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purpletaecup · 4 years

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10 ☾ he said that’s how he still remembers me

warnings: explicit language (cursing), mentions of miscarriage, mentions of infidelity (not rlly but on thin ice)

notes: you guys... this is a long one and it’s kind of fast paced, but we are finally getting some answers and the drama really begins! next chapter will be emotional, that’s all I know. I’m sorry for putting you through all this angst!! also, I wanted to bring some attention to the crisis in the Philippines right now with all of the dangerous typhoons. A lot of people need donations and rescuing, so HERE is a link to a twitter thread of donation drives! Please make sure to check it out, share and help spread awareness!

as always, come talk to me in my ask box! and if you want to be added to the taglist, please send an ask, or reply to this post or the masterlist!

not edited!! sorry if there are any mistakes lmfao i usually am sleep deprived when i write so yeah, there are probably some errors.

word count: 5,614

☾

The days following Jungkook’s visit were dull, if anything. You’ve received texts from Yoongi saying that he couldn’t come visit until that weekend because he had to finish wrapping things up in advance at the company so that he could spend some time with you. You had argued over the phone like teenagers when you insisted that he didn’t need to do that and you could take care of yourself until Jin came back. Of course, that led to him ranting about what the doctor said about monitoring you and your symptoms for concussion and to get him to just shut up about the medical stuff (it made your brain hurt more than it did usually), you reluctantly agreed to his ‘visits’, as you’d rather call them.

[nov. 20, 2020]

It was Friday now and you still haven’t gotten any glimpse of actual memories back, although you have been having these strange dreams that you couldn’t really remember when you woke up. You could only describe the feeling it gave you as ‘sinking’, like you were drowning and you couldn’t escape. As much as possible, you tried not to think about these feelings, and focused more on trying to get to know the version of you who lived in this amazing apartment.

The past couple of days that you spent at this apartment put you in awe. It really was the apartment of your dreams, from the color of the furniture down to the little plants stuck in the corner of that tiny shelf in the kitchen. It was beautiful and so you. The only problem was that you couldn’t find anything to help with your current situation. You scoured every nook and cranny and couldn’t find anything dated after your wedding reception. No pictures, no post-its, notes or anything past that date. What you had found in your apartment, you already knew of (aside from the wedding photos). Past photoshoots, high school photos, a notebook full of movie ticket stubs. There was absolutely nothing in this apartment that gave you a clue to the life you lived during the four year gap in your memory.

You even tried to get into your twitter and instagram from when you were nineteen but you couldn’t log in. Wrong password every single time. When you tried to change your password for social media, the email you used had a different password too. You couldn’t figure out what you could have changed your password to. Every password combination you could think of, you tried, but none worked, so you decided to just skip that and maybe go over it later on. Or make a new one. That could work, too.

You couldn’t even look at your twitter account because for some reason, it was private and that seemed strange for someone with almost 130,000 followers. You could see your instagram account from your browser, but it wouldn’t let you see the pictures and posts in full size with the captions and comments, so you were really stuck.

A quick internet search of your name yielded things you already knew. Former model, current writer (that fact was still surprising to you). Old news articles of dating scandals that weren’t true, except for the one with Yoongi. More news articles about your divorce with no further information than what Yoongi had told you already.

It’s as if any clue about your life during your memory loss is unaccounted for. It seemed like at this point, you could only rely on other people telling you about your life and pray to whatever higher power there was to give you your memories back.

This futile search was beginning to make your stomach churn. You almost couldn’t suppress the bile rising up in your throat. Hopefully Jin would return soon. Maybe he could put all of the pieces back together for you.

☾

Jungkook sat in on the uncomfortable leather couch in Yoongi’s office as he waited for the man to finish up whatever he was typing. He looked through his instagram feed and saw one of your posts from July. For a while, he was confused as to why this picture from July would end up on his feed, but he remembered the new instagram algorithm. Curious, he clicked on your profile and looked through it slowly. He couldn’t remember the last time he actually paid attention to your posts.

“I forgot to ask but what did you and Yn do at her apartment? She said you stayed over for a couple of hours.” Yoongi asked though his eyes never strayed from his paperwork.

Jungkook looked up at him and pondered on what to say.

“Hm, yeah. I got roped into staying. She asked a bunch of questions and we looked through her apartment and her photo albums. Her apartment’s cute, by the way. Way different from what your house looked like.” He comments.

“Really?”

“Yeah. It was bright. Lots of green. Nothing I’ve ever seen in the house you guys shared.”

“How was she when you picked her up? She told me a couple of things but I haven’t seen her yet so I can’t know if what she’s telling is the truth or not.”

It was quiet for a moment, with only the sound of turning pages filling the room, as Jungkook wondered what to say to this. He didn’t really know when to start with you, especially with how different you were acting.

“Well, she’s fine. The personality is definitely different. She seems a lot more outgoing, and she had a lot of questions but she didn’t push. I think she wants to try and figure things out on her own.” Jungkook replies as he continued to slowly look through your previous instagram posts.

“She’s been like that. She hates being a burden and gets really defensive about it sometimes.” Yoongi comments.

Jungkook pauses at your most recent post. He checks the date. September 22.

“When did you guys divorce again?” He asked.

At this, Yoongi looked up.

“The divorce was finalized on September 29, I think.” He answered, but looked questioningly at Jungkook as if to ask why.

“Did you know she was going to therapy?” Jungkook asked again.

Hearing this, Yoongi stood up abruptly and hurried over to where Jungkook was sitting.

“What? Where did you see that?” Yoongi asked as he looked over Jungkook’s shoulder.

Jungkook showed him the post. Yoongi took the phone from him and examined the post carefully.

It was a picture of clouds with text on it. Is this the life we really want? The caption read “as per the advice of my therapist, i’m just here to pop in and say that I’ll be going on a hiatus for a little bit”.

“What the fuck? I didn’t know this!” Yoongi yelled, evidently angry.

Jungkook looked at him confused. They were together for four years, how could he not know that you were at least going to therapy?

The same question was running through Yoongi’s head. He took a seat next to Jungkook to process this new information.

“Hyung, can I ask you a couple of questions?” Jungkook requested.

Yoongi could only nod.

“What was Yn like when you were together? Why did you marry her?” Those were the first questions that came out of Jungkook’s mouth.

He was truly, genuinely curious. Though he’s heard some things that Yoongi had said about you, he never knew the full story.

“We married each other because we loved each other. Wasn’t that obvious?” Yoongi retorted.

Jungkook pursed his lips at this. “Well that's what you tell everybody and yeah we get it, but considering the fact that I’ve barely seen you two together more than two handful of times in the past two years, I had to ask.”

“That’s because we were both busy, but that didn’t mean we didn’t spend time together. Of course you never saw it because you weren’t there and I’m not one to actively talk about my love life. Yn and I both liked our privacy.”

“Okay, then what was she like when you were together?”

Yoongi was quiet for a while. There were a lot of things he could say about you when you were together. He just didn’t know how to articulate it to Jungkook.

“When we were together… she was charismatic, beautiful and intelligent. Something about the way she communicated made you feel like you could forget about all of your worries and live life to its extent with her. She constantly dragged me out to picnics and made me forget about the business and my career. She made me feel young again. And she had so much love and care for people around her. For a long time, I felt like I would never be deserving of her. She was kind of like a sunflower. Or sunshine, you know what I mean?” Yoongi poured out.

Jungkook nodded. He realized that this was the time to try to figure out what happened to you in your marriage. From his conversation with you at your apartment, to the description of you that Yoongi had just given, he surmised that the version of you that he knew was someone different and he could only wonder if Yoongi saw it too.

“Did you ever feel like she changed? In the time you guys were together?” He probed.

Yoongi thought about it for a while.

“Yeah, I think so. I always found it strange that she decided to quit modelling. When I met her, she said it was all she ever wanted. I never asked because it seemed like a sensitive topic to her, but I supported her regardless. Writing seemed so out of nowhere for her. I don’t know where it came from. Then she stopped wanting to go to business dinners and events with me and after that we just drifted. And in between that, you introduced me to Yura.”

When Yoongi mentioned Yura, Jungkook winced. He had thought about it some nights ago, but he realized that he might have had a hand in your divorce by introducing Yura to Yoongi. Though he knows Yoongi would have never physically cheated on you, he could see how Yoongi and Yura gravitated towards each other. Jungkook had to admit that Yura was a sweet girl. She was beautiful, and when she smiled it was like sunshine.

Yoongi interrupted his train of thought. “Yura is kind of a complicated subject to our marriage. I would never, ever cheat on someone I loved. And I loved Yn, so much. When you introduced Yura to me, I was happy to meet a new friend and that’s all I saw, but the more you made me hang out with you guys, the more I started to see something in her that I stopped seeing in Yn. I never meant to have any sort of romantic feelings for Yura, but it happened and I feel so fucking shitty for doing that to Yn when I’m the one who promised her a lifetime together.”

Jungkook straightened his posture as Yoongi’s confession.

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” He asked.

“By what?” Yoongi looked at him confused.

“What happened to Yn that pushed you to Yura?”

At this, Yoongi scratched his head.

“I wouldn’t say that it pushed me to Yura, but remember when I said Yn and I started getting distant? As time went on, I felt like she changed and I didn’t know who she was. She used to be so bubbly and happy and always wanting to go look at flowers, but towards the end of our marriage, she stayed holed up in our room no matter how much I asked her to spend time with me. Yura, she was happy to spend time with me. She made me feel like I could forget about everything just by talking to me.”

“Yura made you feel like how Yn used to make you feel?” Jungkook cut him off.

“Well… I guess so.”

Jungkook thought about this for a while but narrowed his eyes at his hyung.

“Hyung, answer this truthfully; do you love Yura?”

The tips of Yoongi’s ears turned red after hearing this.

“Love? I don’t know. I like her? I like the way she makes me feel. She’s beautiful and smart and she makes me happy.”

“Hyung, I don’t know if you realize this, but the way you described Yura is exactly the same way you described Yn.”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like you started liking Yura because she reminded you of Yn when you met her. So, do you really, truly like Yura? Or do you just like her because she reminds you of what you don’t have anymore?”

Yoongi lowered his head.

“I-I don’t know. I never thought of it like that.”

Jungkook put his hand on Yoongi’s back to comfort him. Obviously, the man was confused.

“I don’t know if this helps, but I just wanted to let you know that whenever I saw Yn, during those dinners or events, she never gave off the vibe that you described her to be. To me, she was quiet, reserved and never bothered trying to get to know us, your friends, or your business. That’s what she came off as. When you told us that you loved each other and that you eloped, I thought you were joking. When I saw her, she just seemed like the typical trophy wife. Just for show. I never liked her and wondered what you saw in her all the fucking time, but now after hearing this, and after being with her for a couple of hours, it’s obvious that something happened that fucked her up and then fucked your marriage up.” Jungkook ranted.

“I think you might need to reevaluate the relationship you had with Yn so we could help her recover from this whole amnesia thing and hopefully figure out what happened. Something definitely happened, but since I don’t know your marriage like you do, I don't know what it is. I feel guilty now after realizing that I might have had a hand in whatever the fuck she was going through. And maybe figure out what you’re going to do about Yura. Can you keep dating her when your feelings for her are based off of your feelings for your ex-wife, who is currently pregnant with your wife and doesn’t know about it?” He continued.

Yoongi took a deep breath, taking all of this conversation in.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m almost done with the shit here at the company. When I go home, I’ll sort everything out and talk to Yn and Yura tomorrow. I don’t think I can keep seeing Yura with the current situation. I have to tell Yn about the pregnancy as soon as possible, but I’m scared because the doctor told me to monitor for residual symptoms for her concussion. I don’t even know where to begin with the situation.”

“It’s okay, hyung. I’m here for you. You have to tell her about the pregnancy before she finds out herself. In the meantime, I’ll help you out when you can’t take care of her. I already feel shitty enough for how I acted with her when you two were married. I feel like I had the wrong impression this whole time.” Jungkook offered.

Yoongi remembered the moment earlier when Jungkook confessed that he never liked you and that baffled him because he thought that you two, of all people, would get along well together. More often than not, he would feel jealous of Jungkook, who had your admiration when you first started dating. He remembered you always asking him to introduce you to Jungkook and it took a year for him to budge and actually make it happen.

“I’m sure you’ll get along now. I always thought you did get along. Did you know she liked you before?” Yoongi asked.

Jungkook shook his head. “I didn’t know until the other day when you had me take her home. It probably would have helped if you told me she knew who I was before you introduced us after you got together. She never acted like she was a fan of my music and admittedly, I was a dick to her.”

Yoongi glared at him. It was a first for him to hear about how Jungkook treated his ex-wife.

“Well, you should feel shitty because she really liked you and your music. For a while, I thought she liked you more than me. If I had known you were an asshole to her, I probably would have ripped you a new one. Hearing you admit you treated her like shit makes me feel like shit because I never knew and just assumed you guys were good with each other. You didn’t do or say anything bad to her, right? You’re not that type of person.”

Jungkook could only pretend to smile at Yoongi as he asked this.

He shook his head and lied. “No, never.”

Lying through his teeth to his best friend about how he treated you made his heart fall to his stomach. Well, Yoongi didn’t have to know because it was in the past. You couldn’t remember any of the mean things he’d said to you, so now was the perfect time to make a new, much better impression of himself to you. He decided days ago that he would be better, because deep down, he knew that you didn’t deserve to be treated like how he treated you.

[nov. 21, 2020]

Yoongi had taken the day off after his somewhat enlightening conversation with Jungkook last night. He decided that he needed to go see you and spend some time with you today, but before that, he needed to settle things with Yura.

They decided to meet up at his apartment for maximum privacy, just in case anything happened. He wanted to account for the worst case scenario of Yura probably getting angry and throwing things around, but he doesn’t think she’s the type of person to do dramatic things like that.

Turns out, she’s not. When he reluctantly tells her that he can’t continue on with what they had because of residual feelings for you, in addition to the fact that there were complications in that relationship that he can’t speak about carelessly, she had reacted calmly and amicably. Though Yoongi hadn’t expected her to throw a tantrum, he was expecting some kind of anger, but all he got was a sad look passing on her face followed by comforting words.

He apologized profusely for having dragged her around when he still had apparent feelings for his ex-wife and not figuring out his feelings for her, or lack thereof, sooner. She reassured him that it was okay and she’ll be fine.

“I’ll be fine Yoongi. I liked you, but it’s pretty obvious that you used me as some kind of rebound or replacement for your ex-wife, and I was okay with it. Truthfully, I was waiting for you to just come clean and break it off with me. I hope you and Yn figure things out this time, and I hope you can talk to her. Communication is important.” She reminds him before she leaves, but not before letting him know that she would always be there for him as a friend.

He had texted her after she left, and after a couple of minutes to himself, that he was thankful for her being so nice about the situation and all in all, he didn’t regret whatever short-lived affection they had for each other.

Yoongi still couldn’t believe how smoothly everything with Yura went. He hoped that the rest of the day would be the same.

☾

You woke up to a message from Jungkook asking if you were free, so you had to tidy up the apartment and yourself because you didn’t want to look messy in front of someone you had idolized for a long time.

Luckily enough, you didn’t have to cook since Jungkook offered to bring food. You thank your lucky stars for that because for some reason, you’ve been feeling incredibly sluggish and nauseous. It was probably some symptoms of the concussion you suffered. You remembered your doctor saying something about that the last time you were at the hospital.

About 20 minutes later, you heard your doorbell ring so practically skip to the door, excited to see Jungkook and steal the food that he brought.

You opened the door to see Jungkook standing there with a big back of food in his hands. He was wearing all black, with a leather jacket that looked a tad too big on him.

“You look warm.” You comment.

He rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna invite me in or not? I even brought you food.”

You laugh a little and move to the side to give him room to step inside the apartment.

“So, what have you been doing?” He asks as he makes his way to your dining room to put the food down.

You make your way to the kitchen to get some plates for the both of you.

“Nothing. I’ve been trying to look for some stuff but I don’t know where to start so I just gave up until you or Yoongi could come help.” You reply as you move to the dining room to set the plates down.

Jungkook takes the food out and puts some on the plates. Kimbap, like you asked, and some seaweed soup.

“How have you been feeling? Okay?” He questioned.

You nodded, though hesitantly.

“Eh, I’ve been feeling kind of tired. I think I might be sick because I keep wanting to vomit. Is that my wintermelon tea, by the way?” You pointed to the drink in his hand.

Jungkook poked the straw through the lid and handed it to you.

“Sick? Did you take any medicine? Are you feeling better now?”

You took a sip of your tea and sighed, missing the sweet taste of the drink. It felt nostalgic.

“Mhm, took some earlier and I'm feeling much better thanks to the food you brought!” You smiled.

Jungkook rolled his eyes jokingly once again. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

He didn’t think about your illness any further. It was probably a cold and nothing else.

