wholedamnbody - Tumblr blog

[wholedamnbody]

Something I want to point out in yet another wave of mass bannings is the structural aspect that makes up a good chunk of every single one of these. That is, even if everyone on staff was perfect on queer issues, even if Matt and his bullshit disappeared and handed the site over to a literal saint tomorrow, we would STILL have a moderation bias problem if we don't magically solve the longstanding hard problem of making moderation at scale fair.

How so?

Imagine two users. One is a cisgender, heterosexual, white, abled person; the other is a trans person, or a Black person, or an indigenous person, or a disabled person, or any other marginalized person, or likely MORE than one of the above. Both like to kind of toe the line of acceptability re:"mature content" (or anything else really, but "mature content" is what's causing the problem here for many reasons). They go about their lives, they do their thing, they mind their own business.

User 1 flies under the radar basically forever, because pretty much nobody is going to object to them.

User 2...is likely to not be so lucky. User 2 is likely to run into bigoted asshole trolls who will mass report them for shits and giggles because they don't like trans/Black/indigenous people existing on the internet, or they don't like recognizing that disabled people can be horny, or anything else. So they'll report, and report, and report, until at least one of two things happens:

1) The automated system goes "oh fuck this one must be REALLY bad" and bans them automatically, and/or

2) The report lands on the desk of a human moderator and at least one is, at least arguably correctly, found to be a violation of TOS.

You see the problem? An enforcement system based on user reports, while still being....probably? the most efficient system we have - one of very very few that can even be argued to work AT ALL at scale - inherently leads to a situation where marginalized people are scrutinized more heavily than others. Even when the rules are being interpreted 100% fairly, even if everyone on staff is a perfect paragon of justice with no human flaws whatsoever, who never misclicks, who never makes a snap judgment because they had a bad day, who has zero societally imposed biases whatsoever, they're still ONLY punishing violations from the most marginalized people. People who don't get reported - usually mass reported - are effectively not bound by the rules, while people who are going to get reported for "terrorism" just for existing will have every arguable violation tracked. This is inherent to the system. This is structural.

This is an aspect that I think we should all be focusing on and trying to change a hell of a lot more than we are.

[wholedamnbody]

even this will pass. nothing is forever.

[wholedamnbody]

in 2015 I needed a job really bad for reasons not worth getting into. i was living in ohio for like 6 months & i just applied at every place within a 30 minute drive from me and i got a call from the local Game Stop mere minutes after submitting the online app, which was obviously a red flag but I wasn’t in the position to be picky.

so they tell me when to show up for orientation & I get there the day-of but the store is closed & locked. i text the manager & he says back “oh yeah. i manage two Game Stops and open them alternate days.”

apparently the Game Stop I originally applied to is open Mondays Wednesdays Fridays and the other one is open Sundays Tuesdays Thursdays Saturdays.

They’re 15 minutes apart. I don’t ask whether it would make sense to just have one store locally that is open daily, bc maybe the guy knows something I don’t.

So I get to the other Game Stop and walk in and it seems like there’s no one working there. There’s just a single woman in there wearing an ankle length leather trench coat. She didn’t greet me when I came in & she’s just browsing.

After ten minutes I ask her if she’s seen any employees and she’s like “oh I’m an employee.” She’s not wearing a name tag on the trench coat.

I tell her I’m here for training and she tells me the manager hasn’t come in yet. “he falls asleep playing xbox all the time but if he’s on live we can try pinging him to wake him up.”

I play Xbox and that absolutely doesn’t sound like a thing you can do in the way she’s describing it but once again maybe she knows something I don’t.

I ask if we have an Xbox that we can use to “ping” him and she says “yeah the one in the back we play on.”

She has an English accent by the way, a very specific & posh one which usually wouldn’t be relevant but we’ll get there.

So before she leads me to the Xbox-in-the-back she goes “oh damn. our internet has actually been down all morning, I forgot. We need to call the provider and have them come out and fix it. Can you do that?”

