#YOU WANT THIS TO BE A SOCIAL MEDIA MONOPOLY???? LIKE HE WANTS

[3-aem]

My gut instinct tbh that twitter is going to die potentially as a service very soon if elon doesn't get it together but part of me hopes or thinks it's not going to stay dead. Simply bc there's a lack of platforms available that fit it's niche which is highly desired.

And i also want to talk about the sheer comedy of a man whose ego is so inflated he thinks that after firing half their colleagues and working the remainder like dogs for a month giving them an ultimatum to either quit or continue to be worked to death would do anything??

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me — because Amazon refuses to sell my audio:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

Amazon owns Audible, the monopoly audiobook platform that controls >90% of the audio market. They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon’s monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library.

That’s a hell of a lot of leverage to hand to any company, let alone a rapacious monopoly that ran a program targeting small publishers called “Project Gazelle,” where execs were ordered to attack indie publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

[Image ID: Journalist and novelist Doctorow (Red Team Blues) details a plan for how to break up Big Tech in this impassioned and perceptive manifesto….Doctorow’s sense of urgency is contagious -Publishers Weekly]

I won’t sell my work with DRM, because DRM is key to the enshittification of the internet. Enshittification is why the old, good internet died and became “five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four” (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech company can lock in its users and suppliers, it can drain value from both sides, using DRM and other lock-in gimmicks to keep their business even as they grow ever more miserable on the platform.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

[Image ID: A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI”]

The Internet Con isn’t just an analysis of where enshittification comes from: it’s a detailed, shovel-ready policy prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing back the old, good internet.

How do we do that? With interoperability: the ability to plug new technology into those crapulent, decaying platform. Interop lets you choose which parts of the service you want and block the parts you don’t (think of how an adblocker lets you take the take-it-or-leave “offer” from a website and reply with “How about nah?”):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But interop isn’t just about making platforms less terrible — it’s an explosive charge that demolishes walled gardens. With interop, you can leave a social media service, but keep talking to the people who stay. With interop, you can leave your mobile platform, but bring your apps and media with you to a rival’s service. With interop, you can break up with Amazon, and still keep your audiobooks.

So, if interop is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?

Well, it used to be. Interop is how Microsoft became the dominant operating system:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

[Image ID: Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one’s better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That’s The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality. -Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine]

It’s how Apple saved itself from Microsoft’s vicious campaign to destroy it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Every tech giant used interop to grow, and then every tech giant promptly turned around and attacked interoperators. Every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Big Tech did it, that was progress; when you do it back to Big Tech, that’s piracy. The tech giants used their monopoly power to make interop without permission illegal, creating a kind of “felony contempt of business model” (h/t Jay Freeman).

The Internet Con describes how this came to pass, but, more importantly, it tells us how to fix it. It lays out how we can combine different kinds of interop requirements (like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Massachusetts’s Right to Repair law) with protections for reverse-engineering and other guerrilla tactics to create a system that is strong without being brittle, hard to cheat on and easy to enforce.

What’s more, this book explains how to get these policies: what existing legislative, regulatory and judicial powers can be invoked to make them a reality. Because we are living through the Great Enshittification, and crises erupt every ten seconds, and when those crises occur, the “good ideas lying around” can move from the fringes to the center in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/only-a-crisis/#lets-gooooo

[Image ID: Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL]

After all, we’ve known Big Tech was rotten for years, but we had no idea what to do about it. Every time a Big Tech colossus did something ghastly to millions or billions of people, we tried to fix the tech company. There’s no fixing the tech companies. They need to burn. The way to make users safe from Big Tech predators isn’t to make those predators behave better — it’s to evacuate those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

I’ve been campaigning for human rights in the digital world for more than 20 years; I’ve been EFF’s European Director, representing the public interest at the EU, the UN, Westminster, Ottawa and DC. This is the subject I’ve devoted my life to, and I live my principles. I won’t let my books be sold with DRM, which means that Audible won’t carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this decision has cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through college. That’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means that my books aren’t enshittification bait.

But not selling on Audible has another cost, one that’s more important to me: a lot of readers prefer audiobooks and 9 out of 10 of those readers start and end their searches on Audible. When they don’t find an author there, they assume no audiobook exists, period. It got so bad I put up an audiobook on Amazon — me, reading an essay, explaining how Audible rips off writers and readers. It’s called “Why None of My Audiobooks Are For Sale on Audible”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

[Image ID: Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock]

To get my audiobooks into readers’ ears, I pre-sell them on Kickstarter. This has been wildly successful, both financially and as a means of getting other prominent authors to break up with Amazon and use crowdfunding to fill the gap. Writers like Brandon Sanderson are doing heroic work, smashing Amazon’s monopoly:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/guest-editorial-cory-doctorow-is-a-bestselling-author-but-audible-wont-carry-his-audiobooks/

And to be frank, I love audiobooks, too. I swim every day as physio for a chronic pain condition, and I listen to 2–3 books/month on my underwater MP3 player, disappearing into an imaginary world as I scull back and forth in my public pool. I’m able to get those audiobooks on my MP3 player thanks to Libro.fm, a DRM-free store that supports indie booksellers all over the world:

https://blog.libro.fm/a-qa-with-mark-pearson-libro-fm-ceo-and-co-founder/

Producing my own audiobooks has been a dream. Working with Skyboat Media, I’ve gotten narrators like @wilwheaton​, Amber Benson, @neil-gaiman​ and Stefan Rudnicki for my work:

https://craphound.com/shop/

[Image ID: “This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn’t want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When Its Gone”]

But for this title, I decided that I would read it myself. After all, I’ve been podcasting since 2006, reading my own work aloud every week or so, even as I traveled the world and gave thousands of speeches about the subject of this book. I was excited (and a little trepedatious) at the prospect, but how could I pass up a chance to work with director Gabrielle de Cuir, who has directed everyone from Anne Hathaway to LeVar Burton to Eric Idle?

Reader, I fucking nailed it. I went back to those daily recordings fully prepared to hate them, but they were good — even great (especially after my engineer John Taylor Williams mastered them). Listen for yourself!

https://archive.org/details/cory_doctorow_internet_con_chapter_01

I hope you’ll consider backing this Kickstarter. If you’ve ever read my free, open access, CC-licensed blog posts and novels, or listened to my podcasts, or come to one of my talks and wished there was a way to say thank you, this is it. These crowdfunders make my DRM-free publishing program viable, even as audiobooks grow more central to a writer’s income and even as a single company takes over nearly the entire audiobook market.

Backers can choose from the DRM-free audiobook, DRM-free ebook (EPUB and MOBI) and a hardcover — including a signed, personalized option, fulfilled through the great LA indie bookstore Book Soup:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

What’s more, these ebooks and audiobooks are unlike any you’ll get anywhere else because they are sold without any terms of service or license agreements. As has been the case since time immemorial, when you buy these books, they’re yours, and you are allowed to do anything with them that copyright law permits — give them away, lend them to friends, or simply read them with any technology you choose.

As with my previous Kickstarters, backers can get their audiobooks delivered with an app (from libro.fm) or as a folder of MP3s. That helps people who struggle with “sideloading,” a process that Apple and Google have made progressively harder, even as they force audiobook and ebook sellers to hand over a 30% app tax on every dollar they make:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

Enshittification is rotting every layer of the tech stack: mobile, payments, hosting, social, delivery, playback. Every tech company is pulling the rug out from under us, using the chokepoints they built between audiences and speakers, artists and fans, to pick all of our pockets.

The Internet Con isn’t just a lament for the internet we lost — it’s a plan to get it back. I hope you’ll get a copy and share it with the people you love, even as the tech platforms choke off your communities to pad their quarterly numbers.

Next weekend (Aug 4-6), I'll be in Austin for Armadillocon, a science fiction convention, where I'm the Guest of Honor:

https://armadillocon.org/d45/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

[Image ID: My forthcoming book 'The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation' in various editions: Verso hardcover, audiobook displayed on a phone, and ebook displayed on an e-ink reader.]

[chosolala]

༘˚⋆𐙚｡⋆.✧˚ Gojo headcannons

like the title says, here are some ‘silly’ little headcannons i have about satoru gojo ᡣ𐭩ྀིྀིྀི

he has the craziest collection of glasses, every style shape and size, sometimes he’ll let you borrow a pair if you really need to but only if he gets to pick them

he collects digimon figures and collectibles, despite how lame it sounds his collection is actually pretty cool

he never talks about his emotions, he tries to ignore it but he feels everything so deeply.

he’s actually quite emotionally unavailable, he masks a lot with humor or being goofy overall.

he still considers suguru his best friend and secretly hoped he would turn around and come back to him

his love language is physical touch and gift giving, i mean he has a lot of money to spend and doesn’t mind spoiling you to whatever you want or whatever he wants you to have

he always has his hands on you, in public or in private he always wants to be close to you or touching you in some way or form, even if it’s just his foot touching yours under the table at a restaurant.

he’s really good at stupid and kind of useless things, like he could destroy anyone in a game of random trivia or bowling or monopoly and is such a sore winner, he never shuts up about it

he uses super overpriced lip balm for no reason, like he spends $40 on a single lip balm just because he liked how it smelled, at least his lips are always moisturized

he really wants to adopt a pet but he just doesn’t have time and it makes him really sad

he still blames himself for what happened to geto

he loves binging tv or movies, his idea of a perfect saturday night would be cuddling up on the couch with you and watching a movie that’s so bad it’s actually funny

gojo is actually very smart and logical but everyone just sees him as this silly jokester

he loves shopping. sometimes he goes shopping with nobara and they get into disagreements because they don’t like the pieces the other chose, like gojo would get mad because nobara thinks the shirt he chose for himself was ugly

he has a big sweet tooth, he loves baked goods

he is very good with his hands

he is a diva, he’ll go get his hands manicured with you and get facials done with you, even if you don’t necessarily like that stuff he’ll convince you to go.

all his clothes are designer/brand name even if it’s not a visible brand, its always branded, he is very boujee.

every chance he gets his taking you on weekend trips or vacations, he loves traveling with you since you’re the only consistent thing in his life and you give him some sense of normalcy

he sleeps in digimon pajama pants sometimes, he’s had them for years and just tries not to wear them around you.

#selfieking, his camera roll is full of silly selfies of him and pictures of the two of you together. he also has a lot of embarrassing pictures of megumi when he was younger and teases him with these pictures

he loves aquariums because they remind him of better days, he gets lost in the imagery infront of him

he also loves taking baths, he doesn’t often since he doesn’t have time but when he does he goes all out, bubbles, candles, bath bombs, tv shows on his laptop, dim lighting. he just likes to make the most of the time he has to relax

once he has you to himself, he shows you off to everyone, all his social medias are just pictures of you two on your dates and him posting about how lucky he is to have you

he never talks about geto, even if you asked he would just say he’s an old friend and end it at that.

he still catches himself wanting to tell geto certain things that would happen but then remembers geto isn’t in his life anymore

[queerprayers]

any tips/advice for someone who is not catholic who wants to participate in lent? like how to choose what to give up etc?

Cheers to not letting Catholics have a monopoly on Lent, beloved! Last year I answered a similar ask that might be helpful. Here are the thoughts I have right now!

[CW: discussion of eating/fasting in italics] My most important note/disclaimer: Fasting is not for everyone. It is a beautiful tradition (for Catholics and non-Catholics) that can change people's lives, but if it's going to be a part of your practice, do it on purpose, knowing yourself. It inherently changes your relationship with food--and for people who have always had enough to eat, who have never struggled with disordered eating, who have never been seriously ill, there can be a solidarity and new perspective in fasting, in realizing how sensory experiences and comfort and mortality go together, how privileged you are to have the choice to go hungry. But for those who have struggled with food insecurity, or have lived through/live with eating disorders/disability/illness, or any other experience/relationship with food/the body that changes your perspective, fasting will often be a re-traumatizing or triggering practice that doesn't change your perspective so much as reinforce unhealthy ones. Something I think about: why fast if you cannot feast? Lenten fasting brings us to Easter feasting--if that's not accessible to you, if that wouldn't be joyful or affordable or healthy, fasting probably isn't either. Okay, all that said:

There is so much diversity in what a Lenten practice can look like, and I can't tell you what will be most meaningful for you, but I'll give you some ideas and some questions that have been helpful for me to ask myself! Lent existed way before the Catholic/Protestant divide, and exists among so many diverse communities, and there is a path here for you if you want one.

