#how do i appease the algorithm

[fruit-kick]

going balls deep into a hobby is watching 40 minute videos from 5 years ago about an incredibly specific technique/solution to a problem you're having

[suguvanilla]

the lines are shaky and weird because i drew this in the midst of a 2am panic attack because it came to me in a vision

[dingodad]

im not hating and am not pressed about this in any way but i dont understand how this benefits anyone on tumblr like youd get more reach just tagging things as homestuck right

[aropride]

one thing i hate is the trend of journalling just to post it on tiktok or pinterest like what is the fucking point then !!! ur spending all that time to make ur emotions and thoughts digestible and aesthetically pleasing ??? what if later u want to know how u were Actually feeling and what u were Actually going thru but all u have is ur thoughts and feelings distilled repackaged commodified and sanitized into a perfectly repostible png ?!? like is nothing sacred !!! is nothing just for you ??? is everything to appease an audience ?!? and like yeah there's nothing wrong with it like morally and that's not what i'm saying . but what is the point if u can't be honest and vulnerable in a private space !!! how can it be fully for u when it's made with the intent of turning into Content !!! what do u even get out of it when u have to consider the aesthetics and how it caters to the algorithm rather than venting and working through things and being honest ?!! like if ur highlighter smudges and ur ink bleeds and ur words aren't perfectly publicly consumable do u even bother writing like is it all just for the performance ?!?

[physalian]

Ok but somebody just sent me one of those Gary Vee videos (and I have very mixed feelings about motivational speakers in general) specifically about underperforming content.

In the clip the bulk of Gary’s argument is: Stop blaming the algorithm, your content sucks. The algorithm is your customer, figure out how to appease it and make it work for you, because “blaming the algorithm” makes you sound like one of those “well it’s not *me* people are just too basic for my content”.

And. Yes. I fully appreciate and acknowledge that my content sucks… on platforms where I have to pretend to be something I’m not to appease the algorithm.

And yes it is its own thing, not simply the will of the people. If it were the will of the people, I wouldn’t have my Instagram infested with scam accounts every time I so much as hint at marketing. The “will of the people,” Mr. Vee, is this hellsite right here.

“Shut up and figure out how to enjoy the process” some comment said.

Friendo, I will never enjoy the process of being on social media, as social media continues to grind inevitably toward the brain-rotting content generation machine to satisfy diminishing attention spans.

I’m not mad that “the algorithm” doesn’t like my content. I’m pissed that there’s an algorithm at all and that because it exists, people are encouraged to saturate the market with unoriginality and play it safe, over being experimental and unique. I can’t tell you how many times on YouTube alone I’ve seen videos by some of my favorite creators that didn’t perform well and say “I know this won’t do well, but I had fun” and it’s some of the best content they’ve made in part because they know they’re not under pressure to perform and can be so much more human.

I don’t want to appease the algorithm because I don’t want there to be a goddamn algorithm. When you have a robot deciding what videos to show you based on numbers and not soul, you have a game you can rig. Which is great! If your goal is to encourage a bunch of people desperate for audiences to play that game and over-produce the exact same content.

Booktok is a shining example.

It encourages people to put on acts and adopt attitudes and arguments that they might not agree with because that’s what’s trending and they’ve made their livelihood dependent on clicks and ad revenue. Or am I imagining the deluge of rage bait out there on TikTok?

I could mindlessly and spitefully pinch out artificial enthusiasm (or rage) for things I don’t care about for attention. I could have ChatGPT write me a month’s worth of cheap tweets. I could make an assembly line for Instagram reels with all the depth and uniqueness of a gutter puddle. I could write “what sells” and glue it together in a Canva AI-generated cover to add to the steaming pile of romantacy.

But I’m an artist, and for fuck’s sake, if this is what I have to do to reach people, the people that I’m reaching won’t enjoy my work anyway. I have a day job, I’m not doing this for money. If I end up with a cult following, I’d rather have a loyal few than sell my soul to feeding the algorithm. Fuck the algorithm.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 01/05/2024

super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More) super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont

Ripper Unknown

So. It's been a month now. Has it all settled yet? Have we had the time to let SiIvaGunner's April Fools 2024 event sink in, 30 days later? Speaking personally, I don't believe I have yet. Visions of Gegagedigedagedago, Pomny (digital circus), Boykisser, Brainless Kitty and all of my other favorite memes continue to haunt me to this very day - I see one of the events' rips in my recommended, and in the blink of an eye five hours will have passed. I cannot be anything but amazed at the surgical precision that the SiIva team captured the phenomena of online internet brainrot with during this event, spanning the whole range of severity levels from bad to worse. super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont was certainly not the worst it got - yet it embodies everything the event sought to achieve through it's title alone.

