#<- user like cult activity in their media
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WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THERE'S CULT ACTIVITY ????? IN MY PIRATE SMP ???? SNARLING AS I SPEAK
#guys guyss#sun god ?#the savior mayhaps ?#foaming at the mouth. possible entities in my minecraft???#oh my hodd#<- user like cult activity in their media#its their hyperfixation. and yeah i kind of realized how weird it is#kites [?] were really having them activities on they islands fr 💯‼️#tw cult#cult tw#so sanee and normall oh my godd this also connects to my other hyperfix currrently#optr#scurvyblr#pirates smp#bee rambles
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i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.
the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order
damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post
I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.
First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.
Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."
You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."
"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)
some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.
oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.
(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)
So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.
But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:
some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.
Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)
the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order
No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).
someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out
A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.
partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:
This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.
(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")
This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.
This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.
Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.
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An Observational Study on Fictoreligions
by: Tule
This is an amateur study not affiliated to any persons or institutions.
The purpose of this sociological research is to document and understand what is the Fictoreligion Community, why beings (see dictionary) might identify with a fictoreligion, and what activities they perform related to their faiths.
Although this research focuses on the community directly connected to that label, the chapters “Intersectionality with Systemhood” and “Intersectionality with Pop Culture Paganism” explore the existence of beings who relate with fictional religions or entities way before the term was coined.
Methods of study: observing the tags ‘fictoreligion’ and ‘neoreligion’ on Tumblr, as well as a public* fictoreligion Discord Server owned by the coiner of the term; interviewing the label's coiner. (see dictionary)
*as of April 8, 2024
DO NOT HARASS ANY INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS MENTIONED.
Introduction
“Fictoreligion” (FR) is a label coined by Kai on xry Tumblr page @/redacted-coiner on January 27, 2024, to describe real-world religions based on fictional media.
Transcription from a part of xry coining post:
“Ficto-Religions, a term to refer to religons/neoreligons found in fictional sources and/or religions that are based off religious mediums! These are commonly non practiced religions within this world but does not mean they are never practiced. These religions should not be moderated , rather these shall only be something that someone should inner personally use (of course multiple people can use it but it should stick to one person to one person).
Note: These are NOT Fults/Cults. Do not use them as if they are!”[1]
Moreover, according to Kai xemself, xry rule that “FRs should not be moderated” means that FRs must not have groups with leaders, in order to “prevent unintended cult-like situations”.[1]
Term etiquette
Kai has stated that xe does not want xry term connected in any way to the creation of, compared to, or facilitating relationships that resemble cults or fults (see dictionary). Considering that the FR community is very supportive of this rule, breaking it would cause a negative reaction from other members and arise conflict.
A few statistics
As of April 6, 2024, Kai's coining post has received exactly a hundred notes (interactions) on Tumblr. Moreover, there is evidence of more than 60 FRs announced on either Tumblr or the Discord server, meaning that an average of 15 FRs per month have been created so far since the label's inception. Although only a few users other than Kai have coined FRs yet, they commonly have done so at the requests of other beings. The exact number of FR adepts is unknown. (Hey does anyone wanna do the research?)
The complexity of FRs
Internet coining hobbyists exhibit a lot of creative freedom with their terms surrounding specific topics of interest, and this is also true for FR coiners. For example, Kai's “Writer's Faith” religion is both meta- (referring to the paradox of creating fiction creating reality) and self-centered (self as referring to the adept themselves, not Kai). Xe also coined “Parable's Blessings”, a FR based around Parable, the mascot xe created to represent the community.
Sub-groups, or perhaps branches, have been created to multiple FRs, like Revive the Old Faith (a FR based on Cult of the Lamb) and the Genshin Belief (FR based on Genshin Impact).
Intersectionality with Systemhood
A considerable number of fictives heavily identify with their sources, including the faiths presented in them (but a fictive may also feel disconnected from source and still identify with its religions). A fictive from the Discord server mentioned worshiping their entity in source (thus carrying the worship into this world); another fictive, a Jedi whose source is Star Wars, mentioned that a pre-established Jedi faith exists in real life, but she doesn't identify with that community since her experience is different, reason being that she actually is from the Star Wars universe.
Systems are extremely diverse, both intra-system (inside the system, “alter-to-alter”) and extra-system (outside the system, “system-to-system”). A single system can feature devotees to multiple FRs, followers of pre-established religions and atheists, agnostics, etc.
Proving one more example, according to another Discord member the following scenario is real (Tule is not using his words, it's just interpreting what he said):
In a system, there are fictives from source A and B, all connected to their respective sources. Almost all fictives from B follow one of its religions, except for “Jane” who follows a religion from A.
Intersectionality with Pop Culture Paganism (PCP)
When Kai was asked on xry coining post if FR was related to pop culture paganism, xe answered: “can be, matters on someone’s view of things. Being they may not attach it to paganism.”[1]
Some adepts of neopaganism or neopagan faiths, chaos magick, etc, also work with deities and spirits first seen in fiction (like Lovecraft's Cthulhu) for a variety of reasons, such as: believing that the author was inspired by the spirit, believing the spirit sprung into reality via the collective subconscious (an egregore; see dictionary), that the character manifests an abstract concept or collection of concepts, or that the character is or represents an aspect/mask of a real spirit. (Source: neopagan community and headmate lol)
The perspective of FR adherents
Some beings follow FRs for the comfort they provide.
The way a FR is practiced varies from adept to adept, but common activities include building digital or physical altars to worshiped entities and creating sigils.
Here's an interview Tule did with Kai:
Q: What sparked your desire to coin Fictoreligion?
A: I made it due to the fact I have always struggled with religious traumas and I didn’t feel personally safe with anything that was pre-established. I made the term being it was one of the few things I understood and gave me personally comfort. I have always viewed religious beliefs as something that gives you comfort, so the term was made for that. It gives me comfort.
Q: Did you already have a fictoreligion even before coining the term, or have seen other beings with experiences similar to what fictoreligion describes?
A: Sorta? It was never really put into words but I had seen a character as a religious figure but I never went into it until I coined the post. Now that it is I feel more comfortable doing religious things related to it.
Q: What is your favorite part/aspect of the fictoreligion(s) you have?
A: Mainly the interpersonal freedom, I don’t feel trapped within the rules of other religions. With the ones I fallow I feel comforted by the those who I account as it’s deities. Such as in Lovingcrafian, I feel comforted in my relationships even more now due to how I perceive them.
Q: We all know that it's really validating to have words to describe our experiences. So, do you think that there might be a considerable number of beings who would benefit from finding the label? Perhaps reaching a thousand or more?
A: While I don’t think it’ll be a lot, I want the term just to be a thing that gives people answers. I realistically know it won’t be used widely, but if it ever got there, it’d be something that’d give me peace. Being that’d also just mean that people are more accepting of more neoreligons in general.
Q: Tule has noticed a similarity between Parable and egregories; which are spirits created by us that grow self-awareness and can interact with others. That might be just a coincidence, but since you coined Parable's Blessings, do you personally believe that Parable has grown to be a real spirit too?
A: I don’t entirely believe in Parable’s Blessing myself, Parable is a mascot I made for fun and I realized that some may end up seeing her as a religious figure. A lot of stuff I make I may personally not believe in but know there is a possibility that others may. If Parable ends up becoming a religious figure for someone and become a spirt/egregirories I’d be happy. Being that means that Parable gave people comfort in some shape or form.
Conclusion
The community surrounding the Fictoreligion label may be small, but the experiences its members share are much older and common than outsiders may expect when first stumbling upon it. Systems and neopagans (especially those interested in chaos magick, egregores etc), are demographics that might feel more familiarity with the label than the average population.
Dictionary
Alterhuman: a sentient being who physically possesses a human body but does not identify 100% with humanity may choose this label to describe themself.[2]
Being: in this context, it is synonymous with “individual”, as an alternative of “person” inclusive of alterhuman and nonhuman identities.
To coin: to create a label/word/term.