"Giving up something" is the most common language used for Lent--fasting technically refers to anything abstained from--and generally that's really useful! Jesus's forty days in the wilderness was time that he had nothing but God, and during Lent we can get closer to that experience. I give things up not as punishment or a test of self-control (those ideas trigger unhealthy behavior patterns for me), but as a letting go of something that is in my life but doesn't need to be, and may deserve reconsidering. Sometimes it's a bad habit, but sometimes it's just a conscious allowing of my life to grow simultaneously smaller and bigger. There is space for grief during Lent, but we're not just making ourselves feel bad--I've never found forced emotions to be spiritually helpful. Emotions come and go--we're doing this on purpose, and whatever we feel about it, we make space for that.

Ideas of things to give up:

eating out/getting coffee/buying drinks/little treats

impulse buying/nonessentials (you could pick a category, like clothes, or go all out)

alcohol/drugs/smoking (if this would be starting a recovery journey, I am not the person to ask for advice on that but please do seek help)

social media (you could choose one app to give up, or set time limits--it doesn't have to be all or nothing)

scrolling-on-your-phone time before bed/another time when you get sucked in

another form of casual entertainment (like TV/video games--again, you can limit this rather than cutting it out)

sexual activity (I talked about this here)

makeup/other appearance-related thing (I must confess I have considered doing this and always chickened out. I know that's because it would force me to rethink too many things, which is a probably a sign I should do it one of these years.)

a social habit, like gossiping or getting into arguments online

overscheduling/not having rest days (this is often unavoidable, but rest is necessary and holy, and perhaps this is the season for sacrifice in honor of rest)

single-use plastics/another environmental choice

Note: I don't think any of these things are inherently bad things. This is a list of things we can change/investigate our relationship with or have a season without them as a distraction, not things I think we shouldn't be doing or we should feel bad about.

One of the most important things I've realized is that so often I have given something up and not done anything about it. Like I didn't watch TV for forty days and was mad about it and then Lent was over and I watched TV again. Perhaps this strengthened my self-discipline, or made my life better in a way known only to God, but ultimately nothing happened. I didn't consciously do anything else, I didn't learn anything.

Now, when I give up something, I purposely do something with whatever space it leaves. If I'm not watching TV, what am I going to do when I would usually watch TV? Am I gonna pray? go to bed earlier? call my grandmother? Am I gonna cancel my Netflix subscription for a couple months and donate that saved money? Or maybe I'm gonna give up watching mindless TV, and find stories that resonate and make me think. Don't give things up to check a box, but to reexamine your relationship with them, make everyday things sacred, fill the space/time/money/energy you now have with God, and ultimately to set this time apart.

The other way of looking at Lent practices is things you can add. Often, as I mentioned, they go together--you can pair up something you're no longer buying with somewhere to donate to, or give up an activity and replace it with a new one. I always caution against Lent-as-self-improvement--obviously I can support improving our habits, but I've seen too many people use Lent to restart their new year's workout plans, and while exercise can be a way to care for ourselves, if new year's and Lent are treated the exact same way, what's different about this season? What makes this Lent?

One of the questions I've been asking myself recently is: What are you gonna do about it? When I'm investigating a belief, or learning something new, or reframing an old thought process, I ask myself: What am I gonna do about it? Lent is a path to Holy Week--something I and many others commemorate as the week when God was put on trial and literally killed. I genuinely believe God died and was resurrected--how does this affect my life? Believing something like that and not letting it change you is, to me, inauthentic. When I'm considering a belief, I think, if this were true, how would it change me? Would it lead me to Love? Lent (and Christianity itself) over and over asks us to do something about what we say we believe. Faith without works is dead--and faith is a work, something I do.

It's almost Lent, which is preparation for the Resurrection, which fundamentally changes our understanding of what it means to be alive--so what are you gonna do about it? Not because doing something will make God love you more or make you a "better person," or even because you'll succeed or change your life, but because how can we not? We are of course welcome at Easter having done nothing, but I can't imagine knowing what's coming and not letting it change me.

Ideas of things to add to our lives:

start a prayer/Bible routine--I can now wholeheartedly recommend (as a Protestant who connects with ancient traditions but not always Catholicism) Phyllis Tickle's Divine Hours books! For Bible study, I like The Bible Project's videos.

read a book--it can be anything that connects you with God! (I had a lovely experience with Lenten Lord of the Rings last year, and this year I'm properly going through the Quran)

pick a subject to research (theological or anything else)

start to attend worship services or commit to attending more--this could include going to several different places if you don't currently belong to a church

research places to volunteer for or donate to

do something politically active, like calling your representatives, researching the next local election, or attending a protest

donate to the next [insert number here] posts you see online requesting mutual aid

start a physical practice like taking a walk or stretching

write a letter or call someone regularly, especially with people you've been wanting to connect with more or have unresolved conflict with

start/commit to more regular therapy/other health treatment

ask for help--maybe you're the one who needs mutual aid, or reaching out to, or support cleaning your house or with your kids. there is no shame in this.

These are all obviously things we can be doing year round, and certainly we can use Lent as a season to start something we want to keep with us! I'd also encourage us to have something that's only present during Lent, or something that we do more or in a different way.

You asked how to choose, and I don't have a one sentence answer to that (...obviously), but perhaps in these days before Lent you can look at your routine/habits, the places where God is present, the things you do to distract yourself from life (not a crime--just something to be mindful of), and you can see where Lent might be able to come in and change you. The thing that's nagging at you that you know might be helpful, the thing you're not in control of and just do, the time you take up or the money you spend that might not be bad but also doesn't lead you anywhere. We can't expect every aspect of our lives to be purposeful and present, or to be continuously improving ourselves (in fact, that sounds terribly stressful and unsustainable)--but we can look around us. We can have a season that looks different because everyone I've ever known has a brain that craves ritual in some way--and either we do it on purpose, or we fall into it. Do something (or don't do something) a little more on purpose this season.

Another think to think about is what Sundays will look like for you--the "forty days" don't count them. There's no fasting on Sundays--my mom says every Sunday is a little Easter. "Sundays in Lent" is such an interesting concept because it's very much Lent, but the rhythm of our weeks breaks through. When I give up soda, I'll have one as a celebration on Sundays, but a prayer/reading practice I'll continue through. It's up to you and depends on what your rhythm/habits ask of you.

Ultimately, let God interrupt you. Let Them seep in the cracks of everything you do and let go of. To be loved is to be changed. Even the smallest thing--like wearing a cross necklace every day--can cause our lives to be filled with noticing God's presence. I keep saying to do this on purpose, but know that I find Them much more often by accident.

And an obligatory note: starting Lent late, stopping your practice halfway through, not meeting a goal, whatever comes up--Easter still comes for you. Lent is for paying attention, for making space, not for perfection.

I also want to add that while a lot of Lenten practices (including most I've mentioned here) tend to be personal, ultimately what is asked of us is interpersonal. We make space in our life and be more present in the name of Love--which we cannot do alone. If a practice is not specifically about other people (like volunteering/donating), ask yourself how it will serve the ways you love others? This isn't a trick question, just something to think about. Personally, my study of the Quran this season will connect me with my Muslim siblings through time and enable me to more fully love the Muslims around me, and my rhythm of the divine hours will connect me with the wider Christian community and center me as I go about my day, allowing me to be more present in my relationships.

Easter comes whether we're ready or not--and I don't think we can be ready. But we can look at the small parts of ourselves, set this time apart, see what we can change our relationship with, and perhaps when Easter comes, we will every year have come that much closer to understanding what it means to live out the resurrection by honoring the death that came first.

Wishing you a blessed almost-Lent, and praying for you and your practice (as well as all those reading this)!

<3 Johanna

[sokkigarden]

If you’re willing to humbly accept my Jamie tartt request where the team has a board game/charades night and they set up the reader and Jamie to be partners cause they’re all sick of their flirting/pining and they obviously crush everyone cause they’re the perfect team?

this is a little bullet-point drabble bc that’s how these things usually start for me and i’d rather give y’all smth small instead of nothing! that being said this got out of hand. lmfao i hope you like this !!

it all started when phoebe came around after training one day and was so obsessed with a new game that she made the richmond boys play with her

and this quickly escalated into game nights for the whole football club

everyone brought board games, card games and booze

family members came along, the whole facility got involved

it got really competitive naturally

you usually paired off with keeley while playing bc you both worked on social media and were becoming good friends outside of work too

but this meant you often ended up playing against roy and jamie

because there was some weird dynamic between the three of them

and somehow you got looped into it too

and eventually every time you played, you would start arguing with jamie

it was never anything serious, but it did get out of hand sometimes

it wasn’t your fault! you were super competitive, and he wanted to be the best at everything 

it didn’t matter if you played monopoly or scrabble, you always ended up nearly yelling at each other

it was all in good fun, but truth be told, you really didn’t know jamie that well outside of these game nights

you crossed paths with him just about as much as the other players, getting some content for socials and discussing PR promo with them

you wouldn’t deny that you found him attractive, but you wouldn’t openly admit it either

so it was fun to mess around and mildly flirt with him with the pretense of getting competitive over board games

finally one week, you noticed keeley and roy showed up together

they were clearly interested in staying close to each other all night, which left you and jamie the odd ducks out

at first you felt betrayed. what happened to you and keeley being the dream team?

but you’d seen how they had been glancing at each other these past few weeks

you should’ve known this was inevitable

but everyone saw the way you and jamie interacted as well

so when roy and keeley showed up together, they suggested you and jamie pair up to play poker

you’d been wanting to learn how to play for weeks and colin brought fancy new poker chips

jamie was pretty okay at poker, so roy and keeley subtly suggested you two pair up to learn and play

“maybe you’ll work better together rather than against each other” they said

they were definitely conspiring to see if something would happen between you two

you both reluctantly agree

but you can’t tell if jamie is grumbling more about being your partner or because roy and keeley are back together

you ended up playing poker against bumbercatch, colin, and isaac, with jamie helping you learn the ins and outs before heading off to find drinks

he definitely got distracted on the way, chatting to others throughout the room 

once he returned with drinks for you all, he saw how badly you were losing

so he pulled up a chair next to you, and started helping you

nudging you when he noticed what the others were doing

whispering in your ear what card to play

at one point, jamie places his hand on your thigh under the table to get your attention

suggesting how to play your cards right to beat the other boys

but you can hardly focus bc his hand is big and it’s warm and still resting on your leg

and even when you end up winning the round, he leaves his hand there, squeezing your thigh for encouragement 

its not long before the boys are groaning over losing their money to you

while jamie is still helping out a lil bit, you’ve definitely improved on your own

by the end of the night you’re feeling triumphant when keeley and roy make their way over to you

and jamie’s got a proud look on his face

jamie’s a pretty touchy person, so he slings an arm around your shoulder as you all walk to a bar together

roy and keeley share a look as you guys chatter together instead of arguing over silly games

clearly they were right

as you and jamie flirt and get to know each other for the rest of the night

the arguing was definitely a pretense to something more

and you have a feeling it will be fun to find what comes next

it all started when phoebe came around after training one day and was so obsessed with a new game that she made the richmond boys play with her

and this quickly escalated into game nights for the whole football club

everyone brought board games, card games and booze

family members came along, the whole facility got involved

it got really competitive naturally

you usually paired off with keeley while playing bc you both worked on social media and were becoming good friends outside of work too

but this meant you often ended up playing against roy and jamie

because there was some weird dynamic between the three of them

and somehow you got looped into it too

and eventually every time you played, you would start arguing with jamie

it was never anything serious, but it did get out of hand sometimes

it wasn’t your fault! you were super competitive, and he wanted to be the best at everything 

it didn’t matter if you played monopoly or scrabble, you always ended up nearly yelling at each other

it was all in good fun, but truth be told, you really didn’t know jamie that well outside of these game nights

you crossed paths with him just about as much as the other players, getting some content for socials and discussing PR promo with them

you wouldn’t deny that you found him attractive, but you wouldn’t openly admit it either

so it was fun to mess around and mildly flirt with him with the pretense of getting competitive over board games

finally one week, you noticed keeley and roy showed up together

they were clearly interested in staying close to each other all night, which left you and jamie the odd ducks out

at first you felt betrayed. what happened to you and keeley being the dream team?