But, right, the event - you'll have noticed right away that everything about the above-linked video's metadata is completely awry from typical SiIvaGunner videos. No attempt at a bait-and-switch, completely different video description, not even a thumbnail of the game used...and what the fuck is the "Buddy Holly Soundfont"???? What's going on here? Well, a lot of these traits may seem familiar to you if you've been on other corners of YouTube in the last few years - like I mentioned briefly back in we are number one but with outdated memes over it, there's been a trend in how non-SiIva audio edits are presented on YouTube as of late. There's an algorithm to appease now, after all - surprises and ambiguity only serve to ward off potential new listeners! After the explosive popularity of some of these, particularly during 2023 with videos like Nirvana's Nevermind but with the SM64 soundfont, they began feeling inescapable - often times sounding pretty low-effort to boot. I don't intend to shame anyone who's made these videos or anyone who enjoys them, of course, but...through how hard they aim to appease the algorithm that be, its difficult not to see these videos as attention-seeking first, and as creative endeavors second.

Which then brings us back to SiIvaGunner. Eight years in, and the channel's way of presenting its videos has remained thoroughly consistent, rain or shine - content in charting its own course. Narratively, this is actually playing to the channel's thematic core, something enforced all the way back in The Reboot story of Season 1, and that continues to be relevant over the years through rips like NIGHTMARESCAPE 〜Unrestrained HyperCam 2〜 (Final Boss Phase 2), and indeed through this very April Fools event. That core is simple: To never conform, to never restrict, to let the channel's team of artist continue doing what they love purely for love's sake, rather than to appease a crowd or a system. Throughout this April Fools day event, then, it was as if we were shown the twisted view on that core, the channel's rippers following the opposite creed - clickbaity titles and thumbnails, no core theme, often even lacking any regard for the tracks being remixed - several times the Wii Shop Channel theme was simply called "The Wii Theme", and of course the very notion of games having "soundfonts" is something that's woefully misinformed to begin with. Opening the entire event with Buddy Holly by Weezer but in the Mario 64 Soundfont set the stage perfectly - after all, what game more overused in "soundfont" edits than Super Mario 64, what album more trendy to playfully make fun of in 2024 than Weezer's Blue album, and what song from said album is more memed than its hit single, Buddy Holly?

Except, of course, this whole thing went one layer deeper. Throughout the four months that the season has been running for thus far, Season 8's running theme above all else has been pure silliness - everything from a Justin Bieber takeover, to an MLG day, to the currently-ongoing SpongeBob day embodies that theme perfectly. And at the helm of it all sits the Joke-Explainer 7000, the current in-universe manager of the channel. Her name doesn't lie: as we saw back in Magolor's Shoppe Fusion Collab she do be Explaining the Jokes, and that was initially assumed to be the bit of this very April Fools bit, the titles like super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont explaining the jokes of the event immediately. But forget not the point of April Fools as a holiday - to deceive. Indeed, though the titles suggest that the team are spending the day just explaining the joke of every rip uploaded, they're in reality just spoiling the supposed "premise". Listen to any one of them yourself, and you'll be given a bait-and-switch surprise which completely transforms the rip of choice. And as the day went on, these surprises only grew stranger and stranger...

SiIvaGunner's April Fools events have an incredible track record, as I've hopefully made clear in Our Sweet Parsley and Your Best Nightmario - but I think I can safely say this year's bit was at least the FUNNIEST one of them all. Every minute of the day felt like slipping deeper into insanity, made all the more clear the moment super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont was uploaded - in a matter of hours, the event had gone from making fun of low-effort soundfont edits that very much DO exist on YouTube, to completely making up an entirely new tier of slop through the very idea of a "Buddy Holly Soundfont". In case it needs to be explained, "soundfonts" are used to refer to video games using sequenced music, wherein individual instruments are played note-by-note through data sent by the game, rather than being streamed from a recording - it is IMPOSSIBLE to derive a "soundfont" from songs like Buddy Holly, played on live instruments and saved as masters back in the 90s. That is the gag that super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont is built on - the "instruments" used to recreate Bob-Omb Battlefield from Super Mario 64 are intentionally low-quality snippets taken from Buddy Holly, used just the same as Super Mario 64's sequenced instruments are used within soundfont edits.

The end result feels like getting splashed with cold water at every part of listening. Rivers' repeating "Whut" voiceline being used as the main melody for the first 40 seconds, for instance, is the kind of obviously "wrong" thing one would never seriously do in this sort of arrangement, yet it only serves to add to the joke here, of just how far we've fallen so deep into the event. The tinny guitar shredding, the low-effort thumbnail edit, the vocals suddenly being added onto the track, the bass being far deeper in the mix than it reasonably should be...it's an experience to behold, and just as you're letting it all sink in, the vocals are suddenly pitch-shifted to the quintessential SiIva meme, Grand Dad himself The Flintstones - its like the rip is poking fun at your misery, as to remind you that this IS indeed still SiIvaGunner, the bit is still going, you are merely along for SiIva's wild ride.

The entire event was RELENTLESSLY funny to see unfold from every angle. Be it experiencing every rip as it was uploaded, or seeing the comments' reactions to the gradual spiral of rot we were being taken on, or most importantly - realizing just how much fun the team must've still had finding ways to subvert expectations at every turn. Season 8 has been an absolute blast so far, and I cannot wait to see where its patented silliness takes us next - even if it'll be hard to surpass the shit we saw on this day, and the absolute state of things that super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont represents. Truly one of the SiIvaGunner rips of all time.

