#longcat media

[yourheartinyourmouth]

me listening to Mockery Manor for the 100th time: oh ho ho not quite Bette

[captainclickycat]

I really have to give the @longcatmedia creators props for this because it sounds so true to what this kind of theme park attraction sounds like - it’s giving Disneyland - and I have this very vivid mental image of a couple of people in cat suits waving and doing the little dances and stuff…

…And then the realisation hits you that this park has two mascots. Which presumably means only two costumes - it’s even mentioned how crap it is to have to get into one of them because of all the bad breath buildup. This “parade” consists of exactly two (2) people in cat suits, accompanied by “the staff”. Two cat suits and what I can only imagine to be like, a bunch of bored teens who sell hotdogs trundling along behind them. If the murder attempt hadn’t happened the whole thing would’ve been over by the end of the song anyway. Most mediocre display ever. I can’t entirely explain why but the mental image cracks me the fuck up.

[longcatmedia]

We’re WELL excited to be part of London Podcast Festival 2023 at Kings Place!

Come for the full Sep 10th Audio Drama Day:

11:30am - Ramon Fear's Terror Tapes (feat Beth Eyre and Lexie McDougall)

2pm - Magenta Presents 😺

4:30pm - Realms of Peril & Glory

7pm - We Fix Space Junk / The Amelia Project / Greater Boston

9:30pm - Kane and Feels: Paranormal Investigators

Getcha tickets here

[yoshimickster]

@longcatmedia YOYOI, so do Madame Magenta and Mockery Manor take place in the same universe, or is the Magenta in Mockery Manor like,her Earth-2 doppelganger?

[narrettwist]

Second Witcher Au piece featuring Tsuangu and Michi. This is their first meeting and involves something exploding, because of course it does.

Ivory - Longcat - Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

3k+ and locked for A03 accounts only.

[flojocabron]

12/20/23: Videogame finds were weak this Wednesday. But I found other goodies at the fleamarket and thrift store today. First find at the fleamarket was Encanto on bluray for a dollar. Then, a new 128gb drive for $10. The next place had some okay looking, complete DS games, but I wasn't feeling his prices of $15 each. They were average games at best. So I left them for others to decide on. But looking through this guy's boxes, I found two OG Transformers toys. These were late runs when the toyline started to run out of ideas. Two more recent ones and a stuffed plushie of a Longcat! Paid $7.00 for them. I was excited to find a dvd of They Live for $2.00. Old man had it in a box with other John Carpenter dvds. Didn't feel like talking the rest, since I have them. My only gaming find was a lowly Build-a-bear DS game for a dollar. I then found some more media, too. $5.00 got me a Ludacris cd, three dvds and an early 90s Viz Manga. Last fleamarket finds was some more Transformers toys and a few 90s ones too. Spent $5.00 there. Afterwards, I went to Salvation Army Store and after searching through the pallets,I found a box of movies. Again, I had many of them already and left them, but I grabbed a few I can probably sell later. $13 dollars was my total for the discs. Pretty average stuff for me.

[radramblog]

What happened to Dirk in Homestuck^2?

Why am I doing this to myself.

I memed a little yesterday when I was posting that article around social medias about Homestuck jokes, because once again we are in lockdown and I am therefore Stuck at Home. Canned laughter goes here. But there’s a topic related to the comic- or more specifically, its aborted sequel, Homestuck^2, that I’m interested in delving into a little bit. I’m going to avoid talking about spoilers as much as possible, but considering said comic takes place not only after the events of the massive sprawl that is Homestuck but also the more linear but still messy Epilogues, some amount of sus shit is inevitable.

Anyway. Much maligned is what the Epilogues and 2 did to everyone’s favourite decapitation target, Dirk Strider, and I have a theory as to why it happened this way.

To begin with, let’s summarise what and who Dirk is through the course of the comics. Fair warning from me, though, it’s been a while since I read through this.

Dirk Strider is a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, completely devoid of physical contact with other people and only really ever gets to talk to 3 other people, only one of whom is in anything remotely resembling a relatable situation. He struggles with self-identity, having created numerous robots including an artificial intelligence based on his own brain, aka Lil’ Hal. He’s somewhat of a control freak, and a bit of a cold aloof asshole, but means well, and is pretty gay. NBD. The kinda guy to set up a plan meticulously and thoroughly, not informing any of the moving parts even if said parts are his friends, and often involving some form of self-sacrifice.

Throughout the comic he further reckons with self-identity problems and his own self-loathing including entering a relationship with Jake which doesn’t go well and he eventually breaks off since he knows his overbearing and manipulative behaviour is Not Cool and Pretty Toxic but doesn’t know how to shut it off. Eventually he reaches the God Tier as a Prince of Heart, gaining the power to literally annihilate souls, which he never actually uses since he gets yeeted into deep (Paradox) space and then everything goes to shit. Except none of that happens because of the Retcon (aside from the God Tier bit) and we don’t actually see how that shit progressed in the canon timeline. I think. Dirk’s arc, as it were, doesn’t really come full circle- while he does assist in Dave’s character…growth? he really isn’t the focus of that conversation. This immediately precedes the action climax and there isn’t literally any dialogue after that so that’s what we’re left with.

