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youarejesting · 3 years

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Mania.2

[Full Master List] [Mania Master List]

Beta: N/A Rating: Mature 18+ Pairing: BTS OT7 Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Comedy, Omegaverse Words: 1.3k Blood types: Namjoon, Jhope, Jungkook, Yoongi (A) Taehyung (AB) Jin, Jimin and Yoongi (O) (Jimin in real life is an A blood type)

Summary: At eighteen everyone takes a blood test to find out their blood types. A, B, or O. Each blood type represents the person's secondary gender Alpha, Beta or Omega and can be Dominant (+) or Recessive (-).

When small thin Yoongi receives his letter he doesn't expect A+. There was no way he was an Alpha especially not a dominant. But as time passes he shows no Alpha nor Omega tendencies and frankly he doesn't care. Working in his father's electrical business helps pay the bills but Yoongi's real passion is music.

One very hot day in the roof space of a luxury apartment that Yoongi is rewiring an intoxicatingly pleasant smell churns his insides and he finds himself in need of something to quench his thirst.

[First] [Mania] [Next]

Yoongi was guided by Seokjin's hands into an unfamiliar room, his heart beating out of his chest like it was trying to escape. Behind the haze of wanting to be mated, he cursed the stupid test. They said he was an alpha but they were wrong. They said he was going to be the one in control but it seemed he was the one losing complete control. Yoongi never groveled or begged but he could smell the faint alpha scent and more than that he just knew they were in the house. So he called for them. He cried out and pleaded for them to relieve the pain. He was scared.

“I want to go home!” He pleaded in a moment of clarity, he wanted the safety of his own room away from the unfamiliar scents and feelings. He wanted everything to stop, it was too much.

“See he doesn’t want to be here,” Jimin threw his arms up in the air exasperated, he turned to leave wanting this omega out of his territory as soon as possible, “I will send him home.”

Before he had the chance to leave the room, his exit was blocked by Seokjin who grabbed him firmly, “If you open that door those alphas will barge in here, he is not in his right mind and he is scared. The Alphas in our band are not bad guys who would ever do something without consent,” Seokjin words came out harsh reprimanding the younger omega for being selfish, “don’t make them the bad guys here?”

“How do we help him?” Jimin sighed, "I am just confused why we are putting so much effort into protecting someone we don't even know."

"I'm sorry," Yoongi's weak voice drifted towards them as feeble as a leaf fluttering in a gentle wind, destined to fall. Seokjin walked over, taking the Omega's hand and giving it a squeeze. Yoongi blinked through the ache in his abdomen and saw the older Omega dab the sweat from his face and reassure him that everything would be okay.

"Of course, Jimin is a kind-hearted person, and if he had seen you having your first heat he would help, but when it threatened his relationship with the Alpha’s, he grew a bit defensive." Seokjin said, "He knows deep down he wants to protect you and yet he just can't bring himself to open his hands or heart with fear of being betrayed. Omega’s and their Alphas are very territorial."

"I'm sorry," Yoongi repeatedly felt himself drift into a half conscious state, his eyes were too heavy to open and his body too heavy to move but his senses were still going strong.

“We will be here with you the whole time until your first heat passes,” Seokjin explained tiredly, getting some cool towels to help try to relive the heat.

The pain came in waves and they tried to get him to eat and drink when he plateaued between them, he had a few sips of water but it took a few waves for them to convince him to eat something only for him to bring it back up.

“He is in a lot of pain and he isn’t keeping anything down, so if we can’t calm him we will have to call an emergency doctor,” Seokjin expressed his concern and Yoongi knew if he had the strength to open his eyes this Omega's brows would be pressed together in worry. “It doesn’t look good at all?”

“I might have something that can help him calm down.” Jimin announced thoughtfully, before Yoongi heard the door open and shut. Jimin wasn't gone long or perhaps Yoongi had passed out at some point but the most pleasant of smells hit him. His eyes opened as clothes littered the bed and then the familiar spritz sound of a spray bottle. Yoongi felt his whole body relax, as pheromones filled the room lightly cutting though his haze with a thin blade of clarity. Jimin felt his body easy and the stress the three Omega's were holding seemed to melt away.

“Jimin, Thanks for helping?” Seokjin sighed as the scent hit him as well. The two Omega’s relaxed sitting comfortably on the bed around Yoongi. It took a lot more pills and pheromones before Yoongi’s heat began to weaken. By the time his heat had safely ended three days had passed.

“How are you feeling?” Jimin smiled, laying beside him on the bed, somehow during the three days Yoongi had grown accustomed to Jimin's presence and he thought perhaps Jimin no longer felt threatened by his scent, maybe he could see him as a potential friend.

Yoongi blushed, the two had spent each new morning talking about their favourite things, Yoongi confessed he loved making music, and Jimin asked to listen to some of his songs so finding some headphones the two shared them listening to some of Yoongi's favourite tracks.

“These are really good,” Jimin enthused Yoongi still felt a little apprehensive about him, every smile felt more like fanservice. He didn't allow himself to dwell on these thoughts instead focusing on the pretty Omega beside him wiggling to the beat and enjoying Yoongi's fast and yet intricate raps. "I like this one a lot."

“You are just saying that, it’s definitely not as good as your music, that’s why I am an electrician and not a producer” Yoongi sat up stretching, he felt his muscles ache and his bones creaking. It was the first time he felt the strength to sit up and he could already hear his bed at home calling for him.

Unsure about when he would be deemed safe enough to leave, he was leaving it up to the Omega's more accustomed to heats and pheromones. Seokjin poked his head inside with a funny expression that almost made Yoongi laugh. Yoongi thought of himself as a quiet person. He rarely ever smiled, but he found around his two newly acquired friends he was on the edge.

“What were you talking about?” Seokjin asked, brandishing a serving dish containing a few blueberry muffins, fresh fruit, saltines, and cheese cubes. "I didn't know what you would like but I knew you would be hungry.

“Thank you” Yoongi thanked the man sincerely before eating the muffin in mere seconds not realising how hungry he was from his heat. They laughed and Jimin began handing him more and more foods, seemingly happy to watch him eat.

“Jimin you are being creepy,” Seokjin said, almost warning him to back off.

“He is just excited to see me leave,” Yoongi said quietly, “I think you must be really popular Jimin, you are very pretty and have a lovely voice, from what I heard, you were singing to me every night when Seokjin fell asleep. I like your voice a lot. It is sweet.”

Jimin blushed at the compliment and froze, “I wasn’t trying to rush you to leave,” his voice was small, almost guilty like he was trying to deny it. “I like your songs, maybe we could collaborate on something.”

“Maybe, someday.” Yoongi stood up, and collected his things off the bedside, he looked at the two and nodded, “Thank you for taking care of me, and sorry that you had to take care of me.”

“It was no trouble at all, if you would like, I can drop you off at your house and make sure you get back safe.” Seokjin smiled, “Also I booked you in at a specialist as yours is a rather special case, the doctor is really good and will get you some medication that will suppress your heat and make things more bearable and ease to manage.”

Seokjin handed Yoongi a card after writing the appointment date on the back, Yoongi followed the two Omega's to their vehicle and they dropped him off with a wave.

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yasminbenoit · 4 years

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I’m so proud to announce that I am the first-ever openly asexual person in Paper Magazine! It’s a great step for asexual visibility, I can’t believe I’m in a publication like this speaking about the importance of asexual visibility. Your support has made this happen. We are here, we are being seen.

Spread the word!

When we talk about the LGBTQIA+ community, there still isn't a lot of talk about the "A" portion, and that's something UK-based model and activist Yasmin Benoit is actively trying to change.

As an asexual and aromantic person, Benoit does not experience sexual or romantic attraction. And while she's spent the majority of her life comfortable with this knowledge, it's also something she knows isn't the case for many others — and a lot of this can be chalked up to a dearth of asexual and aromantic representation.

So, using the platform and visibility she built as a model, Benoit has spent the past two years making videos, writing posts, and giving talks about the topic, which is still rife with misinformation and harmful stereotypes. According to her, "when you say you don't experience romance and sexuality and that those things are, innately, not a part of you, people think you're less human," which she says is a result of the importance society places sexuality.

"[They say] you're robotic. You're psychopathic. I often get narcissistic," as Benoit explains, before launching into the misconceptions she has to deal with on a daily basis. The biggest one? Her occupation, especially when it comes to her work with lingerie, almost always elicits a confused public reaction. Even though the rationale behind modeling lingerie is simple: she likes the garments and enjoys mixing up her portfolio.