[breezypunk]

How do you get so much love for your Cyberpunk 2077 screenshots? I spend hours posing, setting up lights etc etc but I get 0 love. Ok, I'm definitely not a professional photographer, but 0? Teach me, plsssss.

Oh my goodness, I need to gather my thoughts for this because as someone whose struggled with this for a long time, I understand 100% how you feel right now and I just want to give you a bit of advice.

I'm not a professional either, and what I mean by struggle is that when I first came into this fandom I came in with nothing. I hardly got any notes or any recognition for my posts as well.. Granted I was on console and console users sadly don't get the love they deserve, and I think they deserve just as much love if not more from people, and that doesn't happen, it's a fact.

When I started using mods and got on PC, I still barely got anything, and it started becoming a struggle for me because I fed off of validation and approval from others, and that is something I still struggle with to this day, maybe not as much, but I def still do and I think most people in this fandom do. No one can say they don't crave validation, we ALL do, if we didn't we would post n o t h i n g. And while I do agree that we should post for ourselves, we also post because when we do something we are super proud of, we want others to see it and enjoy it as well and there's NOTHING wrong with that at all. We reblog our things multiple times to push it out so other's can see (and because the algorithm truly sucks, just my opinion).

I was desperate for validation because I craved interaction and friendship, that's all I ever wanted, and I wanted to bond with people I have the same interests in and because of my desperate need for it I made enemies, still to this day. It only makes you feel icky on the inside when you're constantly trying to appease others, and while it's normal to want validation, it's not normal to only do it for that and that alone. I don't know who you are anon, and I cannot "teach" you, simply because what you're doing right now is good enough, not even good, it's great & regardless of how many people interact with your VP, you are good enough and you shouldn't stop, because if you love it that's the #1 most important thing. But also don't be afraid to reblog your stuff! Reblog it as often as you like.

Also, P.S.. I am still not always proud of what I do. I still get a little envious, it's human nature, I'm on a shitty laptop with horrible graphics and I can't do much with it, but I love taking VP, it's a passion and I will do it no matter how it looks. You should do it too, the best part of doing it is doing it because you enjoy it with no regrets. Sometimes this fandom will make you feel like you have to be the very best or at the very top for people to interact with you or enjoy your VP/art, and sometimes that's true, mostly it's true... but there are still good people here who genuinely appreciate all forms of VP, whether it's console, modding, gorgeous lighting, no lighting at all, etc. It's all beautiful, and at the end of the day, that validation is gonna come and go anyway. But you will continue to look at your art and go "yeaaaaah, I did that :)"

So please don't feel upset for getting "0" love, cos I promise someone loves it.

[stupidstrawberrystars]

I’ve decided that my WIPs should be somewhere. This is wolfstar, modern au (where Sirius and James have a tiktok account). It was supposed to be multi chaptered (basically just gonna be Wolfstar doing couples trends on tiktok, but they’re not actually together yet), but I only fully completed the first chapter. But it’s just rotting away so here, it’s about 1k.

I’ve made this a thing now so;

Next

Their video went viral two months ago. Sirius and James precariously attempted to pet a pigeon. Gotta give the guy credit, Pete’s great at dares. 

He recorded it all, planning to use it to blackmail the two in the future. Nothing like friendly bullying between mates. And he got some good footage, a pigeon did fly in James’ face and Sirius stepped in poop, but then Remus just had to help.

He went to the shop and grabbed some bread. So they could lure a pigeon in. And in a shocking turn of events, they managed to pet one eventually. 

They posted the video as a joke.

It took the algorithm only a few weeks to hit all the UK uni students currently withering away behind their desks.

And soon Pads and Prongs went viral. 

And so as James and Remus crashed through uni, Pete cruised through his internship as a sous chef, and Sirius desperately search for artistic inspiration, they kept an online presence too.

Sirius and James documented their crazy days of boring work and painting, and entertained their fans with late night lives at their flats and short tiktok clips of dumb pranks. James’ hair was pink for a week. It was hilarious.

The internet was quick to fall in love with James’ long distance relationship with Lily. Pete popped up to show off his cooking sometimes. Remus appeared in the background sometimes. Sirius finds it unbelievable that he hasn’t realised how much the tiktok book girlies already love him. 

And that’s what lead to last night. The marauders, a nickname from school and therefore an embarrassing inside joke, are all huddled in the small living room of James and Sirius’, eating Pete’s cake and cuddled under blankets. Their live and just chatting with the fans, relating over awful projects and difficult teachers. 

“Not that this cake isn’t amazing, but does anyone want actual food? I could order takeaway since clearly none of us want to get up and make shit.” It’s a good suggestion from James, but Sirius isn’t really hungry.

“Yeah i’d have food mate.” Remus agrees and then so does Pete. 

“I’m good i’m not hungry.” James shoots him a vaguely sceptical look, and asks him if he’s sure.

