#fuck you reddit and your karma system

[awheelywheelygoodtime]

I spent two days writing this and I would like some recognition because I have no one else to share it with.

I would like to preface this by saying that the original film is my absolute favourite of all time. Surprisingly, I actually really liked the remake! It is not without it’s flaws, and I hope to rectify them because no one can fucking stop me and I have to do something to relax after my exam.

I always considered the franchise to be the closest thing that Disney has to true epic fantasy and the genre will serve as a source of inspiration for my amendments.

1. The Animation and Character Design:

I actually thought that the animation and character designs were brilliant. Lions are my favourite animal and I have been watching nature documentaries religiously since I was a child. The remake hit a perfect spot between realism and the aesthetics of the original characters. The landscape and such is a different matter, but I will get into that eventually.

My biggest gripe is one that is commonly shared by pretty much everyone that saw the film, the expressions or lack thereof. Real lions can squint, curl their lips, crease their brow and basically move their faces. You would be surprised by how expressive they can be.

Some people may say that it would anthropomorphise them too much and be unrealistic but we have a monarchy of talking lions, so who gives a fuck?

This is also a minor thing that only nature nuts would notice but the lions move wrong. They have this weird loping gait when they should run in what’s called a “rotary gallop” like real lions. The original film literally showed this in slow motion when Simba runs through the desert.

2. The Pridelands and Beyond:

The Pridelands need a lot of work. Everything is too beige and boring. It was as if they couldn’t decide between a golden arid savannah or a lush green one and just meshed the two into one boring mess.

Minas Tirith, Mordor and The Shire are all incredibly iconic and instantly recognisable. The same should be true for the Pridelands and the rest of the world.

Pride Rock should be an absolute monolith. A giant that looms in the background of every scene in the Pridelands and a believable capital for a kingdom (I’ll get more into this later). Not just tall but broad, a sprawling wild metropolis.

The Graveyard is an inhospitable hellhole. Always shrouded in shadow born from the ashes and noxious clouds spewed from geothermal activity. Thick clouds of mist and fog blanket the landscape, leaving bones and carcasses to loom out of the smog like giant teeth and claws.

The Gorge is a massive scar in the landscape. A Grand Canyon-esque pit that swallows light and just screams doom. The jungle that Simba winds up in needs to be more colourful and lively, a real paradise in the desert.

I think that a lot of the issues with the setting comes down to the fact that they acted as if they were on an actual set and not an animated world.

3. Ecology and Society

We need more wildlife.

More animals should have been at the presentation of Simba. Leopards and African Wild Dogs, Hippos and Crocodiles, even Gorillas and other jungle creatures should have been part of the montage of animals at the beginning. Migratory birds should have been present to bring the news back to their respective homelands (if Buckingham Palace can make international news then so can Pride Rock). Hyenas would also be part of the procession (this ties into something later).

Mufasa explaining the circle of life would include some scenes of various animals asking their king for counsel.

I would expand on the pride itself. It’s rare but some exceptionally large prides have subordinate males that can mate with the lionesses. This would avoid a lot of incestous connotations and make the pride more like a royal court (I have plans for Nala).

I would also change the wildebeest herd to a Cape buffalo herd. Cape buffalo are notorious lion killers and can live in herds up to a thousand strong. Shenzi and the gang send the calves first into the gorge and the rest of the herd would follow.

I would also pepper in references that Shenzi and her clan are mostly comprised of vagabonds, outcasts and exiles from other clans. The hyenas from the opening sequence would be some more positive examples. This may seem like “not all hyenas (tm)” but it’s better than them just being the Orcs of the savannah.

4. Characters and Characterisation

I’m not going to do everyone, just the characters that I have a firm grasp on what I would have done.

Scar: a vicious aristocrat. Really play up the gentlemanly aspects of his personality to contrast with an absolutely black heart. Like Palpatine his sole reason to live is the pursuit of power. All the brutality of Tywin Lannister with the underhanded slyness of Petyr Baelish. This makes him ambitious as hell but doesn’t translate to being a good ruler.

Shenzi: a calculated ruler that cares only for the betterment of her subjects. Queen of the Graveyard and willing to do anything to feed her clan of the lost and exiled. She and Scar were once genuine friends but now they are only using each other for their own gain.

Rafiki: kooky and mystic. They are basically Gandalf on mushrooms. Wielding a very subtle and ambiguous form of magic. I use gender neutral pronouns because I wouldn’t be opposed to making them female like in the broadway show.

Nala: a fierce huntress and the only hope for the pride during the reign of Scar. I would also make her a princess from another pride that has been betrothed to Simba. This gets rid of the incest questions and helps lay the groundwork for a sequel.

The Pride and the Subjects: I would place greater emphasis on the pride itself and the citizens of the Pridelands. Show the growing discord between the pride and the clan. The other animals are getting sick of Scar’s misrule and are either leaving or are in quiet revolt.

Mtumishi: a cape cobra and a new character. Zazu was major-domo for Mufasa, Shenzi serves the same role for Scar and Mtumishi serves his own royal. Mtumishi repeatedly visits the Pridelands under the orders of his queen, Zira. Zira rules Nala’s original pride and is a great figure of fear and conquest. She’s basically a family friendly lioness version of Vlad the Impaler.

I don’t really have anything of significance to say about everyone else. I would like to see more Sarabi but I’m happy with the other characters.

5. Plot and Story

I have already mentioned some additions that I would make in the previous sections but I’ll list a few more here. I would keep the same overall plot but with just some stuff added in.

We need to include the Hunt of the Lionesses from the broadway show. We don’t need to be too gory but I still think that it would be a brilliant addition to the film. It would give a greater emphasis to the lionesses and a short prayer after the hunt would reiterate the message of the Circle of Life.

I would expand on the meeting between Scar and the hyenas. Shenzi and her clan have just been humiliated by Mufasa. They have pushed their luck and now fear retaliation from the entire kingdom. Enter Scar with promises of food and security. He plays most of the clan like fiddles. Shenzi is wise to his schemes but doesn’t really have a choice. They have no idea no other allies and she is out options.

Scar would stop Zazu and the pride just before they got to the gorge. He would spin a few lies about no one needing to see the state of Mufasa and Simba. He would take care of everything and strongly encourage a heartbroken Sarabi to abdicate.

I would contrast Simba growing up in the jungle with Nala growing up in the Pridelands. Simba having fun with Timon and Pumbaa vs Nala cowering from a passing battalion of hyenas, Simba being desperately lonely as the only lion in the jungle vs Nala growing up in a tight knit community of older lionesses and other cubs, Simba battling leopards and other jungle hunters to protect Timon and Pumbaa vs Nala becoming a great huntress and protecting the smaller carnivores from competitive hyenas. Eventually, Sarabi and the rest of the pride scheme to send Nala to find help. The nearest pride belongs to Zira and that is a no-go. She must go further afield and eventually winds up in the jungle.

The conversation between Simba and Mufasa’s spirit is much more mystical. Rafiki leads Simba to the puddle in the thorns and his staring into the ripples of his reflection sucks him into an endless clearing beneath the night sky. He Lives in You starts crying as the stars come to land and form different animals. Not just African animals, but pretty much all of them. Bears, whales, jaguars, kangaroos, komodo Dragons, penguins and many more. This riot of life and light eventually leads to Mufasa himself. The vision ends with Simba back with Rafiki.

Mtumishi would be a reoccurring character relaying between the Pridelands and Zira. Scar’s growing madness and the disappearance of Nala bring his role to a climax when Scar sends him packing just before Simba returns. This is to help set up a possible sequel.