For about 20 minutes, the two of you ate and spoke about little things, mostly about Jungkook and his career. It helped you get to know him a little bit better since he’s the only person besides Yoongi who could help you in your situation until Jin comes back.

After you finished eating, you told him that you needed his help going through your room in case there was anything that could jog your memory.

“I would ask Yoongi but he’s been busy lately.”

“So I’m just your last resort?”

“You’re literally the only other person in my contact list besides Yoongi and Jin.”

“Right, anyways, lead the way!” He exclaimed.

You laughed as you led him to the room at the end of the hallway.

“Sorry if it’s a little messy, I didn’t have that much time to clean up before you got here!” You explained.

Jungkook shook his head, telling you it didn’t really matter since it was gonna be a mess anyways while you two went through your things.

☾

When Jungkook walked into your room, he was once again hit with the feeling that he had no fucking clue who you were in the past years he’d known you. If he could describe your room in one word, it would be enchanting. White walls, white sheets adorn with a baby blue blanket, wooden floors, giant plants and a mirror much bigger than himself. Your desk was filled with different kinds of pens, different notebooks that look to have been trifled through, and an unnatural amount of books and crystals.

From the looks of the rest of your house, he probably shouldn’t be surprised at your bedroom, but it’s still a bit difficult for him to wrap his mind around the fact that you were this type of person. Bright, intelligent, and incredibly neat.

He walked up to your desk and picked up the different notebooks laid out messily on the table. When he opened each of them, he noticed that they were mostly blank, with the exception of a few doodles. There were some things he’d recognized as lyrics from songs he knew, but nothing truly relevant to the memories you lost.

You stood next to Jungkook and looked at the notebooks in his hands.

“I went through those already. Nothing but a few sad lyrics here and there. None of them triggered any memories.” You mentioned.

Jungkook put them down and started walking around the room with you as you talked about what you did find during the days that you were left alone. What he got from that conversation was that you had no luck with anything and that’s why you waited until either he or Yoongi could come over and help you. Jungkook knew that Yoongi was coming over later, so if he couldn’t help you find anything or answer any of your questions today, then maybe Yoongi could.

“Oh! I forgot to mention that I can’t even access any of my social media, so do you think I can look through my instagram through your phone? I mean, if that’s okay with you. I know some people feel uncomfortable giving their phone to someone else to play around with.” You asked.

Jungkook shook his head and stuck his hand in his pant pocket, reaching for his phone.

“It’s fine, you can look at your profile, I think I follow you. The password is 061313.” He stated as he handed his phone over to you.

You grabbed it excitedly, finally getting the chance to see what your life was like during the four years that were missing from your memory. You fell back onto your bed as you unlocked Jungkook’s phone and clicked on his instagram app quickly.

You took a look at his profile first, staring in awe at the pictures he’s posted. Most of his pictures are very dark and he had quite a few selfies. You smiled a little bit as you admitted in your head that he was indeed handsome.

Okay, Yn, onto the more important things! You thought to yourself as you quickly searched your username ‘faeyn’ on the search bar. At first you were excited, but it deflated when you saw just how many posts you had. 13 posts. And almost all of them were just landscapes. Some had pictures of you by yourself, or with Jin, but that was it. How the fuck were you supposed to try to figure out your life through 13 pictures?

Scrolling through each picture and their captions from the oldest to newest, you quickly realized that you must have decided that privacy was something that should be valued. There was nothing of substance to your situation in the captions you’d written. Just casual mentions of how your day was, or what you did that day. The only thing that caught your eye was the latest post you had, dated September 22. It was a picture of clouds and the caption said something about your therapist advising you to take a break, so you were going to be on a social media cleanse for a while.

Well, at least you learned one thing. Apparently, you started going to therapy again. For what? You don’t know. You only remembered going to therapy a couple of times after the whole incident with your bastard ex-boyfriend.

You filed this little detail into your brain and hoped that maybe it would make more sense later on. Swiping up on Jungkook’s phone took you to his home screen, but you paused for a little. Maybe you could snoop through some more apps and see if there was anything else you can find.

No, that would be an invasion of Jungkook’s privacy, you thought. Another part of you argued that he wasn’t going to know and he’s here to help you. If there was anything worth hiding, he wouldn’t have given you his phone and his password so easily. And if there was anything, it wouldn’t be incriminating since he mentioned that you two didn’t really know each other that well, so you shrugged and clicked on his messages.

I’ll just see if there are any messages to me. I won’t look at anything else, you justified, as if it made it any better.

After scrolling for a little while, you finally saw something worthwhile. A text convo between you and Jungkook and from the preview of the message, it looks like it was from the middle of September. You opened it, excited to see the contents, but what you saw made you furrow your brows.

What is this?

☾

After Jungkook gave you his phone, he continued walking around your room until he got to the side of your bed that was next to the window. He looked around for a bit and saw something in the corner of his eyes. Crouching down lower, he saw something on the floor behind your headboard. He couldn’t tell what it was at first, but as soon as he moved closer, he realized it was a thick notebook. Jungkook surmises that you probably hadn’t seen it despite telling him that you looked ‘everywhere’. He took the notebook and sat down on the floor, completely hiding his figure, but not before he could look at you. He wanted to see what was in the notebook before he showed it to you, and luckily enough, you had been facing away from him.

So he sat down and opened the notebook. From just the first page, he could tell it was some kind of diary or journal. There were lots of drawings and stickers and a picture of you in a field of flowers right in the middle of the first page. He flipped through the whole notebook really quickly and found that half of it was already filled.

A part of him wanted to read through the whole thing and see what kind of things you wrote, but another part told him that it wasn’t appropriate. Despite that, he convinced himself that he should read maybe just one entry, just to see if this notebook was something substantial to your current situation.

Jungkook took a peek at you again and noticed you still had your back turned to him so he took that as a sign that he could probably get away with reading an entry. He flipped to a page randomly and focused his eyes on the writing.

The entry was dated August 4, 2020. Fairly recent. He noticed that there were some dark blotches on the paper that made the ink bleed.

He began to read the entry, not knowing what he was going to find out.

It still seems weird to be writing about my problems in a journal. I’m still not used to it, but it’s been helpful since I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this.

That made him frown.

I went to my OBGYN today because I’ve been having severe cramps and bleeding, but I already had my period so I was worried. And the cramps were starting to really hurt, so I had to go get it checked out just in case. Well, apparently I was pregnant and lost the baby.

Jungkook’s eyes widened and he gasped audibly. Luckily enough, it wasn’t loud enough for you to notice. He clasped his hand over his mouth at the disbelief in reading this information. A miscarriage? And so recent, too. He didn’t know how to feel. Yoongi had never said anything about this.

Jin actually just left my house a couple of hours ago. I don’t think the news hit me until now. I texted Yoongi earlier to tell him but he was busy so I think that was a sign that I should probably not tell him. It’s not like it matters right? Since the baby was gone anyways.

I know my therapist told me to stop with the negative self-talk, but it’s moments like this that really push me to just keep thinking I’ll never be good enough for the men that I love. Thanks to my bastard ex for fucking my mind up like this. No matter how hard I try, I always just circle back to the fact that I wasn’t good enough for him, and that I’m not good enough for Yoongi. Even fate is telling me that I’m not good enough to carry a child with the man I love. How fucked up is that?

Jungkook’s heart dropped to his stomach. He felt sick. There were so many things going through his head right now. He felt like he was violating something that was so private. Yoongi didn’t even know that you went through this. You didn’t even know you went through this. He shut the journal quickly, wiping the tears that formed in his eyes.

At that exact moment, he heard your heavy breathing and quickly got up to check on you. He walked around to your side of the bed and found you trembling with his phone in your hands. He noticed that his messages were open and he began to panic.

“What the fuck is this?” was the last thing he heard you say before your eyes rolled to the back of your head and you fell limp into your bed.

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incarnateirony · 5 years

Note

i think there’s a distinction that needs to be made. i think those with power over dabb & co are the ones who are exuding more habits of queerbaiting, while dabb and co aren’t. and because those execs are more or less invisible, the blame/fault is put on dabb as he’s the perceived figurehead of everything in the show when he’s not. anything he may want to put in the show can be easily vetoed by a higher exec so

Okay so I said I wouldn’t touch related issues facing wanky-side, but while this runs the line this is such a genuine, and valid thought process it feels worth addressing.

So in short: Yes. But no. But yes. But no. But we’ll see.

What do I mean by that? I’m going to put this behind a cut. But first of all I want to thank this Nonnie for at least trying to critically think about where the problems lead to. This is FAR BETTER CRITICAL THINKING than I see in this discussion most of the time and this. More like this. Nuance, discussion, idea trade, history. Let’s do it.

Okay, so.

How can it be yes no yes no maybe eenie meenie miney mo?

Because it really depends on what part of this 15 year legacy show we’re talking about.

What I’m about to say isn’t going to be popular, but I’ve said it before, I just can’t find the ancient ass post discussing it.

We’re going to rewind. Like, a fucking lot. A lot, a lot. This is going to be a history ride, and you’re probably going to wonder how it connects to the conversation at first, but bear with me.

Ignoring any personal frustrations I have with the casting of season 4 – frankly a chapter of this FUCKING show that haunts me somewhere in the ballpark of, “If my friend wasn’t dismissed as not white enough and got the role, would we have Misha, Destiel, any of this, would the show be on, would she have been chased off as the other actresses?” – and frankly these are the things people don’t even fucking *think* about.

TLDR a bajillion years ago CW made a casting call and we got this super cute character named Anna that Dean was slated to bend over in two seconds flat, as old canon used to be before modernly growing. The actress expressed discomfort, and frankly went over with the audience about as well as wet cardboard. And like, while I agree that a lot of women were hated for misogynistic reasons in this show, she really was about as interesting as a plank of plywood to me once she got past her first performance or two.

At the same time, this handsome bastard named Misha Collins auditioned for a bit role originally intended for 3 episodes and quickly extended to 6. But, identified as lightning in a bottle and with on-fire chemistry, while Anna waffled for *several* reasons, summarily, their story ends swapped. That’s… not like *exactly* what happened but it’s *basically* what happened. Anna became the herald and contagonist instead of Cas, and Cas quite frankly took on the role of the goddess.

With Lisa already entered before Anna, there’s no evidence whatsoever she was intended as endgame. Story flip. Thank you for everything last night on earth fall by angel banishing almost like this was foreshadowed woohoo! But… don’t lend towards a relationship. No point. Given, they made a few jokes on set at that point, but it wasn’t really an idea *they thought anyone took seriously*.

Coming from a phase where most of the leads were introduced to “slash fandom” by Wincest, which they literally used to torture and prank each other, the idea of this being anything serious really wasn’t on their radar. The one I remember most was Misha choosing to sit on Dean’s side of the bed as Cas in the famous “What were you dreaming about?” and Sgriccia being like “that’s kinda gay” “nah keep it”

I mean, is that… queerbait at that point? I don’t think it’s fair to really call it that. They respectfully tried to scrub out the leading romantic edges from what would have been Anna’s story, but ultimately, the human psyche kind of recognizes 8000 years of storytelling history subconsciously when using the Hero’s Journey narrative, so it was resonant. Nobody was crazy for seeing it. That didn’t mean it was right, that didn’t mean it’s what they were consciously leading anyone for.

Hell, Jensen didn’t even know what the fuck Destiel WAS until season 7 (”Deathstiel?”) due to the way cons, circuits, and fansites kept the conversation force-muted at that point. Anything they had floated somewhere in the area of “hah that is kinda gay I guess”, and even that there’s no evidence of being frequent.

Kripke left, the show petered, social media was new, and summarily, Sera Gamble was a dumbass and listened to the wrong crowd that seemed super big back when big accounts were a whole 10K followers and you had 50 asshats screaming as a coordinated group about Ruining The Show™. Ratings tanked, somewhere between Misha being fired and the show turning into a parody of itself with dick jokes that made it seem like Gamble was trying to target 11 year old boys for her audience, and like, that’s it, that was the season.

Until that nosedive spiral essentially turned into a shorthand apology reversal, a panicked and roughly written script that was *SO GAY* that *EVEN MISHA FUCKING COLLINS* couldn’t seriously choke out the dialogue. It was cheap, it was out of character, and as Jensen put it, the dialogue might as well have had him petting and sobbing into Castiel’s coat while essentially being like I SLEEP WITH YOUR COAT EVERY NIGHT TO REMEMBER YOUR SCENT UWU and shit that just LITERALLY vaulted from alien fascinated staring into desperate teenage gay drama in the body of a 30 year old man.

So yeah. Did I consider it reasonable to change that? Fuck yes I did.

Was what Sera Gamble did queerbait? Yes, actually. And she did it again in the Magicians. You see, Gamble had fucked over an audience, and then tried to exploit that audience in reverse when she realized she fucked over the *wrong* audience, but had zero intent of fulfillment.

And then magically, Sera Gamble didn’t fucking work there anymore after a whole like, year and a half as showrunner.

Now, at the same time, Dawn Ostroff was leaving the CW. Jensen’s had some pretty fierce words about Dawn Ostroff not understanding the show and how to manage it, but whatever. Bye, Dawn. Hello… MARK FUCKING PEDOWITZ. But at the same time, WELCOME BACK CARVER and most of all HOWDY DO NETFLIX, so nice to make a guaranteed deal with you (that ended as of this year due to a CBS merchandising meltdown).

When Carver came back, he said a lot of things. He… very tactfully called Gamble’s era trash by phasing it like “:) Watching the show :) since I left :) I realized :) a lot of our mythology :) has been difficult to follow :) so I went :) back to basics :) please help”, and others, like mentioning he had a three year plan on his desk. So 3. Season 8, 9, 10. He had notes for his S10 finale in mind and everything! Great stuff.

Now the fandom, at this point, generally didn’t pay attention to the network or production. In fact, the actor worship around here is some other kind of wild and I don’t know how after 15 years people haven’t figured out that it isn’t how to go about paying attention. Either way – plot switches, showrunner switches, author switches, and NETWORK LEADERSHIP SWITCHES.

Now, this little part here is speculation – but I am 99% sure that when Carver was pulling SPN out of the cancellation toilet, he had bigger things to inform the new execs about than “btw I might make it gay.” Like “Hey, since CW just got its netflix deal, if you give us another year we can import fresh demographic while bringing back Collins’ old fanbase by setting him back as a regular.” SURE, SOUND GREAT, MAKE MONEY, THX.

Cool. Cool. Make sense so far, you still with me?

Because at this point, S8 into early S9, fandom had gotten itself into all kinds of a stir. It was about to go canon, rite nao, said a bunch of bloggers, who at that point WERE pretty much chasing wallpapers and Tshirts and making the most bizarre uncorroborated parallel interpretations like “IF U PARALLEL IT TO MOBY DICK-” WHAT WHY WHERE– ??? BUT cAS = fISH

Okay, my fucking annoyance at what counted as lit crit in those days aside, we’ll get back on track. Everybody started vibrating for this shit because, you know what, S8 did resonate pretty strong, almost like authors were toying with ideas. I’m not gonna get into stuff about Robbie, I THINK fandom knows the statements he’s made and I don’t just mean the whole Destiel being canon tweet both antis and bitters descended on him to eviscerate him about. About what? Calling it queerbait!

So here we go, the great advent. About a year after a dramatic network shift, a CW exec was like :))))))))) I’D LIKE TO LEARN ABOUT THIS FANDOM THAT IS SUDDENLY MAKING ME MONEY!! WHAT SHOULD I DO??? TO TWITTER! HASHTAG TALK TO THEM!

[logs in]

Beep boop. “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” the FUCK is a Destiel? Wait what no I don’t know what you’re talking about representation isn’t our intention with these characters. “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT”

And then the network exec got so slammed he deleted twitter entirely and everybody popped confetti and felt accomplished and did NOT realize how fucking BAD that was. And frankly, anyone that did kinda didn��t want to admit it, because taking responsibility for that tire fire was… not… attractive. In fact, several folks are still around to this day, bitter blogging or making weirdass meta or accusing other people of wallpapers and Tshirts because that’s what they did so *YAY, PROJECTION!*

My own frustrated bitterness aside, I’m going to place some questions down, and not so much answer them as, now that the reader has really taken history in, let them decide:

At this point… is this queerbait?

Because this is when the queerbait yelling began. It’s when every fan with even a moderate platform or site blasted it out there.

It’s when the fandom made DeanCas a big problem.

And it’s also literally the same time Carver left his very first recorded, known direction with a romantic tilt, “The note I got from Jeremy Carver was to play it like a jilted lover, so that’s what we played there,” on LGBT author Bobo berens’ very first episode. Everyone runs circles around that modernly, or goes “SEE??? QUEERBAIT!” without realizing what the FUCK just happened here.

So, SPN went from cancel rating line to their most successful show between 7 and 9. Suddenly corporate sees their successful product *ON FUCKING FIRE* so do you know what happens?

