#twitter users are garbage human beings

[xbuster]

It’s insane to see that this is Twitter users’ reactions to this when this is just completely normal on Tumblr. Twitter is such a hellscape of privacy violations that standard anonymity features like hidden likes are treated as suspicious.

[ladyshinga]

I keep being told to "adapt" to this new AI world.

Okay.

Well first of all, I've been training myself more and more how to spot fake images. I've been reading every article with a more critical eye to see if it's full of ChatGPT's nonsense. I've been ignoring half the comments on stuff just assuming it's now mostly bots trying to make people angry enough to comment.

When it comes to the news and social issues, I've started to focus on and look for specific journalists and essayists whose work I trust. I've been working on getting better at double-checking and verifying things.

I have been working on the biggest part, and this one is a hurdle: PEOPLE. People whose names and faces I actually know. TALKING to people. Being USED to talking to people. Actual conversations with give and take that a chat bot can't emulate even if their creators insist they can.

All of this combined is helping me survive an AI-poisoned internet, because here's what's been on my mind:

What if the internet was this poisoned in 2020?

Would we have protested after George Floyd?

A HUGE number of people followed updates about it via places like Twitter and Tiktok. Twitter is now a bot-hell filled with nazis and owned by a petulant anti-facts weirdo, and Tiktok is embracing AI so hard that it gave up music so that its users can create deepfakes of each other.

Would information have traveled as well as it did? Now?

The answer is no. Half the people would have called the video of Floyd's death a deepfake, AI versions of it would be everywhere to sew doubt about the original, bots would be pushing hard for people to do nothing about it, half the articles written about it would be useless ChatGPT garbage, and the protests themselves… might just NOT have happened. Or at least, they'd be smaller - AND more dangerous when it comes to showing your face in a photo or video - because NOW what can people DO with that photo and video? The things I mentioned earlier will help going forward. Discernment. Studying how the images look, how the fake audio sounds, how the articles often talk in circles and litter in contradictory misinformation. and PEOPLE.

PEOPLE is the biggest one here, because if another 2020-level event happens where we want to be protesting on the streets by the thousands, our ONLY recourse right now is to actually connect with people. Carefully of course, it's still a protest, don't use Discord or something, they'll turn your chats over to cops.

But what USED to theoretically be "simple" when it came to leftist organizing ("well my tweet about it went viral, I helped!") is just going to require more WORK now, and actual personal communication and connection and community. I know if you're reading this and you're American, you barely know what that feels like and I get it. We're deprived of it very much on purpose, but the internet is becoming more and more hostile to humanity itself. When it comes to connecting to other humans… we now have to REALLY connect to other humans

I'm sorry. This all sucks. But adapting usually does.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

so...does twitter just not...work anymore?

i mean, i know why it's garbage now, and that's the same reason i no longer use it regularly. but very occasionally when i want to reach out to a writer of some article i read, or somebody i heard on a podcast, to tell them i enjoyed the thing--twitter is still the only way to find them.

so i was still doing that. and today, when i posted for the first time in in a while, to thank a writer for an article, i got this popup that i've never seen before.

it informed me that until they are sure i'm a human, they may limit my use/access to others, and the only way for me to fix that (aka a problem they created, cuz i've been a human for all the years my account has visibly existed and already been used, which i'm sure they can see cuz it's their website lol) is for me to 'help them learn by spending time engaging with my timeline and connecting with others.'

in other words, if i want to have a twitter account that functions properly, i am now required to 'engage' with the toxic mess twitter has become until the site thinks i've done enough to show how active and happy everything still is under a new ruler prove my loyalty, rather than being allowed to treat it like a freaking social media site where i would engage when i want to and enjoy doing so, and not any more often than that.

but no, that isn't how things work anymore, not in the dystopian hell of one gross billionaire who is literally holding user accounts hostage because the world didn't rejoice and love twitter more when it became all about him, so now we can't even have formerly-nice things.

'when we’re able to observe more usage of your account, you’ll be unlocked to be able to be seen by, and have direct access to, more people' it says. i don't know if that's why my post tagging the author is shown under 'replies' on my profile and not 'posts' or if that's just evidence of another way the site is broken now?

but as somebody who's heard a lot about twitter being overrun by nazis and cutting all the most useful employees and just generally not working as well or being as pleasant...i still hadn't experienced much of what it's actually like these days. and even just trying to briefly stop by definitely made me feel like yeah, this is really not a place where i belong. or want to be.

good to know, but also weirdly sad. turns out i don't have to be deeply attached to something, to hate when it gets taken over by somebody hostile to what i thought the thing was all about.

[bigbitchdyke]

Soapboxing for a moment but that last post brought up some really fucked memories of people I've befriended/dated who were absolute nightmares and who tended to have idiotic opinions on addition to massive emotional toxicity. This is me venting so if you don't wanna read this, skip!!

Some fun examples:

- "goth anarchist" who I had to ask THREE DIFFERENT TIMES to stop making Hitler jokes at me (I'm a Jew, she's German by heritage) who also had the most fetishistic view of black men of anyone I've ever met

- "soft tboy" who verbally/emotionally abused me & gaslit me on the daily for years of my life (currently works with kids in the educational system 🙃)

- polycule "throuple-couple" who asked me to fly out halfway across the country to visit them for a week; who then broke up with me THE DAY I ARRIVED & stranded me in a dirty motel

- the most "Human Resources Manager" gay man you can possibly imagine who fought and died on the hill of "yes it's totally normal and reasonable to dock >20% of an employee's paycheck to pay off unreasonably high student debt"

- "aromantic lesbian anarchist" who was still obsessed with her shitty straight cis *ACTUAL REAL LIFE PEDO* ex-bf, who would routinely blow off plans with me to spend time with him instead with zero warning

- "open-minded d&d bisexual couple" who used "crackheads" as punchlines for every other joke, who kept trying to get me to fuck them while simultaneously treating my actual real life partner (also a part of this d&d group) like she didn't exist.

- Rich bitch child of a Midwest corpo CEO who left my best friend and partner stranded in downtown Chicago at 3am after promising to pick her up and drive her back home (who also held some of her property hostage until she "paid what she owed - $20 for gas lmaoo)

- Mid-2010s popular Tumblr/Twitter poster that I dated who falsely accused me of SA after I (privately) told her she was being an asshole after she PUBLICLY ACCUSED an ex of hers (that was my friend) of abuse to an audience of 100,000 TWITTER FOLLOWERS (after mooching off her ex's money for 2+ years and, imo, treating her like absolute garbage during)

- one thousand variations of tenderqueer who think drug users/addicts are the scum of the earth and that any form of radical political change is "making the rest of us look bad"

Soapboxing over, I'm just thankful that I've more-or-less left the era where I've been in close proximity to shitty people like this behind. More than a few of these experiences I described gave me trauma that has lasted almost a decade now and most got zero consequences for how they hurt me and hurt people I care about :)

[captainjoongki]

