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coco-loco-nut · 15 days

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Revelations

pairing: Daniel x reader

summary: Daniel casually mentions his wife after 11 YEARS OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP. Danny Ric comeback. 2025 season, he is back on rbr

request are open pookie masterlist part 2

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Being an engineer for Red Bull was something else. You have been with them since you graduated college, and truthfully you never want to leave, the team is your family, having been with them for 11 years.

You met your husband through your job, both starting at the ripe old age of 23, and despite the potential HR violations, Christian Horner practically set the two of you up on a date after being oblivious about each other’s crushes. Thus began Red Bull’s best kept secret.

“Happy 10 years, Danny,” you kiss your husband, him watching you analyze data. Christian made him promise to never use you as a mole, and the two of you very quickly agreed. Even when he was on Renault and McLaren, work talk was kept quiet. Daniel had a great season last year and was brought back to Red Bull Racing, Christian promoted you to be his race engineer, knowing Daniel would listen to you.

“Happy 10 years, my love,” he hugs you tight. Your children are home in Australia with their grandparents for the weekend.

“Good morning, Ricciardos. Happy wedding anniversary,” Christian greets you, sitting for the pre-race meeting. Christian celebrates your wedding anniversary almost as much as you do, but he is a part of the family. He officiated your wedding at this track 10 years ago today, and he is the godfather of your eldest.

“Good morning, I printed out some data sheets so we can determine strategy. I noticed some unusual tyre degradation, while it could be from the unusually high track temperatures yesterday, it is something we should plan for today,” you start, passing out the papers. Daniel will never not be able to admire you. Sometimes he misses what people say because he stares at you, the exact reason Christian helped get you two together.

“Let’s grab some coffee then go on a track walk,” Daniel holds his hand out to you after the strategy meeting, you happily take it. After your lap around the track, you meet with the other engineers while Daniel warms up and does media. As you are watching the F2 race for valuable data, someone from PR comes over to you.

“Watch this clip,” she says and you oblige.

Daniel, you seem in better spirits than usual, care to share?

I don’t know mate, I am usually a pretty happy person.

Here I was thinking that maybe you finally had a girlfriend

Nah, I don’t think my wife would be happy about that… I wasn’t really supposed to say that. If you are watching, sorry! I’ll make it up to you, love.

Well, I hope there isn’t a couch in your future. Good luck today.

Thanks, but she’s put up with me for 11 years, I doubt there will be a couch in the future.

“Oh, he might have the couch tonight,” you laugh a little, honestly surprised it took 11 years for him to accidentally say something.

“Looking back at all the photos, he is wearing a wedding ring, how did we not see that?” You hear one of the Mercedes drivers say outside the garage.

“You saw the video?” Daniel asks as you playfully glare at him.

“I did. I have a winning strategy for you, so maybe you can move off the couch tonight. Lose and you stay there longer,” you tease. Being his race engineer helps so much because you can subtly say things and no one picks it up, and any interactions between you seem normal.

“Yes, Mrs. Ricciardo,” he smiles and goes to get changed for the race.

Last car in, good luck Daniel

I don’t need luck, I have you guiding my race

Ok, Daniel, whatever you say

The strategy works out well, and planning for the hotter heat was a smart move. Christian hasn’t told you not to race with Max, so you push Daniel for the overtake.

“Come on, honey badger,” you whisper. Daniel has had the better strategy and better pacing, all day so he easily overtakes and keeps the lead through the final five laps.

Okay Daniel, last lap, Verstappen behind, keep the pace.

Does this mean I’m off the couch?

Focus.

Sorry.

And that’s P1, P1 very good, Daniel. Red Bull 1-2. You are officially off of the couch.

LET’S GO! Thank you team! I couldn’t have done it without you guys. Thanks for the brilliant strategy, and for letting me off the couch. Best wife ever.

Mhmm. Happy 10 years. Parc Ferme is clear for you, pull in so the team can celebrate.

Let’s just say that F1 TV streaming your radio broke the internet, and the drivers when they all got out of their cars and into the garages. You followed the team to wear Daniel was parking and the team pushed you to the front. Daniel celebrated there with the team, taking his helmet off and kissing you. The team wolf whistles around you.

“Go to the podium, we will celebrate with you there,” you push him in the direction of where he needs to go. Unknowingly to Daniel, Red Bull chooses you to represent them for the Constructors Trophy.

“Mate, how did you keep that a secret?” Oscar asks Daniel in the debrief room.

“It wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone in Red Bull knows most of the relationship,” Max says and Daniel nods along.

“Honestly, I don’t know how people didn’t know,” Daniel laughs. The FIA tells them to start heading out to the Podium and Daniel searches the crowd for you when he steps out, but can’t find you. He’s shocked but extremely delighted when you step out and stand beside Oscar for the Constructors trophy. The mischievous glint in his eye is a loud warning that you will be sprayed with champagne. You happily stand through the national anthems, clap when Daniel is handed the trophy, and beam with joy as you are handed the second trophy. Soon enough you are presented with champagne and the go ahead to spray it is given.

“Max!” you squeal and hide behind him as you both spray Daniel.

“Quit hiding my wife!” Daniel laughs and in a split second, your cover is gone as Max moves to spray Oscar. You and Daniel both pour the champagne in each other’s mouth.

“Ew, that’s almost as bad as if you guys were to kiss,” Max laughs. Daniel gives you a devilish smile, pulling you close to him and capturing you lips with his.

“The kids are going to be so grossed out,” you laugh and Oscar looks almost horrified.

“THE KIDS?!”

#f1 imagines #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #daniel ricciardo #daniel ricciardo x reader #daniel ricciardo imagine #daniel ricciardo imagines #oscar piastri #max verstappen #christian horner

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antiporn-activist · 2 months

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A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/us/instagram-child-influencers.html

Seeking social media stardom for their underage daughters, mothers post images of them on Instagram. The accounts draw men sexually attracted to children, and they sometimes pay to see more.

Feb. 22, 2024

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller

The ominous messages began arriving in Elissa’s inbox early last year.

“You sell pics of your underage daughter to pedophiles,” read one. “You’re such a naughty sick mom, you’re just as sick as us pedophiles,” read another. “I will make your life hell for you and your daughter.”

Elissa has been running her daughter’s Instagram account since 2020, when the girl was 11 and too young to have her own. Photos show a bright, bubbly girl modeling evening dresses, high-end workout gear and dance leotards. She has more than 100,000 followers, some so enthusiastic about her posts that they pay $9.99 a month for more photos.

Over the years, Elissa has fielded all kinds of criticism and knows full well that some people think she is exploiting her daughter. She has even gotten used to receiving creepy messages, but these — from “Instamodelfan” — were extreme. “I think they’re all pedophiles,” she said of the many online followers obsessed with her daughter and other young girls.

Elissa and her daughter inhabit the world of Instagram influencers whose accounts are managed by their parents. Although the site prohibits children under 13, parents can open so-called mom-run accounts for them, and they can live on even when the girls become teenagers.

But what often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children, an investigation by The New York Times found.

For this investigation, the reporters analyzed 2.1 million Instagram posts, monitored months of online chats of professed pedophiles and interviewed over 100 people, including parents and children.

Thousands of accounts examined by The Times offer disturbing insights into how social media is reshaping childhood, especially for girls, with direct parental encouragement and involvement. Some parents are the driving force behind the sale of photos, exclusive chat sessions and even the girls’ worn leotards and cheer outfits to mostly unknown followers. The most devoted customers spend thousands of dollars nurturing the underage relationships.

The large audiences boosted by men can benefit the families, The Times found. The bigger followings look impressive to brands and bolster chances of getting discounts, products and other financial incentives, and the accounts themselves are rewarded by Instagram’s algorithm with greater visibility on the platform, which in turn attracts more followers.

One calculation performed by an audience demographics firm found 32 million connections to male followers among the 5,000 accounts examined by The Times.

Interacting with the men opens the door to abuse. Some flatter, bully and blackmail girls and their parents to get racier and racier images. The Times monitored separate exchanges on Telegram, the messaging app, where men openly fantasize about sexually abusing the children they follow on Instagram and extol the platform for making the images so readily available.

“It’s like a candy store 😍😍😍,” one of them wrote. “God bless instamoms 🙌,” wrote another.

The troubling interactions on Instagram come as social media companies increasingly dominate the cultural landscape and the internet is seen as a career path of its own.