"People find it weird as an overlap, because I'm asexual," she explains. "People think if you're modeling lingerie, something sexual is going on. They don't realize I'm just standing there for a couple hours, making a little conversation and shaking hands, before I go home."

Yet despite Benoit's sound logic, she says she still, on the daily, runs into a lot of questions surrounding her job, which is "seen as an oxymoron" — likely due to the inherent sexualization of lingerie modeling. That said, she says this isn't the most troubling assumption she's had to deal with, as exemplified by the myriad of invasive questions pertaining to why she's asexual and aromantic.

"Literally, yesterday, I had a man insisting I had been molested, and I was just hiding it and repressing it," she uses as an example. "He was insistent that that was obviously my issue. They think sexual attraction is the most human thing ever, and it's impossible to not feel that. You can't be human if you don't feel anything."

Sadly though, this sort of presumptuous projection and unfounded theorization has been happening to her from before she even figured out that there was terminology for how she felt. As Benoit says, she'd constantly be "quizzed on my sexuality" from the time she was around 9.

"Once other people around me started getting more hormonal, more into dating and going out with each other, I was like, 'This is kind of silly. I just want to stick by myself and play with my Legos,'" she recalls. "I assumed it would kick in for me, but it wasn't something I encouraged."

Unfortunately, Benoit says that once people began noticing that she "wasn't reacting to things the same way" as other girls her age — talking about her crushes or fantasizing about boys — they began coming up with theories, with some people even going so far as to tell her about their hypotheses, which ranged from theories about her being gay, a religious prude, a potential survivor of sexual abuse, or "just mentally slow."

"Because I wasn't reacting like everyone else, they concluded that I was stupid," Benoit explains, also mentioning that she's had to put up with other people assuming that she was repressing sexual trauma or that she was hiding a secret perversion. "But I just didn't understand why other people were trying to work it out for me, because there wasn't really anything to work out. I hadn't been molested. I don't have sexual hang-ups. I'm not against sex. There was nothing to work out."

That said, even once she learned about asexuality and aromanticism, that apparently "didn't stop people from coming up with theories" — including her own father, who she says recently went so far as to accuse her of pedophilia. But all the naysay has also, in part, spurred Benoit to dive into the world of activism.

As Benoit started gaining traction as a model, she began toying with the idea of mentioning her asexuality online in an effort to reach others grappling with their asexuality. This all resulted in a casual post about the topic, as well as the release of a video called "Things Asexual Girls Don't Want to Hear" — something she genuinely "didn't think people would care that much about," but ended up "spiraling, because not a lot of people talk about it."

"The asexual community was very happy to see someone with a platform discussing it," Benoit explains, later adding that she had "people messaging me how much it meant to them, which [made me feel like], if doing something so simple is really impacting people's lives, I might as well keep doing it." Benoit adds that she'd love to see more asexual and aromantic role models out there, especially since the stigma is so prevalent. After all, as Benoit explains, a lack of visibility and understanding surrounding asexuality and aromanticism makes those grappling with their identities much more hesitant to "come out" — whether we're talking about men, for whom sexual desire is "seen as such a quintessential trait of masculinity," or an asexual person who doesn't want to potentially "embarass" their romantic partner.

For now though, Benoit is doing what she can, with her most prominent push toward asexual visibility so far being a hashtag she started last year called #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike, which aims to "dispel the idea that theres an asexual way to look or dress."

"People often say I don't look asexual, and I don't dress asexual, but what do you think that looks like then?" she explains. "I was trying to show the diversity of the community and, at the same time, give a tool back to others, so that they can represent themselves without relying on the media."

"There is a lot of stigma still around, so asexual people can go decades without realizing there's a word for what they're not feeling."

That said, Benoit's also quick to posit that while her asexuality and aromanticism have "never been a secret," it took her until that point to "realize I was filling a space and providing that visibility, especially for asexual minorities." That said, she also mentions that being a Black asexual activist is also an especially tenunous task, as there's a huge racial disparity when it comes to visibility.

"People perceive my asexuality differently than white asexual people," Benoit says, before mentioning the televised version of a documentary that she was cut out of — something she believes is "reflective of people higher up in the company who looked at us and was like, 'She doesn't make sense.'"

However, in the uncut version posted online, Benoit said the comments about her were much more "sexually aggressive and racialized" than what the other white activists got. "There was a lot more anger directed at me," she says. "People find it harder to compute that a Black woman can be asexual just because we're hypersexualized a lot more."

And though she acknowledges the difficulties of being a Black activist, Benoit says she's undeterred in her mission to continue spreading visibility and tackling the misconceptions and stigma surrounding asexuality and aromanticism. Her next steps? According to Benoit, she's currently working on a BBC radio series about asexuality, starring in another documentary about the topic, and potentially doing more talks at sex-positivity conferences and international Pride events. However, she's also eager to help organize more events in the UK that would provide physical spaces for asexual and aromantic people to convene and feel seen as well as supported by others.

"There is a lot of stigma [and misconception] still around, so even asexual people can go decades without realizing there's a word for what they're not feeling," Benoit says. "That has to change."

Article written by Sandra Song.

Hair & MUA: Fey Adediji (@beautybyfey_) Photography: Matt Parker (@mtyparks) Lingerie: Playful Promises Model: Yasmin Benoit (@theyasminbenoit)

#this is what asexual looks like #yasmin benoit #asexuality #asexual #asexual awareness #asexual pride #aromantic #matty parks #paper magazine #playful promises #lingerie #lingerie model

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manariztan · 6 years

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Deadpool 2 did subtitling right!

Okay, I have something I want to comment on about Deadpool 2. And for many of you this might seem like a stupid thing to pay notice to, but as a lot of non-English speakers know; subtitles in movies and series are often … lacking.

I bit of background: I am currently in the last week of my studies to become a translator (English – Norwegian) and it has been pointed out to us so many times that even though many of us want to work with movies and series, usually the jobs are not payed enough to survive, and there are a lot of people who don’t have an education who think they can do it simply because they know some English. This again presses the prices down, which again makes it difficult for those with the experience and education in translation to make a living of those jobs etc.

And so, often the subtitles are quite bad and if you don’t know any English at all, you may miss out on a lot of jokes and wordplays. Just to be clear: wordplay and jokes depending on language is normally hard to translate, but it can be done if you have the skills and brains for it.

Anyway, add this to the fact that Norway, as many countries today, adapt and take in a lot of English words anyway, it is a constant discussion in the language community on how to take care of our own language and make sure our language is keeping up with society. This is especially hard in areas to do with technology and anything to do with coding and computers (obviously), but it is also something we see in mainstream media and popular culture. A lot of the word I use, as a fan, is taken from English. Examples of this: OTP, fanfic, fanbase, post and so on. So, in my day to day life I use English words every day because there is no word for it in Norwegian, and even if it was, there would be no use in using it if my friends didn’t know the word as well.

This is also a challenge in regard to social media. We have managed to make our own word for hashtag, and even though it is used fairly often, I would still say it is about 50/50 usage of the Norwegian word and the English word (all of this has to do with many factors; how the word sounds, how it fit in our mouths and in our language in general, which word is shorter and so on).

Now, this brings me to Deadpool 2. This is the first movie I honestly can say I took notice of the subtitles. Usually when I watch a movie, I rely at least 80% on hearing the lines, and then my eyes track the text automatically without me taking notice of it (unless I have problems hearing what the characters say, which is not likely in a movie theater). But, in this movie! I took notice of the subtitles, oh man, did I take notice. It was the first thing I said after watching it, like “guys, did you notice the translation of those words?” And it was amazing! To know that the translator had the time and knowledge to translate words that usually would not be translated, and to know that it actually added to the humor on screen, rather than just being descriptive.

My favorite example is the word “spoilers”. We don’t have a word for that in Norwegian, at least not to my knowledge. But the translator had translated it to “plottblotter” which literary means “plotflasher”, or in other words, someone who is showing/telling you something you don’t what to hear/see about the plot. And I have honestly been stuck on that word for a week! If you look at the word in Norwegian, you can see two sets of “ott” which make it “fun” to say. The addition: the letter P and the letter B in Norwegian is very close to each other in regard to who the sound is made and where in the mouth you make the sound, which means it almost feels like saying the same word twice. And, as I said, even if this seems like it might not matter, it really does! It is the same mechanism that is at hand when slang is created; often the slang-word is shorter and “easier” to say, which saves times. And even though many might still use the longer word, language will usually automatically prefer the shorter/easier version of the word. The Norwegian word here is considerably longer than the English word, but because of the sounds it is made up of, it can be preferable over the English word, especially considering the big change between Norwegian and English sounds have. It could mean saving time, because you don’t have to reposition your tongue and your lips just to say the word “spoiler”. Only time will tell.

