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#diapers rule
tommywolf · 3 days
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Hi hi just us nothing too see giggles
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reasonsforhope · 3 months
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Btw, if you really just Need A Job (tm)
I'd really recommend looking into care work
Care work here is specifically being a home care aid, a care aid or assistant at any kind of residential home.
This for usually for elderly or disabled adults - and those are the ones that tend to be most entry level, from what I've seen, but also for mental health, addiction recovery etc. (With the obvious caveat that some of these jobs will be more emotionally intense than others)
I'm so serious about this guys. I was applying to jobs in care work for just three weeks, starting a couple days before Christmas, and in that time I got three interviews, two jobs offers, and five additional interview requests
Care work needs people CONSTANTLY
because it's a huge sector but very hard for them to keep staff long-term. Partly because it can be high burn-out, and there's definitely toxic places out there you should watch out for. And partly because a lot of people think care work is beneath them
AND they ACTUALLY MEAN IT when they say they're entry level. Because it's so hard for them to get staff that a lot of them will advertise super aggressively that they will train you themselves. A lot of them will straight up pay for your CPR and First Aid certifications, once they hire you, too (and you can get a leg up on applications by getting a CPR/First Aid certification for like. $30 to $80, at least in the US). They also accept experience taking care of elderly/disabled/etc. family members as real experience
Like, obviously don't do it if you hate taking care of people, but if you're open to it, it's probably by far your best shot of getting hired rn, statistically
(eta: Genuinely disclaimer that it can be super taxing emotionally and large portions of the industry are indeed fucked, and def don't take a job in this field if you're gonna be an asshole to the people you're caring for, but sometimes you just need whatever job you can get.)
Seriously, though, the first time I applied for a care work job (in October 2023, yes short timeline, like I said there's some toxic workplaces etc. out there), I applied to like ten or fifteen jobs over the course of a week or so. Within three weeks, I was working.
(And they did provide all of the training, fwiw)
If you need a job and no one is hiring, seriously consider looking into it
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Happy International Women’s day to all the superior perfect Goddesses on this earth, especially my beautiful Mommy, Rosie!
Today, it’s my proud duty as one of the many pathetic, drooly chinned, sissified, incompetent boys of the world to be an example and voice for all the arrogant “men” out there who don’t know their true place bowing and kissing Women’s feet!
I mean c’mon boys! Without Women, who would change our full diapers? Tease us? Feed us? Laugh at us whenever we make a fool out of ourselves (A.K.A. always ☺️)? TRY to teach us things like numbers and vo… vow-cab-you-larry? (mommy chose not to spell check that one for some reason! She said it was cute though so who cares! 🤭) Who would spoil us rotten like the dumb clowns we are to them! Who would let us watch them change and paw at our padding on occasion? (no touching of course! 😋) That’s right boys! Nobody!
It’s my hope that soon enough WE are the objectified gender! WE should be paid less. WE should be stereotyped as the ditzy homemakers! WE should be ogled at no matter where we go or how we dress! WE should be talked down to like we know absolutely nothing! When WE get bullied by a Woman, our first thought should always be “I’m privileged she’s even giving me attention! Girls will be Girls after all! 🤤” Personally I think every statue and painting commemorating a boy should either be replaced by a Woman who ACTUALLY did something or have a thick diaper permanently added to his butt 🥰
So to all the silly boys like me, always remember: Your purpose in life is pleasing Women! Even if its just giving them something to point and laugh at~ Heres my contribution! Enjoy the photos, Ladies! 🙈
(P.S. heres a little screenshot of me asking permission to make this post in honor of @roseredcheeks !!! I love you mommy! I’d say I hope it meets your standards, but as a big dumb baby boy, I know I could NEVER impress you besides how full I can make my diaper! I can ALWAYS do more for my Queen!!!! 💖😌😍)
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itsthislake · 1 year
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The White Star’s age makes no sense.
Like, he’s is around 20 physically in canon, right? But so is Endable! I don’t remember when but one of the vampires says so explicitly I think, that the kingdom has only existed for around two decades at that point. And the White Star is the first and only king of Endable? How?? Was he just ruling as a toddler? Did the citizens just accept a little child as their king without protest? Or does everybody in the kingdom know he can reincarnate? Maybe he can like, polymorph/shapeshift to appear as an adult with magic? Idk, there’s never been any mention of magic that can achieve that in canon, aside from Fredo’s bracelet which is supposed to be a secret one-of-a-kind heirloom. I’m so confused rn lol
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diapered-bun · 1 year
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Crying and stomping my feet until someone gets me all padded up for them, puts me in the cutest most adorable most embarrassing outfit they picked out for me. Want to be taken out on a trip to the park or a zoo and just have the best time being my little self all while clinging to and sharing the experience with a cg.
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hoarniebastard · 6 months
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heyyy so like 3 months ago or something i sent an anon ask about your pullups bc i was too embarrassed to just ask. didnt think anything would come of it. anyway point being my dom told me i needed to thank you for recommending this brand because i look cute in them ❤️
omgggg it was you! i’m so glad you’re enjoying them 🥰 they’re great tbh and i’m sure they do look super fucking adorable on you 💖💕
thank u for the ask, today is actually my birthday and this is a wonderful present :)
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six-of-ravens · 7 months
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youtube: okay we're going to force you to see ads. what ads should we make you see?
youtube: google owns us so we know everything you've ever done in your life, you white, English-speaking female age 29 who works in tech!
youtube: .....local Chinese language newspaper ads it is!
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its-ticsticstics · 2 years
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“but he/him lesbians make no sense!!” 
first of all. who cares. 
second of all, thats just a super transphobic and lesbophobic way of saying “i know nothing about lesbian and queer history” 
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memorys-skyscraper · 2 months
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the yakuza series is truly just guys being dudes in the coolest ways imaginable
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stelashe · 6 months
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Government be like: we don't want you to do that! !! So we gotta make you pay and punish you if you do the opposite what now uh what?