Nearly one in three preteens lists influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers. The so-called creator economy surpasses $250 billion worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs, with U.S. brands spending more than $5 billion a year on influencers.

Health and technology experts have recently cautioned that social media presents a “profound risk of harm” for girls. Constant comparisons to their peers and face-altering filters are driving negative feelings of self-worth and promoting objectification of their bodies, researchers found.

But the pursuit of online fame, particularly through Instagram, has supercharged the often toxic phenomenon, The Times found, encouraging parents to commodify their children’s images. Some of the child influencers earn six-figure incomes, according to interviews.

“I really don’t want my child exploited on the internet,” said Kaelyn, a mother in Melbourne, Australia, who like Elissa and many other parents interviewed by The Times agreed to be identified only by a middle name to protect the privacy of her child.

“But she’s been doing this so long now,” she said. “Her numbers are so big. What do we do? Just stop it and walk away?”

In investigating this growing and unregulated ecosystem, The Times analyzed 2.1 million Instagram posts, monitored months of online chats of professed pedophiles and reviewed thousands of pages of police reports and court documents.

Reporters also interviewed more than 100 people, including parents in the United States and three other countries, their children, child safety experts, tech company employees and followers of the accounts, some of whom were convicted sex offenders.

This is how The Times found its sample of 5,000 mom-run accounts.

The accounts range from dancers whose mothers diligently cull men from the ranks of followers, to girls in skimpy bikinis whose parents actively encourage male admirers and sell them special photo sets. While there are some mom-run accounts for boys, they are the exception.

Some girls on Instagram use their social media clout to get little more than clothing discounts; others receive gifts from Amazon wish lists, or money through Cash App; and still others earn thousands of dollars a month by selling subscriptions with exclusive content.

In interviews and online comments, parents said that their children enjoyed being on social media or that it was important for a future career. But some expressed misgivings. Kaelyn, whose daughter is now 17, said she worried that a childhood spent sporting bikinis online for adult men had scarred her.

“She’s written herself off and decided that the only way she’s going to have a future is to make a mint on OnlyFans,” she said, referring to a website that allows users to sell adult content to subscribers. “She has way more than that to offer.”

She warned mothers not to make their children social media influencers. “With the wisdom and knowledge I have now, if I could go back, I definitely wouldn’t do it,” she said. “I’ve been stupidly, naïvely, feeding a pack of monsters, and the regret is huge.”

Account owners who report explicit images or potential predators to Instagram are typically met with silence or indifference, and those who block many abusers have seen their own accounts’ ability to use certain features limited, according to the interviews and documents. In the course of eight months, The Times made over 50 reports of its own about questionable material and received only one response.

Meta, Instagram’s parent company, found that 500,000 child Instagram accounts had “inappropriate” interactions every day, according to an internal study in 2020 quoted in legal proceedings.

In a statement to The Times, Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said that parents were responsible for the accounts and their content and could delete them anytime.

“Anyone on Instagram can control who is able to tag, mention or message them, as well as who can comment on their account,” Mr. Stone added, noting a feature that allows parents to ban comments with certain words. “On top of that, we prevent accounts exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior from using our monetization tools, and we plan to limit such accounts from accessing subscription content.”

Influencers use TikTok, too, but Instagram is easier for parents to navigate and better suited to the kinds of photos that brands want. It is also home to a longstanding network of parents and brands that predated TikTok.

From time to time, Instagram removes child-influencer accounts for unspecified reasons or because people flag them as inappropriate, The Times found. In extreme cases, parents and photographers have been arrested or convicted of child exploitation, but barring evidence of illegal images, most of the activity does not draw the attention of law enforcement.

Like many parents, Elissa, who received the threatening messages about her daughter’s photos, said she protected her daughter by handling the account exclusively herself. Ultimately, she concluded, the Instagram community is dominated by “disgusting creeps,” but she nonetheless keeps the account up and running. Shutting it down, she said, would be “giving in to bullies.”

The account’s risks became apparent last spring when the person messaging her threatened to report her to the police and others unless she completed “a small task.” When she did not respond, the person emailed the girl’s school, saying Elissa sold “naughty” pictures to pedophiles.

Days later, the girl tearfully explained to her mother that school officials had questioned her about the Instagram account. They showed her images that her mother had posted — one of the girl in hot pants and fishnets, another in a leotard and sweatshirt.

Elissa had reported the blackmail to the local sheriff, but school officials only dropped the matter after an emotional interrogation of the girl.

“I was crying,” the girl said in an interview. “I was just scared. I didn’t understand what was going on.”

‘Walking Advertising’

In today’s creator economy, companies often turn to social media influencers to attract new customers. Giants like Kim Kardashian, who has 364 million followers on Instagram, have turned the phenomenon into a big business.

Young girls strive to do the same.

In the dance and gymnastics worlds, teens and preteens jockey to become brand ambassadors for products and apparel. They don bikinis in Instagram posts, walk runways in youth fashion shows and offer paid subscriptions to videos showing the everyday goings-on of children seeking internet fame.

“We costumed somebody for ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ thinking that would be huge P.R., but we ended up finding out the bigger return on investment is these microinfluencers,” she said. “We have parents that will spend thousands of dollars to buy styles that no one else will have. That’s our best market.”

The most successful girls can demand $3,000 from their sponsors for a single post on Instagram, but monetary gain can be elusive for others, who receive free or discounted clothes in exchange for their posts and have to pay for their own hairstyling and makeup, among other costs. Even youth fashion shows, including events in New York that coincide but are not affiliated with New York Fashion Week, charge the girls to participate and charge their parents to attend.

In interviews, parents defended spending the money to promote their daughters’ influencer ambitions, describing them as extracurricular activities that build confidence, develop friendships and create social media résumés that will follow them into adulthood.

“It’s like a little security blanket,” said a New Jersey mother whose mom-run account has led to paid modeling jobs for her daughter and invitations to work with sought-after choreographers. “She can help pay for college if she does it right,” she said.

A mother in Alabama said parents couldn’t ignore the reality of this new economy.

“Social media is the way of our future, and I feel like they’ll be behind if they don’t know what’s going on,” the mother said. “You can’t do anything without it now.”

One 12-year-old girl in Maryland, who spoke with The Times alongside her mother, described the thrill of seeing other girls she knows wear a brand she represents in Instagram posts.

“People are actually being influenced by me,” she said.

In 2022, Instagram launched paid subscriptions, which allows followers to pay a monthly fee for exclusive content and access. The rules don’t allow subscriptions for anyone under 18, but the mom-run accounts sidestep that restriction. The Times found dozens that charged from 99 cents to $19.99. At the highest price, parents offered “ask me anything” chat sessions and behind-the-scenes photos.

Child safety experts warn the subscriptions and other features could lead to unhealthy interactions, with men believing they have a special connection to the girls and the girls believing they must meet the men’s needs.

“I have reservations about a child feeling like they have to satisfy either adults in their orbit or strangers who are asking something from them,” said Sally Theran, a professor at Wellesley College and clinical psychologist who studies online relationships. “It’s really hard to give consent to that when your frontal lobe isn’t fully developed.”

Instagram isn’t alone in the subscription business. Some parents promote other platforms on their mom-run accounts. One of them, Brand Army, caters to adult influencers but also has “junior channel” parent-run subscriptions ranging from free to $250 monthly.

“Message me anytime. You will have more opportunities for buying and receiving super exclusive content😘,” read a description for a $25 subscription to a minor’s account. For $100 a month, subscribers can get “live interactive video chats,” unlimited direct messages and a mention on the girl’s Instagram story.

The Times subscribed to several accounts to glean what content is being offered and how much money is being made. On one account, 141 subscribers liked a photo only available to those who paid $100 monthly, indicating over $14,000 in subscription revenue.

Some of the descriptions also highlight the revealing nature of photos. One account for a child around 14 years old encouraged new sign-ups at the end of last year by branding the days between Christmas and New Year’s as “Bikini Week.” An account for a 17-year-old girl advertised that she wasn’t wearing underwear in a workout photo set and, as a result, the images were “uh … a lot spicier than usual.”

The girl’s “Elite VIP” subscription costs $250 a month.

Brand Army’s founder, Ramon Mendez, said that junior-channel users were a minority on his platform and that moderating their pages had grown so problematic that he discontinued new sign-ups.

“We’ve removed thousands of pieces of content,” he said. “The parents’ behavior is just disgusting. We don’t want to be part of it.”