but you’d seen how they had been glancing at each other these past few weeks

you should’ve known this was inevitable

but everyone saw the way you and jamie interacted as well

so when roy and keeley showed up together, they suggested you and jamie pair up to play poker

you’d been wanting to learn how to play for weeks and colin brought fancy new poker chips

jamie was pretty okay at poker, so roy and keeley subtly suggested you two pair up to learn and play

“maybe you’ll work better together rather than against each other” they said

they were definitely conspiring to see if something would happen between you two

you both reluctantly agree

but you can’t tell if jamie is grumbling more about being your partner or because roy and keeley are back together

you ended up playing poker against bumbercatch, colin, and isaac, with jamie helping you learn the ins and outs before heading off to find drinks

he definitely got distracted on the way, chatting to others throughout the room 

once he returned with drinks for you all, he saw how badly you were losing

so he pulled up a chair next to you, and started helping you

nudging you when he noticed what the others were doing

whispering in your ear what card to play

at one point, jamie places his hand on your thigh under the table to get your attention

suggesting how to play your cards right to beat the other boys

but you can hardly focus bc his hand is big and it’s warm and still resting on your leg

and even when you end up winning the round, he leaves his hand there, squeezing your thigh for encouragement 

its not long before the boys are groaning over losing their money to you

while jamie is still helping out a lil bit, you’ve definitely improved on your own

by the end of the night you’re feeling triumphant when keeley and roy make their way over to you

and jamie’s got a proud look on his face

jamie’s a pretty touchy person, so he slings an arm around your shoulder as you all walk to a bar together

roy and keeley share a look as you guys chatter together instead of arguing over silly games

clearly they were right

as you and jamie flirt and get to know each other for the rest of the night

the arguing was definitely a pretense to something more

if you didn't had a crush at the beginning of the night, you definitely do now

[magapatriot64]

The most prestigious election in the world. The Presidency of the United States. Usually two candidates hammering out their agendas and their promises if they are able to win the most coveted job, the Presidency. Something changed. The Democrats have changed the game. Democrats no longer run on agenda. They have no agenda. Their goal? Destroying our America. How can they win after failure upon failure? Sell fear. Sell the people their opponent is bad for business. Lie about him and scare the people if they win our Democracy will end. Democracy? They mean Democrat Power. They use a rigged media to deliver nothing but lies, fear, and bullshit propaganda. Their message? Vote for us or die a slow death.

Democrats say if you are black and don’t vote for Kamala you should check your race and if you are white and don’t vote for Kamala you are racist. This here is their way to guilt you into voting for them.

They say Trump will be a dictator. They say Trump will cause bloodbaths in the streets if he loses. All lies. They tell you Trump is for the rich, wants to end Social Security, Medicare, low prescription prices. All lies and they know it. None of that matters when the coveted prize of power is at stake. It is no holds barred and they will eat their own to keep their quest for power and end our Constitutional Republic and replacing it with a NWO. They want to be the ruling class that rules the world.

If only the people who support the Dems could stop buying the bullshit and start opening their eyes and ears and learn the truth about the Party they defend and plan on voting for.

Kamala Harris already said the quiet part out loud. They want to depopulate the world. This isn’t fake propaganda, this is reality. They no longer support our most important ally, instead support the terrorists they are fighting. Proof? Kamala refused to meet with Netanyahu but if their money laundering CEO Zelensky came to town, they’d be rolling out the red carpet and another blank check. Where does it all end? It doesn’t if they stop Trump. They tried everything from smear campaigns, to trying to lock him up, when all failed they tried to end his life. Protecting Democracy simply means protecting the Democrat Party.

How important is this election? Imagine this. If the wheels on the bus, passage of time word salad Queen ever gets the White House it’s game over. You thought Biden was a puppet of the Obama far left? Kamala makes them all look like Conservatives compared to where she wants to take this country. The budget? What budget. They’ll be printing Monopoly money. Our schools? Education will be a thing if the past. It will be all about DEI training and government control. There will be no future because there will be no country. The open borders are all part of the plan. They are our replacements. They will be the slave class to help put their operation in motion. And that will start with getting rid of us. They already want to get rid of the old and sick. Just look at Canada. They think it’s ok to end your lives.

They want to control our food, our medicine, our doctors, mandating vaccines, and telling you how to live. Do you trust them? What the hell is in the food or water we ingest? What is in all the medicine we take? The only people that no their end game is we Conservatives and they know it. That is why they labeled us MAGA. Easier for them to find us and end us. Their mind games and controlling all started with having their base brainwashed against all of us and the end goal is to take us all out.

One problem. We all know this. Trump knows this. We also have goals. Our goals are simple. Keep Trump safe, return him to the White House, and flip the script by ending every last one of them, who is running their shit show, and finally returning our America. We have God. Our faith with the chosen one, Trump will end all this madness and restore civility forever in this the greatest Country in the world. My two cents.

👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

[cosmicjoke]

i’m the red flag question anon! i have no intention to start a fight so just tell me if you’ve had enough… (also this has nothing to do with gabi or levi hate, i love them both) i don’t understand your point about art. yes it does engender empathy and understanding, but it doesn’t morally bind us the same way real life does, because it’s fiction. if you play monopoly with friends, do you feel bad about making them go bankrupt? no, it’s fun. characters are the same in my opinion. it’s a game of imagination. you’re allowed to not feel the need to protect a child because no child is actually harmed, and it doesn’t say anything about your empathy or lack of empathy. you’re allowed to dislike a character just because you don’t like their haircut, you don’t even need a better reason than that, it’s fiction, it doesn’t hurt anyone. you can feel empathy and understanding for a character who does bad things because they’re interesting, and it doesn’t mean you want to do the same as they do. you can dislike a character even if they’re kind without disliking kindness. i understand that if people actively hate on gabi or levi and come pour their hate on a blog that doesn’t, it’s rude. but disliking levi isn’t enough to make someone cynical. nobody has an obligation to like him just because he is defined by compassion and kindness. it’s not a moral flaw to dislike a morally good character. i agree that the way we respond to characters says a lot about who we are as people, but i don’t think it’s in a linear way. you don’t respond to characters exactly the same way you would respond to a person. it shows what interests and questions you rather than how you act and what your qualities are as a person

I disagree. Certainly, you can dislike a character for any number of shallow and ultimately meritless reasons. But then the question is, why. Why would someone actively dislike or hate a character for something as shallow as what they look like? I'm not talking about general disinterest or ambivalence, I'm talking about conscious dislike and hate that manifests in negative discourse about that character online. It says something about the person, what the reasons are for their dislike and hate. And when that dislike turns to active aggression against fans, when it leads to the active harassment of people, then it becomes evident to me that it's driven by something deeper than some simple, surface level dislike based on shallow prejudice. If someone is deliberately seeking out fan blogs of a character they supposedly dislike or hate and sending that person hate messages about said character, that goes beyond being "rude" and turns into bullying, which I shouldn't need to explain, if you're bullying someone online and on social media, it's a safe bet to assume you would do the same to people in real life. It speaks volumes about a person's character, that they would harass and actively attempt to antagonize someone for liking a specific character. I've never seen anyone offer a legitimate reason for hating Levi that went beyond the most petty and shallow of reasons, i.e. Levi is now a "cripple", Levi lost in some popularity poll to Eren, what a loser, Levi is short and ugly, etc, etc... These are absurd reasons for hating anyone, and if they're to be taken at face value, speak to a kind of character totally lacking in empathy and compassion. They're attacks based on arbitrary characteristics, and the consistent and constant utilization of them is routinely and obviously employed by certain individuals in an attempt to make fans of Levi miserable and to destroy any chance of actual enjoyment they might find in engaging with the fandom. Most attacks on Levi are disingenuous and only rooted in the desire to make people in real life unhappy. However, if someone is genuinely willing to be so judgmental toward anyone for something so meaningless, fictional or otherwise, if they truly believe what they say, that they find Levi to somehow now be "lesser" because he ended up in a wheelchair, for example, or because he's short, or because he isn't charismatic, etc, etc... if they truly believe that, then I wonder what exactly would recommend them in real life as a good friend or person to want to associate with? So either you have people attacking Levi for things they don't actually hold against him, but like to use as ammunition against his fans with the sole aim of ruining their day and fandom experience, or you have people who genuinely believe it's legitimate to dislike or hate someone based on something as meaningless and arbitrary as their physical appearance or lack of outgoing personality, in which case, you have someone who's clearly deeply prejudiced and shallow in mind, and again, there's nothing to recommend them as a person anyone would want to know or associate with in reality.

And then you have a third option, which is people who, if they genuinely dislike or hate Levi for who he actually is as a character, meaning a character defined by and driven by empathy, then you're dealing with something more malicious still. Someone who is genuinely turned off by and hostile toward a character for being a good person. Someone who dislikes or despises what Levi represents within the narrative of the story itself. And anyone who feels that way about Levi should probably engage in some self-reflection and ask themselves why they're so turned off by and even threatened by a character who only wants to help people. I don't agree with you at all that our responses to fictional characters don't in any way indicate or reflect who we are in real life or how we might treat others in real life. People expose their biases all the time while discussing fictional characters and works of fiction. They expose their inner feelings and subconscious inclinations. If someone thinks it's okay to badmouth Levi for being disabled, chances are, that person is also likely to mistreat a disabled person in real life, consciously or not. If someone thinks it's okay to badmouth or victim blame a character for being abused, then chances are that person will do the same to a real life victim of abuse, again, consciously or not. Oftentimes, these people, while speaking so ill of fictional characters, are completely unaware of how it sounds and what it exposes about themselves, and it's indicative of a general lack of awareness on their part, which is very much a real life character flaw which doubtless spills over into their everyday, actual comportment. Someone so totally lacking in introspection is, generally, a very toxic person to be around. And those sorts of inclinations and prejudices and views, whether you want to admit it or not, can have very real world consequences. How you treat people online can have very real world consequences.

I don't think many Levi haters actually fall under this last category. I think most Levi haters are just assholes who are insecure and take that insecurity out on other people. But it still says plenty about them, that they do. They're okay with harassing other people and trying to ruin their day, simply for liking a certain character that they've deemed unworthy, for whatever inane reason they come up with. It shows them to be absurdly insecure, shallow and petty people. And if their reasoning is actually rooted in truth, and not simply an expression of some shallow prejudice, but an actual, substantial criticism of Levi's character, in particular, if they really believe Levi to be a fundamentally unlikable or repulsive character, based on his core characteristics, then, yes, they prove themselves to be deeply cynical and hateful human beings. Because why the hell would anyone hate Levi for being a good person, if they themselves aren't a bad person?

So either you "hate" Levi, or engage in hateful rhetoric about him because you simply feel insecure about yourself and are threatened by his popularity, because you enjoy making other people unhappy, or because you really are just that stupid and shallow, that you think hating someone for their looks is legit. Or because everything Levi stands for, compassion, kindness, empathy, nonjudgmentalism, grates against your own core characteristics and causes you to rebel against him. In either instance, like I said before, you would have to be an actual asshole to qualify for any of these scenarios.

[cipheramnesia]

Selection bias means there's always going to be an exaggerated sense of how important anyone you follow on social media is, how much influence the stuff you like has in the world, how well known your favorite movies are. The thing is in your life, it's importance becomes larger by the nature of its relationship. It can be difficult to separate out the personal and the parasocial from whatever mysterious real world forces happen to drive around the winds of media trends or social change or stuff like that.

So it is kinda funny to know there's at least one person out there who hates my guts so badly that seeing anything I posted anywhere makes him seethe with rage and stew over some misplaced sense of injustice over the issue that we, presumably, share the same narrow social circle on Tumblr closely enough that he feels like I'm inescapable. A version of me is a dispropotionately important idea living in that guy's head rent free, sitting on a mountain of imaginary Tumblr clout and laughing as if I'm a grotesque caricature of the Monopoly man. It feels so silly to have a hate-stalker, one more person in the meatgrinder of capitalism who wants people to have a worse day I guess.

Tomorrow I'll probably have some ice cream, and pet my cat, kiss my wife and partner, write and draw, maybe cook, chat with people I love. The world is already a nightmare, what else is there to do?

[louisisalarrie]

i don’t understand how louis is selling out stadiums, having fans crowd him at airports like during 1d, and just have a big fan base (as i can see on social media), however his listeners are like 2 million? it is so weird?