We want you to do that! So we're gonna make you pay and punish you if you do it I'm so smart
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waughymommy · 25 days
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Diaper Discipline Guide
Emma & Henry
My boyfriend of 4 years has always had regressive and sub tendencies while I’ve wanted to talk more control in our relationship. We tried several bdsm activities including smacking and bondage but the occasional nature wasn’t really doing it for me.
After finding out more online about Female Led Relationships I came across DD, initially dismissing it. But the more I read, the better and better the idea appealed to me. After some planning I decided to confront my partner and say I wanted to add an element of control and domination into our relationship, by saying I hadn’t decided how to do it yet we had a long discussion without diapers being mentioned where he agreed in principle to “lifestyle dominance” as long as it could be kept between them and not impact his job, friends, etc. 
This guide was invaluable to me to plan the rest and it solidified my decision. It took me two weeks to discreetly buy the required supplies, getting them delivered to our apartment on days he was at work. I decided that I wanted a high initial level of DD where he’d be in diapers 24/7 at home.
I decided to start on a Friday night after work. He’d known that I had been preparing for something and I started the conversation by saying my proposal was weird, reassuring him that it wouldn’t be painful/harmful and nobody else would find out but you wanted him to agree to try it for at least 6 weeks.
Although nervous he also seemed excited by the prospect and agreed. We moved to the bedroom where I told him to get undressed before I diapered him for the first time. There was a lot of objections at this stage but I talked him round and the agreement to try it for 6 weeks was helpful.
To make the shock less I started with a medical diaper which wasn’t too thick and let him wear his normal pjs over it. I left him to explore it on his own while going to make dinner. After dinner it was time to tell him all the rules, the main one was that the toilet at home was now banned and he’d be in diapers whenever he’s at home. I kept the baby elements to a minimum and said he’s have to also wear out the house sometimes but I’d make sure nobody could tell and never when he’s at work or with friends/family. I’m not going to lie and say this didn’t involve an argument, especially when he realised that no toilet meant #2 as well but we got through. We ended up watching a movie which was a good way for him to calm down.
He wet his diaper for the first time after the movie which was funny to watch as he was so nervous it was going to leak everywhere. Even though it wasn’t too wet I did change him straight away and made his change extra special too. That night he slept in a diaper for the first time.
Over the first weekend he did get more used to wearing and I allowed him to use the toilet for a bm on Saturday. Sunday however I decided to fully enforce the rules and he messed himself for the first time. I didn’t change him this time and he took a shower. There was a lot of protests again but I said it was none-negotiable. The smell did seem to be the biggest thing that bothered him so I bought some Devrom tablets which had been recommended, it took a few days for them to arrive and a few more of taking them but now his messy diapers hardly smell and the protests have stopped. I’d actually recommend you use these from day 1 to make the transition easier.
The first week was tough but we got through it and I’m happy to say we’re now 7 months in to him being in DD. Over that time I’ve moved to thicker abdl diapers, he wears onesies regularly around the house and the toilet has remained unused by him with only a few exceptions.
We both work mainly from home so I’ve gotten used to checking and changing his diaper but thick diapers + devrom has meant he generally only needs a change after waking up, sometime in the early afternoon and before bed. I’ll also let him change himself if I’m busy or cba. 
The best news is after an initial rocky patch, our relationship feels stronger than ever! He proposed to me 5 months in and I can’t see his DD ending any time soon. I’ve increased elements overtime and now the toilet is banned even when out of the house together. Public wearing did take him a while to get used to but actually it’s easy. 
I’m sure DD is not for everyone and is much more involved and hard work than other lifestyle changes but for creating a caring bond between you and your partner I’ve found it to be great!
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regressionschool · 3 months
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Piddle Pout
One thing that never fails to catch your attention is the mischievous smile they often wear when they first wet their pull-ups. It's a playful expression, full of innocence and excitement, and it's known as the "Piddle Pout."
You see it happen all the time - a girl will be going about her day, playing or chatting with friends, when suddenly she feels the urge to go. There's a moment of hesitation, a brief pause as she realizes what's happening, and then it's like a switch flips in her mind. You watch as they squirm and fidget, their faces lighting up with anticipation. And then, it happens - a small trickle of pee escapes into their pull-ups, and that's when you see it: the Piddle Pout.
It's almost like a secret game they're playing, a little act of rebellion against the rules of adulthood. They know they're not supposed to wet themselves, but there's something thrilling about breaking those rules, about giving in to the urge and letting nature take its course.
It's a look of pure delight, a silent acknowledgment of the pleasure they feel in that moment. They may not say anything out loud, but their eyes say it all - they're enjoying every second of it.
You can't help but smile yourself as you witness the Piddle Pout. There's something infectious about their joy, something that makes you appreciate the simplicity and innocence of regression.
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Diaper Pride
 As you go about your duties at the regression school, you often witness the transition of women from pull-ups back to thick, crinkly diapers. There are several reasons why this transition occurs.
One common reason is as a reward for being good little girls. When a woman demonstrates exceptional behavior or meets certain milestones in her regression journey, it's customary to reward her with the privilege of wearing diapers again during the day. This serves as positive reinforcement for embracing her regression and behaving in a childlike manner.
Another reason for the transition is when a woman experiences leaks or messes through her pull-ups. Pull-ups are designed for light to moderate wetting, but sometimes accidents happen, especially as the women regress further and lose some control over their bladders and bowels. In such cases, transitioning back to diapers provides better containment and prevents embarrassing leaks.
When a woman is first put back into diapers during the day, you often observe a sense of pride and excitement on her face. It's as if she's been granted permission to fully embrace her regression and indulge in the comforts of childhood once again. She may giggle and squirm with delight as she feels the familiar sensation of thick padding between her legs and the comforting crinkle of the diaper around her waist.
