#reposting everything from my twitter feed

[in-sufficientdata]

[theharrowing]

White Lies 🤍 0: Introductions

Yoongi is everything you could ask for. He is attractive, confident, and smart. And his partner Taehyung is as possessive as he is beautiful. Too bad a relationship would be a major conflict of interest.

You need to have them at all costs.

🤍 Yoongi x Female Reader x Taehyung

🤍 word count: 0; screencaps of twitter feeds & text messages.

🤍 college au, cop au, partial social media au with a lot of written story, strangers to lovers & established relationship, yandere, hurt/comfort, smut, fluff, angst, slash, poly, minor character injury & death, graphic violence, nsfw, 21+.

🤍 warnings: ACAB includes our MC, sorry you found out this way.

🤍 this is a sequel to Boy Blue! i highly recommend that you start at the beginning to fully understand the the dynamic & history between Yoongi & Taehyung. there will be a lot of references to Boy Blue; this fic will spoil the shit out of it. this MC/reader character is not the same MC/reader character from Boy Blue.

🤍 for full notes & warnings, see the master list.

🤍 note: those of you who read Boy Blue...you finally get to meet one of the characters for the first time. are you excited??? this is the first of several surprises hehe.

🤍 posted nov. 2023 | read on ao3

INDEX | NEXT

Profiles of starting characters:

reader/mc:

Yoongi & Taehyug:

Seokjin:

note: time stamps & dates are important but also a bit loose. if you see a mistake just pretend you don't! more profiles are likely to be added, and i may or may not remember to edit this post so just vibe with it. 🤍

also note: the image for mc is a statue of medusa, and it is not meant to suggest that she is white. her physical description is going to be kept as vague as possible.

* * *

Teaser for Chapter 1 because i love you:

😈😈😈 HELLO, MY LOVES!!! ARE WE READYYY??? i am still trying to wrap up Collateral before i get too far into this fic, but the muse has been wanting to work on this and nothing else, so here is a teaser. and yes, you are not mistaken, Kim Seokjin is alive. 😈😈😈

i cannot thank you enough for keeping the hype for Boy Blue alive. it was such a wild ride that i thought people would hate me for, and it became somewhat of a cult classic. this fic will have all the twists and turns that you have come to expect from Boy Blue, with some wild new additions because my writing style has changed a bit in the last two years.

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF THIS SITE, BUT LIKES ARE ALSO SUPER APPRECIATED!!! 🤍🤍🤍 BUCKLE UP BECAUSE THIS IS GOING TO BE A WILD RIDE!!!

tag list: @bangtan-tee-86 @ffion451 @fluffybuns69 @here4kpopfics @iloverubberduckiez-blog @lovemeforeternity @mgthecat @moonleeai @oceansmerchild @unsureofwhathappens 🤍 visit the master post to read the warnings & request to be tagged!

INDEX | NEXT

White Lies is copyright 2023 theharrowing, all rights reserved. No translations or reposts allowed!

[ox1-lovesick]

🌿 boyfriend material - c.sb

ꜝꜝ 🌿 pairing. idol!choi soobin x non idol gn!reader genre. fluff warnings. my atrocious writing wc. 600+

ꜝꜝ 🌿 synopsis. taking boyfriend pictures of your boyfriend so he can post them and have others imagine he's their boyfriend

ꜝꜝ 🌿 a/n. having very real romantic feelings for choi soobin right now and i need to get them out 😟

"get my good side!" soobin yelled, gaining attention and whispers from the strangers passing by you two; he bows with an apologetic look before perching himself back on the bench—this time with his legs crossed over each other. he gestures for you to continue clicking pictures, posing for moa's so they could see his new hair colour

you roll your eyes before stepping back to get some of the scenery within the picture. you had been tapping away at your screen endlessly for the past 20 minutes or so, experimenting with different angles and views to take good pictures for soobin to post onto twitter later. he practically led you half the way to north korea by dragging you along with him, insisting to have different backgrounds and scenery because 'taking all his pictures in one place was cringey'; then changing shirts halfway through seoul because he didn't want it to look like he was taking them on the same day, because that's even worse apparently

"can we be done now?" you huffed, your arms becoming sore. "just a few more" he shifted "that's what you said 200 pictures ago" soobin sighed, adjusting his beanie before jumping off the bench and making his way over to you to examine your photography skills, and whether you had actually been listening to him or just clicking.

"you got everything but my good side" he pouted, scrolling through the pictures and making a mental note of the ones he liked by sending them to himself. "you're not exactly the easiest model to work with, bin" he gasped, his hand flying to his chest "i am a pleasure to be around y/n" he whined. "you never like anything i take though, you should just let kai take them from now on"

he scrunched his nose, visibly cringing at the thought "you know kai can't take pictures, he always makes them blurry and keeps cutting my head out- ooh! i like this one" he tilted the screen towards you, an approving smile adorning his lips before he continued swiping

"you're such a bully, poor kai's just trying his best. i think you're problem" you pushed his chest gently to which — ironically — soobin smiled, his aegyo sal gathering under his eyes as he took your hand in his, placing it in the pocket of his hoodie along with his own. "i'm pretty sure it's kai. he's probably sabotaging me because i'm more handsome than him, but thank you for taking my boyfriend pictures. i think moa will like them"

you hummed "taking boyfriend pictures of my boyfriend so he can feed other people's delusions and have them imagine he's their boyfriend, how wonderful" soobin elbowed your side, clicking his tongue "don't speak of my boyfriends and girlfriends like that, i love them too y'know"

"wow, maybe they should stand here and take pictures of you for two hours straight next time"

"don't worry, love. you're my favourite, don't tell them i said that though"

© OX1-LOVESICK ── all rights reserved. do not copy, translate, alter, or repost my work without my explicit permission.

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Lost, how have you managed to keep your sanity while being in the aot fandom? I'm almost going insane because of all the vitriol, especially on Twitter. I know Twitter isn't the ideal place for fandom experience, but I spend a lot of time there for the fanarts, and I can't seem to avoid the toxic side of it as the algorithm keeps suggesting reposts of people with similar interests (mostly Erwin or Levi or Eruri) about some toxic takes antis have. And, of course, I find myself engaging and making it worse for myself. Should I just block everyone and everything and keep myself sane? 😭

Learning to set boundaries in fandom, or indeed any area of your life, is never easy and it's made all the more difficult by fucked up social media algorithms. I always recommend blocking and muting people who bring drama onto your timeline, but that will only get you so far. You also have to learn how to disengage, to take active steps not to consume content that you know will upset or enrage you. It's very easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of negativity and outrage, and I'm certainly not immune. Whenever I find myself doing this I try to consciously think "do I really want to spend my precious time reading this bullshit?" The answer is usually no, so I look at the pretty fan art instead. Figuring out what your own boundaries are and learning how to maintain them is critical to navigating not just fandom, but the world at large, and it's a constant practice that requires attention and determination.