“Yes i’m sure James.”

They decide on simple fish and chips. Usually they get something, as James would say, with more taste. But the chippies the only place that’ll bring them food and not take more than two hours. It is a Friday after all. 

Since they’re using James’ phone for the live, Remus takes his phone out and takes Pete and James’ order.

So they continue along chatting and rather quickly the questions about Remus, who’s been pretty quiet all evening, increase from about 50% of the comments to 75%. 

“Just appease them a bit Lupin.” Remus glares at James for that. 

“I have no clue what the people on your phone want to know about me James.”

Remus has a tendency to refer to technology as if he’s a grandpa who understands nothing beyond a radio. Sirius has heard people call it annoying but really it’s just endearing. At least to Sirius.

“How about that book you read Moony? Red, White and Royal Blue? Apparently you were caught making some choice expressions while reading in the background of me and James’ last tiktok. Did you like it?”

Remus gives him a disapproving look, likely annoyed at Sirius’ question. Apparently books need more detail than just a simple, yes it was good, or no it was not.

“Well… okay do your phone people really care about my opinion?” Remus turns to James. He replies that yes they obviously do. The comments are going crazy over having Remus’ attention.

“Fine. I enjoy Casey McQuiston’s writing style. I thought it was entertaining and I really liked how Alex and Henry complimented each other. Henry was able to calm Alex and Alex’s able to reason with Henry when he’s struggling.” 

Sirius looked blankly at Remus.

“Oh come on Moons. You spent like 2 hours explaining the whole book in depth and going on and on about your favourite characters and lines. Your book is annotated all over. At least share with the audience your favourite quotes.”

Remus sighs beside Sirius. Sirius really wants to hear these though. Remus seemed to love the book and Sirius often finds listening to him describe something he loves is always majestic. He details it all with elegant words until you’re eating out the plan of his hand. 

“I guess I thought it was pretty funny when Nora said, How did I know I was Bi? I touched a boob. Wasn’t that profound.”

“Remus.” Sirius whines.

“Oh fine. There’s a tone of quotes from that book I love. There’s I love him on purpose. Or he tells his too fast brain: don’t miss it this time, it’s too important. I- erm- I guess I also kind of love this thing Henry says, it’s like And I thought if someone like that ever loved me, it’d set me on fire. But then I was a careless fool and fell in love with you anyway.” Remus has not taken his eyes of Sirius once as he quotes this beautiful book. How does he remember those lines just of the top of his head?

“You know what though,” His voice takes on a soft tone. The one he reserves for kids, animals, things he loves, and sometimes Sirius. If he’s in a good mood. “my favourite, has got to be When have I ever, since the very first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you?” Remus’ eyes are rich and deep and chocolate. Sirius wants to paint them. 

“Moony!” James interrupts their eye contact. “Now they’re all gonna be in love with you, damn it.”

Remus chuckles and glances to the side.

“Doubt that Prongs. But yeah I loved the book. Oh and erm- food should be here soon by the way guys. Just got the notification to say it’s on its way here.”

Remus then clearly decides he’s done enough socialising with the internet so he grabs his current book, Song of Achilles, and carries on reading. 

And of course, because he’s so easy to deal with already, Sirius’ stomach, as if it has a mind of its own, decides now is the time to become bloody starving.

He glances guilty at Prongs, who furrows his eyebrows as if to ask what’s wrong.

“Hey Moons,” Sirius raises the pitch of his voice slightly to warn Remus he’s about to be a bit annoying. Remus glances up, squints at him and tilts his head.

“Remember when I said I wasn’t hungry?”

James bursts into laughter and Pete chuckles. But Remus just goes back to his book. And once the laughter dies down he, without even lifting his head from reading, tells Sirius,

“Idiot. I know. I ordered you food when I ordered ours. I know you. I knew you’d be hungry.” He rolls his eyes but goes straight back to the book.

The entire internet sees Sirius’ doe eyes but Remus does not. It sends James up the wall. 

[leighlew3]

Hey I'm interested in how the industry works and how it's slowing down atm, could you give some insights?

Welp. Buckle up...

Between tech bros and tech bro appeasers taking over the industry, the streaming model (an initially positive thing that's been twisted into something obviously not always so great), the pandemic, and the strike, plus the ever present political and global upheaval which has investors/banks biting nails -- Hollywood is not in a good place, and it's being run further and further into the ground by people afraid to take any risks or spend any money -- worse than ever.

That means less specs being bought, less movies being made, less shows being greenlit, and so on. Productions in LA have fallen to historic lows (because what IS being made is increasingly being taken elsewhere for tax credits and lower cost). Output and employment is just not great. And of course fans have become more selective and most studios and executives are simply not remotely on the same page with audiences and viewers anymore and relying too much on algorithms and skewed data (and allowing hateful anti-“woke” mobs to review bomb and doom anything fresh) and then wondering why even their big blockbusters are flopping now as well.

