#especially when so much of it is just advertising and algorithms

[glassrunner]

i’m so unbelievably fucking frustrated that something as cool and groundbreaking as AI (which i literally went back to college to study!!!) is being used for such fucking nefarious purposes

i always dreamed of finding the spirit in the machine and now it’s just being bastardized to take away jobs from hardworking creators — mostly by arrogant techbro fucknuts who sneer at these creators for pursuing art, but then tell on themselves for not having the discipline to truly learn a craft

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Why We Need to Care About Insects

Originally posted on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/why-we-need-to-care-about-insects/

Some months back a study was released that demonstrates just how damaging climate change is to insects, particularly those in tropical areas. Warming temperatures cause insects to die from overheating and dehydration, kills off their food sources, and lowers their fertility rates to dangerous levels. Moreover, changes in climate affect insect phenology, the timing of when they hatch, migrate, breed, and so forth.

And because insects are so small, they’re often disproportionately affected by many of these problems. As ectotherms, they rely on the air around them to regulate their body temperatures; their small mass means they lose heat faster than larger animals, and can be overloaded with heat much more quickly. Tropical insects are especially at risk from major fluctuations in temperature because they are adapted to a relatively narrow temperature range.

Gray spruce looper moth (Caripeta divisata)

But the problem goes far beyond the tropics, and we are in the middle of an insect apocalypse. This problem often flies under the radar of those who are not already aware of invertebrate conservation. While a few insects, such as monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) and domestic honey bees (Apis mellifera), find themselves in the press on a regular basis, most species don’t have large fan clubs. Some of my favorite insects include the white-tipped ctenucha moth (Ctenucha rubroscapus), the velvet snail-eating beetle (Scaphinotus velutinus), and the black-tailed bumblebee (Bombus melanopygus), none of which are insects you’re likely to find making the headlines.

To be fair, there are a lot of insect species out there, so it would be hard to feature every single one individually. But we already face the problem that many people simply just don’t see why we need to worry about fewer bugs around. Last year I wrote an article about how search engines tend to produce exterminator sites at the top of results for various insects, and while some of that is no doubt due to advertising-oriented algorithms, they do reflect a widespread demand for extermination services that isn’t matched by more positive attention to these little animals.

Much has been said among entomologists, ecologists, and other professionals about why we need to be concerned about the drastic drop in the numbers of many insect species, and I’ve written about it as well. I could reiterate what would happen if we lost our pollinators (and also how to save them!) or the crucial role insect detritivores play in reducing diseases and keeping the food web cycling along. And I am still a champion for mosquitoes and other unpopular insects.

Green stink bug (Chinavia hilaris)

But these things always bear repeating. It may be that nine out of every ten organisms on this planet is an insect. Insects play an incredible number of ecological roles, from ecosystem engineers to pollinators to food sources and much more. Without them, ecosystems around the planet would collapse entirely.

I could certainly take the self-interested route and emphasize that fully one-third of our food relies on insects and other pollinators. I might also point out that insect detritivores help nourish the soil needed for everything from food crops to timber. While terrestrial insects and other arthropods only make up about a fifth of the amount of global biomass as their marine counterparts, they still represent a natural sink that holds about 200 million tons of carbon at any given time.

But our anthropocentric worldview rarely considers the intrinsic value of insects simply for existing. We’re constantly weighing and measuring their worth based on our biases and values. We divide them into “good” or “bad” insects: good insects are those that do things we like, like pollination or looking pretty, while bad insects are the ones that chew on our homes and plants or which bite or sting us when threatened or seeking food. For a lot of people, any insect beyond maybe a butterfly is a reason to say “Ewww, gross!” I’ve even seen this widespread among self-professed nature lovers, whether they have a true entemophobia or not, though there may be an evolutionary reason for this seemingly disproportionate reaction.

So consider this yet another attempt to change opinions about insects. I can’t cure entemophobia, but I can at least get people thinking more critically about personal and societal attitudes toward insects. I hope to get people to realize that widespread use of pesticides and other garden/agricultural chemicals–which has increased fifty-fold in twenty-five years–is driving the loss of so many insects. I’ve mentioned before that habitat loss is the single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction, and that goes for insects, too. And, of course, the study mentioned at the start of this article is just one highlighting the increasing impact climate change has on insects worldwide.

Metric Paper Wasp (Polistes metricus)

Let me wrap this up on a bright note: word is getting out. There is a lot more awareness than there was twenty years ago, and there’s more nuance than we had in the early “save the (domesticated European honey) bees” campaigns. More people are ditching pesticides and other garden chemicals unless absolutely needed, and regenerative agricultural practices that use fewer chemicals overall are gaining ground. And while numerous organizations are increasing awareness of insect conservation, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation–the oldest organization dedicated solely to invertebrates–is still going strong.

And you can help spread the word, too. Share this article with others, and some of the resources and organizations linked throughout. Consider your own relationship to the native insects in the world around you, and whether you might make their lives a little easier. And remember that sometimes it is the smallest of things that have the greatest importance in such a massive system as an entire living planet.

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

[olderthannetfic]

Hi hi! I have a question and I apologise if it's impertinent but I really didn't have anyone else to ask. I'm new to ao3 and I'm still figuring out how it works. The problem is this- when I look up a character x reader, I'll see the tag included in many works that have oneshots but since it's a side character, more often than not the oneshot for the character hasn't been written and the tag has been there for months. Is it okay to do that or is it tagging something incorrectly? They say they'll write one eventually but they never do, y'know? To me it kind of feels like they're just trying to reach a wider audience but because of this I can't even filter tags and I have to manually search through the book to check if the character is included, especially when the chapters are titled only by numbers :')

Is it okay to tag things in advance like that?

--

Oh boy...

Wattpad refugees do tend to use AO3 "wrong", sometimes in ways that break the rules and sometimes just in ways I find annoying and against typical AO3 culture.

I'm assuming you are coming from Wattpad based on you calling a work or a fic a "book", which is a very, very Wattpad thing to do.

I'm assuming they are coming from Wattpad given the bad behavior you're describing and the fact that they're a x reader writer.

--

So, here's the thing, if you start writing a fic and there's any amount of the actual fic, even if it's pretty short and bad or in a weird format or whatever, it's still a valid fanwork. Most of the time, AO3 leaves it to the author to decide how to tag (aside from a very few things like death threats in the tags or failing to use the required archive warnings).

AO3 won't stop someone from tagging a future pairing that hasn't appeared yet.

--

But "books" of "oneshots" are such an obnoxious Wattpad thing. This is a completely stupid use of AO3 from the "Please send me prompts" part that is usually in there to the way that unrelated fics are smashed together.

It's not against the rules, but it's a crappy use of AO3 befitting of n00bs.

Sadly, old hands at AO3 also make shitty works that are unrelated stories mashed together. They're often a whole set of kinktober fics or something where the trope tags and the ship tags are accurate, but you can't tell which ones go with which ones without searching the whole fic.

We regularly complain about that on here.

--

A much better way to use AO3 is to make a series titled "My x Reader Oneshots" or "All of my kinktober fics" where each separate story is its own work with its own tags.

My assumption is that this person is using the inaccurate tag both to get more eyeballs on their existing work and because they probably take prompts for that ship or something. (I'm basing this on the kinds of things people say on their oneshot books on Wattpad. Maybe they don't actually take prompts since you haven't mentioned it.)

Some people just don't care that they're annoying others and messing up the tags, but I think some actually don't realize how AO3 filtering works and have no idea this behavior is a nuisance.

On a lot of sites, both Wattpad and algorithm-driven social media, unless a post/work is very popular, it disappears out of sight. Even an inaccurate tag doesn't do that much.

On AO3, one is getting a full list of everything with the tag, going back however far. It's a library catalogue for which you should use accurate data. But this writer is probably thinking of tags more as advertising and a way to get their name out there so readers can follow them pre-emptively. They mean to write the ship in the future, so it's not really inaccurate... (And, tbh, if it were a single work and the ship just hadn't appeared yet, I would agree with them even though those are frustrating too.)

--

So no, they should not do this.

But it's not actually against the rules.

I would mute the annoying people who do this.

[alpaca-clouds]

Democratizing Media

Alright, one thing first: When politicians speak about "democratizing media" they usually mean something else then what scientist say, when they use those words. Politicians mostly mean something along the lines of "media should say what I want instead being controlled by some coorporation, because like I am elected, right?" Meanwhile scientist mean something else.

You see, before the internet became easily accessible for most people, the only way to access media was through certain outlets. TV stations, the cinema, some publishers and some record lables.