I came across a really interesting paper last year in the Association for Psychological Science journal called Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens, by Anastasia Kozyreva, Sam Wineburg, Stephan Lewandowsky, and Ralph Hertwig. The abstract alone makes salutary reading:

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoring—choosing what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities. We review three types of cognitive strategies for implementing critical ignoring: self-nudging, in which one ignores temptations by removing them from one’s digital environments; lateral reading, in which one vets information by leaving the source and verifying its credibility elsewhere online; and the do-not-feed-the-trolls heuristic, which advises one to not reward malicious actors with attention. We argue that these strategies implementing critical ignoring should be part of school curricula on digital information literacy. Teaching the competence of critical ignoring requires a paradigm shift in educators’ thinking, from a sole focus on the power and promise of paying close attention to an additional emphasis on the power of ignoring. Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps, and information disorders of today’s attention economy.

I don't know if that helps Anon, but I hope you find a way to continue enjoying fandom while avoiding the worst of its excesses.

[aibyoutachi]

11 and 26 pwwwwws

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

Yes oh my god I would go insane if I didn't have anything to listen to... I listen to everything and anything, my default is looping whatever song I'm stuck on at the moment for hours and hours, but if my brain is in the right spot I just put on my gigantic 25-hour playlist and let it cycle around. When I feel really distracted I put on rain noises or kind of chill touhou arrangements, when I feel like nothing's working I usually put on a youtube video or let's play (usually some guy playing video games, for you I'll mention that anything by Griffin McElroy is a godsend for me when it comes to drawing lol)

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended

hmm I think most of my art is like "aww cute souyo" so maybe this one of Souji feeding a cat?

I definitely got a few "this is so sweet"/"he loves cats so much" comments, but I was surprised by how many people interpreted it as him being sad... I think it's interesting that just hiding the face like that makes the interpretations sprawl all across the board (even though I just did this pose because I didn't want to draw his face LOL). The funniest comment was definitely "of course a yosuke pfp would draw yu being loving", guilty as charged

ACTUALLY... this one too:

purely because of this comment on twitter i got when i reposted it (?!?!?!)

[this-is-an-open-letter]

Hmmmm…. At 12:13am this morning I was woken up by a notification from twitter, I wear glasses so I couldn’t make out who the tweet was from but when I put them on I saw that the notification was from Sophia Bush….Iike the actual Sophia Bush blue check and all.

It was a simple tweet-two emojis. It was under a small thread I had tweeted about the recent incident of Jason Beghe yelling a Jesse Lee Soffer on set of Chicago PD, not dissimilar to the ask I answered about the same thing a few days back.

The tweets do not mention Sophia by full name, I used SB to save space and used ‘Sophia’ once - ChicagoPD was the only other thing tagged- there is no way she could’ve found these tweets, even in the likelihood she searched ChicagoPD tag, which she would literally never do. That definitely kept me up for a good couple hours last night, wondering how the hell she found these tweets.

I woke up this morning and I decide to check her feed and found a simple tweet of her expressing her gratefulness for my tweets and their content (I feel confident she was talking abt my tweets just based on the time stamps), she also solved the mystery of how she found my tweets- someone sent them to her….which yeah, makes sense.

I have a big mouth and I am heavily opinionated, its the Aires in me, and the way Sophia has been treated by the ChicagoPD fandom since she left has always been such a problem for me, its been so vile and so misogynistic to see for years women in this fandom dismiss what happened to her just because she left and when she told you why, people not only didn’t like the truth they also chose not to believe it. The fact that this fandom chose a man over her truth, is the problem. The fact that the studio and producers also chose Jason over Sophia is the problem.

For years I have been watching so many women in this fandom dismiss Sophia to praise Jason and the moment Jason raises his voice to Jesse suddenly his actions are awful? Suddenly everything Sophia said has merit? Suddenly you want repercussions for his actions? It just makes me mad and that’s why I sent out those tweets.

I get very little traction on Twitter bc I don’t love it and who really cares? But last night someone did care and she then expressed why she cared and it was because of something honest I said but also something I so strongly believed. My tweets will not go viral, I am not even going to publicly acknowledge her response tweet with a response of my own, I just reposted and commented with the same emojis she threw my way.

I do not know why I wrote any of this - I guess maybe to acknowledge that celebrities are human beings too and the stuff we say about them has repercussions and potential to hurt them. That as nameless faceless people on the internet we take dramatic and unhealthy privileged approaches to how we treat celebrities and the reality is, we’re tweeting in a public space where everyone can read what we say and being a asshole online that only gets a few likes or retweets, who never goes viral…still makes you a nameless faceless asshole on the internet.

I dunno…thanks Sophia and also sorry that women are awful to you and a job you loved so much was so quickly ruined by a system that seems to only protect men but hardly ever women even after their proof is verified, publicly, and still no real repercussions are laid for him but they’ll never stop being laid for you…

[risingoflights]

twitter is...

like. artists have been protesting artstation’s allowance of AI generated art by posting a ‘NO AI’ image right - now if you go to Artstation’s main page it’s mostly those images.

cool!

techbro makes a post MOCKING the protest by AI-generating an image that’s made up of those protest images like ‘oh no my AI art is ruined because this is what I get when entering the ‘trending on artstation’ prompt now!’. The post aims to point out artists don’t know how AI tech works.

Bleh.

ARTISTS takes the techbro’s post as GENUINE, and post screencaps of it celebrating the fact the protest is working. The artists’ posts gets a lot of attention, and are still up despite people pointing out the techbro’s intention was to MOCK artists.

techbros are now seeing this and gleefully announcing how stupid and gullible artists are!

i have screenshots of all the above because apparently i want to remember this moment of feeling both very angry and very frustrated by a number of things this scenario demonstrates about being an artist online and social media, but posting those would increase the chances of THIS post going outside my usual circle which I don’t want.

so, friends, my own takeaway from this so far is,

a. no matter how much techbros would say otherwise, AI art generation depends on having real art to feed into the machines. the fact that techbros are SO HOSTILE to artists - the very people they depend on! - bewilders me, but there’s that pretty common sense of entitlement that people have toward things found online. have myself been told multiple times that if i didn’t want an artwork reposted, repurposed, etc, i shouldn’t have posted it in the first place. ‘found on google/pinterest/buzzfeed’ and ‘credit to the artist’ is a common caption. this is now that sentiment amplified. techbros probably also think there’s no way their well of stolen material will dry up... because artists depend on posting to survive and are not all going to collectively stop.

b. misinformation doesn’t help the cause!

c. waiting, optimistically, for the techbro’s mocking post to actually become true - that artists will flood the well with unusable images that will make AI generation too hard, or at least much harder.

