#its the exact same as an nft

[spacedoutsheepy]

Petition to rename Established Titles to the Bored Ape Scots Club

[evilvillain123456789]

My demonic fucking boomer f*ther is always telling me not to make posts like this while waching tiktoks picture in picture on my samsung zflip 5 and slamming celsuis energy supplement and ritalin and sudafed and caffeine pills while doing promotional work in an IRC channel on the family santa fe's onboard computer all while doing 90 on i75 northbound (to go steal from the gainesville athleta [because, yes, i have been banned from every mid priced womens athliesure retailer in the orlando metropolitan area, thanks for asking]). news flash "dad", as if you didn't grow up staring at the gaydge cluster on your old boomer car and fucking shifting gears every five minutes, because it's literally the exact. same. thing. also im mentally ill and need constant stimulation or i WILL crash the family santa fe into other cars or pedestrians. Whose fauult is this exactly??? let's see, whos the sickly, old boomer war criminal with a taste for poisonous offgasses, which mutated and weakened his focking sperms, hmmmmmm??? The pathetic little fuck is barely clinging to life now and i think it would push him over the edge if he learned that i borrowed against his settlement, because god forbid anyone provide for this fucking family, and god forbid a mentally ill queer woman be a fucking antraprenore... its like my rival investment guru always said, no one ever made seven figures rugpulling on doomed NFTs by hanging around in the persian gulf inhaling toxic fumes like some kind of- FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK YOU BITCHES MADE ME MISS MY FUCKING EXIT!!!

[tippenfunkaport]

if ur still doing fic requests, can u do how all the SPOP characters react to Elon Musk and the twitter implosion?

I got this ask few days ago and wrote this but didn't post bc I left some characters out but I’m never going to have a better chance to post it than now so, here ya go!

Catra and Glimmer immediately went on the assault, using their verified status to impersonate the Muskrat… were both promptly suspended. Catra a few hours before Glimmer, which won her the bet between them, and she will never, EVER let Glimmer live it down.

Catra does still maintain Melog's Twitter presence (Entrapta buttered the cat as part of an elaborate experiment and Melog went viral) because its platform on unions and worker's rights was too important to squander.

In the spirit of Adventure!, Sea Hawk took advantage of the unregulated verification system to sow chaos by registering as a number of political figures and brands. At last count, he'd managed to tank the value of Amazon stock with what pundits are nicknamed the "wick in a box" stunt and was the direct cause of Old Spice suing Twitter for “damaging the sanctity of the brand and also several nautically theme shooting sets.”

Mermista claimed that the whole thing was, like, too stupid to join in but that was because she was secretly hoping to use her Twitter account to participate in #pitmad this year and finally get a book deal for Dead in the Water, the first in her series of undersea murder mysteries.

Adora immediately made accounts on Mastodon, Cohost, and every other Twitter alternative she could find and is trying to build up a following. She has tweeted the exact same joke on no less than five platforms as of this moment and is frantically researching tips for increasing engagement because social media is a game and she WILL win.

Bow's Twitter account was also suspended for impersonating Musk. Glimmer again. But he never really used it. He's more into making helpful YouTube tutorials. He has a Tumblr account too, but it's mostly filled with embarrassing old posts from his old Pirates of the Caribbean roleplaying days.

Netossa and Spinnerella finally ceded their long standing competition to see who could get the most Twitter followers and decided to concentrate on their popular YouTube channel where they document their ongoing prank war. They are currently competing to see who can stack the most verified checkmarks on their Tumblr account.

Kyle said it was a shame about Twitter going down but he wasn't too worried, since he still had his parasocial fanbase of 50 million fans who watched his gaming streams. Despite his underwhelming face reveal last month, he is still currently part of 3 of the top 10 ships on AO3.

Lonnie also streams and 99% of the comments on her streams are about how she's so underrated and deserves so much more popularity. She and Rogelio also have a big following on their fitness TikTok where they participate in funny trends and bully Kyle.

Entrapta does not need a social network. She IS the social network. She's so deeply tapped in she knows about every trend or breaking news story five minutes before it happens and has personally overthrown at least two governments without leaving her desk chair. She has an account on every major social network, but her close friends know those are just bots working off highly developed AI. If she does feel like actually socializing online, she makes a burner and hops on Reddit to start trouble in the Linux subreddits by recommending ethically dubious hacks for the lulz.

Hordak used to be a bit of a darkweb edgelord with an extensive collection of NFTs, but he's stopped hanging around with that bad crowd. These days, he's proudly not online at all, but always listens very patiently whenever Entrapta tries to explain the latest memes.

Frosta's deep into the Club Penguin fandom on Tumblr and has written 400k words of Jelsa fanfic she would die if anyone in the princess alliance found out about.

Castaspella only uses Facebook, where she shares nothing but wine-mom Minion memes despite the fact that she is not a mom and has never seen any of the Despicable Me movies. The day Farmville went offline, she wept openly.

Micah also only uses Facebook. His wizard roleplay group uses it for meetings. He signs every single one of his status (“Had a lovely with my daughter today! -Micah”) and no one can convince him to stop.

George and Lance share a Facebook account and also sign every post so when the three dads start talking to each other, it's too #cringe #oldfail for anyone else to look at.

Adora banned Swift Wind from the internet because he's too gullible and has fallen for every online scam there is.

Perfuma left Twitter at her therapist's suggestion because it made her too angry. She was incapable of not trying to “patiently” explain to people why they were wrong, no matter how bad faith the argument. She was once ratioed so hard in the comments of RoudUp’s official twitter account that she started a four day flamewar that only ended when Scorpia had to physically stop her from getting into her car and hunting down the other users. These days she just looks at the pretty pictures on Pinterest and takes a deep, calming breath. Though her eye still twitches at the idea that somehow, somewhere someone is probably being wrong on the internet.