Everything else I would leave as-is or I need more time to figure it out.

What do you guys think?

[rorschach-black]

hey redditors who just recently joined tumblr cause you didnt know where the fuck else to go among the blackout:

- you can be so so so not-normal here. in fact, its not only welcomed but encouraged

- feel free to change your username as many times as you want

- you can use sideblogs to save certain usernames you want so that they dont get taken by other people (this is usually practiced in fandoms)

- every other 'welcome to tumblr' post has been saying this already but its really important so it cant be stressed enough: MAKE YOUR BLOG YOUR HOME. otherwise people will think youre a (malicious) bot and block you

- use the tag system. i havent used reddit in a while but iirc the tags are like subreddits except they have no mods and also theres like 20 of them for one piece of media. theyre kinda disorganized in general, but its better than having no organization at all

- your dashboard is the tumblr equivalent of r/all

- your dashboard is ALSO the following page

- there IS an algorithm, the for you page; but nobody here uses it so its whatever

- you unfortunately cannot ratio people on here; every reblog and every like you get from that reblog gets added to the notes of the original post

- PLEASE private your likes and following pages on your blog. you have privacy here (and lowkey we'd rather not know anyways)

- karma doesnt exist here. nothing related to karma exists here. this is a land of lawlessness and the ghosts that life here are more alive than they ever were. go crazy

- you will recieve most news in a supernatural meme format; it will be whiplash inducing but its kinda the best way to find out about things on this site and irl so dont immediately scroll on these posts

- and finally, dont worry about the rent lowering shots they're not for you

[noellevanious]

Every reddit subreddit is basically "what if you turned this specific hobby into your personality" and it's simultaneously hilarious and unnerving to observe. The hollow pursuit of internet upvotes perpetrated by the karma system is insanely predatory, and like. Idk man. Fuck reddit and fuck modern social media

[simstryingtheirbestok]

This is a "what fucks me off about the TS3 subreddit" post. Feel free to skip it! But I have to get this out of my system.

What fucks me off about the sims3 subreddit is that it's the worst of all social media worlds.

Look, reddit sucks. I don't know any social media that doesn't, though Tumblr comes closest for me. But the way reddit traditionally has sucked and the way that particular subreddit sucks now are not the same.

Traditionally, these were kind of the pros and cons of reddit--very, very abridged version:

PROS

Some very knowledgeable, very funny people

Some wide-ranging discussions

There is a subreddit for your niche, whatever it is

CLEAR, WIDELY KNOWN GUIDELINES ABOUT WHEN TO DOWNVOTE

CLEAR, WIDELY KNOWN GUIDELINES ABOUT WHEN TO SELF-PROMOTE

(That's right, I said when to self-promote. That shit is very, very allowed and always has been.)

CONS

Toxic white cishet dudes and their off-the-charts wingnuttery, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc.

Brigading

ZERO tolerance for even the tiniest request for decency towards redditors who are not toxic white cishet dudes

That shitty "I'm an engineer" mindset, if you know, you know

Hypocrisy about downvoting: Where everyone in a subreddit shrieks "only downvote things that don't contribute to discussion!" but then downvotes you for typos

Karma farming

Okay, there were a lot more cons to old reddit than that and I might be am likely overstating the pros, but that's the general outline: In general, mostly, people downvoted stuff that derailed the thread or didn't fit the theme of a subreddit. And in general, mostly, you were allowed (in some subs, encouraged) to self-promote as long as your self-promotion was kept to about 10% of your overall contributions. So if you submitted 9 link posts on, I don't know, geodesic domes or something, on the 10th one you could post a link to your website, geodesicdominion.com or whatever.

The possessive pronoun "my" + [selection of content] didn't really have an analogue on reddit. Every other social media encourages you to apply "my" to the material you find there: My wall, my feed, my TL, my dash--my, my, my.

Reddit didn't really have that. You could, I guess, have said "my subreddits," to indicate the subreddits you were subscribed to, or "my home page," but you would've sounded like a douchebag and you would definitely have been bullied for it.

That's because using "my" as a modifier to other people's work is inherently douche-y behavior. It is fundamentally antisocial. You don't walk into a museum and start talking about "my" art unless you actually have work you did hanging there, but people virtually walk into online content all the time talking about "my."

I think we should all be looking critically at the way every so-called "social" media outlet encourages us to act like douchebags to each other, but that's a topic for another time. Also, lest I sound too preachy, please know that historically, I have been the biggest dbag of all: I wrote rants about The Shit Up With Which I Will Not Put On Myyyyy Dash pretty much daily when I was on Tumblr a decade ago. I am not exempt.

The problem is, now you have old reddit colliding with a new generation of redditors who have come up on the idea of MY when it comes to their social media; so when they get on r/sims3 and they see things they do not like on "their" subreddit, they downvote. Of course, maybe another redditor likes it and would enjoy seeing it, but tough shit!--Callie thinks your lighting mod sucks. Downvote.

Help request that I just saw yesterday? Downvote. Yeah, the two requests were posted by completely different people and yeah, the sub desperately needs to unpin that worthless content directory post and replace it with a link to a good FAQ, but stuff that bores me should not be on myyyyy subbbbb so I'm going to downvote it.

Ugly Sim? Downvote.

Half-assed screenshot? Downvote.

WCIF question that doesn't interest me? Downvote.

Genuinely useful content that would help so many Simmers if only more of them knew about it? Sorry (not sorry), it's competing with a compliment-seeking post about my ✨Simself✨. Downvote. Besides! how dare they self-promote on myyyyy--

So that's what I mean when I say r/sims3 is trash: It's the worst of old reddit ("how dare you attempt to make me feel bad about my vile and inexcusable mods") colliding with new reddit ("Just Google it ♡. Isn't my Simself so cute? 🥺"). And I would lay some of those problems at the feet of the mods, but mods aren't paid and in our capitalist hellscape, you get what you pay for... sometimes. Anyway, I'm sure the mods are genuinely doing their best.

Addendum: A real sanity boost I learned a few years back is "disable replies." I'm an old who uses old reddit, so I don't know whether/how that option is available on new reddit or the app or third-party apps, etc. It's an option at the bottom of everything you ever submit on old.reddit.com, though. By doing this, I only see replies when (or if 🤭) I feel up to it, and I'm not besieged by notifications. Also, sometimes folks get mad that I didn't acknowledge the full expression of their loathing of whatever I said, and that shit is fucking gold. Bullies hate it when they can't command your attention. I recommend.

[alan-p-49]

Rating socal medias I've used so far

Tumblr 8/10

Giving it a lower score bc it has problems but bro this is the best place bc you legit can write a fuckin essay

Facebook 0/10

That's the place where I feel like I'm sitting in a glass house in a glass bathroom on a glass toilet. Like you could literally see me shitting and I hate it

Twitter 4/10

I'm giving it a higher number bc I remember the good days before Musky Wusky fucked it up. Before musk fucked it up it was a solid 7/10 and now look what you've done to it. You've massacred the bird

Tiktok 6/10

Yes tiktok is not that great when it comes to privacy either and it has a butt load of censorship going on and it wants your money all the fucking time but time to time I find gems in the dump that it is and it makes me smile. Currently it has been giving me stain glass videos of people making charms and wall hangings

Instagram 5/10

So far all I've been seeing are my friends, my aunt's travel blogging and slime videos on there so I have a good algorithm going for me but the reason why I rate it so low is bc of the format of posts you have to do. It's only images and they have to be a certain aspect ratio bc it's trying to have that dumb pretentious aesthetic that it's trying to do and I just hate it

Reddit 5/10

I rate it so low is bc from the subreddits I was in i just feel everyone is pretentious as shit. I don't like the vibes and I don't understand the karma system

Snapchat 1/10

The only reason why I'm giving Snapchat 1 point is because I used to use it as a form of messaging app but I just don't understand it and how it DELETES YOUR MESSAGES LIKE WHYYY WHAT IF IM BEING FUCKIN HARASSED BRO. That place is for predators ok?