I felt the "I've only loved 8 couples since 2019" down to my bones. Dramas have been downhill since then and this year is probably the worst for me. Idk wtf they're doing? Have they forgotten what romance is or what? Because take love next door as one example of the many failures what was that? I came out of it not believing the relationship at all he was obsessed with her since they were kids and she looked like she could leave him or take him at any point... Like I don't think you can watch that as a love story and think it actually delivered unless you're watching it from the female lead as your stand in. I know they want to cater to the "green flag looser in love ML while FL does nothing so you can pretend to be her" as romance majority but lord give us some real relationships with FLs ACTUALLY being shown in love and doing something about it???

seen a lot of kdrama blogs on here talk about similar things and i agree with you so wholeheartedly anon! like i genuinely had to stop and think about the couples i've cared about in recent years and when i stop and think i realize that they were relationships where both parties expressed their care and love beautifully.

for me, a love story just cannot be one-sided - unless that's the PLOT - and i fucking HATEEEEEE this stupid "green flag red flag loser in love" nonsense that's been going around lately like you cannot box characters like that and when you do, you get the mess that was LND. like, if you loved that drama that's your opinion, but mine was that it's the perfect example of the garbage that kdrama writers are spewing in the name of romance in recent times.

i want full fledged characters who are human who fuck up and feel things and do questionable things and do right things and mess up and are wrong and right and in between and love with their whole heart and BOTH fight for their love. i want romance that feels worth going to the ends of the earth for and not some stand-in AUs with characters who have 1 shade to them.

idk so many things about kdramas in recent years annoy me but also i have some (in that post you mentioned mostly) that truly have checked off boxes for me. so all hope is not lost. but these types of dramas are just too rare which is soooooo whack.

like, i'll give an example - back in 2007 there aired a drama (thank you) with jang hyuk and gong hyojin where the romance was between a single mother and the doctor whose girlfriend fucked up a medical procedure hat lead to a HIV case for the mom's daughter. that's the kind of plot we had in 2007!!!!! can such a drama even exist in 2024? no because you'd have user 193i4294 on twitter dot com tell me that jang hyuk is not a green flag.

[dueling-jesters]

I'm seriously considering deactivating my main twitter account. That site is a cesspool of hatred and abuse. Seeing all the transphobia, the racism, the antisemitism, the sexual abuse, the animal abuse, science denial, and overall willful ignorance makes me reconsider being a human. All social media is garbage imo, but twitter is one of the worst mainstream platforms. I rarely go on there, and almost every time I do, in a matter of seconds, I come across some of the worst shit I have ever seen on the internet. If you try to report it, you'll get an email informing you that the user somehow didn't violate any of the site's guidelines- even when they very explicitly did. Literally, the only reason I'm on it anymore is to post the porn I draw occasionally, but that's on my private account. I see no point in keeping my main on there.

[alloutofgoddesses]

PJO TV Thoughts

S1,E6

(There will be book mentions/spoilers)

Can’t lie to y’all im on my second week of this semester and already just so eepy

Okay the first line does tell you exactly what’s happening in this dream but I was so confused by it being Percy’s headmaster from Yancy

Anyway omg I swear you can see Luke in the reflection like it’s gonna be so obvious it’s not Clarisse on rewatches

WE GOT “Little Hero”

Cracker Barrel! What o would give to eat at a Restaurant rn

A SECOND SEAWEED BRAIN HAS HIT THE PERCABETH TOWERS

(I am aware others have made that joke)

Omg hi Luke

Good not being sus Luke

ARREST HER?!?! Percy wtf

Luke I’m positive you would know what Ares is like

OOP if Luke picks up on it IMMEDIATELY…

The episode is titled “A Zebra Takes Us To Vegas” AND WE INLY GET A SECOND OF A ZEBRA ON SCREEN?!?!

Anybody else see the Geia fashion billboard or just me

Way to be obvious about it

“I had a premonition that we fell into a rhythm/where the music don’t stop for life” I think that Levitating was chosen WITH INTENTION for these lyrics only

ODYSSEY MENTION

Graphic novels do count

ODYSSEUS MENTION

Oh besties… the lotus eaters have upgraded darlings

WISE GIRL WISE GIRL WEE WOO WEE WOO IT’S HAPPENING EVERYONE STAY CALM

The fact that they haven’t shown Grover eating garbage yet… cowards. COWARDS.

I do think that them knowing takes tension out of it but they think that it’s okay unless they eat something

CASTELLAN LORE ALREADY

A Saytr?? I’m saying that TV screen image is a sun so APOLLO MENTION

A gay satyr?!!! The subtext

Oh? I’m compelled certainly what kind of magic does the Lotus have to convince satyrs Pan is there

DREAM TALK

Like you can see extras wearing dated clothes but it’s just not the same

Also I’m waiting for others to find the di Angelos, I know I’m not gonna be able to find anything

(If they cut it out I will lose it)

Are the employees also under the spell? I would have to assume so

Uh oh Grover is forgetting

HE’S HERE

The way his face fell… I’m afraid LMM is eating as Hermes

BTW I saw someone say LMM was a bad choice as Hermes because canonically Hermes has the most children and they don’t think LMM is sexy enough for that… girlie do you not remember what happened when Hamilton came out be SO FOR REAL

At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to seperate actor from character but he’s doing such a good job that’s Hermes I’m sorry (no I’m not)

ORPHEUS MENTION (I’ve helped others [get into the Underworld] before)

Are the fields Italy? Once again folks I’m not gonna be able to find it so I’m reaching out to

Someone looks back I’m guessing

Oh babey the lore the tension

HEY WHAT WAS THAT

My guess is something to do with Gabe or as one brilliant Twitter user said, Percy’s first time at boarding school

YEAH ANNABETH MOVE BABY YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT

(Also how the fuck can Hermes do that)

Sure buddy see you next season

“This was all just a waste of time. We don’t have time to waste.” Oh Annabeth I’m so sorry for what you’re about to learn

I love all the helmets and stuff really lets you know what’s going on

Oh noooooo oh boy oh buddy oh wow that hurt

Sorry he’s making Hermes feel so empathetic which is exactly how he is in the books. He’s good!

OOP

Were those the di Angelos? They were brunette and small (still reaching)

Oh so that’s why they mentioned days earlier I see

HIS KEYS?

Are George and Martha on there are they wondering what’s happening

CENTRAL AIR BABEY

Oh no Percy’s forgetting too

Just rip him out and leave besties

Oh geez they’re never leaving at this rate

Damn there’s that fatal flaw again Percy

RIP Grover playing a human hunter game I will never forget you

Annabeth it was good it really was but you’re right. He is the god of thieves.

Oh boy now we know why they let him drive though

Me when I first started learning how to drive standard

Just in case you forgot Percy is a New Yorker

Oh NO bestie got distracted looking at the princess (his words not mine though I agree) next to him

NO DON’T TURN OFF THE LIGHT I WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE ANYTHING

What did I just say. What is happening on screen

Oh boyyyyyy

He’s just three apples tall

Oh it’s so much worse underwater

SEAWEED HAIR

Wait… were AFTER the summer solstice? WHY

Exactly Percy you gotta finish it

YEEAHHHHHHH

Four?!?! What about ‘you will fail to save what matters most in the end?’ He better lose one I stg

Next ep trailer

Okay so who’s eye is in the credits what do we think

Crusty’s!