But still, the translation and creation of the Norwegian word is genius!

In addition to this fun and creative word that I definitively will continue to use, it speaks to the creative ability of both the studio and the translator. The studio was willing to give the translator freedom to be creative and not to stick to a word that is part of the culture anyway, and the translator had the ability to come up with a word that was both fun and fitting. And as a translator-student this makes me so happy and hopeful for the future. I know that English is going to be a big part of the future for our language, that is just how things are. All languages are changing, always, but to also be able to come up with new ideas, such as this, is a sign that we at least are aware of what we are doing, and not just along for the ride, so to speak.

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ellana-ravenwood · 7 years

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#MyParentsAreLosers - Batmom x Batfam

I couldn’t bring myself to write a “depressed Batmom” story today, and I really wanna write it well and all so...here’s a silly thing for you, to “wait” for an actual story. Warning : it’s stupid and not greatly written, probably a bit of a mess (I wrote that in three days, with 5 minutes available each day to do it so yeah...messy) This was requested (anonymously), a story about the Batboys introducing Batmom and Bruce to Instagram and Snapchat, but I can’t find the original message anymore so...Here, if you read this anon’, I hope you’ll like it :-) (I hope all of you guys will like it) :

You can find my masterlist here : @ella-ravenwood-archives

__________________________________________________

It’s Alfred who discovered it.

He read it in the Gotham Daily (neither you nor Bruce ever had time to read any newspapers, besides, both of you were getting a bit tired about the fact that almost every “news” was about you and him...).

As he was reading the article, for the first time in years, Alfred let it go. Thanks God he was alone in the house that day, as he bursted out in a loud and ridiculous laughter !

It made him laugh for hours, in fact (Damian and Tim coming home from school ruining his fun), and oh he had to tell you guys but...his majordome ways kept him from plainly coming to you and outright telling you.

At first, he tried to leave the actual article in places you could see it.

On the kitchen counter, for example, while you took your breakfast...But you never paid attention to anything before your third cup of coffee, even if it was right there in front of you, and by then Bruce would have joined you and you and him would be too focused on each other to realize that this damn article was on the kitchen counter !! AND OH MY GOD COULD YOU STOP KISSING AND LOOK AT THIS DAMN PIECE OF PAPER RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU ?! But it was too late, your kids were coming in and your focus would slightly shift from Bruce to them, the article would fall into the Oblivion as you just completely ignored it while doing your traditional conversation with your family. It was an old routine Alfred knew by heart.

He tried to put it in the bathroom, and found it soaked and teared...It was something, really, how you and Bruce could be so observant sometimes, and yet so blind some others.

He also tried the bed, laying it on your pillow where he’d be sure you’d find it...But the day he did that, Bruce came home early from patrol and you rushed upstairs rather fast and...Alfred found the sticky and...oh he’d rather not think about it, and just imagined that you guys were very sweaty when sleeping and...Let’s just never mention that episode ever again.

He put it on the computer in the Batcave, and found it, days later, under Bruce’s seat. How did it got there ? He had no idea, but what was sure is that the greatest detective in the World, the Goddamn Batman, didn’t notice that stupid piece of paper RIGHT ON HIS KEYBOARD !

His last resort was the library, where you spend most of your free times when the boys and Bruce weren’t around...He placarded it everywhere, putting it in every single books you were most likely to read that day and...What did you do ? Enter the damn library reading something already, so of course you didn’t pay attention to any of the articles, and you even used a few articles as bookmarks...Oh dear...

Alfred decided that it was time to stop trying to be subtle (though he could admit that his poor attempts at making you read this particular newspaper articles weren’t really “subtle”).

He gave up one morning, after three weeks of trying to make you guys read that damn article, and just shoved it in your face, right in front of the cup of coffee you were about to drink, so that you just HAD to read it.

“The children of the Wayne households post a series of pictures of their parents, and it goes viral” was the title of it.

What ?

It was early in the morning, and it took you a while before starting to understand what was happening.

To understand that your sons apparently kept posting pictures on the internet, of you and Bruce, with the caption (or “hashtag” as they called it) : #MyParentsAreLoosers, followed by the sentence “But I still love them”.

And oh the pictures they took...When did they even took those ?!

The articles only had three pictures to illustrate their words, and it was enough for you to feel overly embarrassed and mortified.

One picture was you and Bruce making out on the couch, clearly about to fall as the movements caught by the camera showed it rather well. The caption read : “#MyParentsAreLoosers but I still love them. They fell right after this picture, and thanks God stopped being gross when they spotted me.” with a little face vomiting at the end of it (later they’d tell you it’s called an “emoji”). It was apparently from Dick’s account and why would he take pictures of it if it was grossing him out ? You remember that day, that damn kid came in the living room super fast and scared you and Bruce, which propped the both of you to fall off the couch...Was it done on purpose ?!

The second picture was of some of your dance moves and...When the Hell did was this taken ? You remember when it was, after a charity happening at Wayne Manor, after they should have been ALL IN BED. You and Bruce, a bit inebriated, stayed behind and reenacted that Mia and Vincent Vega scene from Pulp Fiction...It showed Bruce in mid-movement as he was making some silly “boogie moves”, and you doing the famous “I’m diving” dance move and...oh God it looked utterly ridiculous. The caption read : “#MyParentsAreLosers, but I still love them. Staying past their bed times to dance like idiots...Yup, sounds about right”, and was posted by Tim.

The third and last picture was taken by Damian with the caption : “#MyParentsAreLosers, but I still love them. #Goodmemories though I suck at selfies” and was a picture taken right at the right moment, while you and Bruce were laughing your asses off. A little part of your son’s head was in frame, right under your neck, and...Actually this one wasn’t that bad.

Still, reading this article made you blush more and more and when Bruce entered the kitchen, you shoved it in his face just like Alfred did, while the butler was looking at the both of you obviously very amused.

Bruce started to read the article automatically, without really registering what he was reading until...Wait ? What ? “The four Wayne boys, the most famous children in Gotham City, are trending in the World with their #MyParentsAreLosers ! In a matter of months they achieved an insane amount of followers and became the most subscribed instagram accounts ever ! Besides their hilarious post about their famous parents, they also post selfies of themselves that got also quite a lot of likes. And comments, often talking about...”

-WHAT ?!

Bruce’s reaction makes you jump but...you understand. What indeed ?

That’s when your sons enter the kitchen and, just by looking at the two of you, and at Alfred smirking face...They know they’re in trouble.

************

Because they added “but I still love them” to their ridiculous “#MyParentsAreLosers” thing, you forgave them faster. Bruce was a bit harder to, as he hated when paparazzis posted pictures of him and you without their consent so, his own sons ? He almost felt like it was a betrayal but you laughing at him for being so dramatic soothed him.

You were right. Besides, they did add “but I still love them” (even Jason and Damian, who really weren’t the cheesy type), and that was cute.

You “forced them” to show them their accounts and...after mocking them for posting pictures of their abs and muscles (”who’s the real loser uh ?”), you looked at all the pictures they posted that the article was talking about.

It really was a serie, as there were many MANY pictures. Some of them were adorable (you and Bruce asleep in each other’s arms for example), some others really embarrassing (you and Bruce asleep in each other’s arms...mouth open and drooling).

You glared at them as they were snickering at you and your husbands while you were scrolling through all the pictures. They knew you wouldn’t really do anything to them because in a way, you thought this was hilarious but...oh they were wrong.

You weren’t going to do anything bad, oh no. You were just going to attack them on one of their biggest flaw : their pride. You had a plan. And you knew Bruce would follow.

-So...Who started it ?

His three little brothers had no remorse ratting him out, and Dick looked at you with a very fake sorry look that made you smile.

-Alright then...Dickie, you’re the one that’s gonna show us how this instagram and snapchat things are working.

-...Wh...What ?

************

Teaching you and his father how to use instagram and snapchat wasn’t as bad as he thought it was gonna be. You both quickly understood, but really, he should have guessed...After all, you monitored the bat computer every night, and Bruce was a genius, of course you would get how silly photo apps would work ! Though there were a few...misunderstanding about Snapchat :

-Why would I want to send a picture only for a few seconds to someone ?

Bruce asked, a bit confused about how useful this thing really was. And when Dick explained :

-Well, it’s just to tell people how your day is going you know ? To show what you do and all.

Bruce became even more confused and call the app “completely pointless”, owing him a roll of the eyes from his son...who quickly stopped when he looked at you. Ok. He was showing you guys how things were working, and since he made a fool of you and your husband online, wasn’t allowed to roll his eyes at you. Alright. Gotcha.

