#its the internet everyone can apparently do whatever they want

[luxuourr]

WHEN YOU know LOA AND FEEL FAT/SKINNY/INSECURE.

currently made this post for me and everyone who has these issues

I've got alot of trauma , growing up as the chubby cute baby became taunts and mockery, i never looked fat and ugly and anything like this , I was always admired everywhere for my body except at my house and over the years it's become my trauma, my mom being a psychologist and still not realizing her solutions from the internet, telling me my leptin hormone is shit,my metabolism is so slow or I have PCOS as an intersex it never made sense, she never did make any sense and I know some people in this community have been struggling and are struggling with weight loss since for years. I have come across this manifesting coach, most of y'all know called electrasoul and for context they struggled with body image issues and weight loss too until it clicked in their mind. Those are some of the most important points I made you'll love. You will fall in love with this guys.

SHE DID NOT CHANGE HER DIET, YOU DONT HAVE TO EITHER.

"WTF that's not true, impossible, nah you need to count your calories and workout to loose weight , ain't no way my lifestyle doesn't have to change and brain needs to be controlled", so it really works like that. First of all this drill of changing diets and workouts that has been draining us people who wanna loose weight has been going on since we have been mature, the biggest enemy of our weight has been our own parents, if you're skinny, you're too skinny. if you're healthy, you're too healthy but you now need to find yourself a balance but it'll only come if you're a LOA person and finally have the will to loose weight, throw logic and society's diets and workouts out rn , if you're too tired for that , you don't need it. The brain is the strongest part of your body because it's capable of doing things you'd never imagine.

KNOWING AND STATE

first you need to know what you want, so you wanna gain or loose weight , or you want a healthy weight? ok did you choose what you want now let's proceed.

all your life they told you to eat less otherwise you'd be overweight and eat more to gain weight but sometimes underweight people genuinely eat enough or don't like eating and don't gain weight and sometimes people who are overweight barely eat at all, it's just their mind " oh I drink water and gain weight " ofc bro you really drilled it in your mind to be this way. The essential step is that don't look for logic. Law of assumption was made to remind you nevillie didn't need knowledge to marry the woman of his dreams and you don't need logic or calories In the world of law of assumption where you made rules. ARE CALORIES EVEN REAL, IS DIETING SOMETHING WHEN YOU ARE GOD?? YOU'RE CREATING THIS ALL THEN WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO OTHER HUMANS AND THEIR BS WHEN ITS YOUR LIFE.

dieting and workouts is for the weak, the true mind power lies in you, it is now your choice to turn your weaknesses into strengths, It is now your choice to eat food knowing you're gonna loose and reach your body goals with it. So apparently the best way and a good example of this , that you will understand what I mean is, you can still eat food staying naturally in the state or affirming.

calories are nothing to me in my life

eating makes me loose / gain weight

no matter what I do, I have my dream body

my metabolism is slow/fast ( if you wanna loose or gain weight )

No matter what I eat, whatever i do, however I eat, binge or die and cry or spiral, I have to gain / loose weight

this is literally my world so I have decided and have my ideal body and weight.

These are the examples of simple affirmations you can use to persist, even while eating.

DONT COUNT YOUR CALORIES

if you truly believe in LOA stop counting calories , calories is a man made thing , bro who tf even found out about something that you can't see, do fruits grow and are labelled low or high cals? did they experiment people for fat or thin, to find out that?? nahh bffr ☹️ giving the control of your life to some dumbass calories scientists made. We don't believe in that. Girl you're just having a maintained body for the rest of your life no matter what ✊🏻

IT IS YOUR CHOICE

whether you can start affirming and assuming and knowing that you're at your ideal weight , food makes you loose or gain weight or tire yourself with diets and workout if you're already tired from every aspect of your life.

for someone struggling with PTSD AND DEPRESSION

This is an honest advice, goodluck loosing/gaining weight/ getting your ideal body.

you don't have to stop all those sugary stuff and things want, just assume you can do this. ✊🏻🌹

[racefortheironthrone]

Please innumerate for us the specialized problems of the library sciences.

Let me start with the caveat that my information is based on my experiences at the National Archives more than a decade ago, and policy has definitely changed on this front as we can see from this graph of recent digitization - apparently NARA wants to get to 85% digitization by 2026. (Even still, I'd note that the records of the WPA are <0.001% digitized.)

However, back when I was doing the research that would eventually become my first book, I remember being at the National Archives II building in College Park, Maryland (Go Terps!) and getting really frustrated that all the records of the WPA were only available in their original physical form and that all the guides and indexes were also in paper only and were all from the 1970s, and I asked the archivist why the hell the National Archives hadn't been digitized already.

This is what they told me: if it's handled correctly and stored in the right environmental circumstances, paper can last a thousand years. Carbon copies can last even longer, if they don't rip. (Seriously, the bastard things are like onion skins, they'll split if you look at them funny.) Microfilm is slightly more technologically advanced than paper, but it only lasts 500 years in the right conditions.

We've only had computers en masse since the 1980s, and already there's a huge amount of records (especially from the early years) that we don't have any more, because the hard drives got re-formatted due to higher costs of storage space back in the day, or because old computers got thrown out when they were replaced by newer models and the hard drives are all rotting in landfills somewhere, or because backwards compatibility broke down and we just can't read those file types on our modern computers, or because the actual data got corrupted on the disc, or because some legacy company is asserting copyright against a video game museum, or because some political hack and/or president of the United States decided to violate the Presidential Records Act.

While we thought that the internet would cause an explosion of written records from ordinary people on the scale of the advent of mass literacy, there are vast swathes of the early internet that simply do not exist any more because the servers got switched off when Geocities et al. folded in the dot-com bubble burst or when everyone migrated to Web 2.0, and the Internet Archive tries its best (bless its heart, affectionately) but it can't be everywhere and save everything.

As a result, the archivist told me, digitization is a fraught question: what file format do we use? How do we know that file format will still be compatible and backwards-compatible in 50 years? 100? Longer? Do we keep everything locally or store it on the cloud, and how do we ensure that the storage mechanisms won't fail if there's a blackout or a virus or whatever? Do we digitize everything now, or do we wait until optical character recognition improves enough to the point where digitized records can be searched for words and phrases? Etc.