Hi anon! Demographics, venue capacity, tour legs, time of year to tour, venue availability, recent releases, social media traction, tiktok song plays, stunts, radio play, allllllll that and more obviously have a huge effect on streaming numbers and followers and fan interactions. I feel like this may be a bit longer than you probably wanted, and may also stray a bit, but alas, welcome to the show!

Let’s have a squiz at the numbers between the boys real quick:

Harry

Instagram: 47.2m followers

Engagement Rate: 5.05%

YouTube: 14.7m subscribers

Spotify: 62.4m monthly

Top 5 countries: Brazil, Indonesia, Great Britain, Chile, Australia

Louis

Instagram: 17.8m followers

Engagement Rate: 3.17%

YouTube: 4.39m subscribers

Spotify: 2.8m monthly

Top 5 countries: Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina

Niall

Instagram: 32.4m followers

Engagement Rate: 1.70%

YouTube: 4.63m subscribers

Spotify: 15.1m monthly

Top 5 countries: Australia, Great Britain, Australia, Indonesia, Ireland

Liam

Instagram: 26.4m followers

Engagement Rate: 0.83%

YouTube: 3.73m subscribers

Spotify: 5.1m monthly

Top 5 countries: Australia, Great Britain, Indonesia, Australia, Australia

Zayn

Instagram: 52.3m followers

Engagement Rate: 1.52%

YouTube: 15.7m subscribers

Spotify: 27.2m monthly

Top 5 countries: Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Great Britain, Australia

———

So, these top 5 countries and numbers, based on very little info that’s not super detailed or anything and like I won’t go into the statistics of everything else because it’s pretty obvious who’s getting radio play etc etc., show the diversity of listeners and followers in their demographic. These top countries fluctuate often, particularly louis’ being mostly in LATAM right now because of his tour there but… don’t you think he’d still have GB on there? He’s not holding any traction there like the others, and has the lowest monthly listens and followers out of them all.

However, his lack of radio play is hugely affecting this. It may seem that radio play is pretty obsolete these days, what with everyone having Bluetooth in their cars and Spotify/youtube on their phones, but it pulls a wider demographic. Hell, we still have a radio monopoly in Aus. But anyway. It’s not dead, and it’s a great way to plug music, and not focus on just streaming services (not that Louis is, he’s been pretty much blacklisted from radio unfortunately).

Radio play encourages folks to search the artist on Spotify and then it builds from there. It’s still crucial in this day and age to diversify the age demographic, and country demographic, of your fanbase.

But look at those numbers… Zayn is slaying at the moment. He’s ahead of Harry in both Instagram and YouTube. Granted, Harry’s been MIA for ages and Zayn is on a promo run with a new release, but he’s just pulling that liiiiittle bit more than Harry. Louis is extremely far behind all of them, only beating out Liam in YouTube, and it just… it breaks my heart. Because Louis’ songs ARE marketable, ARE good for radio, and should be treated as such.

However, have a squiz at that Instagram engagement rate. Louis is just after Harry, and the other boys are far further behind. It makes sense for Louis to have a higher engagement because he’s consistently posting and on tour, but to be THAT far ahead with the LEAST amount of followers? Pretty fucking awesome.

He has a different relationship with fans, far closer than I’ve seen across many artists. He has a community, extremely dedicated and supportive of everything he fucking does. Harry does, but it’s far wider spread. The bigger your fanbase, the more discourse and differing of fan dedication is. It doesn’t feel like a community, whereas Louis’ does, and so it’s nice and cosy for us. But, what comes with this, is a lack of further PR push for bigger and better.

And you’re correct, he’s selling out venues (of an arena capacity 99% of the time) and has a lot of fan interactions and all that, but he’s not diversifying his fanbase. It’s a comfortable, lovely, and reliable group of fans that get him on stage and pay his bills. He doesn’t necessarily need to get bigger, and I don’t really think he’s that fussed right now about it either.

The BEST way to get more fans and more Spotify listens is to interact with other artists, doing collabs, stunting with them, and getting in touch with their fanbase. He’s done a great job with that with AFHF, which is an awesome tactic to do and also clearly something he’s passionate about, but he’s still not hitting the mark quite yet. But he’s grown massively from the beginning of his solo career, and it’s been more steady and picking people up along for the journey, not just dropping them at the show.

He hasn’t stunted in a long time, and hasn’t really interacted with a big name in ages. It’s not always romantic stunts, though. It can truly be about creating and upholding the relationships with other musicians that can really positively boost you in a bigger direction. No other artist is really vouching for him or posting “hey my mate louis just dropped a live album!” or “Louis is hosting a music festival what a sick lad!” ya know? Or even a selfie or attending one of his shows or anything at all. Niall is carrying on with Shawn and Lewis and having fun with it and being silly and the general public, and other fanbases who’ve never even heard of Louis, aren’t seeing the side to him that we see and love.

His stage show also, is absolutely sick. We love it, and the barrier run is something Harry simply can’t do, but it provides just that more of an artist to fan relationship. Harry kills it with the banter, dedicates entire parts of his shows to have chats with the audience, says outrageous shit and wears outrageous things, and makes a statement. Louis isn’t doing anything like that that would break the internet right now. His songs and funny quotes aren’t being used on tiktok like they are with Harry. He’s not reaching a larger crowd and I really, unfortunately, don’t think he will (to a massive scale, at least) without doing something big, a stunt beginning or ending, or if he keeps building a solid fanbase who he likes to connect with, interacting with other artists.

He seems to be in his own little Louis world right now, our Louis world, and we love him for that. Of course we do. He’s built a steady and dedicated long lasting relationship with us, but yeah.. he’s not making headlines, radio play, or getting the GPs attention. It fucking sucks, but it is what it is at the moment, and I hope it changes for him because I would LOVE nothing more than to see him sell out stadiums worldwide and be the best he can be.

But he’s just doing what he loves right now, and I don’t think him or his media team are really all that fussed on pushing to a wider audience because it involves things that he probably doesn’t wanna do. He’ll take a break after this tour (heartbreaking) but he’ll need to push to get back on the ground after HS4 drops because that’s gonna dominate the charts again. Right now, during this tour without the shadow of Harry, was the time to be making headlines. But he’s happy, and we’re happy, so so be it.

Anyway, this turned into a shit show of marketing and me probably repeating myself 16783890 times, but his strategy at the moment doesn’t seem to be rushing to top the charts (even tho he’s blacklisted too which doesn’t help) to rapidly grow his fanbase, it’s just to spend time with us and enjoy tour.

At the end of the day, dedication and the Artist to Fan relationship are the most CRUCIAL things an artist can have. And Spotify and follower numbers don’t mean shit.

Once more, he’ll pick up people to the way to the show, and not just drop them off.

I’m exhausted now LOL. thanks anon!

[akajustmerry]

Do you have any predictions for Dennis in S3 of The Newsreader? He's one of my favourites, he's so interesting, and I really wanna know what you think is gonna happen with his story, if you have any thoughts (you're takes on the show are always the best)

I FUCKING LOVE DENNIS. I feel like he's the perfect example of a character who is doing such a difficult dance. He's gotta manage corporate and political interests with his journos and producer's capabilities while being marginalised himself. He reminds me a lot of one of my editors at my old workplace who was always trying to do right by us while juggling all these different social, political and corporate influences. She was always honest about why we couldn't run things etc even if it meant being the voice of things she didn't agree with. I don't think Dennis is a bad person, but I do think he's complicit in bad decisions. I think he tries to balance it out where he can when he can but I do think the guilt will get to him. It's just that as a Brown man his position is precarious. He has influence now but it can be taken from him. This is a wild card theory but since Newsreader s3 is the last my ideal ending is that dale, Helen, Dennis, and Noelene all quit spectacularly. Like, I genuinely want so bad for this series to end like the first season finale of the Hour where Dale and Helen deliver some insane duologue about the piss poor state of news media in this country due to corporate greed and a CERTAIN monopoly and then walk off air and Dennis and noelene follow them. I'd die of happiness. I'd never need another TV show to exist.

[ornii]

My Bitter Half series? Shut up and take my money!

It's monopoly money but the point still stands!

I Never expected that short story to get such praise. But if people want more of it, I’d be glad to I love the Siblings Dynamic, so here’s part 2 AKa: (Y/n) Pissing Wednesday off for (insert number) minutes.

My Better Bitter Half, Part 2

Chapter 2: Sibling rivalry, Part 1.

“The whole snarky Goth girl thing might have worked at normie school, but here things are different. Let me give you a wiki on Nevermore's social scene.”

Enid and (Y/n) walk between Wednesday down the hall.

“I'm not interested in participating in tribal adolescent clichés.”

“Well, then use it to fill your obviously bottomless pit of disdain. There are many flavors of outcasts here, but the four main cliques are Fangs, Furs, Stoners and Scales.” She explains, they eventually reach the Quad, the main social hub of Nevermore.

“Those are the Fangs, AKA vampires. Some of them have been here for decades.” (Y/n) motions to the ones in deep dark glasses. A few of the more feminine vampires eye the Addams Twins, more importantly (Y/n). They growl and wink at him, some batting their fangs.

“That bunch of knuckleheads are Furs, AKA werewolves. Like me!” Enid smiles, and the howling of werewolves echo along the annals of Nevermore.

“Full moons get pretty loud around here. That's when Furs wolf out. I suggest you pick up noise-cancelling headphones.” Enid said.

“I'm assuming Scales are sirens?” Wednesday said.

“You catch on quick.” Enid smiles, and motions to a girl, dark beautiful skin with azure blue eyes.

“And that girl, Bianca Barclay, is the closest thing Nevermore has to royalty. Although her crown's been slipping lately. She used to date our resident tortured artist, Xavier Thorpe. But they broke up at the beginning of the semester. Reason unknown.”

“Fascinating.” Wednesday says, obviously sarcastically.

“I know, right? My vlog is, like, the number one source for Nevermore gossip.” Enid says with a prideful gleam. (Y/n) sighs at this, until Ajax, a friend and local stoner approaches Wednesday.

Yo, (Y/n) Enid! You're not gonna believe the dirt I heard about your new roommate. She eats human flesh. Chowed down on that kid she murdered.You better watch your back (Y/n).” Ajax says to Wednesday, “You look, shorter, did you grow your hair out?” He asks.

“Ajax.” You say, “That is my Sister Wednesday, the girl who is Rooming with Enid.” You say and he peers over to her, stoned out of his mind.

“O-oh uh—“ he begins but is halted

“Quite the contrary. I actually fillet the bodies of my victims, then feed them to my menagerie of pets.” Wednesday says, which blows Ajax’s mind.

“Whoa. You're both in black and white.” He says to the twins. “Like a living Instagram filter.” (Y/n) shakes his head

“Ignore him. Gorgons spend way too much time getting stoned. He's cute, but clueless.” Enid says, ignoring Ajax, the three continue to acquire her schedule.

“It's a small school. There wasn't much online about you. You should really get on Insta, Snapchat and TikTok. I find social media to be a soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation.” Wednesday responds deadpanned.

“Are, you sure this is your sister?” Enid asks (Y/n), who grins.

“Unfortunately yes, In all her glory I’m sure.” You say coldly, The day ends and the family must bid goodbye to the twins, Pugsley hugs Wednesday.

“Pugsley, you're soft and weak. You'll never survive without me. I give you two months, tops.” She said

“I'm gonna miss you, too, sis.” He responds, he hugs (Y/n) who gladly reciprocated, and tags a “stab me.” Note on pugsleys back.

“I’ll miss you too little brother.” You say and the family leave in the car, the two stand silent before you spoke to her.

“A Word of Advice Mi Hermana (My Sister) Any plans you have of running away end right now. Mother has alerted all family members to contact her the minute you darken their doorstep, I will be watching you, closely.” You say as you go lucky attitude quickly fades.

“As usual, you underestimate me, Mi Hermano. I will escape this educational penitentiary, and you will never hear from me again.” She says, (Y/n) growls a bit and folds his arms.

“I detest saying this, but You are a brilliant girl, Wednesday, and.. as much as It annoys me, I’d… I’d honestly miss you if you left.” You admit, Wednesdays cold stare slightly warmed as you gritted your teeth.

“Mother wishes for you to stay here, you’re lucky you aren’t in prison like Uncle Fester. Don’t throw your life away over your pride.” You say and walk away leaving Wednesday to consider your words, but as siblings go, she wouldn’t take your orders laying down.