Desert and terrible forest?

Okay yeah he definitely loses one or uses one to trick someone or something he said said “you guys leave with my mom”

Oh wait what if he uses it on Crusty… Disney let Percy actually be violent

SWORD FIGHT NEXT EP? At least the beginning

HOLD FAST MOM OHHHHHHHHH OUCH

BONUS: Hermes in cat form

[chuunibyoucatgirl]

while i agree that content moderation on social media platforms is fundamentally broken (particularly wrt the sheer amount of suffering the work inflicts), i feel this assertion is overgeneralized to a worrying degree

no site is nearly as moderated as anyone would like, nor is it moderated in a consistent or perfect manner. but if we're talking about metrics like "time spent by a normal user on a site before seeing a particular kind of offensive content," I'd argue moderation can make a substantive difference in both usability and site culture. X didn't get worse than twitter's baseline solely because of moderation changes—a whole slew of other enshittifying things happened at the same time, like trying to monetize the userbase in ways that encouraged engagement bait—but i think it'd be hard to say the moderation changes had no real effect on the site.

it's true that moderation will never drive out people finding new dogwhistles to say bad shit every week, but it can make the worst bigotry the average user sees and recognizes be something on the level of some dipshit qrting JKR for a dunk every once in a while instead of direct death threats and slurs or even depictions of violence alongside them, and it can make them at least marginally (if only marginally) less likely to deal with harassment. these are bad, still, but some harms to the user are worse than others

is there any actual data that shows that moderation is ineffective at reducing the amount of offensive content that reaches an end user? I know when i last read about this, it was clear that moderation would not and could not catch all offensive content, and the work was the equivalent of working on the slaughter floor of the social media factory. but i never saw any indication that moderating content did not prevent harm to users, nor that the average user would be equally likely to see offensive content if moderation were reduced or not in place at all. if anything, i've only seen the opposite: that moderation can be effective at reducing the amount of garbage reaching end users, even if it will never catch everything. it's still better if people see less inhumane trash, even if it'd be best if they saw none

that being said, there is still a potent ethical argument against having anyone perform the labor required for moderating a site like fb—even if without moderation, you can't ethically run social media at all. there's plenty of room to argue we'd be better off without social media and other large social websites anyways, and if an actual torment nexus is required to moderate your site, maybe we don't need your site after all. that's more where i end up, probably? given the choice between an unmoderated site and no site, I'd prefer no website. (also, given a choice between AI moderation with no human oversight and no website, i'd likewise prefer no website)

~~~

algorithms optimized for engagement are a much bigger issue than moderation in a lot of practical cases, though, for sure. on any site that only shows you stuff from people you follow (or at least has a following feed you can default to), a lot of social media "moderation" is done by the user anyways. by curating who you follow, you can tailor your experience in a way that avoids most of the bullshit, except in annoying cases like account takeovers or weirdo crypto converts that you block and ignore. but on a site with a recommendation algorithm that wants you to spend time on the site? oh boy, get fucked. they want you to stew so fucking bad. they don't care why you're there and they'll show you whatever makes you interact, regardless of how bullshit it is and how angry it'll make you and how subtly or obviously bigoted it is. you're just getting fed shit you would've preferred be moderated out of existence by posters you wish were banned inbetween anime tits

~~~

i think what people pick up as uniquely bad about 4chan and similar sites is the comparatively lax moderation combined with the inability to pick what you see. you're given an uncurated firehose and your only way of choosing what garbage you see is what board you're on. so you're forcefed shit and you don't have any choice other than to leave or become numb to it. there's no way to use the site that won't have you reading slurs constantly

but is that really so much better than an algorithm that is heavily optimizing for engagement? like i said before, you're still not choosing what you see. if anything, the algorithm can be worse in practice, because it'll dripfeed you enough decent content to stick around and enough infuriating content to make you interact and you'll get stuck there instead of just going "god i regret looking at this board" and leaving and keeping years of your future life intact lmao

okay just one more thing about this: it is v. v. v. funny to see people talk about 4chan being uniquely bad because its unmoderated -- an Awesome way to expose a total lack of literally any knowledge about the basics of social media is to imply that content moderation on any even moderately popular website is anything but a completely dysfunctional fundamentally broken system that, best case scenario, produces ptsd on an industrial scale in order to catch an impossibly miniscule fragment of infracting content

[kirbys-pop-culture-junk]

Japanese copy of Danganronpa for the PSP that I bought on the SomethingAwful forums back in like 2013 or so.

I feel like a lot of people my age went through a 4chan phase of their life as almost a rite of passage where they spent at the least a little bit of time on the site, especially in the late 2000s/early 2010s era. As someone who has always been a bit of an old soul, for some reason for me I had a SomethingAwful phase.

I had always been a fan of the weird stuff on the site, especially Photoshop Phriday, the kinds of stuff that a 13/14 year old in 2003/04 probably should not have been looking at. But the forums themselves were always paywalled and something that I never really had much of an interest in going to anyway. All of my forums were retro video game and wrestling message boards and I didn’t feel the need to branch out that badly. It wasn’t until I got a bit older and hit that specific weirdo cynic phase of my life when I was like 18 when boards like SomethingAwful appealed to me.

I became a longtime lurker of the place, including a fan of Retsupurae, the YouTube SA-based series that is now a relic of early YouTube history, before finally purchasing an account, as well as Archives access (for an extra fee you were able to access the entire forum archive, which for a person like me who loves history it meant I could access stuff like posts that got weirdos like TotalBiscuit banned on the site) and started to post, mostly in the Let’s Play, Games, and Food boards. I’m sure you’ve heard about the drama associated with SA and I can safely tell you that yes, even the board that just talked about food and cooking had drama with members and it was honestly always absurdly hilarious. As an internet-lonely early 20s doofus, it was a place to make friends. The last community I was involved with (Detective Conan) had things end on extremely sour notes with some friends while other friends kinda just drifted away, which meant that a lot of the time that I spent online, I was extremely lonely. Using SomethingAwful around the same time that I started heavily using Tumblr meant that I got to see both sides of the infamous Danganronpa Let’s Play Paywall situation. I’m not gonna lie, all the posts getting upset that Lowtax would put the LP Paywall back up whenever a new chapter of the Let’s Play for the game came out used to crack me up, as did seeing all the ways people would circumvent it by even posting god damned screenshots of posts in the thread. I was even there for when slowbeef infamously banned someone for using the phrase “intriguingly moe” to describe a character and let’s be real here, slowbeef was completely in the right.

Being like 23 and having what I thought was disposable income, as a gag I figured I’d buy a copy of the game from the SA Mart from a fellow goon for like $15. It was the only time I ever used the SA Mart to buy anything. I didn’t even have a way to play it, I just thought it was a funny gag as someone who liked the series and characters while also seeing the fandom in the early days of Tumblr Fandoms being a thing go bananas for everything possible about it. I hung out on SA until about early 2015, when a lot of us realized that after having corners of the site that were a dedicated safe haven for people like us, it was getting overtaken by garbage again, so most all of us abandoned ship for the hangout future of Twitch streams, Skype group chats, and of course, Twitter.

