#and i have never used tiktok and i don't really get instagram culture even though there are some accounts i follow regularly over there

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

with the disclaimer that i am definitely prone to negative thinking and that i don’t have a super wide social circle so i haven’t, of course, observed what it’s like for a ton of kids and younger people these days!--

does anyone else just .......... yearn for a time when the internet wasn’t so everywhere?

in particular, i feel sad for kids, because screens are like having ten thousand pieces of candy in front of you at every second. like, how do you resist the lure? how can you NOT want it? how can you not get addicted?? it’s shiny infinite entertainment! but then everything you do is filtered through this device. (this is where i’m gonna get really judgy in a way that’s maybe over-simplistic and too negative. i know there are tons of benefits to the internet and all the information and content we have access to today! i’m just not talking about those in this post.) like, what chance do the old activities have, like doing art or playing board games or reading physical books or going outside or doing science experiments or even just watching a handful of movies over and over because those were the only options you had in your at-home video library?? (as opposed to youtube throwing endless content at young viewers via algorithm.) or even just sitting around being bored, with naught but your own thoughts???

i also find it wild that it’s so expected that from a very young age everyone in your family has this extremely expensive technological device. (like, i feel like my parents definitely would not have been willing to buy me a hundreds-of-dollars mini-computer to carry around all the time that could’ve easily gotten broken ... but it was such a different time, this being the norm would have been unimaginable!) is it hard to opt out of smart phone culture for kids? is it even acceptable to be like “my kid isn’t going to have a smartphone/ipad/whatever until high school” anymore?

i’m just really feeling the pressure of there being infinite options for screen entertainment at every moment. it has REALLY scrambled my brains as a 30-something adult. so it makes me really curious how it feels to grow up in that environment without having ever experienced what it was like before, when your options were still plentiful (”having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card!”) but much, much, much more limited. i kinda feel like you could get deeper and more profound enjoyment out of things just because there wasn’t a part of you always wondering “okay, what next?” that could be instantly gratified.

but again! i am definitely old-man-yells-at-clouds as my default setting, and therefore prone to complaining about the age of technological marvels we are living in. still ... omg, i’m so tired. i’m just really curious about whether something truly has been lost, or if that’s just how i feel because i’m nostalgic for how it was when i was younger and the internet was way more niche and one part of life that it was easy to put down and walk away from rather than EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME.

[ms-demeanor]

sex work is work, no problem with that, but spamming sex work absolutely everywhere now is not okay. bot or not, it is not okay to shove your probably fake/stolen tits or ass into everyone's face even where kids are. it is absolutely the lowest, cheapest trash doing that. are these people showing their barely covered up pussy to school kids on the street to maybe get a customer? because they are doing exactly that on the internet. if you cant find customers and need to lower yourself to std ridden junkey trash standards who missed the way and entitled themselves to begging for money outside trash town, zero support from me!

Yeah you really sound like someone who supports sex workers. That's what I always think when I hear people using words like "disease-ridden" and "junkie" - 'wow, that person must be SUCH an ally. braver than any US marine, thank you for your service, person who believes sex work is work but thinks STIs or drug addiction are 'trash'.'

So, point by point:

It's not absolutely everywhere. You don't see people trying to link their onlyfans on facebook most of the time (i've actually never seen it but i could believe it is happening, though it's not common because FB has real-name policies that are unfriendly to sex workers). You're unlikely to see fansly links as sidebar ads on cspan. People aren't linking their pages in the amazon reviews. You're seeing it "everywhere" because you're not going anywhere. Tell me you spend all your time on two to three platforms without telling me you spend all your time on two to three platforms. Instagram, tiktok, twitter, and tumblr are full of people who are promoting all kinds of brands and one of those kinds of brands is sex work.

Those are also all platforms that have age restrictions and behavior standards, and of all of them tumblr is the one that has the history of being the most openly sexual and the least connected to legal identities. People are linking to their diy porn because of the culture of these websites both currently and historically. I once posted a video on this website of me bringing myself to orgasm in a public bathroom stall then inserting a dildo into my vagina before I went on stage and performed a set with my band. I did it for free and for fun five years ago, the week before the porn ban hit.

What I'm saying here is that the culture of this website has a much longer history of openness about sex and sexuality and the visual presentation of sex than it does of being full of people who think teens shouldn't see nipples. This is an *extremely* reasonable place to post information linking to porn that you make and to use cute pictures of yourself to do so.