d. waiting for tech to defeat the tech to come along, waiting for more regulations... Feeling, though, as a self-employed artist in this capitalist hellscape that ultimately money will win

e. seeing a bunch of ARTISTS lamenting the ‘no AI’ images on artstation because it’s inconveniencing their usual use of it!

f. artstation’s statement about the protest basically amounts to ‘well we respect artists’ copyright but we won’t ban AI art because we don’t want to gatekeep’. Gatekeep? That’s the wording they chose to use??

g. as a side-note, you know that scene in The Incredibles movie where Syndrome says ‘when everyone’s a super, no one will be’ and like. when everyone’s an artist i guess no one will be? and in The Incredibles 2 where Evelyn says ‘I think people will choose ease over quality every time’ - god isn’t that so applicable?

this is all very stupid and very tiring, but it just feels like something we’ll be dealing with now, i guess, on top of everything else. so that’s cool!

may well delete this later. i wrote this in an uncharacteristic rage! was so happy not checking twitter obsessively last few weeks because i’ve been so busy and this is what i come back to today, christ!

[akanothere]

About me

Part time fandom artist, full time clown.

20+, she/her.

DO NOT REPOST, EDIT, PRINT FOR COMMERCIAL USE OR BULK PRINTING

DO NOT FEED MY ART TO AI PLEASE

AI IMAGE GENERATOR USERS DO NOT INTERACT

TRACING& COPYING ARE FORBIDDEN AND BLOCKED. IF YOU ARE TOO AN ARTIST PLEASE RESPECT THIS UNIVERSAL RULE (UNLESS MEME/PARODY). “HIGHLY INSPIRED” WITHOUT CREDIT WILL BE BLOCKED AS WELL. MY HOURS OF HARDWORK AND BRAIN JUICE ARE NOT FOR YOU TO USE IN THIS WAY. I APPRECIATE THE LIKE BUT PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, DO NOT FOLLOW.

THIS IS A MATURE BLOG OFTEN ENGAGING WITH DARK CONTENT, HOWEVER I STILL HAVE DNIs.

THIS BLOG CONTAINS NSFW, BLOOD AND GORE DRAWINGS, TONS OF TOXIC RELATIONSHIP AND OTHER TW (ALL PROPERLY TAGGED UNLESS I FORGOT ONE OR TWO. IF I DO PLEASE TELL ME!!!)

FULL DNI, DOS AND DON’T, FANDOM CONTENT WARNINGS BELOW. I AM BAD AT EXPRESSING SO IT GETS LENGTHY BUT UM HOPE IT CLEARS UP EVERYTHING

THIS USER DOES NOT ACCEPT INSULTS, VIOLENCE, ABUSE, SLURS, AND DEATH THREATS TOWARDS HUMAN IN REAL LIFE.

What to expect or not here:

⚠️VERY IMPORTANT

I can tolerate/will create darker themed content when it comes to Danny Johnson or Tom Riddle, as well as some other slashers or mature fandoms and villains. I would say this is NOT a safe blog (I mean come on those are bad guys what do you expect! Don’t be too delulu to a point you gonna make them a good guy). However I do not tolerate any form of violence, abuse and discrimination in real life. Seriously, get help if you come across to any of these.

All my darker artworks are NOT for you to follow irl (can’t believe I still have to say this in 2020s do people use their brains nowadays)— It is for me to explore darker concepts, trying to figure out how, for example, how people attracted by psycho criminals, WITHOUT using an existing criminal and hurting anyone irl. Bc everyone is FAKE, they don’t exist, it’s FICTIONAL. Also, to explore my own/seen traumas. I turn personal issues into NSFW kinks or simply dark shit etc, and cope with it as a fictional content. Not exactly the best idea I know but this keeps me sane and overthinking about the past irl. I do not tolerate death/abuse threats and insults towards human in real life, it’s stupid. And all of you should also keep every dark shit fictional content in fictional world. We do not need anymore crime irl thank you very much. Think before you act or talk. Fandom is not that serious to a point you wish death and suggesting violence upon someone.

For my Haikyuu or Naruto art those are mostly safe as hell (my opinion) just loving caring and tons of smooch smooch!😭💖 OMFG I MEAN BOKUAKA HOW YOU GONNA LOOK AT THEM AND THINK OF ANYTHING DARK HELLO EXCUSE ME

Generally I’m open-minded to all ships and kinks (even with complicated relationships where abuse are mentioned for plot reasons, or larger age difference), but l0lic0ns and ped0s you can do us a favour go fk yourself🖕😘🖕While I’m in horror movies fandom, I do not support real life criminals. If you do or even a delulu fan of them please stay away from every living beings, also fk you too🫶💓 I don’t engage with inc3st contents, however will bear it for past trauma, but will not read purely inc3st stories. Pseudo/step c3st sometimes okay (depends on context really). Also I draw& read& reblog dead doves, which contains different TW like abuse/non-con/dub-con, you have been warned!!!! If it’s dark content with NSFW, please only recommend me with characters at least over age of consent but much more better if they are of age coz tbh I’m more into adult relationships really ahem. DO NOT SEND ME CREEPY PED0 (UNDER AGE OF CONSENT) SHIT THROUGH “ASK ME”. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED AND REPORTED. Also usual DNIs coz I’m traumatised by how stupid they are considering I am the most stupid people on this planet— c0mmies/ z!onists/ transphobes/ TERF/ homophobes/ biphobes/ typical fujoshis who complains about hetero but do same shit if it’s gay, do not interact.

ABOUT NSFW OR COMMISSION— In all circumstances, I cannot and will not create NSFW art piece regarding minors under the age of consent. PLEASE DO NOT EVEN ASK COME ON DUDE…

Also I DO NOT accept any NSFW commission, even it’s purely about adult characters. Adult characters with a bit of suggestive content, maybe um okay base on context. If it’s a pairing or character(s) that is at the age of consent (not an adult), and is from NSFW story/series, but you wish to make SFW art, please check with me before commissioning. Coz sometimes I read darker content but really do not have the heart to draw it if it’s too much for me…However let me be clear again— ANY NSFW OR SUGGESTIVE ART OF MINOR CHARACTERS UNDER THE AGE OF CONSENT IS NOT OKAY FOR ME. I’M NOT COMFORTABLE DOING IT. DON’T EVEN BOTHER ASKING. PLEASE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I don’t post NSFW art directly (artistic nudes, maybe; explicit nudes? Nah). However, I talk nonsense/ adult jokes/ head canon on my socials, so please DNI if you are not comfortable with. I can’t check every single account before I reply, so minors and people who are not pleased with NSFW topics: if you see this post, do not engage with my posts even they are SFW. Sometimes posting slightly NSFW (aka suggestive) art or head canons directly, but will still tag it as NSFW.