I like Dirk in Homestuck a lot. It’s hard not to, considering the flashes heavily featuring him (Unite/Synchronise and Prince of Heart: Rise Up) are genuinely excellent, along with many of his music themes being absolute bangers. He gets to interact with Caliborn a lot, with a pretty great banter, there, and the whole splintered personality thing is a really interesting hook for a character. I think he’s my favourite of the Alpha kids, a controversial pick considering I know everyone loves Roxy so much. I think, I’m not as in tune with the fandom as that statement implies I am.

And then the Epilogues/Homestuck 2 came.

Now I read the Meat half of the epilogues first, but that’s more interesting, so we’ll tackle Candy first (this is going to get real confusing for those who haven’t read this comic, huh).

In Candy, Dirk almost immediately kills himself, citing the irrelevance of the timeline as cause, an act considered by whatever mechanism governs God Tier deaths to be Just because he hates himself (and also bc of things we’ll get into), so it actually sticks. This isn’t super relevant for the discussion, but that’s just kinda so unbelievably fucked up? Entirely? I’d imagine if you read Candy first you might get entirely turned off by this, which I’m sure a lot of people did.

Meat is where the, well, meat of post-canon Dirk is. You see, a concept very quickly introduced in the tail end of the original comic is the Ultimate Self, an idea where you somehow encompass every different timeline iteration or alternate version of yourself. This was pretty clearly tacked on to make it so characters whose arcs all happened in the retcon timeline could have their not getting an actual arc explained away, but it didn’t land then and it sure doesn’t land for me now. Anyway, in Meat, Dirk becomes his ultimate self, making him near-omniscient and able to control the fabric of the story himself- for much of this story, he is the narrator. And he uses this power to fuck with all his friends really distressingly without their knowledge (or consent), including breaking up a marriage, in order to further his own goals which largely appear to be just keep the story going so to not fade out of relevance. It’s a plot that makes no sense with his previous characterisation, but I guess now that he’s the Ultimate Self he’s a different person? But I liked old Dirk, and I don’t like New Dirk. He’s a villain now, but he made a much better anti-hero.

But this would be fine if he (or the epilogues, or Homestuck^2) were written well. But they aren’t. Dirk’s dialogue is long, painfully drawn out, with tangents that tend to amount to pure wank, misused literary references and pointless metaphors that go on and on, filling the screen with a bright orange screed that hurts to look at as much as it does to comprehend. It’s not fun. And we’ve seen Dirk communicate before, obviously, the story of Homestuck is built around chatlogs, but it wasn’t like this. He was sarcastic, dryly witty, blunt at times. Even when he was literally talking to a different version of himself it didn’t get that masturbatory.

I was so confused about what the hell happened to Dirk, because I had no idea what the hell someone writing this character was thinking when they turned him into this. And then, the 21st page of Homestuck^2 dropped.

And it all came together.

What Ultimate Dirk and Terezi are referring to is Pony Pals: Detective Pony, a children’s book about some girls who hang out with ponies and solve a mystery. It’s a real book, buy it for your 5-year-old.

Except they’re not referring to that, they’re referring to the Homestuck Canon version of Detective Pony- a birthday gift from Dirk to Jane, heavily edited and to be much more obscene and eventually developing into it’s own story, stated to be “tough, emotionally draining, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible”.

Except the quote “Remember Longcat, Jane?” and references to philosophy, dead languages, and ancient earth culture aren’t referring to the three pages of the Dirk-edited Detective Pony we see in the actual comic itself. That quote doesn’t appear there.

That image is from Detective Pony, by Sonnetstuck- the 40,000 word fanfiction from 2014 that serves as a completed version of Jane’s copy of the book. An expansion of what we see in canon. And it’s a tough, emotionally draining read, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible.

It’s a very good fanfiction.

In the later bits of Detective Pony, we can start to see the origins of what would become Ultimate Dirk’s signature style of writing. Long blocks of rambling text, orange dripping down the page, references to philosophy and history and language that go on and on. And it probably does look familiar to those who read the Epilogues and ^2. 

But there are a couple of key differences here. First of all, it’s just better written? The way these rambles circle back on themselves is so excellent, the absolute absurdity of this being written on top of a pony book for little girls, the humour (beyond some of the more immature stuff), it’s just a really well-written piece of fiction. Hell, you don’t even need to be familiar with the character of Dirk to enjoy it. It’s a harrowing piece, but it’s also self-aware- because it’s not supposed to be tough, draining, cathartic etc. just for Jane- it’s clearly that for Dirk himself.