The Next day, (Y/n) effortlessly knocks Rowan down in their fencing, using his quick fencing ability.

“Coach, Coach, he tripped me.” Rowan complains.

“It was a clean strike, Rowan.” You say, “Widen your stance, build more muscle and I won’t knock you over like a twig.” You say, you turn your attention to the other novice fencers.

“Anyone wish to challenge the Prince of Nevermore?” You say, and one voice speaks up.

“I do.”

(Y/n) turns to face his sister, Wednesday. Geared to the toe for fencing. You can only laugh and tilt your head.

“Wednesday, as amusing as this would be I’d rather avoid hurting my own blood.”

“Do you? It seems nothing has changed since you left home, you’re still a coward.”

“Ooh!” The fencers say from parts of the room, (Y/n)’s smile Fades to silence and burning fury. (Y/n) snaps his fingers and the teacher looks up.

“Professor, I’d like a match with Wednesday Addams..” you say coldly and he nods, “First to three strikes.” The siblings get in position and pit on their gear. Drawing their sabres their intense glares focus on each other,

“En garde.” They say in unison and move in, the strikes were fast, fluent and held so much animosity. Each stroke inches closer to a point, before a quick jab to (Y/n)‘s neck won Wednesday a point.

“Point to Wednesday.” The Coach says, Wednesday voice was muffled but (Y/n) could hear it.

“You know what they say Brother, “Pride Cometh before the fall.” She says, (Y/n) moved in, much more ferocious and hungry for victory. The blades dance and trade before (Y/n) lands a point on her heart. The score is even.

“Let's finish this.” You say.

“Agreed. For the final point, I would like to invoke a military challenge. No masks. No tips. Winner draws first blood.” Wednesday says.

“Fine.” You respond and tear your mask off.

“I’ll apologize to mother when she visits you.” You say and Wednesdays focus was dead on you, and the final round began, the bladed tips were fast, sharp and each swing and jab were inches, millimeters away from landing a point, each attack felt so, raw, full of fury and strike, their blades clash once more and Wednesday goes for a stab, (Y/n) for a downward slash. And blood, was spilled.

(Y/n) and Wednesday sat in the nurses office together, both bleeding. Wednesday had a small cut on the top of her head, and her brother? Not as fortunate. He had his upper shirt removed as there was a stab wound in his shoulder. It was being patched up by the nurse and wrapped. The nurse leaves as the siblings sit together.

“Sorry for being a bit too, aggressive.” You say to her, Wednesday kept staring forward.

“I apologize for almost piercing your heart.” She said.

“I’ll admit, what you said got under my skin, you always had that ability to bring the worst emotions out of me.” She explains, “What’s Family good for?” You say sarcastically.

“I meant what I said though, I’d be amiss to have my other half missing. As much as you Hate it mother cares for you, as I do.” You said, you put your hand on her leg and try to reassure her.

“Just, Take what i Said into consideration.” You ask her, Wednesday turns her head to face yours. “I’ll consider it.” She responds.

“Thank you, I’m still going to stab you back though.” You say smirking, and Wednesday attempts to hide her grin.

“You’ll have to Earn it.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The (open) web is good, actually

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library tonight (Monday, November 13) at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

The great irony of the platformization of the internet is that platforms are intermediaries, and the original promise of the internet that got so many of us excited about it was disintermediation – getting rid of the middlemen that act as gatekeepers between community members, creators and audiences, buyers and sellers, etc.

The platformized internet is ripe for rent seeking: where the platform captures an ever-larger share of the value generated by its users, making the service worst for both, while lock-in stops people from looking elsewhere. Every sector of the modern economy is less competitive, thanks to monopolistic tactics like mergers and acquisitions and predatory pricing. But with tech, the options for making things worse are infinitely divisible, thanks to the flexibility of digital systems, which means that product managers can keep subdividing the Jenga blocks they pulling out of the services we rely on. Combine platforms with monopolies with digital flexibility and you get enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

An enshittified, platformized internet is bad for lots of reasons – it concentrates decisions about who may speak and what may be said into just a few hands; it creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that creates a new oligarchy, with all the corruption and instability that comes with elite capture; it makes life materially worse for workers, users, and communities.

But there are many other ways in which the enshitternet is worse than the old good internet. Today, I want to talk about how the enshitternet affects openness and all that entails. An open internet is one whose workings are transparent (think of "open source"), but it's also an internet founded on access – the ability to know what has gone before, to recall what has been said, and to revisit the context in which it was said.

At last week's Museum Computer Network conference, Aaron Straup Cope gave a talk on museums and technology called "Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of 'extended reality' technologies in the cultural heritage sector" that beautifully addressed these questions of recall and revisiting:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/#wishful

Cope is a museums technologist who's worked on lots of critical digital projects over the years, and in this talk, he addresses himself to the difference between the excitement of the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector over the possibilities of the web, and why he doesn't feel the same excitement over the metaverse, and its various guises – XR, VR, MR and AR.

The biggest reason to be excited about the web was – and is – the openness of disintermediation. The internet was inspired by the end-to-end principle, the idea that the network's first duty was to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. That principle made it possible for whole swathes of people to connect with one another. As Cope writes, openness "was not, and has never been, a guarantee of a receptive audience or even any audience at all." But because it was "easy and cheap enough to put something on the web," you could "leave it there long enough for others to find it."

That dynamic nurtured an environment where people could have "time to warm up to ideas." This is in sharp contrast to the social media world, where "[anything] not immediately successful or viral … was a waste of time and effort… not worth doing." The social media bias towards a river of content that can't be easily reversed is one in which the only ideas that get to spread are those the algorithm boosts.

This is an important way to understand the role of algorithms in the context of the spread of ideas – that without recall or revisiting, we just don't see stuff, including stuff that might challenge our thinking and change our minds. This is a much more materialistic and grounded way to talk about algorithms and ideas than the idea that Big Data and AI make algorithms so persuasive that they can control our minds:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

As bad as this is in the social media context, it's even worse in the context of apps, which can't be linked into, bookmarked, or archived. All of this made apps an ominous sign right from the beginning:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Apps interact with law in precisely the way that web-pages don't. "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to defend yourself against corporate predation":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

Apps are "closed" in every sense. You can't see what's on an app without installing the app and "agreeing" to its terms of service. You can't reverse-engineer an app (to add a privacy blocker, or to change how it presents information) without risking criminal and civil liability. You can't bookmark anything the app won't let you bookmark, and you can't preserve anything the app won't let you preserve.

Despite being built on the same underlying open frameworks – HTTP, HTML, etc – as the web, apps have the opposite technological viewpoint to the web. Apps' technopolitics are at war with the web's technopolitics. The web is built around recall – the ability to see things, go back to things, save things. The web has the technopolitics of a museum:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/09/11/brand/#dconstruct

By comparison, apps have the politics of a product, and most often, that product is a rent-seeking, lock-in-hunting product that wants to take you hostage by holding something you love hostage – your data, perhaps, or your friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

When Anil Dash described "The Web We Lost" in 2012, he was describing a web with the technopolitics of a museum:

where tagging was combined with permissive licenses to make it easy for people to find and reuse each others' stuff;

where it was easy to find out who linked to you in realtime even though most of us were posting to our own sites, which they controlled;

where a link from one site to another meant one person found another person's contribution worthy;

where privacy-invasive bids to capture the web were greeted with outright hostility;

where every service that helped you post things that mattered to you was expected to make it easy for you take that data back if you changed services;

where inlining or referencing material from someone else's site meant following a technical standard, not inking a business-development deal;

https://www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

Ten years later, Dash's "broken tech/content culture cycle" described the web we live on now:

https://www.anildash.com/2022/02/09/the-stupid-tech-content-culture-cycle/

found your platform by promising to facilitate your users' growth;

order your technologists and designers to prioritize growth above all other factors and fire anyone who doesn't deliver;

grow without regard to the norms of your platform's users;

plaster over the growth-driven influx of abusive and vile material by assigning it to your "most marginalized, least resourced team";

deliver a half-assed moderation scheme that drives good users off the service and leaves no one behind but griefers, edgelords and trolls;

steadfastly refuse to contemplate why the marginalized users who made your platform attractive before being chased away have all left;

flail about in a panic over illegal content, do deals with large media brands, seize control over your most popular users' output;

"surface great content" by algorithmically promoting things that look like whatever's successful, guaranteeing that nothing new will take hold;

overpay your top performers for exclusivity deals, utterly neglect any pipeline for nurturing new performers;

abuse your creators the same ways that big media companies have for decades, but insist that it's different because you're a tech company;

ignore workers who warn that your product is a danger to society, dismiss them as "millennials" (defined as "anyone born after 1970 or who has a student loan")

when your platform is (inevitably) implicated in a murder, have a "town hall" overseen by a crisis communications firm;

pay the creator who inspired the murder to go exclusive on your platform;

dismiss the murder and fascist rhetoric as "growing pains";

when truly ghastly stuff happens on your platform, give your Trust and Safety team a 5% budget increase;

chase growth based on "emotionally engaging content" without specifying whether the emotions should be positive;

respond to ex-employees' call-outs with transient feelings of guilt followed by dismissals of "cancel culture":

fund your platforms' most toxic users and call it "free speech";

whenever anyone disagrees with any of your decisions, dismiss them as being "anti-free speech";

start increasing how much your platform takes out of your creators' paychecks;

force out internal dissenters, dismiss external critics as being in conspiracy with your corporate rivals;

once regulation becomes inevitable, form a cartel with the other large firms in your sector and insist that the problem is a "bad algorithm";

"claim full victim status," and quit your job, complaining about the toll that running a big platform took on your mental wellbeing.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/18/broken-records/#dashes

The web wasn't inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee's decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as "branded communities." The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn't even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since. After three or four attempts to replace the web with various garbage systems all called "MSN," Microsoft moved on to trying to lock the internet inside a proprietary browser. Years later, Facebook had far more success in an attempt to kill HTML with React. And of course, apps have gobbled up so much of the old, good internet.

Which brings us to Cope's views on museums and the metaverse. There's nothing intrinsically proprietary about virtual worlds and all their permutations. VRML is a quarter of a century old – just five years younger than Snow Crash:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

But the current enthusiasm for virtual worlds isn't merely a function of the interesting, cool and fun experiences you can have in them. Rather, it's a bid to kill off whatever is left of the old, good web and put everything inside a walled garden. Facebook's metaverse "is more of the same but with a technical footprint so expensive and so demanding that it all but ensures it will only be within the means of a very few companies to operate."

Facebook's VR headsets have forward-facing cameras, turning every users into a walking surveillance camera. Facebook put those cameras there for "pass through" – so they can paint the screens inside the headset with the scene around you – but "who here believes that Facebook doesn't have other motives for enabling an always-on camera capturing the world around you?"

Apple's VisionPro VR headset is "a near-perfect surveillance device," and "the only thing to save this device is the trust that Apple has marketed its brand on over the last few years." Cope notes that "a brand promise is about as fleeting a guarantee as you can get." I'll go further: Apple is already a surveillance company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The technopolitics of the metaverse are the opposite of the technopolitics of the museum – even moreso than apps. Museums that shift their scarce technology budgets to virtual worlds stand a good chance of making something no one wants to use, and that's the best case scenario. The worst case is that museums make a successful project inside a walled garden, one where recall is subject to corporate whim, and help lure their patrons away from the recall-friendly internet to the captured, intermediated metaverse.

It's true that the early web benefited from a lot of hype, just as the metaverse is enjoying today. But the similarity ends there: the metaverse is designed for enclosure, the web for openness. Recall is a historical force for "the right to assembly… access to basic literacy… a public library." The web was "an unexpected gift with the ability to change the order of things; a gift that merits being protected, preserved and promoted both internally and externally." Museums were right to jump on the web bandwagon, because of its technopolitics. The metaverse, with its very different technopolitics, is hostile to the very idea of museums.

In joining forces with metaverse companies, museums strike a Faustian bargain, "because we believe that these places are where our audiences have gone."