I create art for my inner peace and needs. I cannot babysit and accommodate everyone, so, if you don’t like, don’t engage. The definition of “problematic ships” differs from person to person coz fk me people nowadays overuse this too much to a point idk what is & what is not…

-

Fandoms and ships

Dead by Daylight

Ghostface centric, Ghostface x OC/ x reader, sometimes GhostFrank, GhostMeg and GhostFrankMeg-the-daddy-issue-trio-poly

⚠️IMPORTANT: It’s totally okay to consume my version of Jed Olsen X OC content and imagining in your brain it’s you or whoever his S/O is, but I block people who draw my version of Jed with themselves/self-inserts/OCs, or generally drawing him. It’s a culture here: impolite to draw someone’s design without permission😭💦 So please don’t take it personally, it’s just me not comfortable with sharing my design of Jed with other people’s self insert/OC. Also I have many plans for him so when people draws him (even not a ship art), it might actually interfere with my WIP sketches and ideas which makes me so awkward like “should I continue when someone drew it already???” However I am glad many people like him! Thank you for giving him love he really doesn’t deserve it he belongs in the trash💥

PS. There are some designs out here alike which of course is fine, I do not own the character himself, but I‘ll stay away or block if it’s too alike/ overly referenced. I stay quiet about things I don’t like so unless shoving it in my face, I will just walk away🧍‍♀️💦Need not worry!

Haikyuu!!

BokuAka, sometimes Tsukishima centric and SunaKita

Harry Potter (Wizarding World)

Tom Riddle centric, Tomione. Casual: Tomarry, Drarry/Harco, Voldantonin, Antonmione, GGAD, SebOmi/OmiSeb, Sebastian Sallow x MC, Ominis Gaunt x MC, Seb+Omi+MC trio friendship.

⚠️I DO NOT SUPPORT JK ROWLING’S TRANSPHOBIC SPEECH. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. IF YOU CAN’T ACCEPT OTHERS HAPPINESS AND RIGHTS, THIS IS NOT A PLACE FOR YOU. FK OFF.

ALSO THAT ONE TOMIONE ANON WHO KEEPS ANNOYING WRITERS WHEN THEY WRITE FOR OTHER PAIR— DO NOT INTERACT.

Don’t follow me for ships. See me as a cheap ass £10 all you can eat cushion buffet please. No quality of art here. Just pure delulu and bad drawing skills.

Naruto

KakaSaku, ObiRin, ObiKaka and InoSaku.

⚠️Note that my main ship in this fandom is KakaSaku, but only when Sakura is of age and usually I ship them in same age AU. And I don’t ship them if they were very close as student and teacher before Sakura of age (it’s really weird). I also love them as platonically best friends, the way their personalities work together if they were born in the same generation, not the teenage-creepy-forbidden-love-in-classroom-gro0ming type of shit, in case you start wondering. If there’s no KakaSaku tag or it is described as “platonic”, it means that art is not a romantic ship art. There might be some head canon etc about teenage SKR having a crush on KKS or both of them feeling butterflies in stomach, but I will always prefer Kakashi not stepping over the boundaries in some close to canon AUs. He is a very nice person and would never take advantage of SKR, I think. It’s true crushing on older people like this happens irl, so I admire the storytelling, but OOC af if KKS lets himself be this low. If you are still concerned or feeling uncomfortable about this ship, please block me. ALSO DON’T RECOMMEND REAL FKED UP CONTENT TO ME that was the reason I stopped drawing coz mentally grossed out I had to stay away from the fandom for at least a while💀 I swear those KKSK doujins from like 15+years ago grossed me a lot if you know which ones you know… hell I don’t wanna spread those out no one should ever read that… would do anything to unsee the cover of those doujins MY FKING BRAIN WAS DAMAGED FK

Other games, films and anime

Who’s Lila?, Cube Escape & Rusty Lake series, Year Walk, Disco Elysiumc, Good Omens, Hotline Miami, Chainsaw Man, Golden Kamuy, Dorohedoro, any Kon Satoshi/ Ito Junji/ Wong Ka Wai’s creations, Horror and thrillers, Sci-fics

Fic recommendation lists

(Most of them are dark, dead doves and NSFW. Some are light and cracks! Read TW and tags. Read at your own risk.)

Danny x You/OC/SO

Tomione

[godbirdart]

first off, i just want to say that i love your art, you are a huge inspiration to me and i love how expressive your characters are! would you have any tips for someone trying to grow a following from their art? specifically within the furry community ideally. im just not sure where to start

i hope youre having a great day!

thank you so much!!

okay i gotta preface this with: i have been doing commissions for over a decade. everything i say here i've been doing since roughly 2014, but my career as an artist didn't really Take Off and become reliable until 2019. success isn't immediate. some artists will grow faster or slower than others, not every tactic is going to apply / work for every artist; and that's okay. just keep pushing yourself and adapting and figuring out what works for You!

i’m putting this under a readmore as it got a bit long. every time someone asks me for advice on professional Anything i always write up a five page essay despite trying to bulletpoint it oof

post on multiple platforms and keep them all updated. i’m putting this one in bold because it is possibly the Most Important thing. we’re all watching twitter sinking over there, and many of my mutuals there were floundering because they hadn’t established themselves on any other social media site. i strongly recommend three or four socials minimum. my main four sites are tumblr, deviantart, twitter and toyhouse. furaffinity is also good. inkblot and artfol are new and i use them frequently as well. if you don’t like posting manually to every site each and every time you post art, Postybirb exists and is what i use to crosspost all my art to most of my socials at once.

avoid venting a lot on main. we all have frustrating days where our art isn’t getting the recognition we hoped, or we’re feeling petty about a controversial topic or the latest drama. it happens! it’s okay! however, many people just don’t like seeing dozens of negative posts on their feed. most people will sympathize, but if your negative vents are constantly clogging their dashboard they’re not gonna stick around.

shamelessly self promote yourself. reblog your own art. retweet it again. repost it. mention your other socials. we live in a world of timezones! when you post art, only a fraction of your audience is going to see it. i recommend reblogging / retweeting one to four individual pieces periodically over the course of a day and change it up each day. you can also repost your own work into photosets and title it “recent commissions” or the something like that.

don’t hide your linktrees and carrds. seriously! the amount of times on twitter i went to try and follow someone on another platform only to find they had no carrd or linktree link,, it is infuriating. put your socials link in your bio or pinned or SOMEWHERE readily at the top of your profile that’s easy to spot.

if you’re offering commissions, make a telegram channel or discord server for your announcements / openings.

post regularly. this one is a lot harder for artists that don’t make a lot of content, but posting even a status update once or twice a day can go a long way - especially if you’re on twitter with that platform’s hideous algorithm. alternatively as i said earlier, just retweet/reblog your work a few times a day and you should be good.