The second part is, of course, that this is a fanfiction. It’s not canon, it’s not official, this is by someone who really likes Dirk for people who really like Dirk. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so if you bounce off it (and I’m sure a lot did), then you don’t have to keep reading it, it’s fine, thanks for playing. As much as Homestuck^2 tried to doll itself up as “dubiously canon” it’s still the official continuation of the story, and that means if it’s as difficult to get into as Detective Pony, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of people.

The other part of it is that Detective Pony’s exploration of Dirk’s character is, well, in character. When the man himself steps in as a character in his own book, the explorations of what he is as an author, who he is as a person, make perfect sense for what we see of him at the start of the comic. He is that manipulative, blunt person, and he is aware of his faults. He’s the kind of person to hide a lamentation on his own failings inside an impenetrable maze of a story layered on top of a book about fucking ponies. Ultimate Dirk does not act like Dirk, outside of the “manipulator” angle, something that Dirk was aware of and trying to improve in the comic. But I guess people don’t have arcs, right?

It’s so interesting to see the seeds of Homestuck^2 laden within Detective Pony- because the meta angle that and the epilogues take is also represented in said fanfiction. While the nature of canon is a facet of the work, the idea of authors and narrators fighting for control of a story, different ideas in mind for the characters, one being more personally connected to them than the other, it’s all there. When I wrote about Fallout 4 in the past, I mentioned being worried that Bethesda took the wrong lessons from Skyrim- seeing something successful and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. I think Homestuck^2 is an extreme example of this- the writers of the comic saw Sonnetstuck’s masterwork and thought, yeah that’s great, we can do that. But they just can’t. And with the comic crashed and burning, the probably won’t ever get a chance to. Dirk is forever stuck as this amalgamation of himself that looks nothing like any individual version of him ever did.

At least we will still have Detective Pony, and many other excellent fanworks, for actually good Dirk content. I admittedly haven’t looked into much fanfic written during/post-epilogues, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll see- I can only hope the fanbase didn’t take the same wrong lessons as the official team did.

[emonewtype]

man, could you imagine how much damage Longcat could do in modern social media, where infinite vertical scroll has become the standard layout?

[fictionkinfessions]

"[...] I don't want representation in media, I'd like to ask people not to share everything. #🖤💜"

You are absolutely in the wrong here. If you don't want to see gay people talking about their confirmed gay relationships in their source, you seek therapy to treat your homophobia.

I believe your identity. I believe you cannot hide behind it for this matter. I saw that love confession scene. There was nothing sexual about it. They didn't even kiss, much less touch. And no confession here about that gay relationship had explicit sexual content.

I consider it insulting to others who your sexuality to claim you're all just as hateful towards two men in a romantic, non sexually explicit context. I can't believe other asexual and / or aromantic gay men would hate their own identity by default. [I don't know your gender, that sentence isn't in reference to you. Asexual aromantic gay mlm exist too.]

You're a homophobe. You don't want lgbt+ people to exist. You especially don't want gay mlm to exist, or have representation in media. [was it good representation? I don't think so. Though I'm not familiar with the source beyond a few scenes. Like 'It's tuesday'.]

That's all. And with regards to your other message: stay away fandom for a while. You may have developed an uncommon predisposition towards how relationships and human beings work. Good luck with everything you're going through right now.

Connie / Mod Party Cat!

edit: someone unfollowed after I posted this. I’m hoping it’s the anon deleting their tumblr account and heading to therapy. Longcat speed you, anon.

edit two: someone reblogged with this ‘kin discourse’. No, it’s not. This is homophobia. Anon hates gay mlm. That’s homophobia. That has nothing to do with kinnity beyond them using it as a partial shield to be homophobic. [don’t harass the person who used that tag, thank you.]

[marshmallowprotection]

You’ll be able to find all my MysticTober prompts here on Tumblr, or on AO3 daily @ lilacnightmares   !

Day 8: Cafe

CAFE

“Boys, are you just going to stand there all day or are you going to order something to support the business?”

Saeyoung sputtered, his words utterly nonsensical in nature. He was floored that she had called him out, watching her lean forward against the counter as her blond curls framed her face. Normally, he was incredibly happy to play her little games and tease his girlfriend back, but today, she had caught him off-guard, and that had been the last thing on his mind.

“Oh, I will, darling,” Judas called over to their girlfriend. A smirk appeared on his face as slid his foot just a bit further underneath the table they were sitting at as he hooked it around Saeyoung’s ankle and relished in Saeyoung’s floundering. “Why don’t you bring over the house special? I think Jaehee has finally perfected her blend. I wanna give it a try.”

Minji beamed at his response. She stood up and looked behind the counter to where Jaehee was putting out some of the afternoon snacks for the rush that they got when people were leaving work and on their way home. “Jaehee! Could you get some of the dark roasts? Judas wants to see if you’ve struck gold.”

