#shipping mod apps

[opthroughtheageszine]

[Mod Apps] One Week Left

A Look Through The Ages is still looking for a socials and a shipping mod! Our mod apps will close on February 14th, so don't miss this chance to apply!

Mod App 🔗 http://tinyurl.com/opttamodapps

Thank you for your support!

@opfandombase @anizines @zinefeed @all-zine-apps

[needtobehisprettyboy]

Me listening to my Steb dedicated playlist:

I LOVE YOU BABYYYYY AAAAAAA I LOVE THAT FISH MAN I LOVE HIMMMMMMM AAAAAAA WTFFFFFF WHY ARENT WE MARRIED???!?!?!?!

[linked below]

I get so giggly while listening to this playlist it's insane I am unwell I love it I love him I LOVE EVERYTHINGGGGFF DKSNSLAKSMLSLE

[shuaketravelszine]

Hello there! We're currently in need of a new Shipping Mod to join our team. We are planning to open pre-orders in July 2024. If this opportunity interests you, please fill out the form provided below. Thank you for considering this role! ✈ 🔗https://buff.ly/4cuYJKY

[shigussy]

just saw someone celebrating a new update for a game they play and for a moment i was so shocked that anyone could be happy about that but then i remembered that only the sims 4 has the shittiest updates possible

[unyieldingsilence]

‎

this is a gimmick blog

^read that

if something is said in tags, it is me (the mod!!) speaking. not the silence yielding. stop saying "OH MY GOD THE SILENCE YIELDED" in response to the tags

mod is transmasc and uses they/ey/he/it (ey as in ey/em/eir)

the silence may be referred to with they/it

terfs fuck off

bits i currently have:

using images that are at 3% opacity (i occasionally forget to put alt text on these, if i do please remind me)

using one specific image of sonic at 3% opacity (it's from the iblis trigger cutscene)

saying "eeeeeeee" whenever tinnitus is mentioned

the chain

please stop talking about piss kinks i swear to god (/silly)

terfs fuck off

shout out to anyone who decides to be ominous in my askbox

sometimes i don't respond to an ask because it's broken in the ios app and i don't feel like going to the website just to answer an ask

please don't ship the silence with the frightening ghoul it makes me mildly uncomfortable

[etherealfilmstar]

– thunderbolts* headcanons; pt 2 i am not romantically shipping anyone btw !

part 1 - general part 3 - cleaning

theme; social media ════════════════════════════════════════════

JOHN WALKER

advocates that instagram reels is better than tiktok. will trash on you for being on tiktok. but he's also a reddit user. he tries to defend himself saying that he's the 'normal one' when he's really not. he loves those AITA stuff tho. his favorite thing to watch? idk why but i can see him as a dude who loves commentary channels. also he's a twitter/x keyboard warrior. he crashes out at memes making fun of him. probably blocked bucky's number.

══════════════════════════════════════��═════

BUCKY BARNES

only uses youtube because it's the only thing he can navigate. he tried to get onto twitter/x but gave up because of the UI (me too bucky, me too). he's that parent that gets upset at your screentime. he constantly tells the others that they're online too much. he doesn't like youtube shorts much but he likes long documentaries. the others, including valentina, want to get rid of the cable tv but he wants to keep it 😭 don't get me wrong he's not completely grandpa, he knows how to use messaging apps like whatsapp. he has an instagram account just because yelena told him to make one, but he doesn't use or check it much. he still prefers sending emails.

═══════════════════════════════════

ALEXEI SHOSTAKOV

he loves memes. also will spam the whatsapp group chat with tiktoks. i feel like he'd be interested in conspiracy theories. sometimes he sends the others memes against them yet still laughs heartily at them. he doesn't take them that seriously. he also yells at his device if it's lagging or if the wifi is bugging. he watches those clickbait celebrity or online drama channels LOL. he has facebook too. but he loves sending yelena those wholesome posts like "my daughter is the light of my world" with floral backgrounds fshkdfhsfm