This was supposed to be the year the industry started to bounce back after the pandemic and strike, and while it's gotten better than it was when it was completely at a standstill, and yes movies and tv are still being made, it's just not good. It's not remotely where it should be, let alone anywhere near the level it was pre-pandemic. And even pre-pandemic, we were already seeing a lot of these problems starting to rear their heads...

I mean in the 90s and early 2000s a straight white guy could give a one line pitch to a studio and be handed a million bucks to write it. Or write the most basic ass spec and make a cool couple million for the sale. But now, even the straight white guys have to have a project locked and loaded already with attachments (talent, director, producers) already on board. No one want to develop anything. Everyone wants everyone else to do all the work (aka spend all the time and money) first and then maybe they'll buy the package and make the movie, or distribute a finished product. Imagine what that means for mid to lower level projects entirely. And imagine what that especially means for women/POC/LGBTQ creatives.

Anyway, agencies and reps all thought things would start to really get back on track this year, but it hasn't, really. The town-wide motto being said to writers, actors, directors, etc by Spring/Summer was "survive 'til 25". Now, the new motto is "survive through 25". Now everyone is hoping, somehow 2025 will be a solid recovery year and 2026 might be a genuinely good year again. But it just keeps getting pushed back and looking more and more bleak. A lot of writers, showrunners, etc -- successful ones and newbies alike, are just flat out leaving or preparing to leave the industry entirely, if they haven't already.

And people who are considering making writing, acting, or crew work a career are being flat out told "now is not the time, don't come to Hollywood, don't try to make this a career because there's just not enough work right now, and the career might not exist at all soon". And that's... pretty yikes.

Look, Hollywood has ALWAYS endured. It survived the Great Depression, global wars, technological revolutions -- and I actually believe it will survive this era as well.

I'm just not sure what comes out the other side of it...

And that's not even taking into account the role AI will play.

[knightoflodis]

You know what. I think I am starting to hate romance fantasy manhwa. Or, at least the schlock that repeat the same tropes over and over again. Or maybe just some of the main tropes. But there is one that has started to begin to annoy me. Isekai stories are super popular, right? And in these Korean web novels/comics romance stories that have a character get reincarnated into a book that they were reading is VERY popular. Another thing that is popular is regression stories where a character dies and goes back to relive their life to fix all of their mistakes. And now they are fucking starting to combine them. Multiple times I have seen someone think that they died in Korea and reincarnated in a book eventually find out that they were the original “character” in the “book” and that the “book” was just how they remembered their past life while they were in Korea. And now I just saw something that has absolutely pissed me off. There’s this character that goes back in time and then another character passes off past memories to her “in the form of a book/novel” so that they can still have that stupid fucking trope of her being in a novel without it being a fucking novel at all!!! Like. IT IS SO FUCKING UNNECESSARY! It is clearly only being done so that a box can be checked off to appease the publishers and algorithms and I fucking hate it! One of the only reasons I am trying it out is that I usually like villainess stories and there is a sale on this one today. But. The author for this story has written two other stories that I tried out and dropped pretty quickly. I should do the same for this. However. It has now given me a new hatred for the melding of the regression and isekai tropes.

[sany-wave]

Fae-go-away and internet safety

I propose: the Internet is full of fey and people have forgotten how to behave with fae.

Hear me out.

You know, I have always been fascinated by the Internet and by dangers, lurking in it. I won't say I have never messed up, I do have a big failure I'm still cringing about. No, nothing happened, I noticed the problem before it became one, but I still remember.

But anyway, the dangers of the Net had my attention for a while. Then I grew careless and forgot about it. And discovered the European/English Fair Folk.

I am Russian, and we don't quite have similar things in culture. There are beings you'd rather not interact with, things you do when meeting a нечисть (something between demons and undead, they overlap quite a bit, but aren't the same). But only powerful spirits (beasts and game) can be summoned by their names and humans aren't in this list in Slavic mythology. There are literary mentions of using different names in papers and day-to-day, but this practice is 18-19th century, which were known to be greatly affected by all things European.

Amd there are fairies. F-whatevers, really, I'm trying to not repeat myself in naming them. Hope it's obvious what Urania here is about.

Rules on encountering them have existed for a long time. And here I wrote a point-by-point comparison of the most common rules about them -- and Internet.

-Do not say your real name to anyone of the small gentry. Names have power, don't they? The exact rules about the name varies, but in general it's not a good idea to use it at all. This correlates with a "don't publish any of your real information online" rule, doesn't it? I'd even go so far, as to say that fae also need a face to go with the name, not unlike Death Note, it just never came up historically -- so "not posting your face" is also a universal advise.

-Don't take anything from any of the Kind Ones, especially food. Don't click suspicious links and especially don't download anything weird. This parallel is rather self-explanatory, even if binding to the other realm is not tge same as getting something like WannaCry.

-Respect the Fair Ones. Respecting someone is being polite and helping a bit if asked, not whatever a Karen think it is. This is a universal one, really. I don't see many explicit jerkwads on the Internet, but I might be lucky or inattentive, and I'm always trying to be informal, but polite. Unless there are people I explicitly don't want around, later about that.