But really, it took you just a few hours for you and him to get both applications down, and Dick left, carefree, thinking he got out of everything pretty easily. Thinking posting ridiculous pictures of his parents online was worth it and...Oh but he wasn’t ready for what you were about to do.

And so, as you learned how to use Instagram and Snapchat, phase one of your revenge plan started.

************

You observed what your sons were posting about, to see what was most liked and such...

Damian seemed to be the one that cared the least about his social media...Seemed only, as you saw him refresh pages of his insta regularly to see how many likes he got. He mainly posted about his animals, selfies with them, and his brothers that he would also #MyPets (oh that boy). His selfies were always very cute, with him half-smiling and all.

Tim would post about nerdy stuffs, talking about computers and all, showing off his gears, but he would also post “ingenue” pictures of himself. Like playing guitar or looking out a window...Thinking he was so damn cool. Pictures of his abs and all were both amusing and awkward to you, and reading people’s comments ? Oh my god.

Dick would post videos of himself doing flips and such. And selfies, oh so many selfies. Mirror pics of his abs too...What was with those boys and their muscles ? You were pretty sure if Bruce did it too, he would break Instagram (he was rather muscular...but also, his chest was littered with scars so probably he shouldn’t do that to the risk of people getting suspicious).

Jason would post about his motorcycle, about trespassing in different parts of Gotham (uh) and selfies...And damn pictures of his abs. Flexing his muscle for the camera, looking all smug and all.

On all of their accounts, the pictures that seemed to have the more likes (except for the abs pics and the #MyParentsAreLosers serie) were their selfies...Interesting.

************

You didn’t tell Bruce what you were about to do, because you just KNEW he would ruin it. It wasn’t mean of you, it was just that...keeping a secret for him wasn’t always easy.

You’d think that being the Batman and keeping it secret for so long would make him a master at not saying anything about secrets right ? But no. Whenever it concerned you messing around with the boys, he would let it out somehow.

He would never actually downright tell your plans but...he’d smirk when they would be around, laughing to himself and staring at them and, eventually, your boys would guess that you and him would be up to something, and diffused your prank before you could even do it.

SO you didn’t tell anything to Bruce, and kept on with your revenge.

And oh they didn’t see it coming.

************

You definitely took them by surprise. How could they have guessed ?

They thought it was rather funny, how you would only post pictures of Wayne Manor’s garden, making comments about it like : “oh I love green” or some silly things like this. Or post super cheesy inspirational quote. You were such a mom. Posting about flowers and books and tea...They secretly loved it.

Bruce would post only about food and would fanboy over you, though he was far from being good at taking pictures. It was really REALLY cute really how often he posted things about you, obviously completely in love with you...Your sons particularly liked that time he posted a picture of your back, just your back, not even your neck, or arms or anything, and captioned it : “My wife is so beautiful #truebeauty”...It was so laughable and cheesy ! He only scoffed at them and said “but she is beautiful” when they pointed out that he posted only your back, and you ? Oh you could only kiss him passionately because it wasn’t often your Bruce was that cute. You knew he loved you, there wasn’t a doubt about this but...carefree moment where he could just show you and tell you he did were very rare.

You both quickly gained a lot of followers, Bruce having more than you because...Well, it was Bruce Wayne, and many people were so jealous of the fact he seemed to have eyes only for you, of the fact that it was clear he was just so damn in love with you (his most liked pictures was of you laying on him on the couch, asleep...he hash tagged it with the word “selfie” though technically it wasn’t one, as only the lower part of his body was in frame, and not an inch of his face...).

The local celebrities papers (and national too really) made articles about the famous Waynes opening Instagram and snapchats accounts too, and published ridiculous interviews of random people you didn’t even know about talking about how great it was that you were now on social medias, though it was a bit pretentious, like you were nourishing your “narcissist”...Uh. What narcissist side ? Neither of you ever posted pictures of yourselves.

Yes. People were thrilled you guys were posting but...after months of Bruce only posting about food he was getting in restaurants, or that were cooked by Alfred, and part of your body captioned “I love my wife”, and you only posting garden pictures and inspirational quotes...the hyped died down completely.

You still got a steady amount of likes but...it was nothing compared to your sons’ pictures, wether it was selfies of themselves (alone, together or with friends), of their damn abs, or those famous “#MyParentsAreLosers” pictures.

Until one day, you posted your very first selfie.

Both apps almost crashed at the amount of likes you got. It was more than all your sons’ combine ! You bragged about it a bit, but this was still fine. After your first selfie you stopped for a while and they still had more followers and all...Still, if their mom was getting more instagram famous than them ? Like, they didn’t really need to be instagram famous, they were already harassed enough when going out in the streets just for being Waynes (though wearing very casual clothes always helped being incognito), but they were all very VERY competitives, and they were having a little contest about who had the most followers for a while now, and who received the most snapchat reacting to their snaps. You couldn’t win ! Their pride was challenged.

They posted even more selfies and sneaky pictures of you and Bruce after that...and you let them think you stopped with the selfies for months before...before your big attack.

************

You launched #MyKidsAreAdorkable a Sunday afternoon, your children would remember this forever.

It made the headline of every celebrities magazine the next day.

After posting your usual garden pics and other inspirational quotes that only grandma liked...You dared to do it. To challenge your boys. Only, you won before they could retaliate.

You blew the number of likes. Set a new record.

And your partner in crime ? A picture of Bruce and your boys, a bundle of cuddle, asleep on the couch in front of “Singing in the rain”. Your husband was sitting in the middle of the couch, Damian was in his lap, cuddled up against him, Jason and Dick on each sides of him, and Tim was asleep across them all. It was the cutest picture ever, but also very embarrassing for your teenagers who kept posting manly pictures of their abs and stuffs.

And from that fateful Sunday and on, you kept going.

You destroyed them on the “follower part”, and once Bruce understood your plan, he started doing the same, posting selfies with you (a favorite of everyone, the two famous Waynes together, being all lovey dovey), or sneaky pictures of the boys.

Damian and Tim fighting (”#MyKidsAreAdorkable, Baby number 3 and 4 started to fight for the last cookie, without knowing I actually ate it hours ago”)

Jason falling asleep on his motorcycle, his helmet still on (”#MyKidsAreAdorkable. Today baby number 2 fell asleep in his helmet, and I’m too afraid to move him in fear of him being startled and head butting me with that thing”).

Dick just waking up and yawning (#MyKidsAreAdorkable, baby number one being oh so attractive...ladies, he’s single, look at that handsome face”) and of course, this picture was the worst ever.

Selfies with Alfred were also a public’s favorite, because they were always so hilarious...And after popular demand, Alfred opened his own Instagram account under the pseudo of : “BetterButler”...Uh.

You and Bruce quickly became the most followed account in the World, and constantly bragged about it to your kids, until you finally thought it was enough, that they “paid” enough, and that you dug in their pride enough.

Besides, you managed to take pictures of their grumpy faces and posted them and the comments and teasing they got after that was definitely enough haha.

So you posted less and less #MyKidsAreAdorkable pictures, and they posted less and less #MyParentsAreLosers ones and...all of your instagram accounts became a sort of family album. Pictures of you guys together, still the occasional embarrassing photos but mainly all of you loving each others and...Haha who were you kidding ? Of course your accounts were mostly filled with embarrassing pictures of each others !

You guys loved them, though you’d never admit it and acted like you were vexed by them (Bruce was particularly good at that, acting like he was genuinely bothered by the very unattractive pictures of him you would post sometimes...or was he serious ? But of course he wasn’t, and when he was starting to pout like a child, you knew it was just a joke).

You all couldn’t help yourself, and it was really a competition about “who would take the most embarrassing picture ever ?” ! But there were also lots of pictures of you being a happy family. Pictures of birthdays, of smiles, of tough days turned awesome because of the support you all gave each others...

Pictures of laughter, dancing, hugging, kissing...Pictures that perfectly represented the love you all had for each others.

But still, mainly pictures with funny, sarcastic and witty caption, of something one of you would have done that was just very embarrassing (a favorite of your sons would be the one they took of the kitchen after you tried to cook that one time...it was a mess, a war zone, so awful !).

************

In the end, this Instagram thing was actually pretty good. You quickly gave up Snapchat, not understanding the point either (though this dog filter ? Hilariously awesome).