The other girls in diapers are quick to welcome the new addition to their ranks. They greet her with smiles and hugs, eager to share in the camaraderie of regression. There's a sense of solidarity among them, knowing that they all understand the joys and challenges of wearing diapers during the day. They exchange stories and tips, bonding over their shared experiences and supporting each other through their regression journey.
Meanwhile, the girls still in pull-ups can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy as they watch the new girl donning her thick, crinkly diapers. They long to experience the same sense of security and comfort, to be free from the worry of leaks and accidents. Some may even feel a sense of inadequacy, wondering why they haven't progressed to diapers yet and questioning their own regression journey.
But despite their envy, the girls in pull-ups also feel a sense of anticipation, knowing that their turn to wear diapers during the day may come soon. They eagerly await the day when they, too, can join the ranks of the diapered girls and fully embrace their regression without reservation.
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hannieehaee · 3 months
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hii!! i hope ure having a great day
i just wanted to request loser!scoups hehe I RLLY LOVED CHANS VERSION AND WAS HOPING TO SEE MORE 🫶🏻 anyways take your time to answer when ure free, thanku!
18+ / mdi
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content: loser!seungcheol, afab reader, smut, dry humping, penetrative sex, etc.
wc: 2686
part 1, part 2
a/n: hii thank u for requesting <33 i never considered loser!cheol before but ngl i loved writing it hehe i hope u enjoy <3
masterlist
despite popular belief, seungcheol was actually a bit of a loser.
okay, maybe his appearance didn't necessarily fit the bill (with his slicked back hair and bulging muscles), but everything else about choi seungcheol truly screamed loser.
even with a large group of fratboy friends, seungcheol was still the loser of the friend group, being the only one who had opted out of joining the frat and who spent every day and night studying rather than ever attending any of his friends' parties.
this was all by choice, he swears! seungcheol was just far too serious about his education to let anything become a distraction. and it had always been like this, even dating back all the way to middle school (jeonghan could vouch for this, having known him basically since diapers). due to this, seungcheol had always been kind of a black sheep in any and every social situation he ever found himself in. as a result, seungcheol ended up becoming shy, awkward, utterly embarrassing in social situations, and as jeonghan liked to put it, a 'virgin loser.'
even if seungcheol wanted to disagree with his friend, he knew he was right. here he was, twenty-one years of age and still a lonely virgin who had never even felt the touch of a woman's hand in his. he'd had opportunities before, set ups orchestrated by his friends, but he always managed to fuck them up. due to jeonghan's outgoing disposition, the girls he usually set him up with were set for a surprise upon meeting a his friend seungcheol, who could not even hold eye contact for more then twelve seconds (he counted).
except this year that would all change.
now in his senior year of college, seungcheol had an epiphany.
on the very first week of senior year, upon being assigned a new dorm-mate due to his previous one transfering, seungcheol finally saw a mirror of himself.
his new roommate was, for lack of a better term, a fucking loser (the term being courtesy of jeonghan once again). seungcheol had barely met the guy, yet he could not stand one more moment of conversation with him. not only was he a know-it-all who could only ever talk about academics, but he was maybe even more of a loser virgin than seungcheol was (at least that's what seungcheol was able to assess from the three separate occasions in which he walked in on his roommate watching porn in the common area of the dorm). his hygiene was terrible and his wide-rimmed glasses made him look like the typical nerd in every high school movie. everything about him was what seungcheol feared to one day become.
this one week of torture had been enough for seungcheol to finally take jeonghan up on his offer to join his frat and subsequently move into the frat house. granted, jeonghan had to break a few rules to allow a new pledge with zero obstacles in the way, but jeonghan was just charming enough to get away with it.
seungcheol had already spent the past 10+ years with perfect grades and pristine extra curriculars, so he figured that even if he completely flunked these last two semesters, he would still be a shoe-in for the masters program he'd been eyeing since arriving to university.
so now seungcheol was immersed in the frat lifestyle, though he still felt a bit out of place, which unfortunately for cheol, was something his good friend jeonghan noticed immediately. but this would only be a problem for a short while.
unbeknownst to seungcheol, jeonghan had orchestrated a plan for seungcheol's first frat party. it all started with giving seungcheol a bit of a new look. jeonghan insisted on throwing out most of cheol's 'nerdy clothes' (admittedly, he did dress like an old man at times), traded in his thick-rimmed glasses for some better fitting specs and lastly, gave cheol a trim to better frame his face. after all these changes, cheol felt more confident but still did not feel ready to attend one of the frat's well-known parties.
the decision was, however, taken for him, as he found himself in attendance to one just a few days later. also unknown to cheol was that jeonghan had been playing cupid once more, scouting to see which one of his closer girl-friends would be a good fit for his friend. and of course, his attention immediately fell on you.
jeonghan had only known you since the last semester of his junior year, in which the two of you had partnered up for a project that took up the entire fifteen weeks of instruction. the two of you hit it off pretty easily, but you hadn't quite caught his attention in a non-platonic way.
but you had caught someone else's.
although it had only been a fleeting moment, jeonghan caught onto every single look and action that had occurred the day in which seungcheol had accidentally interrupted a study session between the two of you.
he had easily noticed the blush in cheol's cheeks upon seeing you for the first time, along with the way he shyly checked you out when you weren't paying attention. what had surprised him the most, though, had been the way you checked out his friend as he went to leave the room. that had been enough for jeonghan to decide to play matchmaker between the two of you if the opportunity ever arose. and that was now.
getting the two of you alone was not difficult, but jeonghan knew better. he knew that sending the two of you into an empty room, completely blind to whatever he was planning was just a bad idea. so jeonghan decided that for the first time in his life, he would not scheme. he would simply set up the scene and leave the rest to you.