art trends are cool and fun and an easy way to get your work seen by others. see a “draw your sona in this outfit” meme? go, have fun with it. this one’s a bit tricky as timing is everything when it comes to ~trending~ content, so try and draw quick. that said, it’s never outdated to drawover reaction memes with your fursona.

try not to clog your socials with memes and shitposty images. this one is directed at twitter specifically. with twitter moments now gone, your media tab is the last way for people to hope to find your work organically on your profile without having to use the twitter search. they can’t get invested in your work if they can’t find it!

it’s okay to change course if you’re not vibing with where you’re headed. if you want to move onto a new aesthetic - that’s fine! you may lose some followers if they don’t click with your new vibe, but you’ll inevitably gain some new ones.

avoid frequent name changes. so many of the artists i follow have changed their brands / urls over the years that i don’t recognize them anymore.

tag your work properly. on tumblr, the first five tags on the original post are the tags your work will pop up in in the search feature. make those first five tags the Most important ones; example: #furry, #anthro, #art #fursona etc. twitter’s algo seems flip-flop if it likes tags or hates them. if you see a tag trending, repost your art in a photoset with the hashtag in the post [example: if #pokemon is trending, repost some of your pokemon fanart with the hashtag in the post body]. if the tag isn’t trending,,, i’ll be honest it’s a gamble if twitter likes your post or not at that point. i have no advice for that hell algorithm.

hosting raffles or doing a mini art request event [example: “leave a ref and i might draw your oc”] is good for traction while simultaneously giving back to the community + your audience a little!

try and reply to / like comments on your work. it’s not required per se, but it’s good to express gratitude.

engage with other members of the community. comment on other peoples work. like it. retweet it. follow other people. obviously don’t be disingenuous about it, but this is what the professionals call ~networking~

don’t compare yourself to others. this one is one you have got to keep in mind constantly. you’re going to find 17 year olds with huge followings and 30 year olds that are doing professional industry work whose level feels alien and almost out of reach. if you’re not doing as well, don’t let yourself get discouraged. we all gotta start somewhere!

related to the above point: be nice to your followers. venting on main about not having the same audience volume as others can come off as a huge middle finger to the audience you already have.

gaining a following takes time. unless you get a really lucky break, it’s going to take a lot of work and self promotion to build up your brand.

slap your name on everything. i mean it. any art you do - sign it. watermark it. people can and will share art in telegram channels and discord servers, and if the art interests someone they can easily source it back to you if your name is on it.

you can buy adspace. if you’re catering to a furry audience specifically, you can buy adspace on furaffinity pretty easily. inkblot i believe also offers adspace for artists though i haven’t looked too deep into it. this is really a “if you’re okay burning money” situation, as the huge chunkk of internet users have adblockers now and it’s a gamble if people will see or even click on your ad.

just have fun and do your own thing. you can hop on trends and draw art that caters to your audience’s tastes, but don’t forget to draw what YOU want and what YOU’RE about. Draw what makes YOU happy.

hope these help!! ;w;

[in-sufficientdata]

This can be a huge source of medical trauma and it's so cruel that it's being imposed on people by the medical establishment itself. How can they help but feel anything but helpless? There's no fighting that.

I can't help but think of this from my own perspective as a fibromyalgia patient who keeps having to fight being thought of as (or even being labeled as) drug-seeking.

I am literally just trying to live life closer to the standard that 'normal' people have every day.

Why is it in any way fair that most people are mostly pain-free and capable of doing the things they want to do, but I have to suffer with pain on a daily basis that is at minimum, on a very rare, very good day, at level 5?

Why is it when I report that my pain level is at level 7, 8, 9, I only get doctors side-eyeing me and explaining my OTC options?

I have had chronic pain since I was 8. I'm very fucking aware of my OTC options, so no thank you, doc.

And when I spend 20 minutes explaining in detail that my daily pain has noticeably increased and changed in quality since around January 1st, why should I have my PCP giggle at me every time I say that I need help with managing my pain and learning ways to deal with it?

It felt incredibly invalidating and I wish he would have said, look, I don't have the expertise to help you, so here's a referral to a pain specialist.

I only found out there was a such thing by trying to research the topic after this on my own!

So yeah, it's not just the insurance companies, it's the doctors, too.

It's almost like having a profit-motivated medical establishment hurts patients.

[qwilman]

Losing your Twitter Audience: Some Shit of the Top of  My Head, by Me

Reposting a Twitter thread I just made because it's got a lot of thoughts I've had stuck in my head lately:

I don't have a fully-formed version of these thoughts, but I think what a lot of artist are asking when they say "where will we go after twitter" is actually asking "where are all of the normal people going to end up?" I can name a half-dozen sites that are ready and waiting for more artists to come flooding onto their platform. I'm sure there are just as many for writers, musicians, filmmakers, everything else. The actual question everyone needs an answer to is where is the AUDIENCE going.

I've been terminally online for well over two decades at this point. I've been obsessed with the internet since middle school and I can honestly say I've never seen anything like twitter's user base in my entire goddamned life. I've never seen a website that EVERYBODY uses. The closest comparison I have is Facebook, which was really the first internet community that normal people ever truly appreciated. At it's core though, Facebook was a tool that kept you connected with people you knew in real life. As much as it changed, that idea was its bones. Twitter isn't really like that. It doesn't have shared calendars or photo albums or a base instinct to keep you hooked into communities you're already in. Twitter has performance in it's core. It's a bullhorn you pick up to shout to as many people as possible. As much as it's changed that's still it's core feature, the thing it's always going to want to do. That's why it's so appealing for every performer in the world, and I think since most people who don't want to be on stage want to watch a show, that's why it got so huge.

So a bunch of performers can reach enormous audiences and a bunch of us managed to make a living off of it. The question now that this stage is burning down with us on it is where is the next one, and I just don't think this massive audience is ever going to move in unison. I think the thing we all need to be prepared for is that we're going to fragment. We're going to find our own corners again and the more savvy members of our audiences are going to find those same corners as they seek out what they love, but our causal viewers will veer off. Twitter has been an incredible tool for us to put our art in the faces of people who would never think to look for it. This was a big part of what the people who found success on Facebook benefitted from as well, the audience who treated social media like television.

The people who are just looking for an entertainment box to turn on and comfort them without effort are most likely never going to use a Pillowfort, or a Tumblr, or a Cohost, and DEFINITELY not a Mastodon, because they all require a base level of interaction and engagement. And to be clear, this isn't me calling those people stupid, or a "bad" audience. People have their own lives and their own interests. Curating a feed of content requires effort and seeking out new artists is a skill. A lot of people just want to crash after they got off work. So those people aren't going to follow us to new sites. Either because those new sites are improved, but more esoteric, or just because signing up for a new site is a hassle of it's own. We're going to lose that audience. Period. Mourn them if you need to, but accept that.