‘The Wealth of the Wicked’

“You are so sexy,” read one comment on an image of a 5-year-old girl in a ruffled bikini. “Those two little things look great thru ur top,” said another on a video of a girl dancing in a white cropped shirt, who months later posted pictures of her 11th birthday party.

For many mom-run accounts, comments from men — admiring, suggestive or explicit — are a recurring scourge to be eradicated, or an inescapable fact of life to be ignored. For others, they are a source to be tapped.

“The first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do when I go to bed is block accounts,” said Lynn, the mother of a 6-year-old girl in Florida who has about 3,000 followers from the dance world.

Another mother, Gail from Texas, described being desensitized to the men’s messages. “I don’t have as much of an emotional response anymore,” she said. “It’s weird to be so numb to that, but the quantity is just astounding.”

Meta does not provide public information about who uses Instagram, so The Times analyzed data from the audience firms Modash and HypeAuditor, which estimate follower demographics based on their own algorithms.

The proportion of male followers varied greatly in The Times’s sample, according to the estimates. Many accounts had a few thousand followers who were mostly female. But while men accounted for about 35 percent of the audience overall, their presence grew dramatically as accounts became more popular. Many with more than 100,000 followers had a male audience of over 75 percent, and a few of them over 90 percent, the analysis showed.

To be sure, not all men following the accounts have bad intentions. Some are grandparents and fathers of the young influencers. Many have inoffensive profiles and simply post compliments or greetings, and mothers react appreciatively.

“In responding or even hitting ‘like’ on it, it boosts your algorithm,” said a mother in Florida whose 16-year-old daughter has been an Instagram influencer for six years. “We tried shutting comments off at one point, and some of the brands didn’t like that.”

Brands that feature children from mom-run accounts face similar challenges.

Dean Stockton, who runs a small clothing company in Florida called Original Hippie, often features girls from the Instagram accounts, who earn a commission when customers use personalized discount codes. After initially deleting many male followers, he now sees them as a way to grow the account and give it a wider audience because the platform rewards large followings.

“The Bible says, ‘The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous,’” he said. “So sometimes you got to use the things of this world to get you to where you need to be, as long as it’s not harming anybody.”

Mr. Stockton said he deleted male followers who were disrespectful or sexual in their interactions. An examination by The Times of the three dozen brands that are popular among mom-run accounts found inappropriate, predatory or pornographic followers in almost all of the brands’ accounts, including Original Hippie.

Many of the men posted pornography, or their bios included sexual language and emojis that child protection experts say pedophiles can use to signal interest in children. For instance, one follower of a children’s dance wear brand described himself as a “thong & anl sx lover.” A user named “sexy_69nazi” followed a children’s apparel company and exclusively posted pornography.

Chixit, a brand selling swimwear and other clothing, describes itself as “an International Sorority,” but business records show that it was run by Philip Russo, who advertised himself as a tutor operating out of his home in the Hudson Valley of New York. Other websites registered to Mr. Russo’s email are a tutoring business and inactive domain names describing sex with animals.

After The Times reached out to Mr. Russo, the website for his tutoring business went offline. He did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment.

‘Girls Become a Currency’

The vast world of child-influencer followers on Instagram includes men who have been charged with or convicted of sex crimes, and those who engage in forums off platform where child sexual abuse imagery, including of girls on Instagram, is shared.

The Times traced the account of one follower, who goes by the moniker “jizzquizz,” to a man named Joshua V. Rubel, 39. He was convicted in 2008 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl and is listed on the New Jersey sex offender registry. (Instagram’s policy bars sex offenders from using the platform, and the company said it removed two accounts after The Times pointed them out.)

Another account belongs to Daniel Duane Huver, a man in Lansing, Mich., who told law enforcement in 2018 that he had “top fan status” on girls’ pages, a designation bestowed by Instagram’s sister company, Facebook. The police searched Mr. Huver’s cellphone after it was confiscated by his probation officer and found hundreds of images and videos of children, including many considered inappropriate and sexually suggestive and two believed to be illegal (showing minors engaged in explicit acts.)

Mr. Huver told officers he was sexually attracted to children and masturbated to images of them, according to police records. He was charged with possession of child sexual abuse material, but the prosecutor in Eaton County later dropped charges, citing insufficient evidence because of the poor quality of the imagery.

Mr. Rubel did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Huver said that the police mischaracterized his words and that the lack of prosecution was evidence he had done nothing wrong.

In monitoring multiple Telegram chat rooms, The Times found men who treat children’s Instagram pages and subscription services as menus to satisfy their fantasies. They trade information about parents considered receptive to producing and selling “private sets” of images.

A group with more than 4,000 members was highly organized, with an F.A.Q. page and a Google sheet that tracked nearly 700 children, identifying them by hashtags to help members find them within the long chat history. The group’s logo showed a child’s hand in an adult hand.

The Times asked the Canadian Center for Child Protection, an organization that monitors online child exploitation, to review links and other potentially illegal material posted by the Telegram groups and elsewhere. The center identified child sexual abuse imagery involving multiple underage Instagram models from around the world, as well as sexualized videos of others, including a preteen girl wearing a thong and a young teenager raising her dress to show her bikini bottom.

Men in these groups frequently praise the advent of Instagram as a golden age for child exploitation.

“I’m so glad for these new moms pimping their daughters out,” wrote one of them. “And there’s an infinite supply of it — literally just refresh your Instagram Explore page there’s fresh preteens.”

A small group of men go even further and cultivate business and patronage relationships with mothers.

One man posts videos and photos on Instagram of girls thanking him for shopping sprees, gifts like iPhones and iPads, and cash. If he does not receive a message of gratitude quickly, he sometimes shames the mother and daughter on his private Instagram account.

Another makes recommendations about increasing visibility by using specific hashtags and photographers. But two mothers said they became suspicious, and stopped working with the man, after he suggested they make certain their daughters’ nipples and other private areas could be detected through their outfits.

A third man tried to persuade a mother to sell her daughter’s used leotards because many men, including himself, were “collectors,” according to a recording of the conversation.

“In retrospect I feel like such a stupid mom, but I’m not stupid,” said a mother of a young gymnast, who dealt with similar men before she realized they were predators and received threatening messages from several of them. “I didn’t understand what grooming was.”

Sometimes the men flirt or try to develop virtual romances with mothers, offer to protect them and become possessive and angry if they interact with other men.

“It’s almost like the girls become a currency,” said the gymnast’s mother, who did not want to be named.

This feeling of ownership and jealousy can drive attempts at blackmail, The Times found.

Instamodelfan, who sent threatening messages to Elissa, sent blackmail threats to at least five other mom-run accounts. When one mother responded, he demanded that she sexually abuse her child and send him photos and videos, emails to the mother show. She refused and contacted law enforcement.

The Times communicated with a person identified on Telegram as Instamodelfan who said that he lashed out at the mothers because he believed other men got illegal images of children and he wanted them for himself.

Reporters also received information from an anonymous tipster, who they later found was linked to the blackmailer, indicating that some parents had produced explicit imagery of their daughters.

The Canadian center reviewed the imagery and said it included illegal nude photos of two girls. One girl’s mother said she was shaken to learn of the photos and did not know who could have made them. The other girl, now 17, said in an interview that the photos were for her and a girlfriend and that she told law enforcement that they had been stolen.

Others images either were borderline illegal, were too poor quality to be conclusive or were digitally altered, the center said.

Several mothers who had been identified by the tipster said they reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, they said, had conducted an investigation. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Ultimately, the gymnast’s mother said, a federal agent told them to stop talking to men online.

“They told everyone to get off Instagram,” she said. “‘You’re in over your head. Get off.’ That’s what they told us.”

‘My Limit of Pedophiles’

Meta failed to act on multiple reports made by parents and even restricted those who tried to police their own followers, according to interviews and materials provided by the parents.

If parents block too many followers’ accounts in a day, Meta curtails their ability to block or follow others, they said.

“I remember being told, like, I’ve reached my limit,” said a mother of two dancers in Arizona who declined to be named. “Like what? I reached my limit of pedophiles for today. OK, great.”

Mr. Stone, the Meta spokesman, said “there are lots of reasons an account might face limitations or restrictions based the account’s activity,” and therefore it was difficult to know why parents encountered these problems.

Ms. Pastore of LA Dance Designs said it was “very much overdue” for Instagram to add the ability to filter by age and sex to help identify suspicious followers. “If you’re starting to gain a following, there needs to be some sort of way to control it,” she said.