Scorpia herself was at first heartbroken when she heard about Twitter’s potential demise until Perfuma showed her that there are also cute animal accounts to follow on Tumblr and Facebook and then she was all good.

Double Trouble has said they will be going down with the ship, keeping their dozen+ different troll and sockpuppet accounts going until the very end because they enjoy the chaos.

Wrong Hordak does not use Twitter but he would love to show you this most amusing meme he found that you definitely already saw four months ago.

[centrally-unplanned]

A personal fascination I have discussed before is a kind of ‘cultural obsolescence’; when developments in cultural products are not just a matter of fads or taste, but are for various reasons just ‘superior’ products (from an economic perspective, all taste is of course subjective). Music vs poetry is my go to - poetry used to be a popular, hot-right-now product to make, but the rise of recorded music & the pop genre relegated it imo forever to the fringe, as poetic lyrics set to music is just “poetry: but better” for most people. 

Anituber Pause & Select recently had a thread responding to the idea someone put out that Lindsay Ellis ‘started’ the media video essay genre, which even if you take that to mean she popularized the genre is still a laughable claim - fair to say Lindsay Ellis was one of the most successful in an era of video essay YouTube (~2017′s “polish & politics” era) but that is an era nowhere near the start of it. But anyway, in the thread P&S also laments how Lindsay’s era was the tail end of the ‘visual’ YouTube essay:

I do want to be upfront about something: I think a lot of video essays have kinda regressed in terms of their complexity as video essays. A lot of video essays nowadays are just "sit in front of camera and ramble," which admittedly is something I do.

But you look at stuff like Kevin Lee's "Transformers: The Premake" or Kogonada's "What is Neorealism?" and you can see content creators in the early and mid 2010's very deeply grapple with the video essay as a VISUAL format.

I agree with him on this trend - the ~2010′s had this growing focus on making the video essay justify the fact that it was a video essay vs just a book, with using cinematic techniques, intensive visual elements, hell even the cutesy stick-figure graphics of CGP Grey-esque genre to communicate ideas in more interesting ways. But this had faded over time, and while visual openings or a sequence or two for videos are still pretty common the ‘person talking at the camera’ era of YouTube+ is here.

And I think its here to stay, because the 2010′s trend was, from a market perspective, misguided. The Visual Essay was an attempt to *justify* the existence of the essay, but while it was experimenting with intense design Twitch was experimenting with parasocial personality. Its actually hard to tell someone about how streaming came off to people who had never heard of it in like 2008 - unscripted people talking about...playing a video game? It was literally a joke. And honestly 2008 streaming (or maybe Lets Plays, proto-streaming) were themselves underdeveloped - how to adopt that personality, how to make 2 hours of grinding in Persona 4 interesting to audience, was all primitive. But new talent entered the scene, better techniques became standard, and then a tipping point happened and people realized they loved it. They didn’t need any bells and whistles at all, at least not obvious ones, just a person they liked talking about interesting things was more than enough.

And this spilled over to video essays. Of course, people still make high effort visual videos - CGP Grey and his genre still exist, people like Folding Ideas or Defunctland go all out on filming locations or animations, etc. Its not as bad as the poetry vs music transition, it wasn’t a slaughter. But it is a numbers game - Folding Ideas can do on-location shoots of NFT graffiti or Lake Minnewanka and he will get the same exact amount of views as Jenny Nicholson talking in room holding a Twilight Sparkle body pillow. Those videos get the same rewards for a fraction of the costs and time, which means they will be produced at way higher rates. And since people *also* learned in the 2010′s that they can actually enjoy putting on a playlist of animated podcasts of Emirichu’s childhood fictional crushes while doing chores for 3 hours, they will like the people who output content faster even more, they can make them a part of their lives the way streamers are.

As always part of this story is market expansion and segmentation - being on youtube in 2008 listening to video essays meant you were a fucking weirdo, so if those essays didn’t include parody Lucky Star dance sequences you weren’t gonna hang; but in 2022 Minecraft Youtubers are literally the most popular children’s media on the planet, everyone is there. Which means normies are there, which means the market caters to them. I will always hyper-value those high effort visual essays, and continue to hunt for the Pause & Selects, the Hazels, the Soup Emporiums, and those creators will develop brands around that. But I am the niche, I am the guy reading poetry in the 21st century, and people like me only have so much money & eyeballs to throw around. Pivoting to camera-talking will pay off for 99% of creators for the foreseeable future, which means that style of video essay is the future. Its the superior product.

(Edit to clarify, 0% of this is judgmental about either type of video or the trend itself. Or, I guess, poetry or music)

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2022: #25 - #21

25. ARMENIA

Rosa Linn - “Snap”

20th place

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Overall placement: 50/79

[Above The Black Mamba, below James Newman]

Ugh, Fine. 

Time to finish this ranking turbo style! So yeah, I’m not impressed with The Biggest Eurovision Hit, which I suppose is a controversial opinion? Then again, if Rosa was so good, then why did she only make it 20th place, hmmm? 🤔🤔

When Rosa’s song leaked it sounded exactly like the type of song you’d expect  DMGP to commit murder for: a frivolous, cheery pop welterweight (which somehow has the same cadence as I’m Alive by Elhaida Dani) thats easy to listen to and doesn’t get in the way of stanning better things. 

At Eurovision, this was Rosa’s exact journey. She was a cute presence that was vaguely liked, and her staging supported this. (despite the staging mishaps, still pretty neat!) Don’t know what all the references in the lyrics are about, but we can pretend it added some depth and meaning, Into 20th place she went, which was a fair result for what her lovable random self brought to the table. 