It was funny, how Bruce would get jealous of the number of likes you’d get on your selfies...not because you were getting more than him, but because he didn’t like people saying you were “so damn beautiful”, only him was allowed too ! And oh how cute you thought his jealousy was (though he would always act like he wasn’t actually jealous, asking you discreetly who “that guy” was who said you were hot...as if you knew personally everyone who posted comments on your pictures...). Hell, he even tracked down a dude who once said that he would “tap that” talking about you, and hacked into his internet system, delating all his files...You thought it was very petty, but also quite cute. You always had your knight in a shining armor protecting you...Though you never needed him.

Whenever you had rude comments on your pictures, any of them, you’d just post a snarky remark back and humiliate them.

When you started to post pictures of Dick, Jason and Tim when they were younger...oh man their reactions were the best. So entertaining. Really, they started to regret ever starting that “#MyParentsAreLosers” thing, because if they never did, neither you nor Bruce (or Alfred) would be on Instagram....

************

Dick Grayson would forever regret the day he introduced his parents to social medias...but at the same time, not. He would never admit it, but he LOVED seeing pictures of him and his brothers being all together, or of his parents being in love, of his surrogate grandfather thinking he was cool and...of his family in general. Whenever he felt sad, he would go on those instagram account and recall all of those happy moments forever accessible on the Internet. It was a great comfort really, in difficult moments. For him, but not only. For Jason, too. And Tim. Damian as well. And when one of them would be badly injured, for you and Bruce too. And for Alfred, too. Those pictures would be forever there, for them to see when needed...And oh sometimes, sometimes they needed it.

Besides, years later, those now dead since a long time accounts would help them remind them of how you and Bruce looked like. Once you’ll be gone, those pictures on the internet, that you posted just to get your revenge, would help them remember their mom and dad, their smiles and their love...Yes, it seemed silly at first, this all Instagram thing, but in the end, it became overly important. To all of them.

_______________________________

Sorry I haven’t posted any fics for a while and came back with such a shitty one. It’s so messy, going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Sorry. Anyway. Hum. Yes. The End.

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relaxandlaughatyourself · 6 years

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Recap of Ika IG Live 2-23-18

Mostly talk about Dem, what happened today, CBB and their trip to LA.

Link to screenshots.

Said she’s been running around all day, eating popcorn and drinking soda now. She’s tired.

Quick recap of CBB.

“Why are people asking if me and Dem are okay? Of course we’re okay. Why are people asking? That’s so weird.”

She’s packing, going to LA tomorrow.

Wants Ari to win, mentions how Mark isn’t playing a bad game, he knows what’s going on.

Dem is going to LA. “He always comes with me. I’m double excited. I’m excited to interview these people but I’m more excited to see Dem.”

She really wants us to send her questions for the HGs. She wants more unusual questions, ones that we really want answers to. We need to step our game up with the questions.

Josh is in the live, they’re going to see him in LA. Dem is so excited to see him. “Josh is out here ruining relationships, I say ‘baby, we’re going to see Josh’ and Dem forgets about me.”

Some asks if her IG got hacked, it did not. She said she would explain what happened today. She says that people noticed that they unfollowed each other and then refollowed each other later in the day. She’s embarrassed to say what happened, it won’t make sense to us. Last night they were talking and they were asking if they could go a whole day without talking to each other. They said they couldn’t see each other on social media either, they had to disconnect totally. So Ika blocked him on all social media and whatsapp so he couldn’t even call her, they wanted to see how they would do without talking to each other. They did the blocking at like 3 in the morning and they lasted until they added each other back when we saw it. She’s proud of how long they went. But she cheated because she went into the demika hashtag. “Thank god for that hashtag.” They didn’t unlike the pics, it must’ve done it when they got the blocks. Dem called Karen and asked her to message Ika to call him cause he was done with that. So Ika called first, but Dem broke down first. But he also cheated cause he took screenshots of her IG before they blocked each other. She knows this sounds stupid. She promises it wasn’t anything. “Dem and I, we’re not ordinary.”

She deleted pics, but she deleted a ton so don’t worry about the ones with Dem. She didn’t love the pics she deleted (she didn’t like how she looked), it’s not that big of a deal, she swears. All the important pics, the ones that mean the most to her are still there. She wanted to clean it up a bit. Said if her and Dem were having issues or broke up, she wouldn’t delete him. She has more restraint than that. If they ever break up or anything, she’s not doing any unfollowing.

She is upset she deleted the fake interview, she’s gonna cry that she deleted that. She didn’t know she deleted it.

Her IG is a business account, the businesses cannot see her sucking face with her boyfriend every two pics.

She adds Dem. He says that he’s been watching the whole time. Dem said he was going to comment “publicity stunt” in the comments.

Dem’s IG account was connected to her account because he has used her phone, but when she blocked him it got deleted, but she has all his passwords. And he has all her passwords. Her email goes through him (?).

Marina is in the live.

Keeps messing up when Dem is added, but they’ll talk to us together in LA.

Discusses Lucian, the designer. She called him last minute that she needed a dress, and he had her come over, he’s so amazing to her and is just a great person, humble. The first time she met him she was amazed at how they treated her not like a nobody. She’s excited about her dress.

A lot of people compliment her on her fans. They say we’re nice, but even when we’re rude, we’re funny.

She doesn’t know if we’ll be seeing her on ET Canada much in the future because BBCAN6 is coming up, but she’ll be on lives and on twitter. Thinking of doing a weekly recap show for bbcan6 on youtube; it will be funny segments. She doesn’t want it to be mean, she wants it to be respectable and clean. She wants to commit if she’s going to do it. “We can do it if I’m not doing the ET stuff.”

She has tea for us. She’s going through her DMs and she has so many, hundreds, in the requests section. But she can’t check everything but she wants to. She’s scrolling through and sees one that says her dress looks good. She usually just responds, doesn’t click on the person. But this one she did. It was one of Dem’s ex’s best friends. She was wondering if it was shade. She didn’t respond. “It’s been a year.” She says they should have taken the time to put up good pics and make themselves look good before coming to her. She says we need to all take the time to do things. New hashtag alert lmao

When something bad happens, she says “they really tried us.” She always says “us” or “we” so she doesn’t feel like she’s in things alone.

Someone did something really shady to her recently. “It’s okay, people will get theirs.”

When she gets to LA she will show us her skin/facial in good lighting. She has two more sessions.

In LA until Tuesday.

She shows us her tattoo on her wrist, and she says it really hurt and she was crying, she told them they were attacking her. She won’t tell us what the tattoo means.

Dem is still using her products.

The packing isn’t going well. Meaning, it hasn’t started yet. She’s planning on starting at 2am so she doesn’t have to sleep and she can sleep on the plane. Dem will stay up with her.

Most excited to interview Brandi. Excited to see Marissa again because Marissa told the producer to bring her back and they called Ika almost right away to bring her back. That meant a lot to Ika. The lady she works with for ET in America is amazing, she lets Ika be herself and she doesn’t try to take over, she lets ika take the wheel and do what’s comfortable. She called ET Canada and raved about Ika; she doesn’t normally do things like that.

She says she likes watching Omarosa, she’s playing well and is entertaining. Really likes Ari, loves that she didn’t make herself a sob story.

His birthday: “I don’t know. We were supposed to extend the trip but we couldn’t. My little baby is busy selling houses in Edmonton so we’ll have to see.”

She and Dem started following this cooking IG account because when they’re together they’re gonna make those meals together.

They decided that March 11 is their anniversary because that is the day they met, “that’s the day our lives changed.”

Never saw Dem in the casting process because she was never in the casting process for bbcan5.

She’s had a lot of fun doing interviews with ET Canada and she has seen growth in her ability.

How to lead into the interview makes her nervous but otherwise she doesn’t get too nervous.

Dem tells her to try to censor herself a bit more. Dem is the type of person where if someone is shady or rude to them, he can play it off and not let them know that he knows that they’re being shady. Ika doesn’t know how he does that. Ika is the kind of person where if someone shades her or is a snake, she wants them to know she feels that way. But Dem thinks that burns bridges and it may hurt her relationships in business. She says he’s right, but she doesn’t know how to just take the shade though it is smart. She does realize it’s hurt her in the past.

She has to pack and talk to Dem.

#demika #ig live

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narcisbolgor-blog · 6 years

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Post-Weinstein, Jim Jefferies calls out himself for past sexist jokes and behavior.

Comedian Jim Jefferies was floored by the avalanche of women sharing stories of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations.

After laying into Weinstein in a raucous, wide-ranging monologue on "The Jim Jefferies Show," The Comedy Central host spent the segment's final minutes reflecting on his own ignorance and complicity in a culture that allows behavior like Weinstein's to exist.