The GLAM sector is devoted to access, to recall, and to revisiting. Unlike the self-style free speech warriors whom Dash calls out for self-serving neglect of their communities, the GLAM sector is about preservation and access, the true heart of free expression. When a handful of giant companies organize all our discourse, the ability to be heard is contingent on pleasing the ever-shifting tastes of the algorithm. This is the problem with the idea that "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach" – if a platform won't let people who want to hear from you see what you have to say, they are indeed compromising freedom of speech:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Likewise, "censorship" is not limited to "things that governments do." As Ada Palmer so wonderfully describes it in her brilliant "Why We Censor: from the Inquisition to the Internet" speech, censorship is like arsenic, with trace elements of it all around us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMJb3AxA0s

A community's decision to ban certain offensive conduct or words on pain of expulsion or sanction is censorship – but not to the same degree that, say, a government ban on expressing certain points of view is. However, there are many kinds of private censorship that rise to the same level as state censorship in their impact on public discourse (think of Moms For Liberty and their book-bannings).

It's not a coincidence that Palmer – a historian – would have views on censorship and free speech that intersect with Cope, a museum worker. One of the most brilliant moments in Palmer's speech is where she describes how censorship under the Inquistion was not state censorship – the Inquisition was a multinational, nongovernmental body that was often in conflict with state power.

Not all intermediaries are bad for speech or access. The "disintermediation" that excited early web boosters was about escaping from otherwise inescapable middlemen – the people who figured out how to control and charge for the things we did with one another.

When I was a kid, I loved the writing of Crad Kilodney, a short story writer who sold his own self-published books on Toronto street-corners while wearing a sign that said "VERY FAMOUS CANADIAN AUTHOR, BUY MY BOOKS" (he also had a sign that read, simply, "MARGARET ATWOOD"). Kilodney was a force of nature, who wrote, edited, typeset, printed, bound, and sold his own books:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-late-street-poet-and-publishing-scourge-crad-kilodney-left-behind-a/

But there are plenty of writers out there that I want to hear from who lack the skill or the will to do all of that. Editors, publishers, distributors, booksellers – all the intermediaries who sit between a writer and their readers – are not bad. They're good, actually. The problem isn't intermediation – it's capture.

For generations, hucksters have conned would-be writers by telling them that publishing won't buy their books because "the gatekeepers" lack the discernment to publish "quality" work. Friends of mine in publishing laughed at the idea that they would deliberately sideline a book they could figure out how to sell – that's just not how it worked.

But today, monopolized film studios are literally annihilating beloved, high-priced, commercially viable works because they are worth slightly more as tax writeoffs than they are as movies:

https://deadline.com/2023/11/coyote-vs-acme-shelved-warner-bros-discovery-writeoff-david-zaslav-1235598676/

There's four giant studios and five giant publishers. Maybe "five" is the magic number and publishing isn't concentrated enough to drop whole novels down the memory hole for a tax deduction, but even so, publishing is trying like hell to shrink to four:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

Even as the entertainment sector is working to both literally and figuratively destroy our libraries, the cultural heritage sector is grappling with preserving these libraries, with shrinking budgets and increased legal threats:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

I keep meeting artists of all description who have been conditioned to be suspicious of anything with the word "open" in its name. One colleague has repeatedly told me that fighting for the "open internet" is a self-defeating rhetorical move that will scare off artists who hear "open" and think "Big Tech ripoff."

But "openness" is a necessary precondition for preservation and access, which are the necessary preconditions for recall and revisiting. Here on the last, melting fragment of the open internet, as tech- and entertainment-barons are seizing control over our attention and charging rent on our ability to talk and think together, openness is our best hope of a new, good internet. T

he cultural heritage sector wants to save our creative works. The entertainment and tech industry want to delete them and take a tax writeoff.

As a working artist, I know which side I'm on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/13/this-is-for-everyone/#revisiting

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Mimara,_Zagreb,_Croacia,_2014-04-20,_DD_01.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[peaceoutofthepieces]

Hey! I had a writing prompt idea for a Nick and Charlie one shot-ish thing. Where Charlie gets a haircut and split dyes his hair while Nick is at uni and stresses about how Nick is going to react. White he avoids FaceTiming Nick because he is too nervous Nick thinks something is up. So when Nick comes to visit to check up on Charlie he seas his hair, he loves it. Sorry that was a lot!

i’m not 100% sure this is anything like what you wanted but…enjoy??

~^~

It’s a somewhat impulsive decision. 

Charlie isn’t exactly sure where the notion comes from, originally, or why it niggles enough to stick. He isn’t sure how it ends up feeling at once like a necessity and something not worth mentioning. He thinks about it, on and off, in an abstractly curious and urgently eager sort of way. But no matter how often it crosses his mind, he doesn’t really bring it up to anyone—not his friends, not his parents, not Tori. 

Not Nick.

He supposes it isn’t something he actually thinks he’ll do until suddenly, it’s done. Or in the overall scheme of his more noteworthy habits, it doesn’t really seem like something that will matter. 

He leans more towards the former, though. 

The thing is, there’s multiple factors suggesting this is something he would never dream of doing. He has various anxieties about his appearance on a regular day. He’s particularly precious about his hair. He really doesn’t like going for haircuts. 

So going for a trim and then getting his hair shorter than he’s had it in over a year and bleaching half of it such a bright blond it’s basically white? Well, it can probably be considered impulsive. 

It’s just that he likes it. He’s seen it over and over on social media, has admired how people’s whole air changes with confidence or simply the look itself. Has seen it done in various shades of blond, blue, red, green, and everything in between. 

He’s thought about how he’d never thought about how easy a part of his appearance it could be to control, without a hint of harm. 

Then it’s done, and the control immediately starts to slip under his mother’s stare. 

Eventually, carefully, she says, “You didn’t tell us you were doing that.”

“I wasn’t really sure I would until I was there,” is all Charlie has to defend with. It is, at least, true. 

His mum considers him for another moment. “I could’ve given you more money.”

Charlie silently breathes out his relief. “I had enough,” he assures. 

Tori blinks baffled eyes at him for all of five seconds before her lips turn up in a tiny smile. “You’re stealing my dubious coping methods.”

Charlie blinks back. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have a monopoly on spontaneous haircuts.”

Tori sips her lemonade. “You’re lucky it suits you.”

Oliver gasps in delight and immediately clambers into Charlie’s arms to inspect more closely, fisting his small hand in the newly-whitened strands with care. “It’s so cool! Can I have mine like this too? Mum!”

Tao responds with curiosity but overall approval, and Elle answers Charlie’s FaceTime later that week with a shriek of delight. 

Despite it maybe not holding as a reason, overall, the change doesn’t seem to matter. He gets a few compliments and no insults, though the main response is none at all, which is perfectly fine by him. 

So he isn’t sure why, when it comes to it, he still can’t quite bring himself to mention it to Nick. 

The haircut would be a big enough change. Charlie may be precious about his hair personally, but he also knows Nick loves it. That if, forced to choose, Nick would list it as one of his favourite physical features of Charlie’s. Charlie finds it hard to think of an instance where he and Nick have had any sort of extended affection without Nick’s hands finding their way into his curls, and the memory bank is small. Basically nonexistent. 

And with Nick multiple hours away at uni, Charlie doesn’t immediately have to face Nick’s reaction to the change. It’s almost depressingly easy to hide, really, with how busy they are with their respective studies and social commitments and some minor determination on Charlie’s part. 

But he doesn’t expect it can last forever, and he isn’t surprised when Nick asks. 

“Should we switch to FaceTime? It’s honestly a bit embarrassing how much I miss looking at you. I feel like it’s been ages.”

The sound of Nick’s voice travels all the way from Leeds, through the tiny speaker of Charlie’s phone into his ear, caressing the corners of his mind and melting down into his chest. It’s a balm to all of Charlie’s frayed edges, and the desire to see the words from Nick’s lips, to watch his eyes crinkle as those lips turn up in a smile, is so deep that it makes Charlie ache. 

“Uhm,” Charlie delays, rolling onto his back in his bed and reaching a hand up to play with the ends of his hair. His heart cracks even before he asks. “Can we maybe not tonight?”

“Oh.” Charlie hates that it’s more concern than disappointment in Nick’s voice. It only gets worse when Nick complies instantly with the request. “Yeah, of course. Are you okay, though?”

Charlie blinks harshly. “Yeah. Just really tired. Feel like I won’t be able to keep my eyes open long enough to enjoy looking at you, to be honest.”

A soft chuckle passes down the line. “You should have said,” Nick says gently. “I can go, you should get your sleep.”

Charlie shakes his head quickly. He blurts, “No,” unable to imagine lying awake alone to think about how terribly and needlessly he’s lied to his boyfriend, while worries about any possible bad reaction continue to play on loop. “I—I really miss you. Do you think you could talk to me for a bit longer? If you’re not too tired,” he hastily adds.

“Not yet.” Nick’s smile bleeds through his tone. “I miss you too.”

Charlie rolls back onto his side, drawing his legs up and tucking a hand under his cheek. “How did your match go yesterday? You told me in your texts you won, but not much else.”

Nick lets out a groan, but there’s contentment in it, and Charlie reminds himself that Nick is happy, despite the period of turmoil it took them to get there. “God, it’s so much tougher at uni level. I’m definitely not one of the bulkiest guys playing anymore and I can feel it. I hurt in places I didn’t even think could hurt.”

Charlie can’t help it—he laughs. “Maybe you’re only noticing it now because I’m not there to kiss to it better,” he says, teasing. “You know, in all those tender places.”

Nick makes a sound of vague protest. “I thought you wanted to hear about the game.”

“I do.”

“Then keep it in your pants, Charles.”

Charlie snorts. “Alright. Your loss, Nicholas.”

The smile in Nick’s voice comes through even stronger. “So, obviously I still got us a few points, but Jason did this absolutely amazing tackle, Charlie, you wouldn’t believe how good he is…”

Nick takes him through the match, and Charlie’s eyes droop even as he smiles and envisions Nick in his element, until the next thing he knows, he’s blinking his eyes open to light lancing through his curtains and his phone lost somewhere in his sheets. 

He brushes Nick off in this way for weeks, despite the growing ache begging him to see Nick in any way he can. A part of him tries to believe Nick doesn’t notice, but then Nick starts checking in with him more often—questions after his well-being more than any other aspects of his day-to-day—and starts sending him increasingly enticing photos, seemingly in the hope that Charlie will send one back. 

And Charlie does, now and again, of his surroundings and their friends and himself, just not with his face or hair in the frame. 

Nick’s obvious notice leaks through their regular phone calls, concern bleeding into his voice in bits and pieces, and then begins invading their messages. 

Nick: I feel like I haven’t seen your face in ages. I miss you so fucking much you don’t even know Char 

Charlie: i’m fairly sure i do know and it’s an absolutely miserable experience

Nick: You haven’t really seemed like you wanted to FaceTime the last few times I asked

Nick: Been thinking you might have actually gotten fed up looking at me lol

Charlie: never!!!! nick i want literally nothing more than to see you all the time i promise

Charlie: let’s not pretend we aren’t both aware of how painfully attracted i am to you literally 100% of the time

Charlie: i guess things have just been sort of hectic and i haven’t felt like it

Charlie: i’m sorry

Nick: NO don’t be sorry!!

Nick: I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad Char I swear

Nick: I only ever want you to be comfortable and okay with me

Nick: This time just feels like it’s been so long and I know I still won’t get to actually see you for a while and I miss you so so much

Nick: And I really don’t want to be annoying and constantly ask you how you are but I guess I’m used to just KNOWING and it’s not the same not being physically with you but it’s still so much easier when I can see your face you know? I miss your smile more than anything

Nick: I’m sorry I’m really not trying to be pushy 

Nick: I sound so needy ugh

Charlie: I’m so sorry

Nick: DON’T I literally just said sorry for pushing. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do and I never want to make you feel like that

Nick: Honestly I was just trying to explain why I kept asking and that’s on me!

Nick: Please don’t feel upset or bad or anything about it I know I’ll get to see you for real soon and that’s all that matters

Nick: Can you let me know we’re okay?

Nick: Char??

Charlie isn’t so bad that he’ll ignore Nick for the next few days, but he does try his best to divert and then keep them away from straying back to the topic. It only makes him feel worse, because he’s sure he’s made Nick hesitant to ask now, even though he surely still wants to. Even though Charlie still wants him to. 

But the fear has clawed into him and taken root, and so he avoids. 

To the point where his boyfriend feels the need to check in with his sister. 

“You’re being an idiot,” is what Tori corners him with. “You’re moping about because you miss Nick and he’s messaging me because you’re being weird and avoiding him.”

“He messaged you?” Charlie asks, anguished. 

Tori huffs. “I don’t see what the problem is. Nick wouldn’t be any less obsessed with you if you were bald and you had blue skin.”

