#also the posts are always about tiktok like it's a mystery why the most popular app's most popular posts are about popular interests | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

skynapple · 1 month

Note

Hi! Sorry to bother you but could you tell us (me) the plot of Love and Deepspace? I've seen a lot of tiktoks and tumblr post about the main 3 💦voice lines💦 but now I'm really interested about the plot of the game. I've only read about a Caleb dying in an explosion, Zayne seeing mc die in every timeline (?) and Rafayel being a Lemurian but I still don't know the contexts. I'm asking because I can't spend money on the game so I have no idea. Thank you in advance!!!

*cracks knuckles* Alright Anon.

This story is SO, so rich and deep and I can't even begin to cover it but I will try to be as thorough yet brief as I can for people who are interested!

TL;DR:

In a futuristic earth, the audience plays as a new hero in a world of alien invaders. When a sudden tragedy occurs, the world is revealed to be far darker than previously thought, and evil forces seem to be at play behind the scenes. Seeking the truth, our protagonist begins to investigate on her own.

On the outside, the story is about a heroine's journey, and also the internal struggle in seeking revenge and how far she'll go to find answers.

It's really about time loops, alternate universes colliding, and how far will you go for the one you love.

I'm going JUST off the main plot here not the myths or too far into the side stories and trying to avoid the in-game jargon:

About the three love interests in order of proximity to her:

Zayne:

Her childhood friend Zayne is introduced early on as her primary care physician and cardiologist. They spent 8 years apart and only recently reconnected. At this point in the story, he is the one she's closest given that history.

He is outwardly stoic but cares deeply not only about the MC but about people in general. This is widely noted by the hospital staff and patients you encounter.

He has an ice power that he uses sparingly and it's currently unknown whether or not it's because he doesn't have total control over it or because it causes him pain or...?

Secretly good at random things like he studied how to peel an apple perfectly in one go

Is shown to be very thoughtful. Always keeps candy around for MC (and his patients!) (they both have a sweet tooth problem)

Speedran med school (he's 27 good God)

Was a combat medic before taking up his current hospital residency

Plot-wise: he knows the most about MC's heart disease and a little about the evil forces who might be seeking to capture her? To me its obvious he may know a lot more than he lets on but he might be withholding to protect her

Xavier:

Xavier is introduced as a mysterious fellow hunter and colleague who is very powerful. They have odd run-ins and she's initially suspicious of him until his employment and position are confirmed by her supervisor, who seems to trust him greatly. Xavier is very knowledgeable about the antagonist's group (Onychinus, lead by the antagonist named Sylus) and what they are seeking. Proximity wise, he's her work partner and upstairs neighbor but it's unclear how much MC trusts him yet in the current plot.

Many things hint to him having lived a long, long time but his age is unconfirmed (he has mentioned he's around 23)

Has a light superpower, in that he can weaponize and control rays of light. Can also teleport.

Is probably definitely an alien

Has a secret alter-ego as a superhero vigilante called "Lumiere"

Is often shown needing to sleep to recover energy and finding out why killed me dead

Obviously knows more than he lets on

He's a bit standoffish with MC at first but this is revealed to be because he can't let her know too much and it's made clear he's very protective of her and shows up often to rescue her

Has a playful "play dumb" side

Rafayel:

Rafayel is a renown artist who is currently living in the same city. He's introduced as somewhat rude and maybe even arrogant. Because of his wealth and popularity, he's targeted by no-gooders and the MC is sent to investigate. She ends up being coerced into being his personal bodyguard-for-hire, in exchange for some information. Rafayel, too, knows more than he lets on and its clear very quickly that he is no ordinary artist. At this point, while they are friendly it's clear that he might be the person she trusts the least (just because she knows the least about him at this point and it's so, so obvious he's hiding a lot).

His paintings are implied to have occasional hypnotic abilities

Is obsessed with the ocean

His special power is fire and it can't be put out by water

Is older than MC

Its revealed to the audience but not MC that he is a Lemurian from the ancient and long gone civilization under the sea (not actually a merman but can and does take the form of one)

Has a strange work partner that may or may not be related to Onychinus but either way he's definitely involved in the underworld somehow

Initially comes off bratty, whiny, and demanding, seemingly thinking only of himself. Overall very over-dramatic

Has a lot of faith in MC for seemingly having just "met her"

Lore-wise: his backstory is very, very deep, tragic, and intriguing where you learn the brattiness is somewhat of an act

The Myths:

Each love interest has an equivalent "mythical" story self, either long, long in the past, long in the future, or simply an alternate world altogether. There's no official word yet on whether they're all connected, or if the myths truly happened. The myths at least add layers and layers to the love interest's personalities and interactions with the MC, at least in showing their deep care and also how they conduct themselves in different circumstances. In each myth, the MC is known to either be romantically involved or wanting to be romantically involved with the corresponding love interest. In all of the myths, the MC has the same heart disease. All the myths have tragic endings.

Rafayel: a former sea god

Xavier: an immortal prince

Zayne: a cursed demigod

About the MC:

The version of her in the main story was adopted by her grandmother-like figure (but no confirmation of true relation) alongside her adoptive brother, Caleb. They fit into the mix for only a brief moment in the story and both die tragically early on in an explosion. This being the event that shakes her world and sets her off on her journey to seek truth of what secrets her grandmother may have been hiding.

Can reincarnate

She's shown to be headstrong, determined, diligent, and a little mischievous.

Her superpower is "resonance" which. I'm still... a little lost on what that means altogether. We do know that she can "connect" and "enhance" other things so in the gameplay by "resonating" with the love interests' powers she can enhance their abilities and make them stronger and maybe even mirror them(??). Don't quote me on this. Anytime she does something I'm like "okk?? I guess she can do that now??"

Her heart is Broken™️ in that she has some kind of disease that only exists in that world. Something struck her heart in a catastrophe when she was young and is now just... lodged itself in there.

Whatever is lodged in her heart is what the evil group (and literally everyone) is seeking.

It's somewhat obvious in the plot that her power is actually going to be crazy OP and strong and that "Only She Has The Power To Save Us All" type of trope

Has a mischievous side

When she wants something, come hell or highwater she's gonna get it

Currently does not have feelings for any of the love interests in the main plot

There you have it!

There's so many layers, so much to uncover, but the main plot is relatively simple so far. The gameplay is fun, and easy. Apparently its similar to Genshin Impact but I've never played that so I can't say!

There's a ton of content on Youtube so if you ever have more questions pls pls bother me I will be glad to send a link or explain more things! My brainrot is spinning so bad.

#madi plays lnds #anonymous #ask #love and deepspace #l&ds #lnds #lads #lnd

64 notes · View notes

rileybiers-stanaccount · 2 years

Text

So, I’ve been outlining a fic and consequently have been considering what the characters would be like in a human HS AU.

The following are my conclusions.

Alice: Cheerleader 100%, Popular girl if only because she goes out of her way to be everyone's friend. Avid TikTok user and TikTok famous in fashion circles. Everyone thinks she’s a bit odd (affectionate) but she’s a delight to be around. Adopts anyone she thinks looks lonely because that’s simply not allowed on her watch.

Emmett: Also a cheerleader. He tried out because he thought it would be fun but actually took a liking to it. Class clown. Local himbo who gets an invite to every party. 1/2 of the schools it couple.

Rosalie: Popular Girl™ Big into drama club and auto shop. Doesn’t have a lot of friends because she’s intimidating and a bit cold at first but a great friend if you make the effort. Other half of the it couple.

Jasper: Weird kid (derogatory). He’s super quiet and just wants to listen to his I-pod (He doesn’t have a smart phone because his flip phone still works and why would he replace something that’s not broken.) and read his little books. Socially awkward and doesn’t really get along well with most people. Is adopted by Alice who is NOT ok with this kid not having any friends. He’s not interested at first because she’s a lot but she isn’t going to give up on this and he slowly warms to her. In the end they’re the couple that no one really understands but they seem happy so good for them.

Edward: Band kid. No one really knows anything about him because he’s always locked in a practice room with one of the many instruments he plays. If not in the band room he’s in the library reading books that make him think he’s sophisticated.