-Don't go into magic circles no matter what enticing things you can see there, and try to walk backwards or repeat your steps if you accidentally entered it. Naked people (how queer! However, not my taste) or [10 BESTEST GARLIC BREAD RECIPES], don't go to weird sites, and if you got there accidentally, leave the way you came or close the page outright, not clicking anything.

-Use amulets to ward off elvenkind and other sprites. As houses nowadays are built with iron and copper in their walls, and people use a lot of uniquely artificial chemicals, modern built-in system antiviri are usually good enough in preventing undesirable encounters. You might want to have backups, if you are dealing with these things often, though.

-Your Good Neighbours might not be good or even work on a good/bad framework that's anything close to yours, remember their tricks. And this doesn't only apply to people, but to internet mechanisms too. Remember "frick" and "unalive"? How about other influencer words that are said to appease the algorithm? Using euphemisms like when talking about powerful beasts like bears (honey-knowers in Russian), wolves (ones who drag their prey) and snakes (ones close to earth). Google is one of such Little People.

-Weres and wives of seele and unseele variety look for entertainment and one of such jokes is substituting kids for ones of their own, just disguised. It was a way to explain autism and/or ADHD in ye olden times, but... You are here. You might be a changeling, too -- see how easily you can change your presence here. You can become like leprechauns and play tricks on people, like a "loss" and a "rickroll", or you can learn the magic of "Hello Wor(l)d" and sometimes called Excel Macros and do both good and harm. I'd go so far as to say that everyone on the Internet is a Person Of A Mound, at least a little bit, some are just more in touch with their magical side.

I know that I disregard several traits of fay like "being unable to consciously lie", or "being bound by their code of honour", but who exactly said that? The faeries themselves? Also "using a diverse set of passwords" remains unrepresented in the Feyworld, at least as far as I know, but it is more of a house security deal than actual fairness.

Admittedly, there is also a notion of fayure liking to count, and computers are made for counting in fancy ways, but I find this grasping at straws.

All pictures done by me, almost all of them for this post specifically.

Anyway... Brings out a big bottle of a fey-go-away. Every spambot, AI (f)artist and "sexy girl looking only for fans" will be sprayed with that to the face. Other kinds of faures are welcome, just be careful of the blast residue.

[cozylittleartblog]

As someone who is a fan of old Hollywood musicals from the 1930s and 1940s, I love your James and Clara pieces. This adorable OC couple gives off major Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vibes.

I was wondering, will we ever get to see some full fledged web comics with these two? With the backstory you described, I can kind of picture a 42nd Street-style story that shows how James and Clara met and ended up starring together in their movie musical “Swingin’ Sweetheart”.

Also, if you were to draw Clara in one of the dresses that Ginger Rogers wore on screen, which one would you pick?

(On a related note, I think James would totally look great in a white tie and tailcoat.)

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! :D fred and ginger were a huge inspiration for them, I saw the famous scene from swing time where they dance together in the school and instantly fell in love with them both, i've seen all the movies they made together. the characters had already existed, but i had to incorporate more of their charm and dynamic after that. the more old musicals i watched, the more i wanted to tell a story like them!

I'd like to do more short comics with them! though ideally if i magically stumbled into some $50 million dollars, I'd want to make a 2D animated film in the styles of singin' in the rain and cats dont dance. i have a rough plot in mind, it's just a matter of ironing it all out and making the thing, which... will not be for a long time, if ever. i refuse to sell them off to some studio that will make too many changes in the name of appeasing demographics and algorithms, and probably use it as a tax write-off right before release anyway, so it'd be indie or bust. i feel like with as integral as song and dance is to the story, doing it fully in comic form wouldn't do it justice, but there are shorter little moments and scenes i want to do with them in the meantime. maybe in ten years i can reblog this post with a trailer, if i am very lucky :') you're right though that that's what the movie would be about! and if i ever feel like a film absolutely wont happen then i'd find a way to make it work as a comic instead.

as for your last two comments... ginger has a lot of really good outfits, and i've drawn clara in a couple of them, but i suggest you look at my newest post :)c thank you for the inspiration hehehe

[milksockets]

Hello I just found your blog a few days ago and I love to see all you do! From the way you dress to the collages and your scans. I feel like so much stuff nowadays (specifically art related) is missing something. I just love seeing people making stuff without trying to appease an algorithm. I'm trying not to impulsivity buy a scanner rn, maybe in the future but I just wanted to say how much you have inspired me so far. Hope you have a good rest of ur day/night 💜

thank you, but i toil alone in the dark with nothing but my temper tantrum-throwing scanner + my ungrateful cat so that others don't have to subject themselves to the life i've chosen... so go out and truly live!!!!! feel the sun on your face!

[ccchloister]

It's so strange how the problems that come with existing online have forced me to find words to explain concepts that I assumed were mostly universal. I thought knowledge, talent, expertise, hard work and persistence were skills that were valuable and should be encouraged in everyone. A.I. has taught me otherwise.