Then, she went viral on TikTok, which honestly is more of an  “eww” than a “good on her” i m o. Okay, look, it defo does not surprise me that out of the entire 2022 catalogue this song became the viral one. TikTok viralness is a horrible metric for musical quality though. “Snap” works as a TikTok song specifcally because it doesn’t syphon attention away from whatever brainfart nonsense TikTokkers force on their feeds for a living. If you want a backing track to your “Make mac ‘n’ cheese by dumping the ingredients on a marble countertop” silliness or your indie song-singing 101 Tutorial, might as well pick something like a Snap as the accompanying backing track.

Also, I always felt the record label behind Rosa Linn was a bit too eager to get A Big Kicker on their conto. Remember when Rosa -likely on urging from her mentor Tamar Karpelian- attempted to start a respectful discussion on Twitter (oh dear) about how wonderful NFTs were (oh dear) because they helped establish a base income for fledgling artists,like herself (oh dearrrr) without having to rely on her songs getting streams? (oh dearrrrrrrrr)Twitter gave their usual gaslighting-disguised-as-concern response which in turn forced Rosa issue a semi-confused, half-arsed apology for attempting to profit from her work. Okay that was kinda funny, but by Monika Liu’s  grown-out bob, Zoomer drama is the nuttiest drama, I swear.

Anyway, the aforementioned NFT shizzle, the association with Tamar’s Slytherin Evil, the TikTok viralness and the radio people’s sudden insistence that “Snap” was A Hidden Underrated Gem despite it being an inconspicuous 20th placer at Eurivision THAT NOBODY CARED ABOUT, and also the fact that Snap has five different versions (HER?!) all kinda hints at a certain ambition that just... taints it a bit for me. It just feels like Snap’s popularity didn’t develop itself naturally and but came about due to largely commercial and monetary reasons, after which the sheeple convinced themselves retroactively that it was secretly great and very underrated, since you know, influencers would never twist the truth to us for their own profit. 

Overall the song’s fine in a vaccuum. Underneath its base sheer lie values that my crusty millennial monroe ass doesn’t share. FARE THEE WELL, MISS LINN, YOU GO BYE NOW!!!

 -----------------------

24. CROATIA

Mia Dimsic - “Guilty pleasure”

26th place

undefined

 Decade placement: 47/79

[above The Roop, below Tusse]

Oh look, another vaguely pleasant, mildly likabable, and ultimately not very exciting middle-of-the-road pop melody. The cynic in you might think I’m ranking Mia ahead of Rosa because Mia didn’t go viral, and like always the cynic in you is correct! Hooray! 😁 Yeah sorry, in the ongoing battle of overrated vs underrated, it’s the correctly rated that always win :-) 

Still, like Rosa, Mia had the potential to be green on my ranking if she had cultivated a status as a fun random. TSwift IS a guilty pleasure of mine (except for her Midnights Era self which is unironically great) and while “Willow” is a part of the least exciting wing in Taylor’s musical library (ie: the part that isn’t crazed out through copium and/or severe neurosis), this bootlegged version was just cute enough to charm me.

Now of course, if your song is all about maintaining a certain level of delicate joie-de-vivre, it’s really important to not overdo the act and let the singer’s personal charisma carry it. Cue to the staging which looked like this:

What.

The.

Everlovin’.

Fuck?

There’s good staging and there is whatever the flyin’ fuck that was. Goodbye cutesie lounge vibe, goodbye charming performer, you’re completely overtaken by this overly choreographed, overtly dramatic and abrasive act that your song didn’t need. ONE dancer, NO acrobatics, how difficult is that to grasp, HRT? I’d be tempted to say the act was a cursed decision, but then realize Croatia’s frantic dance gremlins were probably the tipping point that allowed ~Systur~ into the finals, and any Eurovision final graced by those three earth angels has to count as a blessing. So thank you Mia for blessing us. ^_^ 

------------------------------------

23. GERMANY

Malik Harris - “Rockstars”

25th place

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Decade ranking: 45/79

[Above Tusse, below Undisclosed]

It is very common knowledge that nobody likes Rockstars, and fine, I don’t! As insipid as “Rockstars” was though, I don’t think it was completely without redeeming qualities.Malik had a baseline charm and really went for it, I guess. 

The German Selection, which had adopted the very... um... optimistic name “Germany, 12 points” for the occasion, (optimistic even if we believe the conspiracy theory the “12 points” alluded to the total numerical amount ARD were aiming for in Turin <3) was one of the worst in a horrible NF season. I was fucking relieved it produced a winner I could (sadly no more than) vaguely enjoy. Not everyone has the panache of getting distracted by their own soap bubble bonanza. 

Also, the SPOKEN WORD RAP BREAK was exactly what my brain and soul -both high on copium after the Alina Pash withdrawal- needed at the time. It didn’t blow me away or anything, but it at least gave me something tangible to cling onto besides “well this is nice, i guess”. 

For the rest though, ::tumbleweeds::. I think people might have been a bit too bandwagon-y in their Malik Mockery cus like, yeah he’s clearly getting last, don’t make it worse? But then again... he brought very little to the table. Besides the spoken word it’s like... cursive singing (petition to rename this to “Cursed Singing”) and instruments displayed on moth-eaten rugs to get points, you know? It’s like Germany were deliberately telegraphing us to NOT vote for them, again. But that’s less on Malik and more on ARD’s incompetence, which is a discussion for another time. 

-----------------------------------------------

22. NORTH MACEDONIA

Andrea - “Circles”

27th place

undefined

Decade ranking: 44/79

[Above Malik, below Hurricane]

WE FINALLY MADE IT TO GREEN!!! Sadly we’re still in the No Man’s Land of VagueOpinionstan. 😣 

There is *something* about Andrea and “Circles” that resonates well with me? Is it the perfectly mimed frustration with a poorly communicating love interest? Is it the palpable resignation on her face as she helplessly bleats “u don’t wanna test my limits -_-”.