Bella: Bella is pretty chill once she acclimates to moving from Phoenix from Arizona and get’s over herself a bit and one of those people who’s not popular per se but is also never alone. She’s quickly adopted by Alice because every introvert needs and extrovert and makes a lot of friends. She gets really into booktok but never actually posts anything. I firmly believe that because she doesn’t have some vampiric mystery to draw her in with Edward she actually ends up dating Mike for awhile. It doesn’t work out and they break up in collage. She goes on to live a very normal life.

Jake: Same as he was before the werewolf stuff. Just a fun chill dude. He has a crush on Bella but get’s over it. There’s no soul crushing breakup to make Bella bond with him more since there’s not vampire stuff so his relationship with her doesn’t really have a chance to develop as much as it did in canon.

#Twilight #Alice Cullen #Jasper Hale #Emmett Cullen #Rosalie Cullen #Edward Cullen #Bella Swan #Jacob Black #Jalice #Emmalie #mike newton #BellaXMike #Just some thoughts

65 notes · View notes

nellycanwrite · 2 years

Note

From the podcast episode

What sort of jobs would the triplets and friends have at the resort if they're asked to help out? Or a fun hc about each that hasn't been mentioned yet?

OOOOHHH YAAASSSS! @cheesy-cryptid and I actually had some fun little headcanons about their work in the resort! I'm gonna add in some fun little tidbits about their life in the Madrigal Resort while we're at it!

Angelina is our lovely Social Media Manager slash Influencer! She's a model for different clothing brands that will request a collaboration with her and mostly does advertisements for summer wear! She uses her popularity as a means to help advertise the Madrigal Resort and sometimes would even rope her family into her social media shenanigans. Ignacio is also fairly popular with Angelina's fans, and everyone wants to have a peak of mommy Evalina! But what mildly irks her is how Javier is always the one who would gain the most traction in her posts, especially on Tiktok. Javi doesn't like to be seen on camera, so it's been a running gag in her account to spot Javier whenever a blurb of him in the background could be seen (some would even go as far as to compile clips of blurred stolen videos of Javi and some audio recordings of his voice from Angi's many many videos). Angelina uses this to her advantage and sometimes ropes Javier into her schemes for the clout. But she makes sure to cut any on-cam face reveals of Javier.

Ignacio is our Rockin' Fiery Musician and Surf Teacher! Although he does go with Angelina for photoshoots on occasion (and is quite popular on social media as well), he's actually the star of the Madrigal Resort dinner as the lead singer and guitarist of the night! He also likes to do a little bit of fire shows with his gift when he sings. It's a headcanon of mine that he does fire breath performances for the thrill as well, but since it's a fire hazard, it's rare for him to do spitfire shows on evenings. During the day, he helps out with the kids who wants to learn how to surf. He also accompanies willing adults as well! You can say that he's also a volunteer life saver, but only if the lifeguards on the resort are too shorthanded for the amount of rifts in the beach. Angelina would sometimes film Ignacio with his shirt off for thirst trap videos

Javier is our All Rounder Manager! It's not really a shock on how Javier is a jack-of-all trades. The only difference is he's a master of all. He can definitely make advertisements and catch banger shots of the resort with his trusty drone and DSLR camera which is the main reason why the marketing for the Madrigal Resort is sky-high. He manages the website and bookings sometimes, and he schedules Ignacio's performances during the night. He can be an event coordinator and floor director, but he cannot, for the life of him, become the center of attention. He says it's too much of a drag. Contrary to what you may think, Javier knows all of the up-to-date trends and would sometimes give tips to Angelina on what content she should do next. He is hyperaware of his own popularity as the mystery triplet of the Madrigals, so he cashes in on that as well. But you can say that his biggest responsibility is to keep Angelina and Ignacio out of trouble (and possibly not to ignite a fire in the resort). His work doubled when Auri and Diego came into the picture, but he's thankful that Diego has enough sense in him to get the others out of trouble too. He's a big sweetheart, but he tends not to show it as much.

Bonus!

Everyone in the Madrigal Family is, one way or another, involved with the Madrigal resort!

Julieta's side of the family deals with room management, hospitality, and the resort's menus! Julieta and Agustin are head and sous chefs respectively, Isabela is front of the house and head steward, Luisa does front of the house too, but is in charge of the heavy lifting, and Mirabel is the one who does official Madrigal Resort tours (with a musical twist).

Pepa's side of the family is in charge of event planning and coordination, especially for bigger events like weddings, anniversaries, debuts, quinceanreas, and big celebrations! Pepa and Felix are head event coordinators, Dolores deals with the networking (wardrobe, make-up, stage decorators, you name it), Camilo is head hospitality and host for events, and little Antonio is still too young to really help out, but he often lets his animal friends to tricks for guests!

Bruno's side of the family deals more with internal management and advertisement! Evalina goes to board meetings in Alma's steed with Bruno. Sometimes, people tend to forget that Bruno is actually one of the owners of the resort since he mostly wears cargo shorts, a jacket with coconut stains, mismatched slippers, and overall just has an aloof look compared to his gorgeous wife.

---

Auri and Diego belong to the amazing @daliceus and @lunamadrigal! Feel free to drop some more Summer AU head canons if ya'll have more in store!

#i love this au so much omfg #INFLUENCER TRIPLETS YEAAAAAAH #nelly answered #encanto #bruno madrigal #bruno madrigal x reader #encanto oc #bruno madrigal fankids #summer au #encanto summer au #bruno madrigal x oc #triplet ocs #madrigal triplets

24 notes · View notes

mademoisellehypergamy · 3 years

Photo

✨ CREATING A PERSONA FOR HYPERGAMY & SOCIAL CLIMBING ✨

The votes are in and “Persona” won! Ladies, get the notebooks out. Class is in session. And this is gonna be a long one.

Be honest with me: Are you currently your ideal woman? The majority of you will probably answer honestly and say no. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that. The harsh reality is most women on their hypergamous journey aren’t even close to being the ideal woman they aspire to be. Hell, the average woman (hypergamous or not) will probably live her life never being able to become that woman, if we’re being completely honest here.

I believe every hypergamous woman should create and adopt a persona. You are who you believe to be. When I was younger, my teachers and parents told me I was academically gifted. So guess what? I believed the same! That pushed me to work even harder in school. Same concept applies here. You are who you believe to be. A persona isn’t a “fake” version of you. It is you. Your ideal person. It is malleable, so it can change at anytime. Just like you changed throughout your life.

STEP 0 - WHY YOU SHOULD ADOPT A PERSONA

✨Not Everyone Will Win the Birth Lottery. But that doesn’t mean you can’t rewrite your past, and repave your future path. Let’s face it: some of you were born into bad circumstances; abusive families, poverty, toxic relationships, obstacles and barriers, etc. And some of you are living lives currently that you aren’t satisfied with: stressful job, health issues, bad environment, *insert sob story here*, blah, blah, blah, woe is me! But should your current and past conditions get in the way of your hypergamous journey? No! Absolutely not.

✨You Can’t Be the Same Basic B*tch Forever. Okay b*tch, when you were being “true to yourself” in the past, look where it got you. Probably in a less than favorable situation. Congratulations for being an authentic basic b*tch! 🥳😊

Ladies, change is necessary. When you started your hypergamous journey, you underwent a change. Are you saying your hypergamous self is fake? Of course it isn’t! It’s still you, just an “elevated you”. One that is more aware and knows what she wants.

✨ Most People Don’t Even Know Who TF They Are. It’s sad, but true. Most people are lost and suppressing their true desires and personality. I’m here encouraging you ladies to create your ideal persona and to become this woman. Because this woman is who you are deep inside, who you want to be. Stop hiding her! Create her, and become her! As long as this person isn’t harming anyone, there is no reason you shouldn’t chase your dream self.

STEP 1 - CHOOSE & CREATE YOUR PERSONA

This is the fun part ladies! Time to choose and create your new persona!

✨ What Kind of Woman Do You Aspire to Be? Have fun with this ladies! What kind of woman have you always dreamt of becoming? Is she wildly intelligent and beautiful? Or perhaps she has a heart of gold and is adored by all? Nothing is off limits. This is you.

For those of you who are truly struggling, below I have included a few examples of common personas. If you don’t know where to begin, choose one as the “foundation” and build on it. Make it your own!

*Disclaimer: Anyone that I mentioned/included below is simply for inspiration. Not all of these women are hypergamous. This is just for inspiration*

1. The Socialite/ The “It” Girl: This is the girl that everyone knows. She’s always at a party with a glass of champagne, wearing the latest styles, and living the BEST life. She’s glamorously unattainable and few have access to her, but somehow she’s a part of every social circle.