Fuck it this IS one line I’ll break: Corporate panicked. They changed their press packets. If you noticed a bunch of media-adjacent people and their friends suddenly get bitter as FUCK in season 10 after still surviving the S9 mess, here’s fucking why. Because now that everybody spent the last YEAR trying to burn down the product yelling about shit that corporate had been literally blindsided by, they added temporarily a new section to the packet that included sexuality. They were, at that moment, suddenly listed collectively as heterosexual men. SEE, WE AREN’T QUEERBAITING IF WE TELL YOU THEY’RE STRAIGHT *will smith pose*

Congrats fandom, you have now officially made Destiel A Huge Problem™ to the corporate behemoth behind the shiny pictures. The iron curtain dropped. This is what you could call “Protect the Product Mode” if you will.

Now again, at this point: Is it queerbait?

Because at this point, S9-10 was rolling out. We all know it, Cain, Collette, *gestures off into infinity* But let’s fall back to Carver’s statement. 3 years. 8, 9, 10. You know what else happened season 10?

A bunch of shit, including shit Carver *wrote himself for the season 10 finale* got filmed, then cut. Coincidentally, it was all very gay shit. Things that pulled forward the Crowley/Abaddon Cas/Colette Sam/Abel parallels, arguing over who was who’s boyfriend, Rowena mentioning about them both being shattered at the Altar of Winchester (15.3 is calling), the secret admirer dream, I could go on. I mean, this shit literally would have shifted the entire storytelling arc to full-frontal taking that parallel and addressing it right up in your face. First you’ll kill your mistress but you’ll get it done, and then you’ll kill your wife. He’s your boyfriend no he’s YOUR boyfriend. You’ve BOTH been shattered at the Altar of Winchester. Really, this is what you dream about? Your secret admirer Cas?

K? K. K?

Is it queerbait for Carver to have entered with a plan? Is it queerbait for Carver to have been interrupted on that plan despite attempting to pursue it? And is it queerbait for the network to still lock down on that plan so close after the event?

You see why this conversation gets increasingly complex.

S11 rolled around, Carver was half in half out, Dabb was stepping in, big gay heart songs, take what you will out of that entire mess, and by S12 Dabb entirely took over and we started entering the era we are in today.

So let’s address where we’re at today.

Now :) I can’t say anything for sure :) because anybody that’s been to or worked on marketing stuff definitely has an NDA :) but let’s play for a minute. Let’s say with the stone wall up, a set of creators still wanted to actually *go somewhere* with this story.

“But!” remembered the network, “Remember the tire fire?! And all the people that hated the gay?! What about our profit?!”

“No,” a creator might say, “Tides have changed.”

“We’ll see,” a network might say, “Take it to market testing.” At which point, one would enter a few years of polling how the general audience reacts to this.

Now, if they were seeing promising numbers, they might be given a bit of rope. Why, let’s … just pretend. Totally. Totally pretending. That Dabb pitched this idea to take up Carver’s mantle. Let’s say that started S12ish when he took over. Let’s say they ran through hiatus. And then… authors might be given a little bit of a line. “Looks good, but we’re not sure,” said a network quite fond of its split conservative/liberal demographic, “Try it out a bit and see how it goes.”

And so an author room that would be full of LGBT creators fed out good faith groundwork. They might even be like YALL ITS NEVER TOO LAAAAAATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN and just throw their whole boy howdy cowboy into that shit and get great ratings.

What if even if the results came back positive leaning, the network ho’ed and hummed and stayed noncommital? Might the creators scale it back while still writing it lowkey just in case they got flashed a greenlight? I know I sure would, woudn’t you?! Or I guess would you prefer we drop the whole thing cold and stop writing anything vaguely in the direction?

Difficult question, in reality, isn’t it?

So in this TOTALLY HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION, this leaves the authors holding the bag, waiting for a sign, and being held with limitations. And just in case anybody thinks “BUT AUTHORS CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT!! AND!! OTHER SHOWS!!!”

K have we come down to reality yet? So, sure kids, try the gay, we’re interested, but you can’t like, go Full Gay Frontal with it. You gotta imply the gay. Wouldn’t want to offend conservative america! Besides! We’re totally exploiting marketing making this LGBT content for you over here! *jingles a carrot on a stick* LOOK AT HOW MUCH WE’RE FLEECING ADVERTISING PROMOTING ALL THIS GAY STUFF FOR YOU AREN’T THE RAINBOWS GREAT?

Some creator of limited LGBT content: How’s the marketing looking?

Some network: EH! We’ll see!

Some creator of limited LGBT content: K guys we’ll scale it back to not upset them but don’t drop it.maybe we can have them hold hands at the end or if we’re lucky maybe they’ll say we can do the whole thing

Some LGBT creators: K

Making sense still? STILL WITH ME?

So at this point… is this queerbait, or is this business?

Put aside the emotional reaction. Realize this really only hit scale in S9, hit front line S10, and hit potential corporate discussion in this TOTALLY theoretic universe around S11-12. We’re talking 3-4 years. Not 10. And we’re talking only a few of it really being tested.

So again I ask, history minded: Is this queerbait, or is this business?

That’s where the nuance and complication comes in, and let it be said I am in no way defending the CW. I fucking hate the network. They have literally personally screwed over real friends of mine and I hope they choke on a whole bag of dicks with their bullshit, but honestly, the shit I have seen and heard would make people stick their heads in the sand like scared and ashamed ostriches for every time they trumpet “BUT OTHER SHOWS” – you don’t know what’s going on in those shows. You don’t know how they’re getting hardballed on budget decisions, you don’t know what that show’s marketed demographic is about, you don’t know what they demand cast how, you literally don’t have a fucking idea unless you’re up in that disaster zone.

And even IF you’re in that disaster zone, unless you’re truly in the upper echelon, you only know so much.

Now let’s pretend, again, totally metaphorically, and absolutely not inspired by a real person at all, that someone worked with the crew for a while and, because they saw support inside creeping upward siiiiince mmmm gosh we’ll say season 12 since that’s our advent and totally not when anybody specific started working there and telling fandom ladder fans what they thought they saw going on, only to get sad and bitter and angry and eventually leave, and all those friends, still abiding old bitterness from S9~, now get angrier because of somebody else’s burnout on their ITK level and perspective, even if that was *probably* aggravated by other work stress conditions as well, but hey! WHO KNOWS!?!?! :)))) What a weird hypothetical though and I’m getting weirdly super specific on it aren’t I so LET’S MOVE ON.

We’re in S12-13 discussion category now.

So my question is, from this perspective… when do you call queerbait? When not swept up in misguided hysteria… at what point do you say “Yeah, you know what, yup, that’s all queerbait”?

So we’re gonna take a bit of a break here for a second and really process all of that hypothetical world, where a creator pitched going for it, and got it put into market testing, and was given enough rope to hang themselves on if the network changed its mind.

After only a few years of conscious thought on it… do you even think the network is truly consciously misguiding specifically those fans, or do they see it as giving the fans something they want while testing the idea of possibly truly giving it to them?

Because here’s what fandom misses – the corporate perspective. And again, I’m utterly not fucking justifying the CW as a whole, but people look at this from the angle of fans, and then argue what they think is representative dialogue from the angle of fans, often while missing all of this history. All that history up till S9? That’s all very real. But looking at history in perspective… who are you going to blame for that? Is it fair to hold S4-9 to that five year stretch of queerbait when that was… pretty much fandom manufactured from blissful ignorance to begin with? I mean if you want to go yell at Sera Gamble Specifically okay (please don’t) but beyond that like– that shit? Is that anybody’s fault? Do you blame a company for actually shutting DOWN the talk of it on a press angle? Can we call that and S10 queerbait then? Was Carver’s attempt at writing through it queerbait? Was trying to continue the story in S11 after theoretic shutdown queerbait? These are all genuine questions that are not asked enough. Most people don’t even realize they need to be asked.

So back to Totally Theoretic Land, where S12ish market testing would have been going on to see if people really thought it was Gay N Shit. Like a lot of people in an overwhelming majority after the amount of apprehension the straight old dude running the network has ever since the goddamn tornado of horse shit that happened like a year after he took over. Probably not the fondest fucking memory for him either. Probably also why he dismissively called most of that demographic “casual fans”, because in Smug White Guy Brain, “tru” fans would have all known, I guess, exactly the shit I’m telling you in history backtrack so, look at the silly girls wanting the gay shit :) Ahhhh girlllllls

Okay so, my impression of douchebags aside, let’s give it 12-13 hiatus to give the first test rope lead and 13-14 hiatus for the next, only to have at best noncommital and uncertain numbers and authors, theoretically, cautiously pulling back while writing it as generally established and implicit, as if it might, I don’t know, go from BIG GAY DRAMA to DEADASS DOMESTIC all of a sudden despite ITS NEVER TOO LATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN cuz get it, they started over, after he came in his room and played him. *elbows* You all get it right?

K. So maybe numbers changed. Maybe they don’t. Maybe I’m not comfortable talking in this hypothetical, maybe I don’t have access to this hypothetical AU’s current marketing data as of this year, I just don’t know! We don’t know where those cards fell.

But if, at this point, after 2-3 years of market testing, and leading authors on, and giving them enough rope to hang themselves with to get themselves accused of queerbait just for trying to lay good faith groundwork for a cohesive narrative, because fans don’t care that 2 open closet LGBT authors are on deck or that there’s totally theoretically probably and in no way fingering anyone at least one closeted author on deck, or at least publicly so, their coworkers would probably know. But I mean. That’s just. :) statistics. Right?

K whatever moving on. If at this point they’ve been boggley bounced around… you know, I gotta say. At this point… I might actually call queerbait if the network stonewalls it. At this point, they’ve had a few years to really get their shit together, and if they’ve just used it to play yo yo with LGBT creators trying to make content then yeah, go suck a whole bag of dicks.

The problem being with the lack of nuance in this conversation, you’re right, Dabb and co would catch it rather than the guilty party, which is why I HATE faux activism culture. If you’re going to be an activist pay the fuck attention to what you’re being an activist in, don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you just because it was a PBJ and not filet mignon, go after the bastard 1%’er that’s eating all the goddamn filet mignon. But nobody will. It never works like that. And then everybody wonders why this continues – be it in this show, or on other networks.

But hey. Maybe this theoretic network got enough material to change their mind. Maybe another executive got promoted that might help one of the other creators argue it to corporate with their new shiny title. Maybe they can convince someone. Convince them of what and to what level, who knows. Maybe just continue telling the established story, give them a divorce, mention marriage, divorce, dead wives, breakups every 0.2 seconds while they go through a classically framed dark point in the romance everybody with brains and eyes understands because, again, historic storytelling we literally all recognize, but pretend we don’t when stomping about personal representation lines? Or hey! Maybe it’ll go further. (Don’t hold your breath.) Throw in some other shit that even a straight guy would look at and be like “two dicks one chick that shit’s gay bro” because WE LITERALLY ALL FUCKING KNOW WHAT IT MEANS EVEN IF IT’S IMPLIED BECAUSE THE NETWORK IS A BUNCH OF PUSSIES.

…*stops, breathes*

If you can’t tell this is a very long term topic of frustration to me, because nobody, absolutely nobody, wants to introspect and think, you know, maybe it wasn’t queerbait back then, maybe we SHOULDN’T have set a corporate exec on fire about it, that might have been fucking bad.

There are other ways to be an activist than to scream queerbait into the void at whoever is unfortunate enough to cross your paths. One of the best examples I can remember is Exorcising Emily collecting demographics on fandom, and testimonials from LGBT fans about resonating with the content – no fanfic, no fanart, no attacks – and sent copies of this to several powerful creative names.

Now… if with this history… if, from season 9 to 12… one of those names became a creator. If, by some FLUKE of imagination… he still had that book around… and even gave it to his freshly joined new employees like 2 weeks after they started working there–

oh wait and i oop

The mentions would be much as you expect, antis screaming and demanding her job (QUICK, somebody tell Andrew Dabb that she’s READING ANDREW DABB’S OWN BOOKS THAT HE CHOSE TO KEEP AROUND FOR THREE YEARS).

Has Dabb’s era seemed… more plugged in? More resonant? Better and stronger in its storytelling? More hooked into fandom?

See, that’s what well thought activism can do. Well thought activism can structure an entire movement. Poorly thought rioting thinking itself as activism can cause the literal opposite effect of what it wanted. That is how these things contrast each other. And that is something fandom needs to DEEPLY consider.

…but is it queerbait for him to try to continue the story? Even if, say, we drop the marketing talk, because TOTALLY nobody can ACTUALLY know because AGAIN anyone that DOES would have an NDA so we DEFINITELY can’t say anybody knows anything for sure, because anyone that said jack shit would probably get sued so hard their descendents down in whatever homo superior evolution 1000 years into the future would feel it, so you know. We’ll put aside this totes theoretical shit and ask

…If he just was told no– would you prefer to just drop the storyline entirely at this point?

Again. Genuine question. And difficult. And something poorly thought queerbait screaming can actually cause, too.

So here we are in the land of the final season. Whether you consider it network queerbait or not – again, they can choke on the whole bag of dicks at a network level for all I care for ANY number of reasons, even well beyond the domain of Supernatural, and may all their bacon burn from here into the next life – it’s a lot more complicated than fandom has ever let it on to be, because letting it on to be what it really is, in full perspective, also demands a lot of introspection and acceptance, and we all know nobody in this fandom can ever make a mistake ever and they’re all fucking perfect darlings.

It’s a complicated answer to a simple idea… and unfortunately I don’t think this fandom will ever really sit here. They’ll yell “VICTIM BLAMING” because it’s buzzy, they’ll yell “HIDING YOUR GAYS” which I mean, yeah, but let’s talk about what led us here. They’ll yell a lot of things. But they will rarely quietly think, and study, and hone down to what’s going on in the world out there beyond what they have, at this point, become obsessively hotlocked on.

Supernatural, as of 15.7, has already taken several steps further than it ever is before. No, that’s not a signal of me saying [Your Personal Goalpost] is going to happen. But it’s a sign that if they have a line, they’re testing it with every strength they have.

Going back onto the Fateful Advent: Cain. The mentor– who was never going to stop; I can’t stop samuel; he was never going to stop; I will never stop; Rowena, the mentor, never going to stop, shattered, at the altar of Winchester. Long ago, when Cas was human, Dean sealed him away, and now, he’s doing the same to him. So Shirt Of Bad Decisions Deanmon basically karaokes with his friend like the Crowley days, REPEATING the Crowley dialogue but infinitely harder to dodge, as if some sort of calculated method of cat’s cradle of How To Write The Gay was discussed. Man, whoever wrote that kind of shit would probably even publicly thank whatever big gay mastermind helped them map out THAT level of stuff. Wouldn’t it be funny if most of that shit had been written by a gay dude that’s still around and it’s still popping back up in the show louder and harder to dodge than before? That’d be fuckin’ wild, man. Oh, fucking WAIT.

And this is why I hate the way shipping culture thinks it’s doing activism. Most of the time it’s cosplaying as an activist and at this point it’s become more of a furry convention than it has any kind of organized rights movement. Nobody’s out here fighting for the rights of these LGBT authors this year, nobody’s helping them get a voice, and in fact, often scream at them or bury what voice they’ve had as not enough.

And I want to fix it.

Desperately.

And frankly, I don’t know how anymore.

But what we’re not talking about is some 3-5 year show that came in early and started intentionally fucking at you. We’re looking at happy coincidences, so let’s check with our gay king, the father of Wayward that everybody coincidentally accepted as canon with far less because of a (meaningful) third party line DeanCas had elsewhere but hey it didn’t have antis so suddenly it counts; let’s check with him about that.

That’s my king. That’s my king that wrote the first recorded episode to be intentionally directed as jilted lovers. My king that gav eus Colette. My king that gave us the mixtape. My king that gave us the PR framed breakup. My king that gave us Cas leaving Dean. That’s my King. That’s my gay king who has been fighting his ass off, only to be hung out to dry by a fandom that doesn’t even care to look where or how to scream, or maybe consider that perhaps screaming isn’t the option.

Is he yours yet? Have I broken through to a single soul on this?

That’s my king who wrote about the necessary evils in 2003, before the youngest in this fandom were born and while many were still in diapers or kindergarten; about the unfortunate necessary evils that he loathes and acknowledges about moderate queer content gaining exponential amounts of platform compared to whatever is considered hardline aggressive at the time, about how that incrementalization is what helped our media landscape evolve to this day.

And he isn’t wrong.

And he’s getting roasted for doing just that.

And I really wish I could just psychically make everyone fucking stop.

But I will say one thing.

“It’s network queerbait!” I mean

Yeah

That

Because… realistically? like 99% of modern queer content is queerbait, even stuff with canon queer content.

ESPECIALLY on the CW.