when jeonghan first came up to you a few days back and let you know about his friend's crush on you, you had been pleasantly surprised. what had shocked you the most, though, had been the revelation that jeonghan's cute friend was actually an inexperienced virgin. jeonghan told you to please not bring it up to cheol, but that he felt it was best you knew so you didnt feel caught off guard should you ever try to hit him up (which he knew you would). what jeonghan didnt realize was that this fact excited you more than you'd like to admit.
planting that seed was more than enough to get you looking for cheol in the empty room jeonghan had said he'd be in (okay, maybe he did scheme a little), prepared to deflower the pretty nerd you'd been thinking about every time you started to notice him sitting alone in the library every other day.
you had dressed to the nines, donning a red slip dress that gave you breathing room but still accentuated every part of your body you wished to stand out. ready and confident, you quietly opened the door to what you assumed to be jeonghan's room, knowing you'd find his pretty friend inside.
sitting alone on the bed, seemingly trying to psych himself up as he whispered affirmations to himself, the boy jumped back upon your unexpected intrusion, with his hears instantly turning red at realizing who you were.
you were jeonghan's pretty friend. the one seungcheol had had some unbecoming thoughts about immediately after seeing you in jeonghan's room last semester (and subsequently seeing you around campus as his eyes would unknowingly always search for you). and you looked .... fuck. and you were alone in han's room with him .... and you had closed the door right behind you .... and now you had walked all the way over to where he was sitting at the edge of the bed, not shocked at all to see him there ....
"hi," you smiled at him.
"h– hey."
"are you okay? how come you're here all alone?", you sat next to him on the bed, damning all boundaries, apparently.
"oh, i ... just a little nervous, i guess."
"yeah? of what?", despite the unexpectedness of the situation, you seemed genuinely interested, so seungcheol responded.
"it's, uh, my first party as a member of the frat."
"oh, really? i had no idea you were a member of the frat. that's pretty cool, seungcheol."
"you know my name?"
you scoot closer, smile still on your face, "yeah, of course i know your name. do you now mine?"
"oh, i, uh, yeah ..."
"okay, so we know each other. do you maybe want a friend to go out there with? maybe that would ease your nerves," your hand had somehow made its way to his thigh, now invading his personal space a bit. except he couldnt find it in himself to complain.
"t– that's fine, i, uh, i have han and– "
"but arent i better company?"
"y– you're ..."
"can i be honest with you, seungcheol?", you didnt wait for a response, "hannie told me that maybe you needed some help. that i could maybe help you out?"
"help? what type of help do you mean?"
you leaned in even closer, "do you want me to show you?"
"i ..."
"all you have to say is 'yes', cheollie ...", you breathed out now close enough for him to feel your breath on his lips.
he nodded and made an embarrassing noise of affirmation, completely giving up on speaking.
it was embarrassing how easily he let you turn him into a puddle, not even bothering to question how or why jeonghan orchestrated this situation. but that didnt matter as he finally felt the lips of a woman against his own – your lips; the lips of the girl he'd been crushing on from afar, jealous that maybe you'd become more than jeonghan's classmate. this was a clear declaration that his assertions had been incorrect.
seungcheol wasn't sure what to do with his hands (or with his tongue) as he kissed you. he felt you smile against his lips at his whimper, making feel that maybe you were making fun of him. when you pulled away, he feared that maybe he'd been right.
"cheollie, let me show you, yeah? just let me– yeah, like that", you positioned him in a way that would allow you to straddle him as you said this, wrapping his arms around your waist, "okay now let me show you how to kiss me, okay? just open your mouth a bit for me and let me teach you. then you can try it on me."
with that, you leaned into his open mouth, sticking your tongue inside as you played with his own, sucking on it and causing his eyes to roll back, another embarrassing moan leaving his lips.
"do you wanna try it now?", you asked as you pulled away.
he feared his voice would betray him, so he just nodded before leaning in.
seungcheol mimicked your previous actions, though his were a bit sloppier and more desperate. he whined at the way you sighed and pulled at his hair due to the way in which he suckled at your tongue and squeezed his fingers on your hips.
eventually you began to also kiss him back, making it a battle between your tongues all the while seungcheol tried to keep up.
suddenly your hips began to move against his own, making him groan in pleasure. after that, you leaned over him, causing the two of you to lay on the bed as you practically rode him through your clothes.
cheol couldnt help his cries of pleasure at feeling you press against his now swollen member. he didnt want the feeling to end, so he grabbed onto your hips and helped you in your movements, even grinding his own hips upwards to match you.
"cheollie ... do you want more? hmm? wanna feel what its like?", you purred against his ear while pulling off your dress, leaving you in a tiny bralette and thin panties.
"yes! fuck, please. i'll take whatever you wanna give me, just ..."
"shhh, it's okay. i'll give it to you, pretty. you dont have to beg. want you just as bad," you kissed him again before he could reply.
without him noticing, you had thrown off your bra, something which made him completely blank when you pulled away and began talking to him. none of your words made it through his head. he was far too busy looking at the pretty nude girl in front of him. he salivated at every inch of naked skin, wanting nothing more than to lick and kiss at every curve. out of all parts of your body, his eyes were glued to your tits. the fleeting thought of suffocating in them flew through his head, making him shudder.
"cheol?", you grabbed onto his chin and pointed his gaze towards your own, finally breaking him out of his trance.
you giggled at his confused face, causing him to sheepishly apologize for dozing off.
"it's okay, pretty. i'd be distracted too if i could get all these clothes off you ... that's what i was asking actually, can i?" your hands began to teasingly pull at his top, mangling it a bit so it could expose some skin.
his nod was all you needed to rip off his shirt and pull off his pants with urgency that had seungcheol blushing. after getting him fully naked, you threw off your panties and finally sat against him completely bare. the heat of your skin against his was enough to have him burying his face against your neck and begging you once more to please give it to him.