A.I. might as well stand for Anti-Intellectualism, because that's the spirit behind the excitement. It literally takes the skill and labor out of skilled labor. Learning is being treated like an inconvenience, a problem to be eliminated in the name of efficiency. Entire disciplines are being treated as grand sacrifices in the name of mass production and instant gratification.

Why does art need to be efficient? It's not food. It's not medicine. It's not shelter. How fast are people shoveling content into their gob that between social media, streaming, and physical media, it's still not enough? Technology has already pushed creators to pumping out content at an unhealthy and unnatural rate just to try to appease social media algorithms. Now that same output is being used to train new algorithms to pump it out even faster while cutting creators out entirely. It’s sick and cruel. And instead of this exploitation being treated like an injustice that needs to be corrected, I'm told "It's inevitable. Adapt or die. Don't put your work online if you don't want it taken", delivered either with condescending pity, callous apathy, or malicious glee.

If A.I. fans aren't taking the "hardened pragmatic realist" approach, then they are shallowly aping socialist ideas, blaming capitalism for exploitation, not the tech. A very "guns don't kill people, people kill people" take. Just because exploitation of creatives is not a new concept doesn't mean A.I. isn't responsible for making it INFINITELY WORSE. They’ve also decided that people shouldn't be pursuing art and knowledge for the sake of profit and that the skilled creators trying to protect their labor are greedy, elitist gatekeepers trying to keep art from "the common man" (because creatives aren't the common man, apparently). It's that same resentment and distrust of experts that's typical of anti-intellectualism, except creative fields are in this weird place where they aren't even respected the way STEM is, so there's an extra layer of belittling and disrespect to the othering. Consumers feel entitled to art, but they don't understand how it's made, and they definitely don't respect it as a discipline.

The glut of creative content available for "the common man" to consume has never been greater or more accessible, but it's still not enough. It's not enough to just consume art. They want ownership. They want the sense of accomplishment that comes from making something, without having actually *made* it. And despite their finger-wagging at creatives wanting to protect their careers, they also want to make some money. Etsy is flooded with A.I. prints, kindle is filled with A.I. books, spotify is loaded with A.I. songs. There’s even A.I. kickstarters. Along with replacing writers and animators, CEOs want to replace actors, voice actors, and models with simulacrums they can make do whatever they want, forever, and A.I. fans are hoping they'll be the ones hired to facilitate that process. Even without actively profiting, A.I. still devalues the work of skilled laborers. Why commission a skilled artist when for 15 dollars you can buy a machine that will give you infinite works of the same or better quality, instantly? Do you have faith in consumers to prioritize ethics over convenience? Do you think it's right and fair and good to make compensating skilled creators an act of charity rather than a necessity?

A.I. users overestimate their contribution to the final product, thinking their idea is so unique and their vision so strong, that of course they should claim ownership… conveniently ignoring all the infinite little decisions A.I. made for them based off the knowledge and fine motor skills of millions of artists. It's like they think fully realized Good Ideas are a natural resource waiting to be excavated, and traditional creators had the unfair advantage of pickaxes, physical strength and a knowledge of geology to find the rich veins. Now A.I. is providing scanners and and powerful machinery so "the common man" doesn't need strength or knowledge to quickly mine those same veins first.

But that's not what art is, and that's not how creation works. Art is communication. Imagination is fostered through life experience, observation and processing information with your human brain. It's something every living person could do, because every person is unique with unique life experiences. Creation is practice, study, experimentation, problem solving, and adapting to limitations. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing these things. Natural ability has been grossly overvalued: most people with "talent" were not making hyper-realistic paintings at 13 like Picasso. What happens is a child shows a slight aptitude, the adults in their life notice and give them positive reinforcement, and then they are motivated and encouraged to pursue that interest. So instead of treating the naturally talented as having an unfair advantage, why not blame the adults in your life for not encouraging your interests at a young age. Or if you want to be brutally honest, blame yourself for not pursuing your interests despite a lack of external validation. You have agency.

I try to imagine, what is an A.I. fan's idea of a perfect future? One where no one has any advantages that another person doesn't, where "everyone's special so no ones special"? Where all labor is automated and no one has to do anything they don't want to and everyone spends their infinite free time bettering themselves for it's own sake rather than for money? Every time they mention the evils of capitalism and how we need universal basic income and other ideas of a post-work society it makes me want to pull my hair out. We don't *have* those things. We aren't even close to those things. So it is functionally useless to factor that into your argument. Who is Tech to use A.I.'s elimination of thousands of jobs in non-Tech industries as a bargaining chip to try and incentivize the government to create safety nets for those displaced? Since when has your government prioritized it's citizens over corporations? Have proponents always been this naive, or only when trying to assuage concerns over the consequences of their new toy?