Jaehee stared at her for a moment, then chuckled. “Alright, alright. He may be trying on my nerves but I do respect his taste.”

“Thanks,” Minji smiled. “Besides, you’ve been working hard for weeks to get the calculations right, we have to test it on someone fresh every now and again! Otherwise, we may get burnt out on the coffee beans.”

Minji was glad that she had followed her heart when she started talking to Jaehee about what she wanted to do with her life now that things had calmed down.

The two of them decided that they had shared interests, Jaehee was passionate about coffee and Minji was determined to bake no matter what happened. It just seemed logical for them to decide to open a cafe together as friends.

They were business partners, and things couldn’t have been better between the two of them.

Even though Minji spent a lot of time making latte art with cats. To be fair, it had garnered a crowd from the social media platforms so she couldn’t whine all that much. All she had to do was keep up with the demand and Jaehee didn’t mind.

Foam cats were far better than actual cats in her opinion!

Jaehee was doing a lot better here than she ever had with C&R. The pay had been great and all, but she had never felt content with her life or what she was doing. Minji could see that a mile away, and Jumin asked too much of her and she never bowed her head when she should have.

It had only been a matter of time until things went south.

The end hadn’t been all that messy but everyone railed around her when she needed it most and that’s how she was able to figure out what it was that she wanted the most.

She deserved to feel like she was in control of her life and the direction that it was going. Minji felt lucky that she could share this with her friend. She smiled as Jaehee doled out the drinks to the two men with a smile. Saeyoung teased her a bit with a laugh, and Judas reassured her when she felt a bit flustered.

Life was finding a new normal and for Minji, she was just happy with that. Now, as long as everyone could behave then it would be alright.

“Absolutely not, Saeyoung. That’s an impossible request.”

“Minji! What do you think about nine glasses connected to make a Longcat? It could be a group special!”  

“Darling, are you just saying that because you want everyone to come here?”

“I think it’s a meowy good idea!” Minji snickered.

[pleasesavetanaka]

Ajin 62 Reactions

I’ve been pretty quiet, and that mostly just comes down to me not writing much fic. I still reblog, and I still read, but we’re in a pretty action-oriented part of the story, so there’s not as much speculation to be had. Put some first thoughts / reactions under the cut.

We’ve had a lot of speculation that Kai would be coming back soon, so it’s a great relief to see them show back up so soon!

Super refreshing to see that Akiyama has no idea how to use a gun. Makes perfect sense for him, but media always tends to throw ‘knows how to use a gun’ on... almost anyone.

Also NEW IBM. SKELETON AND LONGCAT. Thought we had Blep coming in, but seems like Blep’s been teaching them how to fight instead.

Nerd-IBM seems pretty interesting, although I suspect he’s going to be cleared before long. It’s a pretty good tactic, but it also assumes that Akiyama is going to just rush him, versus like... you know, dodging. It’s been established that tranq guns are pretty slow after all.

FUCKING YES WE FINALLY GET WORKING DUAL IBMS. This was something that was explicitly brought up with Satou back in volume one:

Well, now we finally know. You can have more than one properly. This strongly implies that Satou can have more than one, he’s just been choosing not to, since he came up with the original idea. I’m suspecting three.

[yourheartinyourmouth]

listening to s1 of mockery manor again and bette’s admission that she has always known that she was bi…😭 i feel so seen

everyone say thank u to longcat media for giving us a main character who is more or less openly, canonically, explicitly bisexual before the end of the first season.

[narrettwist]

I've done it lads. I'm part of a creative discord group and we got a creative writing challenge in April and finally, today, October seventh, I have completed the 4th and final prompt.

I made a series on AO3 of all 4 of them as they explore the Witcher AU I have for my OC Michi and Best Jeanist.

[tracyloveswork]

Rise of the Poor Image

Interview with Zack Rosenberg, Trust﹠Safety/Community Representative, Tumblr and Amanda Brennan “Meme librarian”, Content﹠Community Associate, Tumblr

In Hito Steyerl’s essay, “Defense of the Poor Image,” she suggests that the worth of a digital image could be judged on its speed and penetration rather than resolution. In this case, we would give the greatest worth to the poorest image of all, the GIF.

An early file format for the internet, the GIF could provide a simple animation without requiring a plug-in at a small file size. With the onset of Flash and greater bandwidth, the use of the GIF fell out of favor but endured on message boards and forums. It’s ability to portray small loops of visual data found a new life embedded in online conversations. Its resurgence is due to its ability to translate information into a distilled and often entertaining format. It stands in the place of words.

Vintage Dancing Baby GIF

In Wim Crouwel’s “Type Design of the Computer Age” he felt that the computers will bring the development of new characters and communication symbols. This has come to be, but not through reinventing fonts, but through the creation of memes, emoticons and reactionary GIFs. This could be the universal pictorial language that Charles Bliss was seeking with his Blissymbolics.