When Lowtax committed suicide a few years back, there were a lot of people making self-reflective posts about their own lives on SomethingAwful, and I completely understood why, and even had my own little taken aback moment over being reminded of that period of me life. Lowtax was a genuinely reprehensible human being and even when I was an active user of SA a lot of the forum regulars were well past tired of him and his antics. But people used the site and turned it into something that I don’t think Lowtax had ever wanted it to be. For a large chunk of people now-a-days Online, especially leftist/progressives in their late 20s to mid-to-late 30s, that was where a lot of friends were made. I made some of my longest lasting internet friends on that site, including people that I talk to to this day. I learned *a lot* from the people I met on there, including people who helped me gain new perspectives on things in life. Before becoming a SA Goon, back when I was a lonely post-college dropout living in an entirely new town away from home and away from all my friends I grew up with, I was almost a reclusive outcast, a college liberal dirtbag leftist who watched Bill Maher. People on SA that I met got me to knock all that obnoxious shit off and I don’t even think they realized it.

Even though SomethingAwful was only a footnote of a few years or so of my life, it was definitely one of the biggest moments of my internet life, and maybe one of the times where I went through the most changes as a human being. As a website, it was an awful, awful place full of stupidity (never forget the guy who peed “LET’S PLAY” into the snow) but I can’t ignore the fact that I also made some friends with some very cool people who helped mold me into the person that I am today. And as a shoutout to those people, much love to FutureFriend, TheJayofSpade, DeviousVacuum (you’ll always be DVac to me), Danzel Glovington (maybe the first friend I made on SA. Haven’t spoken to you in years but hope all is well), DazzlynReed (an absolute sweetheart), Metroixer, FreezingInferno, Captain_Duck (one of the first people to give me a chance by having me guest on streams), Color Printer, and ChorpSaway.

Also a funny thing about SomethingAwful is how many new people I meet that as it turns out were on the site at the same time as me despite our paths never crossing. One of my best friends and someone very important to me now is something who was hilariously on the cusp of interacting with me on SA for years and years due to the both of us sharing a lot of the same friends, before we finally began talking barely a few years ago. I constantly kick myself over how I could’ve known her even almost a decade ago and it just never happened!!

This was a lot more than I had anticipated writing and I don’t think I properly conveyed all my thoughts about this period of my life the way I wanted to but I think you will at the least get the gist of it.

[capsiclesteebrogers]

i am posting this here because i really do not want rabid team bl*ck stand in my quotes on twitter. but it baffles me the way team green fans always have somebody from team bl*ck in their quotes even when the post/tweet doesn't say anything bad about the characters they like. sometimes it's just an opinion or short analysis that actually makes sense and can start an interesting conversation and doesn't "attack" any character and here they come ready to post their dumb takes and make sure the user doesn't forget that team green is absolutely evil and if you dare like any of them you are a garbage human being and don't deserve to have opinions. oh and alicent is to blame for everything, she is awful and deserves everything that happened to her (just in case they haven't said it today). and it's incredibly shitty. let people discuss and enjoy characters in peace. make your own posts and stop being absolute losers.

[orionsangel86]

LMAO! The fact that there is a whole fandom on tumblr devoted to some minecraft guy called Dream is pretty amusing to us Sandman fans. There is only one Dream here bitches and it is Dream of the Endless, THE Dream. Though I do genuinely think anon was referring to the other Dream based on their juvenile turns of phrase - Since I'm pretty sure the minecraft guy fans skew much MUCH younger than Sandman fans - its like something I would have received from a hater in SPN fandom back in the day.

Nevertheless, the thought of anyone being such a huge Dream (of the Endless) simp that they think people discussing his actual canonical crimes is somehow unforgiveable hate towards him is just as amusing and I'm not sure which option I prefer more!

I think we do need to drum home that there are no morally GOOD only characters in Sandman. Even the characters that people may want to put on a pedestal of perfection are most definitely flawed because stories are much more interesting when characters are flawed. Its how the stories show those characters working through their flaws, and growing despite them that makes for the best stories. It is deeply concerning to me that fandom seems to be moving towards this viewpoint where unless a character is deemed "morally perfect" by the standards of 21st century leftist/liberal young skewing tumblr/twitter users, that character is only fit to be thrown in the garbage and everyone who enjoys them is a horribly immoral person who should also be cancelled immediately.

It's a bullshit viewpoint and one I will fight against constantly whilst I remain in fandom.

On the point of Hob Gadling which I'm putting under a cut because it got long - ah yes, our problematic, extremely immoral, rather despicable "fave". What I think pretty much all the fandom except maybe a few meta writers fail to understand about Hob Gadling, is that he is supposed to be Dream's symbol of humanity. Now, if we were to take the last 600 years of human history, shove them into some sort of personification machine, smush them altogether and shape them into a person (skewing the data points heavily towards white European man of course), the machine should spit out Hob Gadling. That's the point. Yeah, he's not quite the entire world, but he is Europe personified. He is its flaws, its crimes, its inventions, its inspirations, its desires, its dreams, its despairs. etc. He can't be perfect. He can't be your liberal Tory hating fave. He can't be your progressive queer ally, but he isn't just his racist evil slaver self either. He is all of these things because humanity is all of these things. He is selfish, because people are selfish, he makes horrible mistakes, because people make horrible mistakes, he follows the crowd and plays it safe most of the time, because that's what the majority of people do. He also manages to adapt, to change, to reinvent, because humans are remarkably capable at doing that in general, given our overall history. He is also an optimist, and never seems to lose hope that something better is coming, which is a wonderful overall message to give humanity. Whatever else may happen, hope remains.

That doesn't mean he is the personification of hope though. For the love of all the gods NO. He is the personification of US. Of OUR history, all the glorious and all the brutal evil parts of it.

He is the ultimate centrist because if you smush all of humanity together you are gonna end up somewhere in the middle. I think the problems of Hob Gadling come from one side of fandom wanting to put him on a pedestal and make him into a projection of everything good, and the other side of fandom, hating him because of what fandom has done to him, only ever focuses on his horrible flaws, and reducing his character to only the worst parts of him. The truth is, this is character we don't know a hell of a lot about, even after reading and rereading through the comics, and all we really get from him is that he is basically pretty damn average. Dream finding friendship and love in Hob Gadling is supposed to be a reflection of Dream learning to care about and love humanity as a whole, which you see reflected through the story as Dream continues to change and become better.

Anyway sorry for the Hob Gadling related tangent, I guess I had more to say about the guy in light of all the fandom obsession than I thought!

When has Dream ever committed war crimes? I swear you dream haters like making up shit as you go along.

"Dream hater"? Me???

Okay, okay, I KNOW you're never supposed to respond to anon hate but this legit made me laugh! For real! Dream is one of my favorite characters ever! That does not mean he is always the nice soft good boy that the fandom likes to pretend he is!