It's also really easy to tell that these people aren't bots or using stolen images because the whole point of the live platform is that you can click through and go talk to them. Strange Aeons did just that and you can see what happened. (click on that video for a fun cameo at 6:04) Turns out live users are just a bunch of people (not networks stealing images the way that actual porn *bots* on tumblr do) and the ones who are trying to do sex work on the live platform itself get banned.

But also kids too young to see the occasional boob shouldn't be on tumblr! (like, seriously, define kids. what age is too young to see the kinds of images allowed by the tumblr live tos? how about the ones banned by the tumblr live tos? How old should you have to be before someone shows you an ahegao face on a hoodie in public? What should the punishment be for the ahegao fashionistas for exposing six year olds to anime tongues? What should the minimum age be to go on the beach and see men in speedos? Fifteen, or is that still abusive to children? Maybe we should make it twenty to be safe, or better yet why don't we make it twenty AND ban speedos? this is what you sound like, you fucking asshole). Tumblr has age limits and people under that age limit shouldn't be looking at most things on this website. A smiling woman in a bikini top or a dude with his abs out are fucking nothing compared to the kind of damage you personally and specifically are trying to inflict with your shitty ideas.

Posting t&a on tumblr is not at all comparable to doing street level work and soliciting children for a number of reasons, but I'd just like to really take the time to point out that you just compared the profile pics on tumblr live to sexually soliciting a child. You literally did the "x group i hate are pedophiles" thing, which is exactly why it's such a huge problem that any and all types of nudity have been stigmatized online. We have created an entirely new paradigm of "pedophile" that means "existed around a child while wearing tight pants." You are such a fucking clueless, sanctimonious pile of shit that you can't even see that that's what you're doing. This is literally, exactly kink at pride discourse.

And that's even if I grant you that these people are posting t&a! Go look at the live leaderboards, you don't have to accept the ToS to see the leaderboards! We are talking about *at most* saucy pin-up levels of eroticism. I have seen fucking holiday cards with more visible cleavage than any of the top 200 tumblr live streamers right now.

The only thing in your final sentence that makes any sense is that you are positioning tumblr as trash town.

Yeah. I'm actually not at all impressed by tumblr recently and that has a lot more to do with the influx or resurgence of nuance-allergic, anti-sex, whiny shits like you than it does with a banner that i can scroll past in a quarter of a second.

I want people reading this to really, really sit down and think about what they're calling assault or hypersexualiztion or whatever. We are talking about profile pictures. You are so offended by a bar of 4 profile pictures at the top of your dash that you're comparing regular ass humans (some of whom are sex workers and some of whom are just streamers who took thirst trap selfies) to the real life solicitation and abuse of children.

TOUCHING GRASS IS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU PLEASE GO INTERACT WITH ACTUAL REAL HUMANS WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT DASHCON OR MILKSHAKE DUCK ARE. YOU ARE CRITICALLY INTERNET POISONED AND IF YOU TALKED TO SOMEONE AT THE DMV AND DESCRIBED IT AS ASSAULTING CHILDREN TO HAVE SOMEONE IN A BIKINI ON A BILLBOARD THEY WOULD IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET AWAY FROM YOU. THINK OF THIS POST AS THE CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR TELLING YOU THAT THE SHADOWS YOU'RE SEEING AREN'T ACTUALLY DEMONS BUT THAT YOU ARE GOING TO REALLY REGRET IT IF YOU DON'T GO OUTSIDE.

[cyarskj1899]

I sing this all the time. Michigan winters especially Detroit,Michigan winters ain’t no joke

LISTEN

NEWSClassified documents at Pence's home, too, his lawyer says

WWJ NEWSRADIO 950NEWSLOCAL

"It's So Cold in the D" turns 15 — the truth behind the accidental Detroit anthem we can't stop singing

By WWJ Newsroom

January 20, 20234:56 pm

DETROIT (WWJ) -- When it comes to Detroit artists who have made an impact on music and culture, there are truly too many to name.

But there’s one local rapper that Metro Detroiters quote regularly — especially during the winter months — who has never really gotten her due.

We’re talking about T-Baby, who had a massive viral hit 15 years ago this month with her now-iconic song, “It’s So Cold in the D.”

And if you tell us you didn’t just sing the hook as you read that — we don’t believe you.