Inspiration: Jamie Chua (https://www.instagram.com/ec24m/)

2. The Traveler: This is the girl that travels constantly. Whether it’s across the globe or to a different state/town, she’s always on the go! No one seems to know how she funds her lifestyle because she always appears to be traveling and never working. Her pictures are always on point and high quality, with a combination of bikini pictures, relaxing scenery, exotic foods, and endless hotels.

Inspiration: Jennifer Tuffen (https://www.instagram.com/izkiz/)

3. The Influencer: Think of the ultimate Instagram Baddie; perfect body (usually because of surgery), full lips, carefully applied makeup, nails always done, hair on point. She is sponsored by all the clothes brands, and lives lavishly. She’s always out at a restaurant and traveling. Typically dresses in more revealing clothes/lots of bikinis. What differentiates her from the Socialite? The degree of elegance and class. While the Socialite gives you an “heiress” vibe, the Influencer is more on the “flashy celebrity” side.

Inspiration: Kaylar Will (https://www.instagram.com/kaylarwill/)

4. Femme Fatale: She rarely posts on social media, but when she does, it only makes you question her existence more. This girl is beautifully sensual, and her social media only reveals bits and pieces of her life. She is an entire mystery, no one knows about her private life. One day she’ll be flying from London, the next she’ll be visiting an art gallery She’ll sometimes post images of gifted roses with poetry captions. She oozes seduction and dark mystery.

Inspiration: Dita Von Teese (https://www.instagram.com/ditavonteese) Now I thought long and hard about who to choose for this one, and if you take a moment to look at Dita’s IG account, you will understand why. You will notice that the ONLY thing she posts about is her clothes/lingerie brand or things relating to business. She reveals nothing about her personal life. Every post is promotion about her business. In fact, the last time she posted something about her “life” was on October 8th when she posted her CAT modeling another designer’s scarf. She’s a very discreet woman, and it works in her favor.

5. Girl Next Door: You know that basic b*tch that’s SUPER popular for no reason? This is her. From her Starbucks to her Tiktoks, she’s just your average girl living her life. In a way, she isn’t a threat because she seems approachable, relatable, and friendly enough through social media. Something about her aspires others that they can achieve a similar lifestyle. She’s terribly basic, but somehow, it works.

Inspiration: Loren Gray (https://www.instagram.com/loren/)

6. Exotica: *This persona is best suited for women of color* She is exotically beautiful and unique. She is a trendsetter, not a follower. She has an air of heightened sexuality, with a touch of grounded-spirituality. Something about her is wild and untamed, and she oozes excitement and adventure.

Inspiration: Monica Leon, or “Danger”. Now if you’re in my generation, you may remember the reality show “For the Love of Ray J” (which was ghetto btw💀). To this day, one girl that I will NEVER forget on that show, was “Danger”, the girl with the tiger tattoo on her face and that NO ONE liked, but Ray J was obsessed with. Although she no longer is on Instagram (and has since legally changed her name), I still believe she naturally embodied that exotic and mysterious woman persona. I recommend watching the show for free on Youtube just to observe her (and only her because the other women were pickme’s 💀)

7. The Luxurious Diamond: This woman is the epitome of class and elegance. She exudes femininity and grace, and holds an air of mystery by only showing us bits and pieces of her life. What we see is soft luxuries, wineries, beautiful clothes/scenery, and a life of comfort. She balances a mature, elegant, ladylike presence, with subtle girly-youthfulness.

Inspiration: Г-жа Анисимова https://www.instagram.com/creme_de.la_femme/

✨How Does She Look Like? From her hair to how she wears her makeup, be able to create a vivid description of her appearance. Being able to do this will show you where to work on with your current appearance.

✨Personality We all have traits about ourselves that we don’t like. This is your chance to identify your traits that you love and maximize them, while also working on the aspects of your personality that are a bit more problematic.

It’s important to recognize that some “negative” traits are not really negative. Society just shames us for them. For example, “The Socialite” persona may be polite, but that doesn’t mean she’s super open and friendly with everyone. Not everyone is her friend, and she is naturally unattainable. So why would she be super friendly to everyone? Some may call her “standoffish”, but I call it “selective”.

✨Past Self? Not a Problem. So let’s say you had a less than perfect childhood and endured a lot of trauma. Not a problem, just reinvent your past! Now I’m not saying to straight up lie and make up a crazy story about how you grew up with billionaire parents and traveled the globe. I’m saying adopt a realistic story that’ll help you on your journey.

For example, if your date were to ask about your past, instead of telling him how tragic your childhood was and how you were homeless and abused by your parents, and no longer have a relationship with them, you can say: “I moved around a lot as a child (“homelessness”), so I really enjoyed being able to interact with a lot of different people (make the negative seem positive). My parents still move around a lot, so it’s hard for us to meet (explains why you aren’t in contact with your parents).

Reword and reframe, ladies. Not everyone needs to know everything.

STEP 2 - BRING HER TO LIFE

✨Remove. You cannot embrace your new persona, your new IDENTITY, if you are still stuck in the past. And that includes past connections that do not serve you. Some of your old friends (college friends, childhood friends, etc.) are not meant to accompany you on this journey. And that’s OKAY. Same with other toxic relationships in your life, family included. You will have to decide who to keep, and who to distance yourself from.

✨ Social Media! I’ve mentioned this in an earlier post, but social media is the easiest way for you to push your new persona. You control the content that goes on your social media, so even if you haven’t fully embodied your new persona, you can sure as hell fake it on social media.

- Unless your persona is a socialite/influencer type, avoid posting too often. - Be consistent; if you retouch your images, make sure its consistent with all your photos. - Be mindful of what people tag you in/post about you. You know that “friend” who always posts the ugliest pictures of you? Yeah. They’re not your friend, hun.

✨Dress. The. Part. Okay, sis. You can have the personality down perfectly, but if the look doesn’t match, no one will buy it. Your look is the first thing people notice, so invest in it. It doesn’t cost a lot, especially with fast fashion sites like Shein that sells clothes for $5. Just be able to keep up the appearance.

✨ Immerse Yourself in the Environment. Looking the part and having the right personality is not enough, ladies! It wouldn’t make sense for you to be a “Socialite” sharing pictures of you eating at Red Lobster and Olive Garden every night. It wouldn’t make sense for the “Traveler” persona to share only bathroom selfies in her apartment. You have to live like the woman you aspire to be, and that includes placing yourself in those environments.

If you are not in the place financially to do so, learn to project the image without spending money. Ex: If you can’t afford to go to Hawaii, go to your local beach and take bomb ass pictures. Don’t tag the location. People will automatically see a beach in your picture and assume you are on vacation traveling. Get creative, ladies.

✨You Owe Them Nothing. Ladies! Remember you don’t owe anyone anything. Not an explanation, not your time, nothing. So if you are living this new persona and people are asking questions you don’t want to answer: don’t. This is your life.

STEP 3 - YOUR PERSONA WHILE DATING HYPERGAMOUSLY & SOCIAL CLIMBING

So now that you have created your ideal persona, and taken the steps to incorporate it into your life, how can you use your newfound persona to aid you on your hypergamous journey and while social climbing?

✨Infiltrate New Circles. Your persona should be someone exciting and enticing. People love befriending people who are happy and adventurous. Use your persona to befriend others and enter new social circles. You can do this through: - Social media; follow similar accounts to yours and interact with them. - Activities related to your persona; Let’s say you adopted the “The Luxurious Diamond” persona and started visiting wineries. You may notice when you go that there are regulars; identify the regulars and use your common interest of wine to strike a conversation. -Interest groups; join clubs/groups that help you reach your goals. For example, “The Traveler” may have always wanted to travel to Bali, but didn’t want to go alone. She joins a travel group to meet other likeminded inviduals and meets a travel buddy. This person ends up introducing her to others who also enjoy traveling.

✨ Be a Chameleon. You should never be set on just one persona. Like I said earlier, your persona should always be malleable. You should be able to change yourself to your benefit, and always be open to expansion. When it comes to dating, a man may “want” a certain type of woman, but the secret is that most men just want a woman who is open to possibilities. I remember a man who used to be on my roster who loved music. This man was always insisting on taking me to operas and symphonies. And he too was a musician (I really don’t like dating musicians, but that’s a topic for another day), so whenever he was performing he would have me sitting in the box so I’d have an “undisturbed” experience. Now ladies, I’m not into music AT ALL. But I was open and willing, and guess what? The man adored it, and he adored me even more! He spoiled me like crazy and would serenade me with music he wrote about me because I was his “muse”. Although I ended up ghosting him, I definitely appreciate a good opera now!