Egregore: “a concept in Western esotericism of a non-physical entity or thoughtform that arises from the collective thoughts and emotions of a distinct group of individuals.” (Paraphrased from Wikipedia)
Fult: abbreviation of “faux-cult”. According to its coiner, “faux cults, also called fults, are groups that exhibit cult-like characteristics, resembling a cult in behavior or structure; however, are not considered a true cult due to being consensual.” The term was created by Tumblr user @/sheyoves on December 16, 2023.[3]
References
[1] https://www.tumblr.com/redacted-coiner/740639140473978880/ficto-religions?source=share
Archive: https://archive.ph/KFeeF
[2] https://phasmovore.tumblr.com/post/98482696958/this-will-probably-be-my-last-post-on-semantics
Archive: https://archive.is/SGP7N
[3] https://www.tumblr.com/transramcoa/736908543412797441/faux-cult?source=share
Archive: https://archive.is/zwCkG
Thank you for reading! Tags meant for reach
#fictoreligion#neoreligion#mogai#liomogai#liom#plural community#plural system#sysblr#sociology#fictive#neopaganism
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Hi
I'm Viktor (or Vik for short), I use he/they pronouns. I identify as a demi boy/masc nonbinary. Aroace/bi. I don't mind most people following me, but please just be respectful. Ask for main in dms, will probably won't give it to you immediately if we haven't been mutuals for a bit. It's not hard to find my main since I do post about self ship on some of my other accounts.
Just my own blog for TCOAAL the game. I do self ship myself with Andrew. I don't really assign any characters with sexualities because I just like leaving it up for interpretation. May be kinda suggestive in posts but actual imagery of sexual activities will not be reblogged and posted here. 18+ users I'll talk to and would prefer. I know I can't stop everyone so please just keep in mind and respect my comforts.
Some is headcanons and will change with info that becomes known (height and so on). I do like other self/oc ships for the characters of this game. I will happily interact with people who also ship with Andrew or other characters. I don't have anything against it and honestly would love to make more friends with the same interests!
I am NOT a pro shipper or an anti. I do not support incest, murder, human trafficking, child neglect, cults, etc. I am not here to be part of drama and I may like posts from people you don't like, but I still want to enjoy art from the fandom. Most I will have are jokes on the topics but I do NOT condone toxic behavior. Just because I enjoy a piece of media that features bad things does not mean I support it. I like Danganronpa but I don't condone kidnapping, terrorism, or murder. So if you think liking media with problematic topics means you enjoy and support problematic actions, please do not interact. Just block me. The point of the game was literally to show how their relationship is toxic and not okay. I don’t mind interacting with people with different opinions, but please just don’t start a fight with me.
Pedos and zoophiles or support of any sort of themes of that topic, do NOT interact at all. Please block me and stay the hell away from me and everyone.
If this game bothers you or anything else, please block this blog, ignore, and don't dm or send hate of any kind.
Relogging other posts, art, and so on.
I don't want to flood my main with a lot. Might shift this to a self ship blog if I don't have much to post about with the game when the series ends. Idk we'll see.
Please don't tag my art as incest. I don't care about what you ship but I don't want my art labeled as such. But please also don't attack people if they do.
Thanks for reading, feel free to reach out to me!
Please do NOT repost/reupload, steal, claim my art as yours, etc
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I’ve seen at least one viral tumblr post argue for Steven Hassan’s BITE model for “mind control” to warn tumblr users for signs of a cult. And like, it’s a noble goal, but I don’t trust the BITE model one bit. For one thing, the concept of “brainwashing” or “thought reform” or “mind control” is very controversial and there is no scientific consensus that it’s real.
Now there are tons of abusive and authoritarian groups, let’s call them cults, who use tactics of socially isolating members from their previous family and friends and outside information. This is itself abusive and makes it harder for members to think critically about the group and leave. And children are easily influenced and can be indoctrinated, especially if they are raised in isolated circumstances.
Still, brainwashing theories do often make outlandish claims of a total “thought reform” that removes personal agency from adult members of cults in a way that is hard to prove or disprove. Scholars such as Rebecca Moore argue it’s even pseudoscientific.
It mainly functions as a comforting thought for friends and family of cult members, as it removes personal responsibility, the member becomes a victim instead of a willing participant, and it’s similarly useful for ex-members to absolve themselves of their actions. It was used more worryingly in the 70s and 80s to justify coercive “deprogramming”, which was family of cult members kidnapping them and attempting to reverse the claimed brainwashing of the cult.
This brings us to Steven Hassan, who I think might be the most visible advocate of “brainwashing” theories active today. He was a moonie for a couple of years in the 70s, before deprogramming and becoming a prominent member of the anti-cult movement of the 70s/80s. His BITE model seems credible at first glance. There are a lot of genuine signs of an abusive group environment on this list. If anything, some of the signs are too obvious, to the point of being facile. The model literally has “murder”, “torture” and “rape” on the list.
Hassan also places a lot on the idea of hypnosis being this super-effective method of controlling another person, which I don’t think the scientific evidence supports. And I have other reasons to think Hassan is a complete crank about hypnosis, more on that later.
A lot of these things are very general too, in a way that makes it easy to accuse almost any group of being a cult. A lot of these things are not in themselves abusive and just general human group behaviour. For example: “Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda, including... Newsletters, magazines, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, YouTube, movies and other media.“ This is literally just an aspect of being an organization in a society with mass media. The organization linked to above is set up by Hassan himself, and it has both a newsletter and a youtube channel. Another example is “Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth.“ Basically any political and religious group has an underlying ideology which it expects its members to believe in.
So basically any group of people will hit many points on this model, which makes it liable to be misused to label any group the speaker doesn’t like as a cult. And Hassan himself likes to stretch his definition of “cult.” He has famously labelled the Trump movement as a cult. And not to defend Trumpists, but while Trump is an authoritarian fascist leader, in my view his movement lacks the rigid organization and cohesion to be an effective “cult” environment. Hassan’s idea of “mind control” also obscures the deeper societal reasons behind Trump’s success as a politician. The misogyny, racism, and transphobia of Trump’s ideology is rooted in systemic inequalities providing a material basis for such supremacist ideologies to prosper in USAian society.
Less famous, but more revealing, is his tweet thread from a few years ago where he comes to the conclusion that trans people are a cult, or at least a “cult-like situation.” You see, Steven discovered the world of forced feminization hypno porn youtube videos. Now that’s a weird subculture, and forced fem as a porn genre has problematic transmisogynist ideological baggage, as I’ve written about briefly here. But it’s porn, both the creators and audience know it’s not real. You can’t be hypnotized into becoming a trans woman against your will.
Except according to Steve Hassan, PhD and self-described “World-renowned expert on cults.”, they are wrong. As he explains “What I watched in Hypno porn IMO was weapons-grade mind control and if a person watches it...they could be profoundly influenced to, for example, believe they were a woman in a man's body.“
It’s a hilarious twitter breakdown, where Hassan destroys down any credibility he might have had in one go. His BITE model seems to be this sophisticated and realistic model of “mind control”, far removed from its depictions in literal cartoons and hollywood movies. But no, his idea of the power of hypnosis is identical to that of porn videos. The funniest thing about forced fem hypno videos are the transmisogynists who think it is real. Hassan has tried to explain his conversion to the moonies as a result of mind control, but I think the simpler explanation is that he is a very gullible person.
Of course, Hassan’s transphobia is worrying. He is a famous “exit counselor” for cults, an advocate of deprogramming and since he believes trans people are essentially a cult, the twitter thread is essentially advocating for conversion therapy for trans people. He explicitly disavows conversion therapy, but he is essentially advocating it by another name. He has similarly mostly disavowed the coercive “deprogramming” of the 70s and 80s anti-cult movement, except as a “last resort.” We should keep in mind that the “father of deprogramming”, Ted Patrick was involved in efforts to kidnap women to cure them of “leftism” (in the case of Susan Wirth in 1980) and lesbianism (in the 1981 case of Stephanie Riethmiller, which included corrective rape). Deprogramming and conversion therapy turned out to be the same thing.
It is legitimately funny when people like Steven Hassan think hypno porn is “weapons-grade mind control”. Yet there are many monstrous acts you can justify when you argue that people lack personal agency and need to be rescued.