“Have you been watching Avatar?”

Tori pins him with a look. “He thinks there’s something wrong. You’re hurting him. Fix it.”

Charlie calls Nick almost immediately; a voice call, obviously. 

He doesn’t greet Nick with a gentle rebuke for contacting Tori. His heart warms enough at Nick’s surprised, fond hello that he’s able to murmur soft words back. Only when the hi how are you I miss you portion is out of the way does he lightly mention, “I didn’t think you’d miss home so much you’d have to text Tori.”

It hurts that he can hear the apology in Nick’s voice. As if Nick is the one that has anything to be sorry for. “I don’t want to be overbearing,” Nick mumbles. “I just—I’m sorry if I overstepped. I didn’t mean to. Tori was surprisingly nice in her responses, so I thought it was alright. And it—I’m just worried about you.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Charlie says emphatically. “Honestly, I promise I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

There’s a small pause. “Do you,“ Nick starts, stops, then continues even more quietly. “Do you not want to see me?”

“No, Nick—I mean—of course I do. I always want to see you.”

His phone makes a funny noise, and he pulls it away to see Nick’s requesting to change the call to FaceTime. Charlie winces, and denies it. 

When the voice call reconnects, Nick’s voice is wobbly. “Explain that, then.”

“I don’t—I’m not—I’ve still got my uniform and everything on and I look terrible right now.”

“You never look terrible. You never care about that sort of thing to begin with, not with me. Charlie, it’s been weeks. I can’t—how do you expect me to believe you’re okay when you won’t let me see you? It’s not like I haven’t tried.”

Charlie sucks in a breath and tries to release it slowly to steady his voice, but it sticks and shudders and he has to suck another one in. “I’m sorry.”

“Please, don’t,” Nick whispers. “Just tell me what’s going on, Char. Tell me what I can do and I’ll do it. We have another match this weekend, but it doesn’t matter. I can be ready to go and book the train for Friday evening and I’ll be there—”

“No,” Charlie cuts him off. “Please don’t miss out on your match for me. I promise there’s nothing serious and you don’t need to worry. And you definitely don’t need to come home.”

Another pause. “Don’t you want me to?”

Charlie closes his eyes. More than anything, he thinks, but swallows the words back. “I don’t want you to miss out on anything for me,” he says firmly. “We agreed we wouldn’t.”

“But we agreed there are special conditions if—”

“If it was anything serious and it’s not,” Charlie reiterates.

He can hear the shaky breath Nick takes. “And if—if it’s serious for me? If I really need to come see you, what then?”

Charlie bites down on his lip. He does the mental math. “We already planned I’d come see you soon. It’s only a couple more weeks, right? When we both don’t have anything on. So you don’t need to miss anything by coming here.”

The next pause goes on so long he thinks Nick’s hung up, or been cut off, but when he glances at us phone, the call is still up and the seconds are still ticking. “Nick?”

“Okay,” Nick responds, eventually. The weighty, wobbly concern has dissipated in favour of blank resignation. “Whatever you want, Char.”

Only the addition of the nickname makes him feel like they’re alright and he’s successfully dodged the bullet, along with the soft I love you Nick offers before they do hang up. 

Then two days later Tori’s springing on him again, this time tugging his headphones right off his head at the drumkit in his room. 

“Jesus, Tori.” Charlie fixes his headphones around his neck and glares at her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You have five minutes, if you’re lucky. I wasn’t going to leave him outside, but I saddled him with Oliver and told him I’d let you know he was here. Based on how terrible he looks, I don’t think he’ll actually wait that long.”

Charlie’s eyes widen incrementally as she speaks, then exponentially when Oliver’s excited voice drifts up the stairs alongside a lower tone that is achingly familiar. “Nick’s here?” he whispers, horror-struck. 

“Shall I allow him up or would you rather make a grand entrance?”

Charlie makes a distressed noise in his throat, and before he can argue the value of neither, he hears footsteps on the stairs. 

After everything, Nick still knocks. 

Charlie squeezes his eyes shut as his heart squeezes. Despite the pat she gives his shoulder, Charlie imagines Tori’s rolling her eyes. Then there’s more footsteps, the crack of the door, and Tori’s breezy, “All yours.”

And Charlie opens his eyes. 

It’s just in time to meet Nick’s gaze as he slips into Charlie’s bedroom, and promptly freezes. 

Charlie resists the urge to throw his arms up in front of himself, standing instead so he can fidget more bodily. Nick doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are glued to Charlie’s hair. 

“Oh,” he breathes.

It doesn’t sound like a bad thing. 

It sounds like the night of their first formal, when Charlie had finally rushed downstairs in his suit and Nick’s lips had parted when he’d seen him. It sounds like the first time Nick had woken up after Charlie during one of their naps together to Charlie gazing at him, likely with atrocious bedhead but definite dimples as he’d fondly watched Nick sleep. It sounds like the first time Charlie had clambered into Nick’s lap and pulled off the last lingering layer on his upper half, and Nick had skimmed over his bare skin with eyes and hands at once. 

It sounds punched-out, achingly adoring and awed in that singular manner Nick has, as if any minor thing Charlie does is another reason to love him. 

“You weren’t supposed to be coming home,” is all Charlie manages to squeak. 

Nick shakes his head and finally drags his gaze from Charlie’s hair to look him in the eye. “Is this why you were hiding from me?”

Charlie shifts from foot to foot. “I wasn’t hiding.” He most definitely was. “I just…I did it sort of in the moment, and then I realised I had no idea how you’d feel about it, and I sort of…panicked?”

Still shaking his head, Nick creeps closer to him, eyes snagging on his hair for another moment before dropping back down. “God, I was going crazy. I thought something was wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie whispers, averting his gaze to the floor. “I knew it was stupid. But once I started avoiding it, I didn’t know how to stop.”

He keeps his eyes down even when Nick’s well-loved Vans enter his vision and a gentle hand settles on his arm. “You are an absolute idiot,” Nick informs him with the same gentleness. 

Charlie risks a glance up and is rewarded with Nick’s lopsided smile. It finally unlocks something in Charlie—maybe just the realisation that his boyfriend is actually here—and he throws his arms around Nick’s shoulders and presses right up against him. 

Nick’s grip settles familiarly around him, a strong forearm braced along his waist and a hand pressed to the centre of his back. He sags further into Nick’s chest, practically melting in his hold as Nick rocks them gently side-to-side. When it stops feeling like enough, Charlie draws back and kisses him. 

Nick hums into a sigh, his hold on Charlie softening until it becomes more of a caress, one hand doing a light sweep up his back and down again, and the other drifting up to his neck. Charlie cups Nick’s face as Nick’s thumb strokes over his cheek, and presses up onto his toes as Nick’s hand finds its way into his hair. 

His hair. 

Charlie pulls away, settling back onto the flats of his feet. He goes back to eyeing Nick more attentively, but when Nick blinks out of his thoroughly-kissed daze, it’s to watch his own fingers twist though near-white locks. 

Eventually, their gazes collide again, and Charlie waits. 

“I understand why you didn’t tell me,” Nick says, solemnly. “This changes things completely.”

Charlie makes a half-questioning, half-constipated sounding noise in response. 

Nick nods. “If you’d shown me the day you’d had it done, I probably would have booked a train then and there to come get my hands on it, and I can clearly imagine how difficult it’s going to be to leave again.” His lips quirk out of his serious expression. “You were very considerate of me and my impulsiveness when it comes to my incredibly sexy boyfriend.”

With a groan that’s almost a laugh, Charlie buries his face in Nick’s chest. He’s very much not doing it to hide an overcome, relieved smile. And the non-existent smile definitely doesn’t widen when Nick’s hand starts sifting through his curls in its well-practiced way, or when Nick dips his head to nose at the locks over his temple. 

“You like it, then?” Charlie dares to whisper after a few minutes of basking in Nick’s attention. 

“There was never any chance I wouldn’t,” Nick says, firmly. “You’re the most beautiful person in the world to me and nothing could ever change that. Except maybe something like this. Which actually I like an unbearable amount.”

Finally, Charlie’s lips spread in a wide grin as he tilts his head back to look up at Nick. “How much?” he needles.

Nick’s smile lifts higher, and he presses his mouth to Charlie’s ear. “I can show you,” he murmurs, sending goosebumps prickling down Charlie’s neck. “Once you promise to never freak me out like that again.”

With a pinch in his chest, Charlie tightens his arms around Nick’s waist. “I won’t. I promise. I’m sorry I was so silly.”

“You weren’t.” Nick kisses the top of Charlie’s head. “I understand your brain was probably being shitty. But one of the reasons you have me is to tell you when your brain’s wrong, remember?”

“I don’t remember that being in the boyfriend ad I put out, actually,” Charlie says. 

“An ad?” Nick plays along with a low whistle. “Someone like you looking for something like that, I can imagine the amount of applications. The guy who got it must be pretty special.”

Charlie shrugs, nudging his chin into Nick’s chest so he can look up at him, even if it means exposing the full force of his smile. “He’s alright. Not too bad to look at, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“He can carry things around for me, so he’s worth keeping for something.” 

Nick breaks into a laugh, and Charlie kisses it away, breathes it in until it settles light and buoyant in his chest and all the tension of the past few weeks disperses. 

All the while, Nick’s hand stays buried in its usual home, fingers woven lovingly through bleached curls. 

[capitalisticveins]

Unempowered Boys Headcanons (Ft Vega, Wampus, Aggro, and Cutie)

Took a bit longer than I thought but I’m still happy with how it turned out

Also I have like 1 personal headcanon that might be based on gender? If you look at it that way? I didn’t want to include it but I did so, sorry if it makes you uncomfortable

PS: Erik refers to Ollie’s listener as “Babe” in March Redactedness, so I did that here too. They’re not to be confused with “Baaabe” (Asher’s listener)

- Guy puts milk before cereal solely to piss off Honey

- Ollie and Babe have matching cat pajamas

- Geordi was a short distance runner for his high school track team. He quit after 3 weeks

- Flyboi! Baby tried to reconnect with Ivan when he was still influenced by Vega, but couldn’t find anything about him online. His number was gone, and so was all of his social media..

- Aaron worked at Walmart for 1 year before quitting on the spot without a 2-week notice

- Geordi was invited to a party in his high school year by Ben. He thinks of it as “one of the most depressing parties I’ve ever been to” in his words

- Ollie would vent to Wampus about his crush on Babe for 2 years before confessing. Wampus was asleep whenever this happened

- Honey was an honor roll student and a part of the college varsity team.

- Guy worked at Max’s Rustic Pizza to afford his tuition, with added bonus money from his parents whenever his paychecks weren’t enough

- Geordi’s only gone to 4 parties, 2 of which were birthday parties in elementary school

- Smartass used to pretend something smelled bad whenever Aaron walked past their cubicle, nothing pissed him off more than when they did that

- Ivan plays Stardew Valley

- Either Geordi and Cutie are the same height, or Cutie is taller by 2+ inches

- Wampus leaves the house through the window whenever neither Babe nor Ollie are home, and gets into another couple’s house and loafs with their cat, or fight them, it’s never clear

- Flyboi! Baby only plays Minecraft on peaceful mode and on 24 hour daylight. It’s too intense to play any other way

- When Cutie first told Geordi they were a telepath, he would put an aluminum foil on his head for a week whenever he wanted 100% privacy. Cutie found it adorable for the wrong reason

- Smartass forgot some stuff on their desk when they quit (a plant, some pictures, post-its, etc), Aaron keeps them on his desk.

- Honey would tutor other students whenever they could.

- Geordi hates FNAF

- Ivan starts getting headaches whenever he sees something about Vesta Distribution online, but he doesn’t know what’s causing it

- Sadism’s Hold! Baby works in Smartass’ old position at Vesta now

- Guy realized Honey was a tutor, and suddenly started being terrible at his English classes. He was assigned to be tutored by Honey, and started silently upper cutting the air when he was told this

- Ollie played Uno once as a teenager. Never again.

- Smartass would demolish Aaron at Monopoly

- Cutie absolutely ADORES Pitbulls

- Babe has 3 pet hamsters that has continuously tried to kill themselves and each other

- Guy proposed the idea of being roommates a few months before Honey finished their final semester, he was scared that when they graduated, they’d drift apart

- When he still had Sadism’s Hold! Baby in captivity, Ivan would want to see if Flyboi! Baby responded to his voicemail, but Vega’s control on him was too much, and he’d forget

- Aaron was one of those kids that would hold 3 chairs to show off to the class in the 2nd grade

- (Personal headcanon) Cutie did cheerleading in high school

- Sadism’s Hold! Baby would rather die than own a pet, commitment isn’t their strong suit, at all.