If you’ve noticed CW panicking the last year and trying to slap rainbows and DARE TO DEFY on everything, it’s because their entire fucking ecosystem just got fucked over by CBS wanting 100% merchandising profit like it already took 100% digital profit and Netflix was basically like “miss us with your bullshit” and broke the CW contract which was *HOW PEDOWITZ BANKROLLED MOST OF HIS NETWORK*. Now? Now CW has to carve a niche. So LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKING PRIDE COLORS ON– OUR– STRAIGHT–CHARACTERS??? BUT WE HAVE GAY ONES LIKE LEGENDS OF TOMORROW AND *flips notes* THAT SIDE CHARACTER LESBIAN ON SPN.

*gets a whisper* What they killed her? Shit. Maybe bring her back. AND THERE’S THIS PERSON OVER ON JANE THE VIRGIN oh that just got cancelled uhhh VAMPIRE DI-wait fuck. Well we’ll just make one of the chicks in this shitty charmed reboot CBS just forced down our throat and killed Wayward over, that’ll fix it *jazz hands*

TV is a business. Businesses make money. The entire LGBT battle is basically us industriously proving we can make money. It’s about rights and visibility on our end, but on their end it is *always* about money and I really don’t think anybody really groks what that really means.

So “it’s the network! Queerbait!”

…yeahhhhh.

…welcome to working in television. Now you just have to sit and think about how many other times this has completely missed your radar.

The network will never get a shit about you, they give a shit about your money, and that’s just the reality of capitalist america whether we like it or not. When it’s 2143 and bernie sanders’ floating head in a jar is president and andrew yang’s base income shit is in effect and we’re all a socialist country and the world has figured out how to run high cost businesses like TV on the power of unicorn farts, they might actually give a shit. But they don’t. There may be a few advocates WITHIN the company that do, but as a whole body, the network will never give a shit. They don’t care if you’re black, white, straight, gay, disabled, male, female, beyond what, explicitly, that totals to in dollar signs depending how they feed you, when and where.

So it’s not like... *just* a queer rights issue, it’s an “Anything Trump’s America may consider offensive on their television” issue. It’s businesses weighing who they think pays their bills while making it and beyond that who they think is the safest investment to make the most money.

As a side note: Personally, I’d consider it dumb as fuck to not do it. SPN will taper within a few years down to just trekkie-esque addicts unless they find a way to get a new burst of viewership and boy howdie do I hope so, but how much Pedowitz overvalues the conservative US demographic, or certain international markets, I don’t know. I’m not in his head and I don’t have this year’s marketing numbers beyond basic live, +3 and +7 ratings, and digital calls. And just general nielsen released demo. But how he’s added that all up? Can’t say. And I sure ain’t gonna bank on him not being a dumbass, when he’s famous for it, so don’t go get your hopes up either.

#supernatural #representation #queerbait #intersectionality #business #corporate #marketing

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thisolddag · 5 years

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Our Family Unplugged For 24 Hours. Here’s What Happened.

Back in September, our thirteen-year-old son finally got his own room. We converted the playroom by dragging in his bed and desk from the room he used to share with his little brother. The new “bedroom” still has bins of Legos and Thomas trains and action figures hidden in drawers, and it’s still painted a cheery bright teal, and he let me keep yesteryear scribbly artwork up, and it doesn’t quite fit his current cool, detached teenager image - but it’s got a TV and it is His Own Personal Space.

From which he hardly ever retreats.

This is the first thing. The fact that we have for all intents and purposes, momentarily “lost” contact with him. It’s normal, I know this - normal to want to burrow away and figure things out in solace, normal for someone who is 13 and looks 16 and is wracked with evolving feelings and changing body. I get it.

But this new room, and this new kid (who is now taller than me) got me missing things. Missing how things used to be before we walked around with devices in our hands. Because the truth is we are - all four us in this house - burrowed away in our own Personal Spaces. Eyes down, time wasted, hours spent scrolling, clicking, forwarding, deleting. Even the ten-year-old who doesn’t have a phone, has an iPad and access to a computer - and so while we still play board games, and eat dinner as a family, watch movies together sometimes - the cold, hard truth is that any leisure time to spare is time spent alone, in some corner, staring down at a screen.

So when I came across Tiffany Shlain’s new book “24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week” it was like a plea, a dare, and an answer all rolled into one. The next day, I called a family meeting.

“We’re going to implement a Tech Shabbat. We are going to unplug for twenty-four hours. No iPhones, no iPads, no computers. ALL of us. We will have a landline, a list of phone numbers to call people if we want, and one TV to share, in the family room.”

The ten year old was excited.

The thirteen year old cried.

He shed actual tears, and his reaction - fear, confusion, desperation, fury - further cemented my decision.

Yesterday was our first unplugged Sunday.

And here are my take-aways.

THINGS THAT WERE SURPRISING

1. Teenagers are resistant and reluctant to use phones for anything other than texting. I had to implore my 13 yr old to pick up the house phone and call his friends (they were supposed to meet up for Superbowl hangout that evening.) “Nobody calls anybody! Nobody leaves voice messages. Nobody checks voicemail!” “They won’t know this number. They won’t pick up.” He was correct on all accounts. I had to call parents and inform them that it was, in fact, our son calling from a landline, that this was no prank. The kids who ended up calling back didn't know to how to greet me. They stammered and hemmed and hawed. The idea that reaching out to a friend did not guarantee a direct connection with said friend, was foreign and stupid and strange. This all blew my mind.

2. The day felt incredibly long and languid. It unfolded slowly. When we get on a device, time is sucked up so quickly. I liken it to being in a casino. Minutes fly by, the whole concept of time is warped, thwarted, eradicated. Many times a day, I take my phone out of my pocket and there I am - Instagram, Facebook, Flipboard, Twitter, Matchington Mansion - and when I slip it back into my pocket, I’m unaware of how much time has passed. An hour? Twenty minutes? I don't register it, and yet, it’s gone in a flash.

3. I didn’t miss the things I thought I would. I didn’t miss social media, I didn't miss news notifications popping up, I didn't even miss the Marco Polos I love exchanging with a group of close friends. I didn’t miss getting emails. I didn’t miss looking around for my phone or “alone time.” I still had my alone time except it was quieter - an aloneness with my thoughts, observing things instead of being distracted by them. I didn’t miss being available and connected to an outside world. When I started wondering about how someone was doing, I picked up the house phone and gave them a ring. I left a message and hoped they’d call back. It felt freeing. It felt authentic. My husband felt the same. However, our oldest son’s biggest worry was missing out. He still got dropped off at his friend’s house for the SuperBowl party (the only kid there without a phone, I'm sure) and he still had loads of fun. In fact, when I called the kid’s house later that night to check up on him, he sounded energetic and happy and even ended the conversation with “I love you, mom.” But later he mentioned experiencing anxiety - feeling like he was missing out on “something important” by not having access to his phone. To him, having his phone nearby means having his friends nearby. Without it, he feels lost, unmoored. That admission made me think about how hard it is for our kids, who have grown up used to being “connected” all the time.

4. Landlines are FUN. My friends called a few times, and I would slightly thrill at the sound of a phone ringing throughout the house, and I’d run downstairs to pick up the receiver in time, smiling. As we talked, one friend commented how it felt like we were sixteen, hanging off our beds, twirling our hair, talking about our crushes.

5. My husband and I worked on a crossword puzzle over coffee and breakfast. I also finished a jigsaw puzzle in one afternoon, which I’d been working on for weeks. I read a lot. My boys lay together on the couch and agreed on what to watch on the one TV we could use. They hung out more than they had in a long, long time. We all felt relaxed. I ended up watching the Superbowl because by 9pm, I was too tired to start another jigsaw puzzle, too tired to read, so what else was there to do? I laid on the couch and learned about fumbles, and touchdowns, and cheered for the Chiefs and I kind of got into it. Who the fuck would have thunk.

THINGS THAT WERE ANNOYING

1. I couldn’t take pictures. That sucked.

2. Traveling was unsettling. When the boys went to SkyZone, I didn't like not being able to get in touch with them. Granted, my sister and her husband and kid were there too, and I called her, but still. I thought about car accidents or something random and awful happening while they were out, and I worried about when they’d get home. That kinda sucked too. It felt like an old yet unfamiliar sensation - not knowing what was going on at every single moment.

3. We couldn't order anything online. We couldn't use GrubHub or DoorDash, or GoogleMaps. We couldn’t just like check the weather with a swipe of one finger. Not having the everyday convenience of being online was a bit of a bother, but we survived. It made me realize that we have gotten lazy about daily tasks, and that part of our brain has BECOME our iPhone.

4. I snacked a lot. Without my calorie counting and fitness apps to log my food intake, I suddenly found myself snacking on junk. I did work out, but eating that day became a sort of time filler, and the feeling reminded me of quitting cigarettes and turning to food. That was unforeseen, and I did not like it.

THINGS THAT WERE PROFOUND

1. All day, we felt like we were together in the same space. We retreated less often. We felt serene, light on our feet. We settled into feeling bored, or lazy, or inspired. We gave each other more attention but somehow felt less encumbered upon. It was really, really lovely and soothing. Putting away our devices felt like going on vacation. When we went to bed, I felt closer to my husband. I felt like we had truly shared the day. And both us were not exactly looking forward to Monday, because it felt like going back to the grind. Already there was a bubble of anxiety in our chests, a feeling of weight on our shoulders. Also, I had 127 emails waiting for me this morning and not a one of them was something that desperately should have been answered yesterday. So there was that realization too. The world won’t fall apart if you check out for one day.

2. Twenty-fours can change you. It is a small amount of time, yet our 24 hours unplugged felt so incredibly substantial and so behavior-altering that it made me pause and realize just how addicted we have become to always being connected to the outside world via technology. It’s fucking bizarre, if you think about it.

3. Unplugging and reaping the benefits will only work when the adults in the house do it too. We already have a Device Free day and have had it for years, but it only applied to the kids. It has never felt as pure, and as important and GOOD, as yesterday, when the rules applied to all of us. Taking electronic away from the kids, while being allowed ourselves because “we didn't grow up with this, so we’re not addicted to it” - is like telling someone to go on a diet and eating cake in front of them all day, because well, you personally don't have an issue with weight. Suddenly, it became clear: to be together, we have to do this together.

Moral of the story: this was a pretty amazing experience, as trivial as it seemed to some. If you are feeling burdened, stressed out, fractured, cranky with your kids, your partner - I highly recommend investing in a landline, writing down phone numbers, picking a weekend day, and trying it out. It will feel new and beautiful, and reassuring somehow. Because while there were moments when obviously we went our own ways, did our own thing, we still felt as one. There were no walls, no apps, no texts getting in the way of figuring out and enjoying the day. We were fully present with each other, with ourselves - aware of time but not panicked or confined by it.

In her book, Tiffany Shlain writes that her family has been unplugging one day a week for ten years now. I don’t know how long we’ll last, but all I know is this - we can’t wait for next Sunday.

#unplugging #24/6 #familytime #rest #technolgy

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iknownothingihearnothing · 5 years

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Game of Thrones 8.3 “Battle of Winterfell”

HOLY SHITSICKLES, YOU GUYZ!

That episode was AH-MAZING. I know it wasn’t exactly the shower of death we expected--I mean, there was TONS of death, don’t get me wrong, but our ultra-beloveds are still safe...for now--but it was still epic. Totally worth having to squint for over an hour at a laptop screen brought obscenely close to my face.

Honestly, I thought it was just me until I logged onto Twitter after the episode and everyone was like:

I also made the grievous error of signing into social media before the episode aired and I saw that “Arya” was trending. I thought that she had been killed and I was about to riot.

My brother had actually seen the episode before me--we share an HBO Go account with my uncle because as a lifelong bachelor, he can afford all those channels we cannot--and when I turned it on the battle was at the midway point; I was spoiling myself. I texted my bro “I WILL KILL YOU” and he replied with an emoji of a house. IDK if he plans to defend himself with a house or hide in a house or drop a house on me like I’m the Wicked Witch of the East.

As the episode opens, it’s nighttime (of course it is), and Sam’s hands are shaking because it’s really fucking cold. The Winterfellians are ushering everyone who ain’t fighting into the supposedly SAFE IT’S SO SAFE YOU ALL WILL BE SO MUCH SAFER crypt and performing last minute prep. Theon and Co are wheeling BranBot to the Weirwood tree where he will be used as bait to lure out the Night King.

Sansa and Tyrion and Co. are up on the ramparts. Sansa, naturally, does not look very excited for this party.

The actors’ also. They had to shoot 55 nights in a row.

We get our first glimpse of Drogon and Rhaegal of the episode, AKA the Good Dragons. Because we need to decipher on this show.

Everybody’s in position. The canons are ready. The awesome catapults are ready. The Dothraki are ready. The Unsullied are ready.

All the animals, too, are in place. Including Ghost!

Jon/Aegon approaches Dany and her dragons on a hill overlooking Winterfell so they can get a decent view of the happenings below and get better air on their dragonplanes.

There is SO much to unpack with Jon and Daenerys. They have lots of, uh, “stuff” to deal with, like that he’s technically her nephew and she’s more concerned that he has a claim (and a bigger one) on the Iron Throne than that he’s her blood relation and they’ve had lots of sexy sex. And also that the brother she grew up hearing raped Lyanna Stark actually loved her and married her in secret, thus producing Jon.

But, er, now is not the time and they know that so they gots to put aside their feels and kick some ice zombie butt and save humanity. I imagine this is how Sophia Bush felt when she still had to work with Chad Michael Murray on One Tree Hill knowing he cheated on her with a teenaged extra.

Sort of. Minus the whole “we might die” part.

Melisandre rides up after being in Volantis all this time. Remember how she said she’d come back to Westeros just one more time? Well, that time is here. The Red Woman asks Jorah to tell the Dothraki to lift their swords, which he hesitantly does. Melly grasps the front dude’s Arakh, chants some freaky Lord of the Light mojo, and then all the Arakhs, one by one, become alight in flames like Beric Dondarrion’s.

Even Tormund is awed.

The Red Woman continues on, wishing “Valar morghulis” to Grey Worm, who instantly returns with “Valar dohaeris”. Davos, up in the ramparts, having been warily watching Melly, finally gives the order to open the gate. He...is not a fan of Melisandre. She may have brought back Jon from the Great Beyond but she burned Shireen alive.

However, now is not the time for disputes among the Team Alive population. If they wanna beat Team Undead, they gotta work together.

Davos goes to meet her and she assures him that there is no need to execute her or anything cus she’ll be dead before dawn.

Davos:

Up on the roof, Arya catches Melly’s eye. And she don’t look like she’s throwing out the welcome banns.

Melisandre is on there because she kidnapped Gendry all those seasons ago. You know, to do that sexy, leechy blood magic on him.

And BOOM. The first wave sets off. Mostly consisting of Dothraki on horseback, with Jorah leading them into battle. Huge alight boulders are also placed inside catapults and set flying. Ghost is seen running beside the horses, teeth gnashing.

Srsly, they need to save that direwolf. The PTB at GoT have already killed the other wolves, with the exception of Nymeria, who has run free, and David and D.B. have confirmed that Crazy Cersei killed Ser Pounce after Tommen died. There is NOT a good track record with pets on this show.

All the Dothraki race into the fray to meet the undead, ululating and shouting war cries in the Dothraki language. They’re proud. They’re confident. They are WARRIORS. They know what they’re doing. They’ve been raised on this shit.

And then...

That’s the ENTIRE DOTHRAKI HORDE! Just...gone in a few minutes, holy shit .Did GoT just erase the Dothraki?! Just like that, what the fuck?!

Anyone else feel indignant on behalf of the Dothraki?

Jaime looks like he’s about to shit his Iron Pants.

The second wave all look at each other like “WE ARE SO FUCKED” until some animals and finally people--including Jorah--return to the line. Ghost better be one of them!

Up on the hill, Dany’s in a panic because, again, the dead desecrated her entire Dothraki forces. And she is understandably devastated; they weren’t loyal to Jon, they were loyal to her. She was their Khaleesi. Their original plan was for them to remain on the hill and take flight there and wait for the dead to come to Winterfell’s gates but we all know that ain’t gonna happen. Jon, awkwardly, tries to intervene when Dany begins to leave, but Dany perseveres. The dead are already here and the Night King is a-comin’.

On the line, everyone’s waiting with bated breath. Sam looks about ready to pass out. Tormund’s glorious red mane blows in the wind, which the captions keep telling me “whistles”, so I know it is strong. Grey Worm puts on his helmet. The Unsullied army bend and position their weapons and....

The ensuing scuffle is pretty much insanity and confusion. There are dead body parts mixed with the same people we know and love trying to fight them off and, like, totally forever kill them. Brienne shouts “STAND YOUR GROUND!!” like a badass but is immediately overwhelmed and Jaime, upon glimpsing his CO and fellow knight (and maybe something more?) going down in the mud, jumps in to help her.

Dany and Jon ride in on the backs of Drogon and Rhaegal and it is never not awesome watching dragons spitting fire at their human overlords’ enemies.