The speed and penetration images can obtain on the internet, also has concerns for the creator. Steyerl speaks to how piracy is a threat to mainstream channels but can also provide exposure to works that are considered less commercial. How does a creator balance the threat and the benefit?

The Falcon goes into hyperdrive.

Many digital copies are also cut, edited and transformed into new works. This could be considered transformative but it could be appropriating. In the age of social networks and fandoms, how does someone protect their work?

Tumblr is a social network built around the idea of microblogging. Small digestible bits of media, a quote or a link are shared amongst followers. It invites discourse through posts versus the long diatribes you see on other blog platforms. It is also known for its audience’s embrace of the GIF.

Hope you like cats…

Tumblr is known for posting quick little things, microblogging and lots of sharing of media. Is that how you guys see yourselves?

Zack: I always like how it was explained to me, and how I explain it when I am on panels. Whether you are a creator or someone who is passionate about something, you are a curator of content that you believe in.

It’s almost like creating a museum of my personal passions. When you go to my blog it’s about my dog, really tasty food or comics and animation. It encompasses process… And what I mean by process is how to make an illustration or something move. The platform really goes into that well... as that backend look at how things are made.

To really boil it down, it’s my own museum of what I like.

Amanda: The way we frame it from the marketing side, is that Tumblr is a place to share your passion. And you can be passionate about a TV show, about food, about dogs… But this is where you go to meet the people who share your interests. And really dive into the community of people who love the thing as much as you do.

Original Longcat

And to compare it to something like Pinterest… When I think of someone who is using Pinterest, it’s usually a mom looking for a recipe or someone looking for a workout, or someone looking for wedding stuff. Here on Tumblr, it is more like that fandom activity where people are looking for TV show gifs or the latest Honey post. You might find that on meme site, or FB, but Tumblr is where people get a little weird and shout out their deepest weird feelings about the thing that they love.

Zack: To add to that… I think it is about creating content to have a conversation. Which adds another layer and what I find fascinating (and we talk about this in our metrics panels) is that people are sharing feelings and posting entire conversations in tags or gifs. And driving this sense of unity... because “I feel that too”… I feel that same thing via this fandom or this thing happening in the world. Let’s connect and join together and have a community of friends strictly on the platform.

It’s almost like it’s own visual language with emoticons and the memes. You can really have a whole conversation.

Zack: I can pull conversations, and they are just all GIFs. We are just responding to each other based on reactions from our favorite types of media. It’s such a fascinating cultural thing that we have gotten ourselves into.

Gleeful Wonder Woman

Apple just installed a feature where can pull GIFs directly into your responses and making that more accessible. Seeing that trend being baked into other products and how Tumblr contributed to that, is a cool accomplishment.

Amanda: If you are thinking about a GIF as language, there is a really good talk by Kenyatta Cheese on how they have come to define language. And how it evolved both with the internet and as a file format.

Zack: He dressed as an internet meme… that blew my mind.

Amanda: The culture has involved so much. I just got back from a cat convention. While I was there I presented a talk on the history of cats on the internet.

We started 1998 with the first use of emoticon cats in Japan, then we go through Long Cat, Nyan Cat, LOL Cat and Pusheen. And in the back row of this event, there were these women with gray hair and they all had they all had their flat Instagram cats.

Nyan Cat

At the end, I asked everyone who had participated in this sort of thing to send their URL and posted them on screen. Most people had 10-20k followers on Instagram, including these older women who you wouldn’t think of as someone who is very active on social media, but here they are… Coming to a convention to meet people their “cat crew”… with the flat cats. They are really owning their identity on social media. And this very heavy image focused community of cats. It was a weird time.

Zack: I am so jealous…

I understand because I am crazy dog owner. My fiance runs a Groot, my dog, Instagram blog. It’s as if it’s him talking and enjoying the world.

She has created a persona of him where he is writing the blog and his followers have been increasing by 10-15 each week. That is pretty good because it is just a back-burner project. One post a day kind of thing. It’s just funny to see how it is contributing to that dog community. Other dog blogs follow him… which is like surreal to me. People doing the same exact thing with their dogs. And I find that awesome.

Pusheen!

What I find interesting about what you just said, Amanda, is that there is a history to the cats on the internet. It seems you are trying to give credit to people who created these images. There are so many floating around without regard for ownership... People taking things and appropriating ideas.

Zack: And that’s my department. I am a trust and safety agent and a community representative in terms of trust and safety. Part of the job is moderating anything that infringes on copyright, DCMA, and that inlcudes GIFs. Technically there has been no legal precedence over how a sense of ownership goes over a GIF.

Because they are almost transformative…

Zack:They are transformative enough to be your own content, so we are actually going to honor people’s ownership. We have certain policies and procedures that can prove that you created the GIF first. We all have that metadata, that is not user-facing. People often come back with “that is from a movie, how can they have ownership over a GIF.” One, there is no legal precedence and two, it is transformative enough by law to be considered fair use and their property.