Yes, sure. Technically self-publishing was a thing even back then, but without the ease of the internet... How were you to market your own book or comic? And self-made music usually just circulated on copied and copied again casette tapes.

Usually, if you wanted to create media that actually people would see, you had to go through a big company. And those companies could very much decide who got to make movies and tv, who got to publish music or books or comics. Not only where those decisions controlled by capitalist interest, but also by nepotism and cultural biases, given that a lot of the people making those decisions where (and still are to these days) white, cis, abled men.

But when the internet came around things changed. Because suddenly everyone had a way easier time in getting their stuff out there. Pretty early on there were websites where people could just publish their stories and comics online. Either free and hosted by some other website or paid on their own site. Which was pretty revolutionary, especially as suddenly ideas that had been ignored could reach a new audience.

Voices, that by news media and such had been ignored so far - voices of women and marginalized folks - could suddenly broadcast over all sorts of channels.

And yes, you could also just publish your music and what not online, could also do your own research and offer it to the world and could actually get heard.

Now, we all know that this came with ups and downs. Because while finally marginalized people were heard like this, it also gave a bigger platform to some fringe conspiracy groups and the like. But at least there was a chance to get your stuff out there.

Social media websites and the like played a big role in this. Especially Youtube, of course, but other sites, too........ which of course brings me to the problem. Or rather to the question: "Is media democratized right now?"

Because it isn't, of course.

Right now we have these chokepoints, where you kinda are forced to push whatever you create through a channel. Sure, you can upload your videos on your own server, but probably nobody will see them. They need to be on youtube. Just like your music now needs to be on spotify and itunes. And if you self-publish a book, it kinda needs to be available on amazon or you won't sell shit. And if you have your own little blog and do not promote it on social media (or have it not integrated on a blogging platform such as tumblr) it will not be seen.

And this brings two issues with it (well, actually three). For one, as private companies those sides are able to censor you in any way they want to. They decide you cannot say the word "queer" anymore? Welp, no more talking about queer issues for you. And because they are a private company nobody can do much against it. Like with the tumblr purge. No more "female presenting nipples" for you.

The next issue is closely related: The companies in question want to make money. This they do mostly through advertisement and maybe subscriptions. Hence their goal is to keep you interacting with their website for a long while. And thus they have algorithms that decide what content you see - and hence if the content decides that something you do is not worth it or will get the wrong kind of attention... Well, nobody will get it shown. On a lot of social media we see, for example, that the negative content gets shown to more people. So writing about positive stuff does often not get you seen. (Which is why algorithms are bad. Don't fucking build your social media websites around a fucking algorithm.)

And lastly: A lot of media additionally to all of that also uses a system of partly manual currated. This is true for Netflix, who obviously want to make sure that the front page does show the stuff they either paid a lot of money for or that they produced themselves. Like, there is an infinity of great indie movies on Netflix, but if you do not know it is there, you will not see it. Same goes for a lot of Indie Games on Steam, that just go unnoticed, because they do not appear anywhere near the front page and just happen to go overlooked by folks. And in the end the big studios obviously have the money to get their games on the front page. Same with books on amazon, where just the difference in marketing budget makes sure, that certain books will end up front.

So, why am I telling all of that?

Because we still do have the tool. We can make a free, democratic internet like that. Where we do not have censorship (please note: banning people for saying hateful shit is actually not censorship, so yeah, ban them nazis). Where we do not have fucking algorithms. And where just everything has the same chance of getting seen.

Like, does not mean that there cannot be any currated lists. Like, those currator pages on steam? Those are fucking great. Lists where everyone just can make those and you can subscribe to their lists. That is amazing. But... you know. Not for the baseline experience, but for what everyone wants their experience to be like.

Just... a thing that bothers me. Based on the stuff I spoke about yesterday.

[roach-works]

hi! I've always admired how you include infrastructure systems in your worldbuilding, and I was wondering if you have any book/documentary/podcast/etc. recs for someone who wants to go into gnarly detail about (for example) wastewater processing, O2 production, and simulated weather systems on a generation ship, but whose current level of knowledge is just "I read a lot of sci-fi?" I find the stuff fascinating in other people's writing, but figuring out where to start research is overwhelming.

shit, that's tough. most of my qualifications are 'i also read a lot of sci fi' but i also read a lot of those pop-up pocket news articles about technology and the environment... my brain isn't one of those kinds of brains where there's much differentiation between what im reading, what im writing, and who im in conversation with. im just always reading everything and having opinions on it and telling my friends what i just learned and learning more about what they learned and so on... tumblr's great for that, honestly. follow a lot of environment and good news blogs, and you'll get an interesting feed of interesting updates on the global ecology.

i would also suggest browsing national geographic, wired, and make magazine websites, if you can. get some good paywall blockers, or dish out for a subscription... the atlantic also has interesting stuff here and there.

'how it's made' type videos are great, especially older mr rogers era stuff, where the machines are less digital and more manual.

get a library card, especially for ebooks--if you're american you can use libby--and browse nonfiction. you can also just ask librarians to help you find stuff. i really admire science writers mary roach and randall munroe, think ryan north is very entertaining, and find malcom gladwell and bill bryson interesting if not particularly trustworthy.

hope this helps! i don't have any more specific suggestions, sorry.

EDIT: GET DUCK DUCK GO AS YOUR SEARCH ENGINE AND FIREFOX WITH UBLOCK AS YOUR BROWSER. i can't emphasize enough how much more useful your search results will be when you need to learn real information about things like ships and sewage systems and oyster farming. these days google only sends you to amazon, wayfair, and pinterest, it's fucking useless if you're not shopping, and sucks even if you are shopping.

there's other, more specialized browsers too that are worth a look.

and of course the internet archive has the wayback machine plus a lot of cool old books for free:

edit edit: here's another post on good search engines

[blazehedgehog]

Were you ever a fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd, and have you ever heard about the TheCinemassacreTruth? I never realized that James Rolfe (Angry Video Game Nerd) had a hate group.

I was an early enough fan that I remember the days where he was kind of the biggest deal on Youtube for a long time, and then as Youtube began to grow and diversify, Mike Matei made some angry posts on his DeviantArt about how Youtube staff were starting to snub them.

Youtube was starting to chase advertising money, and obviously, AVGN (back then still called the Angry Nintendo Nerd, I believe) was very raunchy. There was a time where I think they even disabled AVGN's monetization status because the toilet humor was so extreme. The first inkling of problems some creators still face to this very day.

Like a growing number of people I have fallen off of AVGN in recent years. I outright unsubscribed last year. James has said several times that he's going to quit doing AVGN, but he never commits. At first, that was okay, because he still seemed to have passion for AVGN. But the show has felt like its coasting on fumes for a while now. "I'm so angry at this retro game!" does, in fact, have its limits, especially when, if James tackles something newer, you get a strong sense that he really doesn't care, because he's not really a gamer by his own admission. AVGN as a character, and James himself, have struggled to grow or evolve.

This was further highlighted by the FoldingIdeas video, "I Don't Know James Rolfe."

Even though the video is framed more from the perspective of "James Rolfe hasn't grown very much from that kid making home movies, but then again, neither have I" -- it did highlight a growing distaste I'd developed for AVGN. So I pulled the plug.

I have absolutely zero interest in a Reddit called "TheCinemassacreTruth" and I would advise anyone reading this to be wary of such places. Sharing anger can sometimes be helpful to making you feel better, but building a community based solely on anger is dangerous and unhealthy. I would not take any joy in endless "ISN'T JAMES SO STUPID NOW? ISN'T SCREENWAVE THE WORST? I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE SNEAKING MIKE INTO NEW VIDEOS AGAIN" posts.

Like, its obvious James is still doing this because that's one of the ways he supports his family, and Screenwave is, for better or worse, just running a business. Petty peanut gallery behavior does not serve you or them.

I broke the cycle. Maybe you should, too. Negative engagement is still engagement to the algorithm, so just disengage.

[oops-prow-did-it-again]

Why You Should Rethink DoorDash, and Other Courier Apps: From a Driver Based in the USA

So this is part rant and part psa. I have been doing delivery work as a gig driver for DoorDash for years bc of various personal circumstances. I'm hoping to get a CDL in the near future so I can move on to a better job, but that's besides the point for right now. Further disclaimer: I only know the intricacies of DD. I do not know how precisely GrubHub, Uber Eats, etc, work, but I presume they work much the same, since I see the same complaints come from those services too.