I'm not the OP of that post, but to me it seems clear that they're using "war crimes" in the fandom slang sense of "he's an asshole who did bad things". Which he is for the majority of his existence! There are very few people he is genuinely nice or friendly with! Also, some of the stuff he does arguably could fall afoul of the Geneva Convention if he'd done them as part of an international conflict... which, like. That's not great if you're having to argue on the technicality of "but the wrongful imprisonment and torture wasn't part of a war!"

And him being a terrible person/personified existential concept is an integral part of the plot. The overarching question of the entire series is "can he change?" and its tension with whether or not HE believes he can change! And I felt the actual ending of the books answered those questions in such an unsatisfactory manner that I wrote an entire detailed essay about it... I'd say that's beside the point, but you did say I was a "Dream hater" and well, you don't write academic papers for fun about characters you truly despise.

Everyone in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe is INCREDIBLY morally grey! That's part of the point! Every single one challenges the reader to think about what they value, how they interpret the character, etc. And even if you think a character is a jerk, or even evil, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them as a character. That's the magic of fiction! But if you completely ignore half of their actions... do you even like the character at all?

[georgie-ssnh]

Okay so I do not want to bring any heated debate out there, I'm just an artist AND a former IT student (and still somewhat of an IT enthusiast) But I'm saddened. Because I love art and (as controversal as it seems) I love....AI. Yes, indeed, I do love this weird technology because I know how it works (roughly) and I know its full potential, were it to be used right. Thing is... What happens in the AI Art trend of Twitter is the entire opposite of "AI done right"; there are so many people that think they are getting to be good artists because they're doing the most basic input and have procedurally generated illustrations as outputs. And don't get me wrong, a bad artist is still an artist regardless. Here's how I see it through this one example: I debated with a great friend about wether or not R**i K**r was still an artist and, to my opinion, she still was. Because there was a fine grain of personal input in that self-righteousness and plagiarism puddle that was one of her books, and this one aspect is all that mattered to me.

Artists are a thing, non-artists are also a thing, but to me "bad artist" =/= "non-artist"; and AI "artists" were below Art to me because all they do is ideating art, not making it. I cannot make a precise and finite definition of Art but I sure can tell what an artist is, all artists use their head and their hands (AND YES this is quite similar to the definition of a crafter but I see nothing wrong with it, in French it's not called "Artisan" for nothing); and thus, when you do art, you have ideas and use your head and your members to have it done... So this is where AI abusers are far from it, they have the ideas but renounce developping them in their minds nor DOING them through their own research(just to remind you that researching references is entirely ok) and crafting skills. Which is a damn shame... Both as an artist ....and an AI user. You heard me bloody right. As I told you all, I know a bit of stuff about how AI is made and what are its purposes and a great teacher once told me "You don't even need that much dev skill to be a good AI dev, you just need solid knowledge in the non-IT field you'ld deploy your AI towards". That guy knew what's up because if you're an actual artist, you do know that trendy AI Art is.... bad, like actually bad, flawed as shit, stupid proportions, poses and hands that make NO SENSE, and they're only getting twitter fame because first impression is the only thing they're good at and is the only thing needed to impress the Blue Bird crowd. But beyond that ? Garbage . Could it be improved to make honest-to-god illustrations ? Totally, BUT.... Only real illustrator artists would have the wits and experience to figure out what to improve, because they know, because they practiced, etc... Anybody else would hardly have the expertise to figure out what to improve in details and this is why, my folks, AI is only good when it is assisting the main actors of its targeted field, and not in a way to impersonate said actors. All of these mistakes are due to the fact that Market/Tech nerds are hoping way too hard to become the bosses of each and every field they're giving the technology to; which is human since, when you're deep into a certain craft, you really want that field of yours to get the maximum amount of recognition and even illustration/animation artists are all about this very desire... But when you're the actual most recognized and profitable field under capitalism... capitalism will be very interested in you being the ONE field that is profitable. To uniformize is to simplify; To simplify is to optimize; To optimize is to profit; To profit is the essence of capitalism.

So in all and all, it's always about wanting to own art without being an artist; and, with all of what I said here, you are starting to realize that them being called "non-artists" isn't even a gatekeeping insult, because if they feel like they "owned" Art, they'll just be entirely proud to say that Tech was enough to surpass Art and that Art is, therefore, inherently something simple/low enough for not bothering about artists and giving them any credit/value. Cynical, amarite ? So am I, because deep down I knew that AI could be beneficial to art... only on paper (pun half intended). There could be better assisting tools in digital painting softwares, "intelligent" rendering, "intuitive" compositions, and whatnot feature a machine could do to help in seasoned artists in their decision makings. But I do not believe anymore such a day would come because as the big beared german guy said, it's all about who OWNS the means of production and as I demonstrated earlier, we already know the "easier way" towards profitable situations that is not the way led by artists. ...Wait why did I write all of this ? "End capitalism plz" was enough of a revelant statement, wtf me

[absolutepx]

So I've been playing Death Stranding lately. Wait, that's not what this post is about. Well, it kind of is. Hang on. What is Death Stranding about?

A: Norman Reedus getting bare ass naked B. Sneaking around ghosts with the help of your sidekick, an actual baby C: Carrying 50 Amazon packages up a hill while trying to not topple over D: Waking up in the morning and drinking 5 Monster Energy™ for breakfast

For those following along at home, the answer is actually none of the above. Despite the set dressing being bizarre to the point of near absurdity, what the game is actually about, like thematically, is actually really simple.

See, the development of Death Stranding was actually quite a trip. Hideo Kojima is the video game world's equivalent of an auteur director. He has a very recognizable personal style. It's thoroughly horny – he caught a bunch of shit for the design of Quiet in MGSV, but like, a lot of Kojima characters are just -like that-, including the dudes. Also, this is going to possibly be important later.

Anyway, so Kojima was going to do a rebootmakequel of Silent Hill, and the demo actually made it to the PS store and I could actually write a whole side essay about why P.T. (it was called P.T. for some reason btw) was brilliant game design for how it used the same hallway over and over and it was somehow beneficial to the overall feeling of horror. So Konami it turns out kinda sucks nowadays and they like, fired Kojima (they were huge dicks about it behind closed doors, too) and scrapped the project and kicked him out on the street and kept the Metal Gear series which was his baby (literally the baby in the sink in P.T., he snuck a bunch of messaging about the Konami situation into the demo like a breakup album) and Kojima would go on to form his own studio and poach some of the people who worked with him to boot. So the thing about Kojima is this: he's got a reputation for already putting some wild shit in his games, like a ladder that takes like 10 real time minutes to climb in MGS3 for dramatic effect, and a boss in MGS3 that summons the ghosts of all the people you were too lazy to stealth past and killed, or a sniper battle with a really old guy that he wanted to have last two weeks or some shit until he died of old age but he was "told that "this was impossible and not recommended." That is a real quote I just looked up. So he's coming off the heels of making this hugely successful game with MGSV and the hype of the P.T. Demo and he fucking, he like took all the people that were going to be working on P.T. Along like Guillermo Del Toro was going to co-write it and Norman Reedus was going to star in it, and he's like, I'm going to make this game called Death Stranding. And the first trailer comes out for it and it's completely nuts. Norman Reedus wakes up naked on a beach crying with a baby and there are floating people in the sky? So we're all like hooooooly shit, there's no one to tell him "this is impossible and not recommended" anymore. What's he going to make now!?