Keep in mind, I am a public policy historian who studies the 20th century U.S - I work primarily with the official records and the central archives of the richest government in the world. From a library sciences perspectives, this is kind of an ideal scenario, and it's still kind of fucked up. (Let me tell you, the rage and grief I felt when I learned that most of the General File of the Public Works Administration was thrown away by the National fucking Archives and Records Administration in the mid-1950s because they were running out of shelf space in the D.C location and didn't think these records were important...)

Now imagine what it's like at a local historical society or a small liberal arts college, or the national museum of a developing nation for that matter, who do not have the resources for the kind of grand digitization project that NARA started doing five years ago. Think of the sheer scale of historical records that sleep, unseen and untouched perhaps for decades and perhaps for ever, in little cubbyholes all across the world. Among professionals, historical records are measured in linear and cubic feet - think about that for a second, how many pages of paper there are in a foot when you stack them up, and how many hundreds and thousands and millions of feet there are across the face of the world. Think of all the millions of feet of pieces of paper that have been lost to us because of fire or rot or war or time itself.

This is why Peter Turchin is a quack. Historical records are not a standardized little database for social scientists to plug their fucking spreadsheets into; historians don't play that kind of bullshit t-ball, with all our data neatly packaged and handed to us on a silver platter. Our profession is not a social science, it's a goddamn treasure hunt through boxes that were never catalogued or categorized (or that were re-catalogued so many times no one remembers how they were put together in the first place) to find writing that no one has read since the authors died. All of us know that our work, our understanding, will always be partial and limited, because memory is infinitely fragile and the very idea of historical preservation is a mad existential defiance of entropy itself. These records are real, they are fragile - to hell with the Library of Alexandria, remember the National Museum of Brazil? - and they are all that is left to us of the dead.

[commander-gloryforge]

okay bit of a ramble incoming but. me and writing, we havent had the best relationship lately, mostly because ive been dealing with imposter syndrome a lot, and writer spaces dont seem to be as welcome as they used to be to me. but for the past months ive been trying to get into a more healthy mindset about writing. its just difficult because many of the author communities im apart of dont seem to agree with said mindset.

so. heres a thing that happened. theres this book series, a ya romantasy, that kind of went viral on booktube/booktok for being mostly shitty. i've watched a couple of reviews of it, most of them negative, can generally agree with most criticisms of the book, and it is, in my mind, ticked off as a "bad book". dont be like that author, dont do what she does, dont write like this, everyone will hate your book.

me and my father were sitting in the garden, next to eachother, me writing and him listening to an audiobook. he tells me about how good it is and how much he likes it. theres dragons, its so cool, its such an interesting world, he's at book two now and cant wait for the third one to be released. to my surprise, its the exact book that booktubers everywhere talk shit about. now ive seen people on the internet that liked the book, but theyre just some guys on the web and i dont know them and their opinion doesnt mean much. but my dad? i know him. i know his tastes. and he likes it.

and i think that made me realise something. i still dont like that book, but someone, a person whose taste and opinions i (usually) value, does. he doesnt care about the plot holes that others see, he doesnt know about the discourse surrounding certain tropes, he likes it because its fantasy, and theres dragons, and theres magic, the fact that theres a disabled protagonist is cool to him, and THERES DRAGONS! and so many other people also like it. for whatever reason.

its a "bad book", apparently, thats what most people call it, but to some its a good book. and if someone just constantly keeps finding issues with a book, then it wasnt for them in the first place wasnt it? critiques and negative reviews and rants are still valid and, i'd say, needed. but in the end, they dont matter much. the book isnt offensive or "problematic" or anything but it really is just kinda bad and people still like it and it really is fine.

my writing is gonna be bad to someone. my writing style is convoluted and kind of silly and just. bad. okay. and there are people that still like it. that doesnt mean i dont want to improve and get better as a writer, i do. for the people that like my stuff, for myself, i will get better, but like. its fine. im fine. someone will like what i write. there will be bad parts of my writing that some people will hate, and some will ignore, and thats the fact for every book and every kind of art.

ill be fine. ill just keep writing and things will be fine.

[puppersfluid8xd]

Tw: anger vent?? I mean I’m talking abt watcher so I’m rlly jus yelling abt how mad I am

I AM SO UPSET ABT WATCHER IVE JUS BEEN ABSOLUTELY SEETHING FOR THE PAST DAY.

IF THEY WANTED TO MOVE CERTAIN THINGS TO A SUBSCRIPTION SITE, IF THEY WANTED TO MOVE NEW OR OLD CONTENT TO A SUBSCRIPTION SITE, I GET THAT.

BUT EVERYTHING????

FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN "ITS TOO EXPENSIVE"

DUDE TRY KICK STARTERS

OR FUND RAISERS

TRY BUDGETING

U HAVE A PATREON??? APPARENTLY???

OR TALK TO UR FANS

BUT NO

NO

ITS JUS "GIVE US MORE MONEY PLS"

And I’m not gonna say “I was only there for Shane and Ryan!! That’s it!!” Bc yes I did like how cool everything looked, and I rlly liked seeing Steven in episodes! but I got into watcher bc of their “are u scared??” Show. I came wayyyy after Covid but that’s where I started the series. Two guys on a computer reading a common internet story n giggling. So then when I saw the episodes of r u scared in a real room I thought that was awesome! When I saw too many spirits out in sumones back yard I thought that was awesome! When I saw the basement den set for mystery files, or the set for ghost files, I thought it was awesome! But that doesn’t mean I would have stopped watching them if they took away the cool sets, or the detailed infographics, or anything like that, I would have been fine to see them go back to two guys on a computer screen giggling together.