════════════════════════════════════════════

AVA STARR

TUMBLR. SHE'S ON TUMBLR. you cannot change my mind. also ao3 is her guilty pleasure. she is def on twitter/x and has a john walker hate account. literally messages walker: "i hate you 98" "i hate you 99" "i hate you 98" "oh no i messed up." "i hate you 1" she calls people on twitter/x morons and idiots. i feel like she'd looove watching legitimate drama channels. enjoys looking at shopping online. and is defff a chill pinterest girl. she's also the girl that helps with all the tech issues. is also a discord mod and does nitro giveaways. constantly calls people out for using ai and mocks them. "oh poor baby 🥺🥺 do you need the robot to make you pictures? 🥺🥺 yeah? 🥺🥺" (og tweet from @/peterokii)

════════════════════════════════════════════

BOB REYNOLDS

definitely watching baking and cooking videos. the one least on his device aside from bucky. he also likes watching puppy videos and shares them with yelena. he avoids blocking people as much as possible. is the guy in the comments who says 'guys pls dont argue.' defends himself against hate posts. trying to learn the online terminology ("why do people call me a pookie?") he also loves looking at art and stuff. he uses tiktok and instagram. he has trouble telling the difference between real and AI but when he does realize it's AI he reports it. he's not a complete softy though, he will call people out for posting disgusting things. also the guy who has 'dms open if u need to vent' in his bio. has a pinterest account where he posts those like 'everything will be okay' positivity posts with pictures of flowers or animals. definitely wants to use the internet to help people because he knows not everyone has a shoulder to lean on :) he also sometimes forgets to reply to people and leaves them on read unintentionally

════════════════════════════════════════════

YELENA BELOVA

definitely a tiktok girly!!! she ADORES animal videos. also will spam the others' DMs with reels or tiktoks or memes. often times supports Ava, liking and retweeting/reblogging/reposting her stuff. is the person on pinterest that always puts in the comments the original poster if there aren't any credits. she definitely watches minecraft videos. bought walker a pair of cat ear headphones ("now you're a true redditor"). is the one in charge of hosting movie nights. she is obsessed with actor and broadway drama. always checking movie reviews. watches those 'lazy meal' videos. finds speed paints mesmerizing. she also listens to those like slime asmr videos. she likes to argue with people in twitter/x. always makes sure bob is staying safe on the internet (gotta take care of her little brother) but if he doesn't wanna share she doesn't push.

[science-au-oliver006]

"Hm, this app looks interesting... Heh... Nobody's gonna know I'm here :)"

*cough-cough* Welp, yeah, welcome to RP blog for my most favorite character from FPE, but from Science AU!

I haven't seen any blogs for this AU yet so... I guess this one is gonna be the first :b Cuz why not lol

Note for yall: Some things on this blog are just headcanons, some are canon.

(this is already my 3rd FPE RP blog...- 😀🔫)

Anyway...

🧪Info/Headcanons🧪

🧼 Science AU!Oliver is 24 on this blog.

🧼 He actually can talk, but he just rarely talks, he usually growls most of the time.

🧼 Still incredibly likes eating soap (literally addicted to it-)

🧼 After being reduced to a such state, he of course become much more aggressive and feral, he can even be aggressive towards his friends if he's in a very bad mood. But he actually still cares for them, even though it's not visible.

🧼 Despite being immobilized by the black bands, he won't hesitate to stand up for himself if someone is irritating him (he can easily use his sharp teeth, so be careful-)

🧼 He starts to growling if someone he doesn't trust to is approaching him, this is his warning sign. And if the person he doesn't trust to won't back up, he'll attack them.

🧼 He hates the scientists the most.

🧼 Of course still simps for ∆lice-

🧼 He's the only one who Science AU!∆lice being softened up to.

🧼 If you try to steal his soap you're dead- /j

🧼 Secretly loves belly rubs and getting scratched under his chin :3

🧼 He can purr <3

🧼 His horns are his melt spot, he secretly likes having them petted :3

🧼 He's bisexual.

🧼 Surprisingly very ticklish (underarms, belly and under chin are his worst spots-)

🧼 He's just silly despite being a feral guy :b :3

🧪Rules🧪

• No NSFW is allowed. I'm aware Oliver is an adult, but still, such stuff is not allowed. Mod is a minor.