Even some egregious violations led to no action by Meta.

One parent reported a photo of erect male genitalia sent in a direct message. Another reported an account that reposted children’s photos with explicit captions. A third reported a user who propositioned her child for sex, offering $65,000 for “an hour” with the girl.

In response to those three reports, Meta said either that the communications did not violate “community guidelines” or that its staff did not have time to review them. In other cases, Meta told parents that it relied on its “technology” to determine the content was “probably” not a violation.

Separately, The Times found comments that included links to sites identified by the Canadian center as trading illegal, nude imagery of children. None of those reports received a response from Meta.

Former Meta trust and safety employees described an organization overwhelmed despite knowing about the problem for years.

“You hear, ‘I reported this account, it was harassing my daughter, why is he back?’” said a former investigator for the company who requested anonymity. “There are not enough people, resources and systems to tackle all of it.”

In recent years, conspiracy theories like QAnon, which claims Democratic politicians are trafficking children, have led to an excess of unfounded reports that have muddled the evaluation of child abuse tips, three former Meta trust and safety employees said.

A 2020 document that surfaced in a lawsuit described child safety as a “non-goal” at Meta. “If we do something here, cool,” the document said. “But if we do nothing at all, that’s fine too.” The lawsuit was brought against Meta and other companies claiming damage from using social media. Lawyers for the plaintiffs declined to provide more information about the document.

In documents from 2018 included in a separate lawsuit making similar claims of harm, a top Facebook executive told Instagram’s chief executive that unless changes were made, Facebook and Instagram were “basically massive ‘victim discovery services,’” an allusion to the considerable evidence of abuse on the platforms.

Mr. Stone, the Meta spokesman, disputed the suggestion that the trust team was understaffed and underfunded, saying that 40,000 employees worked on safety and security and that the company had invested $20 billion in such efforts since 2016. He also referred to a previous statement about the lawsuits, saying they “mischaracterize our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents.”

In addition, he noted that Meta reported more suspected child abuse imagery to the authorities than any other company each year. In December, it announced plans to encrypt its messaging services, which would reduce the reports.

‘It’s All Over Instagram’

Experts in child protection and development say young people should never be made to have negative feelings about their bodies. But clothing that is appropriate in a gym or dance competition may take on an unintended meaning when shared online.

Children’s dance attire regularly features strappy bra tops, sheer fabric and bikini bottoms, and popular cheer outfits combine sports bras with little skirts — part of a long-term trend toward more revealing clothing for girls.

“In the dance world we’re in, they’re half naked all the time and their legs are in the air,” said a mother in Massachusetts who declined to be named. “And if you’re not used to seeing that, maybe it’s different.”

Lynn, whose granddaughter in Texas is an ambassador for a cheerleading brand, said there was no logic to the reactions her posts received. Photos of the girl’s feet attract the most extreme comments, she said. “You can’t stop weird people, I guess.”

Still, many of the would-be influencers suffer. In some instances criticism of the posts, and accompanying bullying, becomes so severe that mothers turn to home-schooling.

“She got slaughtered all through primary school,” said Kaelyn, the mother in Melbourne. “Children were telling her, ‘We can’t play with you because my mom said too many perverts follow you on the internet.’”

In the United States, parents have substantial leeway in making decisions about their children. But people who suspect illegal behavior on Instagram quickly discover that the authorities are overwhelmed and typically focus on the clearest-cut cases.

Even the most unsettling images of sexualized child influencers tend to fall into a legal gray area. To meet the federal definition of so-called child pornography, the law generally requires a “lascivious exhibition” of the anal or genital area, though courts have found the requirement can be met without nudity or sheer clothing.

There have been criminal prosecutions against parents accused in child sexual abuse cases.

In Louisiana last year, a mother was arrested and charged with working with a photographer to produce illegal images of her daughter in a thong bikini. In Texas, a mother was sentenced to 32 years in prison in December for producing nude photos of her 8-year-old daughter with the same photographer. And in North Carolina, a mother is awaiting trial on charges that she took her 15-year-old daughter to a photographer who sexually abused her and she failed to get medical help when the girl tried to kill herself, according to court documents.

Still, those prosecutions are rare, and some male followers of the mom-run accounts openly welcome the windfall.

“As long as this stuff legally exists, I just enjoy it :),” one of them wrote on Telegram.

“Exactly,” another responded. “It’s all over Instagram.”

#there's no hope for women

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mooncurses · 3 months

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To add to the current trend of calling out the bullshit that Zionists spout, here's a collection of not so fun facts for my friends outside of Italy.

Some of you may have heard of how Ghali, one of the most famous singers in Italy who is of Tunisian descent, has been criticized by Israel's Ambassador to Italy Alon Bar, who accused him of spreading hate just because he called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Then to remind us all of how much of a grip on the balls of our entire nation Isr*el has, a letter recounting the October 7 happenings was read on air to "balance" things out politically speaking (as our useless Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister stated, whatever the fuck that means). On his part Ghali responded with confusion and honesty, simply saying that as an artist he's always going to use his platform to talk about what he thinks is important, besides the fact that he's always been supportive of the Palestinian people since he was a kid (thus reiterating how their struggle has NOT started on October 7). In no part he ever invoked anything but peace, and yet he sparked controversy.

Of course what this episode merely sheds light on is the shameful and blatant climate of selfcensorship that has taken over the Italian mainstream media. It's not even an isolated accident: just days prior another contestant of the Sanremo festival, Dargen D'Amico, was attacked by the mainstream press after he dared take a minute after his exhibition to remind everyone that with our silence we are all complicit in the deaths of countless children right now. Sure enough he was forced to apologize "for getting political" the very day after.

To protest this cowardly and disgusting attitude that has become the standard in Italy, a peaceful sit-in was organized today in Naples in front of RAI (the public TV network that broadcast the Sanremo festival and that is funded with tax payers' money). After the protestants tried to hang a pro-Palestine banner on the fence of the building, police brutality quickly ensued and several people got hurt after being hit in the head with batons (you can find a video of the whole scene unfolding here).

So the thing here is that you can see how the top brass of our government desperately wants us all to just be complacent in the killing of Palestinians at hands of Isr*el. Much like what happened with the bombing of Rafah carefully made to overlap with the Super Bowl, the pro Isr*el Western governements very much hope that our silence can be bought with as little as good old panem et circaenses. And I've gotta say, at least in the case of Italy, it's almost like in doing so they forget how we young people were taught about genocide in the first place.

They drilled an acute awareness of what genocide looks like into each of our heads throughout our whole grade school life. We would hold our yearly minute of silence for the victims of the Holocaust on Remembrance Day without fail, we would read "Se Questo È Un Uomo" by Primo Levi as early as eight grade and analyze it thoroughly. We would study Hannah Arendt's philosophy while focusing especially on her ideas about the banality of evil that she witnessed during the Nuremberg Trials. Most high schools organized mandatory conferences with Holocaust survivors as speakers and visits at the local synagogue, as well as extra curricular activities (I'm talking weeks long train trips to Dachau and other concentration camps while accompanied by members of survivors associations and historians) to further spread awareness about the horror of the Holocaust and make sure that we would never let it happen again, that we would take a strong stance against it if the situation ever called for it.

And now we are living through the first genocide that's being documented live for the whole world to see and yet apparently nobody can say nothing about it. The countries that so far have taken a strong stance against Isr*el are so few it's absurd considering the enormous amount of damning evidence of war crimes, human trafficking, and ultimately ethnic cleansing that Isr*el is carrying out. It's even more absurd if you think of how casual the Isr*elis are about all of this, perfectly knowing that as long as they are backed by the world's largest powers they are basically untouchable. The banality of evil for real.

But here's the thing. Isr*el is just a country run by the military and made up of brainwashed ultranationalist colonialists, who think it is their birth right to kill every last Palestinian and mock their suffering because that's what they've been told confidently their whole lives. They think that the suffering their people lived in the past made them beyond moral reproach today, that their right to self-defense can spill over to offense and nobody will ever blame them, and they are so convinced of this that they will respond to actual accusations of genocide and war crimes simply by saying "that's antisemitic" and moving on.