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Just wanna say thank you for explain what pro-shipping is because I had zero clue and literally 99% of my dash is stuff that's anti pro-ship and all. Legit feeling like I had a lightbulb moment reading your post 💕
Glad it was helpful! For anyone just seeing this, here's the post.
I can definitely see it being confusing to determine the base issue between pro-shippers and antis. I can't count how many anti-shipping posts I've seen that define pro-shipping as "people who romanticize and normalize incest/pedophilia/rape/etc" and that's wildly untrue. Are there people who use the pro-ship label as an excuse to do that? Of course, it's not dissimilar to right-wing voters who misrepresent their politics to spread their ideas in left-wing circles. But that's the outliers, not the majority.
I think the key difference between pro-shippers and antis is overall behavior regarding what's labeled acceptable in an internet community. Example: I've seen a lot of antis post blocklists for pro-shippers, in which they cite "offending" content and link the account in question. I'm not okay with that, as it encourages harassment of those users. I've yet to see a pro-shipper do the same.
Pro-shipping is not pro-CP, pro-MAP, etc, nor is it a cult of "anything goes." It's a "live and let live" approach to fandom spaces, in which people who aren't harming real human beings or perpetuating actively harmful ideologies should be allowed to engage with media in peace, even when controversial content is involved. Pro-shipping isn't a defense of the ship, but the shipper, aka the real person behind the computer screen. Pro-shipping is defined by the ability to disagree with certain content and move on without bothering the person who posted it. It's fundamentally anti-cyberbullying.
To every concern antis raise, my question is, "but does that make it okay to harass other people on the internet?" Their silence on that is deafening.
I've also noticed that the same antis who define pro-shipping this way tend to be in favor of internet censorship, such as an underage/non-con content ban on Ao3. Being a radical left-wing anarchist, I vehemently disagree with about 98% of censorship efforts--the blanket exception being, "people shouldn't be allowed to spread political/health misinformation without at the very least a disclaimer or freely engage in hate speech that endangers minorities." Censorship is a common tool of fascism. In general, it's not good, as it silences beneficial exchange of contrasting viewpoints and maintains a rigid status quo.
Of course, this doesn't mean I can't be civil with antis. In fact, I welcome opinions that differ from my own when there's genuine, good-faith debate to be had. As a sociology major, I believe discourse has the potential to be a good thing. I don't see much value in "us vs. them" mentalities. Trouble is, these things turn into arguments very easily and next thing you know, you're turning off anons to save your mental health.
So yeah, regardless of what antis say, the vast majority of pro-shippers aren't out to get you. We're just against censorship, harassment, and cyberbullying.
#disclaimer of course that this is based in my experience and opinion. i'm not a fandom authority nor do i want to be.#pro ship#mirroredpaladin#logan answers#on fandom#on politics
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So earlier today, everyone on twitter got all confused because everything was showing a “rate limit exceeded” error message with no further clarification whatsoever. Then, some hours later, Mister dumb-dumb claims its “totally deliberate u guys” to “address extreme levels of data scraping”, and limiting people to seeing 600 posts per day. That might sound like a lot, but the way Twitter loads its feed, that basically means you get about 30 seconds of usage.
So basically, Mister dumb-dumb spent an unearthly amount of money to buy one of the biggest, most relied-upon social networks in the world, fired all the people who actually worked there, changed the verification badges so instead of confirming celeb accounts are legit, they instead mean “my cult is paying me $8″, claimed an adjective is a slur and is now massively restricting people using the service.
He does claim this is “temporary”, but given this idiot’s track record, he probably doesn’t know how to fix it. Especially since he laid off most of the actual software engineers.
Twitter has, for years, been a primary platform for both communities as well as keeping up on news. If people can barely see any tweets per day, that all goes right out the window.
Twitter got so big largely because it was convenient to get those things on one feed. Netflix got big when it started because it was convenient to have everything in one place, it reduced the amount of piracy that was going on for film/TV because it was easier and more convenient than the old torrenting services of the day. Now, every last studio wants to cash in with its own streaming service, and people are going back to piracy because its more convenient that having 500 different monthly subscriptions. This is the social media version of that. Mister dumb-dumb took one of the most convenient social media platforms and utterly mangled it, so user retention is understandably going through the floor.
Anyway, that means a lot of the communities I’ve been a part of are splitting all over the place to countless third party platforms. I’m not 100% sure yet, but I might be making more of an effort to get used to Tumblr. I’ve never quite felt confident posting here, but its currently the best alternative; Reddit is also going down the toilet with their API changes, Facebook is more built for people you know IRL rather than fandom communities (I never particularly liked the groups systems there), Discord is utterly alien to me and I simply cannot learn how to make the most of it and stuff like Mastodon or random-twitter-knockoff-that-my-mutuals-aren’t-bothering-to-tell-me-what-it-is are too niche and a bit weird.
So yeah, this feed might become more active with videogame screenshots, Star Trek episode thoughts and opinions, neurodivergent ramblings and whatever else, idk.
EDIT: News article with a bit more detail if you want
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66077195
#twitter ded#mister dumb-dumb broke twitter for good#social media's gone all weird#i just want my online community spaces#i need somewhere to talk about my hyperfixations#trust your software engineers#i'm still not entirely sure how to use tumblr
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An Autopsy of Roguesci: the coolest way to lose an eye in 2005
If you've been online since the 2000s, you'll have noticed a shift from a web of many independent forums and websites to everything being concentrated on a few social media networks. The content grab started long ago, so many storied subcultures are being lost to digital decay. It's with this in mind that I want to tell the story of the Explosives and Weapons Forum.
Many websites served to dispense advice on gray area or outright illegal activity. There were the pyro forums, specialized toward both legal and illegal fireworks. Beyond fireworks forums there were sketchier places that dealt in more weaponized explosives, drugs and petty crime: Totse, Rorta, Bombshock. They attracted many a fan, but few a practitioner - everyone knew that the information was not the best. Try anything and it would be a dice roll between making something that can go pop, making a dud and blowing your fingers off in an accident in the midst of a felony.
In 1998, megalomania established Roguesci: The Explosives and Weapons Forum, a site to rule above all of these trash boards...or at least that was the expectation.
Roguesci, like others, grew from the mid 90s BBS subcultures and seemed to have been inspired by the writings of an Aussie who went by the name of "Lowry". Lowry was an Aussie pyro who made a little how-to file of various improvised weapons and fireworks (very dangerous to mess with, for chemistry reasons, so just don't). He resurfaced at some point with an obscure partial reup of his site, not knowing that a more complete PDF was going around and that there was another pyro forum with his old contacts.
But these BBS and Usenet lists had a problem that would carry on through the years: Low quality posters and files spread dangerous misinformation. Even widely published and famous books were full of information.
Roguesci would be the site with standards and the go-to for conversations about explosives, chemical warfare, improvised firearms and collection of historical chemistry texts.
So mega brought in his friend nbk2000, a lifetime hobbyist weaponeer, who self-identified as a psychopath and a Nazi to deliver HED, "hot electrion death" (bans) to all "kewls": Kids and young men who spread "cool" dodgy instructions for making dangerous chemicals. Advice was to be peer reviewed and unskilled members expected to lurk and study before posting. Using "crapbooks" like the Anarchist Cookbook was also a quick route to a ban.
(the joke "NBK likes to give HED" was prohibited on the forum)
Under their rule, the site thrived. It hopped from free hosting to its own dedicated domain with official explosives guide to explosives and their synthesis, written by mega himself.
youtube
The site thrived throughout the mid-2000s but ran into some scandals with an early user killing several people with a bomb, and whispers of users getting injured in lab accidents (I can't tell who but one user was said to have lost some fingers).
Dangerous content was its draw and vague connection to murders weren't going to slow it down. But its weakness was in a cult of personality around the vice admin, NBK.
To roguesci users, NBK was a mysterious, charismatic drifter who held the highest subject knowledge. Sometimes hated for his debates about the worthiness of non-white people. Usually respected because he had the most entertaining posts. His famous work was a pdf file and website of his name that mixed his own advice with reprints of a few books and contained "rules to profit by" for criminals. NBK had spent most of a decade writing what he said would be an encyclopedia of improvised weapons and advice for criminals.