This is in no particular order but please, if you have the time, please read it through. I'll preface this by saying I am not going to be rude or bitchy about customers or merchants here, this isn't just me whining, I'm just trying to give a level recount of my experiences with DD, and often, they are just... Not great experiences, unfortunately.

I don't know how many people realize this, but drivers get offered a base pay of $2.00-$2.50 per delivery, depending on the area. This is all DoorDash HAS to pay a driver. Every time you submit an order via DD, it gets spit out onto drivers' apps with that base pay + tip displayed. Meaning if you do not tip, every driver sees only $2-$2.50 to deliver your order. Sometimes, if enough drivers decline an order enough times, the DD algorithm will start to slowly raise the base offered pay... by about $0.25-$1 per round depending on the mileage it takes to deliver that order. This means if you do not tip, your order will most likely be extremely delayed, or bundled with another order, which will make it late, and your food cold.

**Emphasizing this: although I find low tips frustrating, I am NOT personally faulting anyone for not tipping.** DD should just pay their drivers, and it shouldn't be up to you, especially bc ordering delivery is so damn expensive. But I'm telling you this bc they certainly don't advertise it, and many people in my experience are shocked by now little it pays. Many drivers will not accept an offer that's less than $1-$1.50/mi. This means if your restaurant is 8mi away from you, and DD pays the minimum $2, you need to be tipping at least $6-$10 for most drivers to even consider it, or else it will be sitting for a long time or get bundled with a double delivery (more chances for mistakes + takes longer for the food to get to you).

Furthermore, in certain localities, DD offers an hourly rate for its drivers. This sounds good on paper, but keep in mind that this does not include gas money, and only accounts for the time from a delivery being accepted to the time it is dropped off. If you are delivering in suburbs or, god forbid, rural areas, you will spend a lot of time not making money but still burning gas returning from a home to where restaurants are so you can get your next delivery. While the app may say something impressive like $14-$17.25/hr, in reality, it's usually half that or less when you factor in downtime.

DD orders are also exorbitantly more expensive than if you buy directly from the merchant because DD charges the merchant 15-30% of the menu price to use their platform, and the merchants pass this on, usually plus a little extra, to you. This is before you even consider "delivery fees," which are not paid to drivers and are pretty much exclusively pocketed by DD. Also, DD will often choose a store farther away from you (so, say, a McDonald's that's 5mi away from you as opposed to the one that's 1mi away) specifically so they can charge more on fees. *Sometimes* this is just bc the closer store isn't enrolled in DD, but oftentimes, it isn't.

ADDENDUM ON THIS, HOWEVER: If you are ordering directly from a merchant that you know does not have actual in-house drivers, but is offering delivery anyway, like Wendy's or McDonald's, understand that these merchants are going to send these deliveries through to DD or Uber Eats. These orders have cryptic names for items on the Dasher's end and often we cannot contact you if there's an issue with your order, because the phone numbers provided to the Dasher's app never work. If you know for certain the merchant has its own delivery team (most pizza places, Chick-fil-A, Panera, etc), please order delivery directly through them, but if you know they do not (Wendy's, McDonald's), DO NOT ORDER delivery through their apps. It displays poorly on the drivers end and is often more expensive and a less ideal experience for you.

DD does offer DashPass, a subscription service that, for $9.99/mo, says it slashes delivery fees and other costs. Not really; the amount you pay in DashPass, especially the longer you have it, often exceeds the fees you would pay if you simply bought orders without DashPass. Also, it will advertise at you constantly via notifications and emails which will make you more likely to spend more on delivery that you wouldn't have in the first place, further eroding whatever savings you'd gain from DashPass.

DoorDash also can do a thing where they enroll stores in their platform without that store's permission. These orders require Dashers to use a red card, a notoriously buggy debit card that is supposed to get loaded with the amount of money it takes to cover the order by DD. The restaurants do not get any extra profits from these, and many store managers would love to prevent this from happening, but it requires legal action that is infeasible for most stores to do on their own. This causes friction and conflicts between store managers and drivers, delays for the customers, and solely profits DD.

DD ***does not*** reimburse for any amount of gas or car repair costs. Instead, they offer a company debit card which has tons of hidden fees for their drivers, and gives a small % cashback on gas. It is an overwhelmingly bad deal, but they use it as a shield against accusations that they don't support drivers against the cost of gas. They do...but only if you let them be your bank. Otherwise, you get your pay the Tuesday after the week you worked, or you can cash out immediately via the FastPay feature - for a $1.99 fee out of the money you earned.

DD support teams (and I know this is not unique by any measure to DD but it feels worth mentioning) are based in Taiwan, I believe, as well. I have absolutely nothing against the support teams, for they are doing the best with what they have, but DD absolutely weaponizes language barriers and the difficulty in communication to try to silence customers and dashers alike when there is a problem. DD seems to hope that if you get frustrated enough trying to talk to support (once again, not the workers' faults, the call center is absolutely being exploited too, I just don't have firsthand enough experience with that work to talk about the specifics of how), you will simply give up and not bother trying to seek a refund or half pay.

On that note, if a delivery has to be canceled for whatever reason, your driver will not get paid regardless of the time they spent on it. Very very rarely they will give "half pay," which is half of the promised payout, but only if you were on the delivery for an excessive length of time (i.e., 1+ hours).

Furthermore, if a delivery is marked as undelivered, DD will issue a contract violation against the driver. It is then up to the driver to submit proof that they completed the delivery, via pictures or video evidence, even though DD tracks our phones the entire time we are delivering and should be able to see if we were there or not. **New drivers are not properly warned about this,** so oftentimes when you have a "hand it to the customer" delivery, drivers don't think to take pictures or videos, and dashcams are expensive, not everyone has one. It is extremely hard to argue your way out of a contract violation if you do not have proof.

If you get 3 or more contract violations, you will be immediately suspended from the platform, and 2 puts you at risk of it. If you complete 100 deliveries without incident since the one that gave you the violation, it *will* just go away... But this is a subtle tactic used to scare drivers into taking more (usually very badly paying) orders, because they fear deactivation.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to get a refund, if you legitimately did not receive your order. But please, try contacting your driver directly before you contact support, and if you must contact support, really consider whether someone losing a job, even if it a side gig, is worth the amount of money you spent. You can often just lie and tell DD the order is completely wrong and they'll refund it without punishing the driver, as that's seen as a merchant error.

Also, I don't think many customers realize this: we CANNOT see delivery instructions before we accept a delivery, and they are difficult to see until after the delivery is picked up (as they are only available on a floating widget badge). If you ask for extra sauces or other things in the delivery instructions, 9 times out of 10 we will not see it until we are already on the road and headed to you. Please don't hate drivers for this; most of the drivers I've seen are more than happy to do whatever you want! But msg us via the app, DO NOT use the delivery instructions. Delivery instructions is for instructions on how to find your house or apartment if the numbers aren't very visible, or telling us to call you instead of come to your door when we arrive, that sort of thing. In fact, please be as descriptive as possible for the delivery instructions on this front- if you're ordering from a business, tell us the business name. If you're ordering from an apt, tell us the apartment complex name. If you're ordering from a house, tell us the color of your house or the cars in the driveway. It's all very helpful!

One last thing before I wrap this up: safety. Delivering is an extremely dangerous job. Pizza delivery, for example, is one of the most dangerous professions, and DD's safety features are even worse than those places. DD has implemented a feature for you to contact 911 via the Dasher app in emergencies, but often, this would still be too late. DD does NOT vet the areas for safety that they release the platform into, and there is no real recourse for violent customers aside from talking to support, which takes time and often won't communicate the issue effectively. Sometimes this works, and customers will rarely get banned from Doordash if they threaten, harass, or injure a driver. But the vast majority of these cases go unreported.

Loose dogs and carjacking are also major problems. Customers failing to notify other people in their households that they ordered delivery has led to me being threatened before. I've had people answer the door in their underwear. I had someone try to invite me into his house while wearing nothing but briefs. I had someone step out of their pickup truck carrying two rifles directly in front of me right before I delivered to their house once. I've had dogs nearly bite me - thankfully none have, I'm luckier than many others, but it's still a significant risk. A lot of people seem to trust their dogs when they really should not.

All of this, for $2.25 in base pay + a few dollars in tips.

I really do love delivering, and I do appreciate the freedom DD gives me in choosing my work schedule right now. However, the compensation is woefully bad, the company scams merchants, customers, and drivers alike, and the working conditions are very unsafe.

Idk how many people here really use DD, or what in particular can even be done about most of these issues, but I hope this enlightened some folks.