I think success for artists online in the future is going to look a lot more like what it was in the early 00's-10's. Artists and willingly-engaged audiences seeking each other out. I just don't think putting as many eyes as possible on our work will be a winning strategy. Instead of finding as many people as possible, we need to be focused on finding the right people. 100 followers who are excited that their you, specifically, just posted are as valuable as 1000 followers who don't remember you that well and just want to see some cool art. A lot of people stopped trying to find their 1,000 true fans and focused completely on reaching 10k, 50k, 100k followers, no matter how closely they're paying attention. Honest to god, I think the later is going to be suicide in five years.

FWIW, I've never actually been any good at doing that. The biggest following I've ever had in my life is a little over 3,000 followers in TikTok. I think I just feel weird seeing a bunch of artist who have "made it" panic that they'll be losing everything when Twitter's gone. If you have 10k, 50, 100k followers right now, I don't think it's useful to focus on how many you're about to lose. Instead focus on who the best 10% of those followers are, the ones who've supported you financially and by sharing your work, do what you can to meet them where they live.

Anyway this started as an attempt to excise a stray thought I've had stuck in my head all week, didn't mean to spend 45 minutes on it. The point is get ready to post like it's 2007 again. Best case scenario, the internet is going to be asking a little more effort from all of us pretty soon, but I think at the end of the day if things go right we're all going to come out the other side better for it. If you made it this far, dig through your feed, pick one or two of your favorite artists who have links in their bio to give them money, then give them a little money. I promise you they'll notice.

[dervampireprince]

                                                                                                           ASMR | Offering Yourself to a Starving Alucard [M4A] [Spicy Patreon Preview]

[M4A] [Feelings confession] [Biting] [Vampire feeding from you] [Oral on listener] [Listener fingering themself] [Non-specific penetration on listener] [Aftercare]

Tried my best to record while recovering from not being well so apologies if this me at my top game. B requested "Either an Alucard or Ambrose audio… something with tension, and perhaps biting again?".

If you enjoy listening to my audios please considering dropping me a small donation on Ko-Fi or supporting me on Patreon (where at the moment you get optional access to my Discord and HD downloadable MP3s of all my audios). I improv/write, record, and edit all of these myself, as well as doing artwork for any original character roleplays. It takes a while to put everything together so any support is appreciated. Audio commissions are currently open, information is in my pinned post.  As always, I also post my audios to Youtube, and have Youtube, soundg-asm, Twitter, AO3, Ko-Fi and Patreon.

(Full spicy audios on soundgasm and Patreon. Downloadable versions, bonus N-SFW audios and Discord on Patreon) [minors + ageless blogs dni. this blog is for 18+ only.] [do not repost/reupload/edit my audios]

[thebonesofhoudini]

The past 10 days for me were some of the most crippling bouts of depression I have ever dealt with. Holidays were...weird and depressing. One year ends, another year begins where I beat myself up for not accomplishing as much as I thought I would. Social media is filled with so much to make one depressed. Obscene displays of wealth and luxury, people are winning left and right, then I compare myself to others and feel like "what am I even doing here?" Even though I live comfortably, a platform like IG makes me think my lifestyle is just not fly enough for here. I stopped posting on Instagram cause I felt I had nothing to share anymore that anyone would care about, and I felt like it wasn't for me anymore (if it ever was). Stopped posting on Twitter (will never call it X) because it was just getting too weird. I deleted my Facebook account 10 years ago next month. Don't use TikTok. Never used Snapchat.

After a while, I just had to take a break from social media, from all these apps, from the internet in general. I had to take a break from doomscrolling into depression and anxiety. I had to take some time to assess how this is affecting my mental health. I ended up slipping into a dark depression. Thinking about how much time I've wasted on these platforms. Thinking about how everything is based on social media now. Everybody is so hopelessly glued to their phones. Sometimes, I want to just unplug from it all and get back to a simpler lifestyle. It's easy to get burned out on these things. It's now getting hard to remember a time now when the most base human interactions weren't monetized, commodified, and our information wasn't sold off to advertisers.

I think I've just reached the age when I'm over trying to share things on social media. People are seemingly are either humble bragging or trauma dumping on these platforms anyways. If it isn't for business or promotional purposes, or to share the latest breaking news, social media can become more of a negative than a positive. Fiending for more likes, searching for more engagement, anything to keep that dopamine rush going. 5 hours later, you're all drained and more depressed than when you were before you visited that platform. These algorithms are all designed to make sure you keep on endlessly scrolling as it continuously eschews more content based on your search and user history, endlessly hitting the like button, endlessly hitting the repost button. One rabbit hole ends and another rabbit hole begins.

What comes off is ridiculous though is how some people feel that you're weird for wanting to unplug from all of this even if it's just for a week. What are you really that afraid of missing out on? These feeds and timelines constantly bombard the user with so much information that they can realistically take in. Is it really important to be connected and available at all times every time?

I don't know. I know people are probably gonna scroll past this and continue about their business, but I just wanted to leave this here.

[paintandroses]

The Blue Suit - a 'Maurice' fanfic

My first ever effort at fanfic. Still makes me smile.

You devoted Maurice fans might remember seeing it on here before, but Tumblr terminated my old account, so I'm reposting everything I had on here before.

Maurice stirred gently from sleep, the sunlight had sifted little by little into his dreaming until he was aware it was time to wake, and he opened his eyes with a slow smile. It had been a very long time, he thought, since he'd had one of his nightmares, the dreadful dreams which startled him awake in a sweat in the middle of the night, now he couldn't remember the last time his sleeping mind had tormented and tortured him the way it used to. The only bad dream since coming here had been losing Alec in a crowd, struggling to find his hand, to catch sight of him between people pushing and pressing in their hurry to be places which mattered only to them, while the only man alive who mattered to him was lost. He'd woken himself, then, and found Alec awake at his side, holding him tight and close, whispering warm under his breath "Here I am, I'm right here". And he'd wondered afterwards, whether he'd called out, or whether perhaps Alec just knew.

This morning there was no warm shape in the bed beside him, no familiar touch of tender rough fingers catching him for a good morning kiss; Alec was up and abroad early, his yesterday's clothes all tidied from the floor, most given a shake down and put back on, just his socks left behind in favour of a clean dry pair.

Maurice pulled the sheet from the bed with him, and wrapped in it stopped to look through the window, always left open at night since Alec had told him of a dislike for feeling stifled, 'all old air what's been breathed already' he'd said. And Maurice understood, oh how he understood, his whole life had felt stifled, an endless sequence of being shut indoors in airless rooms, until Alec came along and they'd found their freedom together. He looked out on a damp, softly green morning, but one which would clear from this early mist to a brilliant bright day by the time of a civilised breakfast. He thought he heard a voice, a deeper note between all the twittering chirps and fluting songs of the birds which were their only near neighbours, and listening again he smiled; Alec was out there, not too far away, talking to the eager hungry hens as he dealt out their feed.

