues.

No wonder, then, that so many of us are reconsidering our drinking habits. But does a month of sobriety really make any difference to overall health – or are habitual drinkers simply whitewashing the problem, without any discernible benefits?

A sober month may not just benefit physical health, says Dr Catherine Carney, of Delamere rehab clinic in Cheshire.

“Alcohol can also affect sleep quality, so you’ll have more energy,” Dr Carney says. “Regular and excessive alcohol consumption can also have a detrimental effect on mental wellbeing. While 56 per cent of the UK say they consume alcohol for relaxation, it’s only temporary relief, and may leave your mental wellbeing in a worse state overall.”

When it comes to physical health, “drinking large amounts of alcohol over a prolonged period of time can increase blood pressure to unhealthy levels”, says Dr Carney, “and result in more health complications down the line. When you give up alcohol, your blood pressure will reduce, which can help to prevent heart failure, strokes and heart attacks.”

She warns however, that “proving” you can quit for a few weeks doesn’t necessarily suggest a healthy relationship with alcohol. “It promotes this negative mindset that if someone can go without alcohol for the duration, it means that they don’t have a dangerous relationship, when in fact, they do have a substance issue,” she says. “Heavy drinkers could use this month of sobriety as an excuse to abuse alcohol for the remainder of the year.”

For some, though, a month off is the beginning of a full reset. Confidence coach Lucy Baker, 46, from Lincolnshire, gave up for a few weeks earlier this year, and has entirely reset her drinking habits as a result.

“I worked in advertising, and for 18 years, my social life was centred on alcohol – it was just the norm,” she says.

Half-hearted attempts to cut down were met by friends insisting, “go on, just have one…”

“I stopped when I got pregnant, but went back to drinking socially,” she says. Things changed on a holiday to Ibiza this year. “I met an old drinking friend, who told me he was now sober. It really resonated. When I came home I thought, ‘Why am I still drinking?’’’

Lucy decided to stop for a month. “I started to feel really good. I didn’t drink a lot at home, but I made a choice to stop when out, too. I went to a hen party and drank tonic, and to a couple of work things without glugging white wine. Not having to wonder if I’d have a hangover felt so good, it took me by surprise.”

Now, Lucy drinks very occasionally, and also has more energy. “I’m going to the gym more. I don’t miss it, especially hangovers. I absolutely support Sober October now – 10 years ago I’d have thought, ‘What are you doing that for?’”

GP Dr Ross Perry lists the benefits of a month off the booze. “After your last drink, the liver starts working overtime and the pancreas starts producing extra insulin,” he says. “It’s important to drink lots of water, as your body will be flushing out toxins via the liver and kidneys, so you’re going to the loo more.”

If you don’t feel better immediately, he adds, “it takes up to 72 hours before you mentally and physically feel ‘normal’.”

After two weeks, “you will likely see a drop in body weight, eye bags reduced and far less overall bloating around the stomach, as well as clearer skin”, he goes on. “After three weeks, blood pressure may reduce. A month in, skin and eyes will look brighter and clearer – liver fat reduces by up to 15 per cent, increasing its ability to flush out toxins.

Mild liver disease, such as fatty liver can be reversed completely [how long this takes will depend on the state the liver is in and how old the person is] over time, if a person stops drinking alcohol altogether, he concludes. “When there is no alcohol in your blood for several months, often, the liver cells can gradually repair and return to normal.”

Most of us feel we drink “moderately” but counsellor and author of Sober on a Drunk Planet, Sean Gay, found his drinking was out of control and stopped at 31.

“We are conditioned by society to believe that drinking and hangovers are ‘fun’,” he says. “But for a lot of people, the empty wallets, shaky mornings and anxiety are far from it.”

Sean believes “a lot of people have spent their entire adulthood using alcohol as an emotional aid – so just having a month off won’t suddenly undo all the physical, mental, emotional and financial issues caused when they may have been using alcohol since their teenage years”.

For him, as well as many others, “alcohol is a depressant, so it’s no wonder that hangovers and depression go hand in hand”, he adds. “Alcohol also releases cortisol, the stress hormone, into our systems. One big night out can leave cortisol in our bodies for a full seven days.”

Visit PE bags homepage for more details.

My own anxiety improved dramatically within a week of giving up alcohol. I can’t pretend I lost any weight (because I replaced the calories with snacks) – but I slept better almost immediately. Now, my moods are more stable, the headaches have gone, and my skin is no longer flushed.

“The main benefit of going sober for a month is breaking a habit,” says pharmacist Abbas Kanani, of Chemist Click. “It takes around 30 days to form a habit so not drinking for four or five weeks can help you stop.” But in the long term, he warns, it’s back to square one if you return to previous habits. “Thirty days without drinking is not long enough to reverse any long-term damage. If you go straight back to drinking, it will have been a waste of time.”

Most Sober October and Dry January participants might not quit permanently – but for anyone concerned about their health, finances or fluctuating moods, a month without booze is the perfect opportunity to take a step back, and reset their relationship with alcohol – perhaps for good.

[andromedapip]

Body Positivity and Mainstream Media

I’ve been listening to some podcasts about the whole Kanye turn and I learned from a discussion about the Tucker Carlson interview that Kanye thinks Lizzo is emblematic of a Satanic Plot to get Black people fat to make it easier to genocide them.