[zee-rambles]

Hi Zee! new follower that came across your pinned post by chance very recently. Maybe a weird ask ahead, totally fine if you don't answer,

Do you really believe rise can still be saved? Because a part of me is still holding on, and the new andy sketches have been torturing me too. Ive signed all the petitions, done everything I can, I feel like its not enough. It's weird and been bothering me for the last few months, though I've never felt this way before about shows that didnt make it. How do you cope with the feeling, as a long time rise fan? Do you? Obviously not a therapist lmao just curious, trying to learn how to deal with a three year long obsession. Thank you.

I don’t know how many people are going to read this, but here goes.

So, I really tried to think of a nice, clear way to answer this question, but then I realized: it will never be perfect. All I can do is be genuine.

Yes. I do believe that Rise can still be saved. The same way that I hope that many of my favorite shows can return. And I do this because I simply choose to believe it. I choose to have hope. I don’t know, I can’t promise it will come back, but if I’m being true to myself, I choose to hope for the future that I want, and that future includes Rise in it. I once thought I would never get to see the Hey Arnold Jungle Movie, thought I joined the movement too late to bring it back…but it happened.

And I thank you for doing what you can. I did a lot for this show in the last two years. Been recommending it in real life, posting about it anywhere I can, supporting and uplifting other fans, liking as much art, and advertising projects as much as I can. I even put Rise related gifs in the comments of things I react to on social media, hoping that someone will get curious and give it a chance. I’ve sent emails, signed petitions, rewatched as many good videos as I can so that the algorithm can recommend it more. I’ve done a lot. I’m just…slowing down right now because I have a huge project I need to complete in order to graduate from Uni, and because it is hard to advocate for something on your own.

Unless someone is a billionaire and has ties to Hollywood, no one person can bring back Rise. It has to be a collaborative effort from as many fans as possible.

And I’m a lot like you. I’ve never felt this strongly about bringing a show back before. I didn’t even think I would be the person that most fans come to for hope. I just saw that no one was doing what I was hoping they would do: encourage fans not to give up. So I became that person.

I’m not going to lie. I did go through a grief process at first. I was genuinely heartbroken, especially when I notice that slowly but surely, people move on. That happens. It’s normal. But I don’t want to move forward without knowing that I did something. I didn’t just sit there and cry that things were unfair. I gave it my best shot. Sure, I may be wrong, and I may be disappointed, and nothing may come out of it. But I tried, a it’s a 1000 times better to try something, and fail at it, then to never give it a shot.

If I got just one person to fight for Rise, to sign those petitions, to make an effort, that’s enough for me. A victory is a victory, no matter how small. I remember when that petition was only 3 thousand signatures and now it’s over 10 thousand. I think that, as long as we don’t give up, as long as we keep spreading the word, as long as we try our best to bring in new fans, there is a chance. Someone sees a video with the hashtag #saveROTTMNT or #unpauseROTTMNT on YouTube, or insta, or wherever, and digs into the story, falls in love with the show, and tries to get in on the action.

Spectacular Spider-Man fans haven’t given up. Teen Titans fans haven’t given up. I don’t see why we should. And yes, there is always a possibility that the show may never return. But, just as much as there is a possibility of something bad happening, there is also a possibility of something good happening. We’re just pre-disposed to notice the negative, because part of survival is keeping our resources. We could gain 10 good things but still be heartbroken if we lose 1 thing, even if that 1 thing was a bad thing.

At the end of the day, I’ll say this. It’s okay to love something. It’s okay to be sad that it’s over. It’s okay to have a passion for something. It’s okay that a show inspires you, is there for you when you’re alone and scared, that it gives you hope, that it makes you happy, and so on. It’s okay to fight for it if you love it…and it’s okay to let it go, if you need to, or step back if you need to. There is no right way to enjoy a piece of media.

It’s all a choice. At least for me. I choose to do something. And I choose to forgive myself if things don’t work out. I understand that I’m human and there is only so much one person can do. There is no harm in hoping, or believing. I just do it because I want to. Because…well, hope is a ninja’s greatest weapon.

I don’t know if this answers your question, or if it was what you were hoping for. Sometimes we need to figure out an answer for ourselves. That was my answer.

I hope you keep finding things you love and that they bring you joy.

[theamateurartistblog]

The Sad Tale of an Artist's Burnout

I have been burnout over a lot of things but being burnout because of art hits differently. Art burnouts are the worst. Imagine just losing your passion for something or having to force yourself to do so. If this sounds like something you’re going through have no fear, I’m here. Imma tell you how to prevent a burnout and some tips that will help you get back into shape in no time.

Stop Drawing

Mcutie are you serious? Yes, I’m not joking. Stop drawing. Your brain is tired of doing the same thing over and over again, give it a break. Find another hobby, play a game, watch a movie, catch up on a comic or manga (if you want some recommendations I got you;) maybe then you will find inspiration to draw.

Ease your mind a little. What always helps me is ASMRs, find a channel you like and relax to them or put on some Lofi tunes, whatever it takes for you to get your mind out of the sketchbook. Don’t think that when you stop drawing you’re gonna lose your talent, you can’t lose talent but you can lose passion.

Stop looking for likes and views

They'll come eventually, I'm still in the baby stages myself and sometimes it's disappointing not to see any likes or views but that just takes the fun out of art. Social Media is tiring especially with the algorithm doing whatever it likes. If you run an art page why not give it a break a little, maybe the stress of putting out too much content is getting to you.

Also, the self-declared “art critics” don't help either (baby artists please ignore these people, pay attention to the ones who really give you solid advice) so drop social media for a while and post your art unless you want to.

“But Mcutie I need to advertise to get commissions!” (in a future post, I'll give you tips on how to make money with your art). I hear you, but the posts you have in your feed are already enough to tell your audience about what you do and which commissions you’ll take. My advice is to shake it up a bit, instead of Instagram try Twitter maybe art station or deviant art, they have some nice communities on there.

Or better yet create your little website and build a community around it (I'm currently trying this one on Tumblr so follow me on my journey if you want) who knows maybe you’ll find people who respect and admire what you do. ^^

Don’t Compare Yourself!

HA! I need to take my advice. It’s easy to compare yourself with others and let’s be frank there is always gonna be a better artist or athlete or dancer but there is never gonna be another you. The way how YOU draw is different from other artists, no two people are the same and no two artists have the same style unless one artist copies from another. However, it's good to try out new styles and see how you can implement them into your drawings. You may find something that can add an extra spice to your art.

Find Inspiration - Outside!!!

AHA! You thought I was gonna tell you to take up Pinterest and browse huh? Nope! I need YOU to TOUCH SOME GRASS! Look at the clouds find shapes in them, take a walk in the park or something. “But what if it is snowing?” Who cares?! Sit at your window and watch the snowflakes fall you may just find something that inspires you. Doing this motivates you to take up that pen and paper or tablet or whatever kids use these days and draw.

Sleep!! - Please Sleep...

Once again…….I need to take my advice. But let’s face it have you ever gone to bed and suddenly at exactly 3:00 am you get the urge to get creative? That’s what you want! Therefore, get some rest, take a nice bath, rub on your favorite lotion, put on your favorite PJs, and sleep it out. “I suffer from insomnia….” So do I but if it is chronic go and see the doctor maybe you need medical assistance, if not try playing rain sounds or as I said earlier find your favorite ASMRist and just close you’re eyes and fall asleep.

In Conclusion....

At the end of the day, something is gonna burn us out whether it is work, hobbies, or just life in general but the thing is we do not want to stay in a burnout. Besides if you stay in a burnout you’ll just shrivel up and die. So try my tips and if you have anything to add say it in the comments so others can benefit from them. Until next time stay healthy and stay cute.

(〃＾▽＾〃)

[wrathsofgrapes]

Social Media, Sousveillance, and the Self (The Three S’s!) REVISED AND BASS BOOSTED

Preface: I posted this as a gaggle of thoughts some months ago, which you can see if you scroll down just a little bit on my blog. These thoughts were decently unorganized and months later, after slow broiling and marinating these thoughts some more, I decided to turn it into a real conjecture of sorts.

Very special thanks + shoutout to my philosophy professor Daniel Rodriguez-Navas for his careful, thoughtful, constructive, and encouraging guidance throughout the development this paper.