- Geordi wears dorky glasses, Cutie sometimes steals them and wears it themselves, and then gets a headache

- Guy and Honey went through 5 roommates before just moving in with each other, they only liked 1, but that one moved out.

Taglist: @frenchiefitzhere

[mariacallous]

Months out of law school, Yosef Weitzman already has a huge courtroom role in the biggest antitrust trial of the century. In a US federal trial that started last week, Google is accused of unlawfully monopolizing online search and search ads. The company’s self-defined mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, yet Google successfully opposed live streaming the trial and keeping the proceedings wholly open to the public. Enter Weitzman.

The fresh law graduate is among a handful of legal or antitrust geeks trying to attend most, if not all, of the public portions of the trial, fearing a historic moment of tech giant accountability will escape public notice. Some have pushed off day jobs or moved near to the Washington, DC, courthouse. All are obsessively documenting their observations through social media and daily email newsletters.

The trial is scheduled to run near-daily through November and few news outlets can dedicate a reporter to a courtroom seat for eight hours a day for the duration. Most reporters focused on Google are based in San Francisco. Legal and regulatory publications that can commit charge hundreds of dollars for content subscriptions. Any antitrust junkie—or frustrated Google Search user—wanting an affordable readout from the sparsely attended, era-defining trial, must rely on Weitzman, or a handful of others firing off tweets, skeets, and Substacks. “Regardless of your view on this trial and Big Tech, it will affect everyone, so it’s important that the public is aware of what’s going on as the trial unfolds and to record what happens,” Weitzman says.

Megan Gray, an attorney who has sparred with Google in various legal proceedings over two decades but isn’t involved in this case, has felt compelled to take the 30-minute train ride to the courthouse to capture nuances that don’t come through in summaries or transcripts. She has attended all but one day of the trial so far, pushing her legal work into the evenings. “We’ll see if I can go the whole 10 weeks,” she says.

Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor and a former tech antitrust policy adviser to president Biden, stopped by the first day of the trial but like other interested scholars is otherwise stuck at his distant day job. “It seems obvious that the trial should be easier for the public to follow,” Wu says. “Unlike, say, the trial of a celebrity, there's no serious danger of something like this becoming a circus.”

Weitzman got his gig after Matthew Stoller, a noted critic of Google's power, decided to hire someone to attend every day of the trial and write about it for his email newsletter Big, which focuses on monopoly issues in tech and beyond and has about 100,000 subscribers. “You can’t cover anti-monopoly politics without recognizing how important this case is,” Stoller says.

A rare combination of experience as a sports section editor of his school paper at the University of Pennsylvania and a fascination with antitrust law helped Weitzman secure the gig. He packed up in Philadelphia and has signed a monthlong sublet within walking distance of the court, but has not figured out where exactly he’ll live for the remainder of the trial. Some new law graduates travel the world in the few months before starting their first job. Weitzman is making a muggy commute to an uncomfortable bench in the courtroom’s public gallery, working up to dozen hours a day. “I’m not complaining at all,” he says.

Weitzman’s write-up is summarized in Big occasionally and sent out in full each day in a temporary offshoot newsletter on Substack, Big Tech on Trial, which had about 2,700 subscribers after the trial’s first week. He is being paid by Stoller and the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonpartisan anti-monopoly advocacy group where Stoller is director of research.

The last major Big Tech antitrust trial, against Microsoft beginning in 1998, helped open the door to Google amassing the power it now holds over online search and ads. In the current trial, Google’s attorneys argue that the company became the dominant search engine because consumers prefer it—not because they are forced to use it by deals in which Google pays to be the default on phones and browsers, as the US Department of Justice alleges. Attorneys general for every state except Alabama are also involved in bringing the case.

Prosecutors and Google chose to forego a jury, so judge Amit Mehta will decide who wins. He denied a request from groups that included Stoller’s American Economic Liberties Project to allow remote public access for the trial after weighing prosecutors’ support for streaming and Google’s opposition. Mehta cited his own “serious concerns” about unauthorized recording of witness testimony. He also worried about accidental leaks from portions of the trial that will be closed to the public to protect the trade secrets of Google and witnesses.

Stoller calls Mehta’s decision elitist. “This judge was persuaded that the risk that Google would have information it doesn’t want made public get out was too high, and so he only allows people who can take two months off and spend that time in DC to actually hear the case,” Stoller says. He argues that closing the courtroom for some testimony to protect Google’s secrets prevents the public from understanding fundamental details in the case.

The Judicial Conference, which oversees federal district court operating rules, just issued a policy permitting “public live audio” of court proceedings, but it doesn’t cover trials. The conference says it’s still studying whether it can extend access without raising the risk of witnesses becoming intimidated or altering their testimony because of the remote audience. Media and civil rights organizations say widespread streaming of cases during the pandemic, including witness testimony and antitrust trials, did not cause problems.

With the Google case limited to in-person viewing, Weitzman mostly watches from Mehta’s courtroom, where use of phones and computers is barred. For variety he can sit and work in a media room at the courthouse where journalists can watch a closed-circuit broadcast. A separate overflow room for non-media doesn’t allow use of laptops or other personal devices but offers perks over the courtroom including cushioned seats, ample space, and better air conditioning.

Weitzman’s daily dispatches recite and explain the significance of each day’s exchanges between attorneys and witnesses as well as the judge and the attorneys. Among the most striking revelations so far is that Google secretly maneuvered to try to increase search ad pricing without informing advertisers when sales were on pace to miss Wall Street expectations in 2019. Google declined to comment for this story. “My main goal has been to just be accurate and report on what’s happening inside in the courtroom … in a fair way that doesn’t distort what actually happened in favor of either side,” Weitzman says.

Weitzman’s reports flag when he couldn’t hear or understand some of the dialog and weave in references to trial exhibits. He’s called out internal Google emails and presentations, some of which the Justice Department was posting on its website until Google told the judge about the links earlier this week. Prosecutors pulled the uploads pending Mehta’s take on the practice.

The debate over the exhibits has featured in posts on X (formerly Twitter) from the courthouse by Gray, the independent lawyer. She also has tracked genders, age, and races of presenting attorneys. Based on her perceptions, the Justice Department has fielded four women and three persons of any gender under 45 years old, while Google’s team has featured none in either category; there have been no racial minorities on either side. “It reinforces how old and entrenched Google is,” Gray says. What she characterizes as the arrogant and obstreperous demeanor of testifying Google employees’ has spurred spirited laughter in the overflow room, she says. “You can’t get that through a 2D transcript,” she says.

Beside Gray, Weitzman and journalists at outlets including MLex and Reuters attending in person have all posted their reflections on X. But as people have decamped from the service during Elon Musk’s ownership, it doesn’t provide the definitive conversation on marquee tech events it once did. A Bloomberg journalist at the trial has been skeeting on Bluesky, and a one at Law360 has shared trial musings on Threads.

The dispersed conversation makes newsletters like Weitzman’s, which also aggregates information from elsewhere, more important. Luther Lowe, senior vice president of public policy at business reviews app Yelp, a long-time Google foe, turned his weekly note on Google antitrust news into a daily operation for the trial. He’s attending when he can, but mostly relying on instant transcripts, which cost $1.20 per page and run over 300 pages per day. “The cost of the transcripts by the end of trial will be in the tens of thousands of dollars,” he says. “I want to know what’s going on in real time.” But taking 10 weeks off to sit on his hands and observe everyday isn’t an option.

Even Google’s search rivals Microsoft and DuckDuckGo, which stand to benefit the most if the government wins, don’t have people watching the trial every day. Nor do advocacy groups such as the Tech Oversight Project or Chamber of Progress.

Closer to the courtroom but also missing are US lawmakers and their aides, who are occupied across the street at the Capitol trying to avert a government funding collapse that could suspend the trial next month. When lawmakers get back to considering how to regulate large tech companies, lessons from the Google trial could prove valuable. Congressman Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, watched opening arguments from the courtroom to show support for the government’s case. Now, his spokesperson Victoria Marshall says he’s following the action through X—and hoping that future trials have greater access.

[notyour-valentine]

Congrats on your celebration. I loved LOVED Don't forget to smile so could you do some headcanons for modern Tommy and please write a part two! Thanks boo

modern!Tommy Shelby ~ General Headcanons

[Celebration] [Celebration Masterlist] [Masterlist]

Warning: Mention of violence, drug use

I don't see Tommy going to war., at least not with the army. There was no need to conscript soldiers, and he is not the type of person to choose the army for a career path. I'd see Arthur and maybe even John doing that, but I'm not sure about them either. 

However, I see them getting their 'warfare' experience from UK gang wars 

Even so, they aren't as traumatised as they are in the show, even if they are still struggling because of the life they live and so Tommy would have retained some of his pre!war persona and we would see more of his cheeky side.

Modern!Tommy still loves horses and would have wanted to work with them and maybe become a professional equestrian but he sees the mistreatment of horses and becomes an activist in his youth (not necessarily animal rights in general, but horses rights)

And by activist, I mean slashing tyres, spraying graffiti, causing mayhem at the races as a teenager. That's how he met Greta and where he learns a lot of oganizing and sabotating skills

I still think the family would start with illegal gambling but on football games and not horse races

Tommy's expansion would be to start fixing boxing matches and MMA fights to make money while getting legal licences. They also take over strip clubs (and absolutely weed out human trafficking thanks to Polly's and Lizzie's input)

Within years he makes them the UKs gambling monopoly but also runs all those online casinos, betting apps etc (you know- the ones with the annoying ads) which takes them global

I still see him involved with trade and shipping and maybe manufacturing too but more in regards to technology and development. And of course, they are in the drugs business

They are UFC shareholders as well as all other MMA and boxing governing bodies and absolutely keep fixing fights. They also fix football matches and sponsor an F1 team (I want to say RedBull based on the Seb era but who knows?)

He is also hugely involved in real estate and housing

This Tommy would not get involved in active politics, even if he loses his mind over current, especially UK politics (when Brexit hits, he can't fathom the stupidity, the damages to his business and economy, and the general government incompetence)

Instead, he focuses on activism, like funding school lunches for poor children through their foundation 

The 21st century is still classit but not as much as in the 20s, so he has more movement there. There would be far more discrimination in regards to his Irish Traveller background 

The expansion to the US is far earlier. 

Modern!Tommy is just as overworked as canon!Tommy if not more so due to the constant availability of our time so he still smokes, takes drugs and a lot of sleeping pills. 

He does not have any social media and lives completely off the grid, not even a newspaper interview, which makes him a phenomenon, a ghost and an icon for the crypto bros. 

He has a vintage car and motorcycle collection but his biggest treasure is a large horse ranch in the middle of nowhere where he keeps close to a hundred horses, either older horses or former race horses, which he keeps buying up. It's a gigantic facility and is absolutely not profitable (apart for a bit of money laundering) but giving the horses a calm place where they are well taken care of (kind of like a retirement home for horses) is his passion project.

Modern!Tommy has tattoo sleeves, definitely, but he would rather walk on broken glass before he puts on a SmartWatch or drinks a green smoothie

His lockscreen is either a childhood picture of him and Ada on a horse or just a black screen

Bonus fact:

On at least one occasion he has definitely shot his Tablet during a stressful day because the "Sorry- I didn't quite catch that" came at the wrong moment. 

Thank you so much for participating in my celebration - I hope you like what I've written for you! I'll have to see about that Part 2. I know a lot of people like that story but I have a lot of other WIPs in the works, but it won't be forgotten

If you want to join in, click here to find out everything you need to know!

~

Taglist

Overall

@lilyrachelcassidy @jyessaminereads @chlorrox @watercolorskyy @books-livre @quarterpastmidnight  @lilyevanswhore  @polishcrazyone  @zablife  @just-a-harmless-patato  @stevie75 @flyingjosephine-blog @runnning-outof-time @cillmequick @babayaga67 @alex-in-the-wilderness @butterfly-skinnylegend

Tommy

@knowledgefulbutterfly @babayaga67 @signorellisantichrist 

@lespendy @geeksareunique @look-at-the-soul