"shhh. i'll give it to you, pretty. i– i'll give you everything," and with that, you sank down on him, throwing your head back at the intrusion.
meanwhile seungcheol was completely gone. the warmth of your body against his had been one thing, but feeling your heat wrap around him was what truly did him in.
it's not like he had stayed a virgin by choice. he had tried to hit it off with many of the girls jeonghan set him up with, but none of them showed any care for him. they'd all expected him to step up and fuck them. even when he would try to shyly explain that he had never done anything sexual before, he'd just be met with scoffs or laughter. but you had walked him through it. you had complimented him and made him feel comfortable. you had made him see pleasure for the first time in his life.
although these thoughts swam through his head as you fucked yourself on his cock, seungcheol's mind was otherwise completely empty. all he could think about was how good you felt and how pretty you sounded as you threw your head back and pulled at his hair. you were just the embodiment of pleasure.
all cares and worries were gone from his brain until the moment in which he felt all his pleasure reach a peak.
he didn't want to be a fucking loser and cum so soon, but you just felt so fucking good, he couldnt help himself. he cried a warning out to you, to which you encouraged him to let go and told him you'd follow him soon.
his orgasm was something he never couldve imagined. but your own orgasm soon trampled that experience. your tightness as you let yourself go while still wrapped around him had him delirious with pleasure. without meaning to, his nails dug into the skin of your pretty hips as he lost consciousness for a few seconds.
unable to fully process it, he felt a sweet peck against his lips before feeling you cuddle against him. he didnt have to think twice before wrapping his arms around you and pulling you closer.
"remind me to thank that idiot", he spoke up after some moments.
"who, hannie?", you giggled against his chest.
"yeah. he was onto something when he made me get ready in his room."
"oh? he sent me in here looking for you."
"that fucker", he chuckled, "owe him one."
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joeybsversion · 8 months
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Girl Dad
Joe Burrow x Reader
Joe takes his daughter to practice
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9 days after entering the world, your daughter made her first Bengals practice debut. Since then, she’s spent most of her Sundays there as well. That is truly a right that comes with being the quarterbacks daughter.
Joe was the best dad. Even before she was born her catered to your every need. He continues to jump at her every whim.
“You ready to go, baby girl?” He asks, pulling into the facility parking lot. You had to travel for a work emergency with no notice, leaving Joe in charge for the day. “C’mon.” He pulls her from the car and slung the diaper bag over his shoulder, heading inside.
The sound of loud conversation and even louder music can be heard from the locker room as Joe makes his way down the hallway. Appearing around the corner with the small baby in his arms, everyone gasps. The locker room turned into a silent dead zone.
Usually there’s a strict no girls allowed rule in the locker room, but today the team would make an exception.
“Mama had to leave town, so we’re adding another player to the roster for the day.” Joe jokes with the team.
It was the day after a game so there wouldn’t be much practicing going on. Just watching film, talking about the upcoming game, and going over plays.
“Hi sweetie.” Ja’Marr takes the baby from Joes arms, giving him a chance to tuck the diaper bag into his locker and slip out of his coat.
“She loves her uncle Ja’Marr.” Joe admires his friends playfulness with his daughter.
“But she loves her Uncle Sam more!” Sam interrupted the conversation, taking your daughters tiny hand into his big one and cooing at her.
The guys filtered into the film room, finding a spot to take a seat so they could start the days meetings.
Your daughter was mostly content sitting on Joes lap. He bounced her on his knee and intently watched the screen in front of him. Almost as if she knew what was coming, she let out a loud shriek just as the team rewatched a play of Joe taking a hard hit.
“That’s what I’m saying too.” Joe laughs in response before quickly excusing himself from the room.
The training room was empty with the exception of two. Joe cradled his daughter in his arms, lightly bouncing her as he fed her a bottle. “This is where daddy works out.” He gives her a tour of the room. “So he can stay strong and healthy and take care of you for a long, long time.” He admires the tiny girl in his arms.
Soon enough, she’s drifted off to sleep in his arms. The bottle replaced with a binky which is bouncing up and down as she sucks on it in her sleep and a pink blanket wrapped around her.
Joe makes his way back into the room with the rest of the team. He presses a finger to his lips, motioning for the rest of the team to be quiet.
In that moment, he feels like a true winner, cradling his most prized possession, the best trophy ever, in his arms.
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Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in Skinner boxes
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Enshittification is the process by which digital platforms devour themselves: first they dangle goodies in front of end users. Once users are locked in, the goodies are taken away and dangled before business customers who supply goods to the users. Once those business customers are stuck on the platform, the goodies are clawed away and showered on the platform’s shareholders:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
Enshittification isn’t just another way of saying “fraud” or “price gouging” or “wage theft.” Enshittification is intrinsically digital, because moving all those goodies around requires the flexibility that only comes with a digital businesses. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can’t rapidly change the price of eggs at Whole Foods without an army of kids with pricing guns on roller-skates. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can change the price of eggs on Amazon Fresh just by twiddling a knob on the service’s back-end.