NBK maintained one of the most popular non-technical threads, "Why I Hate Rent (rant)" detailing his beliefs that paying rent or property tax was slavery. He escaped this slavery by squatting at abandoned houses, and he blogged about his experiences in the thread.
One of his actually brilliant ideas came in handy when a guy robbed his squat: he kept his money in a safe made with a pipe and padlock. It was mistaken for a pipe bomb and dropped by the burglar.
Then one day, mega announced that NBK had died. There was no elaborating. Users poured out performative mourning (sentiments of respect and resentment were mixed, but the latter not shown as much).
Later on it turned out that NBK was alive but needed legal help: he was being charged with the murder of a guy who he was living with, and had fled to Canada where he tried to stay with another forum member (who promptly turned him in).
NBK2000, or Arthur Charles Carnes, was later convicted after using his history in weaponry to argue that he would have done a far better job of murdering the guy than whoever did (most likely nbk in a less composed, dumber incarnation of himself than he presented online).
NBK2000 unmasked: nerd
According to a forumite's investigation, NBK's friend (the victim) had falsely converted to Judaism so that he could sell kosher meat to the local Jewish community. NBK had decided that this was race treason.
The forum went down and reopened, with some in-house web crawling to preserve the information for the final shutdown that we knew was inevitable, and the inevitable came in 2009 with the site disappearing forever. Rumors of a reopening circulated but it seemed like there was too much heat on mega, and its heyday was long past.
A few users and mods tried to open successor sites and bring the community back together. They also disappeared.
Another of the old Roguesci mods, fierce opponent of seatbelts after a few near miss accidents, died after being thrown through his windshield in a car crash.
Another one lost an eye in an explosives accident.
Roguesci prided itself on having higher standards of accuracy than all the other pyro and weapon freak boards. But it fell short of its own self image and its prided top dog that the user base looked up to (in public at least), NBK, was actually a bit of a dumbass. Many forumites were dumbasses posting things they'd regret, but at their high point, they also distributed information on how to produce illegal weapons that could have killed thousands of innocent civilians if the wrong readers took interest.
In its wake, I've found nothing that is even similar in scope. The condensation of the internet to big social platforms and the ruining of search engines makes it almost impossible, and ironically with less conspiracy-riddled eyes it's obvious that if you wanted to engage in such hobbies, you could just get an ATF license and use explosives legally without resorting to hardware store chemicals that will blow your hands clean off your body as your skin melts off. That's right: explosives and munitions are legal if you fill out ATF forms and pay a fee.
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Join the Cult!
Hello tumblr users! This is a member of the Thomas the Tank Engine Cult here, we are so thrilled to be a part of this community and we hope you welcome us as much as we welcome you into our cult.
This post will contain the necessary information you need to know about our cult!
What is the Thomas the Tank Engine Cult?
We are a cult entirely devoted to Thomas the Tank Engine. We believe that his tank engine-ness is absolutely omnipotent and the media that birthed him is biblical in its nature! For the three years we have been in operation (starting in 2020) we have not been very active, only putting up the occasional poster that didn't even list a contact for queries! We have finally decided to upgrade, choosing this wonderful site as the main outlet for our cult.
Is the Thomas the Tank Engine Cult an Actual Cult?
To put it simply, its a secret! Keeping the fact of whether the Thomas the Tank Engine Cult is an actual cult or not a secret leaves it up to your interpretation, which frankly makes it much more fun!
Should I Join the Cult of Thomas the Tank Engine?
Yes! Absolutely. Joining the Thomas the Tank Engine Cult is a one in a life-time opportunity to be a part of a cult that will absolutely not steal any of your teeth (even though the entry fee to the cult is a bag containing ten adult human teeth, you can take these out on your own accord) and there are also many other great reasons you should join, such as the free, freshly baked cookies by Thomas the Tank Engine himself. Which other cults include cookies baked by their god?
How do I Join?
Well well well dear reader, it's not as difficult as you may think to join a cult like ours, all you need to do is interact with one of our posts or message us, giving us affirmation you would like to join. (e.g. "I am cult member now :)" or "Yippee! Take my teeth!") There is also an entry fee however to this cult, which is a bag of ten adult human teeth. We cannot stress the fact that these teeth need to be adult teeth, as we have had a few confrontations with the tooth fairy about taking baby teeth which are "rightfully hers". Can't argue with tiny, angry fairies after all. Because they bite. We prefer that you clean these teeth beforehand, though it is not mandatory.
Why is There an Entry Fee?
Thomas needs the secret ingredient to his cookies, dear reader. And as we have said before, we only recently updated our methods. With the previous system we had, our members would join free of charge and then try to avoid the mandatory sacrifice of ten adult human teeth. This happened far too frequently for our liking, so we added an entry fee.
We hope that you enjoy your time in our cult and stay as long as you need in order to find enlightenment with Thomas the Tank Engine.
#thomas and friends#thomas the tank engine#thomas#cult#the cult of thomas the tank engine#join our cult#join us#teeth#human teeth#adult human teeth
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@staff I'm setting up a professional blog on WordPress for my business, and I was testing how to share my posts in other websites and social media. I set up all the options, reposted an article from my Facebook page, and checked.
Facebook page: success
Mastodon: success
Instagram: success
LinkedIn: success
Tumblr: nothing happened
How does Automattic expect Tumblr to ever be profitable when basic integration functions don't even work between their two flagship products? Not to mention, the post editor on WordPress, although fairly annoying, has many more features, less limitations and includes SEO tools and AI marketing assistance and integrated stores and a ton of plugins. No wonder Tumblr keeps losing money, it's a blogging platform where blogging is extremely inconvenient compared to their former main competitor/current sister website. Honestly it didn't even cross my mind to make the Tumblr account the main one, I just naturally assumed "well this is professional so I should use wordpress", and I've been in this place for nearly a decade. And if Automattic itself doesn't respect their own product enough to fix basic functionality issues like that when they did put in the work to make it work with Mastodon, a website that came out last Tuesday, then how do they expect anyone else to take it seriously as a business?
You wanna make money with Tumblr? Give it WooCommerce integration, payment plugins and premium creator tools, just like you did in your other website that allegedly does the same thing as this one. Etsy is in decline, Patreon is under fire, and you could easily take in the refugees from both those communities if you just treated this website like a business. It's insane that I can't activate tips on my Tumblr because I don't live in one of seven privileged countries while on WordPress I can just put a PayPal button on the top of my blog like a guitar case on the sidewalk. It honestly makes me mad that this place has been known for a decade to be full of artists and craftspeople and opinionated cult leaders but never even considered to give them the chance to open a merch store. Do you realise how many websites are making dough on commissions for things people could easily sell here? People who by the way have to constantly figure out new and inventive ways to circumvent Tumblr's ass policies of not letting users make any money from their platform directly in any way. And instead you bought a streaming function from some Canadian grifters. This place is broke because it wants to be.
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im supposed to be on a week haitus from all social media but oh my god i had to tell someone that the Children of God cult has aN UP-TO-DATE SIDE TUMBLR???? and there are two users liking every post??? The Tumblr microsocieties are reall and active and here to convince us to give up a life of materialism, accept jesus, and cut everyone who disagrees out of their life?!?
#im not going to tag The Family International#but oh my god oh my god oh my god fucking TFI#a colleagues TFI family moved him and his four siblings to another country to beg for food and ask pennies in exchange for balloon animals#i have no words
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Hello there!
☆ I go by Imaginary on most social media platforms- so I guess that’s what you’re stuck calling me… ☆
↓↓↓
Basics:
• I’m something roughly dude adjacent and use he/they pronouns. I wouldn’t be too opposed to any neo-pronouns you may choose to use.
• I was born in Russia however I have a hefty mix of Russian, Ukrainian and Mongolian blood. Essentially it all boils down to me being white + asian.
• I’ve moved since and am now based in the UK. However, I do tend to travel a-lot so there is no telling where on the globe I might be at any given moment.