Maybe! What I do know is that I stan the critical amount of pure Sadsack Energy Andrea exhudes from every pore. 😍😍 I think she’s a contender for the most morose, Eeyore-ish person to ever set a foot on a Eurovision stage? Reminder that this person won a selection  <33333 Andrea posseses a sort of theoretical anti-charisma that should render her unvoteable, and yet in practice just has me cling to every word crossing her lips. ALL SHE WANTS IS A HEALTHY CONVERSATION SO SHE CAN GET IT RIGHT AND FIX THE SITUATION, YOU GHOULS!!!

(and yes, the other Bubble favourite of floordrop sorcery making an appearance <3)

But then on top of that, Andrea also became A Highly Controversial Pick for NoMac!!!! Strangely not because she was an out-and-proud lesbian (although, an out-and-proud lesbian representing a toxic homophobe country from the Balkans <3333333) but because..... she dropped a wee plastic flag during the turquoise carpet. 

The toxic nationalists took it as HER DELIBERATELY TRAMPLING OUR MACEDONIAN PRIDE AFTER YEARS OF GREEK BULLYING. MRT even issued an official statement that they were CONSIDERING A WITHDRAWAL (with zero intention to actually quit of course) to appease the smooth-brained cunts until the quiet and expected NQ arrived. <3333333333

(knowing her misery was finally over, Andrea cracked a smile for the first time in her life <3)

This only enhanced Andrea’s Charlie Brown”-esque journey even more!! Just when Andrea looked like the token hapless last placer nobody loved, the results came in, and showed she *almost* made the final.  😍😍😍😍😍😍. If there’s one thing that horrible second semifinal should have done right and didn’t, is causing a NoMac qualification by means of fixed jury voting algorithms. Simply imagine the meltdowns over Andrea slaying Andromache AND Nadir. 😍 If only the EBU had the balls to NQ Azer on the spot, huh? Oh well, there’s always 2023 for that. 😈

----------------------------------

21. UKRAINE

Kalush Orchestra - “Stefania”

1st place

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Decade ranking: 41/79

[Above Fyr og Flamme, below Eden Alene]

ugh i forgot he yelled Mariupol and Azofstal at the end of that and wasn’t DQ’d on the spot! Instantly regretting I didn’t rank Ukraine even LOWER. 😫😫😫 (no, don’t think about how much better Stefania would be without him, don’t do it Bobo, consider your mental health -- inner monologue while writing the rest of this post.)

So yeah, after all this inconspicuous also-ran filler (i’m definitely including Snap in that group), I’m eliminating the winner, the biggest televote winner Eurovision have ever had. “Have you no respect, Boris?”, you might ask and well... would I be me, if I had any, lol? I came into the 2022 season with hot takes and mental fortitude and thanks to Shitvidi I’m all out of fortitude, so~

Cynicism and self-awareness aside, let’s get the big elephant out of the room: The war had virtually no impact on my ranking here. I despise politics at Eurovision, (mostly because politics always affect it, but Eurovision NEVER affects the politics back), so there are two options here: Either downvote Ukraine for bringing politics into the contest, or make an exception and turn a blind eye. I chose option two. Nobody can begrudge Ukraine for attempting to pretend that the worst armed conflict to have hit them since WW2 hadn’t broken them, so I won’t. No points added or deducted.  . 

I do have good reasons to not rank Stefania higher though. I think you already know where this is headed - Sorry (for YOU) if you’re a fan of his, but Oleh suuuuuucks. It started at Vidbir when he led a small mob against that poor envelope lady and it was all sorts of messed up? Entitlement and bullying tinged with toxic nationalism, there ain’t no better first impression to make, am i right?

And very unfortunately my distaste towards Oleh also extends to his on-stage presence which I find really fucking obnoxious. The concept of a “Charismatic Black Hole” was one I didn’t fully understand until I first saw Oleh Psiuk set a foot on stage. Does anyone TRULY like  his presence here? All his verses do is distract from the chorus and instrumental, which is awful because those bits fucking slap! Airlift him and his ugly-ass hat the fuck outta here. 

Okay, so the winning song is actually... pretty good. It is NOT great though. Stefania is a weaker, safer and more cis-het version of “Shum”, which is suboptimal. Counterpoint is that “Shum” was Peak Ukraine (Which is also Peak Eurovision), and remains one of the best entries ever, so a lesser replication of that is still enjoyable overall. It made Ihor Didenchuk (who is also in Go_A) a Eurovision laureate! It kinda sucks the fandom didn’t come through at a time when Ukraine had, you know, an actually charismatic lead, but I suppose the power of love Damiano-induced boners does conquer all.

On the flip side, Ihor’s and Tymofii’s contributions are so good that they almost fully balance Oleh’s deteriorative and hammy rapping. Tymofii carries Stefania with his spot-on chanting and preposterous flute playback shenanigans. 

Ihor meanwhile just has a good time on the stage, disguised as one of the two Cousin It-like entities <3 Add in some tasteful staging and hell, even the fact that this song is in essence an ode to someone’s (You Know Who’s) actual mom, (and not  the forced, cringe, jingoistic metaphor it later became) and you have an entry that definitely makes sense as a jury fourth placer and top fiver overall.

Now obviously, I would have preferred for Ukraine to not win because they were not the best option (not by a mile!), and ofc also because I hate their lead, but I’m not fully broken up that they beat my faves. Sometimes there are powers at work beyond our control and that’s fine. Not everything in life must be catered to our tastes. Ukraine are the best Eurovision country, and it doesn’t matter how or when they catch up to (and pass) Ireland and Sweden, as long as it happens during my lifespan. 🤷‍♀️

Still think Pinkbucket’s a thuggish little punk though. Prayer circle that the next time Ukraine win, it’s with someone actually worth stanning. 🙂

CONGRATULATIONS TOP 20!!!