✨Be Larger than Life to Entice. The attractive part about these personas is the fact that it feels almost fake. The image that is portrayed is almost mythical, like something out of a fantasy. You can’t believe this girl is traveling so much, or you can’t believe this girl still has a social life in the middle of a pandemic! It’s unbelievable, but that’s what makes us so intrigued. Men especially love fantasy. That’s why many men have a “dream girl”, a woman that embodies their physical and emotional fantasies. They love the impossible. It’s also important to remember that you are always being watched. People see you, whether in person or on social media, and when they see someone or something more interesting than their mundane life, curiosity will get the best of them. They’ll be drawn to you and want to know you.

✨ The Persona Advantage. Creating a persona is supposed to help your journey. The purpose is to reinvent yourself into someone who will help you better navigate your hypergamous life. For example, if you are trying to get into more exclusive, affluent circles, creating a persona who is skilled in social and dining etiquette would be more beneficial than a persona that’s an Instagram Influencer. Being an Instagram Baddie that wears Fashion Nova won’t help you at a Charity Gala. So be sure to think of what you desire in life to shape yourself into that. Don’t just become someone who won’t get you to where you want to be.

This post will definitely have a Part 2 in the future, but in conclusion: You can be whoever you want to be as long as you play the role. Be an actress in your own life, and live the life you desire.

Well ladies, I’ll be away for Valentine’s day weekend. Wishing you all a wonderful and safe weekend ❤️ Lots of love.

Follow my IG for more: @mademoisellehypergamy

#mhlessons #hypergamy #hypergamous #black hypergamy #hypergamy tips #black femininity #keptwoman #kept wife #spoiled girlfriend #spoiled gf #spoiled heaux #black girls in luxury #black women in luxury #luxury lifestyle #black women in leisure #black women in femininity #sugaring tips #sugaring

3K notes · View notes

kit-herondale-carstairs · 4 years

Text

TDA Characters on TikTok

Julian: doesn’t post very often because he is a father but when he does it is always him painting or drawing something with lofi music or him sharing a tidbit about one of the children or other family members (Kieran, Cristina, Diana, Emma and Aline included and always with their explicit permission).

- He’s very popular without even trying and most assume he is a young single father (which isn’t wrong).

- Mostly finds himself on cottagecore or parent side of tiktok.

- doesn’t understand all the thirsty comments he gets because “I don’t even show my face, Emma, why would they think I’m attractive?” but always shares them with Emma because they make her laugh.

Emma: Does it for the girls and the gays, that’s it. Posts nearly every day and page is generally a mixture of self defense videos, vintage makeup/dress tutorials, and videos slamming the patriarchy but also always does the latest dancing videos and other trends.

- always tries to get others to join in on her trend videos, mostly joined by Mark and Cristina when she can rope her in.

- Nearly broke tiktok when she got Julian to do the “You could have been nicer to me” trend because NO ONE KNEW THEY WERE DATING AND EVEN THOUGH THEY COULDN’T SEE HIS FACE EVERYONE RECOGNIZED HIS VOICE AND HE WAS SO SWEET WHEN HE OFFERED TO TAKE HER TO HER FAVORITE THRIFT STORE AND BUY HER SOME DRESSES AFTER HE PUT THE “BABY” DOWN FOR HIS NAP.

- - everyone knows the “baby” is actually at least seven but no one ever said his name because he’s too young so everyone collectively knows him as “the baby”

- solidly on gay tiktok even though she’s straight.

Mark: Daily blogs. Everyone thinks he’s shit posting because it’s all wild things like standing in a middle of a circle of flowers and talking about “this pixie named Aelia lives here and she’s a BITCH”. Often shows videos of him cooking or baking wild concoctions that range from “Okay, I’d try that” to “this is why God has abandoned us”.

- Does dancing videos with Emma all the time and often acts as the “creeper” in her self defense videos.

- Caused a meltdown on tiktok when he casually mentioned his “partners” and started creating videos to raise awareness for polyamory.

- Revealed Julian was his brother when he posted a video of Julian yelling at him for a solid minute because “the baby is covered in honey, why is the baby covered in honey, Mark? We don’t let the baby bathe in honey even if he really wants to Mark -”

- solidly on cooking and gay tiktok, often takes a sharp left into “crackhead” tiktok

Kieran: Posts videos of cats he finds and rates them. The lowest ever was a 9.5/10 because “she bit me fairly hard but I scared her and I deserved it for trying to pet her without permission”.

- does not do any trends or reveal much personal information.

- Was always considered wholesome until he (on a dare from Dru) posted a video joking about choking a bossy sub that rounded up on kinktok.

-- everyone went through a brief freak out trying to figure out if he had a partner but it was never solved.

--- No one noticed that Mark posted a video joking about how “one of his partners was absolutely in the doghouse” accompanied by someone sitting in a cardboard ‘doghouse’ around the exact same time.

- solidly on animal tiktok but occasionally veers into kinktok with more (less explicit) dom/sub humor.

Cristina: Does not have her own tiktok but often appears in videos with Emma and occasionally shows up in Mark’s.

- Absolute sweetheart always, even when she is demonstrating a self defense move with Emma, and is always commended for trying Mark’s foods.

-- especially commended when trying the foods while, offscreen, their other partner yells about “Hell food”

- is flattered with all the comments begging her to start her own tiktok but doesn’t feel like she has the time to fully commit to one properly.

Livvy: (She’s alive, don’t @ me) Does absolutely all the new trends and also does various acting POVs

- her soulmate POVs are most popular but she also is known for dueting act-along POVS with other popular creators

- also occasionally posts videos rating the best male actors/superheroes and once got into a long drawn out back to back war with someone on whether or not Captain America really had “America’s ass”

- had a very popular multiple-part series about being a girl in the MCU dating the various Avengers but ended it abruptly after Endgame because “Natasha Romanoff deserved better and it hurts too much”

-she used to post occasional videos where she laments on being the “only single person in the family” but she started getting some very creepy duets and comments from actual adults so she told Julian and they both agreed it would be better for her to stop them

-- Julian did take the time to duet the people being inappropriate and explained very clearly that their actions were wrong and directed towards a LITERAL CHILD and shamed multiple accounts into flat out deleting

Ty: Posts literally whatever interests him. Has two animal series - one where he shares facts about his favorite kinds of animals and one where he showcases various animals he’s found in the tidepools or around the house.

- has done several video series of rescuing animals and has at least one where Julian could be heard lecturing him on trying to raise wild animals in his bedroom again

-- tiktok freaked out because this happened right around the same time as Julian calling out all the creeps on Livvy’s tiktok and no one knew that the twins he talked about were them

- also does videos about his favorite literary works - notably Sherlock Holmes - and true crime/mystery videos

-- he always makes sure to carefully put in warnings for anything remotely violent or triggering and has never had a single video taken down for violating the rules even when he did a multiple part series on the Black Dahlia and how her crime was ‘absolutely solved but because the man who did it was rich and white, he got away with it and probably also killed at least two other women, one of whom was killed in the Philippines”

- sometimes does twin videos with Livvy because she likes them and it makes her happy.

Dru: Queen of witch/horror/true crime tiktok.

- got in trouble with Julian for showing actual runes in videos but everyone just thought they were for the aesthetic so it was fine

- most popular videos is a series where she rates horror movies on how they do on the bechdel test

- sometimes duets Ty’s or Livvy’s videos just to drag them (with love)

- Has a very popular series on “women who snapped” and is known for almost rarely during part 2s (and therefore having to speak very very fast)

- also complains constantly because her videos will get taken down even if they aren’t that violent and includes clips from far worse videos from male creators to point out the double standard

- occasionally dives into tiktok drama just to dabble and then sits on the sidelines and watches it happen

-- 100% built a balloon arch to flex on That Balloon Girl

- solidly on witchtok and horrortok

Kit: King of petty/messy tiktok who also posts random videos about crime and occasional blogs

- switches from either sharing no information to borderline oversharing childhood trauma

- shares videos on borderline illegal ways to get back at exfriends/expartners/exfamily members/general enemies

-- putting fish in people’s vents, subscribing them to magazines under various similar names, sending them glitter in the mail, opening their oreos and taking out the middle of all of them, putting baby locks on their cabinets and in the outlets they can’t see (like under the bed so they can’t get plug in their cellphone charger at night), etc.