• I fluently speak Russian, English and French (though I am terribly out of practice and might be rusty). I know a good bit of Latin and am currently learning Japanese!
DNI:
• I’ve been active online for the better part of my tween and teenage years so I am well aware that not everyone will be everybody’s cup of tea. If the type of content I put out doesn’t particularly resonate with you, please be reasonable and simply scroll by :)
• I am part of the LGBTQ+ community and it goes without saying that anyone residing with homophobic or transphobic views will not be tolerated on this blog.
• The same sentiment is also applied to any kind of anti-asian or anti-black dispositions.
Content:
• I like to keep myself busy so I engage in everything from writing fan-fiction to drawing fan-art and even cosplaying!
• As far as writing goes; I will mainly post drabbles and short one-shots on this blog. Any of my longer works that may be advertised here will be posted on my Ao3 profile (can be found in ‘Links’).
• As far as art goes; Anything from rough sketches to fully rendered pieces will be posted on this blog. Feel free to repost or repurpose my art but please be sure to give credit to this specific blog regardless of the social media you choose to repost or repurpose it on!
• As far as cosplay goes; I will not be posting any of my cosplays on here as Tumblr tends to associate cosplaying with NSFW content and SW (which there is absolutely nothing wrong with, I simply don’t engage with producing such content). However, if you wish to see my work it’s predominantly posted on my TikTok page (can be found in ‘Links’).
Fandoms:
• Getting some self promotion out of the way: If you’re feeling so inclined, consider joining a new fandom… check out my concept for a WIP Will Wood Jukebox Musical titled Welcome To Suburbia
• Where do I even start… I’ve been a massive part of fandom culture since I was in my early tweens and there is absolutely no way of encompassing every single fandom I have ever been in, but I can surely try:
Film & TV:
Sherlock BBC; Hannibal NBC; The Umbrella Academy; IT; Marvel; DC; Harry Potter; Fight Club; Back To The Future; American Horror Story; Dr Who; Good Omens; The Sandman.
Anime & Animation:
Gravity Falls; Inside Job; South Park; TAWoG; Adventure Time; MLP; Sailor Moon; WINX Club; Monster High; Kakegurui; Moriarty The Patriot; Neon-Genesis Evangelion; Black Butler.
Games:
FNaF; Cup Head; Cult Of The Lamb; Sally Face; DDLC; Animal Crossing; Splatoon; Legend Of Zelda; Mario Brothers; Project Sekai (Colourful Stage); The Last Of Us; Detroit Become Human.
Books & Literature:
Frankenstein; Jekyll & Hyde; Dracula; Steven King’s Collection; Neil Gaiman’s Collection; Лето В Пионерском Галстуке (Summer In A Scout’s Tie).
Links:
• Role Play Blog
• Ao3
• Pinterest
• Spotify
• TikTok
• Instagram
Afterword…
Any and all engagement with this blog is appreciated. I love receiving comments and questions- anything that let’s me meaningfully interact with other users is always welcome.
☆ Stay safe and have a great day!! ☆
#get to know me#introduction#introductory post#intro post#my dni#my content#my fandoms#my links#lgbtqia#lgbtqia creator#multilingual#multilingual creator#any and all engagement is very much loved and appreciated#Spotify
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NUTTIGE IDIOOT
“Nuttige Idioot” is Afrikaans for “Useful Idiot.” Two words that explain unreconstructed Afrikaner white boy Elon Muck perfectly.
And his useful idiocy to the Fascist American Right is accelerating.
Muck probably does personally believe in white supremacy; certainly the rest of his dodgy family, who made their money profiteering off Afrikaner war crimes in the era of Apartheid, hve shown no indication that they have accepted the changes of the past 30 years in South Africa. His best friend is German immigrant Peter Thiel, who brought and active love for Hitler and Nazism with him. Birds of a feather do indeed flock together. As to whether he believes any of the rest of it is not exacty proven, but if he’s doing it for a lark and doesn’t believe any of it, then he’s even more dangerous than he appears to be.
Yes, everybody’s sick of Elon Muck; I’m sick of him, too. But the problem for all of us, even people like me who won’t be found dead on the platform is that Twitter, with all the myriad flaws it’s floundered through since Day One, has managed to become the most influential social media platform out there. Just like what Facebook, it isn’t limited to pop culture and sports and cat pictures. It’s now used by journalists, activists, researchers, doctors, diplomats, and heads of state and has managed to become a critical source of both news and learned opinion. The fact that some readers of my genre of books declared that my friend Barrett Tillman and I are the “best” authors in our minnow pond - and that a bunch of Twitter users agreed with them - got me noticed by a New York literary agent who now represents me (and Barrett) on some projects I didn’t think I could ever find a way to do - and I didn’t even have to go bother myself with twittering! That’s how powerful Twitter can be.
So, for Muck to dismantle Twitter is bad enough. But to then turn it into a geyser of fake news, disinformation, and hate speech, far beyond what it was in the Bad Old Days, makes us all less safe as a country. Elon Muck is a national security risk and needs to be treated as such. By the government.
The narcissism/radicalization cycle that took hold of Muck at some point in the past two years has been accelerating rapidly, with acceleration growing on acceleration, since he finalized his acquisition of Twitter - was it only six weeks ago?
Within days of the takeover, Muck established relations with every member of the Dark Forces that had wrecked the place and led to those individuals being de-platformed beginning in 2020. He is now in near constant contact and dialogue with the most rabid conspiratorial fantasists and anti-Semites on the internet. Whether he really knows or understands any of his new enthusiasms is irrelevant. He jumped head first into the “globalist”/pedophile vortex which created the “Pizzagate” conspiratorial fantasy that led to the rise of the entire QAnon cult. He accuses former Twitter management who he has organization arguments with of intentionally allowing Twitter to become a breeding ground of pedophilia and child sex trafficking - all the while working with the people who probably are the pedophiles and sex traffickers if recent arrests mean anything! These false accusations and defamations rose to the level last week that last Friday Muck drew a rebuke from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey - up until that tweet, one of his bigger supporters in the takeover.
The message Muck is now broadcasting on the most powerful social media platform is indistinguishable from the far-right claims that “globalist” enemies are behind a vast Satanic network of pedophiles who prey on our children. Despite our surprise that a guy who once appeared to be a Liberal Hero with his “invention” of “the best electric car,” and his “invention” of a successful space exploration company has now “turned” 180 degrees shouldn’t be so surprising. Musk’s main allies now are literally the people who created Pizzagate and all the other conspiratorial fantasies and blood libels.
Watching Muck tells us where liberalism and conservatism are these days. Back when Musk was playing at being a liberal, he was a normal billionaire liberal. Flamboyant and egotistical, but the politics were more or less on the side. His pet issue was climate change, which he rode hard, though now one wonders if he’d have been such an environmental warrior if the government subsidies for his tinny electric toys - the primary source of Tesla’s semi-existant profits - had been less than they were. Had he not been the lib’rul fanboi he was, the Rich White Libs might not have bought in on the cars - and now that he’s gone Nazi, the cars are no longer the Official Car of Rich White Lib’ruls.
Let’s remember something that was there from the beginning: Muck is not this “creative genius.” HE DID NOT INVENT ANYTHING. Not Paypal. Not Tesla. Not Space-X. What he did was bring his part of his dodgy family’s dodgy profits from their participation in Apartheid Afrikaner war crimes to America and invest it in these projects, which had all been created by other people. Other people from whom he stole the credit when he claimed invention of Pay-Pal and named himself “Chief Engineer” of Space-X. He’s the modern version of the Swedish Nazi who went to Germany in 1938 and became an SS officer, and then at the end of the war stole a couple suitcases full of gold fillings taken from dead Jews in the concentration camp he worked at and returned to Sweden to found IKEA.
Muck regularly engages with and affirms the various claims and attacks of Mike Cernovich, the main promoter of “Pizzagate,” the conspiratorial fantasy that Democratic elites were using a D.C. pizza shop as the center of a child sex ring, that eventually evolved into QAnon. He’s also affirmed the claims of Lara Logan, who was recently banned form Newsmax - of all places! - for claiming World Economic Forum “elites” were “dining on the blood of children.” We now know that literal blood libels can get you banned from Newsmax. But Muck loves her.