Up on the roof of Winterfell, Arya and Sansa are flabbergasted as they watch with dismay the battle below. The blood, the fire, the (good) dragons. Finally, Arya turns to Sansa and implores her sister to get into the (VERY SAFE EVERYONE WILL BE SAFE THERE SWEARSIES) crypt.

Sansa doesn’t know how to use it, she is not trained in combat. Arya just tells her to stick the wights with the pointy end.

Good advice, Arya!

At the Weirwood tree, Theon and Co. are doing their bestest to keep the BranBot safe while he attempts to lure Ol’ Nighty out of his hidey-hole. And on the battlefield, Jorah falls off his horse decapitating ice zombies, Jaime is going through the dead like toilet paper (or whatever they used back then...what did they use?), and Sam is...well, he’s trying, poor lamb. Ultimately though, he becomes overwhelmed and Mr. Edd has to save his butt.

Sealing his fate.

Stabbed through the back of the head, that is quite dolorous.

Sansa goes down into the crypt, where all the nearby tenants who have no fight training are gathered already. Wordlessly, a ball of nerves, she meets the eyes of Missandei and Tyrion, the latter of whom, naturally, takes a drink.

I’d drink, too, in that scenario.

In the air, Jon and Dany are on the backs of their respective dragons, which I guess is the ye olde version of aerial warfare, battling the elements as well as the gross horde down below. It’s snowing and raining and they’re stuck in a low hanging cloud or maybe some fog idk I can’t SEE.

Someone shouts to fall back and the gates to Winterfell are opened--by Lyanna Mormont’s command, that pint sized badass--and men start piling in. Grey Worm orders the Unsullied to protect the retreat as best they could and stand their ground, damnit.

Jon finally comes out of the cloud but Dany doesn’t, and he lands with a worried look on his face. More men pour in through the gates while Brienne and Jaime usher them inside.

Arya, from the top of Winterfell, uses her archery skillz to take out the munchers creepin’ up behind Woof.

It’s a milestone every teenage girl reaches and it brings a tear to your eye, it does.

Grey Worm gives the order to fall back and light the trench and we the audience are like--

I cannot say enough how dark this episode is. I have my screen up to 100 percent brightness and I am still squinting doing this recap.

He’s really referring to Dany here, whom he’s trying to signal with torches, but she and Drogon are still stuck in that wholly inconvenient cloud/fog thing. Truly, the worst weather has converged on this one location in Westeros on the one night that they really need clear skies. All that’s missing is a hurricane.

But Davos speaks for us all.

So, Team Alive is all scrambling around trying to light the trenches with torches but they can’t because they’re kinda preoccupied battling the undead. That is where Melly steps in. After reciting some of that weird mojo in High Valyrian, the deep trenches throughout the Winterfell grounds become alight.

And the rest of us blink our eyes repeatedly in thanks.

The wights are separated from Winterfell behind the trenches and the Hound’s kinda freaking out because he doesn’t exactly like fire, having had his face nearly melted off by his brother, the Mountain. So he disappears.

Down in the crypt, everyone is hearing all the crazy going on upstairs and Varys is like “At least we’re already in a crypt, eh?” and no one’s amused.

Tyrion is anxious. He wants to be doing something, damnit! Like he did at the Battle of Blackwater. Maybe seeing something that no one else has figured yet. But Sansa, Lady of Hindsight, tells him to sit his ass down. It won’t do anyone good if Tyrion joins the Army of the Dead. Tyrion makes a smartass remark about how there is no organization less suited to his abilities and Sansa, Milady Logic, is all “Witty remarks won’t help you, all we can do now is wait. That’s why we is down here, because we can’t do nothin’” and Tyrion pauses before--

Tyrion, Lord of Winterfell? A Lannister?! Why not? Weirder shit has happened on GoT. Weirder shit is happening right now.

Then, Sansa squashes that by laying this on the table: it’d never work between them because of the Dragon Queen. Their divided loyalties would come between them. But before Tyrion can reply, Missandei, who has been eavesdropping on their convo, cuts in like “Yeah, damn that Dragon Queen! Y’all wouldn’t have to worry about that crap without her because...we’d all be dead, so...”

Whatever you think of Dany, there is no way the North would live without her and her armies and dragons. They’d be overrun within minutes.

At the Weirwood tree, Theon and Co. have formed a barrier before BranBot. Theon remarks that the trenches have been lit, then, haltingly, turns to BranBot and starts to apologize for, yanno, turning on the only family that ever loved him and claiming Winterfell for himself.

Dime store psychics around the globe should replace their crystal balls with miniature BranBots.

Then he says he’s going to go now, just like that, and he wargs into a raven to find the Night King’s position.

Gee. Why didn’t I ever think of that to get out of conversations?

“Hey, Bee, how’d you do on your stats exam?”

“...oh, uh, I did, er, ok. I’m gonna go now.” Wargs into chicken.

Ah, there’s Ol’ (really Ol’, Ancient Ol’) Nighty, riding Viserion, looking all creepy and stuff.

Not quite, Nighty, not quite.

Zombies are an impatient lot. They’re hungry and dead and they’re doomed to shamble around the earth forever. So, if a few have to be sacrificed in order for the rest of Team Undead to cross the trenches, so be it. One by one, the ice zombies literally throw themselves on the line of fire, sandwiching their ewwie bodies until the rest of the horde can safely use them as a bridge to cross. An Undead Bridge, if you will.

When Davos realizes what they are doing, the look on his face is quite classic horror movie:

You know when you’re watching a scary movie and the protagonist or whoever hears something or sees something but isn’t quite sure what it is, only knowing that it’s bad mmkay? That is that look.

Davos shouts the order to man the walls of Winterfell. Elsewhere on the battlefied, Jon is still in the same spot he landed, anxious about Dany. He glimpses a dragon emerge from the fog and, at first, he thinks it’s Daenerys but it soon becomes evident that it’s the Night King riding on Viserion.

Winterfell, meanwhile, is all cloaked in a cloud of mud and rain. The soldiers and Northerners are clambering to keep the White Walkers from penetrating the walls of the castle.

They have to keep them from legit climbing the damn walls.

If I’m ever a zombie, I want the Night King to make me. Apparently, rigor mortis is not a thing in wights.

The wights keep climbing until some of them start to get over the wall despite Jaime, Brienne, et. al. slicing off head after head. They just keep coming. The Team Undead horde is massive.

I bet the denizens of Winterfell are wishing for a nice, stationary mall right about now.

Soldiers are going over the railings, Sam’s whimpering butt has to be saved again, and the Hound is utterly frozen. It’s all just anarchy.

Beric and his Flaming Sword of Justice attempt to get Woofie’s attention again but to no avail. Arya’s doing her thang with her pointed staff, taking out wight after wight with Davos looking on, impressed (knight or not, you have been bested by a teenager, old man).

And then, this:

ZOMBIE GIANTS!

ZOMBIFIED MOTHAFUCKIN’ GIANTS.

“Fee, fi, fo fum, I smell the blood of EVERYONE.”

It pushes her to the side like she’s a goddamn sack of potatoes and it’s smacking people around with its club like they’re nothing but rag dolls. Arya falls down a set of stairs as wights group in to attack her and smacks her forehead on the side of a wall. Not up to her usual Faceless Man self after that, she stumbles and nearly falls off the roof, which finally energizes the Hound to action.

On the ground, Lyanna’s had enough of being tossed around by White Walker McGigantor.

She screams, races toward it, it grabs her in its huge fist, and, blood pouring out of her mouth and nose and it crushes her, she STABS IT THROUGH THE FRIGGING EYEBALL.

It’s a fitting end for an awesome character. Lyanna made such an impression on everyone and her cumulative screentime was just over fifteen minutes on the show.

In the air, Jon and Dany are finally reunited again when out of nowhere sails the Night King and his trusty Undragon.

Looks like someone has been chewing too much Winterfresh!

Viserion lets loose a stream of Winterfresh friendly fire and Daenerys ducks and whimpers as her undead baby tries to kill her. When the Night King sails off, Jon and Dany look at each other before mutually agreeing in some unspoken communication to dive.

Aww, they are communicating without words already! Bestill my lowkey-shipping-for-incest heart.

In Winterfell, the White Walkers have managed to break into the halls of the castle and, in less...white climes, they look less frozen and more, well, zombie. Arya, with her trusty staff, is attempting to sneak through her ancestral home without alerting Team Undead.

Unfortunately, she stumbles into the library and, weird, there are a lot of wights in the library. I didn’t know ice zombies were such avid readers.

What? Ice zombies need wank material, too, you know.

That is, if their genitals haven’t fallen off.

Our girl is creeping through the library, dodging errant undead in her wake. Desperately, she dives under a table, but the blood from her head wound is dripping on the floor, which attracts a nearby wight.

You know, like a shark.

The wight bends down and almost catches her, giving us all a mini heart attack, but Arya is gone. Phew.

BT-dubbs, that wight is none other than Javier Botet, who has made a sort of career playing monsters, including as the Leper in 2017′s It.

He was cast on purpose because he can contort his body in absurd ways. And I apologize for making you look at the Leper again. Yeesh.

Grabbing a book, she sails it across the floor to distract the zombies, runs into one going around the corner who then meets the fun end of her blade, and escapes the library.

Who knew a library could be so dangerous?

Arya escapes into a chamber and softly closes the door behind her, leaning back against it. She seems to be safe for a moment and then--

Ser Brus of House Bannyr. He’s a buddy of the Mountain.

Wights start pouring in and Arya runs. She runs, runs, runs--down through the narrow, damp, ill-lighted walls of Winterfell, bleeding from her head wound.

Meanwhile, just below her down in the crypt--

It’s SAFE it’s so SAFE, you guys.

The denizens of the crypt wait with bated breath and gasp when two desperate soldiers ram against the crypt door, begging to be let in. Sansa looks conflicted, wanting to help the soldiers but not at the cost of any of her people.

In the corridors, Beric Dondarrion and his Flaming Sword of Justice and the Hound are tiptoeing through Winterfell when they hear battling and growling noises (thank you, captions) and Arya falls through a doorway with wights quickly after her. The Hound picks her up and they all race down the hall, Beric throws his sword at a couple of White Walkers but they soon begin to overwhelm him. Arya gazes back at him in desperation as the Hound tries to get her away, and Beric is stabbed by one of Team Undead. He stands there, limbs akimbo face aloft as if praying to the Lord of the Light.

I love this scene. It further underscores how much Arya has come to mean to the Hound. Before, he was frozen, nothing could jolt him out of his panic but the image of Arya in peril. And he spends the rest of the episode fighting not so much for the living but for her.

Beric manages to stumble down the hall after Arya and the Hound and they lock a door behind him. Arya sits him against a wall while the Hound barricades the door with anything nearby.

Muttering unintelligibly, the man who was resurrected six times closes his eyes forever.

Melisandre appears behind them after Beric passes, letting them know that he served his purpose. Arya knows her; the Red Woman promised her that they’d meet again and there they are. She also promised that Arya would close many eyes in her young life, which was also right. Brown eyes. Green eyes. And blue eyes.

The wights are growling and scratching at the door, eager to come in and kill and feast on human flesh and blood. Arya stares while Melly bends down and whispers in her ear--

At the Weirwood tree, the wights are finally a-comn’ for BranBot and Theon and his men get into position with flaming arrows (I am now really in the mood for smores). Simultaneously, Dany/Drogon, Jon/Rhaegal/ and Ol’ Nighty/Viserion are duking it out in the air above them, the archers below attempting to knock the Undragon out of the sky.

It’s like a WWII aerial dogfight, but with dragons. So, like, a dragonfight.

Someone has entered his rebellious goth phase!

Srsly, what other show offers a mid-air dragon fight?

The dragonfight ends, somehow, only with the Night King falling off his chosen Undragon.

Rhaegal makes a shaky landing--there is plenty of turbulence in the North, after all--and Jon rolls off his favorite dragon. Dany continues the hunt for Ol’ Nighty and when she finds him, she gives the order for Drogon to do his thang.

It...doesn’t work out as hoped.

The Night King grins and throws his ice staff at Drogon, the weapon that took down Viserion. Fortunately, the ensuing hit isn’t fatal and Dany turns tail and gets out of there before it is.

Jon whips out his trusty sword and begins following the Night King. But when Ol’ Nighty realizes he’s being followed, he turns around, bestows upon Jon a “teacher catching you doing something naughty” stare, and...does his thang.

Team Alive desecrated many of your army? Just make a new one like that. Using his dark hippity doo da, the Night King raises all the soldiers (formerly) of Team Alive who fell in battle. And there’s a fucking lot of them. Including fallen Unsullied back at Winterfell’s gates and even Lyanna Mormont.

At the castle, Jaime and Grey Worm look on in confusion and horror.

New inductees to Team Undead swarm in on Jon as the Night King and some of his disciples make their way to Winterfell.

In the crypt, it was only a matter of time until this happened:

Y’all need some stronger building materials. This cannot be up to code. What would the leader of the HOA say?

Everyone in the crypt scatters in panic, minus the unlucky few who become Thing Food.

At the Weirwood tree, Theon and Co. are doing their best Robin Hood while BranBot is still checked out. I guess he’s in the raven, trying to get a location on the Night King? BranBot, do us all a favor and crap on his head.

(You missed! He was totally open, Bird! Damn.)

Jon almost gets overwhelmed until Dany and Drogon come to the rescue and manage to char the ice zombies without turning the one guy who is alive into a crispie critter, too. She tells him to go, be the hero we need, and he runs off.

However, before Drogon can fly off, he, too, is quickly overcome with wights, tearing at his wings, climbing all over his spine. He roars and twists and turns and Dany goes tumbling off.

Drogon flies away with some wights still hanging onto him, trying to get all the annoying dead OFF. They must itch like crazy.

He leaves his mommy behind and suddenly Dany is alone in a battlefield surrounded by Team Undead. She has no weapons. Her main weapon was Drogon. He is how she defeats her enemies. What the hell is she gonna do now?

One of the wights falls off Drogon and has blue eyes only for Dany. Who is alone. Vulnerable. Fucking sitting in the dirt.

But, what luck! Jorah of House Fryndzonne appears out of nowhere to decapitate the wight with Heartsbane and protect his Khaleesi.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to use that. Not a big anime fan but I love Hetalia.

Jon makes his way back to Winterfell, stickin’ and stabbin’ and gruntin’ and growlin’ and bein’ manly. He’s had it up to here with them ice zombies, you guys.

Theon and Co. are working all the harder to protect BranBot while he’s still Like A Bird. Theon’s men all go down and soon he’s left alone to defend the automaton that was once Brandon Stark.

In the crypt, Tyrion and Sansa are hiding behind a cement monument. Their wordless communication, expressed through the eyes alone, sends a chill down my spine. There is so much unsaid in that mutual gaze, and the acting here is superb. Props to Peter Dinklage and Sophie Turner.

Sansa, shaking, whips out the dagger Arya gave her, and Tyrion kisses her hand.

If they both live through season 8, maybe those crazy kids could make it work? Tyrion would be a kick Lord of Winterfell. I can see him in a furry cape.

Elsewhere, Viserion is utterly destroying Winterfell.

Dany and Jorah are desperately stabbing at ice zombies on the battlefield. Tyrion and Sansa carefully run out from behind the monument. Jon just barely dodges a wave of blue fire as Viserion continues to destroy Winterfell. Theon is doing is damndest to shield BranBot from the White Walkers, but he’s evidently slowing down.

And then, oh crap, there he is. In slow motion, like he knows all eyes are on him.

Hey yeah yeah, they’re Calyfornya.

Jorah is working alllllllll his muscles trying to protect his Khaleesi. Jaime and Brienne are backed up against a still standing wall of Winterfell as wights close in around them.

The Night King and his Night Kronies are coming for BranBot.

The remaining wights part for their Icicle Overlord. He stands there glowering down at Theon and BranBot. BranBot tells Theon he is a good man and thanks him and the audience is like--

I thought BranBot wasn’t programmed to say thank you. Ask Meera.

Theon grasps his pointed staff firmly, yells, and runs toward Ol’ Nighty, who, of course, grabs it and stabs him right through the gut.

Sorry, Theon. You managed to survive Ramsey (and getting your Reek cut off) but the Night King was your undoing. You lasted most of the show, though. That’s more than can be said for most characters.

Speaking of lasting most of the show--

Beric, Theon, now Jorah. Everybody stab now!

Jon is hiding behind some debris. The Night King walks ever closer to BranBot. Jon gets up and screams at Viserion for some reason. BranBot gazes up at the Night King. The Night King begins to reach for his ice sword, and then--

Arya Stark, like the fucking avenging angel she is!

I love that she was the one to destroy the Night King. She and Lyanna Mormont were both frigging awesome this episode.

Moral: don’t mess with a girl.

Maisie Williams said in EW that when she initially read the script she was afraid people would think she didn’t deserve it or something. To that I say pish posh. “Arya” has been trending for days.