The unbelievably catchy and quotable song was originally penned as a tribute to T-Baby’s late friend Mason Graham, who was fatally shot while trying to break up a fight at Universal Coney Island on Detroit’s east side in 2006.

The music video, was made with a shoe-string budget of just $300, hit YouTube in January of 2008, and went on to rack up an impressive 11 million views.

NOTE: VIDEO CONTAINS PROFANITY

In the years that followed, variations of the “It’s So Cold in the D” catchphrase have been included in tracks such as Eminem’s “Detroit vs. Everybody” and Big Sean’s “Story by Snoop Lion,” and the song has been performed in-concert by the likes of New Kids on the Block and Usher during tour stops in Detroit.

"It's So Cold in the D" received new life in 2011 when it was included in an episode of MTV’s “Beavis and Butthead” reboot, and the resurgence later resulted in a 2015 remix of the song (though nothing beats the original.)

NOTE: VIDEO CONTAINS PROFANITY

But even with all of its popularity, T-Baby says she received so much online hate after releasing the tribute — which she intended to be a commentary on violence in the city — she took an extended hiatus from YouTube and music to avoid the negativity.

Additionally, the rapper and artist, who grew up Latonya Myles on Detroit’s east side, has never really been given much in the way of compensation or credit for her original song.

Most artists who perform or reference it do so without permission, and despite holding a copyright on the “It’s So Cold in the D” phrase, it often appears on t-shirts, mugs and even candles with little to no money going back to T-Baby.

Though she has continued to have a social media presence and create music through the years, T-Baby says she still keeps mainly to herself, and doesn’t put a lot of trust in others.

But regardless of how people feel about the song itself, T-Baby created something that most artists have a difficult time achieving: staying power.

The song is now used on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, meaning a whole new generation is discovering the viral hit.

In another 15 years, you can bet that on a freezing winter day, Detroiters will still be turning to one another and uttering the phrase, “It’s so cold in the D.”

But if we don't start to give T-Baby the credit she deserves right now...well, there's really nothing colder than that.

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[violetsystems]

I've seemingly lost count of how many jobs I've been applying for. I don't think I'm in a normal situation at all but normally they tell you to "track all your applications and organize them." I'm in a system at one institution almost five times under review. They are civil service positions where I scored a ninety percent so I've even contacted the state directly about the peculiarity of it being under review after a references and a background check for over seven months. I know my record is clean to the point I even did a FOIA request on my identity at the FBI who sent me back a letter of "we don't know nothing about you" on September 11th, 2023. Real classy date there. Most times there is absolutely no response from anything. I feel like I was confidence tricked into an interview as some art project to make me feel helpless and trapped. It could all fall from the sky at once. Or it could just be some sick deep state joke that I'm some sort of social experiment to kick around. None of these are things I want to think about conspiratorially and yet you leave a person locked in a box long enough and they will try to conspire a way to break free. I've also applied for things like GameStop and Home Depot. I applied for a part time position at a conservatory. I go out to do groceries and I'm followed around by the neighborhood. Hollywood people and try hard TikTokers filming movies around me when I go to the store to pick up groceries. Wannabe improv actors playing practical jokes on me in public. Gang Bangers shout at me from their cars calling me tough guy in a mockingly menacingly way. And yet they have been following me around using my identity for the entire pandemic as cover for something I'd rather not talk about. My parents don't even really comprehend how fucked anything is and my friends don't really exist in the material world. So the isolation might be meant to break me but I'm not that kind of person. I've always been the guy who would cut the whole in the wall to escape. Not so much the guy who would cut off his own leg to leave the saw trap though. I don't really know the answer to any of this. It's just gone to a point where I have no choice but to take extreme measures to keep myself safe. And yet everything I've done has put me further in harm's way. Normal people in America can start over. Leave and pick up a job in a new state or country. I'm a blood bag on the roof of an automotive in the wasteland. And honestly half my life has faded away for people whose idea of high culture is a line of cocaine and a meme on an instagram page. I didn't think getting dead sober and cutting down on expenses would leave me this fucked. But I still have ways to survive. Being a target is one thing. Being the butt of an ugly joke masked in a civil war is another. I don't know what the answer is to all of this. But I'd just like to point out that it's gone far beyond normal for the record. My narrative is pretty bleak right now. Thankfully this space keeps me sane. I don't know that any of us would be able to make sense of it. Just remember it hurt me deeply. And the consequence of that seems nonexistent. Neither is the benefit really. I'm supposed to stay nonchalant about everything when any normal person would have called a lawyer years ago. I did and they never replied so your guess is a good as mine. You stand in the way of somebody's attempt at gainful employment in America for an acting gig or bragging rights on a forum you should be subject to worse treatment down the road. You make art with the pain you created in someone else's life without their consent that's worse. And karma may or may not exist for a reason.