Musk’s giving these people the keys to the Twitter kingdom. Former “contrarian” journalist Matt Taibbi, who jumped through the looking glass back in 2020 and Bari Weiss have become Muck’s in-house “reporters.” Whatever their problems, neither ranks with Cernovich and Logan and their “Scoops” from “The Twitter Files” have merely demonstrated that former Twitter executives were worried about doing their jobs right. But each new “revelation” has brought a new round of accusations from the far-right media sources working with them.
Jim Baker, the former FBI general counsel who later joined Twitter was working with Taibbi and Weiss on their initial releases. But then Muck’s new “friends” informed him of Baker’s background with his role in the purported Russia-Russia-Russia “hoax.” He was summarily fired.
Just last week, Muck’s new “friends” have decided that the current Twitter employees assigned to feed them information are actually part of the larger anti-conservative conspiracy. And it comes with the defamatory accusations that these people are promoting pedophilia and child sexual exploitation. In the Far right fever swamp, these are not those actual terrible things, but are rather clubs to be used against political enemies: anyone seen to support the rights of the LBGT community.
This past weekend, Muck went after Yoel Roth, head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. Because Roth is gay and Jewish he’s been a particular target for the far-right. Roth stayed on during Muck’s early weeks at Twitter and was frequently put forward to defend against claims Muck was promoting hate on the platform. But last week Roth took the fateful step of mildly criticizing Muck’s engagement with the right in public. Saturday night Muck retaliated by insinuating that Roth might be a pedophile, which explained Twitter’s purported laxity toward “groomers” and pedophiles.
Cheerleading a smear campaign by the global far right against a gay Jew is not only morally terrible and vicious. This stuff frequently leads to real world violence, with online conversations now filled with every kind of anti-Semitism, images of gas chambers, hook-nosed cartoons and worse. There is really no limit to the predation and malevolence Muck is capable of. He’s done this before when someone didn’t recognize his Glorious Genius, most prominently to a British caver in 2018 when the man who ultimately saved a group of Thai youths trapped in a flooded cave had the temerity to decline Muck’s suggestion he use a submarine during the rerscue effort. Muck then cut loose with “claims” of the rescuer’s involvement in pedophilia, which seriously negatively affected the rescue effort.
For questioning Muck even mildly, Roth is on the receiving end of just the sort of campaign he was charged with preventing, now led by the owner of the platform he was charged with policing. When its led by the guy with 120 million followers who owns the platform it’s a different matter entirely.
Muck’s outrage on Sunday was to promote a tweet that pushes the right wing goal of prosecuting Dr.Fauci. For what criminal offense?
The fact is that Muck doesn’t mean anything with this. He didn’t mean it when he said that Twitter removing Hunter Biden dick pics at the request of the Biden campaign was the clearest possible example of a First Amendment violation - an event that didn’t actually happen.
These aren’t arguments. They’re poses. They’re Muck “virtue signaling” to his new in-group. Muck’s model for Twitter 2.0 is 8chan, the site you go to when you’re looking to connection with the worst filth the internet has to offer - neo-Nazi indoctrination, misogynistic trolling, and every form of bigotry and hate you can imagine.
As far as Muck being anything close to “conservative,” there is no evidence he opposes abortion. His constant pursuit of government subsidies suggests he is not in favor of free markets. His sympathyand support for Putin in Russia and XI in China suggests that he has no understanding of the idea of American-lead internationalism. His “conservatism” is limited to shitposting and “triggering the libs.”
Four years ago, Muck tweeted, "Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI." This pas weekend, he tweeted, “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters.”
If “Woke Mind Virus,” AI, and Climate Change are now his three interests, if he really believed any of them, wouldn’t her find allies for the struggle against WMV are don’t also insist climate change is a hoax?
The truth is, Muck doesn’t really have political beliefs; he has personal interests, and they are closely connected to his financial interests.
The hypocrisy at the center of Muck’s tenure at Twitter is crucial to understanding his political activism. Under his management, Twitter let back on its platform organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville; neo-Nazis like Andrew Anglin; and election deniers and insurrectionists like Roger Stone, while at the same time suspending accounts that mocked Muck or expressed left-leaning views. He is promoting what Adam Serwer defined as a “belief in a new constitutional right. Most important, this new right supersedes the free-speech rights of everyone else: the conservative right to post.”
Muck’s far-right activism, like everything else in his life, is personally motivated by the accumulation of money and “being perceived as a visionary who will reshape human society.”
But unlike Trum, the epitome of the Twitter Troll, Muck is a try-hard - as he has been with everything else he has pursued. Over at 4chan, his Fauci tweet barely merited discussion. “Elon is just being controversial to drive traffic to his website,” as one poster there put it. Muck is a failure at being anything other than cringey.
Saturday night in San Francisco, alleged “comedian” who’s no longer so funny Dave Chapelle called Muck to the stage during his show, where he was booed relentlessly by the crowd for over ten minutes, unable to get a word in, and according to people there he “looked stunned.” The ever-tasteful Chapelle then tried to claim the boos were coming from Twitter employees that Musk fired. Chappelle then said that all the people booing had terrible seats, and they were “way up there.”
In response to the Fauci outrage, he received the following”
“Re Musk tweet? Courting vaccine-deniers doesn’t seem like a smart business strategy, but the issue is this: could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?" Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
"Elon Musk wants to criminalize Anthony Fauci because he disagrees with him. Elon is no champion of free speech," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
"It’s America. You can select any pronouns you damn well please. But Anthony Fauci has likely saved more human lives than any living person in the world. Shame on you," Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.).
"Dr. Fauci is a national hero who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health. Despite your business success, you will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions. You may have money, but you have no class." former CIA director John Brennan.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the tweets as "incredibly dangerous" when asked at a briefing on Monday. Musk's "personal attacks ... are disgusting and they are divorced from reality, and we will continue to call that out and be very clear about that," she said.
The other side: "I affirm your pronouns Elon," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
Last night, the Twitter Trust and Safety Council scheduled a meeting to “discuss recent developments” at Twitter. Feeling anxious about what might happen, Muck dissolved the Council twenty minutes before the meeting.
And this morning, Elton John - who probably has more followers on Twitter than Muck, announced he was leaving Twitter and recommended his followers do the same.
All of the major advertisers Muck needs to pay that looming multi-billion interest payment 100 days from now have either left Twitter or paused their advertising. If a few hundred milliong Twitter users leave, that list of departing advertisers is going to get longer. Muck will either declare bankruptcy, which will destroy his relationships with his fellow richies who personally invested in his game, or be forced to sell even more Tesla stock, which will drive its value down, at the same time that the Wall Street vultures are developing plans to short Tesla stock into a forced bankruptcy.
Muck may soon be wishing those kids he was hiding from at school when he was 12 had found him and put him out of his misery then.
[Thats Another Fine Mess]
#twitter#That's Another Fine Mess#Muck#social media#misinformation#history#culture#society#Musk#NUTTIGE IDIOOT#white supremecy#anti-semitism
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A quick intro to HD physical media
Hey, since @pneumatic-tubes got me thinking about it again, I've been reviving my habit of collecting physical copies of media I like and I thought I'd share some good tools I've found for doing so. It should be said, collecting Blu-Rays is a bit expensive, your average BD movie is gonna cost $30-$40 new, 4K/UHD even more, box sets can cost up to a couple hundred. Even when I was collecting a ton, I really only bought movies and shows that I was absolutely going to watch multiple times. Still, I have them forever, in their original state, in full quality, with extras, and that's definitely worth something.
1.) blu-ray.com
This site is super useful for tracking your collection, getting news and updates on upcoming releases, understanding and finding the differences between releases, and even doing business with other collectors for rare or out of print releases. Create a free account, get the app on your phone, and keep your collection up to date!