• Be kind and respectful towards me and other roleplayers please.

• Don't harass me for my headcanons.

• Don't force me into roleplaying with you.

• Don't try to ship Oliver with OC or other character who's not ∆lice (I have nothing against anything like OC x canon ships and so on tho, but canonically Oliver is dating ∆lice)

• Don't spam in the inbox and please be patient if I'm not answering your ask right away since I have other blogs to keep up with. Also I just can be busy irl, sleeping, etc.

• Please don't spam-like.

• Donation asks will be deleted.

• Magic asks and tickle asks are allowed, just please don't be weird about it-

• Don't try to kill Oliver.

"Oliver will talk like this."

[Mod will talk like this]

🧼 🧼 🧼

Other cool FPE and non FPE blogs that you should check out :3

@engels-ask-blog @askclairefpe @lana-and-her-sockpuppets @abbie-appleboy @claire-the-silly @abbie-the-apple @ask-lesbian-bubble

@oliversoapeater-official @zip-the-chaos-child @3dward-th3-s1lly @ask-edward-fpe @ask-zip-stuff @sillylilchipster

@alice-monstrous-princess

@sk3ll-em0-k1tty @ruby-the-pansexual-robot @riley-crazy-kid @rabies-infested-riley

@ask-silly-rabbit @ask-lizzy-fpe

@math-teacher-who-loves-oreos @miss-bloomies-science-class @wendigo-language-teacher @pansexual-music-teacher @lesbian-history-teacher @kitkatlovingalgebrateacher @best-social-studies-teacher @principal-grace

@danger-abbie @danger-engel @danger-ruby @danger-zipster @danger-bloomie @danger-oliverrr

@askskary @viviansmagicshop @official-crazie @agethath3silly @girl-from-the-snowy-forest @ask-miller

@askofficialfern @amythesilly

(I'm sorry if the ping didn't work, this is all Tumblr💔)

That's all for now. Might update later if necessary. For now, have a good day/night and have fun! ^^

(As always, mod is @just-cutie-avocado)

The character and AU don't belongs to me. The character and FPE itself rightfully belongs to Kaaatie on YouTube/A3DGhost on Twitter. Science AU belongs to Molly on YouTube/HHunh6941958086 on Twitter.

[dragon-curse-au]

DRAGON CURSE MASTERPOST

When Dark Enchantress Cookie meddles with powers that are beyond her control, small gemstone artifacts become scattered across Earthbread, full of magical draconic energy that has the ability to curse any cookie that comes into contact with one. The curse is now commonly known as the Dragon Curse, giving those effected the power to turn into a dragon at will with some drawbacks. Now Dark Enchantress strives to attempt to regain control over the curse, drawing in the attention of the Beast cookies as well.

Updated as of 4/25/2025

RULES

Beast/Ancient Shippers DNI

I genuinely cannot stress this enough. If you ship it, get out. Take a minute and ask yourself why you're glorifying and romanticizing abusive relationships.

No Roleplay

This is not a roleplay blog. Anyone caught trying to start RP or is engaging in RP within our posts will be blocked.

No AI

This includes C.AI and adjacent apps/"tools". If you use any of our art, character interpretations, or OCs in AI or attempt to make fanart/fanfiction with AI you will be blocked.

No Reposting

Reposting any of our art on other platforms - credit or not - is strictly prohibited. That being said, if you find our art posted by anyone that isn't me (Canid) or Dragon please shoot us an ask and we'll deal with it accordingly.

Act Mature

While we won't restrict this blog to an older audience, please be aware that this AU will contain mature themes such as graphic violence, character death, slightly suggestive content, and overall bad times. If you can't handle that or are caught acting like a child (IE: demanding art, being unnecessarily rude, etc.) then you may take your leave.

Fanart/Fanfics

You are allowed to make fan creations! We always love it when people enjoy our work enough to be inspired. We only ask to keep it SFW and all. Please feel free to tag us if you do post anything related to this AU! We will reblog it so you can be featured here.