Can I call an unnamed internet provider and schedule them to come do service at a business where I don’t even technically work yet? Idk. She gives me their number and I call them and they put me on hold.

People are walking in and she’s not greeting them. She keeps browsing and people assume like I did that she’s another customer so they’re coming up to the counter where I’m on hold to ask me for help, and then I have to say I can’t help them and to ask the woman in the trenchcoat, and then she says “we can’t sell you anything. internet’s down.”

this goes on for 30 minutes and every time the store is empty she’s chatting at me and I’m on hold and then a man walks in the door and he says “sorry I fell asleep on live again haahaahaa” so this is the manager and the minute she starts speaking to him she no longer has an English accent which has me confused because it did not sound fake.

It was regionally specific and very natural.

the manager asks what I’m doing and I say I’m on hold with the internet provider and he gives me a thumbs up and walks to the back.

so I ask how long she’s lived in the U.S. and say I’m always interested in the way people can sometimes go in and out of accents and she says “oh I’m American. he asked me to stop doing the accent so I only do it when he’s not here.”

Suddenly I wonder what I’m doing here and I tell her I need to leave and I give no excuse but at this point I didn’t feel like I needed one? She said okay! See you later.

The manager didn’t contact me and that night I got offered some other retail job I jumped on.

Three months later the Game Stop manager texts me and asks if I can cover a shift in an hour and I say back “I don’t think I work there? I left an hour into my training. And we never spoke again.” And he texts back “hahahaha right on.”

And you may think wow, what a strange experience that all was but recently I have spoken to friends who did work at Game Stop and when I tell them this story they don’t even blink. Nothing I say surprises them. I was at the average Game Stop

[wholedamnbody]

Redraws of some old raptor arts I made back in 2017(+ some new doodles as well)

[wholedamnbody]

YOU FUCKING KNOW WHAT I WANT, CIRNO FUMO, NOW

fumo in space

[wholedamnbody]

I recently installed that one firefox extension that puts Mr. Beast in the thumbnails of every video on youtube (which is great if you've ever wanted to be plagued with visions of a grinning white devil) and it made me take a second to think about him and that one Polygon article about how he's subsumed everything he is to win at the content game.

I really appreciate how Mr. Beast is, like, a hollow shell of a person. I don't really like him or care for him, but I can admit to a grudging respect for a man who figured out how to play the content game better than pretty much anyone else.

But it just feels right, you know? He's the closest we'll probably ever get to a God of YouTube, and he lost what made him human along the road to divinity. He's the pinnacle of everything the internet has been leading to for the last few decades, the apex of the apex of those ceaseless, soulless engines of churning content.

He has everything and nothing. He who masters the algorithm cannot break it.

[wholedamnbody]

a lot of people lack self awareness but not me, i know what i'm bad at <- guy who has a whole second set of inadequacies he's not even remotely aware of

[wholedamnbody]

finch fancam❤

[wholedamnbody]

i want you guys to GUESS what this anon says. because seeing this notification itself could not have prepared me for the full thing

[wholedamnbody]

why is it that people who dont play hollow knight are the funniest about it. friend whos been watching me play sent me this headcanon of theirs

[wholedamnbody]

highlighting some verified fundraisers that have not received any donations in over a week. I worry about our siblings in Gaza who aren't able to access the internet or navigate social media to ask for our help. any amount you can donate will bring hope and help save lives

from Ottawa4Palestine: Enas' family Fadi Hamad Nada's family the Shahwan family Ameer Khaled Samah's family Heba's family Mahmoud and Nada Leen's family Khaled and Hisham's family

from Gaza Funds: Malik, Yazan, and Ibrahim the Saeed family Bahaa Kahlout's family Mohammad's family Osama's family Hamdi's family Fatima's husband the Abu Shaaban family Dr. Isam's family Ahmed Timraz's family

[wholedamnbody]

[wholedamnbody]

as far as i'm concerned that emoji is a man barking

[wholedamnbody]

I love this photo

[wholedamnbody]

lets out a noise like a wounded animal and doesn't elaborate