This is a fairly old front that has been opened up by the online trad culture war but it has been updated to include satanism since all these guys switched from being epic atheists to epic Catholics/Orthodox. The idea goes that media is purposefully pushing the idea that it is a good thing to be fat so that the population becomes more servile and effeminate as opposed to masculine and ripped.

This is not the case however. People are not obese because they saw a fat person on TV, they are obese because food has become shittier. People buy fast food because more and more time is dedicated to working and despite the fact that workers have become more and more productive over the many decades they are still working the same eight hour days as their great grandparents. Because more is being accomplished during this time, more of their daily energy is spent at work and commuting to and from their job site. As such, when they get home they want to use the few hours they have for relaxation doing exactly that, relaxing. A good, healthy meal can be cheap but it is costly in the amount of time it takes. Two days ago I made a veggie stew and it took around an hour. An hour of precious time dedicated to something that will be eaten in about 10 minutes.

Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas has an excellent video about Jamie Oliver’s War on Nuggets. In it he cooks a dozen chicken nuggets from a bag and compares it to Jamie Oliver’s healthy nuggets that he touts takes the same amount of time. While it is true that the baking itself is equivalent, the actual total cost of time which included buying the ingredients (which while cheaper per nugget is still more expensive than buying a bag of frozen nuggets) and the prep.

So why is it that media is pushing the idea of body positivity? I think its because everyone gave up on the war on Obesity. In order to effectively fight that battle you need to make healthy home cooked meals appealing to the population and given the fact that fast food has more sugar, salt, and addictive ingredients than, say, baked salmon and a salad. Coupled with the fact that fast food is quicker than preparing a meal and more time can be dedicated to relaxing the choice is clear. Unhealthy fattening food is not going away so the Culture War gave up. Now advertisers have had a new market opened up. Obese people are here to stay yet there is still stigma surrounding them, if we could market to them telling them we’re on their side we could get their money.

It is not a result of a Satanic agenda, it is the result of cynical advertising coupled with poor quality food that remains the most accessible form of sustenance. 

[darkhalo4321]

I started to post a tweet, but it started to form a long rant and I felt Tumblr was the true home for it. SO- I love having a website for my comic. I REALLY DO. however, the amount of people I attract to that site is...

abysmal.

Mostly because not a lot of webcomic artists with sites do link exchanges like they used to and it feels like everyone's gotta be part of a "collective!" or something. Which... Technically I am part of a magical webcomic collective. called Aradia. It's a small community and while it's slowly gaining traction in it's own way, it's not Spiderforest or Hiveworks and it's not WEBTOONS either. I've been wrestling with the task of making a mirror for my webcomic on webtoons. Some people said "just post the pages! I don't get a lot of views, but it's whatever" My LITERAL THOUGHT when I was told to post my traditional format pages "as is" on a vertical scroll dominated site was "of course you don't have traction! THE FORMAT IS WRONG" I would be reformatting for vertical scroll, and it's full of unknowns. I've never uploaded on there. Will it splice and realign okay? What if I mess it up and it's posted wrong? What if the tone moires weird? What if what if what if... Anxiety. It's holding me back. "but darkhalo4321, what about drawing better? Doing color? Advertising for your webcomic's website??" hahaha oh silly made up audience member. I have done all those things and It's not gotten me far. Maybe if I worked HARDER, Maybe if I were a better ARTIST, Maybe if I had a better STORY, Maybe maybe maybe... I've restarted my comic to have a better story, better art, and worked harder as a result. It's not cutting it. 'm fighting a machine. I'M FIGHTING AN ALGORITHM and I'm losing. The idea of being on webtoons is to gain SOME new eyes on my work via their community and I have many friends on there who have said the canvas community is really nice. I've been very calm and chill the last few months but I'm thinking I've been stuffing those in a box and setting them aside. Today I'm unpacking them a bit. I'm not depressed or disheartened. I an genuinely happy for friends that are hitting some personal goals, excited even! I've been big on enneagram stuff, and when my type goes into the unhealthy types, I tend to look at others and feel... bad that my life is not at that point, so I've been keeping busy to not deal with those feelings and now I'm just venting on tumblr for no one to read/see. Which Is ANXIETY. It all boils down to anxiety. Thanks to my boss at work who is working to become an anxiety/life coach I've been learning how to identify what anxieties are tormenting me and how to handle it when they do. I've been inking pages like crazy and maybe the last minute unplanned stream I tried doing last night where no one tuned in made me sad because like, no one came to watch and my dead twitch account getting no views is what did me in to ranting on tumblr. XD In all reality... I could stand to try harder with getting my content out there, but at the same time, I don't have like any free time to be a content creator on 5 social media sites, one of which is slowly burning, and the other ones favor short form videos which I don't have the patience to make videos for anyways, and I don't really... WANT to anyways. I wanna go back to link exchanges and finding things through other comics and their likes and rinse and repeat... I'll end the rant here XD I'm okay, I promise. Gonna make a mirror for webtoons eventually. If it uploads funky then... so be it. The nerds can call me out I guess? Not that I even plan to check comments or metrics. I don't even look at the numbers for my site anymore because it's... eh. I have better peace of mind posting and running.