Even just recalling the words of Holocaust survivors who spoke up about genocide has stopped clicking in the heads of many people because they see everything pertaining to the Jews as exceptional in its political, social, and historical dimensions, even when it's not. To better explain what I mean let me summarize another fun fact from very recent happenings in Italy. This last January 27, on Remembrance Day, several protests by young people of Palestinian descent and other supporters were held in various cities to condemn Isr*el's actions in Palestine, despite having been forbidden for "security reasons" after some complaints of the Jewish community called for the protest to be rescheduled. Some of the words that were written on the banners that the protestors held are quotes of Primo Levi, a writer and Holocaust survivor who passed in 1987. The aftermath of the protests was basically centered around Noemi Di Segni, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), who said that the remembrance of Levi's words should be left to Jews, and then called for an end to the "verbal violence" against Jews that pro Palestine stances imply.

"Cease the fire of words against us is what we say to those who continue to accuse Israel of war crimes and genocide, with slogans based on nationality and faith, giving credence only to Hamas propaganda and giving new life to prejudices that we had hoped were extinct," Di Segni said. She also said that this kind of "Islamic suprematism" should look for quotes elsewhere, basically.

The funny thing here, however, is that the words that Levi originally spoke and that Di Segni and many other Zionists say have been "appropriated" by Palestinians were words that were never meant to be exclusively related to the Holocaust and the persecution of Jews specifically. All the contrary, they invite caution especially by reiterating that everyone needs to retain awareness of the horrors of genocide, because anyone (even Jews themselves in theory) could let such unspeakable things happen again if they let themselves forget. These are the words:

"Se comprendere è impossibile conoscere è necessario, perché ciò che è accaduto può ritornare, le coscienze possono nuovamente essere sedotte ed oscurate: anche le nostre". (trans: "If understanding is impossible then knowing is necessary, because what happened can come back, the consciences can again be seduced and obscured: even ours.")

This is important because to imply as Di Segni did that the Holocaust is a self contained episode in history, that words of warning against genocide in general can only be used in the context of a particular genocide that happened over 75 years ago, is the exact opposite of what survivors like Levi wanted the world to think.

The title Levi gave to what his English-language publishers called “Survival in Auschwitz” was “Se Questo È un Uomo” (“If This Is a Man”). The Nazis’ crime, he believed, was to treat the Jews as if they weren’t men—human beings. But the Jews’ suffering, he said, did not make them better people, or give them special rights. They had to observe the same moral standards as anyone else. Levi abhorred what we now call “exceptionalism.” This affected his views on Israel. He repeatedly condemned the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians. When, in 1982, the Israelis stood by as the Christian Phalangists massacred the Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila, he called for the resignation of Ariel Sharon and Menachem Begin. “Everybody is somebody’s Jew,” he told a reporter, Filippo Gentiloni, from the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, and he cited the abuse of Poland by the Russians and the Germans. At that point in the interview, printed on June 29, 1982, Gentiloni closed the Levi quote and added a sentence of his own: “And today Palestinians are the Jews of the Israelis.”

Anyways, keep calling things as you see them. It may piss off some people, but it's the only way things can actually start to change in such a mud pool of empty politics and performative activism such as what we're witnessing in most Western countries.

#palestine #italy #sanremo #free palestine #anti israel #ceasefire

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blues-valentine · 2 months

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Dune Spoilers:

I like the Dune book series - it’s one of the first sci fic books I ever read and we all know they're the blueprint. And Deni's movies are a visual masterpiece. With that being said, I have some issues with the movies because of their use of Arab culture to build their world while most of their cast and staff isn’t even middle eastern. But I don’t feel I have the authority to talk about it so I’ll refer to some posts. (x x x)

But with a lot of criticism I disagree with the takes about the movie showing us a "white savior trope" and I don’t want to yell that media literacy is death when it comes to analyzing entertainment but yes because Paul Atreides is being portrayed as a cautionary tale since the very first introduction to Dune in the movies. Chani starts the movie explaining Arraki’s story about being invaded and under the ex rule of an imperial house and asks the following question: “Who’ll our next oppressors be?” while cutting directly to Paul and starting his journey. Paul isn’t being shown as the white savior that will free the Fremen from the imperial rule and get them the paradise they see in the prophecy. He quickly becomes a power hungry leader with a god complex and I think Dune: Part Two heavily showcases this transition. Paul spends a lot of time denying what he could be and when he has the ability to see he can win and rule the world - his greed takes over.

Paul’s ascent to power in the 3rd act isn’t even being portrayed as a good thing — it’s supposed to be dark and full of warnings about the tyrant he’ll become. It’s there in his scary speech and Chani’s face. Both Paul and Jessica are being shown as manipulative people that are leading the Fremen into false hopes and religious fanaticism. Paul knew from the very start that the Bere Gesserit were planting ideas on the Fremen about him being the one - and he knew he needed to convince the remaining doubtful people of the prophecy if he wanted them on his side for his revenge. He was using the Fremen for his vengeance agaisnt the emperor. And he might’ve fallen in love with Chani and genuinely believe his place is at Arrakis' but he quickly transforms into the Messiah that plays into people’s false worship. He knows the easiest way to control the Fremen is by playing into the prophecy.

Paul’s Atraides isn’t about a hero’s journey but mostly the journey of an anti hero. We are not supposed to think he is the good guy. In the books there’s this important quote from Frank Herbert’s himself: “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a hero.” because Paul isn’t there to save them from colonialism just replacing their old oppressors (Harkonnen) with him.

And I was pleasantly surprised with the changes in Chani’s character by her having more agency by being a freedom fighter and the only one seeing the wrongs in the increasing fanaticism towards Paul and the dangers this means for her people instead of playing the passive girlfriend that sticks by his side despite him becoming everything he swore won't be like in the books. And I really hope they change some parts of her arc in the last movie and she goes against him. Or at the very least have her still present a strong opposition to his world view. It would turn their relationship more interesting than her spending 12 years as his concubine wanting to bear him children and dying for it. I think Denis seems to be planning a better way to portray the women in the last movie and I can't wait to see what he does with them.

I just feel like people will get to Dune: Messiah and be so confused as if Paul going into a dark path and becoming Arraki's next oppressor wasn't pretty much there all along.

#dune #dune part two #dune part 2 #dune movie #text post #chani kynes #paul atreides

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angelicguy · 6 months

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whats been infuriating about the american response to gaza is how every pundit and creep imaginable who cannot possibly think of themselves as anything but the perfect analyst for all situations are commenting on seven thousand innocent dead palestinians like they can conceptualize the horror and pain that theyre going through. fat pig fingered media sick americans thinking theyve experienced even a percentage of their pain, its a little game to be analyzed and commented on, waggling their fingers at everyones reactions, fucking sick in the head psychos completely devoid of any real love for a shared human experience. "well actually have you considered that hamas was voted in..." bringing that level of analysis that even approaches justifying seven thousand dead men women and children like theyre morally responsible for whats happened to them. like christ. i dont wanna post about it too much because, yeah, i am also a thick necked dipshit american, my input other than conditionless support is pretty useless, but god damn. how could anyone see whats going on, over 7k dead, and decide their "take" is required at all

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 months

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By: Leor Sapir and Colin Wright

Published: Jun 9, 2023

A federal court on Tuesday temporarily blocked enforcement of a Florida law that prohibits the administration of sex-change procedures on children under 18. The opinion, by Judge Robert L. Hinkle, leans heavily on medical and scientific rationales to argue that it is unconstitutional to ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery on teenagers who feel alienated from their bodies.

Twenty states maintain age restrictions on sex-change procedures, and the problem they face is explaining to judges that American medical associations aren’t following the best available evidence. This is known to European health authorities and has been reported in such prestigious publications as the British Medical Journal. But American judges need some way to evaluate conflicting scientific authorities—especially as institutions responsible for ensuring that medical professionals have access to high-quality research aren’t functioning as they should.

A case in point: Springer, an academic publishing giant, has decided to retract an article that appeared last month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The retraction is expected to take effect June 12.

The article’s authors are listed as Michael Bailey and Suzanna Diaz. Mr. Bailey is a well-respected scientist, with dozens of publications to his name. The other author writes under a pseudonym to protect the privacy of her daughter, who suffers from gender dysphoria.

Their new paper is based on survey responses from more than 1,600 parents who reported that their children, who were previously comfortable in their bodies, suddenly declared a transgender identity after extensive exposure to social media and peer influence. Mr. Bailey’s and Ms. Diaz’s sin was to analyze rapid onset gender dysphoria, or ROGD. Gender activists hate any suggestion that transgender identities are anything but innate and immutable. Even mentioning the possibility that trans identity is socially influenced or a phase threatens their claims that children can know early in life they have a permanent transgender identity and therefore that they should have broad access to permanent body-modifying and sterilizing procedures.