It’s like sampling in music.

Zack: Yeah… It’s a very interesting case. For one, most people do not understand copyright law… like just the general public… Which is a challenge in itself. We can’t educate users because that will put us in a gray area if they misinterpret what we say. We can only point them in the right direction. So often we will be like “now is a good time to read about copyright law, here’s a link.” We give them more of an informed direction.

Need a Nap

There’s a lot of interesting things going on with people who are creating their own content on Tumblr in how we define that sense of ownership and who owns what. There was a famous court case where (and we love to tell this story at our panels at Comic-Con) a guy was traveling overseas and a monkey took his camera. The monkey took a bunch of pictures with his camera. Eventually, he got his camera back and posted the photos online. A bunch of outlets took the photo and posted it. He felt it was copyright infringement, but a judge ruled that because he didn’t take the pictures, it wasn’t. The monkey took the pictures and the monkey owned the copyright. And that’s it. You have to be the one to create the visual aspect. And that’s an interesting aspect to how we distribute content. Especially when it comes to photos.

And then there are certain parameters when it comes to the more dark web stuff… like privacy infringement. California specifically has changed privacy laws in response to the internet. We are generally heavy-handed when addressing privacy because we don’t want to be in the position of potentially breaking any laws. And that isn’t just photos. It’s phone numbers and other information that would not be public.

I could chew your ear off on policy all day…

How does a privacy policy work with memes?

Amanda: It’s so hard. I have been doing meme work now since 2011. We have shifted from “Oh, these are random images floating around the internet”, like Nyan Cat and Long cat. All of the old cat memes… No one knows the names of those cats or who owns those cats. It’s very hard to track down the information because someone just put it online on Funny Junk or some other site. People think that it can’t be traced back to me, because no one should know who I am on the internet.

Then as Facebook rolled out and the internet became more prevalent in our daily lives, things shifted. That’s when people became like “Oh, I have ownership of my internet content.” And that shift into “I own this and this is my copyright, and you can’t steal it.” has started happening. And we saw that as YouTube rose and the appearances of “Grumpy Cat”. That’s when the owners were like “This is my cat, this is my content I am making about my cat.” They got this micro-fame where they were able to turn it into money. You saw this with YouTubers like Tyler Oakley, who was able to build a brand on his internet content.

This was about the time when Fuck Jerry started to become popular. Fuck Jerry started on Tumblr as a meme repost site and Instagram account that steals everything from everywhere, and isn’t concerned with copyright. "It’s out there and now it’s mine". He has built a whole empire and made tons of money. His empire is built on stealing.

Haters Gonna Hate

There was also copyright issues around the dress. The dress that broke the internet. The girl who posted the photo did not take the picture and did not own the photo.

Zack: I remember that day because I was called down and asked: “Do you see this?” And I thought I was going crazy. I saw “blue/black”.

Amanda: I saw both… my eyes kept flipping back and forth… I really thought I was dying.

And the trend now is private facebook groups where people are making and sharing content. Then if it gets out and becomes a really big thing, do you want to admit that you made this thing in a secret FB group? The copyright thing gets blurry. Some people want to say “I own this thing and I am going to shout to the ends of the earth” and some are like “hmmm… I guess I made that. I am just going to step away from it and let the internet have it.”

Zack: There really are those two polar opposites. Working directly with it, there are people who understand the copyright laws and procedures. You swear an oath when you file a DMCA claim so we (Tumblr) are not liable. It’s a dispute between the two parties. But doing that scares a lot of people and that’s legitimate. There are people who say “I made this content” but I am not comfortable swearing an oath. Or I don’t have any proof of where it came from. There’s nothing we can do and it’s at the offending parties digression to remove the content.

Brain Freeze

The trend that I’ve been seeing, and you will see this in a lot of GIFs, people have their specific kind of signature. You’ll have these translucent tags to their blog or a copyright watermark symbol.

That trend has become more and more apparent because creators want that sense of ownership. It’s really a part of meme and GIF culture. We ask “How did you create this or make it look that way?” so we can confirm it is transformative. And then they can add a signature to it.

When we speak with artists, such as comic artists at our Comic-Con panels, we tell them “That’s the biggest thing you should do.” To prevent people from reposting or taking credit for your content, just add your name so it can’t be easily removed from the images or cropped out. It’s evolved to the point where people feel they need to protect what they create. Which is fair.

Protecting your ideas is important but there’s great benefit to people getting their stuff out there as well.

Zack: Certainly. Exposure is nice. If you are a creator and you want your content to be seen, you should put up as much as you can. If it ever comes to protecting your work, you do have that right.