[kyuuppi]

help, my boyfriend has no sex drive! (3)

Pairing: Kenma x reader (f)

Contents: smut; thigh highs; semi-clothed sex; unprotected sex; oral sex (f receiving); fingering; cum eating; creampie; virginity kink; established relationship; forgotten homework ):

Word Count: 4.1k

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 4

“Fuck, it’s cold!” 

You curse under your breath as you rub your legs together underneath the blanket, desperate for any semblance of warmth in your freezing apartment. With the arrival of winter, Tokyo has steadily gotten colder and colder each day. Despite wearing your thickest pair of fleece pajamas and cocooning yourself in a bundle of thick blankets on the couch, you feel gooseflesh lining your trembling legs. Each time you accidentally brush your feet against your shins underneath the blankets you recoil from the frostiness of your own toes. 

At your limit, you snatch your cell phone off the coffee table to open the Amazon app, intending to buy a pair of thermal tights to be express shipped. 

Instead, your eyes land on a conveniently placed advertisement on the home page. 

Extra Warm Fuzzy Thigh High Stockings 3 Pack for Women

Immediately enticed by the words “extra warm” you click on the image. The page loads to reveal a variety of colors to choose from along with some product information about the material and a satisfaction guarantee. You scroll down to read a few reviews, almost all citing positive experiences and expressing surprise to find how “cozy and warm” the stockings are despite their low price.

Thoroughly persuaded, you quickly select a set of versatile colors before using the one-click “Buy Now” feature. 

Just as you receive the notification of an order confirmation email, you hear the front door of the apartment open before your boyfriend tiredly shuffles inside. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Kenma murmurs, struggling to shrug off his thick puffer coat. “Yoshida-san wanted to talk again…”

You laugh at that, recalling just how talkative the elderly lady from two doors down tends to be. Once the woman finds someone willing to listen to her rambling, she can go on for hours about topics ranging from romantic conquests of her youth to what types of seasonal fruit her grandchildren like. You can very clearly picture your awkward boyfriend, feeling too guilty to interrupt as Yoshida-san complains about the local markets increasing the price of eggs for thirty minutes. 

“You need to be more selfish, KenKen,” you chastise playfully as you hop up off the couch to help him remove the complicated layers of winter outerwear. 

“Tell people what you want to and don’t want to do. Yoshida-san would understand; you’re a full-time student and eboy , you’re busy.”

Kenma shoots you a disgusted look at your favorite way to refer to his streaming career to which you only cackle. With a few calculated tugs, you manage to remove his coat and hang it on the rack beside the door.

“Anyway, I’ll go ahead and call for dinner—I was thinking we could get sukiyaki and watch a movie for tonight,” you suggest, already making a beeline for your phone.

“Okay.”

The rest of the night is spent comfortably, cuddled up on the couch while you both eat warm soup and watch a fantasy movie Kenma picked out. You hardly have any interest in the contents on the screen but you relish in the warmth provided by both the food and your boyfriend. 

You all but forget about your Amazon order until two days later when Kenma comes home with a plastic package in his hands.

“It says it's for you,” Kenma says simply, handing the package over to where you sit on the couch. 

Your brows furrowed in confusion for a moment before the realization hits and you tear the plastic to pieces in your excitement to open it. Kenma lingers to the side, seeming curious about what could garner such a reaction from you.

With your university student budget, it is rare that you buy anything outside of necessities and an unhealthy amount of take-out, so you are unperturbed by Kenma’s apparent curiosity. 

You grin as you pull the neatly folded pile of multi-colored soft material from the package, holding them in the air for him to see.

“It's my new thigh highs! I was tired of feeling like I was in danger of getting frostbite in our own apartment.”

You drop all but a pair of striped pink socks on the couch and quickly shift to try them on, oblivious to how Kenma’s curious gaze has morphed into something akin to mild horror. The material glides easily up your bare legs, stopping just below mid-thigh. 

“ Ooh— they’re so soft,” you cheer, standing up to test their slipperiness on the wooden floors. Kenma swallows thickly, eyes lingering on where your plush thighs slightly spill over the tops of the stockings. 

He nearly goes into cardiac arrest when you lift your right leg in his direction, toes unintentionally mere centimeters from his crotch. 

“Feel them, they’re super fuzzy!” 

Kenma shies from the innocent brightness in your eyes and shuffles backward, nearly running into the wall in his haste to leave.

“I actually have to film something right now—sorry.”

With the firm shut of his office door, you find yourself standing alone, leg still raised dumbly before your balance falters and you quickly set it down. You can only blink for a few seconds, thoroughly thrown off by the rapid series of events you just experienced. Eventually, you just shrug, writing the exchange off as Kenma being his weird, gamer-boy self, and set to work on your own homework. 

You don’t suspect anything until the next day. 

As usual, you wake up before your boyfriend. You spend a few extra minutes in bed, enjoying the comfortable warmth and silently cooing over Kenma’s cute sleeping face while he’s curled up to your side. Eventually, though, the desire for breakfast wins out and you quietly slip out of bed.