"Now, I’ve been known to make the occasional inappropriate or sexist joke. My act is what you’d call an acquired taste. But I’ve always believed that my audience understood that those are jokes and don’t represent my actual beliefs. Then came the day when a large part of America was willing to write off pussy-grabbing as 'locker room talk,' and I started to rethink that. And if this latest news has made me realize anything, it’s that we as men have been incredibly ignorant about what’s happening right underneath our noses. The women who are now sharing their painful experiences are some of the richest, most powerful, and beloved women in the country, and if they’re fearful of speaking out, just imagine how hard it must be for every other woman in the world.

I was stupid to think that people like Harvey Weinstein were rare. Look at your Twitter and Facebook feeds this week, and you’ll see women sharing their own stories using the hashtag #MeToo. Chances are that every woman you know has experienced harassment or worse. I thought I was a pretty good guy, what with all the not raping I’ve done, but it turns out, that’s not enough. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. We need to create a culture where women feel safe coming forward about their experiences, and when they do, we need to hear them. Every week on this show I say, 'I think we can do better.' I know I can."

For Jefferies, the pressure the "do better" wouldn't be as strong without millions of women outing themselves as survivors.

The hashtag #MeToo has been posted to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram more than 12 million times, helped along by celebrities like Alyssa Milano, who urged women to come forward to convey a "sense of the magnitude of the problem."

The comedian's monologue raises the critical question of what role men should play in combating assault and when to add — or subtract — their voices from the conversation.

On Monday, actor Jim Beaver, himself a sexual assault victim, declared on Facebook that he would not be saying #MeToo in order to keep the focus on women, for whom the problem is systemic. Instead, he wrote, he'd say, "I believe you."

Jim Beaver. Photo by Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images.

"While many men have been victimized in such [a] manner," he explained, "The painful truth is that we live in a world where women are expected to put up with such things."

Some have argued that apologies like Jefferies' are welcome but insufficient — especially without actionable follow-through.

In a fiery New York Times op-ed, commentator Lindy West questioned the value of men — many of them accused perpetrators themselves — waking up to something women have tried to sound the alarm about for years.

Others have asserted that if men contribute at all, it should be to confess their culpability. In a tweet thread that circulated on Monday, journalist Helen Rosner expressed anger that the online conversation around #MeToo has revolved around women coming out as victims rather than holding a mirror up to the men who assaulted them.

In the words of one of my dearest friends: I don't want to say "me too." I want to say "yes, you."

— Helen Rosner (@hels) October 16, 2017

"Sexual harassment and assault didn't happen to me, it was done to me," she wrote. "I resent having to affirmatively embrace my victimhood when he's never been forced to confront his villainy."

Despite his prior ignorance, Jefferies hopes his admission will lead others to embrace reflection and change.

"This isn't a partisan issue," the late-night host said. "This is a human issue."

As he sees it, the gender he belongs to, half of all humans, still needs to take a side — and a stand. Men, particularly those with a megaphone like Jefferies, who are owning their past wrongs is a step in that direction. Will they follow through on their promises to do better? That remains to be seen.

More From this publisher : HERE

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mariemary1 · 5 years

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Tiny Tips for Delivering Out-of-This-World Customer Support on Social Media

If you’re serious about building a remarkable brand on social media, we believe that a core component of your strategy needs to be engagement.

Engagement with fans.

Engagement with your audience.

And engagement with your customers.

One of the primary components to engagement is customer support, working with your team to answer questions and serve customers on social.

We’ll give you a toolbox filled to the brim with ideas, tips, and tools that you can put into practice today. With this knowledge, you can be on the crest of the wave of social media support and make a meaningful impression on your customers.

Let’s dive in.

Why social media customer support is so important

Why does social media engagement matter?

Why should you make it a priority to reply to everyone on social media?

Your customers long to be close to you on social media. They want to engage directly with you to get help, to get questions answered, and to participate in conversations. A Forrester study claimed that four out of every five consumers use social media to engage with brands.

So why is social media customer care so important? Well, first and foremost, it’s because your customers are turning to social media to get in touch with you.

And today’s top brands know that engagement is key to winning trust and love on social media. All you really have to do is show up. Simply by responding, you set yourself apart from the competition. Eighty-eight percent of brands don’t respond to messages that need a reply. Really! You can be among that elite 12 percent; this is a competitive advantage sitting at your fingertips.

Not only that, but there seems to be a disconnect between brands and customers. For instance, 80% of brands are under the impression that they are doing social media customer service exceptionally well. Only 8% of their customers agree.

Yikes.

There are worlds of opportunity here!

Tip #1: Choose the right social media customer support tools

There are a ton of great social media support tools out there, whether it’s an all-in-one solution or a product tailor-made for social media.

For us at Buffer, we use a combination of Help Scout to manage our email support, and we use Buffer Reply to manage all our conversations on social media. Reply incorporates all messages from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and we are able to work together in a single team inbox to help our customers.

A look at our customer support setup with Buffer Reply

In fact, the whole Buffer company spent one day last week answering questions in our inboxes. I’d never seen so many faces in the inbox at one time!

Beyond Help Scout and Reply, we’ve also come across a handful of other tools that are useful for social media support, in case you want to shop around.

For multichannel support — this would be things like email, phone, live chat, social media, and knowledge bases — there are tools like:

Zendesk

Freshdesk

Desk

Groove

And for social customer care, we’ve mentioned Buffer Reply, and there’s also social tools within products like Spark Central and Sprout Social.

For live chat, we’ve heard great things about

Intercom

Zendesk chat (formerly Zopim)

Drift

Oh and while we’re on the topic of tools, I’d love to add a couple of my favorite productivity hacks. I spend my days answering tweets and messages from the Buffer audience — I may have been in touch with some of you who are listening even — so these tools make a big difference for me.

You can use Text Expander to create shortcuts for messages that you type over and over

CloudApp is amazing for quickly making screenshots, GIFs and screencasts that you can share with customers, and

Statuspage.io lets you easily share your app’s status with your customers whenever there’s downtime.

Sample of CloudApp screenshots

Tip #2: Convey empathy in your replies

In person, we naturally display empathy and active listening through gestures, facial expressions, and through our general energy. So how do we convey this online without that face-to-face interaction?

Well, the very best way we’ve found is to: Demonstrate active listening.

In person, we communicate “active listening” with body language such as leaning closer, nodding our heads, having an open posture, or making steady eye contact.

When we can’t use body language on social media, we have to use words instead. Fortunately, the same phrases that show empathy face-to-face can also be used to show support when we’re typing on social media.

A few of our favorite phrases at Buffer are:

“Wow! That must be so …”

“I understand how you feel …”

“It sounds like…”

“I’ve felt that way too.”

“I can sense that you’re feeling…”

“Let me see if I understand correctly…”

“What I hear you saying is…”

Beyond the words, there are also a few things you can add to really take communication to the next level. A few of our favorites are:

Lean forward while typing.

Be honest, and use simple phrases like “I hear you” and “I’m sorry”

Use people’s first names.

Add a personal touch by including your first name as a signoff.

Re-read your message out loud before you hit send.

And don’t forget to say “thank you” whenever you can.

Tip #3: Words to avoid saying to customers.

1. Actually

One of the big ones is “actually.”

You might be wondering, What’s the problem with “actually”?

It’s a subtle one, but what we’ve found is that it almost doesn’t matter how good the news is. If it comes after “actually,” we feel like we were somehow wrong about something.

Consider these two sentences:

Actually, you can do this under “Settings.”

Sure thing, you can do this under “Settings!”

Do those feel any different to you?

We don’t ever want customers to feel stupid, or wrong, or corrected. The word “actually” can imply some of these feelings. Our team’s writing and speaking gets so much brighter when we lose the “actuallys”

2. But

Again, consider these two sentences:

I really appreciate you writing in, but unfortunately we don’t have this feature available.

I really appreciate you writing in! Unfortunately, we don’t have this feature available.

The word “but” renders whatever you said right before it to be completely obsolete. What we try to do instead is to substitute the word “but” for an exclamation point or semi-colon.

Tip #4: Respond fast with a Slack integration

We’ve found Slack to be most useful as a customer support tool when your social media response volume is low or if you filter the types of messages you send into Slack. With tools like Buffer Reply or Help Scout or Groove or Intercom, you can integrate them right into Slack so that you’re alerted whenever a new conversations happen.

If your team spends a lot of time in Slack anyway, these notifications can let you know when something timely needs addressed on social media or in the inbox.

When first building a support team, start by funneling notifications right into the General channel, where most of the day-to-day chatter happens. This is a great starting place because it makes sure you see each message from your customers. And it allows you to jump onto urgent issues at the same speed you can reply to a message from a teammate.