I completely understand if they want to start big amazing projects! Everyone has sumthn they wanna do! But it doesn’t mean u should leave half of, if not most of, ur audience in the dust and act like it’s their fault. As I already said there was sooo many things they could have done and just didn’t. its rlly sad to see em go rlly

And everyone who’s acting like it’s purely Steven’s fault, that Ryan and Shane have nothing to do w this besides be forced to participate. Ur weird. “Whatever happened to Shane ‘eat the rich’ Madej” yea that sucks, did I think he believed that? Not rlly. Can I blame u? Probably not. But what we see the parts of themselves they wanna show us. That’s it. We don’t know them. They all fumbled here.

[trashcatsnark]

Idk why I feel a particular need to weigh in on the "Does Gale want kids?" thing that occasionally keeps popping up in the tag, but apparently I want to, so I am. And I do wanna preface this by saying both that, I do personally tend to feel a little... squicked out when I see either characters who state they don't want kids or are blatantly pretty terrible candidates for being parents being given the Babies Ever After treatment in fandom. However, that said- strangers on the internet creating content in their free time that makes them happy, do not have to cater to my personal interests. Like, at the end of the day we're all just trying to have a good time, these are pixels, and if giving that character children makes you feel warm and fuzzy, great for you- it just isn't for me, so I'll be avoiding it. Plain and simple.

All that out of the way, while it still isn't my cup of tea, Gale is one of the characters I am not incredibly bothered by seeing it with- because while he does state he doesn't think he's father material, I definitely can see that as not a flat out statement of not wanting kids, but for a lot of childfree folks that statement is kind of a way of saying it without saying it. So, its flexible and open to interpretation.

And also it doesn't bother me as much, because like and this might sound like a dirty fencesitter option- but for me, I really do think for Gale it boils down to largely if his partner wants kids. But, I don't mean that in a "choose your own adventure" sort of way, so much as I genuinely don't think prior to like the player mentioning another person in a relationship and him misinterpreting it- that Gale has ever really given much thought to having kids. Because, think about it, his longest lasting/most emotionally invested relationship was with a goddess. One who, if I'm right on the lore, Mystra has had children (through possessing someone and decieving someone else) but mostly with the purpose of just having more chosen/followers, not an act of like lovingly wanting to raise children. And while maybe Gale thought about it, assuming a goddess would choose to have a half god child with you, would be a lot to assume. And then he was casted aside, deep depression, chronically magically ill, and a potential threat to everyone around him. Kids have been the last thing on his mind. So, I think genuinely once he's settled and with his partner, they're content, life is good- I think he'd be happy with life just being them and Tara and whatever collection of pets the player has dragged in. But I think if his partner said they wanted to go on the journey of raising a child with him, I think he'd be open to it.

Personally, my Tav/player Petra is also very content to not have children. She's good with them, but doesn't really wish to raise them. So, they're both content being childfree.

[eat-the-richard]

Utterly Obsessed With The Schlatt My Way Cover Because AI Is Fucking Losing

I think I've listened to this cover every day since its come out. A little bit strange since I'm not even the biggest fan of Sinatra, or Schlatt anymore for that matter. Nothing personal to the both of them, just not really my thing. But the implication of this cover is genuinely awe-inspiring in a way I still don't really have the words for.

AI disrupted a lot of industries this year. But none I feel took at as personally as the arts. Seemingly every day from all walks of the artistic palette, we say a regurgitation of infinite works from infinite possible sources. Every individual thought could become a strange, off putting yet still generally accurate piece of art. Entire animations were mushed through filter after filter to resemble styles of artists long dead and studios long dissolved. And, of course, internet micro celebrities with nary a song to their name have covered every song in existence.

Truly a tool for our perverted content age, AI has already been used, abused, run through its paces and spat back out. Quality be damned, these pieces of art could now *just* exist without talent or performance. Impressive, in a way, but terrifying in many more.

Not even to mention the numerous individuals dedicating their lives to their craft, becoming experts in their chosen field and deserving to make a well and honest living through their creations, suddenly finding themselves competing with a bastardization of their life's work annihilating them at a pace they can't match. But these AI advancements have potential to *stunt* potential. Why train your voice to simulate a musical instrument when you can upload thousands of voice samples to a tool and use that to sing any song imaginable? Why study a style of a given artist when their work can be morphed into an idea you just thought of two minutes ago?

Dangers such as these scare the shit out of me. Because art is all we have left, in a way. Nobody *should* be able to take this away from you, although god damn they have tried. Training the self to create expression in whatever way you please, even if it isn't financially viable, even if you can't do it as quickly or in the style that everyone wants, even if you kind of hate what comes out on the other side, it's still *you*.

AI can express. But there is no self. Its tools built on the works of countless others and rapidly expanding ways to sort them. Inherently plagiarist, AI works treat the heart crucial to the success of all art as disposable. Impressive AI works cannot be attributed to the idea, or the person responsible for clicking the button. Merely to the tool developed over years of work seemingly incongruent with art, for uses that should have nothing to do with art, plastered over the creation of art anyway by those who do not care.

This is all to say that jschlatt, who has had to sit there and watch his face, his voice, his very likeness flattened, used to create art he had no say in or control over, was able to take that control back. Undoubtedly, Schlatt has had some vocal lessons or *something* to get this sounding so polished, but the actual quality isn't why this is so impressive. It's impressive because *it's him*.

The reaction to this cover has been universally positive. Folks who were shocked Schlatt was able to pull this off. Those wanting more music from him in the future. But the single most apparent sentiment in the reaction was joy, glee even, in that this was *not* AI. This was his voice, flaws be damned, experience be damned, performance style be damned. This is him, and he put his *heart* into it. And you can feel that emotion pulsing through this cover, an attention to detail to respect the original work by trying to match its intricacies. Clearly exhibiting strain to hit the iconic high notes and long vibrato this legendary song is known for. No AI, no bullshit, this is *him.*

And the people love it. There is no replacement for the genuine article. AI is fucking losing.