The cold floor nips at your feet as you tip-toe out of the room. You make a detour to the living room where you left the package overnight, pink and white striped socks strewn haphazardly over the back of the couch where you removed them before bed. Deciding to switch it up, you pick a pair of solid black thigh highs and slip them on before hopping to the kitchen, legs sufficiently warm beneath your oversized sleep shirt.

You lose yourself to the familiar motions of making breakfast, cracking eggs, and mixing batter while your hips sway to a rhythm you make up in your head. Halfway through flying your second egg, you hear the bedroom door behind you open, signaling Kenma’s emergence. 

“Good morning,” you sing-song, well aware Kenma is far from a morning person.

“Do you want your pancakes plain or chocolate chip? We’re out of blueberries.” 

You bend down to retrieve clean plates from the bottom of the dishwasher, rummaging for a few moments before finding two decently sized ones. You return to your full height and plate the eggs before realizing the pancake batter is still sitting in its bowl, waiting, and Kenma has still not responded to your question. You twist your torso around to look over your shoulder, briefly considering maybe he hadn’t heard you properly. 

Surprisingly, Kenma is still awkwardly standing right in front of the bedroom door, seeming to not have moved a muscle since opening it. However, his gaze seems locked on something, eyes wide and pupils dilated not unlike a cat staring at a laser. 

You follow his line of sight only to land on your own thighs, clad in the pair of black thigh-highs. The gears shift and it clicks all at once.

A grin sinister enough to rival the Grinch spreads across your face. 

“Enjoying the view, KenKen~?” You taunt, coyly pointing your toe so the muscles of your calves and thighs flex under the material. 

Kenma finally tears his eyes from your legs to meet your eyes, seeming conflicted between annoyance and embarrassment. With red ears, Kenma turns on his heels and walks unusually quickly towards the bathroom, mumbling something about taking a shower. 

“Wait—you never told me what type of pancakes you want!”

The only answer you receive is the slam of a door. 

For the rest of the morning, you take full advantage of Kenma’s newfound interest in your thigh-high stockings. You brush against him at any opportunity: claiming you need something from the cabinet right behind him when he’s in the kitchen, conveniently dropping pens and pencils right in front of him when he sits on the couch so that you have to bend over to pick them up.

With each action, Kenma gets more and more flustered and vocal with his complaints, well aware of what exactly you are doing. Regardless of his harsh words, the pink on his cheeks is too cute to resist so you keep doing it until you’re forced to leave for class. 

By the time you come back from campus, the sun is long gone and the apartment is silent save for Kenma’s mumbled voice in the back room where he speaks to the viewers of his stream. 

Kicking off the jeans you had hastily slid on over your black stockings and settling into bed you have only one thing on your mind: the essay your professor had so graciously surprised your class with. He claimed the topic was “easy” and therefore could be finished and submitted “before midnight.” 

“Easy my ass,” you mutter bitterly, pulling open your prehistoric laptop. 

The hours melt away with the inconsistent click-clacking on your keyboard as you set to researching and writing your assignment. While actually spitting out a 500-word essay had been easier than expected, many of your arguments felt weak and you found conflicting information in a few of your sources, forcing you to spend extra time editing your work.

You are so lost in your reading that you hardly notice the uncharacteristic silence from the other room until the bedroom door opens. You spare Kenma a momentary glance and mumbled greeting before your eyes are immediately back on the lengthy Wikipedia page. The small text blurs together under your tired eyes and the overheating laptop on your thighs is bordering on unbearable.

Unbeknownst to you, Kenma stands idly at the door for several minutes while you read, eyes roving over your disheveled, stressed form before landing on your thighs where you rest your laptop. Somehow, it is when you are least put together that you look the most alluring. Wordlessly, he moves forward. 

You startle when you feel the mattress shift beneath you, looking up at Kenma in mild alarm as he crawls into bed with a strange expression on his face. You try to focus on your work again, half-heartedly announcing that you’re busy. 

But Kenma doesn’t listen. 

A soft pair of lips connect with your cheek, sending shivers down your body at the unexpected sensation. Your cheeks flush, unused to Kenma initiating physical contact so directly. As much as you would love to take full advantage of this moment, your word essay stares back at you threateningly.

“Kenma—I can’t, I have an essay—”

Your complaint falls on deaf ears as he continues leaving soft pecks along your cheeks, becoming less innocent and more frenzied as he moves lower. One of his hands finds purchase on your breast, gently fondling the clothed flesh.

Your pulse flutters as his lips press under your ear, hot tongue swiping at your skin. He moves feverishly as he kisses down the column of your neck, only pausing when he reaches the collar of your sweater. 

“You look so pretty right now,” he whispers airily, voice lower than usual. 

You want to disagree. You’re unshowered and bare-faced after a full day of classes with your hair thrown in a messy style—no part of that is conventionally “pretty.” 

But the way Kenma is looking at you, pupils dilated, and a soft flush on his face as if mesmerized has you unable to utter a word of dissent.

All previous inhibitions are forgotten as you set your laptop to the side, not even bothering to save your draft.

His grip on your chest falls away and you take the hint, grasping the hem of your sweater and pulling it over your head. Having left in a rush not to be late earlier, you had forgone a bra—but Kenma hardly minds.