ALBANIA - AUSTRIA - CZECH REP - ESTONIA - FRANCE -

GEORGIA - ICELAND - IRELAND - LITHUANIA - MALTA -

MOLDOVA - THE NETHERLANDS - PORTUGAL - ROMANIA - SAN MARINO -

SERBIA - SLOVENIA - SPAIN  - SWEDEN - UK

THE RANKING 

21. UKRAINE - Kalush Orchestra - “Stefania”

22. NORTH MACEDONIA - Andrea - “Circles”

23. GERMANY - Malik Harris - “Rockstars”

24. CROATIA - Mia Dimšić - “Guilty pleasure”

25. ARMENIA - Rosa Linn - “Snap”

26. CYPRUS - Andromache - “Ela”

27. LATVIA - Citi Zeni - “Eat your salad”

28. DENMARK - ReDDI - “The show”

29. BULGARIA - Intelligent Music Project - “Intention”

30. GREECE - Amanda Tenjford - “Die together”

31. POLAND - Ochman - “River”

32. MONTENEGRO - Vladana - “Breathe”

33. FINLAND - The Rasmus - "Jezebel"

34. BELGIUM - Jérémie Makiese - “Miss you”

35. NORWAY - Subwoolfer - “Give that wolf a banana”

36. AUSTRALIA - Sheldon Riley - “Not the same”

37. SWITZERLAND - Marius Bear - “Boys do cry”

38. AZERBAIJAN - Nadir Rustamli - “Fade to black”

39. ITALY - Mahmood & Blanco - “Brividi”

40. ISRAEL - Michael Ben David - “I.M”

[brettesims]

Breaking Generational Trauma: How to Become an Artist with a Family Full of Doubters

Hey my little Community!

This has honestly been a topic that has been on my mind for years. I feel like I haven't addressed it, not for personal embarrassment, but due to how embarrassed I was by how others treated me. I am so sick of playing this "prefect family" role society makes us play. Most of us do not have that and I refuse to be ashamed of authenticity. So, lets talk:

In the self love community it is said that we teach others HOW to treat us. So for many years I was ashamed to speak on the emotional abuse I endured within my immediate family and friendship groups. I think we also have to remember how deeply conditioned individuals are, especially black people in America, due to the mental conditioning directly linked to slavery. If you aren't yet awakened in self love then it's easy to blindly and unconsciously play out these patterns; which is the only way I can explain my family blocking my success. My last art hiatus was caused by my family. I don't want to have another so I must speak my mind.

I am an astrology lover and in astrology I am a Mars in Cancer zodiac placement (if you know you know) but your Mars placement is your action. Your method of operation. Being that my placement is in Cancer; the divine mother, I am supposed to flow in soft feminine awareness utilizing my high priestesses spiritual intuition. Instead I was born into a family of wolves. Wolves that often prey on my own happiness and joy, as that is what my art is an embodiment of and represents.

Now, I am sure you are thinking - well it's not uncommon for artists to complain about family support. It's not uncommon for black women to have endured family trauma. Yet, its one thing to have an unsupported family, but it's quite another to have a family that preys on your success and inner love flow.

I come from an emotionally unsupportive family with means. They have every means available; every contact, resource & connection I require to succeed. They supported my brother through law school -jobless. They would even offered him in-family jobs. But when I do art as my job they act as if that isn't real. They showed me none of the same support. They have only been kind to me when I have suffered the abuse of 9-5 jobs they forced me to enslave myself in.

This is not a knock to any 9-5 grind, but it is to say that it ain't for me. It's not my job. And it's toxic for me to pretend as if that is my path. When it came to me evolving as an artist and Nonprofit founder my family has every contact and resource available to support me to if they actually wanted - but most of the time, they choose not to. Every time I lift a project up out of despair or pick myself up from the pain of their incessant emotional abuse, they aim to drag me down further. They cannot stand my joy.

Whether it's campaigning for my Nonprofit, working on my art, launching a podcast, launching a Self Love Shop, Launching NFTs, or a Youtube Channel they pretend to completely ignore everything I work on. My mother "ignored" my Nonprofit then recently created her own, saying I couldn't get involved. She then hired another black woman my exact age and gets a high growing her own Nonprofit as she watches mine struggle and says nothing.

The excuse is that they have "given me everything". Everything I am is because of them they like to remind me. Everything material. But what does that matter if the inside is hollow? What do all the riches in the world mean if the support is fake and the love is conditional? My elitist family attaches value to how much money each person has. They belittle people who have none. They also belittle mental health care and spirituality.

They have disdain for every aspect of what I am. I have always been bullied by my family. They when I do these things in joy and they see it on social media, they stalk my pages and begin to emotionally tear me down. Even when I block them, which I do - it continues because they will gossip to my friends and everyone they know about me. They talk behind my back and tell stories about who and what I am. They have brutally character assassinated me for years.

People love to talk about me but tend to be terrified to actually talk TO me. Probably because they know I see them. I can tell what inauthenticity is because I came from a household full of it. I know when people are talking shit because my family has talked shit about me my entire life. I can tell when people aren’t walking in their truth because I have come from a family that never has.

A few years before the pandemic, when my loving Gemini grandpa died, who was my ONLY sense of unconditional love and support - my family turned on me. My Grandpa, Abba, protected me. He supported me. He taught me art. He clearly saw the ways in which my family treated me; hated my joy and would break me down when they saw me in joy. So growing up, he gave me everything and anything I wanted. I think in some ways he taught me self love. Only because of him do I know I CAN DO, BE and HAVE ALL things. He was a pure soul. I know he is now my guardian angel.