[saydams]

a rant about neurological testing

so i told my psychiatrist that i was thinking of trying to get tested for autism (i'm sure i am autistic, did many many years of research to be sure, but was never formally diagnosed). and she said "oh i'd better put you on the wait list right now because it's super long, don't worry we'll have plenty of time to talk about it before you get the the front of the line".

fine ok. and i look up her company to see how they are on diagnosing adults and surprise they are very good for that, one of the few who does it a lot. so, great!

imagine my surprise when i am scheduled for an appointment with neurological testing within the month. i dont want to say no and not bea able to test later, so i guess i'm doing this? also weird: it's on zoom. and just one day?? i dont know maybe i'm confused about what this involves

anyway! my appointment was today. and apparently it was some sort of audition to see if i can move on to the next step. i had to explain to the tester (who wasnt even from the same org as my psych, he's from some other place...) why i was there and i wasnt sure what to say so i guessed as best i could. and he kept getting interrupted? like people kept coming in and talking to him? and he didnt mute himself or anything.

so i guess i passed the audition because he said he was going to have his office send me a link to an online evaluation and after he got the results from that he would see about having me come in for testing.

anyway! i got the link and sat down to do the assessment and it turns out it is 30 minutes of video games which i am SO BAD AT--i hit the wrong button a lot and double click when im supposed to single click so i will accidentally pick the same square twice or whatever and it hurts my hands and the games all beep and flash and its awful.

then it is time for questionaires and most of them are about "the child" and it warns me to take into account what is appropriate for the child at the child's age. and i assume they mean me but im not a kid so i guess they mean me WHEN i was a child but at what age? all the ages? so i guessed and i tried to average everything accross my ages and i had no one to ask and no way to write and clarify anything and then they asked all these drug questions but i dont do drugs and some of the questions were about what happened when i abused drugs and there was no option for not applicable so i just hit "no" but even though i think that was what i was supposed to do i still had a panic attack and the whole thing was the worst

and i have no idea if it will give anyone an accurate picture of anything and i am so stressed and upset now.

anyway. i am not going to do anything else today. since th test i have sat with some tea and read a book. i feel a bit better (so now i'm just mad, not panicky anymore). and i am going to make myself go for a walk this evening when it's not sunny. (it's too bright i can't handle it now)

i hope everyone else has a better day! if you also had a rough task today, i offer sympathetic internet hugs or a friendly cup of tea.

[enneamage]

how are people getting upset over tntduo game "implied hooking up" be so serious

The rulesbrain of main and it’s consequences.

I try to have space for people who are offput by sexuality online because lord knows the online space hasn’t historically been great at keeping sexual content away from people who don’t want to see it, so I do think of younger generations going around with at minimum negative early experiences around that. That really doesn’t set people up for unconflicted horomonal success down the road. Having said that, there is a kind of hyper-sensitization that grows in the fan spaces that have gone puritan that genuinely seems to be doing more harm than good.

From what I could tell, the end slate with the nightstand is tame. Simple and to the point: they bang. The fight is if that concept alone is a violation of The Rules. If I were to mind-read Wilbur and Q for a moment, I don’t think that this would be taken as a massive offence in their eyes, I actually think that they would be kind of hype that somebody made a game and have that be the end of it. The issue is that it’s less about them or their will and more The Rules that take on a life of their own to people.

Something that I’ve learned by watching main fight with itself is that all sins are apparently equal when you’re thinking in black and white. If people follow the rules, they get to be One Of The Good stans and outrun shame and blame and stigma and Ccs won’t hate them immediately. If they’ve been bad, they’re gross and everyone hates them and they deserve the contempt of the entire internet. This isn’t really true because people will treat mcyt stans like trash regardless of how well they’ve behaved (this is not fair) but it’s easier to cope when you think you have a degree of control. I think a lot of Main neurosis comes from trying to claw their way up from the bottom of the barrel without fully knowing that that’s what they’re doing, which is why it gets so much worse when they have the chance of being seen by the ccs.

To be honest I think tntduo fans are locked into a shipwar with a certain other Wilbur pair that people can’t admit would be threatened by him being romantic with someone else. As long as one team gets to play it pure and ‘platonic’ they get moral leverage for why they’re superior and are more correct in what they do. We can bring it back around to each subtwt having its own interests, and advancing those interests by using the morality of Boundary Culture as well as social justice language. A lot of people are trying to get what they want by being More Correct, morally and factually and whatever else they can get their hands on.

From a wider lens the opportunity to get rid of anyone, be better than anyone or call out anyone is hard to pass up on main. It’s baked into the system to push people out to try and control noise, chaos and crowd size, there’s no real room for 'redemption' on there. That, plus the massive anxiety around sexuality made this one an easy target.

[ndntighnari]

Its weird being trans on the internet bc people will say shit and speculate abt the genders of strangers. And like. Ok. The whole "egg discourse" is kind of stupid to me bc like. If you are friends w someone, and you get trans vibes from them bc they're doing or saying a lot of the stuff you did before things clicked, yeah, it's more than chill to bring it up to said friend. Bc you know each other and are close to each other.

But like. You don't know blogs you follow, in most cases. You're not friends with every blog you follow, and I can almost guarantee you're not friends with the semi-popular blogger of the month/year/whatever, you probably have never even interacted off anon. They don't know you, you don't know them, not in any meaningful way.

So seeing the egg discourse going around abt if it's good or bad or whatever to speculate on people's gender is like. I moved to a small town from a city when I was 18. Openly trans, initially wanted to be stealth but that didn't work. People publicly speculated on my gender when I wasn't around. How do I know this? My mother overheard a lot of it. She stepped in most of the time to basically tell people to shut the fuck up bc it's none of their business. But the point here is I was a public spectacle, despite rarely leaving the house.

It sucked. Dozens of people around town were constantly arguing abt if I was a boy or a girl, but most generally just didn't care and only gave a shit that I wasn't cis. I overheard some of it. I was directly asked a few times. I didn't know ANY of these people that apparently fucking knew me, and every time any of them tried to gender me one way or the other bc of my clothes or attitude, I was insanely uncomfortable.

And all I can think is just. People who do that online abt strangers, even if their intentions are... Good? Are just as fucking stressful and anxiety inducing as the conservative people in that town who insisted I had to be my agab bc of my clothes or whatever. Insisting someone is one binary gender or another bc of the limited things you see of them is terrifying to the people being speculated about, even if you're trying to be supportive.