As the volume of notifications increases, it’s important to set up a dedicated channel for these notifications — otherwise you’ll likely find yourself swimming in Slack notifications. You can set up a #notifications channel in Slack to funnel them all through. Just remember to keep an eye on it throughout the day.

Note: you can set up a Do Not Disturb schedule where Slack won’t notify you between specific hours. This is great for when you might want to mute notifications after business hours.

Tip #5: Choose the right customer support metrics

One of the best ways to provide an exceptional support experience is to understand what’s working in your current process and where you might have room to improve.

Of course, this raises the question:

How do you measure the performance of your support on social media?

1. Contact volume by channel

What you’re trying to find out here is how many customer requests, issues and problems are you replying to on each channel in a given reporting period?

This total volume by channel can tell you a couple of things, like how big the workload is and how many people you need on the team to make sure you’re keeping customers happy.

You can also see how things change over time, which will help you discover trends in the popularity of certain support channels as well as the time of day when you get the most social media conversations.

2. Resolution rate

This one is pretty straightforward to calculate: Out of all the support requests you receive, how many did your team resolve?

Knowing this number will help you see how effective your support is, not just how fast.

3. Time to first reply & time to resolution

It does help to know how fast you’re responding on social media.You can look at the time to the first reply. This measures how long, on average, does it take the team to reply to a support request.

Another way to look at speed is to look at the time to resolution. What you’re looking for here is the answer to how long it takes to resolve an issue for a customer — starting from the moment they first reach out to the final, conclusive answer.

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Heather-Mae on Twitter

Dave on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

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About The Science of Social Media podcast

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cryptswahili · 5 years

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The FUD Stompers: Like It or Not, XRP Army Is Winning Crypto’s Hashtag War

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When it comes to crypto, everyone loves to talk about “community.”

Every cryptocurrency has one, we’re led to believe, but often as not the community is just a Telegram channel peppered with demands of “@admin wen airdrop.”

There is one cryptocurrency, however, for which the word is anything but a cliche. I’m talking of course about XRP, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, which is closely – if contentiously – associated with the San Francisco-based startup Ripple.

“It has become a second family to me,” TplusZero, one of XRP Twitter’s most active and followed members, told CoinDesk.

Search Twitter for XRP-related content, and you’ll find yourself among thousands of accounts dedicated mostly or entirely to XRP and the ecosystem around it – which, in addition to Ripple, includes startups such as Coil, which aims to help content creators monetize their webpages.

A few big names will quickly become familiar – XRP Trump, Hodor, Tiffany Hayden, Bank XRP. Seemingly nothing happens in the world of XRP without these accounts knowing about it, and if they happen to miss an update, there are dozens of other accounts standing ready to flag it.

There’s a whole constellation of forums, blogs and YouTube channels that feed an XRP-hungry audience, but Twitter is arguably the hub for the XRP community (especially its English-speaking contingent), and several people I spoke to created Twitter accounts for the first time just to participate in the XRP conversation.

XRP Twitter is perpetually abuzz up with discussion about the merits of XRP and the challenges – none of them insuperable, of course – that it faces on the road to mass adoption in cross-border payments (its main use case) and beyond.

Many of these discussions are deeply wonkish, assuming a detailed knowledge of the Ripple product suite, the incumbent cross-border payments infrastructure and the XRP Ledger’s consensus protocols. But this is crypto after all, and much of the banter is rah-rah.

For many in the community, XRP’s eventual “mooning” (crypto jargon for astronomical price gains) is a bygone conclusion – the only question is when. Ripple Me This, a bull among XRP bulls, told CoinDesk: “I describe this as the opportunity of several lifetimes,” adding, “those who recognize the opportunity and position themselves accordingly will be the next 1 percent.” The account has since been suspended.

Many XRPers believe the coin’s rightful place is not just at the top of the cryptocurrency hierarchy, but at the center of the “Internet of Value,” a technological revolution that promises to allow money to move as easily as email:

The community’s favorite hashtags – #0doubt, #xrpthestandard – serve as a kind of shorthand for this narrative of universal hyper-XRP-ization.

‘Shill is strong’

Of course, every crypto “community” worthy of the name has carved out a niche in social media where their geekiness and optimism can thrive. So what makes XRP special – or influential?

To paraphrase another pick for this year’s Most Influential series, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance: strength.

In a recent tweet, CZ complimented the community – at least, they took it as a compliment – saying, “the xrp base shill is strong.” In this case, he was referring specifically to the push to make XRP tradeable against every other asset on the exchange.

“Get it out of your system,” CZ urged, “and put all your shills under this one tweet, and let’s see how much we get.” It would be tough to exaggerate the intensity of the shilling – CZ’s word – contained in the 3,400 replies that followed.

Below is a sample that captures the tone of the replies (and showcases the strength of the often-ignored – in the West at least – Japanese XRP contingent):

The community needs no invitation to make the case for XRP, of course, and they will frequently home in on exchanges, brokerages, media outlets and others, urging them to list, cover, respect, promote or simply recognize XRP.

The most recent push? A write-in campaign for a Bank of England Twitter survey.

The XRP Army

Given their ability to mobilize in support of their favorite asset, it should come as no surprise that the XRP community can also mobilize in its defense. And when that happens – when the community feels XRP is being threatened – their geeky charm melts away.

Meet the XRP Army: the community on the FUD-fighting warpath (the image below is from a thread I’ll detail further down).

Short for “fear, uncertainty and doubt,” FUD refers in theory to baseless criticism that’s meant to deter research on or investment in its target. In practice, though, there appears to be near-zero room to question XRP without being cast as a FUDster: all criticism is baseless criticism. Even statements made by Ripple to the media will be attacked as fabrications if they don’t conform to the narrative.

What’s the difference between XRP enthusiasts’ trolling and any other variety of trolling? After all, publicly expressing an opinion on any cryptocurrency will invite similar negativity from that token’s tribal chauvinists.

Again: strength.

The XRP Army distinguishes itself mainly through scale and organization. Question another coin’s merits, and a handful of trolls might come out of the woodwork. But measured by volume, intensity, duration and consistency, the attack will pale in comparison to an XRP Army operation.

First, a foot soldier will spot the offending tweet, article, podcast or video and rally the troops by posting a few hashtags – #XRP, #XRPArmy and the like – and tagging the high command: some combination of XRP Trump, Hayden, Hodor, BankXRP and their peers.

Then, as an XRP enthusiast going by BoiDontFollowMe described it (disapprovingly) to CoinDesk, a flood of accounts will “brigade” the alleged FUD-monger, posting dozens or hundreds of comments.

As a few of these replies attract dozens of likes and retweets and spawn their own threads in turn, the attack forms a torrent of thousands and thousands of angry notifications that lasts for days.

Dispatches from the front

Any number of case studies are available to see the community in action, including the XRP Army operation this article spawned – almost immediately after the reporting for the article began, and before a word of it had been written.

As with pretty much any article, the first thing I did for this piece was to identify a few potential sources. That done, I reached out to them where I thought they might respond: in this case, Twitter direct messages. I wanted to knock out a number of interviews, so I prepared a list of questions. It didn’t go well.

One of the first people I reached out to sounded the alarm, and soon enough XRP Trump had jumped in to denounce my approach: “I’m not participating in that. I don’t like the behind closed door sending messages to some people while ignoring others. So I’m not answering.” (Asked who I was ignoring, he responded, “How would I know?” I didn’t ask him to elaborate on what an interview that isn’t “closed door” looks like.)

Hayden also declined to be interviewed. But in reality, she and XRP Trump did engage, just on their own terms, in public, posing – and answering – their own questions. (The XRP Army is practiced at controlling the narrative.)

Hayden and XRP Trump proceeded to publicly lambast the yet-to-be-written article in a string of posts. And they weren’t alone. The bombardment continued for days, following familiar lines of attack. In no particular order, these were: allegations of incompetence based on previous work …

… of bias …

… of stupidity …

… and of desperation …

Add a bit of professional belittlement …

… insinuations of sinister intent …

… and an implied threat of legal action …

XRP Trump, it should be said, argued against suing CoinDesk and attributed that particular suggestion to a “false flag” attack by a “bitcoiner.” Whether or not that’s the case, Hayden took up the thread to speculate that Ripple may be unable to sue CoinDesk because Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk’s parent company) is a Ripple investor …

How exactly that meshes with DCG’s status as a bitcoin-shilling cabal with an iron grip on crypto “media” is unclear …

… unless, that is, DCG only invested in Ripple to prevent Ripple from fighting DCG’s pro-bitcoin bias – or you know what, never mind …

Top all that off with questions of psychological fitness …

… and some top-shelf, high-proof, barrel-aged vitriol …

… and you’ve got a sense of the XRP Army on the warpath. In this case, the “brigading” lasted well over a week. Here’s what my notifications looked like one morning after not having checked them overnight. “One morning” being the morning of day nine …

The thread was still going after nearly three weeks, but following the iron laws of internet entropy, it had devolved into jokes about small penises at that point.