Asks

The askbox is always open if you have questions, comments, or suggestions. Just please be kind and civil! We love explaining things to people who may be a bit confused.

TAGS

Mod Canid / Mod Dragon : Posts made by their respective mods.

Canid's Art / Dragon's Art : Art drawn by their respective mods.

Dragon Curse AU : Main tag for the AU.

AU Lore Post : Posts made that are important to the lore.

Character Reference : References made for individual characters in the AU.

Asked and Answered : Answered asks.

Every character featured in posts will be tagged individually! If you're looking for someone in particular you can simply search them up within the blog.

IMPORTANT LINKS

GOOGLE DRIVE - Contains all relevant/updated art, the comic so far, and all guidebooks released to the public.

TRELLO - Shows all progress for character art; references, icons, renders, etc.

UNVALE - Publicly available information on various characters!

LIST OF SHIPS | LIST OF CURSED COOKIES | DEITIES OF EARTHBREAD

2025 Q3 ROADMAP

WRITTEN FIC

The Curse - 1

FAQ

What is Dragon Curse AU?

Dragon Curse is a Cookie Run: Kingdom AU that completely rewrites the canon timeline. It is mainly focused on several relationships between cookies, and of course, the main gimmick: the dragon curse.

What is the dragon curse? What does it do?

The dragon curse itself is a curse that can be inflicted upon cookie when they come into contact with artifacts magically charged with draconic energy. Becoming cursed allows the bearer to transform into a dragon (having both an anthro and full dragon form), which can either be done at will or brought out via strong emotions. While cursed cookies will never achieve the same power or grandeur as a true dragon, they can still experience a fraction of that immense power and use it to their advantage.

Will there be shipping?

The entire AU revolves around shipping. If you want specific ships, please see the link provided in the previous section of the masterpost.

When does the story take place?

Dragon Curse spans from the beginning of Earthbread to the very afterlives of the cookies that lived within it. Most of the story takes place during when the canon events would, though it is worth noting that nearly nothing from canon remains the same.

"X character doesn't act like this in canon/this never happened in canon!"

Read above. It's also worth noting that this AU was created prior to the Wind, Piercer of Darkness update and has been changed as we see fit with each update afterwards. None of the beast cookies will be anywhere near their canon counterparts. We can write them better anyways :)

Is there a comic or written fic?

The main fic is currently being written and the available parts are linked in the previous section! Minicomics will also be released alongside each monthly title update.

Can I suggest something for the AU?

We love hearing your thoughts! Feel free to send ideas our way in the inbox. There's no guarantee it'll be added, though.

EXTRA

Support mod Canid on Ko-Fi and Artistree! Commissions available!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

[oliversoapeater-official]

Intro ★

"Well... This app seems interesting."

"Anyways, hey losers. My name's Oliver."

"Can't wait to make an absolute mess of this place :) Gonna cause a little chaos-"

Headcanons 🧼

★ Oliver is obviously a bully- so he'll respond rather rudely to some asks.

★ He has a weird obsession with soap, he has a large stash of it hidden in the school. Only he knows where it is.

★ He's transmasc, and he's also bisexual.

★ Surprisingly very soft at times, mainly towards his friends and ∆lice.

★ He can purr :3

★ Actually very ticklish (His underarms are his worst spot-)

★ Has trauma, but he doesn't want to talk about it.

★He also drinks liquid soap-

★ Will sneak into ∆lice's room just to see her <3

★Very protective of his friends.

★ He likes having his horns petted :3

★ He's just a silly guy :P

★ Will freak tf out if you take his soap away-

Rules 🧼

★ No nsfw. I know Oliver is 18 years old but nsfw still isn't allowed.

★ Magic anons and tickle asks are allowed, just don't be a weirdo-

★ Don't ship Oliver with any other FPE character or your oc. (I have nothing against oc x canon, tho- But Oliver is canonically dating ∆lice.)

★ Respect me and the people I interact with.

★ Triggering asks and Gaza asks will be deleted.

★ Don't try to attack or kill Oliver.