So the whole time the game is in development I keep seeing these tweets where it'll be like, Kojima and one of his homies smiling with some saccharine message about being spiritual warriors and changing the world. And not just Del Toro and Reedus, there was Mads Mikkelsen (another guy Kojima puts in the game just because he apparently loves him), and the band Chvches, and also like, Keanu Reeves at one point? You know how everyone has just kind of accepted that Keanu is a being of light? Here he was endorsing Kojima. The hype was pretty confused and frantic.

The game eventually comes out. A lot of game journos hate it because I think there was this expectation it was going to be, you know, less weird and have more of the conventional structure of a video game. That's not to say the average gamer wasn't also dismissive of it, but I think on the ground level there was more of an understanding that like, yeah, Kojima just be like that sometimes.

Because the game was a timed console exclusive and your homie don't play like that, I spent the first year or so cautiously viewing Death Stranding from a distance. I wasn't sure I was going to like it – except for being really impressed with P.T., I wasn't actually a big fan of Kojima's games as games – but I -was- sure that I was going to buy it, because of the way Konami fucked him over, just out of support. And the shit I was hearing was really out there. The primary mode of gameplay is just delivery packages. You collect Norman Reedus' bathwater and pee and use it as grenades. You get a motorcycle that looks like the one from AMC's The Ride with Norman Reedus, and when you sit on it, his character in the game says "Wow, this thing is like the one from AMC's The Ride with Norman Reedus!"

But I didn't really want to know that much about it. Something has that much fucking crazy person energy, you want to go in mostly blind, right? So maybe people just weren't talking about this, or maybe I wasn't seeing it, but then I watched Girlfriend Reviews' video about it and they came right out and said it (link provided if you want to hear Shelby say it more articulately than me):

Death Stranding is basically about the exact opposite of Twitter. It's about remembering how to be kind to each other, how to reconnect in a world where people are so often hostile to each other by default. Prophetically, it's about a world where people are afraid to go outside or touch other people and how damaging that is. It's not a game about carrying packages, it's a game about helping people by being brave enough to walk through a wasteland carrying their burdens because they can't. It's about rebuilding the lost connections between people, about restoring roads and giving people hope. I bet, for Kojima and the people close to him, it's about how to answer hostility with compassion. You can't kill people in Death Stranding. You can and are absolutely encouraged to fucking throw hands with people sometimes, but all the tools and weapons are nonlethal. So I think Kojima took all the Twitter heat he got over the Quiet nontroversy, and all the feelings of isolation he had from Konami separating him from his team during the end of the development of MGSV, and all the support and encouragement he got from his bros Del Toro and Mads and the rest, and decided to channel that into making a game that was a statement about all of it. And sure, it's a little heavy handed, and sure, it's a little saccharine, and sure, the gameplay sometimes borders on miserable in service of creating emotional payoffs. For me, especially in 2020, this message is a huge success. Social media should be an opportunity for all of us to feel more connected to each other, yet primarily it feels like one of the main forces driving people apart. Why is that? Why is the internet of today such a hostile place? I'm old enough to remember web 1.0: I can haz cheezburger memes; YTMND; the early wild west days of Youtube... What happened to us? I've thrown the blame at Twitter in the past, and I think the architecture of the user experience on Twitter is absolutely a big piece of the puzzle, because it fosters negative interactions. But in terms of the behavior, people have observed that 2018 Twitter was actually almost exactly like 2014 Tumblr. (For the record, Tumblr is now one of the chillest places left on the internet, because so few fucks are left to give.)

I think part of it is the anonymity. The dehumanizing disconnection of the separation of screens and miles. Louis CK, before he was cancelled, had a great point about cyberbullying, and why it's so much more savage than kids are IRL. When you pick on someone in person and you are confronted with seeing the pain you caused them, for most sane people it causes negative feedback and you become disgusted with your actions and eventually learn to stop being a shithead. Online, at best you can "break the wrist, walk away".

At worst, you can become addicted to "clout chasing" and the psychological thrill of being cheered on by your social ingroup. It's even worse if you feel like it's not bullying and your actions are justified because whoever you've targeted is a bad person so you don't have to feel bad about what you do to them. This is where reductive, unhelpful catchphrases like "punch a nazi" come in. For every argument, one or both sides have convinced themselves that the other side is subhuman because their beliefs are so disgusting. And sometimes it's even true! A lot of times, especially these days, people really are acting like animals or worse online. Entire disinformation engines are roaring day and night, churning out garbage and cluttering the social consciousness. (Kojima talked about this bit, too, way back in MGS2. As if I wasn't already in danger of losing my thread through this.)

The human brain was not built to live like this. You can't wake up every morning, roll over and open your phone, and be immediately faced with a tidal wave of anger and indignity. It wasn't built to be aware of fully how horrible the world is at any moment ALL AT ONCE, ALL THE TIME. And you will be. Because of another way that our brain works – the way we are more likely to share negative opinions. And because of the cottage industry built on farming outrage clicks, and because of constant performative activism.

It's not that I don't agree that being informed is important.

It's not that I don't agree that the causes people get riled up about are important.

They are. They absolutely are.

But we can't keep living like this. The constant, unending flood of tragedy, arguments, and hot takes. How much of the negativity we associate with online culture is the product of this feedback loop? What if the rise of doomer culture has been, if not entirely created by, has been nourished and exacerbated by our hostile attitudes toward each other?  Incels and TERFs, white supremacists, radfems, tankies and Trumpers – it seems like on every side of every issue, there are people simultaneously getting it wrong in multiple directions at once and there are more being radicalized every day. They are the toxic waste left behind by the state of discourse. And any hill is a hill worth dying on.

So what am I actually advocating? I don't know. There are a lot of fights going on right now that are important and we can't just climb into bunkers and ignore our problems hoping that Norman Reedus and his fine ass are going to leave the shit we need on our doorsteps. We need to find the strength to carry those hypothetical packages for ourselves sometimes - and hopefully, for others as well. Humans are social creatures. We need interaction and enrichment.

We need love.

So just try to remember the connections between humanity. Try to put more good stuff into the world when you can. Share more shitposts and memes. Tell your friends and family that you love them. Share good news when you hear it. Go on a weird fucking tangent about Death Stranding. Find a way to "be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes."