2.) Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is one of the biggest DVD/Blu-ray distributors outside of the major studios, they have hundreds of properties including anime, classic movies, cult horror, foreign films, and more. BestBuy actually carries a lot of their releases in store if you'd rather shop brick-and-mortar.
There are tons of boutique and more genre specific releasing companies still active so I won't list them all here, but if you explore on blu-ray.com, you're bound to find what you're looking for.
3.) RedBox
Even for new releases, getting the physical disk from a RedBox is typically cheaper than renting it on Amazon, Google, Apple, or where ever ($1.99 vs $3.99+). The selection is much more limited, but they do have more than new releases. RedBox carries the retail disks too, so you can watch extra features if you want.
4.) An actual blu-ray player
This one is a bit obvious, for sure, but in case anyone's wants some basic advice on buying one: Sony or LG are your best bet. Sony wrote the blu-ray spec so they're obviously invested in keeping the format alive. A good (4k/uhd) player is still expensive, but many of them double as a streaming player. My Sony UBP-X700M has Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu apps on it. In my desktop PC, I have an LG blu-ray drive (BH16NS40 Blu-ray Disc Rewriter) which is what enables me to do the cool shit in the next item on this list.
I've never explored external BD drives like you'd use for a laptop, hopefully someone who sees this post can give a good suggestion.
5.) MakeMKV
Honestly, this is the real special sauce on this list. Playing Blu-Rays on your PC is a huge pain in the ass. BDROM's DRM schema is absolutely insane, but it's not impenetrable, this is where MakeMKV comes in. MakeMKV is a tool for making legal, authorized back ups of blu-ray disks that you own, regardless of their encryption (obviously you would never make a copy of a disk you got from a RedBox). MakeMKV is currently in "beta" because they have not paid the license fee to legally read blu-rays, but anyone can use it, fully featured while it's in "beta", you just have to refresh the product key once a month. Personally I bought a license because the software is solid as a rock, built for windows and linux, and has been indispensable for blu-ray collecting.
6.) FFMpeg/Handbrake
I'm gonna plug this even tho it's only really applicable to digital copies of movies because I really think more people need to understand how to manipulate media files. The MKV (Matroska Video files) that MakeMKV exports are huge, blu-ray disks are effectively uncompressed video, and MakeMKV doesn't decide to compress them for you. After a while, you're not gonna want to have every movie taking up 30, 40, or even 60+ GB on your PC, so you're going to have to compress/re-encode them. An actual guide on how to encode video properly is outside the scope of this post, but both FFMpeg (command-line, multi-platform, handles anything) and Handbrake (GUI, windows-only, much more user friendly, less features but more focused) are very easy to find guides for.
Well that's about it. Video collecting is a fun hobby and a great way to preserve media you love. Hopefully, as more people get into it, studios will expand their offerings and we can avoid this stupid bullshit that HBO Discovery has put people thru losing access to shit they've already paid for just because some fuck-ass exec decided to pad the bottom line. Take real ownership of your media with these tools and happy collecting!
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I’m Home
Not me opening up a Tumblr blog since a literal decade ago. Being a marketer and talent manager, working in social media management and whatnot had me so jaded, I felt like my identity was slipping away. And here I see Tumblr, frozen in time in 2013 just like I foolishly left it for Facebook. For what? 26k followers that ended up hating me for being trans and keeping the 100 or so homies after I left in 2019 because of the privacy issues deteriorating my mental health to the point of manic depression and paranoia? Leaving Zuckerville for Twitter to fight fascist weebs with their crusade to make Vic Mignogna their cultural icon and cult leader felt like the right thing to do when I alienated my audience on FB in 2018.
Not me regretting my social media journey thus far. Twitter has been nothing but pain and suffering and doing what I can to help others have less pain and suffer—even if it meant holding their abusers accountable, even if it meant deplatforming Nazis and pedophiles. I don’t regret the actions I took to carve up a place on the cesspit that is Twitter for queers, BIPOC, and neurodivergent people to call home within the VTuber Scene. This also means that my work there isn’t done. I’ll pay the corporate tax and see what happens.
Not me realizing that I had to carve out a space for myself and others like me. The world ended in 2020 and I had already came out as trans, demiromantic, demisexual, and queer in 2018 (started HRT in 2020). It was at that time that I gave up my writing efforts to fully deep dive into VTubers, become one myself, and make a community of people and build a business from the ground up to ensure that the right people succeed with VTubing as a sustainable career. Fast forward to 2022 and a lot of controversies I found myself tangled up in and shitty people I helped cancel, and I end up having a healthy amount of clientele.
Not me having to survive all these years. I moved out away from my abusive father after he pushed me into a fridge and had me unconscious on the ground because of the activist communities, mutual aid societies, and VTuber community that I loved so much. In hindsight, I moved out too soon with the wrong people even though I thought them to be friends when I was being used in my moments of desperation and my momentum died with the responsibilities I had to take on to maintain that household and do my best to stabilize. The events I had to endure in the 2020s year alone are more than many have in an entire lifetime and I’m tired.
Not me now making a Tumblr blog since I’ve procrastinated on having a blog to begin with for my business, Project Evergreen. I now am safe and stable in a much better place. I am now at a point in my career after the tumultuous volatility that I had to face graduating in spring 2020 and never was able to land a job to the point where I can pay all of my bills, have a social life, pay down debt, and even invest money into my business and into my girlfriend/wifey’s VTubing career. I am fortunate to be here and to have the support of my community and clients who appreciate my expertise. I wouldn’t have this privilege without any of them.
Not me writing into a void like old times. Therapeutic and serene is the eternal darkness of a blog when avoiding the overstimulating corporate hell. Twitter threads just didn’t cut it. I’ve always been a blogger my entire life even with forums. Seeing Discord have forum posting and Tumblr making a comeback brings tears to my eyes. In 27 long years of living, I can now rest my weary head and cry no more. I can escape into a corner of the internet that is advertised by users as literally being autistic, Dadaist, and just not taking Twitter bullshit that actively deteriorated my mental health. I’ve known Tumblr for some nonsense, but Twitter has been life altering for the good reasons I put above, but also has burned me the fuck out and made me jaded.
Not me feeling like I can use this blog to post extended thoughts and detailed, nerdy marketing and branding jargon with a tinge of anti-capitalism when I make Twitter threads. Medium just never cut it and corporate work has me burned out on website building as a career (I mean, people compare Google to decaying shopping malls for a reason: marketers have ruined the search engine and Google’s greed followed suit). I don’t need to focus on SEO or rely on monetization. If I get tipped, cool. If I rank high consistently by pure gut instinct with my marketing expertise, then fine. But that’s not the point.
The point is, I’m home. It’s good to be back.
#vtuber#depression cw#abuse cw#vtubr#envtuber#vtuberuprising#social media#marketing#nostalgia#i’m home#anime community#lgbtqiia+#neurodiversesquad#bipoc community#latina#trans pride#not me tho#sa survivor#abuse victim
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Tumblr is such an interesting website because if you ask me as someone who frequents a lot of old websites, forums, and the like; it’s actually extremely similar to those sorts of “closed groups” in that it’s entirely user curated to the point 90% of the people who I interact with or who interact with me are part of at least 1 if not more common interests; for me it’s mainly ProjMoon related media. But it also almost entirely, though sadly not completely; lacks the toxicity we so often see on those sites, or even other social media sites; this is going to go a little all over the place but if you’re curious you know the drill by now here’s a little “keep reading” thing and my thoughts on everything will be below it:
We see this in a lot of forums on the internet that take up almost cult like “us vs them” motifs where even the admins involved will intentionally scare away or bully newcomers who get too comfortable and start actually, you know; using the website. However what’s really cool about tumblr is that because it’s such a diverse web of these sorta closed groups, we don’t see that here.
We totally do in some fandom spaces don’t get me wrong, but I genuinely feel comfortable just posting whatever random stuff comes to mind. I don’t believe any of my mutuals or even followers would randomly decide to say I’m no longer welcome or allowed to post in ProjMoon tags simply because “you also posted about some other random thing one time” it’s cool because in a sense this site functions as a way for us to get to know one another on a deeper level if desired, but while it gives me the power to DM someone, or send them an inbox message it also gives them the power to simply not answer it, to block me, or to go about their business as if I don’t exist and the thing is; doing so won’t effect how the site functions for them.