His gaze immediately zones into your exposed breasts. Briefly, his eyes flicker up to meet your own as if silently asking permission, to which you nod, before he returns his attention to your chest, brushing his pale hands up your waist to finally cup your breasts without a barrier. 

He marvels at their softness for a few minutes, alternating between gently cupping and firmly pressing into the supple flesh. Some distant part of his mind suggests the feeling is similar to mochi but he thinks better of sharing the childish thought aloud. Instead, he puts his mouth to better use. 

You sharply inhale when Kenma ducks down without warning, hot tongue swiping over your right nipple while he flicks the other with his thumb like it's a joystick. He envelops the bud in his wet mouth, lightly sucking while his fingers begin pinching.

The sensations shoot down your spine straight to your core and your squirm at his ministrations, gently fisting his silky hair when he switches sides.

Eventually, he releases your nipples with an audible pop to press kisses on the underside of your breast instead. His lips brush against your flesh and he slowly makes his way down, pausing to edge his wet tongue around your belly button in an unexpectedly naughty way that makes you squirm.

His hands abandon your chest in favor of your hips where his fingers slip under the sides of your cotton panties.

He glances up, lips just barely ghosting your skin as he murmurs, “can I take them off?” 

Your throat feels much too dry to produce any comprehensible sound so you simply nod. He wastes no time rolling the thin material down your thighs as you assist in eagerly kicking them off. You make a move to remove your last remaining clothing, your soft black thigh-high stockings, but Kenma quickly grabs your hands to stop you.

Confused, you look up to meet his eyes only to find his cheeks dusted pink as he avoids your gaze. 

“I…want you to keep them on.”

You can’t contain the giggles that bubble up at his admission, only increasing when he visibly pouts. Your amusement dies down as Kenma’s hands move to your shoulders, gently pushing. Obediently, you let your back fall onto the soft bed while Kenma settles directly between your spread thighs, hands supporting his weight on either side of your waist. 

You watch as he looks over you, golden eyes flitting across your body almost methodically as if he is assessing a challenging puzzle in a game. The comparison makes your body feel warm and you resist the urge to squirm under his stare. 

It is far from your first time—you shouldn’t be the nervous one here , you scold. 

At last, Kenma nods to himself, as if silently making a final decision before he lowers himself again. A pair of soft lips brush against the hood of your clit in a peck that has your muscles tensing and a mewl getting caught in your throat. Kenma presses a few more light, soft kisses around your vulva before he uses the thumbs of both hands to properly spread your lips open.

You’re almost embarrassed by how much wetness you can feel beginning to leak out but all thoughts are rendered obsolete the moment Kenma pushes his tongue into you, earnestly and without hesitation. His increase in confidence since the night he had “returned the favor” is clear in his every movement.

His tongue twists in ways he remembers you had particularly liked with the occasional new experimentation as well, alternating between firmly massaging your walls with the tip and thrusting in and out in a mimicry of what he intends to do with his cock later. 

Just the thought of his dick experiencing the heat currently engulfing his tongue has him groaning into you, making your own voice keen at the vibrations. 

He releases his tongue from inside of you to wrap his lips around your clit instead, sucking while the middle finger of his right hand pushes into you. The insertion has you nearly breathless as he manages to reach a place deep inside of you—much deeper than your own fingers could. As a former volleyball player and current gamer, it is no surprise that Kenma has long, dexterous fingers but to feel them in action leaves your heart pounding in your chest as you greedily rock your hips against him. 

He eventually adds his ring finger, the resistance minimal with how wet you have become. His other hand moves to grip your meaty thigh, fingertips just barely slipping beneath the fabric of your stockings. 

You can quickly feel your release building. Kenma seems set on having you cum on his fingers as quickly as possible as well, flicking at your clit with the tip of his tongue while he pushes in a third finger, never once faltering in his pace. It is when he unexpectedly curls his fingers inside of you, hooking into a squishy spot that your vision blurs, and every muscle in your body tenses with your orgasm. 

Kenma diligently helps you ride it out, continuing to finger you and suckle at your clit until your legs draw up, attempting to push him off. Kindly, he pulls away.

You take a moment to collect yourself but it seems all for naught when you catch the way Kenma brings his sticky fingers, utterly drenched in your release, to his own mouth and licks them clean without a second thought. Despite the fact he had just eaten you out, something about watching him suck your essence off his own fingers feels decidedly filthy and leaves you more turned on than you were before your orgasm.

Kenma removes his fingers from his mouth once he deems them “clean” though they now shine with the remnants of his own saliva. He moves his hands to rest on your raised knees and carefully searches your face for any negative response. 

“Do you want to keep going?”

He asks softly but purposefully, fully prepared to stop if you suddenly aren’t up for it anymore. The consideration makes your chest swell and you grin. 

“Yeah,” you answer, sitting up slightly only to hook your fingers in the waistline of his track pants, “take these off.”

His cheeks flame but he obediently hooks his own thumbs into the pants and slides them down, carelessly kicking them off to some corner of the room.

Unsurprisingly, Kenma didn’t bother wearing underwear but you hardly mind and your mouth nearly waters at the sight of his pretty dick, bobbling slightly with his movements and dripping a copious amount of pre-cum, just like on that first night you sucked him off. 