Washed, dressed, the hole in his jumper noted and then wilfully ignored, Maurice was just about to leave the room when he noticed the wardrobe wasn't quite shut. He frowned, swung the door on its hinges, and tried again. Still, something stopped it, a fold of fabric caught in the gap, something blue. The blue suit. Maurice's heart fluttered for just a moment, and he laughed, a low chuckle at himself, for having such a strong reaction to such a hideous suit of clothes. 'Maybe that's what it means when novels claim a heart skipped a beat' he thought, taking hold of the sleeve and firmly pushing it back where it would interfere with the door no more. His hand lingered, and fingertips stroked down the material. Such vivid memories attached to that ugly, cheap suit it was somehow transformed to a thing both precious and beautiful. Because, of course, his own dear Alec had been wearing it when the tide had turned in their fragile, fraught relationship; from anger and fear, his recognising, almost without realising it, that there was real love in this, that something deep down was changing, and once changed would stay so. And it didn't just bring tender feeling to mind, but a flush to his cheeks as he remembered later that same day, in vivid intimate detail how they'd taken off the suit, his own hands undoing the many waistcoat buttons, one by one. And the blue suit had been the reason they'd argued before they'd even moved in.

That day, seeming so long ago now, after a whole set of seasons weathered, a whole year to settle in, to make the place a home. It had been the last time either of them had been back, the collection of things they wanted to bring to their new lives. Maurice had brought any clothes which seemed practical and hardwearing from his wardrobe, which wasn't much - aside from his tweed shooting things just shirts, his overcoat, a thick knitted jumper which had already seen better days. He'd brought his riding clothes, just in case - he'd thought the boots at least might come in handy; his idea proved ill-planned, for they leaked something terrible, and rubbed his heels, soon to be discarded in favour of a laced pair of hobnail work boots. Pens, paper, a few household things from his bedroom which all fitted into a single suitcase. Everything else, they'd just buy, or do without.

Alec, then, had met him at the station with several bags, and more bundles made up with old sheeting, tied with rope to hold everything tight and clean inside. He'd silently picked up two of the bags and slung them over his shoulder, not wanting to suggest Alec couldn't manage, yet not wanting to leave him to struggle. "Long walk from here" he'd said a few minutes along the road "Mightn't be a bad idea to get ourselves a bicycle." Alec had laughed, the single throaty chuckle which answered any suggestion of Maurice's which he found to be ridiculously impractical. "Can't carry this much on a bicycle" he'd said "One bag, I reckon : any more an' you'd be fallin' off into the first hedge you come past." "How DO you have so much to bring?" Maurice had said "You have more here than when you were off for the Argentine!" "Well I was wearin' my suit that day, weren't I!" Alec had answered emphatically, and if he hadn't been so weighed down with bags, he'd have jostled Maurice's arm in his usual teasing way. But Maurice had stopped, and he'd looked round to see why. "You mean to tell me you've brought that awful suit?" Alec swung round on him, the snap in his voice quite the fiercest thing as he answered back with "That suit cos me a bloody lot of money, I in't leavin' that behind!" "Alec…" but it was no use, he'd dropped all his bags and stood determined, immovable, a force to be reckoned with in any mood but perhaps most of all when angered, his face a picture of dark-eyed stubborn defiance. "S'alright for you, you never had to earn your suits, you got no idea how many long days work I spent on that. How many Yes Sirs, how many times I got woke up early or kept out late and do this, do that, never bein' allowed to say I din't like bein' treated like it." "Alec, I just meant…" "What'd you mean? Sounds like you mean my things don't matter to you." "Alec, listen." Maurice had put his hands on Alec's hands now, catching him still, making him meet his eye. "I mean you shan't need a suit again. I didn't bring any of mine. We agreed, only what we need." And all in an instant Alec's fury was gone, and he'd found himself speaking aloud before he'd even realised he'd thought the words, "All I need's you" and he'd thrown himself into Maurice's arms; ever impulsive, uninhibited in his emotions in a way which made Maurice both jealous and joyful - how he wished he could be like this, how long might it take him to learn how?

"I'll burn that ol' suit, if it'd make you happy" Alec had practically growled against his chest "Don't want it anyway. Don't know why I brung it. I'll burn it, if you say so." Maurice had shushed him, kissed him, laughed into his hair as he'd hugged him again. What a thing to fight over. "No-one's burning anything" he'd said, and the blue suit had come with them. Yes, it had been the reason they'd argued before they'd even moved in. But he loved it all the same. He took his hand from where it'd come to rest on the blue shoulder of the jacket, closed the wardrobe door with a click, and went out into the morning, to find Alec, and decide what they would do with their day.

[josiebelladonna]

“tumblr is the only place to be anymore, it won’t ever die”

oh, yeah? you can’t post hardcore stuff on here anymore and heaven help you if you’re a sex worker who got fucked over by the nsfw ban. bots are everywhere. you post art and you’ll get 3 notes if you’re lucky—if you get upwards of a thousand, 900 of them will be likes guaranteed. you post fanfic on here and it’ll be buried in that monster tag. everything is either memes or nonsense. this place fucking SUCKS now if you’re an artist, like i’m surprised i’m seeing people tell those who jumped ship from reddit that reblogs are lifeblood here because artists are lucky to be reblogged even a couple of times on here anymore. this place is dead if you’re any kind of creative person.

“everyone is faceless on tumblr, there’s no brands or celebrities here”

okay, first of all, what’s your definition of a celebrity? the kardashians? okay, now what if i said that someone with a thousand followers is a celebrity? if they’re known amongst a thousand people i’d say they’re well known, which is what “celebrity” means. next, you guys need to stop it with this “brand = evil” thing, because you know what’s a brand? nat geo. prismacolor. copic usa. scientific american. you can’t get news on here. you guys screenshot from brands on twitter all the time anyway with accounts like “funny-tweets” and what have you, like shit or get off the pot. besides, i follow artists, musicians, art stuff, nat geo, and a few friends on there, stuff i have been itching for on here and stuff i couldn’t get on twitter for years. and the “everyone is faceless” thing is nonsense if you’ve been on here longer than 5 years.

“tumblr is the only place where content creators can be”

lol, no. like i said, unless you are pre-established somewhere else, forget it on here. the tags are a mess, everything looks exactly the same with absolutely no room for anything unique or innovative, and there are so many bells and whistles to this place now that it’s quite literally two bad updates away from being virtually unusable. all of you are like “think twice”, yeah, well, i’m gonna think twice before i listen to you jerks. (by the way, right out the gate over on threads, people made it known that they’re fed up with the whole “influencer” thing. wolf van halen made fun of it. several artists i follow made fun of it. we loathe it as much as anyone else. so, please. get off your high horse.)