Twiddling is the key to enshittification: rapidly adjusting prices, conditions and offers. As with any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Tech monopolists aren’t smarter than the Gilded Age sociopaths who monopolized rail or coal — they use the same tricks as those monsters of history, but they do them faster and with computers:
https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6
If Rockefeller wanted to crush a freight company, he couldn’t just click a mouse and lay down a pipeline that ran on the same route, and then click another mouse to make it go away when he was done. When Bezos wants to bankrupt Diapers.com — a company that refused to sell itself to Amazon — he just moved a slider so that diapers on Amazon were being sold below cost. Amazon lost $100m over three months, diapers.com went bankrupt, and every investor learned that competing with Amazon was a losing bet:
https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html
That’s the power of twiddling — but twiddling cuts both ways. The same flexibility that digital businesses enjoy is hypothetically available to workers and users. The airlines pioneered twiddling ticket prices, and that naturally gave rise to countertwiddling, in the form of comparison shopping sites that scraped the airlines’ sites to predict when tickets would be cheapest:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin
The airlines — like all abusive businesses — refused to tolerate this. They were allowed to touch their knobs as much as they wanted — indeed, they couldn’t stop touching those knobs — but when we tried to twiddle back, that was “felony contempt of business model,” and the airlines sued:
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/30/airline-sues-man-for-founding-a-cheap-flights-website.html
And sued:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/southwest-airlines-lawsuit-prices.html
Platforms don’t just hate it when end-users twiddle back — if anything they are even more aggressive when their business-users dare to twiddle. Take Para, an app that Doordash drivers used to get a peek at the wages offered for jobs before they accepted them — something that Doordash hid from its workers. Doordash ruthlessly attacked Para, saying that by letting drivers know how much they’d earn before they did the work, Para was violating the law:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition
Which law? Well, take your pick. The modern meaning of “IP” is “any law that lets me use the law to control my competitors, competition or customers.” Platforms use a mix of anticircumvention law, patent, copyright, contract, cybersecurity and other legal systems to weave together a thicket of rules that allow them to shut down rivals for their Felony Contempt of Business Model:
https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
Enshittification relies on unlimited twiddling (by platforms), and a general prohibition on countertwiddling (by platform users). Enshittification is a form of fishing, in which bait is dangled before different groups of users and then nimbly withdrawn when they lunge for it. Twiddling puts the suppleness into the enshittifier’s fishing-rod, and a ban on countertwiddling weighs down platform users so they’re always a bit too slow to catch the bait.
Nowhere do we see twiddling’s impact more than in the “gig economy,” where workers are misclassified as independent contractors and put to work for an app that scripts their every move to the finest degree. When an app is your boss, you work for an employer who docks your pay for violating rules that you aren’t allowed to know — and where your attempts to learn those rules are constantly frustrated by the endless back-end twiddling that changes the rules faster than you can learn them.
As with every question of technology, the issue isn’t twiddling per se — it’s who does the twiddling and who gets twiddled. A worker armed with digital tools can play gig work employers off each other and force them to bid up the price of their labor; they can form co-ops with other workers that auto-refuse jobs that don’t pay enough, and use digital tools to organize to shift power from bosses to workers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to
Take “reverse centaurs.” In AI research, a “centaur” is a human assisted by a machine that does more than either could do on their own. For example, a chess master and a chess program can play a better game together than either could play separately. A reverse centaur is a machine assisted by a human, where the machine is in charge and the human is a meat-puppet.
Think of Amazon warehouse workers wearing haptic location-aware wristbands that buzz at them continuously dictating where their hands must be; or Amazon drivers whose eye-movements are continuously tracked in order to penalize drivers who look in the “wrong” direction:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur
The difference between a centaur and a reverse centaur is the difference between a machine that makes your life better and a machine that makes your life worse so that your boss gets richer. Reverse centaurism is the 21st Century’s answer to Taylorism, the pseudoscience that saw white-coated “experts” subject workers to humiliating choreography down to the smallest movement of your fingertip:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust
While reverse centaurism was born in warehouses and other company-owned facilities, gig work let it make the leap into workers’ homes and cars. The 21st century has seen a return to the cottage industry — a form of production that once saw workers labor far from their bosses and thus beyond their control — but shriven of the autonomy and dignity that working from home once afforded:
https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d
The rise and rise of bossware — which allows for remote surveillance of workers in their homes and cars — has turned “work from home” into “live at work.” Reverse centaurs can now be chickenized — a term from labor economics that describes how poultry farmers, who sell their birds to one of three vast poultry processors who have divided up the country like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” are uniquely exploited:
https://onezero.medium.com/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs-b2e8d5cda826
A chickenized reverse centaur has it rough: they must pay for the machines they use to make money for their bosses, they must obey the orders of the app that controls their work, and they are denied any of the protections that a traditional worker might enjoy, even as they are prohibited from deploying digital self-help measures that let them twiddle back to bargain for a better wage.
All of this sets the stage for a phenomenon called algorithmic wage discrimination, in which two workers doing the same job under the same conditions will see radically different payouts for that work. These payouts are continuously tweaked in the background by an algorithm that tries to predict the minimum sum a worker will accept to remain available without payment, to ensure sufficient workers to pick up jobs as they arise.
This phenomenon — and proposed policy and labor solutions to it — is expertly analyzed in “On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination,” a superb paper by UC Law San Franciscos Veena Dubal:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080
Dubal uses empirical data and enthnographic accounts from Uber drivers and other gig workers to explain how endless, self-directed twiddling allows gig companies pay workers less and pay themselves more. As @[email protected] explains in his LA Times article on Dubal’s research, the goal of the payment algorithm is to guess how often a given driver needs to receive fair compensation in order to keep them driving when the payments are unfair:
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-04-11/algorithmic-wage-discrimination
The algorithm combines nonconsensual dossiers compiled on individual drivers with population-scale data to seek an equilibrium between keeping drivers waiting, unpaid, for a job; and how much a driver needs to be paid for an individual job, in order to keep that driver from clocking out and doing something else. @ Here’s how that works. Sergio Avedian, a writer for The Rideshare Guy, ran an experiment with two brothers who both drove for Uber; one drove a Tesla and drove intermittently, the other brother rented a hybrid sedan and drove frequently. Sitting side-by-side with the brothers, Avedian showed how the brother with the Tesla was offered more for every trip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UADTiL3S67I
Uber wants to lure intermittent drivers into becoming frequent drivers. Uber doesn’t pay for an oversupply of drivers, because it only pays drivers when they have a passenger in the car. Having drivers on call — but idle — is a way for Uber to shift the cost of maintaining a capacity cushion to its workers.