He settles between your hips and you lay back on the pillows to form a textbook-perfect missionary position. One of his hands slides up your leg before finding a good place under your thigh to grab and hold your leg open while his other grabs his cock to position himself.

The first brush of his head against your sticky folds sends a shiver through both of you and his grip on you tightens almost painfully. 

“Can I...put it inside?”

“Yes, Kenma, please,” you respond breathlessly. 

You’re far too impatient to bother being embarrassed by your apparently eagerness though Kenma flusters at your plea. He lines himself up carefully before finally pressing forward. 

You gasp at the stretch, trying your best not to tense up as he slowly forces his way inside. You can hardly remember the last time you had someone inside of you—it must have been a while before you had even met Kenma.

Just as you had suspected that night you first saw him, his girth feels thicker than average and the stretch has your toes curling. He keeps pressing until he bottoms out, hips flush against your ass, and he has to physically pause to catch his breath as he adjusts to the brand-new sensation of being inside of someone.

His brain feels foggy and slow, like your pussy holds the power to make him go dumb. His length feels like it’s burning in your hot insides, soaked and massaged by your pulsating walls. 

He is positive this is one of the greatest experiences of his life.

It only gets better when you impatiently rock your hips against him, creating friction he didn’t realize he so desperately craved. You mewl needily, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and forcing him to press against you, sweaty chests smushed together.

Kenma steels himself, adjusting on hand to grip at your hip while the other supports his weight on the bed, trying not to lay his full weight on you. Torturously slowly, he pulls his hips back until his length nearly slips out only to sink back into the hilt. 

Your walls suck him harshly, threatening not to let him leave every time he partially withdraws and he’s pretty sure it's causing him to make some extremely embarrassing sounds he’ll regret later.

In contrast, you revel in the soft ‘ah’ s and sharp gasps he releases against your neck every time he thrusts inside of you. You experimentally clench around him just to hear the whine he makes in response, his hips involuntarily stuttering. 

“Ngh... feels good,” he whines into your ear. 

You moan your agreement, pressing soft kisses into his sweaty neck in encouragement. His speed steadily increases, your wetness producing a distinct squelch with each thrust. It is quickly devolving into something messy and imperfect but filled with love nonetheless. Every nerve in your body feels as if inflamed, burning you until you are no longer yourself but something new—something that is both you and Kenma. 

It is as your second orgasm is rapidly approaching and your limbs are seizing up, forcing Kenma to reach even deeper inside of you that you realize why it feels so different from the other times, why you felt so nervous before.

It’s the first time you’ve been fucked by someone you truly love. 

With a stammer of Kenma’s name, you cum. 

Your spasming walls prove too much for him and he follows quickly, thrusts losing all semblance of rhythm as he releases inside of you. You feel him deep inside, the head of his twitching cock near the entrance of your womb when he cums, filling you with warmth. Idly, you realize there’s a lot of it—likely the result of Kenma’s first time cumming inside of someone. It fills you to a brim, some of it escaping and sliding down his own spent length until it drips onto the sheets in a sticky mess. 

All strength seems to leave his body and Kenma fully collapses on top of you, head buried into your neck and chests sticking together like glue. The room is silent for several minutes aside from panting as the two of you catch your breaths. 

Kenma is surprisingly the first to speak. 

His voice sounds nervous, slightly hesitant and he refuses to make eye contact as he asks, “Was that okay?”

Every inch of his appearance screams insecure and the sight tugs at your heartstrings. You know he is worried he won’t compare to your previous boyfriends, feeling inadequate due to his own lack of experience. You quickly work to amend that. 

“It was great,” you answer honestly, offering a bright smile. 

“You’re amazing, Kenma.” 

The redness of his cheeks is almost comical but a wide smile stretches across his lips and when he meets your gaze his eyes seem to be nearly sparkling in happiness.

Your heart stutters in your chest. 

“I love you,” he whispers, voice full of adoration.

“I love you too,” you respond, curling into his side.

You nearly purr when his arms immediately snake around your waist, rolling you both onto your sides as he slips from your warmth. You’re overcome with a sense of calm, everything suddenly feeling right in the world if only for this single moment. You have never experienced this with any of your past partners; yet another piece of evidence to validate what you already know: Kenma is it for you. He’s the one. 

A thought comes to mind that has your features twisting into a sinister smirk. 

“Hey, KenKen...you really like my thigh highs, right?”

He stiffens beside you, instinctively knowing he’s in danger. 

“...I guess so,” he cautions, flinching when you coyly brush a clothed toe against one of his shins.

“Maybe for Christmas,” you continue, “I should get you a pair.”

[doshmanziari]

Big Games, Big Numbers

With it being a few months since its date of release, Elden Ring I think presents an opportunity to focus attention again on the industry of videogame reviews (as distinct from its industry of journalism; the two are not the same), and how, even after all the things it has gone through, it still very rarely prioritizes a comprehensive critical capacity over the need to praise the thing expected to receive praise and find fault with the thing expected to receive fault-finding. In other words, the videogame review industry continues to exist essentially as one big advertisement, and a partial consequence of this is that reviews are beholden to the arbitrary timeframe of the week of a game’s release.