- is always eating some sort of snack, no matter what he is doing

- also posts videos about personal safety like what locks will actually keep people out and what ones are easy to break into

--caused several minor freakouts when he casually mentioned his father taught him how to do it

- occasionally posts videos with an adorable toddler and a young couple who he refers to as “mom and dad” even though they look at MOST five years older than him and he often makes parental abandonment jokes/comments

- no idea where he lives because he speaks in an American accent and talks constantly about American/California life but everything around him looks very British

- absolutely dives head first into every tiktok drama and will go for the throat for anyone who makes ableist/sexist/racist/homophobic comments without hesitation

-- his drags are legendarily savage and he has caused numerous problematic accounts to just straight up disappear

- duets videos from Livvy, Dru, Mark, Emma and Julian ( with lots of savage drags) but no one knows how he knows them because he is absolutely somewhere in the UK and all of them are based in California/US

-- he also notably NEVER duets Ty

--- the mystery is finally solved when Kit does a livestream and reveals that he met all of them because he was briefly living with them before getting placed with his family, the young couple who actually are his mom and dad

---- he is very vague about the living situation but everyone assumes he was a foster child

- he once caused a mass freakout on Tiktok (that actually spilled over to twitter and buzzfeed) when he announced he was going back to the US to visit friends and then posted a video with the caption “when you see your boyfriend in person for the first time in MONTHS but he’s too distracted by some wet 🐱”

-- the video panned out from Kit’s unamused face to Ty gently rubbing a tiny wet kitten with a soft cotton towel

300 notes · View notes

wondereads · 3 years

Text

Personal Recommendation (3/14/21)

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Why am I recommending this book?

I’ve already read Bardugo’s Six of Crows series, but I wanted to read Shadow and Bone before the tv series came out. I’d heard it wasn’t very good, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Want something short and sweet? Check out my tiktok

Plot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Set in a eastern European-influenced kingdom known as Ravka, Alina Starkov, a mapmaker, awakens a legendary power within herself. After a failed attempt at crossing the Shadow Fold, a rift of shadow and monsters that cuts Ravka in two, it is revealed that Alina has the power to summon light. She is then taken by the Darkling, the mysterious commander of the Grisha, magic-using soldiers, in an attempt to train her to use her power to destroy the Shadow Fold once and for all. Unfortunately, spies from Shu Han and assassins from Fjerda aren’t the only things that stand in the way.

This is a good, classic YA book. An unwilling savior of the world must step up despite her insecurities. It really isn’t anything original. However, despite the cookie cutter plot, it’s executed very well. The pacing is good, and the characters really help to flesh it all out. All in all, there isn’t much to say about the plot. Most of what I noticed had to do with the characters.

(Spoiler) The best thing about the plot was that at the end Alina and Mal didn’t decide to take a stand and fight for what’s right. They’re teenagers, so they made the decision scared teenagers would make. They ran. And I loved it. (End Spoiler)

Characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Despite the tropey writing, Alina stood out to me. Most YA main characters in these sorts of books are sort of bland in an effort to appeal to a wide audience, but I didn’t get that from Alina. I wouldn’t say she had a clearly defined personality, but I think that’s because she hasn’t decided who she is yet. Is she an unassuming mapmaker? Is she an insecure new Grisha? Or is she the powerful, confident Sun Summoner? She cares for those close to her, and she works hard at everything she does, but I don’t think Alina has become her own person yet. Most of her decisions throughout the book are influenced by other people like Mal, Genya, and the Darkling. She bases her choices on what will help them or save them or defeat them, not what she wants or strives for. There’s a flash of it at the end there, when she decides she wants Mal and her alive and free despite what it could mean for everyone else. I can’t wait to see her develop in the later books.

The Darkling. There’s a lot to unpack there. I, as an avid YA reader, was always wary of the brooding, handsome, older, and much more powerful character. I know his and Alina’s relationship is very popular, but I have to admit that every time they had a romantic interaction I felt sick. The Darkling is a good character because I’m horribly curious about him and his past. However, I can’t bring myself to genuinely like him. To put it simply, his interactions with the other characters and the way his actions drive the plot forward, it’s all very compelling, but I would never read a Darkling-focused book.

I can’t say much about Mal at this point in time because he’s only there for about a quarter of the book. I think he’s very sweet, and I love his devotion to Alina, but I don’t really know much about him as a person. However, I do have my suspicions about his unnaturally good tracking...

Finally, Genya is the best character in terms of writing. She’s interesting, and I have no problems sympathizing with her. Her treatment at the Little Palace actually infuriated me, her power and status are unusual and intriguing, and totally get why she took the side she did. I only hope that in the later books she’ll change her mind. I get the feeling she will, based on her explanation to Alina, so I look forward to how that will come about.

Writing Style 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

There aren’t a whole lot of distinct qualities in the writing style. In comparison to Six of Crows, I would say it feels a bit more inexperienced, which makes sense. I do wish that there had been some POV changes at certain points, but that may just be because I love reading from multiple perspectives. I did really like the beginning and ending chapters where it’s told from third person with no names used. I haven’t quite figured out if it means something or if it’s just a stylistic choice.

Overall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Shadow and Bone is a wonderfully average YA book. The plot is absolutely predictable, but the characters are well-written and very interesting. Alina, despite seeming like the usual blank slate YA protagonist, has a unique sort of character development, and I found her much more compelling than I expected. I am happily reading the next book now; it caught my attention enough for me to continue. Keep in mind, you must read all three books for this one as there are no pretty wrap-ups at the end of the books. I would recommend this book to people who like fantasy, chosen one stories, and mildly technologically advanced settings.

The Author

Leigh Bardugo: 45, American, also wrote Six of Crows, King of Scars, and Ninth House

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I try to post a review every two weeks, and I take recommendations. Check out my about me post for more!

#books #recommendations #reviews #shadow and bone #leigh bardugo #grishaverse #ya #fantasy

2 notes · View notes

archivefullofyoutubers · 4 years

Text

Here’s Sean’s interview at Vidcon by the Telegraph

Why one of the world's biggest YouTubers fears for the future of online stars

With 23 million fans, Irish YouTuber Seán McLoughlin has made a fortune from his videos, but was brought to the brink by burnout.

Seán McLoughlin, better known by his YouTube moniker Jacksepticeye, feels like he is getting old.

At least that is next to the hundreds of teens that make up the crowd at London’s VidCon, a conference for YouTube stars and, increasingly, users of viral music video app TikTok.

“I’m 30 now. I’m basically dead,” he jokes, in his distinctive Irish accent.

The YouTube star, who has 23 million subscribers for his channel dedicated to gaming, has been on the streaming site since he was 22.

Next to the very youngest YouTube and TikTok stars, many of them just in their early teens, McLoughlin is a veteran.

But his own experiences offer a sober reminder of the fickle nature of online fame – growing up, and maturing, under the watchful eye of millions of fans watching his videos billions of times.