Discord ??/??

Discord is not social media. It's a replacement of Skype. Social media is when you can post about you having a shitty day and complete strangers come pat your back and say that everything is fine THATS social media

[sameore]

The hostile part of r/HazbinHotel on Reddit?

I don't know your experience with Reddit, but there is something I've genuinely noticed while I was trying to share my transmasc related fanworks (mainly including Alastor, in my case) with Hazbin Hotel's fan community.

And this triggered... my interest, my curiosity? Because there are two specific communities that are dedicated to gather this fanbase:

r/HazbinHotel, and r/HazbinHotelFanart.

(There is another NSFW one, but... welp. The mod team will either delete your work, say it's not "NSFW enough", or just switch your "Male" tag into "Female" tag because they don't know what a trans man actually is... apparently. Even if it was specified on the title: interpret this as you want)

Now the difference? Well. Each time I've posted a trans fanwork, I had two different reactions depending on which community I shared it with.

r/HazbinHotel.

It might not be noticeable here, but as soon as I posted it on this community, I received about 3 downvotes. Yet, it turns out this community won't let the counter go below zero (which explains why it's 0 and not -2). It also goes with the fact, I've left my auto-vote on (when you post something on Reddit, your account will systematically upvote it so you start with 1 point and not "0".)

While the counter will leave it as "0" officially, behind the scenes I noticed my profile karma was dropping. And not just of one point...

Here's what we've got underneath:

(75% were downvotes... except my single auto-vote)

This was an example... but unfortunately, this typically went with other fanworks I've posted in there (not many, as I didn't find this very encouraging in the first place? But that’s the point here: it’s not the first time). People behaved in a quite hostile way.

While I brought up the headcanon of Alastor as a trans man, I received things such as "what the fuck", or "this is the most way-out headcanon I've heard of". This, obviously (and always?) with downvotes. In a rare situation, one or two people defended me... and suggested these people leave the place if they don't like it. Paradoxically, later on for that post back in the days, some people started upvoting my post... to counterbalance the previous downvotes.

r/HazbinHotelFanart.

Well, people seem to be less hostile? And more supportive (see the points). Which might be... err, slightly more encouraging? I don't know.

Thereby, I noticed it was ok to make non-official ships... or to depict a character with a sexual orientation that wasn't confirmed officially. But a character being transgender? You'll have to explain yourself, and have a hard case on your shoulders.

Now, let's remember Reddit is a place in which people tend to upvote/downvote in a quite mechanical way, not just depending on the quality of your post, but mainly on their attitude toward a subject. Many Redditors feel "anonymous", and might use this feeling to belittle your work in any possible way just because they don't like the idea of it.

(The risk when you crosspost something is that it also enables them to directly go to the original post and downvote it as well... which will then affect your overall profile karma. In this case, perhaps I'd expect people from r/HazbinHotel to do the same to the original post from r/HazbinHotelFanArt).

So. obviously, if you depict a trans character, transphobic people will be free to attack you with no difficulty. Guess that's the toxic part of Reddit...

Basically, the problem is that you literally get penalized not because what you shared is morally wrong or is meant to spread hatred (is Alastor being trans wrong?), but because you don't post something according to those people's standards. What you draw is somewhat... unusual?

Here, you get punishment for this. (It's not just about the post that loses karma points, but directly your personal profile).

Finally... the problem is not just about r/HazbinHotel (or this single example), but also about Reddit's whole "justice" system that has flaws per se, and that is mainly based on social desirability.

Your post has to please the largest number of readers, with their expectations (mainstream ideas).

Alastor being transgender? Nah, people don't like this conception of things (which doesn't mean it is any less valid objectively speaking... He remains a character full of mysteries, so why wouldn't it be possible?)

Nonetheless, will it discourage me to depict Alastor as a trans man? Of course not! And there are plenty of other social media to share this on! (But believe me, if only Reddit was the only social media in which I had received remarks... *sigh*)

In the meantime, I'll leave this post some more on Reddit to see what's going to happen... while just hoping I won't keep being downvoted (or even insulted in this case!) #RIPMyKarma

I might update this post if I've got news...

*As a side note:

While in most fan communities there is a "toxic" part...

Of course, as it is important to still recall there are nuances, I'm well aware not everyone in this fan community has this mindset, and that it might not reflect Vivziepop and/or Hazbin Hotel's spirit either.

This is mainly about my personal/global experience and feeling associated with this specific community on Reddit. Perhaps a general tendancy that exists? I don't know... I have never had the possibility to exchange with other artists or mere users who might have gone through something similar. (If you have, well... feel free to share your experience?)

Nevertheless, it's gonna remain an interesting observation.

*EDIT: Another detail I didn't mention when I first published this Tumblr post is that Hazbin Hotel was initially meant for an adult audience. But, in practice... well, a big part of its fanbase might be composed of teenagers. Which might also be one of the potential factors that could explain a part of these reactions...

*Update 1: Turns out there is (once again!) this sort of dynamics in which a few people came in to counterbalance the initial cluster of downvotes on r/HazbinHotel (which confirms the nuance mentioned earlier: not everyone has this mindset). So, now the number of points is finally (timidly) positive, but I have yet to recognize the fact it's a strange way to be welcomed everytime I come up with something trans related. By a bunch of downvotes in the first place...

*Update 1b: To keep on with this nuance, the gasp between r/HazbinHotel and r/HazbinHotelFanart keeps growing though.

The original post on r/HazbinHotelFanart has received way more upvotes since then (over 50).

However. As expected earlier, some people directly reached this one post to downvote it as well. (Obviously I couldn't keep those 100% of upvotes for too long).

*Update 2: Ahh yeah. And the thing with the fact people take it very seriously when you mention this headcanon but the other headcanons are ok. I’m tired of justifying myself though.

But then, these updates were predictable, right?

Sorry if this might sound like a quite long post or something... but I genuinely needed to rant over this. Mentioning a trans(male) headcanon remains, nowadays, still quite taboo... while it's something I've always kept doing because it was important for me. And yet, I feel like I'm being punished for simply wanting to share this with other users and potentially finding people with common interests.

So... that's what it costs to conceive things a bit differently from what we could call a "normative" perspective inside a community?

You get sanctioned for having... different ideas than a majority.

And if you're out of it, you're just... a misfit.

[prosshi]

God I hate reddit... Like can you imagine looking at the nightmare that is modern social media and deciding to add microtransactions and a way to gauge how much people like your posts??? The fucking karma system is just awful for anxiety. Everytime our karma dips I can feel my alter going into panic mode, it suuucks.

[automatismoateo]

How do I deal with a my mother brainwashing my son? via /r/atheism

Submitted October 18, 2018 at 11:45AM by frankalini (Via reddit https://ift.tt/2AgG7Oo) How do I deal with a my mother brainwashing my son?

Hello friends, I hope you can offer some advice!

TL;DR: my mother is a religious nutcase (homophobic, racist, anti-science, anti-vax, etc) and I’ve just found out she’s been teaching my 2.5 year old son about Jesus with the aid of picture books and stories. Refuses to stop doing this even after we’ve repeatedly asked her not to. Need advice on how to proceed....