What this meant with the case of Elden Ring (and other games of comparable size/duration) was that very few of the people appraising it actually finished it; in fact, it is doubtful that the majority got even, say, two-thirds of the way through. It took me playing a frankly unhealthy amount of hours of Elden Ring every other day for about a month-and-a-half to finish it; so what are we to expect of people whose job puts them on an even tighter schedule?

(Regarding videogames themselves, I would also note, comparatively, how events such as E3 impose a similarly arbitrary timeframe for “product presentability” upon each developer. The sooner these events die out, the better.)

If any of you have read some of my previous writings on Elden Ring -- here, here, and here -- you will know that my interest here is not neutral; but I believe that makes my concern more relevant than not. Over time, I experienced a dramatic turnaround of feelings and thoughts for the game, which ended as a knot of unpleasant exhaustion.

It is demonstrably untrue that anyone who finished the game within a similar timeframe would share my experience; but it is true that the triumphal celebration of Elden Ring’s exceptionally high scoring rests upon the tacit acceptance of dozens of viewpoints which are significantly experientially partial. Think of if a two-thousand page book was published, and 90% of its reviewers read eight-hundred of those pages and then awarded the book the highest of marks. Critically absurd -- and its normalization within videogame culture seems to depend, in part, upon the strange idea that, if you enjoy a videogame within its first quarter, you’ll enjoy it for as long as it continues.

A healthier critical practice for videogame reviewers -- among a host of other restructurings -- would be for them to note how much they played (Polygon’s review does cite an investment of forty-five hours); but as long as outlets mostly exist as advertorial supplements, reinforcing this or that trend, such transparency will also mostly be inadmissible.

What’s additionally worth point out here is that the matter of finishing, or just progressing through, Elden Ring intersected not only with its size but also its challenge. From a “practical” point of view, this means that the majority of people reviewing the game probably were called to review it precisely because they had finished prior games by FromSoftware -- because they are “Souls veterans”, or whatever, and would have a higher likelihood of both making headway and saying the “right things” to an established audience. Reassure people that the difficulty is still there, that a bunch of stuff is still obtuse, that the narrative still requires piecing together, that there is still a lot of equipment to choose from, etc., etc.

How boring.

Mightn’t it have been more interesting if the task of reviewing the game were instead given to people perhaps unfamiliar with FromSoftware’s titles, seeing as how the game has mostly been presented as an alternative take on the “open world” mold, and how much it has sold (implying a large number of first-timers)? Why not explicitly use that as an opportunity to see how people who might otherwise only know of that mold through the output of Ubisoft or Rockstar Games took to Elden Ring’s variations? Well, again, because that doesn’t make sense within the advertorial, preaching-to-the-choir, release-accompanying (or release-anticipating!) model reviews employ.

Although it escapes my level of attention now, I strongly believe that responsible critical interest herein will behoove future explorations of why Elden Ring may be receiving extra-special attention for its “open world” when, for example, Dark Souls was really a type of “open world” game too -- a type more particularly suited to the strengths of FromSoftware’s creative vision and still rare to find among 3D videogames (especially during a playthrough with the Master Key, which allows access to most locked doors). Between all of these highly positive reviews, I detect the dreary sentiment that, now that FromSoftware has “finally” paired certain design trademarks with a more recognizably “open world” format, it has achieved an ultimate formulation of potential -- a formulation that just happens to coincide with, as I wrote before, “a demand for Maximum Content.”

[spacetwinks]

It's good to see you on here! I've always wanted to ask you as a long-time follower, first-time caller just how you deal with Twitter and all the dumb bullshit that goes with it? Specifically not caring about what people say about you, follower count, amount of positive reactions to your posts, etc.

It feels like Twitter has legitimately affected my mental health because all I ever get exposed to on there is CONSTANT negativity. Even from folks I generally tolerate. I would love to just stop using it, but everytime I try it feels like I'm missing out on a lot. Plus it's where most of my friends are.

How do you shut out the voices in your head that make that website a goddamn nightmare?

part of it is just curation of who you're following, actively muting certain terms and phrases that might make things bad for you in your head, having a locked account for venting shit (this is one i think is crucial because sometimes you still want to post just to get bad energy out of you but you need a space where it won't be seen by EVERYBODY - maybe just a few people, or maybe even just yourself, tho in the latter i'd recommend getting a regular ass journal for that purpose), all that sort of regular social media stuff but part of it is for me, personally... i just had a break a long time ago with wanting to be The Funny Guy.

because i’m me, this is gonna get long. bear with me.

it's something i actually brought up forever ago on tumblr itself, and how i approached this platform in contrast to my existence in other online spaces before it, my approach would be I Just Post. from serious shit to funny shit to dumb shit, i just let it out of my head, emptying it out. in times WAY long ago in my personal life i would want to be The Funny Guy because that was how i saw myself as having value, which pushed me into unhealthy patterns, needing to 'perform', needing to be 'on', and losing my own sense of value if i wasn't making people laugh, wondering if i'd be pushed out of friendships or social spaces if i let my true self out. i'd keep all sorts of my real feelings inside of me and just simmer with awful thoughts because i had to be The Funny Person, at least that's how i thought of it at the time.