Even if we did achieve that techie utopia, what makes them think most people will use their free time productively, exercising their brain for it's own sake? Because speaking for myself, I can have every good intention of using my time to create and learn, but those things frequently lose out to short term, dopamine-driven feedback loops like social media and video games. Without any external incentives, I guarantee far less people will pursue learning for its own sake if the knowledge-based roles that keep society functioning are filled by machines. Think of how we've had to reintroduce exercise into are lives just for exercise's sake. Hows that going? Again, speaking for myself as an overweight person: Not Great. I might intellectually know physical fitness is important, but the difficulty and unenjoyable nature of exercise and the benefits not being immediate and obvious means it frequently loses out to activities I do enjoy. I know not everyone is like me, but many, many people are. Now replace physical fitness with cognitive abilities. Abilities that require work, who's benefits are totally abstract, and would be wholly unnecessary for living in an A.I dependent society. If that doesn't give you chills up your spine, then you must stand to benefit from a culture of stupidity that's hopelessly dependent on tech. And I hate you.

No ones going to read all this.

[atmospheradraws]

Something I really lament is that every single place has become a market. Something else I lament is that I have and sometimes still do contribute to that when I'm not thinking about it. I miss when communities were community spaces, without thoughts of sales, and before communities of people with shared interests were transformed into creator/consumer relationships by the promise of a dollar or whatever. These days, everyone presumes that its the latter, creators interact like businesses. People even start turning their pre-established friendships into creator/consumer relationships. People are attracted to the idea of making money, of course, and artists deserve to have their hard work pay off, but don't we all also deserve a space where we're not being continually sold to, or being pushed false enthusiasm? People have become walking advertisements. You see people hopping on a fandom trend like 'haha i love this character' and you know they don't know the first fucking thing about them and there's nothing else on their blog about it because it's entirely performative. It's not a real human connection moment, it's an ad. And I get why, and I get how algorithms have pressured us to do that because connection also became contingent on appeasing an algorithm made for sales, but where the fk do we go to just have friends and a community and real fandom again? I don't want to 'create content' I want to draw stupid fkin pictures and write crap with other people doing the same shit

[frostytherobot]

Maybe plenty of white leftists might have expressed annoyance at identity politics, but wanting representation in media is not a political act or should be described as the problem. By anyone. Even people who say they dont like homophobia. Or championed women 10 years ago or whatever those tags said. (im sorry i cant read them while im writing this :)

Let me also say I fully agreed with their evidence with their Scientist man schtick, that Ghostbusters 2016 was manipulated by the studios to stoke controversy because the movie was unfunny. Because they were right, it was very unfunny. I saw it. So i believe its very true that creating an artificial controversy can get people to see a movie/show. Mike knows all about that fact, he reported about it with the Ghostbusters controversy, but yet still he flames on this acolyte controversy with this both-sidesism stuff. Saying that somehow identity-politics is equal part the problem. Between people who want diversity in their media and those who do not want it. i dont see how anyone doesn't see the inherent bigotry in that. Unless you see white straightness as the default. Especially when star wars has how many dozens and dozens of shows/movies? and only relatively recently has diversity crept into it. If you don't like the acolyte show, thats ok, dont watch it, watch something else. What's the problem?

Maybe you are right that they just are not using their words correctly. I might even buy that cause i love their content, and do not want to think of them like this, but that video felt tortured in trying to appease right wing bigotry by saying not wanting diversity is on equal footing as wanting it. does anyone actually believe that? Because it sounded like he was saying that by calling identity-politics the problem

trust me i'm also fucking sucking ducking tired (lol that is a great line) with trying to calmly explain that wanting diversity in media is only political if you see "white straightness" as the default.

thank you for listening.

peace and love.

Maybe it’s just not coming across to me in the way they worded things that they inherently think of whiteness/straightness/cisgenderness as the default. But then again, they’re white guys.

I do think that while Mike seems to act like he doesn’t care about what people think of him, he feels the need to tiptoe around his language or hide it behind (not great) jokes, because it is his channel and the way he and his friends can afford to live, all things considered. It’s a problem with trying not to alienate the kind of audience he’s accumulated over the years, and the comments section on that video does indicate the kind of vapid, idiotic audience they have. That’s another conversation totally, and one that needs to be had, but not really what I’m talking about right now.

I think I do understand what you’re saying though, showing both progressive and reactionary views on media being part of the problem is kinda shitty, BUT I don’t totally think they were trying to say people seeking representation are the problem. Moreso championing the products of a corporation that don’t write well-rounded and three dimensional characters, especially doubling down to fight with reactionaries is. When we have algorithms always feeding us things that are tailor-made to make us angry, it’s a problem that we’re feeding that machine. Again, I just think they’re really bad at what they’re trying to say, especially because Mike has a tendency to poke the bear with just about everything. Another problem considering that doesn’t come off well in serious conversation, but that’s just how he is.

I will say I don’t know their full views on everything, but because of the opinions they’ve shared in the past and the discussion they had with diverse representation in other shows and how much they like them, I don’t think they’re bigoted. Maybe just stupid. But perhaps that’s just me wanting to think the best of them, because I do understand where they’re coming from even if they’re not articulating it properly, and I do understand being angry with them because of that.

I really don’t want to seem like I’m arguing blindly for two people I don’t know, but I don’t want to outright claim they’re the same kind of people who are totally opposed to marginalized people existing in media. Peace and love to you too!