I hear people say, “I don’t use Tumblr because my content is always reposted.” My response is that there is a team working around the clock to protect your content. You don’t have to file any type of government papers, as long as you are 100% sure that it’s your content, it’s safe. If that is someone’s reservation, what’s stopping you?

Every company legally has to have a team to protect from infringement and misattribution. Regardless.

Find your reactionary GIF

Click a button to display reactionary GIFs.

As they appear, you can click on individual GIFs to toggle between animate and pause.

Add a reaction:

Submit

// Create array var topics = ["wut", "dramatic", "dramatic chihuahua", "omg", "shocked"]; // Functions function renderGIFButtons() { // Clear buttons before appending $("#displayGIFButtons").empty(); // Loop through topics array for (i=0; i < topics.length; i++) { console.log(topics[i]); // Create button var a = $("<button class=\"giphy_button\">"); // Add class of topic a.addClass("topics"); // Add data-attribute a.attr("data-name", topics[i]); // Add text to button a.text(topics[i]); // Append buttons to div displayGIFButtons $("#displayGIFButtons").append(a); } } // Add topic to array $("#submitGIFButton").on("click", function(){ // This line prevents the page from refreshing when a user hits "enter". event.preventDefault(); // Get input var newTopic = $("#addTopic").val().trim(); // Add to topics array topics.push(newTopic); // Clear input field $("#addTopic").val(""); // Reset buttons renderGIFButtons(); }); // Function to display Gifs on click function displayGifs() { // Get topic name from button var topic = $(this).attr("data-name"); // Build url to use in query to API var queryURL = "https://api.giphy.com/v1/gifs/search?q=" + topic + "&api_key=dc6zaTOxFJmzC&limit=10"; // Clear old Gifs $("#gifImages").empty(); // Ajax and API $.ajax({ url: queryURL, method: "GET" }).done(function(response) { console.log(response); // Create loop to create divs for the 10 gifs in the response array for (i=0;i<response.data.length;i++) { // Create div for gif var gifDiv = $("<div class=\"giffy\">"); // Create variable for rating var gifRating = response.data[i].rating; console.log(gifRating); gifRating = gifRating.toUpperCase(); // Create and populate p to hold rating var printRating = $("<p>").text("Rating: " + gifRating); // Append to gifDiv gifDiv.append(printRating); // Get image urls var imgURL = response.data[i].images.original.url; var imgURL_still = response.data[i].images.original_still.url; // Create img var imgGif = $("<img height=\"200px\"data-state=\"still\" class=\"gif\"/>"); imgGif.attr("src", imgURL_still); imgGif.attr("data-still", imgURL_still); imgGif.attr("data-animate", imgURL); //Append to gifDiv gifDiv.append(imgGif); // Append gifDiv to gifImages div on page $("#gifImages").append(gifDiv); } }); } // Create initial buttons on page renderGIFButtons(); // Adding click event listeners to all elements with a class topics because the buttons are created dynamically $(document).on("click", ".topics", displayGifs); // Toggle animation on gif $(document).on("click",".gif", function() { // Create variable to get image state var state = $(this).attr("data-state"); console.log(state); // Check and see if it is animating or not if (state == "still") { // Change to animating src and change data-state $(this).attr("src", $(this).attr("data-animate")); $(this).attr("data-state", "animate"); } else { // Change to still src and change data-state $(this).attr("src", $(this).attr("data-still")); $(this).attr("data-state", "still"); } })

References/Links

Bad Monday

Steyerl, Hito. “In Defense of the Poor Image,” in The Wretched of the Screen. Eflux.com. Eflux, n.d. Web.

Kenyatta Cheese. “How Visual Media Affect Culture and Identity Globally”. You Tube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhN2Be4SPoE

Tumbler’s Fandometrics

Okrent, Arika. “In the Land of Invented Languages: A Celebration of Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius”, Chapter 15, “Those Queer and Mysterious Chinese Characters”, pages 160-172. Spiegel﹠Grau Trade Paperbacks, 2010

Tumblr’s Meme Librarian Has the Best Job on the Internet. Washington Post.

How much is too much? Considering infringement

Further Exploration

Contents of Maggie Stiefvater’s Brain: Post on Piracy

Fandom | Funyuns | Onion Flavored Rings

Totino’s - Live Free. Couch Hard.

Gushers

FIAT USA: Archive

adamjk serious blog

drawing megan lynn

Check, Please!