What’s more, what Uber charges customers is not based on how much it pays its workers. As Uber’s head of product explained: Uber uses “machine-learning techniques to estimate how much groups of customers are willing to shell out for a ride. Uber calculates riders’ propensity for paying a higher price for a particular route at a certain time of day. For instance, someone traveling from a wealthy neighborhood to another tony spot might be asked to pay more than another person heading to a poorer part of town, even if demand, traffic and distance are the same.”
https://qz.com/990131/uber-is-practicing-price-discrimination-economists-say-that-might-not-be-a-bad-thing/
Uber has historically described its business a pure supply-and-demand matching system, where a rush of demand for rides triggers surge pricing, which lures out drivers, which takes care of the demand. That’s not how it works today, and it’s unclear if it ever worked that way. Today, a driver who consults the rider version of the Uber app before accepting a job — to compare how much the rider is paying to how much they stand to earn — is booted off the app and denied further journeys.
Surging, instead, has become just another way to twiddle drivers. One of Dubal’s subjects, Derrick, describes how Uber uses fake surges to lure drivers to airports: “You go to the airport, once the lot get kind of full, then the surge go away.” Other drivers describe how they use groupchats to call out fake surges: “I’m in the Marina. It’s dead. Fake surge.”
That’s pure twiddling. Twiddling turns gamification into gamblification, where your labor buys you a spin on a roulette wheel in a rigged casino. As a driver called Melissa, who had doubled down on her availability to earn a $100 bonus awarded for clocking a certain number of rides, told Dubal, “When you get close to the bonus, the rides start trickling in more slowly…. And it makes sense. It’s really the type of shit that they can do when it’s okay to have a surplus labor force that is just sitting there that they don’t have to pay for.”
Wherever you find reverse-centaurs, you get this kind of gamblification, where the rules are twiddled continuously to make sure that the house always wins. As a contract driver Amazon reverse centaur told Lauren Gurley for Motherboard, “Amazon uses these cameras allegedly to make sure they have a safer driving workforce, but they’re actually using them not to pay delivery companies”:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-they-didnt-make
Algorithmic wage discrimination is the robot overlord of our nightmares: its job is to relentlessly quest for vulnerabilities and exploit them. Drivers divide themselves into “ants” (drivers who take every job) and “pickers” (drivers who cherry-pick high-paying jobs). The algorithm’s job is ensuring that pickers get the plum assignments, not the ants, in the hopes of converting those pickers to app-dependent ants.
In my work on enshittification, I call this the “giant teddy bear” gambit. At every county fair, you’ll always spot some poor jerk carrying around a giant teddy-bear they “won” on the midway. But they didn’t win it — not by getting three balls in the peach-basket. Rather, the carny running the rigged game either chose not to operate the “scissor” that kicks balls out of the basket. Or, if the game is “honest” (that is, merely impossible to win, rather than gimmicked), the operator will make a too-good-to-refuse offer: “Get one ball in and I’ll give you this keychain. Win two keychains and I’ll let you trade them for this giant teddy bear.”
Carnies aren’t in the business of giving away giant teddy bears — rather, the gambit is an investment. Giving a mark a giant teddy bear to carry around the midway all day acts as a convincer, luring other marks to try to land three balls in the basket and win their own teddy bear.
In the same way, platforms like Uber distribute giant teddy bears to pickers, as a way of keeping the ants scurrying from job to job, and as a way of convincing the pickers to give up whatever work allows them to discriminate among Uber’s offers and hold out for the plum deals, whereupon then can be transmogrified into ants themselves.
Dubal describes the experience of Adil, a Syrian refugee who drives for Uber in the Bay Area. His colleagues are pickers, and showed him screenshots of how much they earned. Determined to get a share of that money, Adil became a model ant, driving two hours to San Francisco, driving three days straight, napping in his car, spending only one day per week with his family. The algorithm noticed that Adil needed the work, so it paid him less.
Adil responded the way the system predicted he would, by driving even more: “My friends they make it, so I keep going, maybe I can figure it out. It’s unsecure, and I don’t know how people they do it. I don’t know how I am doing it, but I have to. I mean, I don’t find another option. In a minute, if I find something else, oh man, I will be out immediately. I am a very patient person, that’s why I can continue.”
Another driver, Diego, told Dubal about how the winners of the giant teddy bears fell into the trap of thinking that they were “good at the app”: “Any time there’s some big shot getting high pay outs, they always shame everyone else and say you don’t know how to use the app. I think there’s secret PR campaigns going on that gives targeted payouts to select workers, and they just think it’s all them.”
That’s the power of twiddling: by hoarding all the flexibility offered by digital tools, the management at platforms can become centaurs, able to string along thousands of workers, while the workers are reverse-centaurs, puppeteered by the apps.
As the example of Adil shows, the algorithm doesn’t need to be very sophisticated in order to figure out which workers it can underpay. The system automates the kind of racial and gender discrimination that is formally illegal, but which is masked by the smokescreen of digitization. An employer who systematically paid women less than men, or Black people less than white people, would be liable to criminal and civil sanctions. But if an algorithm simply notices that people who have fewer job prospects drive more and will thus accept lower wages, that’s just “optimization,” not racism or sexism.
This is the key to understanding the AI hype bubble: when ghouls from multinational banks predict 13 trillion dollar markets for “AI,” what they mean is that digital tools will speed up the twiddling and other wage-suppression techniques to transfer $13T in value from workers and consumers to shareholders.
The American business lobby is relentlessly focused on the goal of reducing wages. That’s the force behind “free trade,” “right to work,” and other codewords for “paying workers less,” including “gig work.” Tech workers long saw themselves as above this fray, immune to labor exploitation because they worked for a noble profession that took care of its own.
But the epidemic of mass tech-worker layoffs, following on the heels of massive stock buybacks, has demonstrated that tech bosses are just like any other boss: willing to pay as little as they can get away with, and no more. Tech bosses are so comfortable with their market dominance and the lock-in of their customers that they are happy to turn out hundreds of thousands of skilled workers, convinced that the twiddling systems they’ve built are the kinds of self-licking ice-cream cones that are so simple even a manager can use them — no morlocks required.