—-

My mother became ‘born-again’ when I was about 10 or 11, so I was aware of it, but was mature enough to understand it was all a bit silly. We have never had a great mother-daughter relationship because I don’t respect her views at all.

Not only is she hardcore religious, but she swallows any conspiracy theory she’s presented with. She’s incredibly homophobic, mildly racist, anti-science, anti-vaccination, believes abortion is a mortal sin, believes the government is trying to control us with fluoride in tap water, etc etc, I’m sure you get the picture. Pretty sure she’s also a flat-earther. Also, Donald Trump is bae. We’re Australian, so the obsession with him is a bit odd.

She is well-aware that both my husband and I STRONGLY disagree with her beliefs. We’re both clear on the fact that we want our son raised to be kind, and brave, and to be a good person without the fear and shame of religious rules. I attended a catholic school and was taught that I’d spend my days in hell if I didn’t do the right thing, and some of my earliest memories are of the anxiety that caused.

I have made it clear to my mother that I do not want her pushing any religious agenda on my son, her first grandchild. I have since found out that she has purchased children’s books teaching the story of Jesus and other tales from the bible. I said I didn’t want these books being read to him and thought that was the end of it; until I found out this week that more books had been purchased.

My husband tried speaking to her about it and she said our son likes the books and she won’t stop reading them to him.

She doesn’t respect our boundaries, and I don’t trust her. I’m not sure what we can do besides limit unsupervised visits (not practical at all, she helps with childcare twice a week while we work).

It’s causing me a lot of stress, and if it was up to me I’d cut her out of my life altogether, but I’m unable to do so because of many factors, including physical proximity and pressure from a very large extended family.

So that option is off the table.

My husband suggested that we instead begin teaching our son about ALL the religions of the world, and that there is more than one view, and all of them (and none of them!) matter to different people. I’d like him to consider concepts like karma and mindfulness as he gets older, and I know a lot of these ideas stem from Buddhism. There’s good and bad in every belief system, and I guess I’d like him to start questioning these things, I just don’t want to overwhelm him too soon. He’s barely talking yet.

(I’d also like to tell him his grandma is fucking crazy, but I’ll save that one for when he’s a bit older.)

What are your thoughts on this? Is teaching my lil’ guy about ALL the religions an effective way to actively combat this brainwashing? Can you help with any other suggestions?

(Edited to add: I’m not asking for advice on how to deal with my relationship with my mother. Thanks to everyone who has pointed out I need to be more assertive. I get it. It’s just not that simple. I also think drastically cutting someone from your life just because they have a different worldview is not a good lesson to be teaching my son. I’d rather teach him to instead question theories and form his own ideas and beliefs.)

So, please, I am asking for advice on whether I should counter her bible stories with stories of other world religions, etc. Thanks!

[tedisdillon1299-blog]

A small town in Augusta GA

It was already hot as balls in Augusta, and everything where I was at was far and spread out. When I did arrive into a town (I never got the name) it was very poor and broken. A total of one convenient store and a small seafood restaurant. I was now broke again, starting to regret leaving Brunswick. I had a job there anyway so it was something, but I’m sick. I’ve had a very nice runny yellowish shit for days, and everyday it’s getting more and more colorful. As of right now I’m pure yellow, a sign of gallbladder problem or the digestive tract working to fast, or even worse, an infection. I would’ve been fired soon anyway. I recall what I assume is my kidneys, lower back left and right side, hurting if I hold my urge to urinate for longer than ten minutes, and even urinated all over myself at one point back at the Salvation Army. Yes embarrassing, disgusting, but alarming all the same. I’m genuinely worried. This town was worse than Brunswick as far as crime. I was told that when night shines one will sleep, and was told by an older black lady to watch my back. White boys are targets. I made my approach to a local convenience store, to use the bathroom and grab a Powerade. I was very dirty, but managed to scrub much of the dirt off my face with a sink. The lady at that store bought a drink and chips and spoke with me about God. Very well mannered and sweet woman. My karma from my past deeds continued to pay off, and the habit of thanking God after a blessing such as that one in prayer was becoming quite the habit. I know He doesn’t approve of everything I do. I know the bad things I’ve done will bite me later and is usually the result of events forcing me to move on. Things I won’t say here, not until I’m stable, however I am still mostly in His favor, and I accept that this is a trail I from Him that I practically asked for. When I left the shop a man who worked in the store gave me the rest of his friend’s smokes, he said they’ve been laying there in his car for a century. Then he told me he was just like me, except he finally saved to get a ride, and was trying to save to get settled. Cool. Can’t wait to reach that phase. I stopped by a small seafood restaurant along the way, to sit and charge my phone and consult reddit. One of the men who worked at this place asked me where were I was from. He was a person who worked for this place for eighteen years, with a golden grill on his teeth. I told him that I started in Brunswick and ended up here and that’s all that mattered. He said something to me that nearly triggered another round of unending paranoia. “Bruh if I was you I would move way up north. Not everybody is yo friend man, God does everything for a reason.” Why would he say that? Is there something behind the scenes that I didn’t see? Was the entire hood in the world trying to off me? What’s going on? Those are the thoughts of my mind every time something like that happens and it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard, “God does everything for a reason.” A while back, when I had a home a man needed a way home with his old man, and asked me to drive the old man’s car because the old guy was too drunk to drive and the young thug didn’t have a license. Of course I said hell yeah, he’s got his pops with him… and I’d miss driving, and good karma. That’s just me man, the type of person who only needs to hear ‘Adventure’ to motivate him to grab his balls and say fuck it. When I was driving he said to me,” Hey bro God does everything for a reason.” “....” “ Did you hear what I said? I’m serious lil bro, think about it real long and hard as to why God motivated you to do this, it might’ve just saved your life.” Questions man. So. Many. Questions. I left to the resturant to investigate the trains with the help of Maps. Aparently I was too close to the yard, one of the train operators threw a gatorade at me and yelled over the engine, “Hey man! You better get out of here! They just called the police on you man! Go get out of here!” I walked fast off the property, and hid into a nearby wooded area. After an hour I returned to the restaurant to charge my phone, and an old woman there insisted to buy me food, but I couldn’t accept… however a drink would be nice. She seemed aggravated by the fact I wouldn’t eat, but too much help in a small town like that and someone might think I’m playing people. Another man gave me seven dollars, I swear I didn’t ask. I did accept that though, cash is cash I’d be crazy to say no. Might even give people the idea that I’m racist. Definitely don’t need that. Back to the train yard I hid in between the trains to avoid being seen. None of the trains that arrived ever went north for some reason, but I had a strong feeling that at nightfall something would head north. I left again to get another water. I was sweating something awful, and I had to stay hydrated. An interesting fact I once heard was that some people die out in the desert with water still in the bottle. These people would try and conserve their water supply but would end up dehydrating themselves in the process, laughable over a few shots of whiskey but an important note at that. I  drink nearly all I have and only saving a little to keep the mouth moist after a smoke and I find that by doing so I stay hydrated, never feeling like crap because the water hadn’t finished absorbing into my system. Remember that folks. When I finished watching the trains I found a place with a plug and wifi to jam out to music. I don’t know why I stopped listening to music like Bon Jovi, versus the same Trap music I had been listening to. Classic rock was the real me, not that stuff. Listening to it for hour rewired my brain into making myself remember what was good about me before I wrapped my head around nothing but stress, with a shot of confidence to boost my day. On the way to pick up a drink a woman and I crossed paths. Pretty attractive young woman who I never would’ve guessed was a hooker. “You got a smoke man?” “Yeah sure…” “You looking for a girl?” Instantly my mouth answered without using my brain. The thought of having a lady around for awhile would definitely make me happy. It had been a dry season for almost a year now. All of those articles about Hobos riding around with their lady filled my head with too much romanticism. “Hell yeah I’m looking for a baby…” “You ain’t got a cob do you?” (Misheard) “I ain’t got no mushroom baby I got something that’ll…” “Haha no no baby you ain’t a cop are you?” The wheels in my head began to turn. She's a sex worker. “Wha... don’t even insult me like that haha” At this point I knew getting some fruit wasn’t happening. “You got cash?” I knew I sound dumb just saying no, so I played dumb. “Oh wait, you is a… oh oh ugh… shit sorry I didn’t know. You don’t look the type you’re too beautiful.” Persuasion attempt failed :( “Aw oh my God thank you! Well thanks anyway honey you got another smoke?” It was the least I could do. At any rate I felt sorta proud to myself for holding a fluid conversation with a pretty lady like her for longer than ten seconds. Turns out, Bon Jovi cures depression. I made way to the store, it was full of like the whole fucking town. Turns out it was like this nearly every night, feeling good I decided to make conversation with the guy at the register. I was curious as to what happened to that other convenience store. Considering there was only two in the whole area, both in good spots, you wouldn’t think it would just go out of business. Nah something was off. When I asked he just said, “Stay away from there tonight one goes everyday.” Whoa. Anyway, to sum up yes I did eventually hop that train. Damn it got freezing. All that wind.I fell asleep and woke up to what I thought was a golden opportunity, a train station for people to actually ride. Mind you, before I tell you this, I had just woke up and that physics and pain part of my brain wasn’t turned on yet. The train was going about fifteen miles per hour, I figured you know… that I could just jump off into the gravel with grass right next to it, because you know I’ve done crazy shit before… I was totally complacent. And quoting an old coworker who ironically said, “In the marines they had signs in Iraq that said ‘Complacency kills’” and betting that I’d get shocked when I worked for a lighting company before anyone else. Well guess what? Next day this condescending mother fucker gets shocked a day and thrown off his ladder. Yeah he was okay, so I can say in good conscience KARMA BITCH! Anyway yeah it hurt when I landed. As soon as I hit the hit ground I fucked up my pinkie and hurt my knees. I got lucky. After about twenty seconds I got up and limped while laughing at myself out loud. I was just relieved that it was the only thing I did to myself. I limped around to see about getting myself onto a train to who the fuck cares where. I came across three white possibly english teenagers who were up to no good. They were vandalizing something they had paint, and wore all black. I talked to them for a minute to find out about the train station. Bad news. It wasn’t a train station but another yard. Fuuuuck. I felt so dumb. I checked my phone to see where I was at… the heart of Atlanta.