Within days of publication, a group of activists wrote a public letter condemning the article and calling for the termination of the journal’s editor. Among the letter’s signatories is Marci Bowers, a prominent genital surgeon and president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an advocacy organization that promotes sex changes for minors.

Nearly 2,000 researchers and academics signed a counter letter in support of the article. Springer nonetheless decided to retract the paper without disciplining its editor. Springer initially asserted that the study needed approval from an institutional review board. But it quickly abandoned that rationale, which was false.

The publisher now maintains that the retraction is due to improper participant consent. While the respondents consented to the publication of the survey’s results, Springer insists they didn’t specifically agree to publication in a scholarly or peer-reviewed journal. That’s a strange and retrospective requirement, especially considering that Springer and other major publishers have published thousands of survey papers without this type of consent.

Anyone familiar with the controversy over transgender medicine knows what is going on. Activists put pressure on Springer to retract an article with conclusions they didn’t like, and Springer caved in. We’ve become accustomed to seeing these capitulations in academia, media and the corporate world, but it is especially disturbing to see in a respected medical journal.

Rather than appreciate the long-term risk to itself and the scientific community from doing the bidding of activists, Springer has instead agreed to evaluate and retract all survey papers that lack the newly required consent. If Springer follows through on its promise, hundreds of authors who chose to publish in Springer’s journals may have their research retracted.

The publications that support what they call “gender-affirming care” rely heavily on surveys. The U.S. Transgender Survey of 2015, for instance, has generated several influential papers. As it happens, the USTS didn’t inform participants that their answers would be published in peer-reviewed journals.

This kind of double standard runs through gender-medicine research. Papers advocating “gender transition” are readily accepted by leading scientific journals despite having grave methodological flaws and biases. Work that questions gender-transition orthodoxy stands almost no chance of being published in the best-known journals. Every now and then, an errant research paper slips past the censors, but should it prove significant enough to threaten the settled science narrative, retribution is swift and merciless. The researcher Lisa Littman learned this lesson in 2018, when she was widely attacked after publishing on the topic. Mr. Bailey and Ms. Diaz are learning it now.

The idea is to manufacture the appearance of scientific consensus where there is none. The pseudo-consensus then allows such American medical associations as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society to recommend body-altering procedures for children.

While many Americans have heard news about the wave of states passing legislation that curbs sex changes for the young, few realize that an equally fierce, and arguably far more important, battle is raging: the battle for the integrity of the scientific process. It is a fight for the ability to have censorship-free scientific debate as a means to advance human knowledge.

Here's the thing: even if it's wrong, you refute it by making a better scientific case, with better evidence. You show where the flaws are. You don't throw a hissy-fit and cry until it goes away.

#Leor Sapir #Colin Wright #medical corruption #academic corruption #ROGD #rapid onset gender dysphoria #social contagion #gender ideology #genderwang #queer theory #religion is a mental illness

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shouldiusemyname · 9 months

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Only Friends - The Voice of the 80's Babies

Long post

Inspired by this post by @chicademartinica and bestie @thegalwhorants's comment about the wardrobe. Also this post from @blmpff which really made me think I'm in the right direction...

Before I get into this I just wanna say that I'm posting this very hesitantly as it's a very personal view of this show (possibly within the Jojo-verse). I might be reading too much into this and projecting my own experience and the fact that Jojo is about my age, but OF feels very much a reaction of my generation. I realize that most of what I'm going to say will sound familiar and relevant to everyone (not just 80's babies) but I'll try to explain the difference between what I read as a general generational experience and a universal experience.

I said it before and after watching the first ep it has never been clearer that Only Friends is what happens when 80's babies are given a chance to settle scores.

Everything about this show screams I WAS A TEENAGER IN THE 90'S!

First of all - the clothes! EVERYTHING they're wearing is like it's taken from my high school photos 😅 I know fashion is fluid and trends will make a comeback periodically, but given what I feel they're trying to say, I believe it's intentional.

The Sex of it All

It's like a direct reaction to the way we were raised and the relationship my generation has with sex. This is very regional and cultural, but generally speaking sex was not discussed as a natural aspect of life and relationships. Sex was either shameful, dirty, reproductive, or (the worst option) over discussed without healthy boundaries. My parents' generation didn't have the tools to discuss sex with their children in a healthy way because they were also denied this conversation by their parents. So, they either hid it or overshared.

So, my generation was raised (by western media basically) believing that everyone must have sex and our social standing is directly linked to whether or not we were having sex (who said American Pie?). We weren't given the option to have different views. We were trapped by this extremely deformed view of sex and relationships.

Watching this show and the discussion around it feels like creators are calling bullshit on everything we were told about sex.

Stuck in the Middle

I'm going to generalise here, but basically people who are just slightly older than us (meaning my generation) have this very black and white attitude towards sex - there's the right time to start having sex, your partner matters (in the way that you should be in love or in a relationship), relationships are monogamous, and kink is a deviation (don't even get me started on queerness - you were either gay, straight, or a crossdresser).

On the other hand, 90's babies were born into a much wider and open world that gave them the opportunity to get a much broader picture and view about relationships and how sex plays into them. This is even as basic as just having a wider vocabulary to talk about it.

My generation was, however, stuck in the middle, left to really hindsight our way through our perception of sex and its place in relationships.

In my 20's I've witnessed so many conversations where people were analyzed over the fact that they choose not to have sex like there's something wrong with them. Why are you not having sex? What's wrong with you? You're waiting for love? - don't waste your time. You're just going to fuck whoever? - that's just wrong. There's no winning.

Furthermore, when considering what Jojo said about the discussion around queer sex in queer shows and bl - my generation was raised with the idea that being queer (which was then just being gay) was all about who you have sex with. No one ever said anything about love or gender. When I was figuring out my own sexuality, being queer was about who you wanted to sleep with, not who you loved. We still see this today when people believe that our queerness is defined by whether or not we are having queer sex, and I believe this is at least part of what @bengiyo is talking about when he talks about the internalised homophobia. This is so much of my generation carrying and passing it on because we were denied these conversations.

So Now What?

Now, creating a show that is about sex, queer sex, and how it plays into queer relationships is reclaiming the conversation about queerness as an expression of love as well as sexuality. We deserve to discuss these issues as a generation that was denied these conversations whether queer or not. And somehow, these issues are discussed more freely and openly within queerness as it has the advantage of being free of heteronormative notions.

Another reason I believe this is generational is the fact that Jojo is consistently having this discussion within his shows. I don't know how to explain it, but his shows feel like screaming liberation, like he's walking around with a baseball bat (preferably Only Friends branded) and smashing these false ideas one by one. Which is why I believe we need to look at this show as part of the Jojo-verse shows along with The Warp Effect, 3 will be free and Gay OK Bangkok. Jojo is on a mission.

Expression Within The Show

Ok, so what am I getting at after I had you read my trip to the shrink?

I believe that ALL OF THIS is expressed in the show through the group dynamics we see in our friend group. They all represent different notions and they will fight over dominance. This is the power struggle that my generation is trapped in. We need and deserve to say our peace.

This is what I meant when I said that OFTS is what happens when you're an 80's baby with shit to say.

As usual thank you for reading my ramblings. I hope you get what I'm trying to say, and clearly have issues 😅 so feel free to comment and give perspective...

#my trip to the shrink #only friends #ofts #jojo-verse meta

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marvelslut16 · 7 months

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Acquaint Yourself With The Avengers

Prompt number: 29 "That's all? Easy."

Fandom: Marvel

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!reader

Rating: E(veryone)

Word count: 4.2k+

Warnings: Maybe some swearing. Slow Burn? Reality TV show hate. Bucky (and readers') self hatred. Talk of death.

A/N: Hey guys! I feel like I've been gone forever- work is killing me! But I'm back for Fictober and I'm really hoping I'll finally do the whole month. This is part 1 of 2 I think- but I'm open to writing more in this universe. Part two will be up in a few days if not tomorrow. I have never watched a reality TV show, so please bare with me for the mistakes I no doubt made.

“This has to be a joke,” you deadpan, throwing the joke of a contract onto the table in front of you. Steve murmurs in agreement on your left, and an increasingly uncomfortable Bucky shifts in his seat to Steve’s left. “Tony, reality shows are crap. What were you thinking?”