The tech worker layoffs are best understood as an all-out war on tech worker morale, because that morale is the source of tech workers’ confidence and thus their demands for a larger share of the value generated by their labor. The current tech layoff template is very different from previous tech layoffs: today’s layoffs are taking place over a period of months, long after they are announced, and laid off tech worker is likely to be offered a months of paid post-layoff work, rather than severance. This means that tech workplaces are now haunted by the walking dead, workers who have been laid off but need to come into the office for months, even as the threat of layoffs looms over the heads of the workers who remain. As an old friend, recently laid off from Microsoft after decades of service, wrote to me, this is “a new arrow in the quiver of bringing tech workers to heel and ensuring that we’re properly thankful for the jobs we have (had?).”
Dubal is interested in more than analysis, she’s interested in action. She looks at the tactics already deployed by gig workers, who have not taken all this abuse lying down. Workers in the UK and EU organized through Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union have used the GDPR (the EU’s privacy law) to demand “algorithmic transparency,” as well as access to their data. In California, drivers hope to use similar provisions in the CCPA (a state privacy law) to do the same.
These efforts have borne fruit. When Cornell economists, led by Louis Hyman, published research (paid for by Uber) claiming that Uber drivers earned an average of $23/hour, it was data from these efforts that revealed the true average Uber driver’s wage was $9.74. Subsequent research in California found that Uber drivers’ wage fell to $6.22/hour after the passage of Prop 22, a worker misclassification law that gig companies spent $225m to pass, only to have the law struck down because of a careless drafting error:
https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2021-08-23/proposition-22-lyft-uber-decision-essential-california
But Dubal is skeptical that data-coops and transparency will achieve transformative change and build real worker power. Knowing how the algorithm works is useful, but it doesn’t mean you can do anything about it, not least because the platform owners can keep touching their knobs, twiddling the payout schedule on their rigged slot-machines.
Data co-ops start from the proposition that “data extraction is an inevitable form of labor for which workers should be remunerated.” It makes on-the-job surveillance acceptable, provided that workers are compensated for the spying. But co-ops aren’t unions, and they don’t have the power to bargain for a fair price for that data, and coops themselves lack the vast resources — “to store, clean, and understand” — data.
Co-ops are also badly situated to understand the true value of the data that is extracted from their members: “Workers cannot know whether the data collected will, at the population level, violate the civil rights of others or amplifies their own social oppression.”
Instead, Dubal wants an outright, nonwaivable prohibition on algorithmic wage discrimination. Just make it illegal. If firms cannot use gambling mechanisms to control worker behavior through variable pay systems, they will have to find ways to maintain flexible workforces while paying their workforce predictable wages under an employment model. If a firm cannot manage wages through digitally-determined variable pay systems, then the firm is less likely to employ algorithmic management.”
In other words, rather than using market mechanisms too constrain platform twiddling, Dubal just wants to make certain kinds of twiddling illegal. This is a growing trend in legal scholarship. For example, the economist Ramsi Woodcock has proposed a ban on surge pricing as a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act:
https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-105-issue-4/the-efficient-queue-and-the-case-against-dynamic-pricing
Similarly, Dubal proposes that algorithmic wage discrimination violates another antitrust law: the Robinson-Patman Act, which “bans sellers from charging competing buyers different prices for the same commodity. Robinson-Patman enforcement was effectively halted under Reagan, kicking off a host of pathologies, like the rise of Walmart:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes
I really liked Dubal’s legal reasoning and argument, and to it I would add a call to reinvigorate countertwiddling: reforming laws that get in the way of workers who want to reverse-engineer, spoof, and control the apps that currently control them. Adversarial interoperability (AKA competitive compatibility or comcom) is key tool for building worker power in an era of digital Taylorism:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
To see how that works, look to other jursidictions where workers have leapfrogged their European and American cousins, such as Indonesia, where gig workers and toolsmiths collaborate to make a whole suite of “tuyul apps,” which let them override the apps that gig companies expect them to use.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek
For example, ride-hailing companies won’t assign a train-station pickup to a driver unless they’re circling the station — which is incredibly dangerous during the congested moments after a train arrives. A tuyul app lets a driver park nearby and then spoof their phone’s GPS fix to the ridehailing company so that they appear to be right out front of the station.
In an ideal world, those workers would have a union, and be able to dictate the app’s functionality to their bosses. But workers shouldn’t have to wait for an ideal world: they don’t just need jam tomorrow — they need jam today. Tuyul apps, and apps like Para, which allow workers to extract more money under better working conditions, are a prelude to unionization and employer regulation, not a substitute for it.
Employers will not give workers one iota more power than they have to. Just look at the asymmetry between the regulation of union employees versus union busters. Under US law, employees of a union need to account for every single hour they work, every mile they drive, every location they visit, in public filings. Meanwhile, the union-busting industry — far larger and richer than unions — operate under a cloak of total secrecy, Workers aren’t even told which union busters their employers have hired — let alone get an accounting of how those union busters spend money, or how many of them are working undercover, pretending to be workers in order to sabotage the union.
Twiddling will only get an employer so far. Twiddling — like all “AI” — is based on analyzing the past to predict the future. The heuristics an algorithm creates to lure workers into their cars can’t account for rapid changes in the wider world, which is why companies who relied on “AI” scheduling apps (for example, to prevent their employees from logging enough hours to be entitled to benefits) were caught flatfooted by the Great Resignation.
Workers suddenly found themselves with bargaining power thanks to the departure of millions of workers — a mix of early retirees and workers who were killed or permanently disabled by covid — and they used that shortage to demand a larger share of the fruits of their labor. The outraged howls of the capital class at this development were telling: these companies are operated by the kinds of “capitalists” that MLK once identified, who want “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”
https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/821836823022354432/
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