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Yo people. I'm have some time to kill so I figured I might as well make a guide on how to grow your Steemit account.For those of you who don't know, Steemit.com is a blogging platform where users get paid to contribute posts, comments, etc. Basically imagine that it's like Reddit, except karma translates into actual value in crypto. The equivalent over there is called Steem Power. The more SP an account has, the more valuable the upvote.There's a lot more to it than that but I don't want to complicate things.Anyway, Steemit is an excellent platform to build your audience for a few reasons:You earn money for postingYou can get better exposure by using paid upvote botsIf your content is good, then you usually end up making a profit on these paid upvotesYou are virtually guaranteed exposure if you use enough paid upvotesUsers are encouraged to interact with one another, so your posts will almost definitely have commentsThe quality of posts over there is not great, so if you're a decent writer it's easy to stand outYou can use the platform to host your blog instead of Medium and make a little moneyThere are more reasons than that but you get the idea. So let me tell you my story.I created my account over there in December 2017. I was planning on quitting my job on Jan 1 and moving to Thailand to become a digital nomad. I pulled the trigger during the first week of January and moved to Phuket.My plan was to grow/manage Instagram accounts and make money through a few dropshipping sites that I owned. I had 5 decent sized pages (around 50k followers) with DS pages connected to them. I figured that between the five of them and all the pages, I'd be able to make enough to live. I also had around 70 more pages that I was growing. Wasn't really sure what I would do with them.Anyway, one day I got the idea that it would be easier to just sell social media marketing services to businesses instead of trying to make stupid posts on IG all day. A few days later, a friend suggested that I contact ICOs. At the time, crypto was booming.I started sending out emails and actually got some clients. While I was managing them, I figured I'd have a better shot at closing more deals if I had a blog filled with crypto articles. To like establish myself as an expert or something. I chose to use Steemit instead of Medium because of the potential payouts and went to work.I'd post 1-2 articles a day, basically just rewriting news articles that I stole from r/cryptocurrency or Google News. It was boring and unstimulating, but it served a purpose so I kept going.Over time, I eventually started to inject a little of my sense of humor into the articles. I would make up funny clickbait titles and crack a few jokes. Nobody seemed to care because I don't think anyone was reading my articles anyway (even my clients didn't seem to read them), but I was having fun so I didn't care.My posts weren't earning anything to speak of but I didn't care. The point was to write the articles so I could show potential clients that I actually knew about crypto before pitching them on marketing services.I started buying small upvotes from certain bots just to give them a little boost. Nothing serious, just a few bucks here and there. I had a ton of crypto that I had bought during the boom and figured I might as well use some of it to boost my Steemit posts. I figured it would look more legitimate if the post payouts looked bigger.Anyway, somewhere along the line I got discouraged. My crypto posts weren't making that much, but meanwhile some people were posting poorly formatted garbage with spelling errors and making $300 per post. Something didn't add up, so I did some digging and discovered that these posts with massive payouts were just using upvote bots to get exposure and inflate their payouts. The "payouts" were basically fake, because users were just paying to boost their own posts into higher visibility and earning a profit in the meantime.When I realized this something shifted in my brain. I guess I kind of lost it and decided to make a post about it. So I switched gears from my normal crypto posts and wrote what I consider my first "breakout" post. I'll put a link at the bottom for people who want to read it, but basically it "exposed" the fact that the top posts on the Trending page all had payouts that were super inflated by paid upvote bots with money that came out of the poster's pocket.I bought a shitload of upvotes and got more comments than ever. I think I might have lost money on that post but I didn't care. Anyone who considers themselves a writer knows that overcoming obscurity is a huge problem. And here I had accidentally discovered how to guarantee that people read my content.This was about two months ago.During those two months, I made post after post that colorfully explained why the Steemit system is fucked and that only users with extremely high SP or a lot of expendable income to spend on boosting posts benefit from it. Normal users don't really stand a chance.Since then, I've been writing an average of 1 post per week. I've got around 3500 followers right now and have leveraged my blog into a Discord group with about 200 people. I also now call myself a "Steemit Influencer" and point this out any time I introduce myself to new prospective clients. I also have a growing email list.Anyway, I haven't really figured out how to leverage this into any actual money (aside from a slight profit from the upvote bots). But it gives me a chance to show my chops when it comes to writing, self-promotion and motivation speaking. I'm sure it will pay off some day, I'm just not sure how.I have thought about offering this service to businesses as a way to get them exposure. Basically I approach them and say, "Hey, I'm a baller on Steemit. I can write an article about your company and guarantee that 2-3k people read it." Then charge them a few grand to do it.I've also thought of a "blog management service" where I basically create and run a company's blog for them on Steemit. Just not sure how many companies out there are interested in having a blog maintained with new content.If anyone has any thoughts on how I can take advantage of this, I'd be happy to hear them out.My Steemit profile: https://steemit.com/@yallapapiA few of my most popular posts:How To Stop Being Such A LoserWhy Everything You Know About Investing In Crypto Is WrongWhy Steemit Is A Giant Circle-Jerk And How To Make It Work In Your FavorI'd be happy to answer any questions as well.