“This is coming from higher up than me,” he rubs his temples, giving away his exasperation. Over the years Tony started to slowly step out of the spotlight, no longer seeking out media coverage. “It’s directly from Fury, and the few Congress members that are still on our side. Since the Accord drama our ratings have been dipping, we need them to see that underneath it all we’re just human.”

“And if I don’t agree to it?” your voice hardens as you have a staring contest with the billionaire.

“Then you’re out.”

“So you’re telling me if I don’t exploit my life, if we all don’t exploit our lives- we’re kicked to the curb. Just like that? Years of work and helping people just flushed down the toilet?” you’re on the verge of angry tears.

Your mother had drilled into your brain since you were a young impressionable child, that reality shows were trash, that they did more harm than good. The worse things people did on these shows the more famous they got, it teaches young children that they’ll get rewarded for their bad behavior. You wonder what she would think of you now, about to agree to become that trash just so you can continue to help the people that are bound to talk shit about each and every one of your friends online.

“I agree with (Y/N/N),” Steve finally speaks up, quickly glancing at Bucky’s clenched fists. “Bucky shouldn’t be subjected to having twenty cameras shoved in his face, not so soon after rejoining society.”

It’s been a month since Bucky came to live with everyone at the newly built compound, he had spent the previous three months after the Accords in Wakanda receiving the best help Shuri could provide. You wouldn’t say that you and Bucky are friends, but you two are definitely friendlier than he is with most of the team. You’ve never pushed him to talk, you two can sit in peaceful silence, something Sam does regularly because of his experience with PTSD and the benefits of talking about it.

“You’re just worried that more people are going to start speculating that you're dating him,” Sam joins the conversation, referencing the newest gossip article published today. Some ‘news’ site wrote a fifteen paragraph article speculating on a non-existent romance between the super soldiers, stemming from one single photo of Steve standing half in front of Bucky and pushing a camera out of his face on the way into a restaurant- for a team dinner.

“On the topic of relationships, I don’t really want a bunch of cameras in mine and Clint’s,” Natasha speaks up from the other side of the table, Clint nods along.

“The last thing people need is hours of footage of Vis and me to analyze and bully us about, I already get enough judgment and hate,” Wanda adds, crossing her arms over her chest. Vis rests a comforting hand on her soldier, he’s learned enough about human emotions- especially Wanda’s- to know not to add anything.

“You guys are overreacting,” Sam rolls his eyes. “Plus this could be a good time to promote things we’re passionate about, like group therapy for Veterans.”

“It sounds fun,” Thor booms, you roll your eyes. No one will say anything about him, he’s conventionally attractive, has a sexy accent, and he’s a literal God. He has nothing but adoring fans.

“All publicity is good publicity,” Tony grimaces. “We can’t go any lower, we’re already at the bottom of the barrel.”

“Peter’s lucky he’s a minor and anonymous,” you pout, out of the corner of your eye you can see Bucky crack a small smile. With that one final comment you're signing the contract, because at the end of the day you’ll do whatever it takes to be able to help those in need. Everyone has a similar vein of thought, all signing their own contracts.

Later that night you're sitting in the living room with Bucky, the News is playing in the background, but neither of you had been paying it any mind. You’re too focused on coming up with worst case scenarios about the impending reality show. Bucky can practically hear the gears whirring in your head, he keeps glancing over at you to make sure you're okay. Not that you notice because you're too wrapped up in your own little world.

“What if they edit it to make one of us the villain?” you ask out of nowhere, this is the first time you’ve broken the peaceful silence in the months you’ve been sitting with him. “Sorry, forget I said anything, I’m gonna head to bed.”

“It’ll be me,” Bucky whispers when you stand up from the couch. “They’ll take this opportunity to show everyone what a monster I am.”

“You aren’t a monster Bucky,” you squat down in front of him when you see that he’s staring at his lap. “You can’t be blamed for what Hydra made you do. And anyway, they usually pick an unsuspecting person on one of these shows and edit it so their words and actions are all twisted. They ruin people’s characters, not make hard hitting political statements.”

“You think they’ll target you?” he asks it like it’s a question, but it’s more of a statement.

“Yeah I do,” you sigh, standing up and plopping on the couch beside Bucky for the first time. “I’m mysterious, or at least that’s what Tony and Peter keep telling me. I don’t have a big social media presence, I do my best to avoid the paparazzi when I go out, and I very rarely speak at press conferences. If they don’t make me the villain, I’m worried they’ll hyperfocus on me until I slip up and become one.”

“I think it’ll be Vision, since he’s a robot,” Bucky adds after a minute of silence, and you can’t help but smile at him.”

Before you know it, Wednesday rolls around, and the fifteen person crew shows up to invade your lives. You start to get overwhelmed by the ten cameras they are setting up, two in a confessional area, and the other three in the living room where you are all supposed to do your opening scripted talk- where Tony will explain why you guys are doing the reality show Acquaint Yourself With The Avengers. On top of those cameras, the crew are setting up hidden and security cameras to catch the action when they aren’t there filming on the main ones. Once you're all seated on the couches- your stuffed between Bucky and Sam- the PA, Alice, comes over to talk to you all.

“So filming will happen Thursday through Tuesday most weeks, unless a big event falls on an off day, crew leaves by ten PM at the latest, and the hidden cameras will go dormant after midnight. No children will be in the final product- as requested by Scott, we can evaluate on a case by case basis if any of the rest of you choose to have children down the line and want to show them. Are there any questions?” she asks, but gives a look that screams not to ask any. “Well if there aren’t any, we should get to shooting, we’re already twenty minutes behind.”

You say your two scripted lines in the beginning scene and then zone out through the rest, you’re a little worried your face will give your lack of enthusiasm away, but none of the crew says anything so you assume you're fine. Soon enough, you're dismissed, but not allowed to go far because the first interviews for all of you are about to take place in the dining room. You and Bucky both stay firmly planted on the couch while most of the others go to the kitchen to get something to drink, or lurk in the dining room to watch said interviews- Steve being the first to be interviewed.

“Just act like the camera’s aren't there,” you say unhelpfully when you notice his gaze shifting uneasily from one camera to the next. In reality you too are struggling with them watching you from every possible angle.

“That’s all? Easy,” Bucky deadpans, a laugh bursts out of your mouth and his eyes twinkle.

“Did you just make a joke,” you laugh again, this time far quieter. For the first time since the camera crew arrived you forget they’re there, too lost in this one real moment with Bucky, too lost in his gorgeous crystal blue eyes. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen him let his guard down with anyone other than Steve.

“And if I did?” he asks playfully, leaning in closer to you, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Then I’d say do it more often, it’s a good look on you,” you grin back at him, and you're only broken out of your trance when Alice calls for Tony.

She calls you after Tony, hair and makeup come rushing over to give tiny last minute adjustments to your appearance after you're seated in front of a ring light. You start to fidget with the hem of your shirt as the PA flips through her paper to get to her list of questions about you, the suspense just making your anxiety skyrocket.

“To start off we’re just going to ask some easy and basic questions to get you warmed up. So (Y/N), you’ve been with the Avengers since it was first formed, tell us what that’s been like, and make sure you put the question in your answer.”

“I’ve been with the Avengers since 2011, I was the second one Director Fury recruited, right after Tony. I’ve loved all of the good deeds we have been able to do for people all over the world, and I’ve made some lifelong friendships too. It’s amazing being able to do something you love with the people you love.”

“Good good,” Alice nods, looking down at her questions. “Now tell us how you feel about all of the new auditions to the team since then, and don’t hold back.”

“We’ve had some pretty great people join since the seven of us were originally put together, not only are they good, friendly people, but they are also all very skilled at what they do. I love watching the team grow, it just means that we have more skills and manpower to be able to help even more people,” Alice rolls her eyes at your response.

“For this next part we’re going to put up article headlines talking about how you’re the most private Avenger, even more so than Natasha. So just tell us why you’re so private.”

“There isn’t all that much to say, I’m just a private person,” Alice makes a keep going gesture from behind the camera. “I’ve always been pretty private and I was only thrust into the limelight when I joined the Avengers Initiative. I do my job to help people not to get recognition, that’s what my career has always been about. I never felt the need to post a lot of selfies online or make a tweet about the workout I just did. People are allowed to do those things, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I’ve just never understood why people would care what I’m doing in my day to day life.”