After he explodes, all the wights begin to fall, including Viserion. Team Alive was right. Kill the Night King, his disciples are toast, too.

The crypt people come out of their hiding places and silently view the carnage. Arya looks over at BranBot and smiles a little. BranBot just sits there without offering a thank you. I guess he only malfunctioned that one time with Theon.

Unfortunately, the zombies aren’t the only ones that fall. Jorah is hurt and hurt badly. He buckles on the battlefield, surrounded by inactive wights, bleeding from seeming every orifice. Dany bends down before him, crying and holding his head.

He dies in her arms. A fitting end for Jorah of House Mormont, forever loyal to his Khaleesi.

So is Dany’s dragon.

Aww. That’s...cute. Like a dog with wings. And scales. That breathes fire.

The Hound, Melisandre, and Davos walk out of Winterfell just as dawn is breaking. The Hound and Davos stop at the door but Melisandre keeps going, looking determined. Shedding her trademark red cloak, she marches forward, ridding herself of the ruby necklace that has kept her young for centuries.

And then, growing older before their eyes, she perishes. Her mission is complete.

And that’s the end of the episode. Cue end credits.

Salt and crackers, that took FOREVER. Every free moment I had I was recappin’. But the episode was awesome and the cast says the next episode is even more awesome so I can’t wait!

Now comes the march on King’s Landing, the taking of the crown, and, hopefully, Cersei gonna die. Who’s gonna have her head? Will it be Jaime? Arya? Tyrion? My bet is Jaime.

Also, congats are in order for our Sansa Stark. Sophie Turner got married to Joe Jonas last night after the Billboard Music Awards. In Vegas with an Elvis impersonator presiding, which is fantastic.

#game of thrones #game of thrones recap #game of thrones 8 #nickolaj coster-waldau #gwendoline christie #Sophie Turner #peter dinklage #Kit Harrington #emilia clarke #iain glen #alfie allen #isaac hempstead wright #maisie williams

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thinkingaboutyoungroyals · 6 years

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Has Josh really deleted his account over anon hate? It's such a shame as many actors never contributed as much as he did, he was dedicated to his fans, he got invested in the fandom, he was one of us and without him and his character (who I can't imagine as anyone but him) we never would have got representation the way we did. I'm appalled and I hope the anons who did this are happy with themselves.

I don’t think he deleted his account, he just deleted the app from his phone and probably logged out. He said on Twitter that he’ll be back in a week, he just needed time away and you know what? That’s valid and good for him for prioritizing his mental health over the fandom!

Just putting this out there, I don’t agree with everything Josh says but I respect him enough to know that I have no right to send anon hate, especially to a teenager (seeing as I am a 26-year-old woman with better things to do than harass a kid).

The anons who did this have nothing else better to do with their life. In my perspective, they send those hate to Josh in attempts to control him and make him look bad because he can be opinionated and direct, but there are also times when he’s sarcastic and ridiculous. Opinions and point of views often don’t translate well over the internet and can be left up to various interpretations, depending on who’s reading them. (That’s why most of the time, I avoid posting my own opinions online, I’ve learned my lesson after a post on my main circa 2014 but that’s another story for another day.)

Josh is human, he gets frustrated too and sometimes, he’ll post and say things he later regrets and may not even mean in the heat of the moment. (How do you expect him to react when you not only question his choice in friends but also his own beliefs and stances when he’s explained his side MANY times? That he would just take it lying down? Y’all know by now how protective Josh is of people and things he cares about.)

Not to mention, he’s a TEENAGER and teenagers are still growing and learning and they don’t have the answers to everything, but people act like Josh’s words are Godsend. They put him on a pedestal and project this fantasy of him so when he says something that leaves a bitter taste in people’s mouth, he’s attacked because “how dare you be human and have emotions and think differently from me when I thought you were perfect and would always agree with MY own opinions?”

You know how much pressure that puts on someone? He tries to be a friend to the fandom but the fandom keeps pushing and pushing their boundaries until they are no longer just curious, they are being invasive. Even friendships have boundaries and the anons crossed those boundaries.

I’m sorry I ranted, anon. But it’s been bothering me all day that I can’t write my story that I was hoping to have a new chapter up today but I’ve honestly never been so disappointed and I hope those anons step on a Lego barefoot.

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2021195168 · 3 years

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BLOG #3

Paper Reviews

Design Fiction is something I have never heard of before reading the paper Design Fiction as World Building by Paul Coulton, Joseph Lindley, Miriam Sturdee, and Mike Stead. While reading the paper, I was confused regarding a paper that was supposedly published with real world data that was collected, but after understanding what Design Fiction is, I realized that the collected data was so called fiction from a world that was created and resembles our real world. It was also stated that personas had to be created to create the used data and that it prompted the researches to ask many different questions for different scenarios. Design Fiction is confusing for someone who just stumbled upon this term but it is also a very interesting matter, as one can fictionalize many different scenarios for our world to see the defects in a product/ idea or to research how to better develop a product/ idea. So this methodology is very helpful. Though it makes me ponder on the the complex aspects of this method, such as creating a world (world building) as in a fictional world, everything goes as the creator wants the world to go. So when it comes to wanting to compare it to the real world, it will be difficult as there are many different factors that playa role and can make the product/ idea’s goal go haywire.

Another interesting paper I read was 30 Days in ActiveWorlds – Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World by Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith. The paper is talking about a project that was conducted by Dr Hudson-Smith, who had been logging into a virtual world for 30 days. In that world users were able and allowed to world build inside the server, without any restrictions (in the beginning).

What struck out to me was when a teenager, who is introduced as jero, had been terrorizing the community. Even though he was only 15 years old and lived far away from the researcher, he was still able to impose a ‘threat’. This for not only happen in these meta verses such as Active World but it also happens on other social media sites such as Twitter or Instagram. The online world can be very scary at times and attract a lot of danger such as hacking, stalking, etc. but the online world can have its fun sides as well. Such as when the community comes together, for example in the paper it was mentioning an event where all user’s took on the skin of the main host! This reminded me of my experience on Twitter, when it was the birthday of bts’ member jin. On that day, everyone on army Twitter decided to use the same picture of jin as their icon (profile picture) hahah this even lead to bts’ official Twitter account using the same picture as their icon!! To this day, this action is known to army Twitter as Jin’s cult. As Dr Hudson-Smith described in his research paper, it is a feeling of having to being there.

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herestheproof · 3 years

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source: https://twitter.com/burienotacreep/status/1353699255077265408

this is months old, but to those who havent seen the info about this, heres a sorta long thread on why the rumors saying brendon urie is a pedophile are fake disclaimer: this will not have bias. i do like him/his talent, but i know that he can be messy. hes just not a pedo

disclaimer #2: these are my own screenshots (excuse the underlining and marking, its messy as hell) - i looked into all of this myself. i didn’t get it from the nicole row fan account/brendon stan who people in this circle say is delusional. ok let’s start:

there were a few allegations made from different anonymous accounts on twitter. this is the reason no legal action was taken by him: these were burner accounts who even deleted the threads afterward, so there was no way he’d be able to clear his name or even respond to them.

one allegation was by someone named leah who said that he harassed her when she was a minor at a cleveland show. this one is debunked fairly easily: he broke his leg, so he couldn’t even go back and talk to anyone. it was also found out later some of it was from a fanfiction

there are also a lot of little things that don’t add up, despite being minuscule on their own. his shows at this time were 18+ // he doesn’t wear glasses on stage, and has said in the past that he usually can’t see any clear faces in the crowd; meaning there’s no way he’d spot someone and think theyre beautiful // he wouldnt be alone in a room with one of his fans - the rest of the band or some kind of crewmate would be there - & the desc. of a little white room with just a couch is slightly unrealistic esp seeing the venue they were at

but of course those last comments are more just assumptions: what really proves it fake is his broken ankle that day and that it was pasted from a fan fiction.

another one was from someone named kam, this one being a boy, who says that he asked him uncomfortable questions about his sexuality and touched his thigh when he was a minor. this one is false because of the locations used: he claimed that he came across brendon when trying to catch a train home from the coke zero festival, but the nearest train station from the festival grounds is 5 hours away, maybe even more than that. the band would not choose a train over another mode of transportation. (also, don’t ask me why that shit was at an ostrich farm)

there are also little things with this one: though it’s possible, it’s strange and unlikely for a minor to be all alone at a festival in south africa. and panic at the disco never take trains or any public transit from gigs to a hotel room, they take their own private tour buses. so there’s no reason for them to be at a train station, and there’s especially no reason for him to be at a train station with just one guy and not the rest of the band or crew. but once again, those are all assumptions: the location is what actually proves it fake.

there are a couple others which were also debunked, but i’m not going to talk about them because most of them had to do with people being messaged by him on facebook or another form of social media which he doesn’t own, and they later realized they were catfished. speaking of which: pls remember that there are tons of fake accounts of not only brendon urie but many male celebrities with teenage fans, or celebs in general, and creeps use them to talk to underage girls. if you see someone claim to be a famous person, just don’t believe them.

in this thread i’m not saying that brendon urie has NEVER done something even the slightest bit inappropriate before: in this interview, he says that there were times in high school where he hoped that something he said or did didn’t overstep a boundary.

even though no one asked for my opinion on why these were made, i’ll give it anyway: i honestly don’t know. i don’t think they were for attention, because if they were then they wouldn’t be anonymous. many people are annoyed by brendon so it’s likely that they just wanted to do this to smear him or attempt to cancel him since he’s had hate waves on twitter already. it could’ve been a social experiment, but whoever would do that probably would’ve cleared it up? but why they did it doesn’t matter: what matters is that many queer males are already falsely painted as creepy and brendon urie has had a “manwhore” reputation painted on him since he was only 18 years old, despite sharing multiple times before that he doesn’t like to be romantic with people unless he has a connection with them. this is probably another reason he just said “these are false guys” and then moved on like it seemed to be nothing. people have spread fake things about him - from 2006 livejournal blogs to wattpad oneshots being mistaken as real - and at this point he might just be desensitized to rumors, no matter how severe.

i know that most people who think these are real will still feel that way, and they probably ain’t even read this you can think he’s an asshole, but please just know that anything said about him that doesn’t involve him simply saying some dumb shit, is NOT true.

i logged back in because there was actually one on here that i did not address! i swear i wasn’t doing it on purpose, i just didn’t know about it. i’ll talk about it down below since it’s actually very easy to explain.

it was from someone named zoe who says that it happened on february 20th, 2019, and this didn’t happen because

1. he had his family over that day - his parents were backstage right after the show. if you want proof, he had a stream on twitch that day where this is all shown. -

2. he had tons of press that day, most likely because this was his run in california, and it was all also backstage after the show. this was even the day that he was hanging out backstage with conan gray (if any conan fans see this, i’m so sorry for dragging him into this)

tl:dr / he was way too fuckin busy, and he just wasn’t there.

i hope his fans are able to move past this. it’s likely he doesnt care about this as much as his fans do; he is self assured and knows who he is, but many of his fans don’t, so its extremely mentally crippling for them to see their favorite singer possibly be such awful things.

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anisanews · 4 years

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Reddit user says post on $800M Tesla bitcoin buy was a hoax

A German prankster claims that he was behind a mysterious Reddit post last month that appeared to anticipate Tesla’s blockbuster bitcoin buy this week — and that he was on LSD when he did it, The Post has learned.

Tesla stunned Wall Street on Monday when it revealed it had acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoin to “further diversify and maximize returns” for the cash on its balance sheet. Tesla said it also plans to start accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment option for its electric cars.

Not long after the surprise announcement, attention turned to a Jan. 2 post from a Reddit user named “TSLAinsider” who had claimed to have a hot tip about Tesla’s move into the cryptocurrency market.

“You heard it here first – our Company just bought 800 Million worth of Bitcoin,” the five-week-old post read. The user, claiming he was “a software dev working at R&D at Tesla in California,” reportedly added that the Elon Musk-led company had bought 24,701 bitcoin at an average price of $33,142 “over the past 72 hours.”

The post looked like such a prescient prediction of Tesla’s bitcoin investment that financial news outlets including Reuters and Bloomberg picked it up this week.

But in an interview with The Post, Hendrik, the 24-year-old political science student behind the TSLAinsider account, said he made the post while he was high on LSD over the holiday season.

“If you want to know the truth: I am a young German guy and I was on Acid while I did this post in the last month,” the user told The Post in an email on Tuesday. “I had this afflatus that Elon is going to buy Bitcoin, so I created this trollpost. And now all the newspapers around the globe are writing about it, its kinda funny and scary to be honest.”

Hendrik, who asked to be identified only by his first name, said he got an intuition that Tesla would invest in Bitcoin after seeing a December Twitter exchange between Musk and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, whose business-intelligence firm bought more than $1 billion worth of the digital currency last year.

“Me and my girlfriend, we took acid, and I saw the conversation between Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter, and I was like, yeah, why shouldn’t he buy into bitcoin?” Hendrik told The Post in a Tuesday Zoom interview from Germany. “He’s crazy and he has a lot of money, so why not?”

Hendrik provided The Post with a screenshot showing himself logged into the TSLAinsider Reddit account, which triumphantly posted “I TOLD YOU SO” after Tesla’s market-moving Monday announcement.

His initial post — which initially got no comments from other users — was dubious enough that moderators of the Reddit forum dedicated to Tesla stock removed it, according to Hendrik.

It also didn’t quite line up with Tesla’s Monday regulatory filing, which said the company bought Bitcoin after changing its investment policy in January. The purchases spanning 72 hours would have had to start during the final days of December if TSLAinsider’s timeline were accurate.

Hendrik said he’s not otherwise active on Reddit but he decided to pull a prank on the site because “everyone goes to Reddit to troll people.” He is, however, an active Bitcoin investor and has been since he was a teenager, he says.

“I think it’s part of the technology of the future,” Hendrik said, praising Musk for getting Tesla into the Bitcoin game.

“He opened the door for other companies to do the same since they all want to be like Elon,” he added.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The post Reddit user says post on $800M Tesla bitcoin buy was a hoax appeared first on Anisa News.

from Anisa News https://ift.tt/3p6cjun

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meggannn · 7 years

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more for lydia (of course): 21, 24, 45, 49

i am the worst person for taking like a day to respond to this omg

21) Best Friend(s)?

it’s hard to categorize her best “friends” because for a while she doesn’t really consider them friends, she considers them “acquaintances she has varying degrees of closeness and unique relationships with” while not realizing that like… that is the definition of a friend? lmao (like for example, she only really let herself think of garrus and tali as ‘friends’ instead of ‘crewmembers i’m fond and protective of’ until the shore leave after the battle of the citadel. though while she was close with her me1 crew, i do think me2 is the first time she realizes she’s allowed to think of her team as friends too.

me1: kaidan and ashley at least in the beginning. by the end of the game i think she’s closer to tali as well

me2: at first, garrus and kasumi, and later when they join, tali and samara. i say this with like, knowing she has fondness for all of her crew

me3: garrus and, after renewing their relationship, ashley

24) Do they have a love/hate relationship with any of them?

not with any of those mentioned above, though i think her relationships with miranda and jack in 2 are a little… not adversarial, but shepard is wary of them as much as she likes them. miranda for obvious reasons, and jack because she genuinely likes her after a while but being around her for so long is a bit of a drain on her energy, since she kind of reminds her of the kids from her old gangs. zaeed she definitely has a love/hate relationship with in 2, in that she appreciates his talks and advice but doesn’t appreciate his attitude and volatile unpredictability.