[patheticfrogarchive]

…please elaborate 👀 (I agree w/ bts post)

OK I AM DRUNK BUT HERE ARE MY MAIN THOUGHTS that are probably a mes but again i am quite drunk

kpop stan culture is. absolutely encouraged by the big name... labels i guess??

take bts in particular for example. they are the only kpop group im familiar w so im just gonna be talking abt them from now on

LIKE ITS DOWN TO THE SMALLEST THINGS. weverse notifications?? its always "*idol name* shared a post with you" YOU. LIKE. YOU PERSONALLY. NO!!!!! HE DID NOT SHARE IT WITH YOU!!! ITS A PUBLIC POST!!!

like its all set up tp make you think that you have a personal relationship with these guys. i hate the twitter buzzword of parasocial relationship BUT IT REALLY IS. you have bts members coming online and waxing poetic about how much they "miss army" and "cant wait to see army" as if its a singular person. its not. there is no way they care about every single individual fan. im sorry but they dont

im sure they are lovely guys. and i dont doubt that they are very apreciative of their fans. fans make the artist you know? theyd be insane to not be tahnkful!!! but to LOVE EVERY SINGLE FAN???? ALL THE SHIT THEY SAY ABOUT "OH I WONDER WHAT ARMY ARE DOING TODAY" THEY DONT CARE!!!!! HOW CAN THEY!!!!! ITS NOT REAL!!!! their personas are so obvisouly formulated and created to sell shit

its all about selling shit. yes the 7 members of bts are most likely in it bc they are truly passionate about making music and spreading kindess but like. the company they are under only cares about money. trying to argue otherwise makes you look whack to me

people are all about eat the rich and capitalism bad until its benefitting their fave sexy man

ANYWAY people wholly devote their fucking lives to these people who will NEVER know them or truly care about them and its genuinely insane for me to watch like. i will see countless people on twitter waste DAYS of their lives streaming songs and waste so much money buying shit just to """support their boys""" when the LAST thing these guys need is money. charts mean nothing. numbers mean nothing. at the end of the day it does not fucking matter if their shitty song written by ed sheeren reached number one or not. and you all wasting your lives away acting like youre working a full time job streaming garbage is a waste of time im sorry!!!!!

its actually insane and kind of sad that i see so many young people devoting their lives to these people who do NOT know them and will NEVER know them or care about them the way these fans want them to. its an insanely unhealthy culture that is set up and is, in my opinion, DESIGNED to prey on vulnerable people.

and again. im sure the bts guys are lovely people. im sure theyre very nice. but at the same time im sure they too have been taught to say things certain ways to draw these people in and cnvince fans that they have personal relationships. "army we care about you all!!" no they dont. its impossible. yes im sure they're grateful for their fans!!! any famous persn would be insane to not be!!! but do they care about each and every individual one???? HELL NO!!!!!!!

also just a side note but if you ask me its actually kpop stans who infantalize these idols the most. they are not your "boys" they are not the "tannies" they are not your "uwu softe hobi jimim tatetae joonie jinnie meow meow kookie" who do no wrong and need defending from harm. they are grownass men who you need to treat like normal adult human beings. stop being fucking weird. as as korean person myself its fucking demeaning seeing prominent korean people being treated like fucking babies who cant handle anything that comes their way. i PROMISE you that jungkook isnt getting depressed over some random twitter user who called him ugly. you dont need to report them for hate speech. its not that big a deal. god. yes they and other korean groups face racism, but not everytning is a fucking attack.

there is nothing wrong with loving a kpop group or stanning a certain idol but also you have to be realistic about it. if your mental health is suffering because of someone you do not know, or if you are suffering financially because of a kpop idol, please seek help.

[sapphicaffeine]

Someone on twitter on Sunday said Keri broke up with Matthew on January 28th. Hence why he was alone for GG screen time etc. There was an article in celebrity dirty laundry they broke up also (tho those are usually garbage) i hope it's not true!! Have u heard anything?

Hi!! Oh this is a shock for me. I'm not on twitter because it doesn't suit well for my health and my normal functioning so I haven't heard a thing!

If that's the case, it would be terribly sad. Although I am curious about how does this twitter user know the EXACT date? That's a bit suspicious to me. Let's wait and see and hope it's not true!

(Also, him being alone during the awards doesn't mean anything, in my opinion. They have three kids at home and it's very much likely she was watching over them. Or maybe they're going through a rough time like EVERY human relationship in this world)

Thank you for this, anon. I didn't know a thing 😭

[onisiondrama]

(Note: I’m not repeating stories he’s told before and just putting them in parenthesis. I have a lot more videos to go until I’m caught up so that would save me a lot of time. If he gives details I never heard from him before, I will type those.)

“Should I Get A Divorce?” Speaks,  Oct 6, 2020

- This video is weird. He’s trying to make himself seem smart and insightful about marriage because his marriage is “successful”, while most people complain about their marriage. - There’s one part where he says people don’t understand you don’t have to be lied to or cheated on in a relationship. Which is pretty ironic coming from him. He shows a clip of an upset wife asking her husband what he’s doing with a woman in a bedroom. The husband and the woman are getting dressed. The husband keeps asking ���Who?” “What?”, pretending the woman isn’t there. Later he shows more of the clip where the wife is still questing him. He keeps pretending he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She looks in the bedroom again and the woman is gone. The wife looks confused. Love that gaslighting. Just like when Jamsey boi cheats. “I didn’t cheat. It was the other person who cheated on you, my spouse” “You said I can’t have oral or vaginal sex with your friend. You didn’t say anything about anal.” - In another part he says there are people who constantly complain about their s/o and they hide away in a man cave.. he says this while in his garage man cave. 😑 Which we know he spends most of his time in. Like, way longer than normal working hours.  - He says he used to look angry in his old Speaks videos because of his marriage at the time. That’s total crap. He only shows clips from videos where he used his old militant persona for videos like his anti-meat videos. He made plenty of mushy Speaks videos talking about how happy he was with Skye back then too. 🙄 - I think he made this video during his short guru / advise phase.

“gotta say goodbye for a little bit” Speaks, October 8, 2020

- Tells his viewers they can listen to this video without watching it if they like to listen to people talk, like Kai used to do. [This is definitely meant to be another guru / advise type video. I can tell by his tone.] - Says he’s married to Kai for almost 8 years. (How Kai found James story) Says he married a fan and had children with them. He says they now have an awesome dynamic, but he knocks on wood because people who are together 18 years still get divorces. Says you never know, things can suddenly fall apart. - Says it’s cool because at the time he didn’t listen to social standards. Kai was 17 at the time, but lied about his age. Most people would have said don’t go for the relationship because Kai lied and the age gap, even though it was legal. He listened to the law and his heart and now he’s in the happiest marriage of his life. - “F society.” If he listened to society, he wouldn’t know where he’d be or what relationship he’d be in. Says you have to follow the legal system or your life is ruined. - Says he was an air force cop at one point because he believed in justice. He doesn’t think he wanted to shoot people, but he excelled in the cop program. He says he met Magic Johnson in the cafeteria at Lackland Air Force Base. He barely knew who Magic Johnson was, but he thought it was cool a famous basketball player was there. James asked him if he could take a picture and he said yes. He says he took a picture of him like a reporter and not a selfie. He still regrets that. - Says he wants to talk about the future of this channel. Some people appreciate he’s been uploading every day, but he wants to focus on sites that aren’t shadow banning people or algorithmically demoting people. He feels like Youtube is king in letting negative opinions prevail, even if it’s invalid. If the engagement shows people are mad at you, Youtube used to go the harsh truth route. He says that was nice. He says he once made a fake meltdown video in response to a video Leafy made about him. He says it’s fun for him to make fake meltdowns. - He says he and Kai took a quiz today and found out Kai’s IQ is 136 and his is 129, so Kai is smarter than him. - After the meltdown videos, Youtube algorithm didn’t favor him as much. He says maybe it was because he said they were fake. - He says he has been thinking about websites and how they treat users. Says Twitter is one the best because they don’t care about what your opinion is. They just care about their rules. Says if people don’t like you on other sites, they will shadow-ban you and you’re done for. He says his reaction video to Leafy’s video got 1/6th the views Leafy did, so there was a bleed over of traffic. Now when someone says something negative about you, YouTube will only promote videos that agree with that narrative. Says if you only want to hear negative stuff about Joe Biden, you’ll only see negative stuff. He says it’s financially productive, but it’s not ethically productive.