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After like 6 back-and-forth decisions, removals, and reinstatements, LPT has decided to remove the post entirely. So this is the primary hosting point now. Those of you that saved it, look here. I'm sorry that the link you bookmarked doesn't work now.I have redacted some of the legal portions and replaced it mostly with a warning.Do not try to frivolously sue a $17B companyStep Number One.OhRelax. Your info isn't likely to be used unless you lose the lottery I talk about later. And nobody is playing the lottery until about 90 days from now. So relax. But take it seriously. This is still important.Purpose:I am making this because I see a lot of younger or more inexperienced or just unknowledgeable comments and questions about this breach. If you don’t know if you’ve been affected, or it affects you, or what the effects in question even are that’s okay! Especially for you younger folks, teen adults, people that haven’t worked with credit or law a lot you aren’t expected to magically know everything. Since I’m seeing advice scattered everywhere I thought I would consolidate it the best I can.What Happened?Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting agencies in the United States, was breached and over 140,000,000 people had their entire credit history stolen. Credit history includes your Social Security Number, past addresses, all previously held accounts, all inquired accounts, any bankruptcies within the last seven years, and more.How do I know if I was affected?Are you an American adult that has ever held or inquired about a credit card, loan, car, bank account, cell phone account, electric service, water service, internet service, a security clearance, most jobs, most schools, most apartment complexes, or renting a house? Congratulations! You’re affected! I’m seeing a lot of “Well, if you ever did X…” Or “If you ever signed anything with this fine print…”Nope. If you’ve ever applied for anything financial related in the United States then Equifax has been spying on you. Not like Big Brother, but Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian spy on you via financial history which every lender and creditor in the nation sends to them.When did I consent to this?You didn’t. Shame, but that’s the reality. It was likely hidden in the fine print of the first checking account you tried to open or when you inquired about buying a car but let’s be honest – it isn’t consensual regardless. You have no choice because it is pretty much impossible to actually live so off the grid you’ve never had any credit history. If someone used the same leverage to pressure you into giving them sex instead of your SSN it would be considered rape. Will this hold up in court? Almost definitely not. So you’re stuck with the rest of us.How is this different than other breaches?A lot of people brought up the US Office of Personnel Management Breach, or Target, or Yahoo, or PlayStation Network. This one is not very similar to those at all. The closest you’re getting in past examples is OPM. Here’s why: Target, Yahoo, and PSN don’t keep track of SSNs. They don’t keep track of every bill you’ve ever paid. They don’t keep track of everything you’ve ever thought about buying through financing or credit card. Target, Yahoo, and PSN’s biggest damages were your Debit or Credit Information being compromised. Big deal; cancel the card and get a new one. With Equifax, we can’t do that. You can theoretically request a new SSN but that request is not likely to be answered, especially on this scale. OPM was the only one similar to this, but that only affected government employees and it was stolen most likely by the Chinese Government. Fortunately for us, probably to spy on us rather than ruin our lives.So what happens now that my information has been stolen?Well now you get to play the anti-lottery. 140,000,000+ people, virtually every adult in the United States, has been entered into a lottery of epic proportions. Only in this case you don’t want to win. What does this mean for you? Well, it means if you have luck as bad as or worse than mine you ought to be concerned. Is the chance of you being the unlucky loser likely? Nope. But you sure as hell don’t want to be.What happens if I lose this lottery?Then you get to spend literally years fighting to prove to everyone that you are the real you and not the identity thief. During this fight you will not likely be eligible to do anything that requires credit – no cars, no house, no loans, maybe even no utilities or home rentals. If you’re like me and don’t have family to fall back on for a few years in this scenario then you should be the utmost concerned because this will make your life a living hell for 3-4 years.How can I improve my chances?This is where we get to your actual LifeProTip. Here are the processes you should undertake immediately if it applies to you.1) Get a copy of your credit report today.Regardless of freeze, alert, or regular credit monitoring get your current credit report to keep on file so you can identify anything new that shouldn’t be there in the future.Fuck CreditKarma, Fuck FreeCreditReport, Fuck all that shit, you want the real stuff.Annualcreditreport.com (We killed it, Jim. Try again later when not everyone on reddit is trying to access it.)REEE HAIL CORPORATE PLUGGING THEIR SITE REEEENo. The Federal Government of the United States requires each of those three credit agencies give you a free copy of your credit report every year and this is the only authorized site to actually collect on that. Usually I’d suggest not getting them all at once but if you can’t afford to keep paying for all this crap then go ahead and pull all three at once. Again, if you’re like me and move around a lot the website may not like you very much. Jump through its stupid hoops to get it mailed if you have to. The credit agencies have to honor your request. Document this shit well.If you don't believe me see any of the following links. This is the only real free credit report site.http://ift.tt/2f30BCR Karma et al are not free. They might not charge you, but somebody is paying them to do that service. Keep that in mind.2) Freeze your credit. Right. Fucking. Now.Call the three credit agencies, the same bullshit enterprise that allowed this to happen, and put a freeze on your credit. What does this do? Well, it freezes your credit. Nobody, including yourself, can inquire into your credit for any reason until this freeze is unfrozen.This does not affect current accounts! Your current loans will be fine.Does this cost money?Does unfreezing cost money? Isn’t this a pain in the ass?Yes, but only slightly. It will cost about $30 to unfreeze all three when you need to finance something but here’s the bright side: $30 and a few minutes on the phone with an automated system is a hell of a lot easier than the hell that will be your identity being stolen. And besides, if you can’t afford the $30 and a day of preparation before financing something - you probably shouldn’t be financing anything anyway. And I’ll tell you a little later how to get it back.Ultimately the fee varies by State.Does this affect my credit score?Nope. Your credit will go on as usual, but nothing new can be added or inquired during the freeze. You will still be able to use your credit card.Here are the phone numbers to initiate a credit freezeTransUnion: 1-888-909-8872Equifax: 1-800-349-9960Experian: 1 888 397 3742You must call all three!You can do this online, but Equifax’s site has been crashing nonstop since the breach was announced and the system doesn’t like people like me that move around a lot. I’d suggest using the phone. It is an automated system so don’t worry about interacting with a person.Important!What is to stop the credit thief from lifting my freeze?A long PIN that will be supplied to you when you freeze it. This is pretty much it so make damned sure not to lose that. If there is another breach like this while you have the freeze, unfreeze it ASAP, then freeze it again to get a new PIN. Yes, this costs money. It costs less than having your identity stolen. And you might be able to get it back.TransUnion allows you to set your own PIN, Experian will send it in the mail, Equifax will set it for you and give it to you over the phone after your freeze is initiated. IMPORTANT! Do not hang up until you have it written down! You can make it replay the message over and over. Listen to the automated prompts.3) Initiate a Fraud Alert If you don’t do a credit freeze, at least do this.You are a victim of identity theft now. Contact your local police station, tell them you need to file the report to initiate the appropriate processes. They may not know what you’re talking about but they will do it if you explain.This site right here gives you a checklist on how to initiate the fraud alert.This normally costs money but you’re a victim now. This is why you need the police report/Identity Theft Report. This makes it free. This requires that anyone who wants to run your credit is going to have to jump through extra hoops to verify your identity. This may be a pain for you, but sure as hell a lot less pain than fighting through identity theft for four years.4) Opt out of prescreened offers of credit while you’re at it.This incident is probably gonna inspire you to get off the grid a bit more. You tired of junk mail? Well here’s how you reduce a ton of it:888-5OPTOUT (888-567-8688)Call the number or click the link I embedded into it. Either way will work. This will remain for five years at a time but if you return the signed Permanent