★ Don't push him into talking about his past-

"Oliver will talk like this"

[Mod will talk in red]

Oliver's friends 🧼

@zip-the-chaos-child @ask-zip-stuff @ask-edward-fpe @3dward-th3-s1lly

Other students 🧼

@engels-ask-blog @claire-the-silly @clairewithabow @lana-and-her-sockpuppets @abbie-appleboy @ask-lesbian-bubble

@that-emo-skell @ruby-the-pansexual-robot @silly-pan-robot @riley-crazy-kid @rabies-infested-riley

@ask-lizzy-fpe @ask-silly-rabbit

@askofficialfern

Teachers 🧼

@oreolovingmathteacher @miss-bloomies-science-class @miss-thavelll @mister-demis-ask-blog @lesbian-history-teacher @silly-art-teacher @kitkatlovingalgebrateacher

Principal 🧼

@principal-grace

∆lice 🧼

@alice-monstrous-princess

Other 🧼

@danger-abbie @danger-zipster @danger-oliverrr @danger-bloomie @official-crazie @viviansmagicshop @ask-miller @askskary @agethath3silly @thehomehorse @h0pe-anon @zeni-the-silly

[That's all! Byebye :3 my old account is @/oliverthesoapeater. Please don't interact with that one-]

[opthroughtheageszine]

[Mod Apps] One Day Left

Applications for socials and shipping mods for A Look Through The Ages close TOMORROW! If you've been eyeing our apps, don't miss this chance!

Mod App 🔗 http://tinyurl.com/opttamodapps

Thank you for your support!

@opfandombase @anizines @zinefeed @all-zine-apps

[deerlybelovedzine]

🍎 MOD APPS OPEN! 🏛️

Join our zine mod team to help "plan" RadioApple's wedding with us! We are looking for mods with experience in graphic design/layouts, and in shipping and/or production. Zine experience is preferred, but not strictly necessary if you have other related experience! See the form for more info & app guidelines!

Reminder that mods can apply as contributors to the zine as well, and will go through the blind review just like everyone else!

Art by our amazing guest @samzikei!

Mod App Form

Website

Contributor guidelines

FAQs

Any shares are greatly appreciated! @zinefeed @all-zine-apps @zine-scene

[kaelucprismatic]

WE ARE SO BACK!!! when the ship is so good it makes the mods break out of character>>> we're kaeluc fans before anything else😌

now let us get our mod hats bacl: it's also the last day for contributor apps!! 💖

[gsgwzine]

Do you want to become a Director of DayZine Inc.?

In a rare moment of unity, Director Ho and Director Cheong both agree that you would be a great addition!

DayZine Inc. Moderator Applications are now open, so please take a look at our Moderator Info Document ~

We are looking for:

Finance Mods

Production Mods

Shipping Mods

Korean Translation Mods

Formatting Mods

Graphics Mods

SNS/Social Media Mods

Art Mods

Writing Mods

You may apply to more than one role, but you won’t be given more than 2 or 3!

@zinefeed @zinetown @zine-shop-channel @anizines @faneventshub @all-zine-apps Shares are appreciated!

[billcipherzine]

INFORMATION DOC!!! CONTAINS INFORMATION ABOUT ZINE, APPS, AND FAQ!!!

[nqueso-lies]

I accidentally found myself in the 911Fox subreddit bc it came up on my feed and wow, that place is embarrassing. I thought it was a fairly neutral sub, focused more on the show as a whole and not on shipping, considering the name but it's apparently a full on Buddie sub 😬 I am grateful for this little Bucktommy corner of the internet (which you are a big part of!), since most other places (tiktok, reddit, twitter) seem overrun with Buddies. If you or anyone else have any recommendations of Bucktommy positive spaces I'd love to hear about them, though.

Oh 911 subreddit... my origin story.

They're the reason I'm here on this app. Bitches (gn) hate different opinions.

There is a bucktommy subreddit I would recommend! I know at least one mod.

I would also recommend a discord server. Not a 911 general one. Join one that is specifically bucktommy.

And twt isn't horrible IF you block and filter responsibly.