“tumblr doesn’t scrape your data”

the hell it does. did you know that if you live in california, they actually give you the option “do not sell my information” on here? that’s right, they make it optional. oh, and the ads on here are an eyesore. i thought they were kind of funny at first but they make scrolling impossible and they’re the most ridiculous things i’ve ever seen (and apparently adblock is starting to give some leeway on this)

“how do you work threads”

it’s actually really easy to figure out, almost too easy. now, if you follow someone new, you get the accounts they follow in your feed (which i think is weird, but i actually get the logic because they might follow something you’ll like), but if you hide it or straight up ignore it, you won’t see it again. there’s no hashtags on there, either (at least not at the moment), which… i kind of like? hashtags are so abused at this point—looking at you, tumblr—that it’s rather relieving to not see that. so, if you see something you like, you “repost” it (which is like retweeting or reblogging). you guys hate something that uses a mechanism that was once tumblr’s lifeblood and has taken a back seat to the goddamn like button. i… have no words.

“threads isn’t available in the eu, it’s probably full of privacy issues”

okay, two things. number one: when you sign up for it, you are immediately given the option for a public account or a private account. of course, that doesn’t really do much to keep you away from zuckerberg’s reddened eyes (as those of us who have been around facebook will tell you), but all of us who signed up on wednesday were well aware of what we’re getting into with it. we were all like “this is good*” * meaning “for now that is”. it’s so fucking obvious that you don’t need to state it and put words in our mouths (how did we exactly come to this conclusion, anyway? that “not available to europe = privacy out the window”? i’m not in the eu, so help me out here) number two: and i cannot emphasize this more, USE YOUR HEAD. i looked into it immediately after i saw the announcement a couple of months ago and came to the conclusion that i probably needed it. it’s meant to accompany instagram, too—hence why you need an ig to get it and why you need to delete your instagram to rid of it; which tells me the bad reaction to this on here has been a major case of knee-jerk reactions without reading into it first. i’ve been in need of a place like that, a place that’s sort of twitter-ish but is a more user-friendly (and it is! it took me three days to gain 20 followers on threads; twitter, it took me a month; tumblr, it took me two months). if i was a sex worker, i wouldn’t touch the place with a ten-foot pole (and i sure as fuck wouldn’t link my personal facebook to my business instagram, like… i stopped doing that in 2012 with facebook and twitter because i thought it looked bad. really, who does that, especially if you’re a sex worker?) people on here are utterly abysmal when it comes to critical thinking and the fact so many on here are bitching about this tells me no one thought it out and instead ironically took the cowards’ way out. and this is a corollary of that but… if you got nothing to hide, stop worrying about this. really. some of you going all lecture-y about this probably don’t remember the patriot act after 9/11, how we had our privacy invaded with wire-tapping and checking the mail. hell, roe v. wade, at its core, was about a right to privacy. we all have a right to privacy, but violations of it have been going on for decades and truly getting it back has been such a tall order that it’s nearly impossible. plus, all of you saying that it’s an invasion of privacy will always make me laugh because you guys are the same generation letting technology rule your lives and letting a harebrained app like tiktok completely destroy your brain, heart, and attention span, like it’s so ironic.

and just like with american elections, it really comes down to the lesser of two evils. i don’t like zuck or elon, but i’ll take the former because at least i know what i’m getting myself into there; elon has just destroyed everything in his wake to the point of no return (so weird to think that in 2018, i thought he was going to save us all, too). but i promise if you’re in north america, and if you have your location turned off on the instagram app in settings, you’ll be fine.

[golbrocklovely]

When people state in their leaving xplrclub post that there's 'not enough fan interaction' but you know for a fact that both boys have been responding to members feed posts regularly and have been leaping into the chat semi-regularly. Just because it's not happening when you are online does not mean it's not happening.

I do not understand what these people want, do they want them to come on every single day and spend hours chatting and responding? Do they not realise they have work/editing to do and lives to live? This fandom is so unbelievably clingy, my word. Some fans are literally dogs with separation anxiety I swear to god.

If you're leaving xplrclub that's fine, goodbye and have a good life but at least be accurate in your leaving post

idk if this is the same anon five times asking me the same thing, just slightly different. or five different ppl needing my opinion on a fan leaving xplrclub bc snc don't interact with us anymore sksksk

imma be honest with yall, idc. i'm not personally on xplrclub to interact with snc, that's just an added bonus. not to mention there is 2000+ ppl on there, it would take them HOURS to notice all of us. i don't expect that from them. if you feel like you weren't getting your money's worth, then leaving is the best option.

that being said, snc seem to try to interact at least weekly from what i can tell; either in chat or in the member's feed. and i think that's fine enough for me, bc again, i don't use xplrclub to talk to snc (or really anyone for that matter lol).

but outside of xplrclub….. a lot of fans are complaining about snc not interacting with us more. and my thing is, what else are they supposed to be doing? bc according to the twitter heads, they aren't doing enough.

lemme try to lay out what i've read and seen them say:

snc repost fans constantly on their xplr insta account, and also on their personal, but that's not enough. bc a, they only notice fans for merch which just feels like they only care about fans that spend money and b, they only repost hot, skinny, pretty fans.

for YEARS fans wanted snc to repost fans more in merch, and now that they're doing that, it's not good bc it's only fans that spend money that get noticed?????? okay. and the pretty fans only get reposted comment… i've explained how i feel about that. it's horseshit, and you're just insecure. sorry.

also let's be clear here, it isn't "oh snc don't notice fans enough" it's really just colby. bc none of yall bitch about sam. everything colby does is the worst and he's the worst, but sam's allowed to do whatever he wants as long as it's not involving kat or katelyn or a combo of the two, right?

yall wanted colby to like edits/artwork from fans more. he starts liking edits of him and malia. that's not good enough. but when he was noticing fans' work, it wasn't the "real" fans or the ones that "deserve" to be noticed that got likes from him.

you want snc to talk to yall on twitter yet… every day you guys flip flop between being nice to them or shitting on them. it just depends on whether or not they seem online or if you direly need them to wish you happy birthday, or say they love you, or just some other random words of notice.

you want snc to post weekly… which they basically are doing on their react channel…….. and yet again, not good enough. you somehow want hour long vids posted weekly….. when colby's really the only one editing anymore. okay.

why is there a caveat to everything you demand from snc? i'm just genuinely curious. if it's not one thing, it's another. at this point, it would just be better in the long run to admit you're unsatisfied and will never be, and just leave. as i've stated about a million times at this point.

bc for the few 100s that are feeling this way, there are millions of fans (me included) that don't feel like snc need to do more. sure, there are certain things i would love for them to tack onto their business schedule, if they COULD do it. but i'm also not constantly threatening to either leave or off myself if they don't meet my demands.

they aren't going to. so…… LEAVE.