Opt-Out Election Form to each credit bureau it will remain forever.ExperianOpt OutP.O. Box 919Allen, TX 75013TransUnionName Removal OptionP.O. Box 505Woodlyn, PA 19094Equifax, Inc.OptionsP.O. Box 740123Atlanta, GA 30374-0123Innovis Consumer AssistanceP.O. Box 495Pittsburgh, PA 15230-0495Alright. Done. Now how do I get some of this money back? What is our legal recourse? How do we punish Equifax?I want you to do something right now while you’re angry. I want you to type up a clear, polite, but strongly worded email. Prepare it as if you’re sending it to the President himself.Click this link and send it to everyone on that list, both Federal and State.Will this get my money back?No. Not yet. But let’s get started on that.Your legal recourse comes down to small claims court, personal formal suit, or class action.For all of these cases DO NOT ENROLL IN EQUIFAX’S “IDENTITY PROTECTION”. Fuck that horseshit. We don’t trust these people anymore, remember?Your legal recourse comes down to how you were affected. Consult a lawyer. Please read the bottom of the post. You cannot sue without evidence of some kind. DO NOT get into a lawsuit with a $17B company without talking to a lawyer and having a damn good reason.If you are directly impacted, here are the possible options. Again, talk to a lawyer.So here’s the pros and cons of each other recourse:Small ClaimsThis is the most likely in which you actually get anything back, but that doesn't make it easy. Your limitations will vary by State and County. Some jurisdictions allow you to sue for up to $25,000 in small claims. Most limit it much lower at like $3,500. The amount you choose is totally up to you but we’ll get to coming up with a number in a moment.Pros:Most likely to actually get you paidDo not need a lawyerLess formal court processIronically, this will likely do the most damage to Equifax if enough people do it.Equifax will probably not even send a lawyer to deal with it if they get served with enough of them.Cons:Difficult process for someStill costs court feesActually getting the judgement and collecting the judgement are two totally different thingsThere is no discovery process in small claims.Formal LawsuitThis will get you the biggest personal payout - if you win. Keep in mind you’ll be going up against a $17B company so even when fighting many lawsuits they will likely have more firepower than you in almost any case. The good news for us little guys in this case is some very wealthy people would have also gotten their info stolen so if we’re lucky some other big guns will be taking them to court personally, but I wouldn’t count on it.Pros:Biggest possible personal payoutThere is a discovery processWill cost Equifax even if they winCollecting on these judgements is going to be way simpler since you have a lawyerLess personally intense for youCons:Most expensive optionRequires a lawyer (going without one would be suicide)You will need a cyber security expertYou will need a financial sector expertYou will need to be able to prove that Equifax could have done moreClass ActionMost of us will fall into this one.This one is already in the works. It will likely cost Equifax somewhere in the $100M range, the lawyers will collect 40% of it, and the few millions of us that apply to be part of the class will get a few bucks out of it. Equifax is already preparing to pay out for this and it won’t even phase them if this is the worst thing that happens.Pros:Super easy. All you need to do is send the lawyers your info. They will probably set up a website in a few months for all of us to do that.Much easier to win. Hell at this point I’d say its guaranteed to win.You get a few dollars.ConsYou will only get a few dollarsThis won’t even phase Equifax as a company.You lose your ability to sue them as an individual if you sign on as a member of the Class.Which is right for me?Consult a lawyer. Do not try to do this completely on your own. Even with Small Claims at least consult one first.Last Steps!File your tax return as soon as possible from here on out. With your credit frozen and a fraud alert in place your biggest risk of direct impact is going to come from a fraudulent tax return. Unfortunately, the powers that be at the IRS don’t bother to confirm identity on tax filings except for a SSN. If somebody files with your SSN you will not be able to file. You will have to dispute it. I have seen people have to go through this battle before and it is very long. Hound your employers to get your W-2 ASAP.If your identity is stolen and used this way TurboTax keeps a webpage to make fighting this battle a little easier.The IRS will never contact you by phone or email to verify your identity! However, if you contact them they will be willing to verify over the phone. If you get a call from anyone claiming to be the IRS for this purpose hang up, look up the IRS number, and call them instead.Here is the IRS official page on the subject.Is there any part of my identity that is secure?Our birth certificates and passports are about all we've got left right now.Birth CertificatesIf you only have one copy of your birth certificate look up your County of Birth's rules on requesting a new one. This will probably cost about $20 as well. The birth certificate is one of the end-all-be-all points of our identity. Keep them in locked and fire proof boxes. Worst case scenario for you is having your identity stolen and then having a fire take these documents. Make sure both can't happen at the same time at least.Since it relies on birth certificates I highly suggest reading further on Passports.PassportsIf you don't have one look into getting a Passport. This will prevent one from being made in your name with your birth certificate in the future, may help you prove your identity if necessary, and you can also travel to Europe, Canada, and Mexico without a visa in most cases. Win-win-win.Passports use various methods for confirming your identity but the lynchpin is your birth certificate. You'll have to send a 2"x2" photo and a certified original copy of your birth certificate off the State Department to get your Passport. The photo can be done at a UPS Store or CVS or similar places and costs like $5. The Passport fee itself is closer to $100.The State Department will send back your birth certificate when they are done with it but I would suggest having more than one original on hand. Photocopies are not good enough for either case.Additions for non-AmericansCanadaAccording to the news I can find it is likely the Equifax breach compromised information for Canadians but Equifax Canada won't saw how many. Their only official comment was that they have nothing to add to what Atlanta-based Equifax already announced. According to their website they have no idea how many were affected yet. However, judging by how large the compromise was for Americans unless Canadians and Britons are kept on entirely different networks with no trusted relationship, its likely going to be all of you as well.All of the following information is subject to research I've done solely today so allow some room for error:Canada only has Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada, so things are 33% easier.Steps you can take:1) Monitor your credit score. Get a report. TransUnion Click here. Equifax Click Here. In Canada the free reports are done by mail.2) According to CreditCards.com Canadians can request a Credit File Alert which is their equivalent of a credit freeze.3) If you find out you were affected and your SIN was stolen, file a police report and alert all of your banks.UKSame as Canada, all of this is based on research from today only. I am far from an expert on foreign personal credit and finance law.Media reports, largely sensational in appearance claim up to 44m Britons may have been compromised. However, judging by how large the compromise was for Americans unless Canadians and Britons are kept on entirely different networks with no trusted relationship, its likely going to be all of you as well.Steps you can take:1) Check your credit reports. Unfortunately it doesn't look like truly free reports exist in the UK. Instead there is a Statutory £2 Credit Report.Experian Click HereEquifax Click Here2) UK equivalent to a Credit Freeze is [CIFAS.](www.cifas.org.uk) CIFAS – The UK’s Fraud Prevention Service 6th Floor Lynton House 7 - 12 Tavistock Square London WC1H 9LTOnce active, creditors will have to jump through a few hoops to verify who you are.3) If you find your information has been stolen call 0300 123 20 40 or click the link embedded.For American ParentsYou can freeze your child's credit once they have an SSN! They probably don't have an Equifax file unless you've had them apply for banks and credit cards already, but freezing it when they are young is not a bad idea!Advice from an actual lawyerContact your own lawyer if you want to file a suit but here is a comment from a lawyer here on reddit that I think is the most realistic.Equifax was very, very negligent in letting their systems get breached. But until there's an actual injury, you can't win any lawsuit unless there are statutory damages, which almost certainly brings it into the federal court realm. You can't just pick a random-ass number and say "I was harmed for this amount." No, you can't get it for emotional damages. No, you can't get it for pain and suffering. Unless your ID was actually stolen and used to open a line of credit, your best option is to remain in the class action./u/edsbf1Lawsuits are not clear cut. This is why law school is three years and after that there are State Bar Exams. via /r/YouShouldKnow