As a content creator albeit a casual one, using twitter was so strange because if I didn’t have enough followers for someone, they might not give me the time of day. Which yea it sounds scummy, because it is. However that doesn’t mean it wasn’t so commonplace that it was normalized and greatly accepted by other content creators who would often justify it with saying things like “we need to focus on growing our brand and if you’re not going to help us grow our brand then we just don’t have time for you because this is work this isn’t socializing.” Which man, this is why I literally go on record saying “I don’t like vtubers” I don’t mean Hololive or Nijisanji or any professional studio, I literally mean up and coming vtubers on twitter who have around 1,000 followers and think they’re such hot shit that they don’t have the time for someone with say 200 or so followers simply because “mah brand”
tumblrs system functions in such a way however, where my follower count, and your follower count are things that are entirely nonimportant. Like, how many followers do I have? Take a guess? Here’s your answer: does it matter? At the end of the day no matter how many followers I have it doesn’t really change anything about me. It doesn’t gauge my ability to make a “banger post” or to fit in with a community, it doesn’t give you any understanding of how well I can joke around or put on a show. All it does is give you an arbitrary number to judge my worth by.
What always amused me so much about my time actively trying to grow an audience via twitter was that so often I’d see these streamers with 1000+ followers only getting about 2 - 5 active viewers, and the best part about that is that genuinely a majority of the time that was them asking myself or the others they were in a collab with to also view their stream to help boost ratings, the people watching weren’t from their thousands of followers, it was literally maybe their 1 regular and the other people streaming with them or half the time literally themselves on a phone or in a different window. However they still looked at their flashy 1,000+ follower count and said “I’m better than you.”
This is how we’re raised on the internet, we’re raised and conditioned to believe if my number is bigger than your number I am socially better and that I should be held in a higher regard than you, that you should desire to be my friend because I have an inherent worth that you do not.
I mean okay hear me out real quick, when I tell you “I’m a vtuber/streamer/content creator” if that excites you at all, does it excite you because “my friend is a content creator and I would love to see what kind of silly content they make having got to know them and enjoying my interaction with them!” Or perhaps does it excite you because “maybe I could get popular by being their friend! They must have a huge following who would give anything to talk to them like I do!” While posing it like this absolutely does make it seem like a very “selfless vs selfish” reasoning, I promise it’s not that cut and dry; but at the end of the day I always find it interesting how people often find my more interesting when they hear I’m a streamer and content creator, but lose all that interest the moment they hear that I average between 5 - 15 active viewers. They don’t care that those regulars are really cool people who I’ve genuinely enjoyed getting to know and who I am always happy to see in my chat, and who I don’t address as “chat” but rather have gotten to know well enough that I can address them by their name or at the very least their username because I feel it’s a level of respect that should be shared when my audience is still small enough for me to do so. I understand if you have literally tens of thousands of messages scrolling by, you would have to distance yourself a degree from every viewer of course; but when I see someone with 3 viewers refer to their audience as “chat” it bothers me because it feels so subhuman to simply disregard the idea that there’s another living breathing person on the other side of the screen who is giving you their time and attention.
What does this have to do with tumblr? Well simply put tumblr is no different, I know it sounds silly or maybe even stupid for me to say this but I don’t enjoy looking over all my notes because “oh man I’m so popular and I get so much validation from seeing everyone interacting with me” but rather I really enjoy reading through everyone’s tags on posts they reblog from me because it’s a way for me to get to know them a little better, and it leads to me actually checking out their blogs and enjoying their original content, and this allows me in turn to piece together a little more about who they are as a person, and it makes me feel interested in reaching out and saying hi even if it takes a while for a conversation to really get started or even if they don’t respond right away or at all. I find that this site gives me a way to interact with others while being able to do my own thing and they get to in turn choose exactly how much of their time and attention they wish to give me, but they can always learn more about how I think and how I feel about things by looking through what I reblog or checking out my personal posts so they also have an idea of who they are talking to.
tumblr is a website that doesn’t ask me to fully identify myself, it doesn’t ask me to give you my first and last name, birth place, mothers maiden name, and my social security number; it asks instead for all the information you might need to start a budding friendship with someone, what am I into? What sort of things do I enjoy doing, engaging with, eating, listening to. This means you can latch onto any one aspect of those things and go “oh hey me too!” It helps break down intimidating walls and barriers.
I enjoy vtubing as a streamer because I don’t have to put MYSELF out there, I don’t have to be on camera, if I’m not having a great day and my hair is messy it doesn’t matter, if I don’t want to wear a shirt that’s okay too. However I still get to put everything that makes me who I am out there. I still share my opinions, I still play my favorite games, I still discuss my favorite music or joke around with my community. It’s why I was offended on behalf of their viewers when a vtuber I was collabing with started outright ignoring the individuality of their audience distancing themselves harshly from the maybe 3 or 4 people who bothered to come out and support them.
I am not about to tell someone what boundaries they can or can’t set for themselves, but it does feel a bit rude to not give people the time of day, when they have given you theirs. It’s why I tell my community outright “the chat box is your domain, the live stream is mine; and all my streams are a collaborative effort between you and I to have a good time.” I once admitted on stream that the entire reason I enjoy streaming has nothing to do with the potential of fame or fortune but rather because it’s simply fun to feel like I’m sitting on a couch with good friends playing a game I enjoy and having everyone sitting on the couch with me going “wait who’s this Netzach guy? I thought we were talking to the Purple dude? I LEFT FOR 2 MINUTES AND NOW HE’S DEPRESSED”
At the end of the day I’ve grown up as “the little guy” the person who didn’t have friends, the person who wasn’t good at music, art, or media; I’m not even great at playing video games or telling jokes. But what I am good at is treating people with genuine respect and kindness because I know all too well what it feels like to be judged by a number, whether it be your age, your follower count, or how much content you make.
A friend of mine always tells me they feel a little sad when their art doesn’t get as many notes as they hoped it would; and we once had a discussion about how we have been conditioned by living on the internet to desire outside validation rather than being able to genuinely be happy with something. We have to not only be happy with the creation ourselves, but also see that others also deem it important and good, otherwise the imposter syndrome kicks in pretty hard.
I still remember when I once befriended a few people in an old mmorpg only to have their guild officer ask me why I was always hanging around with their guild, I explained that I was friends with some of the members and I felt like I fit in; he then told me I was an arrogant asshole and it’s something that stuck with me because I literally didn’t know the guy. Yet to this day I always favor putting myself down rather than building myself up, and tell people that “I used to be an arrogant asshole” which is funny considering I used to be, and still am; actually a very depressed idiot who just wants to make friends with people and has an extremely low self esteem. However whenever I try to feel confident or catch myself feeling good about myself I’m reminded that I’m just “an arrogant asshole” and that’s specifically why I’m careful about the company that I keep these days.
That’s how the internet is, everything becomes a matter of “survival” where you feel a need to put yourself first even if it hurts others, and you might not even realize you’re doing it. It’s a sort of culture where we are so hardcore focused on “us vs them” that we have no idea that “they” are part of us, just a part we vaguely don’t agree with and therefore we divide ourselves off from. I have found that I walk a very fine line between “protect yourself and your mental health, block people who you don’t wish to interact with or who have wronged you, and never be afraid to set boundaries” and also “be kind to others and give everyone a chance because you never know if inviting a friendship today could be something you come to cherish in 10 years when you’re now very good friends with people all over the world all because you allowed yourself a moment of indifference and understanding.”
On one hand I believe everyone deserves respect and to be heard and to be given the time of day, but much like how a streamer might distance themselves from their audience for the sake of setting boundaries; I cannot fault someone for being even overly cautious on the internet because I have surely been burnt far too many times for opening my arms to the wrong people and inviting friendship when I didn’t realize it would end in ruin.
#Weird long post of rambling that goes completely haywire halfways through#but there's a lot of personal thoughts in here#anyways if you're interested in that sorta thing I guess this is one of my TED talk moments lol
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