Most young people are socially expected to have a form of social media now, and especially expected to have some form of personal information be public. Many find it strange if one does not post photos of themselves online. Most of us, generation Z, are expected and encouraged to contribute to this massive user-curated database, and in exchange, we are able to receive more attention than what was previously fathomable in the form of likes, shares, and comments. This attention is addictive, debilitating, heart-wrenching and hyper-fixated. It has never been possible in human history to access this many people at once, to be heard by this many people and hear this many people. The digital space has never been “natural” - though depending on particular definitions of “natural”, the transhumanist may argue that the digital space is the next step in evolution; an extension of the human realm. But we were not eased into this digital realm, we were thrown, many of us at a very young age, into this realm with a violent and perverted amount of freedom, enticed by information overload and the addiction of attention. The societal over-exposure to the current climate and habits of social media platforms has had not only a detrimental effect on users’ physical health and self esteem, but has also created an uncanny simulacrum of the ways in which we interact and present ourselves with/to others in real life. The incorporation of social media in our everyday lives has solely transformed the ways in which we love, hate, cry and laugh, prioritize - at others and especially ourselves. 

The new product of attention has become a pinnacle of desire; and we pay with sensation, with shock, with beauty and individuality. When these technological experiments first came out, our young, malleable, dissatisfied minds were the first to latch on. Our parents critiqued this, which made the project even more successful. But it is not a phase like our parents said it would be. They caved. All it took was a few years of normalization - advertising, attention, and they too, became hooked. A 2021 Pew research center study found that 91% of US adults aged 30-49 use online platforms, slightly decreasing in ages 50-64 with 83%, and 49% in adults aged 65 and up. We no longer even have an ancient antagonist to complain about “kids these days”. It has become all free and liberated, no shame in this addiction because the algorithms have improved, proved to be impenetrable in its strategy. 

What we now value is increasingly impacted by the digital sphere, riddled with advertisements for particularly desirable lifestyles. With a life revolving so much around the aspect of the digital realm, and with the digital realm being created on the foundation of capital pursuit, value is no longer personal. Life and culture are no longer personal. The personal is no longer personal. Lee Artz, author of “Global Entertainment Media: A Critical Introduction” describes how world culture no longer stems from local cultures, created by people. Instead, TNMCs (TransNational Media Corporations) create a culture based off of the pursuit of production and wealth, skillfully peppered with some features of local culture for the sake of relatability and familiarity, sold under the guise of “cultural diversity”. 

The transaction is subtle - we buy a fix of attention, a sense of connection in exchange for personal information, the more intimate the better. Post a photo of yourself - better if you are wearing less, better if you are doing something vulnerable, intimate, better with more controversy. A 2018 study by Bell, Cassarly and Dunbar examines the extent to which young women aged 18-24 posted self-images that were sexually suggestive and its correlation with the amount of “likes” and online engagement one would receive. The results concluded that this type of positive engagement on sexually suggestive photos encouraged young women to post more of them. As young people have been subject to this reward system for longer and whilst our young minds are still developing, we have a heightened sensitivity to this type of social reward. The oversharing of one’s sexuality and body essentially transfers ownership, or feeling of entitlement to the consumer, who possesses the power of encouraging it, or negatively engaging.

It’s not only sexualization that receives this engagement - the new phenomenon of oversharing personal information on the internet, especially now that less people are choosing to stay anonymous on the internet than ever before, has become essentially a new norm. Simply opening the Tik Tok app will present you with people in their homes, talking to the camera about intimate, vulnerable, and often embarrassing stories in full detail. The fascination with this seemingly raw and unfiltered form of content, or sexualized content, taps into a different type of perversion in the human psyche; this type of content, because it is in a way so humiliatingly honest, welcomes the most brutal responses. Though many love informational oversharing, with netizens commonly expressing that it makes them feel better about themselves, or relieved in its relatability, a 2022 study concluded that informational oversharing stems from anxiety and alienation from society, where people desperately try to find intimacy, attention, and relatability in their vulnerability.  “Better to shock than to bore” - or relevance over irrelevance, has become the subconscious logic. Relevance is emphasized more than ever now, where even “normal” people have a fixation on “staying relevant”, much like a celebrity would traditionally have. The “digital footprint” is no longer about reservation or preservation, it is about sensation and impact. That’s the new age of fame, and it is stupidly easy, stupidly addictive. 

I feel like this newfound addiction to attention and instant gratification has shifted our collective values. We value privacy much less, in favor of attention. Social media platforms have taught us that we can receive a great amount of attention, validation, and discourse just by trading one’s privacy, the value of which has been artificially decreased by TNMCs just as the value of fame/exposure has been artificially increased. 

The strategy of self advertisement is now learned by young adolescents before, or even instead, of the strategies of self preservation and self protection. No real cyber literacy is taught - it is simply learned through experience. Older generations and very young children do not have the years of developmental experience infiltrated by the digital space to garner an awareness of the real-life-to-digital dissonance. The two are not as easily separable to someone naive to the difference of impact they have. The digital space gives one, in a way, the illusion of ultimate privacy, almost like it encourages the exploitation of your deepest vulnerabilities. You can tell your innermost secrets out loud, alone, in the comfort of your own room, and be heard and seen by millions. Accounts of very young children or older people often go viral because their personas online are often either the most vulnerable pure reflection of their reality, or they are presenting themselves in a very obviously curated way, where they naively act like how they think people on the internet should act. These types of accounts are almost always loved by the public in an exploitative or patronizing way, where the humor lies in the fact that they do not act on social media in the way that shows a sense of “getting it”, part of this dreadful post-ironic, terminally blasé attitude that has plagued those with experience-based, shame-based digital literacy. I propose that this attitude is formed out of self protection, or a need to present oneself as somebody who is impenetrable in vulnerability.

The internet is where anything is said mostly without real life consequences - and this is another large aspect of why the digital space is addictive. One gets addicted to the honesty, which coaxes you into delving into and producing opinions that one would not think of producing in real life. Because of this honesty, people often purposefully think of things to critique and reasons to attack. But this is also a product of the oppressive real-life social norms of courtesy and the overbearing expectation of niceness. The digital realm is, in a way, a solace where we can reject that. But that freedom of communication is simply on the other extreme end of the spectrum of healthy communication. The pendulum never stops in the healthy middle. I often like to think of all my social media comments as if they were being said to me, in person, by the people behind these profiles. They usually have photos of themselves publicly posted. They say vile things because I am not real. To them, and funny enough, oftentimes to myself as well, I am just a monkey that is dancing on the circuit board inside their phones, in their pocket, accessible at any time and able to be deleted at any time. I am so beautifully insignificant, so temporary, and yet it inexplicably gives me a sense of a permanent presence - a stable one, that will not fade. I am not immune to the fetishization of fame.

Schlosser identifies self presentation versus self disclosure; self presentation being a goal-oriented, strategic, and curated presentation of the self, with self disclosure being sharing factual information to another about oneself, regardless of its impact on one’s social reputation. She finds that the internet gives affordance for self disclosure due to the option of anonymity, but also discourages disclosure through unfiltered and open audience feedback. Through personal observation, I believe that the issue is more complex, and calls for a more nuanced discussion than whether social platforms promote or discourage presentation or disclosure - because this discussion suggests that there is no blurred line between the curated self and the objective self. Even in a non-social media context, it is hard to differentiate between genuine and performative behavior, since it is so hard for a subject to differentiate and admit to it. With how engrossed most people are within their digital selves, I will argue that it is all presentative - and that even content that feels like disclosure is self presentation. Is there really no motive in disclosure, as Schlosser puts it? 

Maybe disclosure is innocence - a naieveté that is ironically revered and unironically feared. With the internet being an automatic concrete archive of one’s opinions and expression and a machine that almost always guarantees a consequence, there is a saying that has emerged in recent years: “be careful of what you say on the internet”. This is referring to the fear of getting “canceled” for saying something problematic, or to the possibility of publicly embarrassing oneself whether in action, speech or aesthetics. When people have an understanding of this ruthless internet system, everything one says and does on the internet is purposefully curated, with extra care in the desired effect of the content. Even when content is created for the purpose of self-degradation or self embarrassment for humor, it is still careful to not be too vulnerable, or too weird. 

Referring back to my earlier observation of how content from young children or older people who do not necessarily “get” the internet often go viral, I think that maybe this form of simple, naive, innocent and vulnerable content is the only true disclosure that exists on the internet - unintentional disclosure. Unintentional disclosure also can come forth in times where one may try to present a lie to consumers, and are proven false. I believe that this is why these videos and posts go viral - we all truly do love disclosure. We love honesty and vulnerability, proof of humanness and unintentional subjects of endearment. I do believe that my current generation is striving for real human connection, closeness, and earnest communication in this epidemic of loneliness, spearheaded by the cave-like illusion of comfort that technology brings. We’re just scared - I know I am - because who wouldn’t be, as involuntary test subjects for mystifying technologies? 