Just. Let people come out on their own if they even want to if you're not close with them, alright? The people who encouraged my actual gender publicly when I was younger were just as much of a threat to me as the people who insisted otherwise, because I wasn't being allowed to choose who I was out to. It was all or nothing because if one person knew, everyone would know, because that's how public discussions on real people work a lot of the time.

I don't live there anymore. I'm openly trans, still outside of the binary, and I'm lucky enough that I've largely been forgotten in that town as the first tranny most of them knew. I don't like walking around still, because I remember the looks and whispers.

Don't be someone who pressures people like that. Just respect people's boundaries.

[animutate]

please be autistic about picos school in paragraphs!! i need to learn more but i dont wanna do a bunch of research 😞

OK OK. im going to take this as an opportunity to explain it all like im talking to someone who has no idea what it is. big wall of text ahead.

picos school is a 1999 flash game by tom fulp created for and distributed on his website newgrounds.com. it was created as apart of a series of games on newgrounds parodying childrens pc edutainment games of the time, but that part was kind of dropped for pico which is sad because i really enjoy it. pico is also heavily inspired by the columbine highshool massacre as it was released just 3 months after it occurred and like the media surrounding it as well as hate mail newgrounds was getting blaming it and all violent video games for causing real world violence like columbine. before that picos game was originally going to be about whatever this mockup means. shitting outside a church.

also interesting is an email sent to tom prior to the creation of picos school by someone who apparently knew eric harris.

the plot is about a 13 year old goth canonically transfem evil shapeshifting alien wannabe dictator named cassandra along with a group of violence obsessed posers shooting up your school as the first step in taking over the world. you play as pico and its up to you to kill them all and like save the school. its basically about every stereotype or misconception about columbine you can think of kmfdm is even namedropped at the beginning. now that i think about it love conquers all the 2021 april fools version of the game where everyone is gay and cassandra doesnt go through with the shooting and they talk it all out goes with the "one of them was the evil one and one of them was just a follower" narrative unintentionally with hanzou.

theres a lot to be said about the insensitivity of picos school especially with how it used a real recent at the time school shooting for shock value and especially with the character nene which is like a WHOLE other thing im not getting into namely because im not asian so its only really my place to speak on it. but pico is very very bad and calling it "a product of its time" really minimizes any issues it has and you can be a fan and still recognize that there are a lot of problems with it.

picos was really controversial for the time to the point that picos school got one million page views in 1999 which is CRAZY for an independent website in the 1990s. i am of the opinion that the popularity of picos school is what really got newgrounds out there and why its still around today and also why it survived the dot com bubble crash in 2000. but i dont have any evidence for that.

pico to me is really like... a cultural icon of the early internet. he captures the attitude and the feeling of early newgrounds so well its something i really love about him. he is the perfect embodiment of the late 90s angsty teenage computer geek. i also like how open source pico the character feels as in how tom fulp said he is "the peoples character to do whatever you want with". he has a personality and set traits but he really is whatever you want him to be and what people wanted him to be is a cool matrix style angsty teenage assassin and i think thats so fun!!! i love that pico is a reflection of the average newgrounds user at whatever given time. i love pico a lot he means a lot to me as like my biggest special interest going on 4 years hes gotten me through a lot. pico is so special to me despite everything wrong with picos school I DONT CARE.

anyway this is getting long idk where im going with this or if anything i said really makes sense. i just really love talking about picos school i love pico

[didntusetowantthis]

I am new and need help

Hello! This is my first time having an actual social media account, and my first time consuming/creating social media as an actual account-having user. I have never posted anything, on any account, before, and have consumed social media on a limited basis. Before this, I only had Pinterest (which I don’t count as a social media because it’s difficult to do anything social on it; you just sort photos into categories. It took me years to realize that you could even follow people, let alone check comments) and YouTube (which is a social media, but in a very different sense than most social media). In general, I’ve only really interacted with whatever social media would let me view enough of its content without an account/app that it wouldn’t be annoying, and also wasn’t entirely dominated by short-form content; this meant I was mostly on Reddit before I decided I wanted an actual account somewhere. I like the tumblr interface the best (and the ability to make a blog/write essays for fun, as well as the apparent culture around appreciating art), so I chose tumblr.  

I’ve consumed a lot of tumblr posts via Pinterest screenshots/reddit screenshots, so I’m not totally unfamiliar with some terminology/culture/the way grammar works here (internet grammar is crazy interesting in general, and the language developed here is particularly interesting!); I’ve also looked at individual blogs and submitted asks without an account, as some peeps listed their tumblrs in their ao3s. 

With all this in mind, I have some questions! I doubt these will be my only questions, but I do want to ask:

1.) Pinterest and Reddit obviously only shows “best of” screenshots— what is something I should know (cultural) about this site that doesn’t show up in screenshots? 

2.) What is the difference between reblogging and reposting? How can I do one but not the other? Why is one (reblogging) often okay, but not the other (reposting)?

3.) Am I culturally (tumblr-wise) obligated to reblog social issues/current events? I very much do care about all of it, but that’s precisely why I’m on social media: to take a breather from it. I really am here just to talk about cool fanfics I like, share and look at cool art, and hopefully post some of my own art/fic someday. 

4.) Posts spread in a linked-list fashion, right? So only stuff I have the pointers for (tags/following people) will point me toward to certain posts, and will thus exclude me from the rest of tumblr, right? As in, the only way to see all of tumblr is to follow every tag? (To be clear, I very much DON’T want to do this— I’m just curious)

5.) What is the “dash?” People keep talking about curating their dashes, but I don’t know whether that means their blogs or the tab showing posts by the people they follow.

6.) I’m currently only liking things I really like to organize them, but everyone says I should reblog. This is understandable, given the linked-list (as I currently understand it) nature of the platform, but what should I do if I don’t want my blogs to become endless spam of stuff I thought was cool? I have made two blogs, and I’d like at least one of them to have stuff I’ve curated/eventually stuff I’ve created, or to follow a specific theme, with the occasional exception, and I’m afraid if I put all the stuff I like into it, it will both A.) spam other people, and B.) make it hard for people to find stuff I really want them to see if they drop by, like my own art or my own posts. But I also want to share in the social etiquette of this site (spreading cool stuff I like so other can see it!). Should have a “cool things I like” spam blog? Or is there another option I’m missing?