“Some of these kids are getting huge followings,” McLoughlin says. “I just hope they use that to go in a good direction. It’s a slippery slope when you get all that attention at a young age. I was in my early 20s, and even then it was a scary thing. I can’t imagine what it’s like getting that at 16 or 18.”

https://twitter.com/Jack_Septic_Eye/status/1049757899696660481

Having made videos since 2012, McLoughlin is Ireland’s most popular YouTuber and has generated £12m in one year alone from his videos, according to Forbes. But having posted so much of his life online – not just multiple videos per day for years, but his relationships and personal life – McLoughlin is open about struggles with the website that made him and social media as a whole. When you meet McLoughlin you would hardly know. He is charming, laid back and warm with a soft accent of his native County Offaly. His mess of hair and short beard certainly do not fit the mould of the clean-cut YouTube star. McLoughlin is known by fans as Jacksepticeye, Jack being a common nickname for Seán in Ireland. The “septiceye” part comes from a childhood joke after he was booted in the face while playing football, leading to an infected swollen eye – Jack septic eye. He took up YouTube in 2012, but only sprang to fame when, in 2013, his channel got a “shout out” from Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie – the Swedish YouTuber known for having the largest following online. From there McLoughlin’s channel has soared to millions of fans, combining a mix of video gaming “let’s play” videos – where viewers watch him commentate and play games – and other personal vlogs and diary entries. But this rise has not always been smooth. His friendship with Kjellberg led to scrutiny from fans and other YouTubers after Kjellberg was caught out using antisemetic slurs, passed off as jokes, in several of his videos. Kjellberg has repeatedly denied accusations of antisemitism. McLoughlin was critical of Kjellberg, but later backtracked saying he had not meant to appear to defend his detractors and “throw [Kjellberg] under a bus”. While he remains friends with the Swede, who lives near to McLoughlin, it was just one episode that stretched his relationship with YouTube. In 2018, McLoughlin posted an emotional video to his channel, saying he planned to take a break from his relentless uploading schedule of as many as two videos per day. “There’s times when I don’t even leave my house,” he told followers, “I don’t go outside day to day. My mental health has not been in the best place recently.”

https://twitter.com/Jack_Septic_Eye/status/1040025500087771136

YouTube burnout has become a common complaint among video makers. Working essentially solo, making and uploading multiple videos per day, constantly interacting with fans or dealing with abusive messages has led some YouTube stars to take extended breaks. When the website is how you make a living, not just for fun, it can be doubly draining. The risk of going offline means losing followers, and losing your coveted spots in YouTube’s mysterious ranking algorithm. “I used to do two videos a day for five and a half years,” he says. “I never missed a beat, never missed an upload. That eventually led to a kind of burning out. You kind of hit a wall.” Later in 2018, he also had to deal with the very public fallout of breaking up with his girlfriend of three years, fellow YouTuber Wiishu, real name Signe Hansen – and telling his fans. Two years later, McLoughlin seems in a better place. While he is still uploading at a similar rate to before, there is perhaps more of his life beyond the boundaries of YouTube. A series of charity fundraisers across his and other channels has raised $3m (£2.33m) in total for causes including bipolar disorder and mental health group Crisis Text Line. His videos have also offered tips to dealing with fears and anxiety, giving advice on seeking help. “You don't have to be broken to do therapy,” he said in another video. For YouTubers, who millions see as their digital friends, a particularly tough experience can be users reaching out who, themselves, are unhappy, depressed or even suicidal – and how to respond to that. “People message me very frequently asking me how I should deal with depression or suicidal thoughts,” he said in a 2017 video. “They should always be treated with seriousness... but I don’t know. I’m trying to learn as much as I can to help people going through these things. These are my best intentions... not 100pc what you should do.”

While McLoughlin is now in the senior cohort of YouTube stars. A new generation of online celebrities is emerging and dealing with the same challenges he has gone through. TikTok, the viral video sharing social network has exploded in popularity with more than 500 million downloads, and is hugely popular with younger users under the age of 18. It is fun and irreverent in tone, but the fleeting fame offered by the short clips and sudden surge of popularity to users is not without question marks, particular due to its popularity with the youngest internet users. On the topic of social media, McLoughlin says there has been a kind of “curve where people got messed up with it for mental health reasons. People that I know in that age bracket are maybe starting to wean off it a bit more and starting to realise how damaging it can be. People don’t want people to know everything about them anymore.” Among the attendees at VidCon are those taking to TikTok in droves. “You’ll see probably 90pc of it is TikTok,” says McLoughlin. “Social media is for people who want to perform and now it’s like to perform for everyone all the time,” he says. “There are pros and cons to that. With TikTok it’s the same. They want people to know they exist. Some of it is cringey as hell, but I mean we are all cringey at some point. I am just glad I didn’t have social media when I was 16 because I would have uploaded some godawful stuff.” So is he outgrowing YouTube? Will he be on YouTube in years to come? “Yes, but probably not in the same capacity.” How so? “YouTube is my bread and butter. I absolutely love making videos and interacting with the audience in a way that no other media allows you… but I just don’t think I see myself uploading gaming videos every day in five years time.” Among these plans include a clothing brand and more experimental films and shorts on his channel. For the love of it, McLoughlin is still uploading. But perhaps the weight of the need to grow his fan base has lifted, which he now says is self-sustaining. He has a new relationship and a new outlook. YouTube is still central to his career and fame, but perhaps is no longer everything. “We can make all the money in the world,” he says, “but if you’re not happy doing it and you’re not having fun, then who cares?”

#jacksepticeye

31 notes · View notes

shirlleycoyle · 3 years

Text

Why This Teen Walked Away From Millions of TikTok Followers

This is part of a special series, The Future of Fame Is the Fan, which dissects how celebrity became so slippery. It’s also in the latest VICE magazine. Subscribe here.

Sixteen-year-old Ava Rose Beaune was hanging out at a friend’s house on an otherwise unremarkable mid-July afternoon when her cell service briefly shut off. She tried to text her dad, but it wouldn’t send—definitely odd, she thought, but not alarming.

Then people started messaging her: Did you see what’s on your Twitter? Your Instagram? What’s going on? She logged on to her social media accounts and saw that her new Facebook status alluded to suicide—but she hadn’t posted it.

“My whole family thought I was going to kill myself,” Ava said.

Suddenly, a man she’d never met was calling her parents, demanding to speak to her. He had control of all her contacts, texts, emails, and social media accounts. The next day, he texted her: I just want to talk to you. (Spoken and written quotes from Ava’s alleged stalker are italicized to indicate they are not necessarily direct quotes but are as she remembers them.) He called her, and she answered, begging him to do whatever he wanted to her Instagram account, if that’s what he was after. “Delete it. Delete it and leave me alone if that’s what you want,” she told him. You don’t want that, he said. “I do,” she replied. I just want to meet up with you and have sex with you, he said.

“That’s when I hung up the phone, and I was like, this is getting weird,” Ava told me. This stranger had managed to hack her accounts using a method called SIM swapping, in which he contacted her wireless service carrier and convinced them that he owned the account and needed them to transfer access to the SIM card to the phone in his hand—effectively taking over her digital life.

In screenshots viewed by VICE, the hacker can be seen posting a Story to her Instagram about being Ava’s new boyfriend, issuing rape threats, and writing things like “I can’t wait til I impregnate you and marry you. you only live 5 MIN away from me.” She got her social media accounts back in her own possession and resolved the problem with her carrier. “OK, this is, you know, the end, whatever,” she recalled thinking.

With more than 2 million followers on TikTok, Ava was a minor celebrity in her own circles. So, she said, she was used to men being creepy, or even hostile. This was extreme, she thought, but it was over.

But it wasn’t. This was only the beginning of weeks of daily harassment so severe it would uproot her life entirely.

As of this year, TikTok likely has more than 1 billion monthly active users, and the market research firm Statista estimates that adolescents between 10 and 19 years old make up 32.5 percent of those users. The spiritual successor to Vine, TikTok is a micro-video sharing platform that favors an off-the-cuff, do-it-yourself style: People of all ages lip-sync to movie clips and songs, mimic elaborate dances in their living rooms, and use filters to edit the 60-second videos into tiny works of art. It’s also something of a fame lottery.

All this manic, frenetic energy combined with massive audiences is addictive in the same way any social media platform is: with casino-style scrolling and a notification system and the looming chance at virality. Normal teens like Ava—who signed with a talent agency in January 2020—become voracious consumers as well as unstoppable creators, hoping to strike it big, get discovered, or at the very least, make it to the For You feed, where one video plucked by some mysterious algorithm from a user’s feed can get in front of millions of eyeballs instantly.

“I’d rather not give those people the satisfaction of being noticed.”

Despite all this, cyberbullying experts say that TikTok isn’t the worst social media app for harassment. “The way that TikTok is built reduces the likelihood of cyberbullying when compared to other apps,” said Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. Features like direct messaging that only allow mutual followers to contact each other, and the inability to add images or videos to comment sections, set it apart from other apps. “To be sure, cyberbullying can manifest itself in hurtful TikTok videos directed towards others, as well as in comments and in livestream chats—but these possibilities are no different than on any other social media app,” Hinduja told me.