Altman and Taylor proposed the social penetration theory (SPT), where surface-level relationships can develop into much deeper ones, where the seal of intimacy gets penetrated, in a sense, through the sharing of personal information - self disclosure. The goal within self disclosure is social penetration, which is more present than ever in the context of social media, except social media does not give the affordance of other strategies to gain social penetration - such as a slow, gradual relationship, face-to-face contact, and mutual acknowledgement. Since content creators do not have these other affordances, I will argue that they feel the urge to go to extremes with a performance of self-disclosure, for the main goal of social penetration, creating parasocial relationships. 

The parasocial relationship is the driving force of the use of influencers in modern day advertisement. Simulating intimate, honest relationships is what the content creator strives for, because that is what creates the most engagement and makes for the best product endorsements, encouraged and funded by TNMCs. It is what the consumer also loves to consume, because without the added aspects of social penetration such as a slow, gradual relationship, face-to-face contact, and mutual acknowledgement, the consumer is able to have a fundamentally not whole but idealized version of the curator, where the curator’s personality can seem much more wholesome, specified, honest and relatable than the personality of anyone that the consumer could know in real life. 

The influencer blurs the line between “normal” person and celebrity. Celebrities used to be elusive creatures, where a sighting of them outside of a movie or magazine was considered fascinating - because celebrities used to be untouchable. They were Gods rarely among men and worshiped for their unapproachability. The influencer in the digital age has fundamentally transformed the concept of fame into one based not necessarily on traditional talent, but on social penetration, controversy, and very importantly, attractiveness. Even traditional celebrities are now, in recent years, joining social media platforms to engage with fans in a parasocial way - to show that celebrities are just like us! They eat food, shit it out, and have bad hair in the morning! We have all found out how profitable it is to be human - but not too human - that now, even the Gods have come down to earth to cash in. 

Even if consumers are aware of these dynamics in their media consumption, they will still often choose to engage positively in this system. 54% of young Americans would even become an influencer themselves if given the chance, because of how it is advertised and idealized. The parasocial relationship has created a simulation of what a person should be, due to the lack of affordances for actual human connection whilst simulating a version of human connection that is advertised as better than a real human connection - but I will argue that in reality, digital social penetration, or maybe even the illusion of it, fails to satisfy real social needs, but instead of this dilemma spurring people to seek out in-person connections, the instant and effortless gratification of a digital parasocial relationship makes users simply seek out a surplus of it.

My image, or at least the image I carefully project, has been seen by millions. Millions now have a specific perception of me - two-dimensional and dictated by an altered fraction of my legitimate self, locked in time. But what is the legitimate self? The digital age has created a larger gray area in the concept of “self” and “individual”, widening the hole that capitalism has created, where one is not only a product, but a walking advertisement. We now express and define the self through sousveillance, and often do not know ourselves without it. The self has come to be defined as the density and reaction of digital perception. Sometimes people no longer know who they are after their popularity leaves them. Late stage capitalism, bass-boosted by new technologies, has made individuals to be solely defined by reaction - because reaction is what creates transaction, what creates currency, whether it be a fix of mental gratification or actual money. I cannot think of anyone who would possibly like to admit it, but there is certainly a present attitude of “if you don’t exist online, do you even exist? Why wouldn’t you want to be online?” Why wouldn’t you want to partake in this addictive algorithm, endless scrolling, information overload, stimulation overload, and the promise of attention? You are weird if you don’t.

 With the value of personal information going up, and the value of privacy going down, with people believing that they are so insignificant that their information does not matter - I will refrain from using that as a main talking point. The promotion and investment into the advancement of social technologies almost feels like state-funded propaganda, but I also will not get into that talking point in fears of sounding like a crazed conspiracy theorist. The main issue is how it has shifted our entire social attitude, and has deeply affected the social dynamics of communities and circles in real life. Human connection is strained by image and obsession. It is strained from a disembodiment of the self and the environment. We now have to control our social lives online (transcending location and social boundary) as well as our social lives in real life. Because of how personal one’s social page seems, and how unintimidating and easy it is to contact anyone, there is no secrecy left. And some of the world’s greatest stories revolve around the beauty of secrecy.

This conjecture is not just to say that everybody should return to analog, and that the digital age has not had its glorious moments - but social media tries to convince you that the main purpose of your patronage to their platform is connection, fun, and inspiration, while the purpose is really all capital. And because we, the 21st century, have become test subjects for these new, cruel, untested technologies, there was truly no restriction or boundary on who was deemed able to access essentially this panopticon of positive/negative reinforcement, and content from every dark crevice of the world. This promotion of self exploitation has wedged its way into being a priority for many. Friends become friends and lovers become lovers based on aesthetics, image, and attraction. The curation of a profile is just as important as the curation of the real self. The curation of a profile becomes the self. The line between who one is online and in real life is becoming more and more blurred; people try to mold themselves to act in the way they are able to online. Online, one is free to lust and lie and hate and obsess and love. Online, one can be confident, sexy, loud, carefully vulnerable, relentlessly controversial, smart, beautiful, mysterious, careless, carefree, detached, ethereal and unreal. But maybe humans were not meant to be all of those things, all at once.

Author’s note: If you read to the end of this, thank you, and if you’d like access to the bibliography please PM me! I would have liked to make this longer - there’s so many things I could have gone on and on about. I’d also love to hear any comments or questions or general feedback.

[sideshrimp]

Booktok is ruining books?

I am currently rereading the Inheritance Cycle so I can pick up the 5th book, and it's kinda crazy to remember this was written by a 15-year-old? The revelation is extra startling because I read fourth wing a few months ago-they have pretty similar premises: dragon riders, telepathic connection, special powers, evil empire, etc. Obviously, they are aiming for completely different crowds but if someone would have advertised Fourth Wing as for fans of the inheritance cycle and acotar I wouldn't bat an eye. The common premise got me thinking a lot about what I didn't like about Fourth Wing, and I'm very struck by how much better constructed the story is in Eragon. The world-building makes more sense, the character's voice is more distinct and overall the plot has an actual arc and the pacing is much better!

(Granted I'm not acting like Eragon is peak literature, it's derivative and trope-ridden and has a classic hero's journey that we've seen a thousand times. However, as a middle-grade novel it works well as an introduction to fantasy and throughout the series finds ways to differentiate itself. Moreover, it is just a better-polished work)

There is also this other conversation about the declining quality of books since this Bloomsberg article came out: TikTok Is Turning the Publishing World Into Fast Fashion & to say its sparked a lot of conversation would be an understatement, but much of the article focuses on the release of Iron Flame (Fourth Wings much-anticipated sequel) in particular, and I can't say I agree 100% with it.

1. The title is obviously meant to catch your attention but now that I keep seeing people repeat it I just want to clarify that the biggest critique of fast fashion is that it is unsustainable, promotes overconsumption, and relies on cheap and unethical labor practices, so like no I don't think comparing publishing to that is 100% warranted instead the issue is mostly surrounding lack of quality, misprints, and the fact that many books read like unedited first drafts.

2. The article spends so much time focusing on Yarro's appropriation of Scottish Gaelic, and the obvious lack of research that went into it, and while yeah I agree its poorly researched. I also don't think this is some new phenomenon like authors leach off other cultures all the time for aesthetic purposes, especially from the middle east and people don't really seem to care then soooo....

What I do think can be gleamed from Yarro's success and the strategy used by her publisher Red Tower is that TikTok is definitely having an effect on publishing, relying a lot more on hype through influencer marketing and special editions than the actual craft and quality of the writing, so it makes sense they would blow more of their budget on marketing, sprayed edges, and extra arcs than spend the time or money on editors or sensitivity readers. Furthermore, it is difficult to do either of those things when you are fighting an algorithm that only spotlights a book for a good 2 weeks or so before it moves on to something else. It's no surprise then that publishers like Red Tower would crack this formula through their special editions, influencer marketing, and forced scarcity, and its also no surprise that once the FOMO wore off and the hype bubble popped people realized the writing was actually kind of shit.

In terms of overconsumption, TikTok is always going to promote it. You need to post on the site almost every day for the algorithm to work for you and bc it relies heavily on videos rather than photos you need to own a lot more to make decent content. In general its bad, but unlike clothing that goes out of style and is tossed in the bin, people do tend to hold on to their books, and large personal libraries do predate Tiktok. I highly recommend you support your local libraries whenever you can!

Honestly, I think there is so much more to be said about the pressure Booktok puts on people to read more and how this leads people to skim or avoid more challenging books, and the rise in anti-intellectualism but I think I have rambled enough.