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Original Post: Here Well it has been 1 month following my last post of From 0 to 0.1: the Journey of Bootstrapping a Small E-commerce Plugin to a Scalable Business (Part 1). We have done a lot since our SEO Product Optimizer (SPO) soft launched on the Shopify App Store. I think that the marketing works are not good enough. Here is a short recap of what we have done from 11/1/2017 - 10/2/2017: What's done list: We have changed from a free app (beta) to a formally published app, now charging US$15.99 / month (8 paid users converted at the moment)Simplified the app installation process and an installation tutorial video has been published on YoutubeNew feature: Default Facebook share image, website title, meta description are added on our SEO Product OptimizerLaunched Conversion Report, a professional review service for online storesAn intro video has been produced and published on YoutubeSet up a simple affiliate program for agenciesPaid ad experiment on Facebook from 6/2 - 9/2/2017 (3 days) at ~US$25 / dayPaid ad experiment on Reddit from 4/2 - 9/2/2017 at US$10 for the period Why are we changing from free app to paid app?Since we launched our beta as a free app, we discovered free users are not willing to give us feedback, review, nor read / reply to our email (whether machine / human written). Instead, they will try our app for a while and disappear for a long time. I guess that's similar to my user behavior when I am using the free apps on this Wordpress blog. We can learn very few things from existing users, except that they are increasing their usage on our app (before 13/1/2017). We developed the app because we wanted to develop something useful for users and they would be happy to pay us. If we don't make more money or have more user feedback, along with more users, I don't see any reason to continue. It's just another kind of developer masturbation. That's a tough decision indeed because we might lose all users at once. The decision could not be rolled back either. To be honest I'm fucking scared about this move. But I see the move as a test for our app. If we spend several months working on it, but we can't find any paid users, there are only 2 reasons, either we suck at making a product or there is no market at all. In either case, it's time to say goodbye. There's no point in going ahead. Booyah! The first customer arrivesFinally, after a few hours, the first customer arrives, i.e. Sam. Sam is a very funny customer. He has been supporting us since we launched our app in December 2016. Besides trying our app, he also sends us some opinions. He may be the kind of early adopters we want. In terms of his business, Sam is running a store called Collekt, selling Funko Pops / Dorbz / Mystery Minis in the UK. His store was launched on June 2016. I am not affiliated with Sam. However, his products are quite fun for "kidults" like me.. It's always fun to chat with him. He also gave us the first 5-star review on the Shopify App Store. I really appreciate his support when we feel lost in the difficult time. I guess if we could find 1,000 Sams, we would be achieving a sustainable business. Damn it! The first 1-star review appears :(We also received the first 1-star review. Not cool at all. The Shopify platform sets a limit to edit the website title and meta tags. This part is controlled by the Shopify theme. If we want to change any Shopify Store's meta tag, we must edit the Shopify theme, i.e. the liquid code. It cannot be controlled by Shopify App API, which is very different from what I imagined before we developed the app. I don't blame the user, First Generation Millionaire. He found it difficult to edit the code on his own. I found it the same. But we cannot change Shopify's software architecture. The installation process can hardly be streamlined like the Wordpress 1-click app installation. After discovering his comment on Friday morning, we immediately made a tutorial video and simplified the installation documents. Following that we replied to him about the issue. We are sorry to bring him inconvenience. Launched Conversion ReportConversion Report helps to give professional reviews for online stores, whether it's about design, branding, SEO or user engagement, we can help users to do a quick check. I bought a theme at US$14 and made the landing page in 1 day. The pricing plan was initially US$20 to make a custom report for any store, but the rate might be so cheap that it looked like a scam. So, I raised the price to US$79 after a while. You may ask, "Why launch another service if you are not doing well at your first one?" This is because we want to learn from users as much as we can. When we are testing with our free users, we found users unwilling to give us feedback. I guess it's because users do not feel like they are obliged to do anything for us. Users spent their free time to test our new app, in return they can enjoy new features beneficial to their businesses. Fair trade, right? I have to change this concept. If a user wants to ask us for our valuable opinion, he needs to pay for it. When users pay for something, even it's just a small amount of money, they will have a commitment to work with you. While providing our previous hands-on experience as a return, we can get user opinions and understand the challenges they are facing. .Furthermore, we have made Conversion Report a value-added service to the SPO users. It's included in the pricing plan. When a user signs up the free trial, he can claim a free conversion report. I will shoot an email to the new user when he installs our app. We are very happy to help him grow the business, together. New Intro Video MadeNot much to say about it. I spent US$157 dollar on Fiverr. A Poland-based video producer helped me do the voice-over, script writing, video production and background music. After I sent him a brief explanation about the video, It was finished within 1 week. Loved his no bullshit approach. I want to better illustrate what our app does, with graphics instead of plain texts. Not sure if this investment will pay off. Well, you can give me a comment as to whether you like the video or not. It's just 1:30, very short. A Simple Affiliate Program0.5 - 1 day has been used to construct a simple Affiliate Program. I have been closely checking who is trying our app since the beginning. Out of my expectation, some users are web designers or Shopify experts, who are not the end users. I guess they are sourcing solutions to solve customer's problems. If my little app can help them save development time, they can spend more time on other meaningful works. I also often do sourcing works for my customers. OK, they may be just spying on my app, but I always refer to other similar apps before the dirty works. So it's my karma, huh? Facebook & Reddit AdI have allocated US$75 and US$10 for Facebook and Reddit respectively. At the moment of this writing, Facebook has just displayed my ad for 1 day. There is not a single customer converted yet. I used the above video, linking to my Shopify App Store listing page as the ad content. Let's wait a few more days to see how it goes. Reddit charges based on impression. I don't know what CPM means. The system allows me to set the CPM from $0.5 and up but I don't know which level could bring me more audience. The subreddits /ecommerce, /entrepreneur and /shopify are selected to display my ad. As I have no idea of how it works, I have sent an email to the Reddit advertising department. They haven't replied me yet.What's next?Adding keyword ranking function to SPO. It can help to track store ranking against specific target keywords.Co-marketing with a customer of Conversion Report. His story is very interesting. I will share the interview with him in the next post. I have been researching co-marketing for 1 week. It looks like a cost-effective marketing tactic. Two parties share the cost with double the results. Personally, I am very excited to test this strategy soon. Please stay tuned with us!I have an idea. After discussing with different store owners, I think they are having different kinds of problems. There are various tools available for users. There are different blogs teaching them how to do SEO, social marketing, branding, inventory management, etc. However, the real problem is that they don't have practical experience nor knowledge to use the correct information. And it takes them a long time to find out the correct solution. I am wondering whether it's useful to have something like Quora / Stack Overflow for E-commerce. When a store owner is having a problem, he can ask other experienced store owners for an answer. If the questioner wants more, he can request a custom consultation session by paying an expert per hour. When I was asking questions on Reddit, I was not sure whether the answer was useful because no one is showing identity or background. I am thinking to do a small test for this idea. What do you think? Do you think it's practical? :) That's all I would like to share with you for the month. Let's get back to work! Did you find your Product Market Fit?How did you find the Product Market Fit (PMF) under limited time? What pivot did you try before discovering the real market? Feel free to drop me a note at bennychan@sillycube.com or you can just leave a comment here!