[rpbetter]

hey! ive got a question! is it acceptable or problematic to rp a biracial character with a face of which you don't know if theyre actually biracial/partially white? like, I'd like to play an Indo Dutch character faced by marcel fritz, an indonesian model with an assumably german name origin, but with no noted relationship to any european ethnicity..

Hey there, thank you for your question!

I want to say, before anything else, that much of this advice is opinion based. It’s my opinion, formed by my experiences. The basis of what we consider acceptable or problematic is often thus influenced, even when there is an underlying hard yes/no possible. Furthermore, that you’ve both taken the time to consider this matter and reach out to someone tells me that you’re already infinitely more on the side of acceptable here than most people. A hell of a lot of RPers (and published authors, screenwriters, etc.) don’t bother to worry about these things, so thank you for being concerned!

As to your initial question, “is it acceptable or problematic to rp a biracial character with a face of which you don't know if theyre actually biracial/partially white?” I feel like this isn’t inherently problematic. Before anyone kills me, I say that because it’s reality-reflective. Human genetics are weird as hell. It’s often difficult to tell someone’s detailed ethnicity with full accuracy just by looking at them, especially if their genetic heritage isn’t one that presents in a way that is widely recognized, thus obvious. A person can be biracial and present as entirely white, as the race of their non-white parent, or in myriad combinations in between.

So, on a very basic level? There’s nothing problematic about the way this character looks.

What can make it problematic is the handling of the situation, which you explain in more detail, “I'd like to play an Indo Dutch character faced by marcel fritz, an indonesian model with an assumably german name origin, but with no noted relationship to any european ethnicity..”

In order to answer this better, I looked up the model, Marcel Fritz, and also double checked the surname origin. I wanted to see Marcel because where we get into potentially problematic areas with casting muses who are diverse in race is pretty apparent immediately in whitewashing. While there isn’t a load of information anywhere about him, he does legitimately fit your desired parameters without being whitewashed. He doesn’t look like a white European dude with some cliché “exotic” features as a selling point, is what I’m saying. That’s good, that’s very acceptable!

Now, as I said, I also couldn’t find much on his actual history. Marcel is most often a French name, and you’re right that Fritz is German in origin. The Dutch language isn’t one of my strong points, but it does seem to have a lot similarity, use, and transferable word instance with both German and French. (Reasonably.) I think it’s very likely, given the Dutch history with what is now Indonesia, that the model has some Dutch ancestry. Regardless, he doesn’t show any extreme reflections of any manner of what we’d think of as white European appearance. I don’t think it’s going to matter much if, three years from now, you find out that the model is, let’s say, German...it’s believable, both visually and in real-life history, that your muse isn’t.

So, again, you have thought about this, you have done some research, and you haven’t grossly physically whitewashed the muse for the sake of giving them some kind of sex-appeal while remaining, you know, white. You’re doing great so far!

What you need to do to keep doing great is to make sure you’re being respectful and realistic about the muse’s culture, experiences, and so on. Refraining from whitewashing them culturally where you’re already not doing so in appearance.

I, obviously, don’t know if you created this muse because you are from the same background, or one similar, but if you’re not, this is extremely important. It’s one thing for me to point out adherent stereotypes that have points of accuracy with my own race while portraying a character, it’s a whole other, legitimately problematic as fuck, thing to do it with a character who isn’t my race. Even if there are similarities to my racial or cultural experience, it’s important to responsibly portray the things outside of my viewpoint and to be aware of them. You feel what I’m saying?

I also don’t know what sort of muse you’re making, and that’s definitely important. A muse that is never going to set foot in our reality is going to have different experiences. It’s still important to be aware of potential stereotyping in your plots, language, and overall representation.