45) Do they use social media?

lmfao I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT SHEPARD ON SOCIAL MEDIA OKAY YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE ASKED ME THIS, it’s not that she’s very tech savvy (though there’s some proficiency with hacking) just growing up as a teenager on earth who stole/resold a lot of omnitools and translators and laptops, she had very few other pasttimes when cash wasn’t coming in. i think she was really into social media during ict training with other candidates, as a way of bonding and non-physical de-stressing. and she obviously knows a lot of online slang and shitty corners of the internet from her teenage days. in the alliance she goes through periods of activity followed by periods of forgetting about the internet at all, like when she’s on missions.

by me1, she’s established enough that i think she’s convinced herself a commander shouldn’t post on social media, that’s not appropriate, blah blah. so for a while she’s mostly quiet with only occasional funny but nonoffensive comments on things like pop culture or whatever. then after the battle of the citadel she gets a huuuuge influx of followers, and she’s like ??? cause she doesn’t use her space twitter much, so she kinda posts once like "hey thanks for the support, look out for my album coming out next spring” and everybody loves it, until she starts talking about the reapers publicly and preparing for war, then everybody’s like “god shut up i thought you were cool” so she gets angry when it becomes apparent that most people just want a figurehead, not her to actually say anything, but she can’t go back to making jokes and pretending things are normal, so she stops posting altogether. maybe like, once or twice more about something irrelevant, and then three weeks later she’s dead. (and then her crew like garrus and tali in particular waste so much time on the internet looking at her online profiles, rereading her last posts, hunting through years worth of her feed far back enough to see she was a different person once, both of them in mourning but garrus denying it)

and then me2 happens, and she’s obviously not thinking about social media for a while. when she does, it’s like maybe midway through the game, like maybe on illium kasumi drags her out to dinner cause she found authentic thai in the markets, and shepard’s just content enough to think “this is the kind of meal you post a picture about and share on social media” and she considers it before remembering oh yeah i was dead……. is my account even still there? how weird would it be to suddenly post out of nowhere again? i know the rumor is i was just under cover, but would it help or hurt the war to treat this like normal? and she basically overanalyzes and decides not to say anything at all. (in reality i think after she died her account was given the space equivalent of a twitter verification, like Yes This Was The Real Shepard’s Account, Tweets Might Be Recorded, which she only discovers after she logs in on a whim back on the ship). i don’t think she breaks this social media fast until she either uses it one day because she 1) completely forgets she was avoiding it, like she just wakes up randomly and types “i had the weirdest fuckin dream let me tell yall about it” because she’s still half asleep and convinces herself it’s a good idea, then goes back to sleep and wakes up to a million notifications like “i KNEW YOU WERE BACK!!” and “SOMEONE HACKED SHEPARD’S ACCOUNT THAT’S DISGRACEFUL” and she’s like oh boy. OR 2) she gets so heated over something stupid (that is definitely about human pop culture) that she completely forgets/doesnt give a rat’s ass anymore about maintaining silence online. like “I JUST HEARD SPACE BEYONCE WASN’T NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY LAST YEAR. WHAT THE FUCK?” after the collector base, she feels a little more freedom to be funny and has the time to engage and post about pop culture again, so she gains some attention back for that

by me3, coming out of alliance-imposed isolation, i think she takes back to the internet whenever she can, for better or worse, but because most of the news she swallows is so awful, she tries to be positive and reach out to people who @ her, like she doesn’t want to lie to them, but she tries to signal boost official evacuation and relocation efforts and stuff. when the alliance starts gaining allies, there’s a little bit of expectation for her to use her accounts as a political “so honored the turian hierarchy is joining us” blah blah kind of tweet, so she’s kind of like…. well people deserve to know we’ve made an accord, but i’m gonna do it my way, and she essentially starts sharing all the stuff that’s happening on the citadel that might get easily lost in translation, like

“i can confirm councilor udina was just killed by spectre williams after a standoff on the presidum, after he threatened the life of another councilor. we have confirmed that he was compromised by cerberus after his participation in a failed coup. please see the official statement for more details. the death of a high profile politician is always a shock, but to those feeling betrayed, i want every human and alien to be reminded that spectres are chosen to protect the galaxy from both foreign and internal threats. ashley williams takes her role seriously, as do i, and her actions saved lives yesterday. in light of the recent citadel attack, the alliance would also like me to encourage people to remain vigilant against cerberus cyberwarfare and contact with reaper tech. stay safe, everyone.”

just like, very honest, frank statements or clarifications that might not otherwise get out there, with an emphasis on trying to keep morale as high as reasonably possible. it’s not classified info, but she wants people to stay informed, like she wants people across the galaxy being bombarded who think they’ve been abandoned to know that she’s still fighting for them everywhere she can. even though she’s feeling really dejected and pessimistic sometimes i think she’s determined to make other people believe they can win even when she isn’t sure herself.

post-war (AHHA YOU THOUGHT I WAS DONE AFTER ME3, DIDNT YOU) as soon as she can travel, she kind of shoves her way into politics via reconstruction efforts despite her unstable health because she’s terrified everything will just go back to normal and the underprivileged people in slums and terminus colonies will be ignored. i think she keeps up the informative trend of letting people know what’s going on, like explaining what this or that emergency bill that was just passed by the council means, ‘cause she’s still new to politics and honesty all this dense language would’ve definitely confused her too. eventually as things start getting more settled she feels less guilty posting about how her day’s going. and then at one point, there is definitely a collective internet freakout when shepard acknowledges/makes a joke about one of the memes about her, and she’s like “what, you guys think i never go online or something?? i was a teenager once, i know how the internet works!” (she actually doesn’t spend that much time in forums or the like, she just learned about the meme from garrus and vega.)

(and then at some point post-war garrus, who used to have a dumbass video game let’s play account that gained a ton of popularity after me1 when shepard found out about it and asked to play turian call of duty with him on it (the vid was entitled “i play turian call of duty with commander shepard (my co)” and was mostly just them horsing around and then it went viral, but he took it down after she died and then purged the whole account/his entire online presence when he went to omega. but anyway a while post-war garrus comes to her like “hey you remember that video we made” “i remember the jokes about it” “well uh, i just managed to fix this old console i found at a flea market, do you want to do it again? yknow just kill time and lift people’s spirits?” so he makes a new account and introduces her to a lot of other games, she’s good at space overwatch but then when she gets cocky he makes her play like turian dark souls or some shit, and they record and post it online for kicks too)

fuck, i still have one more question left to answer???? i spent a fucking lifetime writing up this, I TOLD YOU ASKING ME QUESTIONS ABOUT LYDIA WAS A MISTAKE

49) Would they consider themselves as a good person, bad person, or morally grey?

mostly i dont think she lets herself think about whether she’s a “good” person because emotionally, and morally, she doesn’t feel much different than she was when she was committing crimes for a living (though she knows logically she’s grown a lot, she convinced herself back then that she was justified in doing bad things by just trying to survive, which is… not entirely too different from now). anyway she still feels like she’s trying to make up for who she used to be, like she wants to put more good into the world than the harm she once contributed to, or failing that, she can at least remove as much of the evil in the galaxy as she can. (i keep forgetting to clarify, she didn’t just do petty theft and break-ins and lookouts and illegal reselling, she was occasionally a debt collector and beat people near to the point of death with biotics, and she hated it but it was mostly out of sympathy that she insisted on going instead of another gangster because if it were anyone else she knows they might’ve dismembered or tortured the person too.)

god i still haven’t answered your question. ive been writing for a full hour, keely. the long and short of it is that i think she’s morally gray. i call her paragade for a reason. she tries really hard to be a good person to make up for who she was (who she “had” to be), so she fights to save every life she can, but against enemies that show no remorse or whatnot, some of her old habits of ruthlessness and reluctance to forgive die hard.

ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT MY OCS IF YOU FEEL LIKE SCROLLING PAST MORE LONG PARAGRAPHS ON YOUR DASH, YO

#lydia shepard #keelificent

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Myspace Wasn’t a Simpler Time, We Were Just Teenagers

My Myspace page was so sick.

Everyone believes this about their own Myspace page. But I had coded custom cursor-animation effects, a rotating sparkly background, auto-playing music, everything—all carefully crafted in the Myspace custom HTML / CSS. I curated my Top 8 obsessively, getting home from school and logging on to shuffle my friends' avatars around on the grid based on the day's drama.

Today, a decade later, Myspace is trending on Twitter, a website that's sucked the fun out of social media and turned it into something more like a job you'd have in hell.

Twitter doesn't denote why something is trending, only that it is. When you click on a trending word or phrase, usually the first thing you see is people tweeting "I don't know why this is trending but…," further boosting the trending word to more popularity, at least in the Twitter trending algorithm's view. So it's hard to pinpoint why Myspace is trending on Twitter today, but it seems to have something to do with the idea that social media should be more like MySpace, and that MySpace’s Tom was a better leader than Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg.

The tweet with the most engagement about Myspace in the last 24 hours is this one, waxing nostalgic for a supposedly simpler time before evil tech overlords consumed the internet:

"Remember Tom? Remember how he just sold his $500m share in myspace and retired so he could have a nice life?" Twitter user @JackDMurphy wrote. "He never sold our data, never tried to influence elections, never lobbied against privacy legislations… what a man. Myspace was just too pure for this world."

Remembering a tech mogul in the rosiest possible terms—even a comparatively benevolent one to what we have today in Silicon Valley—risks forgetting how influential the platforms of the past were for the ones that came after it.

The structure and design of the internet is undeniably more homogeneous today. In the Facebook versus Myspace transition around 2009 when Facebook's users surpassed Myspace's, teens—like me at the time—were growing up and looking for something more utilitarian and adult. At the time, MySpace was regarded as a hangout, not a communication platform—while Facebook was more like a tool.

Facebook was, and still is, basically a form you fill out that populates a clinical-looking profile, peppered with categories and interests you've chosen to add to your profile, like Grilled Cheese or Air Bud. Twitter's only personalization options are the banner image, profile picture and bio (and the bad tweets you populate your feed with). Instagram is even less customizable: profile picture, bio. The rest is up to whatever images you put on your account grid, chronologically. On each of these, the content is the profile, and your online personality is what you post.

On Myspace the promise of personalization was undoubtedly the biggest draw for a lot of users—mostly teens like myself, always struggling to express ourselves adequately to the world. The people talking about Myspace now—old millennials, 30-somethings mostly—were in their middle and highschool years at the social platform's early-2000's peak. That's prime time for crafting the self-image you're hoping to take into adulthood. For me, that meant rotating my auto-playing profile song between Evanescence and whichever RHCP single I was feeling that day, and tinkering with the tiled Blingee background animations until I broke some piece of the CSS. Everyone's different.

Coding a corner of the internet to be your personality shrine might have primed us to casually continue giving all of our personal data to a stranger (in this case, your first Myspace friend, Tom Anderson). But Myspace didn't invent the art of internet persona-building. People had been doing that since the earliest days of online life, crafting elaborate alter egos to roleplay in Multi-User Dungeons. Myspace was less anonymous than Bulletin Board Systems or Blogspot pages, so maybe it felt more socially consequential if your profile sucked or you said something stupid in the journal section. It was, however, one of a handful of gateway platforms between total anonymity or pseudonymity online, and having your legal name tied to everything you post, as the move to Facebook required.

As today's trending tweets about Myspace show, we like to paint the past in broad, optimistic strokes. The reality is, Myspace wasn't what we would call "evil" today—it was no Facebook or Amazon, buying up huge plots of land and labor to monopolize their markets. But it wasn't innocent, either. In 2006, just as the platform signed up its 100 millionth user, Myspace engineers were using powerful backend tools to breach user's privacy and stalk women. We've since seen the same thing happen at Facebook. The platforms change but people don't.

Tom's not innocent when it comes to handling our data, either. He sold the site to Rupert Murdoch in 2005 for $520 million, and Murdoch in turn sold it to Viant, an advertising technology giant, in 2011—along with access to data from its more than one billion registered users and hundreds of email addresses. He can likely live his life guilt-free in that he's not been under any supreme court scrutiny like Mark Zuckerberg or accused of harboring Nazi user base like Jack Dorsey, but that's only because he's been smart enough to take his millions and virtually disappear.

Myspace Wasn’t a Simpler Time, We Were Just Teenagers syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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politicalfilth-blog · 6 years

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Why Is Everyone Upset With Joe Rogan?

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In this video, we give you a breakdown of the Joe Rogan interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Is Joe Rogan the new establishment mouthpiece?

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Let’s just get into the main story that we want to talk about because just moments ago there’s been a huge backlash against Joe Rogan after he hosted a podcast with of course the CEO of Jack Dorsey in the comment section pretty much says it all as I’m seeing comments like people saying.

Joe Rogan that we on sweetie wants all loved is dead and of course the video is getting completely ratio with only three point two thousand people up voting the interview that Joe Rogan conducted with Jack Dorsey but with over 14,000 people down voting it a big ratio and pretty much the comment section says it all with people saying things like quote people are not buying this PR stunt there’s not another comment saying here remember when Joe was present during an interview? I missed.

Send it to me after watching the interview I do have to say that Jack Dorsey does kind of cut come off a little wacky you kind of comes off more like you was trying to be a religious leader then a CEO of a company but I think people also need to understand that this is ultimately a 41 year old billionaire who does also date 23 year old models and Timmy he was a little bit with just not in touch with reality with what he’s been saying and how he’s been expressing himself on the live stream because a lot of the things that he was saying we’re contradicted with what his Corporation has been doing and we have to understand here as one of the comments reads in the videos quote Jack Dorsey has done more to meddle in our elections then Russia and there’s.

Backlash against Jack Dorsey.

Mainly because.

Believe that Joe Rogan kind of went soft at him and you can see that from some of the comments and he didn’t pressure him and question Jack Dorsey on some of the activities at his mask Corporation conduct now I thought a very interesting part of the interview happened at around 48 minutes and 55 seconds we’re actually Joe Rogan asked about Alex Jones who was terminated from using.

Mosley violating the terms and services and Joe Rogan ask Jack Dorsey pointless.

What did Alex Jones do to get permanently banned which I found interesting because Alex Jones actually launched the whole attack on Joe Rogan just this week alone which was pretty out there Jason to say the least yeah you know.

Bottom line is this man has been set up.

Bob the CIA the Deep State the NSA damn I found am I sick.

Elemeno pea.

The new cult leader.

That’s going to take your kids down an LSD DMT path to hell with magic mushrooms.

Jason you’re not really exaggerated because I was just came up.

Very very speculative and that’s a very nice term to use here and talking about it like inside a references and acting like he knows a lot of secrets that he’s not going public with but also a lot of kind of really kind of far out their comments but it was interesting to see Joe Rogan actually asked Jack Dorsey about Alex Jones and Jack Dorsey even said I’m not even sure what what he actually violated and why was he permanently banned from using the platform so that was a big a contentious point.

As well as the fact that people are accusing now Joe Rogan of deleting a lot of the critical comments of the CEO of Twitter a lot of comments were made by Sargon of akkad there was a comment made by of course Mark Dice as well a lot of those comments were uploaded and a lot of people are saying that they can’t find them anymore on specifically the video that was published by Joe Rogan now Mark Dice actually released a statement saying that he could actually see his own comment but when he logged out of his account you couldn’t see his comment at all which of course people are pointing to clear sensor.

Mark Dice actually tweeted that Joe Rogan and then tweeted a photo of Joe Rogan blocking him and there’s been actually beef between Mark and Joe for a couple years now so it doesn’t surprise me that they have been blocked.

Of course a lot of people right now or staying confirmed Joe Rogan is now helping out Jack Dorsey by deleting critical comments of them on his page and people are saying that this is absolute truth but it could also be a possibility that Joe Rogan who did this video live and then deleted it and then reuploaded it that this was one of the reasons why some of those comments with missing it could also be because of the YouTube algorithm which has a bias against Sargon and Mark Dice another alternative creators and sometimes they down Rank and sometimes they get rid of comments in there as well so it’s actually unclear to see if there was any kind of meddling.

Play Joe Rogan but I hope he makes the statement about it because it wouldn’t look good if he was deleting comments from the bigger discussions that are being had on his video which I think are very important to to discuss and.

Bigger aspect here is of course Jack Dorsey himself and then to me honestly there could have been more to kind.

Question Jack Dorsey have to find out more critically important information because Jack Dorsey himself admits that he is biased and of course every human being is biased.

It came it comes to a point where even conservatives within the Twitter organization have come out and expressed that they don’t feel safe even expressing themselves working for of course Twitter even USA Today came out talking about the political bias and the crackdowns that have been politically motivated inside of Twitter and of course the people who use Twitter now Jack Dorsey just like similar comments he made in The Joe Rogan interview said this doesn’t affect us as as he said before as Mashable cupboard you know the left-leaning bias doesn’t affect content decisions at all and a lot of people are just calling straight out right Hui on that and lies because I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that yes there’s a major bias especially in Twitter especially with what we just saw a recently where we saw a lot of celebrities and mainstream media figures literally call for the doxxing and physic. Violence of teenagers of because they had a Maga hat and were smirking during of course the whole Native American controversy and a lot of those left-wing people who are calling for violence and Dachshund they weren’t punished by Twitter but when similar instances happen for an example when people tell journalists to quote learn-to-code now Twitter see that as abusive Behavior because the quote learn to code is being sent to journalists from predominately BuzzFeed and vice who lost their jobs recently so the biosphere is pretty effing.

Sushi with all the people who were permanently banned from that platform and it’s not just a prominent figures but also bigger organizations as we found out from the Washington times at Twitter suppress messages criticizing Planned Parenthood in other pro-life groups out there the bias is very clear with there censorship with her Shadow Banning and also Shilling for the establishment as it’s not only people on the right we’re getting hit but also a lot of people who are anti establishment like the free thought project the anti-media my personal friend Carey wedler who had our account deleted without an explanation to why it’s happening and it’s also done or bigger.

State government recent as we see Twitter recently takedown hundreds of accounts that were pro-regime of Maduro that were Pro Venezuelan accounts coming from Venezuela talking about their support.

Didn’t want a coup d’etat happening in their country all of those people have been bad it was a similar move also made of course in Syria where a lot of Syrian government accounts and Syrian voices.

Procedural voices Rosso sensor attend and deleted and of course a lot of Close Associates to Nicolas Maduro we’re also just totally blocked and suspend.