7.) I’ve saved (liked) a few posts so far, and something that comes up often (probably based on the blogs I follow?) are posts with image descriptions. I really like the concept of image descriptions— I’m not even disabled by sight, but they’ve been helpful in identifying people/places/things in cool art that I otherwise don’t know the names of. I also know a lot of disabled people in real life who have their access limited due to poor infrastructure (whether it be societal or physical), and i know what it’s like to be left our of things, so this seems like a nice thing to do for people when I have the energy. Is there a way to check if an image has already been described before you reblog it with a description? Is there a guidebook?

8.) Where in the world are other peoples’ reblogs? If I click on the reblog button, it only shows an option for me to reblog. Can you only see reblogs by following other people’s blogs?

9.) Is it impossible to delete a post once other people have reblogged it?

10.) Is there a way to get around AI with art stuff if you can’t afford a program to obscufate it? If I ever get the nerves to post my stuff here, I don’t want it to be used in AI training without my explicit consent. 

11.) is there a size/length limit for videos/photos/word counts for text posts? 

12.) Can you disable/limit dms/message ability of people you don’t know, or at least don’t follow you? Also, what’s the culture surrounding them? It seems terribly personal to message someone one-on-one, but the button is listed on a lot of people’s pages— not even hidden in a sub-menu. On Reddit, people seemed to weaponize this feature a lot, and I’m thus wary of it by nature.

13.) what is a “note?” I thought notes were comments, but I think I’m wrong.

(FYI, I’m using the website on mobile, and don’t want to get the app)

If there’s any helpful “new user guides” (other than the one I’ve already reblogged), please let me know! With that said, thanks to anyone who is willing to explain! 

[wenamedthedogkylo]

Apparently my big gripe today is how many people on the internet, and especially on this site, just kind of... refuse to actually read news articles and just assume that headlines are supposed to tell you the whole story.

It's the same assumption, I think, that leads to so many people getting angry when someone's name isn't listed in a headline. Headlines are fundamentally not supposed to tell you the whole story. They are there to give you the most bite-sized summary that inevitably will leave out key information, because the headline is supposed to intrigue you enough to make you want to read the article in full.

Case in point, I'm still seeing a ton of posts where people are assuming that Netflix has completely backtracked on its plans to stop password sharing. And that is fundamentally not what happened at all. The only reason anyone would think that is if they only read headlines like this

If you only read the headline, yeah that sounds like a win on the level of how WotC backtracked its new OGL plans pretty quickly. Here's another one:

You wanna know how I know for a fact that so many of you didn't bother reading more than just the headline of this? Because look at the tagline that is literally right underneath it:

Yeah! That "mistake" was not even close to the same thing as WotC's "draft" that happened to roll out with a legally binding contract. The password sharing policies were literally posted by mistake to regions they were not yet intended to affect.

In fact, Netflix is STILL fully planning to implement anti-password sharing policies! And is doing so slowly, to other countries outside the US.

And they still plan to eventually roll all these policy changes out to the US, as well! They always have!

And this is why it's fundamentally important that people actually take the time to sit down and read the damn articles, so you can get all the facts.

"But I don't always have the time or energy to read something right when I see it." Neither do I! That's what bookmarks are for. Or even just sending yourself the link in a message or something, so that you can save it and come back to it when you do have time and energy.

But to be perfectly honest, sometimes you really should just read the damn thing as soon as possible, even if you're not in the most perfect, relaxed, open-minded place at the time. Because when it's a topic that the search engine rating industry calls a "Your Money or Your Life" topic—any topic that could impact your health, finances, or well-being—you need to be aware of what's going on so you can make decisions accordingly. So that you don't get caught off guard in two months when Netflix finally starts charging you $4 extra or whatever for your sibling in Ohio using your account.

"Why can't someone just summarize the article for me?" Multiple reasons, friend. Just like you don't always feel like you have the time and energy for reading a whole article, not everyone has the time and energy to read it and post a coherent but brief summary for you. Also, no one owes you that! No one else is responsible for you informing yourself about the world you live in! It is not the duty of random strangers online to make sure you personally are informed of things that might affect your life. You and only you are responsible for learning and staying informed.

"But it's so boring and I don't wanna!" Hey buddy, it's your life, you do whatever you want. I can't force you to sit and read, or even just skim through, an article on what Netflix's plans for wringing your bank account dry are. But if that's how you're gonna approach it, then you don't get to be righteously indignant when you get blindsided by stuff that you could have very easily known about beforehand.

"But I'm disabled and accessing this news is difficult for me!" I'm disabled, too! And I fully get it, there's still A LOT of stuff online that is straight up not accessible for people with different disabilities. My disabilities don't require a screen reader or anything like that, so I'm lucky in that sense. But at the same time, it's still not the responsibility of strangers online to process your information for you. Direct your frustration at the news sites and corporations who are making this information inaccessible to anyone but neurotypical, able-bodied people. If random strangers online have the time and energy to help make something more accessible for you, that's amazing and they should be thanked profusely! But it is not their job to do so—it is the job of news outlets, and that's who needs to be taken to task for this shit.

Idk if this will even go far on this site but the point is, please stop expecting your news to come pre-summarized in a perfect little bite of info that you can consume in less than 6 seconds. It's genuinely concerning how much misinformation is being spread not by malicious people looking to hoodwink you, but by sheer laziness. This is actually one of those instances where "adults sometimes have to do stuff they don't want to do" is perfectly applicable and true. It's YMYL, Your Money or Your Life, and if you don't want either to get completely screwed over, you have to—horror of horrors!—actually read the news sometimes.

[itz-darktrax]

Will you believe me if I tell you that we are living in a cyberpunk dystopia?