According to TikTok’s transparency report from 2020, 2.5 percent of videos the platform removed were for bullying or harassment. But there are some features unique to TikTok that make it prone to a different, more personal kind of harassment. “Duet” allows other users to repost your video with a split-screen video of their own. Most of the time, it’s used innocently, for singalongs or miniature skits. But some users say it opens a portal for disturbing abuse. In 2018, BuzzFeed News reported that people—often young children—would duet their videos with a video of them acting out suicide, putting plastic bags over their heads or belts around their necks, to show their disgust at the original post. And a Duet from a more popular account can send a wave of attention from their followers to your page, not all of it positive.

Nick, who runs a TikTok account with his five-year-old daughter Sienna (the family goes by their first names publicly, to protect their privacy), told me that they experience Duet-based harassment on top of the usual comment section cruelty. “Some users would duet our videos and say mean, nasty things that were just not true,” he said. “In the beginning, it made us second-guess the path we were going down.”

It hasn’t stopped since they started the account, in October of 2018—and they’ve since gathered more than 14 million followers. But they have gotten better at managing it, Nick said. “Sienna is luckily very intelligent and knows that this is not OK. I made sure to sit down with her, emphasizing how special she is and that people may not see that right away.”

Nick believes TikTok does a good job of handling harassment, and giving creators the tools to handle it themselves. “If there is consistent harassment from a specific account, I block and delete their hateful comments,” he said. “For the negative comments in general, I tend to just ignore them. I’d rather not give those people the satisfaction of being noticed.”

TikTok does allow users to opt out of Duets. But these are the features that foster that slingshot fame; opting out of them means opting out of your chance at going viral or just growing your audience.

Fatima and Munera Fahiye, who are sisters and TikTok creators with around 3 million followers each, told me that they also find the platform to be responsive when they need support. “There were multiple accounts on TikTok impersonating me on the app, and TikTok helped me by verifying my account to let people know that my account is the real one,” Munera said.

Whatever harassment they do receive—which often means racist comments—they say is outweighed by the support of fans. “I have been on TikTok for a year now, and I have not experienced any harassment, but after gaining some followers I have seen some mean comments about my hijab every now and then, but I try to not give it any attention, because the love and support that I am getting from my fans is more than the little hate, so it does not matter,” Fatima said.

The harassment that happens on TikTok doesn’t stay there, however. On Reddit, whole communities are devoted to catching women and girls on social media in the middle of wardrobe slips, where you can see down their shirts, up their skirts, or anytime they shift and move and reveal a glimpse of more skin. Standalone websites are made for this purpose, too, and for doxxing and harassing women who might have a TikTok in addition to an OnlyFans or other separate adult platform.

In 2020, a server on the gaming chat platform Discord took requests for TikTok creators to be made into deepfakes—AI-generated fake porn. Although child pornography is against Discord’s terms of use, even in the form of deepfakes, one of the most requested targets was only 17. A request for another deepfake noted, “by the way she turns 18 in 4 days.”

Creators also find their content, clothed as in the originals or deepfaked, reposted to porn sites. In concert, the people on each of these platforms work together to create an overwhelming environment of virtual assault for many young women.

Until TikTok, Ava had never really been into social media, she told me on a Zoom call in her parents’ house. She was taking a break from high school distance learning; this was her senior year, spent over video chats because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I always told myself I’d never make a TikTok because my friends all had it and I was like, that’s so cringe,” she said. “Like, I’ll never start that. But they were like, ‘Come on make one,’ so I did.”

She said she made her first account when she was 15, and posted the usual stuff: trend dances, makeup videos. Within a few days, her audience went from the friends who talked her into joining to 150,000 followers—a leap in popularity that she still doesn’t entirely understand. The sudden attention startled her; she deactivated the account.

She accidentally reactivated the account later, and at this point, having gotten over the initial shock of attention, decided to give it another try.

A rock smashed through her mom’s car window with a threatening note tied to it: I want to take you and impregnate you.

Once Ava started posting new videos, the hateful comments started. “I thought that was like the worst it could get,” she said. “It was like, body shaming and hate—the body shaming especially never bothered me, and the normal hate comments were just like, whatever.” A few users created accounts to post rape threats about her, and this did disturb her, but she took it as par for the course as a young woman online.

That is, until one of her followers started stalking her and her best friend, Gabriel. That follower messaged Gabriel, mentioning her home address and demanding to know who she was dating. “So, we’re both kind of like laughing like this guy’s obviously just some weird fan,” she recalled.

I have something planned for Ava. You’ll see in the next three months. I’m planning something big, Ava says he told Gabriel. He hacked her phone three months later, on Gabriel’s 18th birthday. After that, the man texted Ava every day.

“It was stuff about how he wants to rape me, how he’s going to get me, how I can easily stop this—he was texting my dad saying, She’s not allowed to hang out with her friends, if she goes out I’ll know. Saying he’s watching over us and stuff like that.” Every time Ava thought the situation was as bad as it could get—that this man she’d never met was going as far as he could go—he went further.

Then a rock smashed through her mom’s car window with a threatening note tied to it: I want to take you and impregnate you.

Cyberbullying has proven long-lasting effects on teens and young adults. As Hinduja noted, studies show that it’s tied to low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, family problems, academic difficulties, delinquency, school violence, and suicidal thoughts and attempts.

“So at this point I was like, ‘OK, this is getting a little serious.’”

“Most important to me is how negative experiences online unnecessarily compromise the healthy flourishing of our youth at school,” he said. According to his and his co-director Justin Patchin’s research at the Cyberbullying Research Center, over 60 percent of students who experienced cyberbullying reported that it “deeply affected” their ability to learn and feel safe while at school, and 10 percent of students surveyed said they’ve skipped school at least once this past year because of it.

“That cannot be happening,” Hinduja said.

“In general, I hope people will remember that everyone is a human being just like them. We are all capable of feeling hurt and disappointment, and just because there are numbers and a platform attached to our lives doesn’t mean we are impervious to hurtful words or harassing comments,” Nick said. “TikTok is a space where everyone should feel safe to express their creativity, and in order to do that we need to be kind to others.”

Maxwell Mitcheson, Ava’s agent and the head of talent at TalentX Entertainment, told me that he’s seen harassment take a direct toll on young people. “A lot of creators are growing up in front of millions of people, and that involves making mistakes and learning and growing from them,” he said. “The hateful rhetoric definitely weighs on them; some don’t even look at their comments section anymore just to try and stay positive.”

“It’s the inability to make mistakes, being attacked for being authentically yourself, and the sudden lack of anonymity,” Mitcheson said.

Ava’s experience was on the extreme side, he explained, but creators at his agency have had instances of hacking and stalking, or fans randomly showing up at creators’ homes. “We’ve had to involve security and PIs before, but Ava’s was a situation that could have ended in tragedy if it weren’t for the Toronto police intervening.”

After the window-breaking threat, Ava said the police told her that she couldn’t stay at home. She went to stay at a friend’s house, but he still reached her there, she said. “He just kept going saying like, look at what you’ve done, this is all your fault,” she said. He sent her a private message that would delete after it was opened, so she recorded it using a friend’s phone:

I need you to accept the fact that I’m extorting you right now, you need to accept that this isn’t going to end no one’s gonna catch me, the police haven’t ever caught me when I did this before, accept it, give me what I want, I want you to meet up at this park right behind your house I want to do this this this this to you

if you don’t I will kill your parents in front of you in your living room and take you.

“So at this point I was like, ‘OK, this is getting a little serious,’” she told me.

She said she sent the message to the police, who told her whole family to stay somewhere else, hours away. They did, for two weeks. He kept texting her: are you going to be there Saturday you’re making the wrong decision you better answer me.

Eventually, Ava recalled, he was caught. He left the VPN he was using to mask his location off for a half a second, according to her—just long enough, she remembers the police telling her, for the investigators to capture his location data and pinpoint where he was texting her from.

Ava said that the police told her that when he was caught, they found six separate phones and a bunch of SIM cards in his possession—full of pictures and videos of Ava that he’d taken from her accounts. According to the Toronto area detective Ava and her family worked with, the case is still in the courts.

Talking to me now, over Zoom, in between classes and facing midterms, Ava seems fine. She’s able to recount this story in delicate detail, without flinching. She understands the gravity of what happened to her, and how it upended her life. Her family decided to move away, “to the middle of nowhere, pretty much,” she said.

But she is different now. She stopped posting to her TikTok to focus on her friendships and family, though she still posts sporadically on Instagram. She would like to be more active on social media, but she’s not pushing herself. She has anxiety that she describes as “really bad.”