so i fucking ditched it. it wasn't healthy for anybody, not for me, not for the people who came to see me as The Funny Guy either and what preconceptions they might have of me because of it. this also lead to giving less and less of a shit about having high follower counts or whatever. people get it really twisted 1. what a high follower count *actually* is and 2. what it means, materially, for the person who has it. i got 27k on twitter and to someone who doesn't have 1k followers on twitter, yeah, that'll seem like a lot, but here's the thing:

follower counts don't pay bills. follower counts don't help you eat. the only time these numbers are materially useful to me in any way is when i have something new to sell, a twine, a pack of photos, or whatever. and even then, i still have to regularly advertise that stuff, because this relative high follower count doesn't automatically translate to success, to money, whatever. a lot of the people following me are a lot like me: they do not have a lot of money to pass around. this isn't the pre-'08 crash era where we're all tossing 5 bucks at some webcomic's paypal donation bar to get some 800x600 computer wallpapers, everything costs more and everybody has less disposable income. people with a lower amount of followers have, i think, an understandable assumption that high follower count = something materially beneficial, but... no, not really. if we all had more disposable income again, maybe.

but we don’t.

and i'd be fucking miserable if i approached my online presence that way too. just trying to get more followers, focusing solely on that above all else, to get bigger to achieve - what? i get a couple more freelance writing job offers that pay 50 bucks to, at most, 300 dollars? fucking god awful, man. that's not a life i wanna live.

also, seriously, digging in more into how 'high follower counts' are relative: it's not just that my numbers are nothing compared to actual literal celebs, but they're also frequently nothing compared to, say, some random fursuiters i might've never seen before, who are, again, themselves nothing in follower count compared to actual celebs. i think sometimes fixate on a random person who SEEMS popular and get lost in how that 'popularity' can be extremely relative. it's good to step outside of it and see where other people are much, much more popular, and then also to check if THAT greater popularity actually translates into something material for the person with it. it's less common than people tend to assume!

same goes for the ‘not caring what people say about me’. it’s not a ‘haters gonna hate’ deal, it’s ‘sometimes people just won’t like you’. some people just won’t like me. that’s fine! maybe it’s because they think my jokes suck, or i post too much/am too longwinded (these are incredibly justified reasons to dislike me in particular, i do post too much and am too long winded), or for whatever reasons. so long as someone isn’t like trying to start shit with me over it, it’s... whatever, y’know? there’s people i just don’t like too. trying to make it so Everyone Likes Each Other or Trying To Make Everyone Like you is disastrous for everyone’s mental health, especially one’s own. i’d very much rather not end up like fucking amanda palmer obsessing over some Guardian reviewer who didn’t like her work, or a YA author finding some student from several years ago mildly dunking on their books in the article of a small town college newspaper and blowing their top over it. and some of those fuckers - like amanda palmer there - actually make a SHITLOAD of money. they could be jet skiing all the time on a private island, but instead they just fuck themselves up over the fact that some random critic didn’t like their music. not healthy for amanda palmer - or for the critic!

other thing about twitter: it’s the fucking Id of social media platforms. no other site is more ‘everyone is just dumping out what they’re feeling with zero thought for curation’ than twitter. it’s just not designed with curation in mind! i’ll post about whatever the fuck comes to mind, because it all gets into the ‘waterfall’ of people’s feed, people EXPECT things to be all over the place on twitter, ESPECIALLY if they follow a lot of people. someone following 2000, 3000 people, and i’m one among them? my thoughts are just one of many, bursting forth and then disappearing into the flooded ether among the rest! i don’t worry about being ‘consistent’ or having a ‘presence’ because twitter isn’t built for it nearly as well as anything else. i talk about depression, beat ‘em up video games, communism, and which version of master splinter i think is the hottest, maybe all of them in the same day, and it’s just fuckin’ whatever. i find it personally so much preferable than trying to ‘be’ some particular performance, like being ‘the funny guy’ how i used to.

also: right now? twitter is gonna be a lotta negativity in particular! the world is in all sorts of fucked up flux emergency states right now and worse yet for many of us there’s no structure in our lives that actually values and gives time for us to pour out our grief and worry and fear in a healthy way and with the dedicated time necessary to do so. it’s all just sorta scrunched into one fucking cube. some people will handle it okay-ish, for various reasons. i think i do okay-ish, largely because i’ve just been extremely online since i was a kid and i’ve absorbed so much poison that i’ve immunized against a lot of it and process it different. other people won’t handle it as okay-ish, and there’s... nothing wrong with that! not the fault with them for not being able to handle it, but the fault of our societal structures that they don’t give us any real means to handle it but just ‘rugged individualism’ bullshit.

if going cold turkey sounds too much for you right now, i’d say instead just take large steps back from it instead of throwing it out completely, cut down your numbers of who you’re following and/or temporarily deploy more tactical mutes, make a locked account for brain venting purposes, and put more time and mental energy into fulfilling hobbies elsewhere during times you’d spend more on twitter.

you can’t eat twitter clout, you can’t pay bills with it, caring about ‘getting big’ on twitter or w/e is bad for the self and for others. dramatically reassess and change how you interact with that website, find ways to do so that are better for yourself, build other means of communities with your existing friends (and making new ones), do what’s right for you. take care, anon.