#Internet Basics

[zerojanitor]

twitter: currently owned by techbro pissman

tumblr: actively removing functionality and bloating the interface with things nobody uses

discord: being retooled by ex-Meta management who don't understand the appeal of the platform

youtube: neutered by advertisers and algorithms and also tiktokification

reddit: half of the site is down due to protests about the outrageous monetization of third-party API support

facebook: my mom is on there

[batshaped]

the continued adventures of an internet user who was frozen in 2004 and defrosted in 2021: some things are just the way you left them

previous 2004 internet user comics are here: one, two, three, four, five; or just in my 2004 tag

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Glitchtrap really HATES Mike specifically

[originalartblog]

Apparently much-needed reminder that reposting artists' art (by saving the images or screenshotting them and reuploading them yourself) on other platforms without the artists' expressed permission and without credit is theft and an insult to their passion and craft. You are profiting (in views, in attention, in feedback) from someone else's work and ideas, who do not get that feedback for sharing their creation.

If you are an art reposter, you are a thief and I have no respect for you.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[kitsuneisi]

Also, just to set a small boundary Don't send me pictures of yourselves for me to draw. Not only do I not work for free but it's also very dangerous to send photos of yourself to strangers on the Internet.

[lunamothghost]

doodles from last week

[valtsv]

guess who just found out his laptop isn't broken and it was actually just his roommate installing a shitty wifi extender (which he didn't even offer to let anyone else use) that cuts off my access to the internet by redirecting it all to the opposite end of the house 😐🚬

[hellmandraws]

Not gonna lie, I'm super excited about the upcoming One Piece live action series! It's out Aug 31 on Netflix. I actually think it's gonna be good! 🤞🤞🤞

[hunxi-guilai]

so I know that a lot of chinese names are references to specific poems. Is there a way to determine this (vs general auspicious meaning) and which poem specifically? I'd love to be able to figure this out for character names and I haven't been able to find any resources (in case it's helpful, I'd say I'm my understanding is maybe HSK4-level so I can clumsily make my way through the chinese internet with the help of a dictionary)

feel free to make this public so that others can benefit if you have any suggestions

oof... unfortunately I suspect that this, along with one's repertoire of chengyu, is something that one simply Just Learns with reading more. my personal repertoire of poetry is embarrassingly thin, so the horrible horrible process I've been going through is, well, throwing the name into a search bar and hoping for the best.

here's an example of how I (think I) went about doing this for Xiao Xingchen's name, way back when I wrote this post:

I went ahead and dropped "星尘 诗词" ("Xingchen poetry") into the search bar, which turned up this:

Generally speaking, I'll only put the name (minus the surname) because putting the character's full name into a search bar will probably turn up the character themselves, and if someone's name is being derived from a poem, it's usually independent of the surname anyway.

Xiao Xingchen's name is an interesting example because it doesn't quite come from a poem, but it doesn't not come from a poem. you can see that the search engine has automatically assumed that I am looking for poems about constellations, as "星辰" and "星尘" are homonyms, and one of these is more commonly seen. I usually consider that a solid indication that "星尘" (the name) is a novel formation of characters in a name, and not likely a poetic reference.

but! in for a penny, etc. I'm a huge fan of the first search result, gushicimingju, since it's a solid database of poetry and some prose. clicking into that listing informs me that gushicimingju is turning up. oh my. 119 possible matches:

note that these are matches for "星辰" (constellation), not actually our character's name. still! you can click in and peruse the selection if you'd like.

now that you're on gushicimingju's site, you can also use the search function within the site to search for more exact matches, without worrying that you'll accidentally activate the fandom itself.

looks like there's a few matches for "晓星," but nothing for the full name.

so! gushicimingju is a solid database I like to refer to most of the time. if for some reason I'm feeling particularly academically rigorous, I might also do some searches on ctext as sometimes names will come out of famous turns of phrases (a la Zhao Yun 赵云 / Zhao Zilong 赵子龙 from that post I linked earlier) rather than poems. searching the dictionary sometimes (Pleco, or zdic) doesn't hurt either. basically, I throw spaghetti at the search engine wall to see what results come back for these characters in this particular order to try and get the original referent (if any) to show up; I'll probably give up after a few permutations of search terms if nothing is actively jumping out at me

but back to the search results: sometimes, if your character is famous enough, straight up searching for "what poem is this character's name from?" will help you find like-minded people on baidu zhidao (basically yahoo answers):

although of course, take baidu zhidao result with all of the salt you would take with any yahoo answers (look for alternate sources to validate, good for a laugh most of the time)

best of luck!

[dysthoepiadaily]

I always forget Phil was like a male version of a scene queen... Good for him. He was just being an emo myspace hottie in the peak of the myspace era... That is so iconic.

[bitchslapblastoids]

Was thinking about how much of a normo I come across as irl, how I’ve felt a lil odd person out at their shows bc of being a bit older (29) and looking so aggressively normal, how generally confused people in my life would be if they knew about my d&p obsession, how thoroughly i mask weirder traits and essentially codeswitch to suit the mainstream, etc.

i feel kind of fish out of water when I imagine how all the people that populate my tumblr phandom ecosystem are likely presenting to the world irl (I.e. more visibly queer, counterculture, and so on). But then I think maybe the most visible phannies are the ones with the most curated, alt, deliberate daytoday lewks/style? So maybe what I’m picturing is off base? But then I’m also basing this off of what audiences look like in audience footage, m&gs, etc.

Sooooooo i would like to know… do you guys feel like you present as someone who may be Deeply Online and obsessed with two gay nerds from the internet? Or do you hide it and fly under the radar, masking as a total normy and living a double life?

(To clarify I don’t mean you’re like out and about wearing the fringes boob sweatshirt lol I more mean vibes and overall lewk yk?)

[bixels]

I've been making the transition these past few months, but I think I'm gonna just move back to Tumblr. My Twitter's follower-base has reached a point where I can't tweet anything casually opinion-related without it overflowing like a toilet. I post a short thread on my gripes with color design in anime and I'm getting QRT'd with "kill this guy with hammers" reaction gifs. Like, damn, this isn't fun anymore. It's not fun to talk about stuff on Twitter in general anymore. I wanted to post some ship dynamic doodles sometime there, but I know I'm gonna get weirdly aggressive takes and reactions. Monkey's paw curls, but I don't particularly like having that many followers.

[majimasleftasscheek]

working on some merch doodles 👀

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

Anthony Bridgerton’s trajectory is the stuff of dreams memes