I call this “don’t make all your villains black, even if the characters are all cyborgs in space” when trying to explain it. It means that while a totally fantastical setting may never have generated the same stereotypes and racism  and so on as it did in real-life history, we’re interacting with the content as people with those realities. So, you’ve created a fantasy world set in a fictional space saga, you set it up where there’s representation of different races of humans, but didn’t set up as though they have a real problem with racism between humans. That’s great and viable. But...if you, the creator, are still making every one of your villains black men, that’s bad shit.

No matter how unreal the circumstances, be mindful of the reality of the people you’ll interact with and how your muse presents to them. Fantasy, supernatural, post-apocalyptic, whatever narratives and their muses may be lacking our identical experiences with racism, but that doesn’t mean your audience (in this case, the RPC and your writing partners) isn’t going to see it like an offensive neon sign. Make sure you’re not doing that!

And if this muse is going to be played in our reality, or a close derivative thereof, it’s your responsibility to be accurate and respectful. Bad representation is worse than no representation.

To avoid that, keep researching, and don’t stop at just dry history and info; check out real people’s perspectives on blogs and platforms like tiktok, instagram, and youtube. It’s important to have a range of real-life experiences from real-life people similar to your muse. I know it may be tempting, especially if you are white, to engage only with cultural tragedy and negative experiences as a point of realism. Those things are important, but fixating on them erases positive culture and history from the experience.

For example, you say you want the muse to be Indonesian and Dutch. You can ask yourself questions and build on them, like: did he grow up in Indonesia, and if so, what real aspects of this heritage did he experience/learn? From whom? What was a visit to his Dutch-heritage grandma’s house like vs a visit to his Indonesian grandma’s house? Can you list three things that are not well-known outside of Indonesia that are of significance to your muse? If he came to another country, what were the biggest cultural shifts he experienced that had nothing to do with his physical appearance?

By answering these kinds of questions, and those that will naturally come after them, you’re developing a more genuine portrayal. It’s a good way to stay fully in the lane of “acceptable” instead of becoming problematic, including giving others a cliché, offensive, hollow “representation muse.”

It’s always tricky, as I said in the first paragraph, these things can be seen as problematic if someone really wants them to be, as beyond the foundation of legit problems we have different viewpoints, emotions, and experiences. There are people in the RPC who, at the same time they demand more diversity, are hostile to anyone writing a muse who isn’t identical to their own culture, race, or gender experience. You are likely to run into them, it’s an unfortunate part of writing diverse muses. So long as you are approaching it with the genuine desire to not be offensive, doing the research, remaining mindful of how you’re using your muse in different writing situations, and keep being willing to learn more, ask more, listen more...you’re alright.

Hang in there, be respectful and accurate, and thank you for choosing a different muse-type and being interested in doing the right thing, you’re awesome for that!

As a last note here, I know I said “respectful” several times, but I think people may get something...less intense, maybe, out of that. This is a sensitive issue, there are so many things to be respectful of.

I mean things like, be mindful that in many cultures there are unspoken “rules.” Outsiders are not to speak certain languages or words, know some mythology, customs, or interact with other aspects of the culture. Please, be respectful of these things! This isn’t finding cool inside knowledge for your muse, you need to leave things like that alone when you encounter them. It’s fine to research and know they exist by way of that and stop there, it’s fine to allude to the fact that your muse isn’t going to share some knowledge with anyone, but it’s not at all fine for you to expose and use it.

These things often seem ridiculous to outside parties, people who are looking into the window of a culture that’s tinted by being raised in an industrialized, wealthy, or science-oriented culture. That’s inappropriate, and yes, problematic! If you start to feel like this, remind yourself of how things like the varied brutalities of colonialism were justified for so long; that these people were all ignorant savages. Don’t be like that.

Furthermore, if you are of the same ethnicity, if this is your experience, you really do have slightly different rules. Using the above example, let’s say that in a mun and muse shared ethnic experience, the muse has an aunt who is Very Superstitious. That’s difficult for the muse, who had a vastly different cultural experience as a Millennial or Gen Z person, but also loves their aunt. It’s alright to approach the reality of the muse viewing the things she speaks of as stories, where she views it as hard truth. However, this easily falls into an offensive category of tropes when written by someone white who is just going for...well, those tropes of generational disparity represented through Cool Weird Religious Beliefs.

That sort of shit is what you need to be mindful of avoiding when being genuinely respectful. Not everything is open and usable to everyone, and it is someone’s actual life experience and heritage you’re using.