Obama Transformative Piece

[lesbianfenders]

da2 companions & memes

in order of most to least meme literate. minus sebastian cause i never got exiled prince so i don’t know him like that.

isabela: very adeptly normie-passing but in her heart of hearts? a world-class memer. a veritable copypasta compendium. she likes the classics. “haha” says hawke, genially, “what’s that one with the car... hook hand? riveting stuff.” and isabela launches into a dramatic rendition of man door hand hook car door from memory. its very moving. hawke claps politely, thinking to herself that there’s got to be SOME way to monetize this. bela’s also big into yt poops. i think in moments of quiet contemplation you can find her mumbling to herself “and im... jajvert, you know what THAT means” also she says “dont @ me” out loud. patron meme? you know i had to do it to em fenris: IF he were to be cajoled into consuming internet content besides like, politics podcasts, you KNOW he’s big into memes. fenris is great for punchlines so i think he regularly comes across posts and thinks of some brilliant fucking, zinger or some shit but since his idea of using social media is like, once a year posting a sunset and captioning it with yet another tiger truism, he doesn’t actually share it with the world. instead he just texts them all to isabela. like, if the gang’s having a political disagreement fenris isn’t participating in he’ll just lean back in his chair ascribing everyone’s positions to a place on the brain universe chakra opening meme. patron meme buy my silence permanently for $8000 a month i will stop. merrill: knows memes mainly through osmosis, because her sense of humor isn’t quite absurdist enough to be Big on memes? she’s still quite meme-literate though, mostly because when she uses the internet for stuff other than research she’s just looking for mind-numbing background noise. when she studies she’ll just put youtube on autoplay, or like put on one of those bilibili amvs that give you sensory overload in under 10 seconds. i think at some point anders walks in on merrill sitting in her room working on her thesis with one such amv on in one window and 打打打打打打打打打打 playing in the other and just. stares. open mouthed. watches the amv over her shoulder for a long moment and then says quietly, “is this naruto? i’ve heard of naruto.” anyway this is all to say that if you put heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa in front of merrill, she would recognize it. dual patron memes tuesday again no problem and this is fine burning dog

carver: ugh. i don’t want to talk about this. but carver knows all that old stuff. all your base are belong to us etc. loss jpg. 4chan stuff. patron meme all women are queens anakin

varric: only knows the most topical memes, once they get a couple months stale. why? he heard hawke talking about ways to monetize memes and he got a job as a buzzfeed writer. patron meme cracking open a cold one with the boys

anders: weirdly stuck in 2010 or something and doesn’t recognize something as a meme if it doesn’t have impact font and that pinwheel background. patron meme longcat

aveline: MIGHT know “i made you a cookie but i eated it” but finds the characters’ huge heads and tiny little spindly pill bodies disturbing. patron meme uhhhh ok i’ll admit it aveline’s got me stumped. i truly don’t know. for what it’s worth “nice night for an evening” should be a meme in its own right.

bethany: oh honey. no. patron meme are you a blank or blank lesbian

[clementinewithstress]

Rfa + searan reacting to MC being a very talented, and very respected, cage fighter? But at the same time she is very cute and smol

Hey hey~ Guess who?! Mod Ayla~! Yaas! Here to save Longcat~senpai from the stack of requests in the inbox^^ (I feel like seven when saying that holy balls) But here you go!

Yoosung

Was really confused when you wanted to take him somewhere late at night.

“MC…are you taking me to this alley to kill me?!”

After the fight he’ll just stand there, dazed.

How…you’re so..innocent..and…YOU ALMOsT KILLED THOsE PEOPLE!?

Will go into dad-mode whenever you come back from a fight, since he obviously can’t bear watching you fight or get hurt. At all.

Worried you’re hurt, so will treat your knuckles, sometimes jaw as if you were this little porcelain doll.

He honestly hates it, but will bear with you if it makes you happy

This bean is too sweet…

Zen/Hyun Ryu

When you showed one of your fights, he was pumped.

Totally down for betting like, 5000 dollars on you, even if he won’t be able to buy groceries when you lose

He’s pumped man

He digs this

Worried that all the guys in the arena will be staring at you though…

Neither does he understand…you’re such a cute little thing, but you’re so..violent?

He still digs this though lolol

Jaehee

“Huh? MC, why are we in a..rotting alley?”

Will…hate this.

I honestly believe that she’ll hate this with all her might.

Worried and dissaproved mode - activated

But, you’re happy, so she won’t complain.

No more to be said.

Jumin

When you took him to the arena, in a dangerous neighbourhood, without his guards, he got worried.

When he saw why though, he got interested.

May or may not has bet 2 million dollars on you…uhm

Will become one of those maffia bosses over there in them leather chairs, you know?

Finds it hot.

Like, really really hot.

Will have the best doctors look over your injuries after a fight.

707/Luciel/Saeyoung

He knew

Was pumped when you took him to the arena

Actually suprised you when telling you he knew where to go

Will use his skills to make your opponents look bad for media/bidders

Loves this.

Loves this so much.

Worried af that you’ll get seriously injured though.

But that’ll come later...he hopes

Unknown/Saeran

Also knew.

He isn’t one for crowds, so he stayed at home.

Watched videos of every one of your fights though.

Worried someone there might take you, or hurt you.

But you assure him you’re really good, and no one would dare to do anything serious to you.

Which means he’ll have to trust you for that.

Will send saeyoung with you though to make sure you’re okay.