From using the platform as we’re seeing just a stunning video of what looks like American military helicopters in Columbia heading towards the Venezuelan border so this was an issue that I think Joe was kind of very soft on an.

In one point I do agree with Joe when he says I’m here to talk to everyone and people accuse him of platforming people and empowering them and I’m kind of with Joe here that he should have a right to talk to everyone in an exchange of dialogue and to have a bigger discussion here that we could get a better understanding overall this is getting a lot of attention this got my attention this had me watching and overall I think these conversations are.

Where the problem comes in and why people are mad.

Cuz when Joe Rogan is says that he wants to talk to everyone he doesn’t believe Indie platformer e the problem comes when he’s literally talkin to the orwellian overlord billionaire D platform King Jack Dorsey himself and this is why a lot of people.

Are having a backlash against this video because they don’t think Joe Rogan.

Argued and and fought for what he said he believed in and he took the situation very lightly and if you truly did believe in talking to everyone and giving everyone a platform you would fight for that kind of idea more than he did to what people accuse him of giving a very soft handed approach to Jack Dorsey and I can understand that sentiment as well do you agree or disagree with that also talks about AI in Bitcoin which I know you’re dying to talk about Jace.

There’s a lots on back there my friend I got to tell you what let’s start with Y Dorsey band me okay.

It was very direct.

You are like the last platform the bad Alex Jones.

Factory like JC we found you that’s when you know no no no that’s not why we did.

Now it is true that is a true statement because Alex Jones outside of the Capitol in Washington DC screamed at Jack Dorsey as he was getting into his car that’s a fact that is absolutely affect now it’s weird that Jason bermas knows why Alex Jones officially got banned by Twitter but Jack Dorsey. Band Alex Jones and is the head of this algorithm I want to talk about an AI that I want to talk about before we get him pushing Bitcoin will get there he he did so because he said in this interview and this is what I’m not going to be so hard on Joe because there’s a lot of stuff that came out in this interview if you listen to it all right he said he didn’t know now they said that the way he treated Oliver Darcy in this interview Dorsey said well he didn’t violate our terms of service until after he was on the radar violated terms of service since I was 16 for it the fact of the matter is I was with thousands.

After I had a big bowl of chili anyway.

Anyway he says that basically Jones officially got banned for bullying Oliver Darcy and live streaming it on the Twitter platform from the halls of the Capitol building now that if you doubt me I’m sure you can pick those up somewhere was pretty funny was calling like a raccoon look out evil is you can tell so that’s why Jack Dorsey doesn’t know that I know that now.

Dorsey also starts talking about how the algorithm curates content and he also starts talking about how it is an AI algorithm now Rogan then goes wait a minute it’s so this is all run by Ai and and he’s he’s literally asked he does he he says the c word Luke he asked him what should we have artificial intelligence censoring speech.

Anthony presenting says no it’s about Dan down ranking people who have a set of history of quote abusive Behavior but who’s who decided that abusive behavior and he’s talking about how people who they don’t like their responses won’t show up in the response feed which I found a stunning admission.

For him to actually bring.

So all that comes out right then he starts talking about some safe nuts to try to get around box right because you know Russia they had all those Twitter Bots and you know they don’t really care about that but he starts talking about facial recognition.

And then Jose like wait a minute facial recognition and then door she’s like oh no we’re just going to we’re not going to actually take your face yeah I’m sure we’re just going to make sure it’s a human being it’s a real person tweeting this stuff out.

So think about how.

Farthest 140 to 280 now characters.

Social media machine has got that it wants to basically biometrically identify your tweets then let an AI algorithm rate them and whether they should be curated up or down very spooky.

Call the salsa Works in hand.

Of course his app the cash app which also is integrated with Bitcoin which he pumped pretty heavily on The Joe Rogan podcast and talked about how.

Currencies are really the the currency of the future and if they’re in hands of someone with Jack Dorsey who’s already using AI who’s already coming off like kind of trying to be a religious figure here talking about oh yeah don’t wear your your your you know your face scans it won’t be used with anybody else I don’t believe it and it makes it very critical. Of course this kind of pumps up Bitcoin but at the same time it makes me worried because again as we covered on the Shadow the potential of Bitcoin is a two-sided it’s it’s a new form of Technology but that technology could be used for sinister purposes as much as it could be used for good purposes and there has been a big establishment push to watch monitor survey land keep track of any kind of transaction that happens out of course this bigger public blockchain I can be used for coarse very Sinister controlling motives so and they got everything here has to be taken with a grain of salt I’m happy that this interview happened I’m happy that we got to understand. Orbit I do understand why people are being critical of jail for giving this kind of soft approach but ultimately I would rather know and rather see this then not and even though he’s getting a lot of flack.

Overall a good important discussion that needed to be had a time and I’m happy you was.

No I absolutely agree Luke you know I’m I’m glad it’s out there getting you a lot of admissions here you see how the company is run from this guy’s perspective at least he’s willing to Shell out listen Ro going to ask some tough questions he just didn’t follow up with any of them he just took his his word you know what I mean and let him kind of talk around these things again what we got out of this is that we have a company that does have a bias is absolutely left-leaning is letting an AI algorithm dictate who gets to say what and when and where that goes and he kept your was really funny look he kept trying to promote not following people but to follow subject matter and one of the big things that he kept going back to his barracks.

So this guy is obviously anti brexit in every single way shape and form I mean the way they were talking about for Raj and his point of view and remember we talked about brexit earlier in the program that’s a pro people movement. All right so again in this just shows you that we need another platform guys Twitter is not it Twitter Twitter is going to have a limited lifespan it’s not going to be the end-all-be-all guess what Facebook is not going to be either let me tell you something that I’m not I live at the kids but they both have phones right.

You can kind of tell patterns on social media and Facebook was the biggest thing well this generation that is all Snapchat Facebook’s got to die down for my generation or generation mid-twenties upper forties into 50s the kids are really use.

These kids there they’re eight nine there on Tik Tok we don’t even know what’s going to be the next Twitter so Dorsey enjoy your bill and billions of dollars be smart now with your nose ring because the people will figure it out I promise.

Yeah and it was interesting because I got a lot of the conversations were very generalized were very vague they weren’t very much to the point that I do wish Joe Rogan would have followed up and kind of held his feet to the fire a little bit he had to have this kind of balance because he knows he wants to keep having powerful people on.

Same time his audience is very mad at him and and you know Jack Dorsey he kept talking about how he wants to help people and and serve people I think overall even when you look the basic understandings of.

Technological advancements in social media it is pretty clear by many scientific methods and by many scientific discoveries that social media by and large has been a very negative impact on human civilization of course there’s some good aspects of it but overall as far as depression as far as what’s been happening especially the the hate cliques that have been incentivize the censoring the manipulation of been happening behind the scenes for of course the powerful that Twitter does that Jack Dorsey is guilty of I don’t buy when he’s on that Joe Rogan show and says he wants to help people and serve people because again bad things have been done with good intentions and I think this is the case I think this is why there’s such a backlash with so many people disappointed.

Jack dorsey’s feet weren’t out of the fire and I agree with that.

The post Why Is Everyone Upset With Joe Rogan? appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/why-is-everyone-upset-with-joe-rogan/

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digital-strategy · 6 years

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For 17-year-old Mary Amanuel, from London, it happened in Tesco. “We were in year 7,” she remembers, “and my friend had made an Instagram account. As we were buying stuff, she was counting the amounts of likes she’d got on a post. ‘Oooh, 40 likes. 42 likes.’ I just thought: ‘This is ridiculous.’”

Isabelle, an 18-year-old student from Bedfordshire who doesn’t want to disclose her surname, turned against social media when her classmates became zombified. “Everyone switched off from conversation. It became: ‘Can I have your number to text you?’ Something got lost in terms of speaking face to face. And I thought: ‘I don’t really want to be swept up in that.’” For 15-year-old Emily Sharp, from Staines in Surrey, watching bullying online was the final straw. “It wasn’t nice. That deterred me from using it.”

It is widely believed that young people are hopelessly devoted to social media. Teenagers, according to this stereotype, tweet, gram, Snap and scroll. But for every young person hunched over a screen, there are others for whom social media no longer holds such an allure. These teens are turning their backs on the technology – and there are more of them than you might think.

Quarter of 14-year-old girls in UK have self-harmed, report finds

While many of us have been engrossed in the Instagram lives of our co-workers and peers, a backlash among young people has been quietly boiling. One 2017 survey of British schoolchildren found that 63% would be happy if social media had never been invented. Another survey of 9,000 internet users from the research firm Ampere Analysis found that people aged 18-24 had significantly changed their attitudes towards social media in the past two years. Whereas 66% of this demographic agreed with the statement “social media is important to me” in 2016, only 57% make this claim in 2018. As young people increasingly reject social media, older generations increasingly embrace it: among the 45-plus age bracket, the proportion who value social media has increased from 23% to 28% in the past year, according to Ampere’s data.

This is part of a wider trend. According to a study by US marketing firm Hill Holliday of Generation Z – people born after 1995 – half of those surveyed stated they had quit or were considering quitting at least one social media platform. When it comes to Gen Z’s relationship to social media, “significant cracks are beginning to show”, says the firm’s Lesley Bielby.

She believes we will definitely see an increase in younger people quitting or substantially reducing their use. “And as younger Gen Zers notice this behaviour among their older siblings and friends, they too will start to dial down their use of social media.”

As the first generation to grow up online, Gen Z never had to learn social media, or at least not exactly. They glided through every iteration: Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006), Instagram (2010) Snapchat (2011) in real time, effortlessly adopting each one. But a life lived in pixels from your earliest age is no easy thing.

“You start doing things that are dishonest,” says Amanuel, who quit social media aged 16. “Like Instagram: I was presenting this dishonest version of myself, on a platform where most people were presenting dishonest versions of themselves.”

Like Amanuel, Jeremiah Johnson, 18, from Luton, grew weary of the pressures of sustaining an online persona. “It’s a competition for who can appear the happiest,” he says. “And if you’re not happy and want to vent about it on social media, you’re attention-seeking.”

After being “bugged” by his friends to get Instagram (he had stopped using Facebook aged 16), Johnson joined. He lasted six months. “If you’re having a bad day and scrolling through it, you’re constantly bombarded with pictures of people going to parties. Even if that’s not an accurate portrayal of their lives, that’s what you see. So I stopped using it. It became depressing. It was this competition of who’s the happiest.” He pauses. “Participating in that is not something I’m interested in.”

Hyper-connected teens have been faced with a surfeit of clicks, retweets and likes – and the dopamine rush of online validation – since the neural pathways in their brains were formed.

“They’re becoming overwhelmed with the responsibility of maintaining their social sites and with upholding the somewhat inflated persona many have created on these sites, where they are constantly seeking approval via the amount of likes they get for any given post,” Bielby says.

“The people who are the most honest about themselves do not play the game of Instagram,” Amanuel says. “The game of Instagram is who can maximise their likes by being the most risque, outrageous or conformist as possible. I didn’t want to play that game.”

At school, social media can be a brutal barometer of popularity. “If you meet someone new and they ask for your Instagram and you only have 80 followers,” says Sharp, “they’re going to think: ‘You’re not that popular’, but if you have 2,000 followers they’re going to be like: ‘You’re the most popular person in school.’” Sharp quit social media at 13. “I’d rather not know what other people think of me.”

A desire to build authentic, offline friendships motivated some to quit. “I’m so much better at real-life socialising now,” says Amanuel. “Not just those people you accept on a friend request who are friends of a friend.”

For Tyreke Morgan, 18, from Bristol, being a hard man to get hold of – he has no social media presence at all – has its advantages. “Everyone goes through other people to find me,” Morgan laughs, “and when I hear that they’re been trying to get hold of me I say: ‘Great!’ Why would I need 500 flakey friends?”

But when you are from a digitally native generation, quitting social media can feel like joining a monastery. Amanuel was recently asked by co-workers if she had Snapchat. “I said no,” Amanuel remembers, “and I instantly heard, like, gasps. It was like I’d revealed something disgusting.” She explained that she did have a Snapchat handle, but never used it. “Relief came out of their eyes! It was really weird.”

Teenagers not ready to quit entirely are stepping back for a while. Dr Amanda Lenhart, who researches young people’s online lives, conducted a survey of US teenagers, asking them about taking time off social media. “We found that 58% of teenagers said they had taken at least one break from at least one social media platform. The most common reason? It was getting in the way of schoolwork or jobs, with more than a third of respondents citing this as their primary reason for leaving social media. Other reasons included feeling tired of the conflict or drama they could see unfolding among their peer group online, and feeling oppressed too by the constant firehose of information.”

Bielby agrees that young people are becoming more aware of the amount of time they waste online. Of the young people Hill Holliday surveyed who had quit or considered quitting social media, 44% did so, she says, in order to “use time in more valuable ways”.

“I don’t know how people doing their A-levels or GCSEs have the time for it,” says Isabelle. “They’re constantly studying, but their only distraction is social media.” Rather than get sucked into a “mindless vortex of never-ending scrolling,” as she puts it, when Isabelle isn’t studying she prefers to be outdoors.

The fact that Gen Z have had their every move documented online since before they could walk, talk, or even control their bowels helps explain their antipathy to social media: it makes sense for them to strive for privacy, as soon as they reach the age when they have a choice over their online image.

“I’ve seen parents post pictures of their child’s first potty online,” says Amy Binns of the University of Central Lancashire. “You think: ‘Why are you doing this to your child? They wouldn’t want this to be public.”

Gen Z has an interest in privacy that subtly sets them apart. “Young people want to get away from the curtain-twitching village, where everyone knows everything about you,” Binns says. So while today’s teens spend a lot of time online, they don’t actually share that much personal information. And when they do share, it’s strategic. “You’re painting a picture of who you are and your image,” says Binns. “It’s your own shop window or brand.”

“Framing a picture and posting it on there is not a five-minute thing,” says Amanuel, explaining that any post will be well-thought-out in order to project a certain image and maximise likes. “It takes hours of deliberation.”

“When social media started, we didn’t really know what it was going to mean,” says Binns. “Young people are more aware of the value of privacy than we were 10 years ago.”

Amanuel says that the Cambridge Analytica story, with its exposure of widespread data harvesting, helped prompt her to get off social media, and many more young people seem to be turning against Facebook; on Tuesday, it was reported that the number of Facebook users aged 18 to 24 in Britain is expected to fall 1.8% this year.

Some of the teens I spoke to were concerned about how technologies such as Snap Map – a Snapchat feature that tracks your friends geographically, in real time – were spreading through their schools, and mistrustful of the privacy consequences of being surveilled by your followers wherever you go. “Snap Map is this big thing with a lot of my friends, but there is a sense of privacy that is being breached as well,” Isabelle says.

Teenagers are also educated about the ramifications of an offensive tweet, or explicit picture, as well as the health consequences of too much screen time. “Young people are being taught in schools about sharing nudes and how tweets can travel around. They’ve seen the horror stories,” says Binns.

Isabelle agrees. “Constant screen time damages your ability to see, and it also causes internal damage, such as anxiety.” Studies have shown that social media use can negatively affect mental wellbeing, and adolescents are particularly susceptible: one nationally representative survey of US 13- to 18-year-olds linked heavier social media use to depression and suicide, particularly in girls. And 41% of the Gen Z teens surveyed by Hill Holliday reported that social media made them feel anxious, sad or depressed.

But quitting social media can create new anxieties. “Our research shows that the biggest fear of quitting or pausing social media is missing out,” Bielby says. Some are more sanguine than others. “Do I miss out on stuff?” Morgan asks. “Yeah, of course. People find it hard to keep in contact with me. They say: ‘It would be easier if you had this or that.’ But I don’t think it’s that hard to type in my number and send a text. You’re just not willing to do it.”

Others struggle with the fear of missing out. “It’s like everyone in your friend group has gone to a party without telling you,” Johnson says. At times, he questions himself. “I second-guess myself a lot. There are some days I’m really convinced I want to reinstall it, not for myself, but because I want to appear normal.”

Still, refuseniks such as Johnson may not be outliers for ever. In a world in which everyone is online, renouncing social media is a renegade, countercultural move: as quietly punk as shaving your head or fastening your clothes with safety-pins. Morgan has become a svengali for classmates wanting to escape. “My friends come to me and say: ‘Tyreke, I don’t have social media any more,’ and I go: ‘Why? I thought that’s what you guys do.’ And they say: ‘Thanks to you, because of the things you said and the stuff you’re doing.’ It’s quite cool.”

Quitting social media is a determined move: apps including Facebook and Instagram are designed to be addictive. “Social media is so ingrained in teenage culture that it’s hard to take it out. But when you do, it’s such a relief,” Amanuel says. She has received a lot of “admiration” from her peers for quitting. “They wish they were able to log off. People feel like social media is a part of them and their identities as teenagers and something you need to do,” she says. “But I’m no less of a teenager because I don’t use it.”

via the Guardian

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