“Do you feel safe in the compound?” the question comes out of left field and you aren’t sure why it’s being brought up.

“Of course I feel safe! I’m in a highly secured compound with my fellow Avengers, there’s nothing safer.”

“One last question, everyone is dying to know, what’s your relationship status?” Alice even seems like she’s interested in the answer.

“Like I said before, I am a very private person, but I suppose I could answer this. For the whole two people wondering about my relationship status, I am single at the moment. I’ve just been really focusing on my job, and I’ve learned that people don’t necessarily like coming second to my job and my friends.”

“Thank you,” Alice smiles. “Can you send Bucky over next?”

You do as you’re told, search out Bucky and send him on his way to the dining room. Instead of heading to sweet freedom, your room, you loiter and watch Bucky’s intro interview. “Sergeant Barnes, what has it been like joining the Avengers and how has everyone treated you?”

“It’s been okay and mostly everyone-” Bucky gets cut off by Alice.

“Make sure you put the question in your answer.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bucky is clearly starting to get agitated with all of the focus and cameras on him.

“Say something like joining the Avengers has been really good, it’s helping me get better with teamwork again blah blah blah. The team has welcomed me in and it’s reminiscent of my time in the Army, something like that,” Bucky gives one nod, turning back to the camera in front of him.

“Joining the Avengers has been really good, it’s helping me get better with teamwork again,” you bring your hands to your mouth to stifle your laugh at Bucky repeating you word for word. “The team has welcomed me in and it’s reminiscent of my time in the Army.”

“Okay,” Alice draws the word out at Bucky’s lack of originality. “Who would you say your best friends on the team are?”

“Steve,” Bucky responds without thinking, and Alice tells him to mention at least one other person. “Other than Steve, probably (Y/N).”

You're shocked, but flattered, by his response. Sure, he may have just said that because you were right there and staring at him, but maybe he meant it. Maybe all of those nights on the couch with him meant something to him.

“Oh really?” asks, clearly liking whatever spin she’ll eventually put on this conversation in editing.

“Yeah, she um, she was the first one to really welcome me and spend time with me,” he rubs his neck nervously.

“Just like (Y/N), you’re really private too,” you take a step forward seeing that the questioning is starting to put Bucky on edge.

“Cause it’s no one's business,” Alice, thankfully, doesn’t push.

“Are you ever worried you may do something to put your team members in danger?”

That’s enough!” your voice comes out firmer and louder than you imagined it would, drawing the attention of the rest of the Avengers. “Bucky isn’t going to sith there and take your abuse, his interview is done.”

You hold your hand out to him, and he jumps to grasp it, gripping it like it’s his lifeline. You’ve never touched Bucky before, and you keep your brain from running at how warm and nice his right hand feels in your own. You lead him out of the room, away from the prying eyes, and the now constant camera presence. You pull Bucky to your favorite room in the compound, the library. You deposit him on the comfy chaise lounge in the middle of the room while you go grab two books. You come back with Harry Potter for you, and The Hobbit for him, you had heard him talking to Steve about the movies once and learned he read it back in the day.

Little do you know, the littlest action of knowing Bucky’s favorite book on top of the way you stood up for him out there means more to Bucky than he’ll ever know how to express. It thaws his frozen heart just a little.

#fictober23 #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky fanfic #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #kat rambles #bucky barnes imagine #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagine

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coco-loco-nut · 10 days

Text

The Manuscript

Pairing: Daniel Ricciardo x Reader, Lando Norris x Reader

Summary: "write what you know/lookin' backwards/might be the only way to move forward"

A/n: Surprise, here is a gift from my breakup writing! This album didn't have one miss. Unfortunately, this is not inspired by my own breakup.

requests open masterlist __________

You have been holed up in your apartment outside of Nice, France, having moved there from America after your first bestseller. The ocean and beach usually help you write, but you are stuck, so your friends drag you out to Monaco for a girl's weekend.

As you sip on your drink, a guy slides up to you at the bar next to your hotel. "I'm not a donor but I'd give you my heart if you needed it," he says, glancing at your license, and you turn to him, rolling your eyes.

"You are a professional," you take in the guy beside you. His eyes crinkle as he smiles.

"No, just a good samaritan," you let out a small laugh, tilting your head back and finishing your drink.

"A good samaritan would buy another round," your eyes sparkle playfully as he sits beside you, taking your silent invitation to flirt and talk. Your friends leave you alone for the rest of the night, happy to see you relaxed.

He takes you out for coffee the next morning, getting to know each other more. You find out some of the small things, he is 30, does something dangerous for a job, and you learn his first name.

"If the sex is as good as the conversation is, soon we might be pushing strollers," he teases. You become a frequent visitor to Monaco, spending passionate nights and quiet days in his insanely expensive apartment. You lay in bed, him stroking your hair, legs intertwined under the sheets, a light breeze flowing from the windows. You silently wished you were 30 too.

"You are wise beyond your years, this has really been above board, love," his accent soothing as he pulls you closer. You two were planning a year's worth of adventures with each other, you made your coffee together in a French press every morning, and things were going well. But soon it was over, and you weren't sure if things really were above board. Daniel Ricciardo was just a sad memory. You found out who he really was a year after they dated, seeing him in an ad on social media.

After the split, you booked a flight home, only sleeping in your mother's bed the week you were home, crying yourself to sleep. You only are Froot Loops and other children's cereal when she returned to her home in France and dated boys her own age, but they never worked out. You released another book, but it was missing something, your personal experiences were not infused into the book. It was still a best seller.

Years later, you returned to Monaco to celebrate her best friend's birthday where you met another boy your own age. He sees your disillusioned view of love and strives to turn it around. You sit in his apartment, a dartboard on the back of his door and you write and write.

The past couple years had passed by like scenes of a show. You had anonymously taken some writing and literature classes taught in English, your French was good but not that good. Your professor selected your first bestseller for one of the course texts. Thier statement regarding your book stuck with you the most. "Something I learned from Y/n L/n's debut book was to write what you know, looking backwards is sometimes the only way to move forward. She had said in interviews that she writes to heal and loves to infuse her life into her books, making it an intimate read," the professor had analyzed not only your books but also interviews. You approached the professor and introduced yourself, safe to say you didn't have to write an analysis paper on your book.

"How is your book?" your boyfriend asks as you furiously type, the actors hitting their marks.

"A wise professor once said to write what you know. Looking back might be the only way to move forward," you hum. He knew about your ex, but he only knows the ex's first name so he never thought much about the relationship despite you being open about it.

The slow dance of words was alight with sparks as tears fell from your eyes in sync with the score as you type the final words of your manuscript. Your boyfriend holds you close, eyes scanning the computer. At last, you knew what all the agony the last few years had been for.

Now and then you and your boyfriend reread the manuscript as it passes through editing. You go on an American book tour as he travels for work. You set up a camera for the book announcement, holding your book, simply titled 'The Manuscript'.

"To my ex, the only thing left is The Manuscript, one last souvenir from my trips to your shores. Dear readers, the story isn't mine anymore, it's yours," the short video goes viral. Your boyfriend sees a text pop up on your phone from a number you never bothered to block.

Daniel Ricciardo Y/n what the hell?

"Daniel Ricciardo was your ex?" Lando asks, never really putting the puzzle together.

"Yeah, he never even told me who he really was, I should've asked in fairness," you say cautiously. You noticed the next too.

"Well, I'm glad he didn't turn you off drivers. And I'm glad that I am the one who gets to love you," Lando hugs you, not mad at you for not disclosing that information.

"I love you, Lan, please don't give me a reason to write anything but a sweet romance book about you," you whisper, a silent plea to whoever decides fate.

"What about one of those smut books that girls like to take and read on vacation at the beach?" Lando jokes, your face flushing.

"Hmm, maybe," your smile lights up the room and Lando can't help but silently thank his former teammate for fucking up. Nothing satisfies both of you more than the look on Daniel's face when you show up to a grand prix on Lando's arm. You approach the Australian, fishing the book from your bag.

"Now and then I re-read The Manuscript, the story isn't mine anymore," you hand him the book, a handwritten note tucked into the pages as he watches you walk away. A reminder of everything he had and lost remains.

#f1 imagines #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #daniel ricciardo #f1 grid x reader #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #lando norris imagines #lando norris #daniel ricciardo x reader #daniel ricciardo imagines #daniel ricciardo imagine #the tourtured poets department #this album had no misses #this song healed my broken heart #Spotify

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