Before a lot of therapy, I had so many gaps in my memory, because I blocked out how bad the emotional abuse actually was growing up. I have always had to hide my joy from my family or they well find it and take it away somehow.

It's like they seek, search and look where I find the most joy, go to that source and taint it. For example, my brother did this with my group of friends. He started hanging out with the 2nd family I had created for myself - FAR away from my real family. He tarnished my name, character and reputation and with it the credibility of my art businesses.

My family loves to spread ill rumors that I have mental health issues when I run a global Nonprofit that exists to help heal the worlds mental health while giving girls of color protection within the art world I never had. Them not supporting me isn’t even the worse part. I think what’s FAR worse is that they lie about supporting me to my face and slander my name behind my back.

As a mental health advocate do you know what that does to my credibility? They socially outcasted me to hide their truth and simultaneously take away my power. I am obsessed with mental health care because I have always had to protect myself from a family that does not take mental health seriously.

I had to take responsibility for my own mental health because they never would. I can't count how many self help books I have read since the age of 15. At 13 I had to BEG for therapy after my parents divorce. I had to heal my own depression through art, self love, books, teachers, courses, meditation, spirituality, and more! I constantly work on myself. I work on myself every single day and am obsessed with inner work and inner growth. I like to show up as the highest version of myself every single day!

This blog is a 14 year old testament to that. So the fact that my family will not stop shading me and breaking me down even now at I'm at the highest point of a career I have had to climb myself up to - is truly deplorable.

I have been harassed by my family for months, and more brutally when announcing my solo art show.

Since no one in my life has ever stood up for me before - I am forced to stand up for myself. How can any artist create without authentic support? It's impossible. I love family. I have a very close connection to my cousins who have nothing to do with this. I even love my family as much as they spew distain back at me.

But I am DONE with this chapter of abuse. Because my family emotionally abused me for so many years and still does... my jobs, circumstances, relationships have all reflected that same abuse. They will never acknowledge it and continue to put up this cookie cutter external view of a "perfect family" never owning up to the fact that this family targets, harasses and emotionally tortures one individual artist. So while I don't even want to write this - I have to.

I should be celebrating my biggest accomplishment of planning for the BIGGEST (and 3rd) solo art show of my career. But I have been protecting myself and battling my family for months now. When announcing the show via social media my mother said "allegedly you have an art show" continuing the on-going false narrative that I am a liar, and my father tried to put in my head and my little sisters head that my paintings don't sell. That is not even true. I have sold many many paintings; by the grace of God. My fathers white girlfriend also lied on my name with my brother. They love talking about me together. And she wouldn’t let me see my own sister for over 2 years. White lies. So yea I think my mental health would have to be intact to deal with such disorder.

And on top of all that… for over 2 years my art collection has been locked in storage due to family. My mother arranged that during COVID behind my back. My Art stuff was stuck in LA and I was in the Bay and no one would help me for 2 years. I recently recovered it.

But you know what the good part of all this is? That my eyes are finally open and that I am no longer afraid to speak out against this abuse, because I know other black women and other artists go through the same and in voicing something - you learn we are never really alone. And happily the humor in all of this is… lol that they all thought I didn’t know; friends and family alike. Since the beginning I’ve been observing them ALL in silence. I’ve been watching how they move and switch up. When they tune out you home in.

So anyway, that was a long story and you can tune into my Podcast to hear all about this in more detail, but sometimes I need to write things off my chest and this was just that.

If you dig my art, all I would really ask is that you support it, support my Patreon, my art shop, Self Love Shop, Podcast, Vlog, Nonprofit and more! I have put so many digital resources our to help the collective heal and to safeguard you all against feelings of betrayal, depression, alonesness and more.

In all of this it has really made me walk my talk on another level. It has taken my artwork and self love to another level. Due to my family coming for me during an actual world pandemic it made me truly realize how much art DOES save lives and self love heals! Self love also saves lives and art heals!

Thank you for allowing me to share tumblr community and thank you for all the love & support you have been showing me! I truly appreciate it!

Click to listen to the Pod about this!

Love,

B

#PROTECTBLACKWOMEN

STOP ARTIST ABUSE - ACT NOW!

[kawaoneechan]

I just realized something about NFTs that, in hindsight, seems rather obvious, but my brain is weird sometimes and I'm tired: What makes one ugly monkey JPG inherently more valuable than other ugly monkey JPG?

The answer? Some accessories that may appear on a given ugly monkey JPG are rarer than others. Whoever generated that collection sat there and decided that the pope hat will rarely appear compared to most other hats. Besides this wholly artificial rarity, there's literally nothing separating one ugly monkey from another.

You could trade an ugly monkey in a fez and windbreaker on a red background for an ugly monkey in a fez and windbreaker on a red background, and the only difference is one has his eyes open wider. Or instead of the eyes it's the background, one of them is orange.

That means NFTs are actually fungible as fuck. You can, in fact, trade one ugly monkey for another one that's exactly as horrid-looking, with the exact same rarities of its accessories and facial expression.

fungible (comparative more fungible, superlative most fungible)

(finance and commerce) Able to be substituted for something of equal value or utility. Synonyms: interchangeable, exchangeable, replaceable.

You could mint your own ugly monkeys, identical to the "official" ones, and the only real difference is that yours aren't official...

But they're still equally dogshit.

With, I dunno, Pokémon trading cards and such, at least the object being traded is the art piece itself. Holo-foil Charizard might be super rare and therefore expensive, but at least you actually pay for the actual item. And if you have a super common card that you got from your first girl/boyfriend so long ago that the edges are worn? The official going price might be low, if not zero on account of the damage, but it's worth so much more to you.