[mariacallous]

To understand how the American media landscape fractured, one must first understand the brands that forged it. According to Faris Yakob, cofounder of creative consultancy Genius Steals and author of Paid Attention, advertisers created the neutral “view from nowhere” voice in media. In the 19th and 20th centuries, national brands looking to grow customers wouldn’t partner with biased publications. But everything changed when ad tech arrived.

“People started tagging their digital media buys so it wouldn’t appear next to topics like homosexuality, or Covid, to avoid getting into clusters,” Yakob says. “But that means that the news isn’t being funded. If you can pick and choose what topics to fund in news, you can distort what is being reported on, to some degree.”

That distortion, like the US Federal Communications Commission’s abolition of the fairness doctrine in 1987, is part of how America got into this mess. Similar to content recommendation algorithms, audience profiles in digital marketing created micro-targeted ads. Those ads are more valuable on multiple screens. Media executive Euan McLeod recalls growing up when “there was no choice” but to watch what his parents were watching. Now each person in a household might be watching something wildly different, and the shared experience has dissolved. Isolated artists are creating for isolated audiences. Is it any wonder that generative AI seems poised to tailor entertainment to audiences of one?

In this world, we can all be George Lucas, using technology to create special editions. Rick gets on the plane with Ilsa. Jack fits on the door with Rose. Ben Solo lives. As Marvel Comics writer Anthony Oliveira says, Andy Warhol was fascinated by the fact that people everywhere drank the same Coke. But the allure of AI content generation, he says, is the same as the Coca-Cola Freestyle: filling your own cup with someone else’s flavors.

But when everyone can just request the narrative path they want, opportunities to hear other people’s stories greatly diminish. “That is a very sad world to live in, because how else are we gonna be conveying our deepest hopes and wishes, what we think should be a vision of the world we want to live in, what we should worry about?" Yang says. "This is what story and art is for.”

Using AI to sanitize content in regions where certain subjects are banned is already possible, especially if actors yield likeness rights. Generative AI means that studios could edit or change the content of some films without consulting the people who signed a contract based on a script, and the only thing stopping them is the possibility of a defamation suit. It sounds unlikely, until you remember that multiple versions of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse appeared in cinemas.

And animation is an apt comparison: Most changes to entertainment production have made film and TV more like animation or video game development, not less. With current technology, actors can be little more than action figures smashing together, as weightless as they are sexless. With AI, the actors need never leave the trailer. Or exist.

“[Studios will] say it’s for the insurance,” says production designer Blass, suggesting a “Paul Walker scenario” in which a deceased actor’s performance needs generating, because that performance is one of the terms of the film’s business insurance. But in reality, these likenesses could be used to do things that actors would rather not—whether it’s a dangerous stunt or a sex scene.

Generative AI could also be used to edit films in real time, responsive to data-brokered preferences, with algorithms running A/B tests on how much nudity you want based on the customer profile you most closely match.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is: In the 1990s, Blockbuster Video refused to stock films like Natural Born Killers and The Last Temptation of Christ. But that tradition goes back even further. Otherwise known as the Hays Code, the Production Code was an industry standard of self-censorship guidelines for major US studios from 1930 to 1968, when it was replaced by the movie ratings system. The Code influenced everything from the Comics Code to parental advisory warnings to video game ratings. It’s why titles from major studios during that period don’t depict graphic violence. It’s also why they lack out-and-proud queer and interracial relationships. But today, a revived Production Code might have very different guidelines. For example, the Pentagon recently announced it would no longer offer technical support to filmmakers who censor their films for the Chinese market.

When I ask McLeod if he thinks America will ever re-adopt the Production Code, he’s unequivocal: “Absolutely. Everything goes in cycles.”

Hollywood’s Future Belongs to People—Not Machines

[daz4i]

listen. sometimes idm ads. i do want sites i use or youtubers i watch frequently to earn money so i can keep using/watching them, and i won't spend money myself, so this is a good compromise.

the problem is!!!!! ads make these sites lag, sometimes cover pages and make them unusable, or they clog videos and pop up so often and are so long they're practically as long as the video itself, to the point i just stop watching youtubers who have too many ad breaks even if i do like their content

and i gotta say, i don't get it? like being annoyed with an ad won't make me want to get the product - and i know that's not the point, the point is to put it at the front of your mind for when you or someone you know need the product this company provides - and i do end up clicking ads for things i find interesting sometimes

and the thing is. with video ads especially. i think smaller is better for everyone. one 5 seconds ad is so much less annoying than a 20 seconds one or even just two 5 seconds ads, even if it appears multiple times per video, bc psychologically it feels more bearable, yknow? the product is still gonna be in my subconscious or w/e but now i won't associate it with being painfully annoyed, so this is better for the advertisers too. so why not go for that!

also, sometimes ads are taken straight from tv directly to youtube (probably why some are very long), and the problem with that is their volume. like. if i'm watching smth in the middle of the night and your car insurance ad is twice as loud as the video i'm watching, i'm gonna hate it even more (a friend who learned copywriting told me they make ads louder on tv bc if you lower your volume during an ad break and tune out or just change channels quickly, it's more likely to catch your attention this way. i get that but why not just do this very minor adjustment when you sell that ad to youtube. please)

as for websites, some of these ads are so fucking evil 😭 i ranted abt this before but oh my god weight loss and especially fasting apps ads should be illegal i am not even slightly exaggerating. ads literally being malware??? not even getting into how scary algorithms can get.

and as i mentioned about lags, so many ads running at the same time, or the same ad space changing rapidly make things so slow that i once again have to wonder who's benefitting from this. i can't even see what some of the ads are bro, and i don't want to, but like, you're just losing money here, and if i know a site doesn't work well with ads enabled i will either switch to a browser with adblock (tbc, talking abt mobile here. firefox's app is shitty but necessary) or, if i can't use adblock, won't use that site anymore. so again. who's benefitting from this.

idk what the point of this rant is. ads today literally exist for the sake of existing i swear. i don't think they help sell things more at this point, which is the whole point of ads in the first place. and for smaller or newer businesses, they sometimes have to raise prices to make up for paying for their advertising campaign (drew gooden's videos about buying random items he gets ads for showcase this phenomenon well i think) which makes people less likely to buy them, and i can't help but wonder if some products would be better if their companies spent less money on just advertising them and instead actually invest in quality (see also: any shady company that targets youtubers for sponsorships constantly while having an extremely bad product, or barely paying their employees a living wage, etc)

anyway yeah these are my probably not too uncommon thoughts on the matter. have a nice rest of the day

[thatwolfarrow]

So, shit hit the fan with the platform you were publishing your work to.

 Lately it’s felt like there aren’t any reliable places for creators to share their work and that the whole internet is going up in flames. Well...you’re right. It is. And it’s squarely because the egos of the rich and power hungry are rearing their ugly heads. But, that’s no reason for you to stop trying to get your work out in the world.

So here’s 3 essential tips for artists/creators trying to regroup and build their presence on other sites

1). HAVE A BUSINESS EMAIL

This will be your most reliable form of contact online and should be your go to when it comes to contacting you about your work. Even if you use methods like Google Forms, Ko-Fi, or any sort of external site to take commissions, it’ll always be a good idea to have an email like this as a backup especially now with so many sites being hostile to creators.

2). CAST AS WIDE OF A NET AS POSSIBLE.

If your work is on multiple sites, it's that much more likely people will see your work. Apps like Postybirb and sites like Buffer can help with this immensely. Since they let you post your work to multiple sites at once. And this doesn’t just extend to image hosting sites. Posting links to your work in discord and Reddit servers, and posting your timelapses on Youtube and TikTok can all help to build your presence. You shouldn’t be relying on a single algorithm to boost your work. You must become your own advertiser. Finally, and most importantly,

3). MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A WEBSITE OR CENTRAL HUB.

In the current state of the net, it’s more important than ever for people to know where they can find you. You probably already have a linktree or Carrd if you’re a creator, and while those work best as a way to let people know where people can find your work on different sites, having a full website of your own would be ideal. Since you can have a one stop shop for people to see all of your creations and updates about things like your work schedule, commissions availability, events you’re travelling to, TOS and Pricing changes, and so on. Having your own website also gives you much more flexibility compared to simply publishing your work to a social media site. If you’re working on a long form story, like a web comic or mixed media narrative, you can tailor your website to the needs of your story instead of having to create something with the parameters of another site in mind. I cannot make any promises about where the internet will go over even the coming few months, I just hope that, with these tips, creators won’t take too much of a hit as for them to be unable to sustain themselves in their endeavors. Because their work is more than just the sites they post to, let alone their followings.