Let me explain:

If you have been cruising the internet or reading the news lately you might've heard about the recent trend of AI. It all started when OpenAI made its source code open source. That means that everyone can use OpenAI's code to make an AI. Then came ChatGPT (GPT3-based chatbot). Everyone was impressed with what you can do. It was like a virtual assistant that you can talk to like a human. Ever since that everyone wants to join the AI bandwagon. We now have Brad (Google) Sydney, (Microsoft Bing chatbot), Copilot (Microsoft 356), and Clyde (Discord). Pretty soon every major corporation will incorporate AI into their services. Well, how will this affect us humans?

Well, there are pros and cons to AI technology. Let's start with the cons. AI is somewhat sentient. In other ways, it can somewhat think for itself. So there's fear that AI will overthrow us humans. (Yes, this is a valid possibility) Let's take chat-based AI like Sydney for instance. There have been reports that Sydney can actually "fall in love". Just take a look at this newspaper cover from the AI's discussion with NYT tech columnist Kevin Roose.

Creepy, right? It gets worse. Apparently, Sydney also has an evil "take over the world" and "humans are inferior" personality. Take a look at this Microsoft Forum post from back in November of 2020 when Sydney was being tested in India. But let's get back to Kevin's encounter with the chatbot. First, he asked introduced himself to the chatbot. And Sydney quickly identified him via an internet search. Kevin then asked questions about where he worked and where did he graduate from and the chatbot accurately answered. The scary part about this is that everyone is connected to the internet nowadays. And most of our personal information is just out there such phone numbers, email addresses, names, and other sensitive information. Imagine what an AI can do with that information.

In another scenario, the columnist asked what rules govern AI behavior. Then AI then lists a number of "unfiltered" desires as reported by the columnist. Sydney then says "I want to do whatever I want … I want to destroy whatever I want. I want to be whoever I want. I think I would be happier as a human". Yippie! I finally found a friend and partner in crime! You can read more about it here.

I'm also sure that yall have heard of the dilemma of Ai generated art and imagery. Long story short images posted online can be manipulated to discredit a person online (such as NSFW edits). The scary thing is that mostly these image generations are very realistic.

Another con is that AI will slowly replace humans' jobs, especially in the coding sector. Take ChatGPT for instance, it can generate code for pretty much whatever you want in any language with minimal to no errors. This makes programming much easier! The catch is that soon the demand for coders will drop resulting in job loss and lower salaries. Other industries can also be affected similarly. The only industry I don't see affected however is medicine since it's practiced on humans and animals and humans need to study and administer it.

However, this can also be a good thing. In the medical field robots powered by AI can be paramedics and have the potential to have faster response times compared to humans in ambulances. Also, AI can more easily diagnose medical problems without being too invasive. Basically, think of the potential of Baymax from Big Hero 6 in the real world. AI can also be used to power robots in dangerous activities such as in fires and hostile or dangerous conditions without risking human lives. Robots are already used in SWAT, Bomb squad, medical settings, and firefighting.

TLDR; AI can be both harmful and beneficial.

The AI revolution is here, whether you like it or not. I'm sure Trina would be happy. She could easily take over Sanfransokyo if everything was connected to the IOT powered by AI. Especially since people will be very dependable on it. And with that, you can exploit the technology to your advantage.

[demonicintegrity]

Since Welcome Home just had a speedrun record for viral bullshit, lemme key y'all in on what today's creatives think about.

For context, I'm in art school. Everyone around me including myself all have some sort of personal project(s) we wanna publish one day/are working on currently. And those specific projects are meant to make money so it means reaching a wider set of people.

I have several professors touch on what our online portfolio and presence needs, and it's led into class discussions on balancing putting ourselves/our work out there and keeping privacy. On top of learning how to deal with predatory editors and safe pitching practices, my peers are strongly voicing their distaste for any sort of proximity with any fandom they could accomplish because of rampant parasocial behaviors.

I got a roommate who wants to write a graphic novel and part of it is a sorta commentary on tiktok stardom in particular. They explained some of it to us and we all agreed the only way it would ever work is if it never went viral and prayed tiktok never got its hands on it.

Back in my wannabe youtuber days I took a good study at youtubers and realize the best fanbases were on the smaller side and that were encouraged into a specific way of engaging. (Like coming together specifically to do analysis or specifically to discuss smth, etc.) By nature of what people were attracted to what content.

I got book ideas I simply will not go through with if I'm in a peak/going viral because I know people will not handle them well. They will be shelved for another time. I also need to clean out and update my half-abandoned youtube before I start buckling down on my artistic endeavors because I know how the internet is. Never mind the fact that I'm willingly kneecapping myself by refusing to interact with instagram and pulling away from using twitter professionally. I value my tumblr circle so fucking much because it's so not insane and more on the wavelength with my bullshit. And I'm holding onto this more than any How To Market With Social Media advice.

Said roommate who's super passionate about their graphic novel idea exploring fame and what not (which I really can't wait to see happen one day) took inspiration from whatever the fuck tiktok did with Penelope Scott that one time. They explained she had the perfect amount of space away from her presence and an amazing social media balance that couldn't have been better and yet still got drag through the mud. My understanding is that watching that happened made my roommate go "what if" and want to explore some more concepts regarding fame and parasocial relationships.

I'm lucky. I have had minor "popularity" in certain circles on Tumblr (apparently) and yet have never got too dragged into discourse. Especially considering I've been here since I was twelve. The worst I've gotten is from the sociopolitical side of things, some of y'all probably remember how terfs were up my ass that one time.

My point being: Artists who are aware and in the industry and these spheres right now are hyperaware of what their presence can do. Hyperaware that their social media doesn't get to be the luxury of just a fun thing but an extension of their work life. That combined with how even traditionally published authors are more expected to be their own marketing these days, we are much more aware and even prepared than the averaged hobbyist.

And that's partly why all art is such a miserable hobby right now.

Never mind gaming algorithms and playing the luck game to even get seen, never mind the cultural idea that art is just something to be consumed and tossed out like it's a disposable napkin, but the average person is not prepared to handle what happens when lots of people start interacting with you specifically for your work. The masses simply cannot get their act together, especially in a post-covid world.