[sickeningradiances]

being an artist sure is something. for longest time you see so many people jumping into nfts and it sucks and everytime you open social media app (i only use instagram other than this) theres new accounts youre unfollowing because its all nfts now...

then it gets quieter, you dont fear these dumb motherfuckers MIGHT steal your art for their forest burning calculating machine.

and then the exact same thing is happening with AI and now you KNOW everything theyre posting is stolen .

and every time i look another reasonably respectful person I liked seeing on my IG dash posts their incredible AI art.

[lilithsaintcrow]

"…the exact same corporate entity that was selling NFTs and hyping an AI-powered metaverse platform is now, mere months after disappearing on its users, selling an AI-powered gadget after raising $30 million in venture capital."

[omegasmileyface]

i completely understand (and encourage) hesitancy and distrust of image generation ML (AI) and seeking more regulation and talking abt its use to further deny artists the ability to get by on their work, and i dont think you should like it, but... im very worried when ppl say they consider it "stealing". it detects patterns in data (the data being the pixels in the pictures and the words in their metadata such as the titles), and determines "this pattern is more likely to happen under these conditions, and this other one if more likely to happen under these other conditions..." etcetera, lots and lots and lots of times. and then when it generates an image, it follows the likelihoods it counted out earlier. how does that constitute stealing? if "using a certain color/shape/composition/whatever element with the same likelihood that several artists do" is stealing (or, worse, plagiarism, which has a VERY specific definition that isn't this), then.. what isn't? how do you feel about artists who learn by copying eye shapes? artists who follow coloring tutorials by others? the people trying to reconstruct Johannes Vermeer's artistic process even though he kept it secret out of fear of stolen valor? artists drawing based off things theyve seen before but never asked permission to use in the future? artists who post studies of photos someone else took?

remember, it doesnt work anything like a "collage", and if an image generator IS recreating exact pieces of the images in its dataset, that means its not working as intended and has overtrained on a small dataset, which is considered a bad thing. the only thing an image generator (is supposed to) use from its training images is an analysis of how often certain patterns appeared.

i don't think there aren't issues of respect/credit in using something as part of training data, but i dont think using a generator as described above constitutes "stealing" the art used in the dataset. if it does, then i think the other things i've listed in the first paragraph must also count as stealing, right? and that feels like a very hostile and capitalist mindset to have. i think there are problems you can have with image generation that don't require saying you can steal a probability.

please don't encourage stricter copyright, it has historically only been in the benefit of corporations to take rights away from independent artists, which is exactly what we DISLIKE about the ai situation. there is a reason we like open source software and transformative rights and games piracy and copyleft ideals. instead, please encourage protections for artists, like regulations ensuring artists get livable wages regardless of if anyone wants their art. and regulations requiring disclosure that something is machine generated. and regulations restricting how much energy can be used by non-essential processes/industries. not stronger laws about idea-property, ok?

in other words, attempting to turn matters of respect (such as how you're an asshole if you post someone's art without asking but if you copy-paste someone's nft you're based. it's the same action, and it shows disrespect both ways, but the latter is someone it's fine to not respect) into law is very difficult, and if it is codified, it is pretty much always strengthened and used by large companies exploiting people for profit, because they have lawyers and publicity teams, and never used for the benefit of individuals, who get ignored or paid off.

[mintcad]

NFT Marketplaces To Watch Out For In 2024

What are NFTs?

Suppose you borrow $100 from your friend, you need to pay him back with the exact same value, but not necessarily the exact same bill. You can return two $50 bills or ten $10 bills, it’s fungible. Although when you borrow a friend’s car, you cannot return a different car, thus a car is considered non fungible, collectible and is unique. Non-fungibility is a physical asset’s unique property. NFTs are unique, they cannot be exchanged or traded equivalently unlike money.

NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are cryptographic assets minted (created) through blockchain technology, and have unique identification codes and meta-data, which makes each of them distinguishable. They can be transferred to other wallets, traded on the blockchain or leased to someone through a special smart contract with a time horizon.

NFTs are minted as smart contracts that assign ownership and manage their transferability. When someone creates or mints an NFT, they execute code stored in smart contracts that conform to different standards, such as ERC-721. This information is added to the blockchain where the NFT is being managed. The minting process, from a high level, has the following steps that it goes through: 

Creating a new block 

Validating information 

Recording information into the blockchain

Use Cases of NFTs

Authenticity and Ownership - As the blockchain can permanently store information about the product. NFT smart contracts can be used to check for the rarity, owner, and authenticity of the products. This can be applied to real estate, music items, videos, and more.

Digital Content - The most common use of NFTs today is digital content. Content creators see their profits enhanced by NFTs, as they power a creator economy where creatives maintain ownership over their content on platforms where they are publicised. An NFT could represent a key that unlocks access to a certain service or piece of content. This would allow some content creators to monetize their work for the first time ever. At Mintcad users can create an NFT for CAD files for the first time.

Gaming Items - NFTs are changing the gaming industry from its roots. From game developers to players, NFTs have caught interest for their benefits to both. For example, an NFT could represent a character in a game. The NFT would be stored on a blockchain and would be transferable to another player if the original owner decides to sell it. These can be applicable to other game items as well. This is where the major development towards the Metaverse is happening. 

Domain Names - NFTs provide your domain with an easier-to-remember name. It works like a website domain name, making its IP address more memorable and valuable, usually based on length and relevance.

Loyalty points or rewards - A company could issue NFTs that can be redeemed for discounts or special offers. It would give customers an incentive to keep using the company’s products or services.

What’s the size of the NFT Market? 