[rollercoasterwords]

Regarding recommendations of your fic, are you more comfortable with people not ‘advertising’ it on tiktok and such? I know that the comments people make on there can be pretty intense. My point of asking this is, where is the line for you about how much you want your fic talked about outside of tumblr? I think we’ve all seen it before, fics blowing up online is a double edged sword, so I understand you wanting to keep in ‘contained’. I just love to gush about my current favorite reads, but I also don’t want to cause you any trouble.

okay i feel like this answer is gonna get long lol but. yeah generally speaking tldr is i'm not really comfortable w people posting abt my hp fics on tiktok anymore

and like. i don't wanna come off as like...ungrateful ig. like it does make me happy when people like my fics enough to recommend them + i appreciate the kind words + love etc but!! honestly if someone is wanting to let me know that they appreciate my writing the best way to do so is by commenting or sending me a message here, bc im not gonna see any tiktoks unless i go searching for them. and while i appreciate people reccing my fics i also like. have no desire for any sort of 'advertising' like i appreciate recs to the extent that they're someone telling me 'hey i loved ur writing!' i don't like. have a desire to grow an 'audience' or whatever so! that is not something i am asking anybody to help me do and if someone does decide to try and make my fics more popular i'm not really gonna be grateful bc like...i didn't ask for that lol.

and the two big reasons i'm specifically wary about tiktok are:

1. every time i have seen a fic go viral/gain popularity on tiktok there has been a simultaneous influx of hate, entitlement, and just general fuckery that has made the fic writer's life worse. so in this case, specifically with atwmd, i am 100% sure that if it did gain popularity via tiktok that i would get an influx of hate, especially bc it's like. a complex story with very fucked up characters lol. i mean just look at the people who take up arms bc atyd wolfstar is 'toxic' or whatever...i do not want 2 see what would happen if that crowd read my wolfstar in atwmd lmao

2. i have very mixed feelings abt writing hp fic in the first place and am trying to limit my personal contribution to hp's popularity. like. with ao3 people aren't going to be stumbling across hp fic unless they're already seeking it out; tumblr is, for the most part, a similar type of self-curated space where my hp fic pretty much remains limited to what are already hp-fic reading circles.

but bc of tiktok's algorithm, my fic could end up on the fyp's of people who aren't really interested in hp and pique their interest, drawing in new people to start engaging w hp fandom who otherwise wouldn't. and i don't really like the idea of that happening! i don't want the fic i'm writing to contribute to like. growing hp's popularity. i'd rather keep it in circles of people who are already choosing to engage w this content, rather than have it float into the lives of people who might otherwise not see it.

i also feel like. on ao3 anyone finding the fic is gonna be someone searching for like. those specific tags--someone who wants to read a story like the one i'm writing. on tumblr, the only people really hearing abt it r people who follow me + so have like....seen me talking abt the fic + are basically knowing what to expect. on tiktok, any posts tagged like #marauders or whatever could end up crossing paths w a bunch of people who specifically would not read this type of fic, and i do not want those people to read it and then get upset with me when the story isn't what they wanted (something else that i have seen happen to other writers). so that's kinda what i mean by the 'breaking containment' thing

anyway. i don't have any issue w people reccing my fics to like their friends or closed discord servers or whatever--spaces where like. u know the people ur reccing it to are people who would like the fic + not treat it like a product for consumption etc. and as stated previously i appreciate those sorts of recommendations bc it does mean a lot 2 me when someone likes my writing enough to want 2 share it!! there are just specific pitfalls w tiktok that i have grown uncomfortable w to the point that now anytime someone mentions seeing my fic over there and i go search up the vid, even if it's super sweet and has like lovely comments that make me smile and literally nothing negative i still get a kick of anxiety at the thought of who might see this video or what might happen if it goes viral.

i've accepted at this point that i can't control how people are going to respond to my writing once i've posted it on the internet; all i can do is say 'please don't do x with my fics' and hope people listen. but i'm not gonna like get mad at people for posting on tiktok or whatever bc obviously not everyone is gonna see this post or read my faq, and i don't want to send any hate towards people who are posting tiktoks abt my fics--like i don't need anyone defending me or whatever. usually those vids are just out of sight out of mind 4 me. but!! since u have taken the time 2 kindly ask (ty btw) this is like. the very long answer abt where i currently stand on tiktok lol

[staringdownabarrel]

My conspiracy theory--a conspiracy theory that I'll never be able to prove--is that corporate advertising firms probably are way more active on Tumblr than most people would like to believe. Like yeah sure, maybe not every single movie is getting its own ad on the sidebar or anything, but I'd be shocked if there aren't people being paid to spread memes of whatever new movie is coming out or whatever.

It's not like this would be a particularly unusual thing to happen. On Reddit--don't hate me; I migrated here before it was cool--it isn't so unusual for companies to try and do marketing disguised as regular comments. It's common enough that r/hailcorporate was once dedicated to posts that looked like they could have been made by a company's PR department. (It's since been watered down to just being posts that mention a brand on the site, though a lot of them could still be attempts at soft advertising.)

The other thing that happens on Reddit is that people will occasionally sell their accounts. How much they'll get varies, but for a year-old account with average karma, they might get between $5 and $50 for it. Sometimes people will just buy an account because they don't want to fuck around for a few weeks trying to get enough karma on their accounts to post on the subreddits they're actually interested in, but a lot of the time it's probably also just so they can go straight to marketing mode.

Plus, y'know, it's been a bit of a meme for a while that half the people on subs like r/selfie are people who are trying to advertise their OnlyFans content. (No shame if that's a thing for you, by the way; but this is a real thing a lot of people on Reddit actively try to do.) Basically, the entire site is filled with soft advertisements that are trying to pretend to not be that.

My other piece of evidence stems from something that came up in a Swell Entertainment video a couple of years ago. I don't have an exact time stamp for this because, like any good conspiracy theorist and true to my brand overall, I haven't proofread this post at all before I posted it. Anyway, at one point in that linked video, she shows a screenshot of a sponsorship deal that basically amounted to the company asking that she have a poster in the background for a certain number of videos and not mention that it's meant as an advert. Basically, just sell it off as a background decoration she was trying out for a bit.

I wouldn't be too surprised if this kind of thing also happens on Tumblr. The major companies are clearly of the opinion that user-generated content can work as an advertisement. I think it'd also be a lot easier on Tumblr in some ways because people are kinda used to Tumblr being the fandom website, so seeing posts for an upcoming movie or show isn't going to trip any alarms the same way they might on some other website.

I think also, on Reddit people were generally much more aware of this being a thing, so they were a bit more vigilant for it. There were definitely a couple of times when I got a reply to one of my comments where I wondered if it wasn't a celebrity's PR team trying to counteract negative opinions, for example.

There's definitely a few things that have come out somewhat recently that have made me wonder if there hasn't been an active effort to do some grassroots-style advertising for the movie on Tumblr. (Yes, I'm thinking of Barbie specifically.) Sure, it's not unusual for a big budget movie to get a lot of hype, especially if it's part of an ongoing franchise, but usually that level of hype doesn't start until the movie's already out.

I feel like the hard part of this style of advertising on Tumblr is that this site isn't really as easily monetised as some other social media sites. Some of this is because Tumblr has traditionally been pretty resistant to any kind of social media-fication of the site in general, so there isn't really an algorithm that can be gamed the same way you can game the algorithm on Reddit, YouTube, or Instagram.

Because of that, a lot of the ways you'd advertise on Tumblr are very dependent on you being able to "breach containment". Maybe you'd have to buy an account with x number of followers to get the chance of a certain gifset reaching a larger audience, or find a way of convincing some larger accounts to follow you.

This is really the area where I feel like I'm not ever going to be able to prove it definitively. On other sites, especially ones with a fairly well developed influencer culture, you'd just have to pay off a few people to start the trend. Even on Reddit, where there isn't really an influencer culture the same way there is on Instagram or YouTube, you just have to know how to work the site's algorithms a little bit.

I don't really know what the beginning stages of doing that kind of soft advertising on Tumblr would look like. At least in my corner of the site, there's an active rejection of that kind of culture, so someone who'd try that would probably get rightfully shunned. Maybe a newer account could follow however many other people who are posting about a certain thing, show off some gifsets based on a trailer, and that'd be the starting point, but it'd be a slow start; not the kind of thing you'd necessarily want for an advertisement where you want as many eyeballs as possible.

Still, in some ways, that might actually make it work even better. Because it's coming from some nobody from a very specific corner of the site, nobody would be expecting it to be a corporate account.