[I just want to pause here and vent a second. Yes, James fell out of the YouTube algorithm, but he’s had plenty of chances to sweep back into it. Like when he was getting tons of views on those fake meltdown videos in January. The reason those viewers didn’t stay is because there is nothing good for them to watch. His Speaks videos are boring, long, rambling messes. He repeats himself, contradicts himself, talks about the same topics over and over. These videos are mind-numbingly boring. His comedy videos are extremely outdated. The characters, topics, and humor he uses are not going to get him anywhere anymore. Like is the Death Note fandom really that strong in 2020? That anime came out 14 years ago for Christ sake. His music is not particularly good or interesting. On top of all this, his reputation is complete garbage.

People just don’t want to watch Onision. If the algorithm tried promoting his Speaks videos, I guarantee most people are actively choosing not to click on his videos. The non-subscribers that do click probably regret it. He’s made ZERO effort into making interesting or engaging content. He’s ONLY been making Speaks content that either fuels his ego or defends himself using the same old arguments he’s used 100+ times before. He’s got to be in some kind of deep denial if he thinks his Youtube views are down because of the algorithm. 

There used to be a saying that whenever Onision’s fans grow out of him, there will always be a crop of young teens that start watching him. That’s not happening anymore. It’s not cool for the alt / loner kids to watch edgy Youtube videos anymore.]

- Says people only want to hear things they agree with, people want to take what he says out of context, blah, blah. I’m only 1/4th of the way through this damn video. - He asks why he’s busting his butt when there’s no chance for him to prevail on Youtube or anywhere. He says he’s on TikTok, OnlyFans, Twitch. [This video was from before his partnership was taken away on Twitch.] He says those are slightly less problematic because they are driven by human beings and not drama. - He says when you see him posting less to Youtube in the future, you’ll understand why. He says he wants to wait you guys out, 2 years, 20 years. (He tried to call out Shane story.) He says he had to wait a year or two until people admitted he was right about Shane. He says he has conflicting feeling about Shane because they had a personal friendship. Says Shane told him they were friends. - He says you guys seem to drive your narrative and agendas by emotion rather than science and facts. He can’t reason with them unless he picked a greater evil and wages war on that. You would have to join forces with him because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. He says he wouldn’t do that because he’s not interested in being a professional wrestler and making fake drama. - In time you will feel passionately about other things. You don’t actually care about anyone involved because none of you are consuming yourself with anything that is not pop culture. You’re only interested in things other people are pretending to care about. None of you would care if someone found three bodies in a basement. If they were not celebrities you wouldn’t care. You only want justice for things that will get you attention. - If someone builds their whole platform about anti-person they might get bored and become anti-you. That’s why you don’t want to be friends with dramatic people. - He says he was dramatic about things, but that’s because he did care about those things. He wasn’t talking about 3 bodies in the basement either. - Says a long time ago when a celebrity died, he pointed out 30 people were murdered and washed ashore in another country. No one was talking about it because they probably didn’t hear about it. Nobody actually cares about human lives. If you did, every second that a human dies you’d be tweeting about it. - (Sarah blackmail story.) He says in a number of words Sarah said she wouldn’t ruin his life if she slept with him, then went back on it. [Wow. He really morphed his original story. It used to be: One time she jokingly said she could ruin our lives. Later we wanted her to sign an NDA and she said only if she gets something out of it, meaning sex. James said it was “good vibes” that day and he perceived that as her being kinky. She also said it was just a joke in the “proof” clip he always uses. They signed the NDA, then James pressured / tricked Kai into having sex with himself and Sarah. Then Sarah later came back and he decided they should have anal while Kai was out of town because Kai didn’t say no genital to butt. He only said no genital to genital and no genital to mouth before he left.] He says he decided to no longer sleep with Sarah because it was toxic and he decided he would rather be ruined than be with Sarah. [I have a theory he stopped sleeping with Sarah because he was afraid of Kai finding out. If he was truly afraid of Sarah ruining his life, why did he make those videos about weed smokers and BPD that would piss her off? She didn’t speak about their relationship publicly until he started bashing her through those videos.] Says Sarah went ahead and ruined his life and you fell for it. - He keeps mentioning Joe Rogan. - He says others have said he built an empire, uploaded thousands of videos. He gave so much of his life entertaining people and making them laugh. It was so important to him. He changed a lot of lives for the better. Says if you look on Twitter before the drama, you’ll see a lot of people thanking him. Says he was a positive influence to millions of people. That’s a fact. It all came crumbling down because people lied. They’re all criminals he kicked out of his life. He tries to play hero and he was only right with Kai. Kai wasn’t playing victim, he was on his way to college to be a surgeon. Once he was in the process of having kids, he lost the taste to be in a surgery room. Instead he got a bachelor’s in psychology. Kai’s diagnosis of James is aspects of narcissism, but says he doesn’t meet the qualifications to be a full blown narcissist. - He is investing a lot of time in people who don’t listen and don’t appreciate his content. Social media is a drug that tries to take up as much of your time as possible to make advertisers money. He doesn't create content that lies to you or brainwashing you into thinking your opinion is valid. He doesn’t pander to you to make money. Says when he says he’s one of the most honest people on Youtube, the bar is low. OnisionSpeaks is snake poison because snakes don’t survive on this channel. They aren’t going to have a voice that isn’t questioned. Most snakes on Youtube don’t even know how to activate charities on their channels. - Says he had a conversation with Kai about someone who said they vote for the economy over people. Humans are divided between helping their neighbor and helping themselves. - Says he was never taken to court because he never did anything. He’s still posting to places that he thinks is beneficial to himself and his family. Why would he stop because people have a bad idea of him? You shouldn’t alter your life just because people have an opinion of you. If you quit it makes you look guilty. If you quit you’re either guilty or incapable of dealing with it. He says he’s used to dealing with abuse since he began social media. - He wants to create content and help people and make them laugh. He wants to be socially capable and experienced. His ambitions are aligned with what he’s doing. - He says he can’t forgive his father if what people say about him is true. Everyone else he can forgive. If you are at odds with him, he doesn’t have any hate for you. He understands people can hear the wrong narrative and make mistakes. Says we are both imperfect people and have gone through different things. Says if we went through the same experiences, we’d think the same. Says we aren’t so different.  - Says he’s going away and he hopes you watch all his videos so you’ll know a little bit about who he is instead of listening to what Youtube manipulates you into watching. Says his advise is to quit social media. He wouldn’t quit because he’s passionate about it.