Global NFT transaction volumes are on pace to surpass last year's peak soon, but the monthly declines beginning 2022 are troubling for the once-scintillating market. Total sales hit $37 billion as of the first week of May, according to a report from blockchain analysis firm, Chainalysis, compared with $40 billion for all of 2021.

There are around 15,000 to 50,000 NFTs being bought and sold every week. The right to the first-ever tweet was converted into an NFT, and sold for a record $2.9 million, by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

This tweet just said, "just setting up my twttr."

How to buy an NFT?

We can buy or sell NFTs through an NFT Marketplace. These are eCommerce platforms like Amazon or eBay where different products are listed by sellers, and buyers.

NFTs for digital assets can be stored, traded, and displayed to a large audience, an evolved business model is developing through these Marketplaces.        

Three Simple steps to buy an NFT:-

Purchase Ethereum. (Since most NFTs are Ethereum-based tokens, most marketplaces for these collectibles accept primarily ETH tokens as payment.)

Connect your Wallet to an NFT Marketplace. There are many marketplaces to trade on.

Create, Sell, Buy or Lease the NFT.

Types of NFT Marketplaces.

Digital Collectibles: Examples of NFTs in such a marketplace are Computer aided design files for 3D Printing, game/trade cards, trophies of wins, and unique videos of rare gaming moments, which are digitized as a non-fungible token or NFT.

Example:- Opensea

Gaming: Blockchain Games use NFT marketplaces in two ways. Some blockchain games collaborate with gaming marketplaces to allow tokenization of their in-game assets into NFTs. Then, there are pure NFT marketplace-centred games that are exclusively built on the concept of tradable collectibles. Such games are modelled after traditional games like football, racing, strategy, arcade, and even virtual worlds.

Example:- Axie Infinity

Real Estate: It is an online platform for fractional real estate where investors and agents can collaborate with each other to buy and sell their assets. It gives access to high-end, unique, and in-demand properties which can be converted into non-fungible tokens and crowd funding.

Music: The music industry may have finally started taking NFTs more seriously. A number of artists have launched music projects that have garnered fan attention and generated millions of dollars in revenue. Entire music albums or specific songs can be converted into NFTs and sold or leased (per listen) directly via special NFT marketplaces.

Example:- Airnfts

Investment Projects: In this model, the NFT marketplace can function like a stock market, and allow the users to buy/sell specific NFTs via trading. In some of the advanced and regulated NFT marketplace, such transactions can also have legal validity, similar to real estate.

Metaverse: A metaverse NFT marketplace is a technical concept of creating and integrating NFT assets into the virtual spaces of the metaverse. The metaverse is considered a parallel universe where avatars (representing the unique identity of users) can perform activities similar to the real world with the use of VR headsets.

Example:- Cryptovoxels, Decentraland

Top 10 NFT Marketplaces in 2023

1.  OpenSea

2.  Mintcad

3.  SuperRare

4.  Jump.trade

5.  Rarible

6.  Axie Infinity

7.  Nifty Gateway

8.  Solanart

9.  Binance

10.  NBA Top Shot

This content is originally published on Mintcad's Website: NFT Marketplaces To Watch Out For In 2024

[nightcoremoon]

nickelback made four albums in a row where every single song was built on the exact same formula to the point where if you play someday and how you remind me side to side, they fit together perfectly. it was formulaic, commercialized, generic, advertiser-friendly, marketable to everyone with no heart soul or unique identity of its own because it was just derivative of other music that came before it… and so then everyone and their mom hated on nickelback for its own sake to the point of LITERALLY THROWING ROCKS ON THE STAGE in portugal (proving once again that western europeans are the literal worst humanity has to offer).

now ai (f)art is doing the exact same thing and the same people who shit on nickelback are supporting this trash.

because it wasn’t ever about nickelback. it was about what was socially acceptable. people are just following trends just as they always have and always will. we thought we’d never escape NFTs. we thought we’d never escape cryptocurrency. we thought we’d never escape fad after fad after fad after fad and this is no different. people will get bored and then it will cease making profits and then it will die. it will join the many throngs of other failed fads that we thought would destroy the social economy of artistic expression.

[famousblueraincoatmp3]

sometimes i miss the psychward friendships but now i have a bunch of friends who are finance bros in their 20-30s and its the exact same thing. the entire time theyre talking about the dark web bitcoin market or underground nfts or investing 1 cent into tesla in 2008 and you usually just have to nod your head and say "wow jeff you are very smart" so often

[wafact]

Aavegotchi bonding curve closes on exact day of DAI depeg By Cointelegraph

According to play-to-earn nonfungible token (NFT) protocol Aavegotchi, on March 11, the entity closed the bonding curve defining the exchange rate between its Aavegotchi (GHST) token and the Da (DAI) U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin. The same day, DAI lost its U.S. dollar peg due to the ongoing fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the Circle-issued (USDC) depegging. USDC’s depeg was…

[parolim-prlm]

Aavegotchi bonding curve closes on exact day of DAI depeg

According to play-to-earn nonfungible tokens (NFT) protocol Aavegotchi on Mar. 11, the entity closed the bonding curve defining the exchange rate between its namesake token (GHST) and the DAI U.S. dollar stablecoin (DAI). The same day, the DAI stablecoin depegged as part of the ongoing USD Coin destabilization, which was, in turn, caused by $3.3 billion in stuck stablecoin collateral deposits…

[worldspotlightnews]

Aavegotchi bonding curve closes on exact day of DAI depeg

According to play-to-earn nonfungible tokens (NFT) protocol Aavegotchi on Mar. 11, the entity closed the bonding curve defining the exchange rate between its namesake token (GHST) and the DAI U.S. dollar stablecoin (DAI). The same day, the DAI stablecoin depegged as part of the ongoing USD Coin destabilization, which was, in turn, caused by $3.3 billion in stuck stablecoin collateral deposits…