“It’s really affected me, like, you know, just like not being able to live in your own home, and like, even when you are at home, not being safe… It’s really hard, especially when I was only 16 when this happened,” she said. “It is hard, and knowing that my parents were always stressed out and not being able to go outside and walk without feeling kind of scared…”

Before she stopped posting new TikTok videos, she tried to open up on the platform in videos about her mental health and her experiences. But people weren’t receptive to it.

“Especially when they’re like, Oh, a TikTok girl that all the simps love, or What are you complaining about, all these boys love you, kind of thing,” she told me. “I’ve been trying to go to therapy and trying to get over it, but when that kind of thing happens you’re not really the same afterwards. You have a different outlook on social media. You’re kind of scared of if it’s going to happen again. You don’t think those people exist until it happens to you, and then you’re like, wow, this is crazy.”

Online harassment has a silencing effect on people of all ages and genders, but women have it especially bad—and young women are pushed offline, out of the center of conversations and control of their own narrative, at earlier and earlier ages. As adolescents, harassment online makes them do worse in school, seek riskier behaviors, and contemplate or even attempt and follow through on self-harm and suicide. As grown women, this looks like anxiety, a lack of self-confidence, not sleeping, and stepping out of the online conversation altogether to protect their own mental health, and, in severe cases, the safety of themselves and their loved ones. When harassment is allowed to carry on, and women are shamed for seeking help, the damage digs deeper—and we lose those voices.

I asked Ava what she wishes more people understood—about her, about what it’s like to have a big social media following, about how it feels to have millions of eyes on you at such a young age. “I just wish they knew that just because you have followers, doesn’t mean you have this perfect life,” she said. “Just because boys love you, that doesn’t complete your life. When these kinds of things happen, you should be able to be open about it.”

Follow Samantha Cole on Twitter.

Why This Teen Walked Away From Millions of TikTok Followers syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

0 notes

shirlleycoyle · 5 years

Text

TikTok Users Are Inventing Wild Theories to Explain Its Mysterious Algorithm

Probably half of the videos I see on TikTok include one of the following hashtags: #fyp, #foryou, or #foryoupage.

The hashtaggers’ theory is that if they use these tags in their captions, their posts are more likely to surface on more people’s For You pages. The For You page is TikTok’s recommendation feed, which is personalized to each user based on how that user interacts with videos on TikTok, according to the company.

There’s absolutely no proof that using these hashtags does anything, but it seems like they do. Because so many people use these hashtags, it looks like they actually get videos on people’s For You pages. Also, the top Google search result for “How to get on TikTok For You page” is a link to a blog that promotes this very method. (The blog provides other possible but unverified tips, like using high-quality footage, and using trending footage and trending hashtags.)

No one outside TikTok knows how its For You page algorithm works (like many social media recommendation algorithms, it’s likely the company itself doesn’t know all of its quirks). The company has repeatedly declined to answer Motherboard’s specific questions about it, including questions asked for this article.

TikTok users, without verifiable information from TikTok, are aggressively postulating their theories about how the For You page actually works on the platform. Speculation about the For You page has become prevalent that it’s practically adopted status as a meme on the platform. If users aren’t theorizing about it, then they’re making irreverent jokes about it.

One of the most popular theories on TikTok about how the For You page works is the “batch” theory. The idea is that TikTok shows each post to a small batch of users. The ratio of likes-to-views, or engagement-to-views, determines whether that post get released to a larger batch of users, and so on with each batch. Videos promoting these theories have gotten 46k and 17k likes, respectively.

Some users have tried to test this theory by asking users to comment how many likes the video had when they saw it. The thinking goes that if like counts increase in spurts, it’s possible that videos are shown in batches. But the results from this “test” are inconclusive. There’s absolutely no way to prove this theory without confirmation from TikTok.

According to the TikTok listing in the iOS App Store, a user’s For You page is based on an unclear mix of engagement metrics.

“A personalized video feed specifically for you based on what you watch, like, and share,” the page reads. “TikTok will quickly adapt to your taste to offer the most relevant, interesting, fun, quirky, head-turning videos that you’ll never want to stop watching.”

We don’t know which engagement metrics—likes re-watches, likes, or shares—have a more sizable influence on people’s For You pages than other metrics. (For instance, we don’t know if likes matter more than re-watches.)

Do you work at TikTok and have a tip about how For You recommendations work? Contact Caroline Haskins securely via email at [email protected] or via Signal at +1 785-813-1084.

Becca Lewis, a digital culture researcher at the non-profit research organization Data and Society, told Motherboard in a phone call that when platforms aren’t transparent about how content gets algorithmically surfaced, people start to look for patterns explaining why some things are seen and some things are not.

“It’s incredibly difficult to tell whether their observations are accurate or not, because it’s difficult from the outside to see what’s happening,” Lewis said. “That is one unintended consequence of these platforms keeping their algorithms so under wraps. You start to get these folk stories or urban legends about how these things work.”

Lewis added that there can be unintended consequences when platforms don’t provide information about their platforms to users. “I think the lack of transparency around algorithmic surfacing of content can lead to a culture of distrust and even a conspiratorial culture,” Lewis said.

There are many more theories about how TikTok’s For You page works, some of which are less sensible than others. For instance, one user proposed that TikTok assigns a score to accounts based on how much engagement their first five posts get, and TikTok uses that score to determine how often future posts get surfaced on the For You page. There’s no evidence that this is true. From TikTok’s perspective, this theory also doesn’t make sense because it would dissuades people from staying on the platform, and experimenting with content creation, on a long-term basis.

Other users have theorized that TikTok has no intelligent algorithm and just surfaces content randomly to each user. This user says that even when her views have a good “interaction per view” ratio—or, the ratio of likes, comments, and shares to total views—her videos still top off with very few views.

Some people see the opacity of the For You page algorithm as a call to action. For instance, one user asks his viewers if they also tap TikTok’s “share” button in order to try and make other people’s videos go viral on the app. The thinking is that by tapping share—even if users don’t actually share the video with a friend—users improve the engagement metrics of another video. It goes a step further than simply liking a video.

Another user told her viewers that TikTok users have a “duty” to like videos with only a handful of likes. She argues that the “batch” theory is correct, meaning that videos with high view-counts are distributed to more people’s For You Pages. For this reason, she says, it’s very difficult for videos with a small view count to get over the hump and reach a larger group of users.

“If you scroll past these little TikToks with like five likes, they’re probably going to die soon,” she says, with ironic melodrama. “So in conclusion, it is your civic duty as a member of the TikTok community to like and comment on this video, because if you don’t do it, no one else will.”

Doing this would surely affect one’s own For You page. However, it’s unclear how much it would affect other people’s For You pages.

Of course, TikTok isn’t the only platform with a secret content-surfacing algorithm. Becca Lewis said that often, tech companies will keep these algorithms secret because it’s expensive proprietary information, and more public information can empower media manipulators.

For example, if everyone had a list of attributes that move tweets to the top of people’s Twitter home feeds, everyone would just use those attributes.

“Since the early days of Google, for example, there’s always been a cat and mouse game where Google specifically tries to keep their search algorithm under wraps to a certain degree so it doesn’t get manipulated,” Lewis said. “But at the same time, you have people who want to appear highly in searches, and so there’s been the entire industry of search engine optimization that has emerged out of that.”

Some tech employees have resisted the principle of secrecy. YouTube’s union, for instance, is demanding more transparency about how the company operates. However, platforms like YouTube or TikTok don’t have an incentive to be transparent because maximizing engagement is a core part of their business models. Engagement often means people spend more time on a platform, and therefore, more time engaging with ads that make the company money. When platforms aren’t clear about what maximizes engagement, this money-making model stays safe.

And of course, all major algorithmically-powered feeds look different to each user because they’re influenced by how people behave. Twitter home pages, Facebook News Feeds, and Instagram home feeds display content in personalized orders, depending on how each user has behaved on the platform before. This isn’t unique to TikTok.

On one hand, there’s a positive side to personalized feeds. Users are more likely to see stuff that they want to see. But personalized feeds can also create echo chambers of content that don’t just subconsciously construct people’s own realities, but push them toward more radical content.

In any case, when users ask “why does this video have 43 likes and my video has zero,” they aren’t unjustified.

TikTok Users Are Inventing Wild Theories to Explain Its Mysterious Algorithm syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

0 notes