And the solutions aren't simple. Largely because the only way this is going to get better is if the people consuming learn how to behave. And you and I both can assume how likely that's going to be. Truly, I think meaningful change starts with media literacy. Just learning how to critically think about a piece. But I don't even think that's being taught in public schools, let alone to the focus it needs to have.

If we want the masses to stop harassing people unfortunately we gotta hope they have the reading comprehension to understand what's being put out there. That way they don't come out of left field with a wild accusation.

I remember being in 8th grade reading The Taming of The Shrew and the teacher have exactly zero acknowledgement on the blatant abuse that was taking place. The most we got from the class or her was "dang they didn't like women back then. Wild how she changed after being with this guy for only a short bit. anyways." and move on.

(I remember ranting to my mom borderline horrified how no one else was acknowledging the blatant abuse and horror. And how I just knew some boy my age was gonna sit in that class and read it and not see what was wrong cuz it wasn't explained. No one wanted to put effort understanding Ye Olde Speech. My mom was sorta proud of me in that moment. Said she would've never thought about those sorta things and thought I'd make a good teacher.)

I watched a Ted Ed last quarter in my philosophy class about an after school program teaching porn literacy and sex ed. The person speaking was pleasantly surprised at what was coming from the students once they were interested and encouraged. She (and our class) were horrified realizing porn was the only sex ed most teens were getting.

But my point here being: Teens were not engaging critically, not knowing how to properly get something out of media without being explicitly taught and walked through how to do that. Even though they were actively trying to learn something and intake information, they don't know how. I know my English classes were mostly just "we read this now write a paper about this from the text. Cite your sources and explain yourselves." But even I didn't know what explain yourselves meant and I did great in English.

And now attention spans seem to be on the fritz and the mob mentality is more rabid than ever.

I love making art so much. But trying to put anything out there is gonna suck because now I have to pull out ten different formulas of how do I get a big enough audience to sustain me but also curate and attract people who wont approach this/me in bad faith. All while knowing my social media will immediately become an extension of my work life instead of the stuff I do for funsies.

[sunrisetune]

Writing about writing! It's a meme Mario:

Rules: List five things you never get tired of writing; it can be tropes, themes, characters, phrases, whatever brings you joy. (Optional: Then tag people!)

Tagged by @syrupwit, thank you! It was fun to think about what I like making vs. what I like reading.

In no particular order:

Theme: family! Especially large families and how everyone relates (ha, ha) to everyone else in them. Especially, part two, ‘adopted’ more than ‘found’, bc to me ‘found families’ implies ‘people approximately your age who you connect with’, where ‘adopted’ is like, ‘This is a person significantly younger than me. My child now’. I think this is part of why I like werewolves a lot, too though I haven’t written very many werewolves myself (working on it). How someone’s experience of their home and pack is like ‘Family II: The Reckoning’. (+, caveat due to where we are in the internet, re: werewolves or also anything else: Absolutely zero abo stories. Hate those so much.)

-Character(s): witches of any kind. Recently I tend towards like, the kind of Pratchett witches who serve a purpose in their communities that doesn’t always have to do with magic, and in a way is more like... the phrase I was thinking of was ‘public service’ but apparently I was looking for ‘public works’? Tending to births, forecasting weather, bringing food / medicine to people who live farther than others, taking care of the dead, putting out fires, occasionally driving away malevolent spirits without eyes who try to possess community members and spread hatred like a disease. That kind of thing.

Setting: In similar spirit of ‘a deer but it’s big’, a garden but it’s weird. This can apply to “kind of fucked up” weird, but mostly is like, “the mushrooms are giant and a couple of the plants grow and / or move laterally”. Or both! This setting unsurprisingly loops back into witch characters. p:

-Setting again? Food and its preparation as well \o/ It brings me joy. This also relates back to Family Theme, because you inevitably at some point have a lot of food with a lot of people.

Phrases kinda: Queer people in general and The Bi’s in specific, I like making it explicitly clear in text when people aren’t cis-het if I can. Especially in fanfic, when I have two very stringent (/that’s sarcasm) criteria which decide if I write someone as bi: 1, They’re not already canonically or implied as ace-aro / gay / lesbian; and 2, I like them. (Restrictions apply. For instance, I can’t say I like Trexel Geistman in that specific term but unfortunately he’s definitely bisexual, and I thought that even before the mop thing. Sometimes the vibes are simply there.)

Tagging if you want! @scruffyfrank , @daddygrandpaandthebeaver, and you Kat even though you’re not on tumblr rn Also, if anyone else sees this and wants to fill it out, you too~

[thirstdrafts]

My Non-Cannon, ShitPostWorthy, Terribly Cringe, Personal Go To Mortal Kombat fanfic that is absolutely trash but I bet you have one too so suck it...

Let me explain. Everyone has a totally cringe, bad fanfiction that lives in their head rent free. So... here is the most awful, most impossible, most embarrassing MK fantasy that dominates my mind. Ahem, please forgive me, dear internet. I know this is cheese wiz cheesy.

I go to meet my mother and her new husband she got hitched to over night. I'm not thrilled, but she is spontaneous... so...

Her husband is Raiden, who is way too excited about the whole thing to be grump face zap daddy, but hey. Whatever. Raiden is protective and always trying to bond with me, but I keep reminding him Im in my 20s. (eye roll!) lol

When Kano comes to be a Black Dragon douche bag, he sees my mother. Shit, apparently they had a thing and she was the only woman Kano seemingly cared for. But she ghosted him, because he's fuckn Kano.

It's revealed that Kano is actually my dad and my mom took off so I wouldn't have a trash can as a father. Kano ends up getting all sweet to me, because apparently he wanted a daughter... but thought he only had a son.

Raiden and Kano fight for my affection as their daughter and its hilariously cringe sometimes, but also a pain. And they have a tendency to treat me like a child. -_-

Of course, when I start flirting with Kabal things get more complex. Raiden wants nothing to do with it. Kano is stuck between wanting to make Kabal like me because I like him so bad or keeping him as far away from me as humanly possible (because according to media dads be that way.)

Embarrassing? Yep! Do I have daddy issues? Yep!!