The A-word

It’s worth mentioning what angered the XRP community in the first place.

The catalyst was that I asked – among other questions, such as “What’s your experience with the XRP community been like?” – whether “some of the more aggressive behaviors some XRP fans engage in are justified.”

Full disclosure: the first person I reached out to – who was also the first to sound the alarm, was sent a different version of the question, which gave examples of “aggressive behaviors”: “Name-calling, piling into people’s mentions, threats (I know that threats are rare)?”

After he refused to answer, I removed that section when reaching out to others. As Hodor’s tweet shows, though, it didn’t make much difference.

It should also be noted – fuller disclosure – that the XRP Community has not forgotten about this story about their Community Night party in May, so they are not inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt.

What’s most bizarre is that, side by side with this barrage of, well, aggression, were questions about why I’d provided no evidence of aggression:

Some participants in the thread, though, were apparently aware that its general tenor was less than friendly …

… and in a private message another XRP supporter, Crypto Dave, did not mince words.

Asked if he thought aggression was justified, he answered in all caps, “YES.” He cited a “media blackout” of XRP and Ripple by the likes of CNBC and Bloomberg, which aim “to suppress the price.”

He also said that the same media outlets, which refuse to mention XRP and Ripple, “call XRP ‘Ripple’ all the time, which it isn’t.”

Another community member offered some kind words: “I feel bad about the massive backlash that has come your way… I am sure you are just trying to do your job.” (“Don’t quote me,” they added.)

And as noted above, another community member, BoiDontFollowMe, said, “if you’re talking about the accounts that brigade and are rude for the sake of being rude, then no, I don’t think that’s justified.”

More than one person I spoke to, however, expressed the view that casting XRP community members as aggressive – even some of them, some of the time – simply has no basis in fact.

“Aggressive XRP members,” XRP Yoda told me, channeling his namesake’s syntactic quirks, “I have not seen any.”

The view from the inside

It’s tempting to see blanket denials of aggression on the part of the XRP Army as, to use the voguish term, gaslighting.

But that might be unfair. From an outsider’s perspective, the XRP Army is a horde that appears on the horizon, wreaks havoc and then departs.

From the insiders’ perspective, though, the same group is a community that – left to its own devices – would peacefully nerd out on the minutiae of the XRP Ledger’s consensus protocol, Ripple’s business development efforts and product suite, Coil’s content monetization product and the like.

TplusZero described individuals in the community as “incredibly intelligent, curious and visionary,” adding “consistently welcoming, humble, idealistic and autodidactic” for good measure. Several other community members offered similarly glowing descriptions.

“I have found the community to be well researched, level headed and open to a good discussion,” a user going by EDadoun said, adding, “I also really appreciate how engaged elements of the community are in terms of advocating for high level use of the technology.”

Beyond being interesting conversationalists, XRP supporters can be incredibly supportive, kind and generous. One Twitter user described going through “some really hard money issues” which made it difficult to get his daughter to spinal surgery in a different state.

The XRP community “helped get her there not even knowing me or her,” he said, and she’s now home recovering.

Another community member recalled a time when an XRP-er went to the hospital “for a serious condition.” Since hospital food “isn’t so good,” another person from the community, RobertLe88, sent food to the hospital, which the patient then shared with his nurses.

The community’s favorite app (barring Twitter), the XRP Tip Bot, has enabled acts of charity both large and small.

The Tip Bot functions as a sort of fourth engagement function on XRP Twitter. Have something to say? Reply. Like something? Heart it. Really like something? Retweet it.

But if you feel overwhelming love or gratitude, you send the person who posted it a small tip in XRP using the Tip Bot, which automatically integrates with Twitter. XRP Trump is particularly lavish with the XRP-denominated love.

Wietse Wind, the independent developer who created the Tip Bot, told CoinDesk that he “really didn’t expect it to take off like this,” since he’d just approached it as “a hobby project.”

One user, going by KingBlue, saw potential for the tool do more than brighten a few XRP tweeters’ days. “My mind immediately turned to charity,” he told CoinDesk in a recent interview, specifically to St. Jude, a non-profit children’s cancer research hospital.

KingBlue began organizing the fundraiser in June. The initial goal was to raise 5,000 XRP but, he said, “we blew through that,” bringing in over 24,000 XRP at the time of writing (worth over $8,300), as well as nearly $3,400 in fiat.

Own these digital assets… for real and forever.

What happened?

So, what accounts for the disconnect between these two sides of the XRP community – the one that buys winter coats for kids and the one that generates deluges of angry spam?

Of course, not all individuals engage in both types of behaviors. But here’s the answer I heard again and again from community members: they are under constant siege. Journalists, entrepreneurs, developers, investors, influencers, lawyers and garden-variety trolls constantly needle the community, leading to the kinds of response we’ve seen above.

The critics have a few favorite talking points: XRP is an unregistered security issued by Ripple; it’s a “banker coin,” a cynical effort by the financial powers that be to co-opt a budding revolution; it’s a worthless “shitcoin”; it’s being dumped on naive retail investors in a “never-ending ICO” (to quote one lawsuit’s complaint); Ripple has full control over the ledger, including the ability to freeze it; Ripple can release the XRP it’s locked in escrow on a whim; the list goes on.

Some of these claims are purely a matter of opinion (“shitcoin”). Others probably have a definitive answer, but either it can’t be known yet (the security question is working its way through the courts) or we hit a wall: he-said-she-said, can’t-prove-a-negative. Some lines of attack do in fact appear to be genuine FUD (XRP’s technical documentation, all forms of emphasis in the original, says: “XRP CANNOT be frozen by any entity or individual”).

“XRP fans have been targeted for many years,” Kieran Kelly, an active member of XRP Twitter, told me. “I think the XRP community just got to a stage where they got fed up with the constant insults.”

Another member of the community urged me to consider the “hundreds of hours” people like Hayden, Hodor and XRP Trump have put into fighting bad information. BoiDontFollowMe said that seeing the “same misinformed talking points parroted across different channels by people who have no interest in educating themselves” causes understandable frustration.

Hayden, in particular, has had to put up with more than others. Anti-XRP trolls often go personal, and when she’s the target, the attacks sometimes veer into sexism – even in-person intimidation.

At the XRP Community Night party in May, she said, “somebody seemed to be there entirely to harass me. That’s *really* scary. Nobody helps, but they hold up scorecards to judge how I handled being attacked.”

No, you’re a bot

As with any group that feels it’s under siege, what most rattles the XRP Community is the idea that they’ve been infiltrated, that the saboteurs walk among them.

For XRP Trump, it was that random account that pitched the idea of suing “FUDDesk,” which I naively – in his estimation – believed was an authentic XRP supporter. “False flags are real,” he wrote. “Just stay long enough to become a target and you’ll know.”

For Kelly, it’s the so-called 589-ers, whom he cast – though he acknowledged he can’t prove it – as bitcoin maximalist infiltrators intent on discrediting the XRP community as a whole.

Here’s why 589-ers might cause XRP enthusiasts some reputational harm: they predict – “preach” might be a better word – that the price of XRP will be $589.00 or higher at the end of 2018. They continue to say so as of Dec. 20, with XRP trading at around $0.37.

Those who question their prophecy are “sheep.”

Kelly argues that the ones spreading 589-ism, beginning with the now-dormant Reddit account bearableguy123, are “sockpuppets” – fake social media accounts, sometimes automated, sometimes operated manually – which their owners use for “astroturfing”: social media manipulation that creates the illusion of broad support for a message and aims, in turn, to catalyze real support.

The idea that astroturfing is rife on XRP Twitter, however, is most associated with Geoff Golberg, an independent researcher who’s been studying the XRP community’s online presence for months.

“It’s coordinated amplification,” Golberg said in a recent interview. “This isn’t organic.”

He cited suspicious patterns of following, liking and retweeting that point to some degree of manipulation. In certain cases, the accounts appear to be automated (“bots”), that is, controlled using a script.

In other cases, he said, the accounts appear to be controlled manually, but even so, “there isn’t an actual, XRP-supporting person behind each pseudonymous XRP Army account. That’s the whole point.”

In short, he said, “these aren’t real accounts.”

While Golberg hasn’t shared evidence that explicitly links the alleged astroturfing efforts to any particular culprit, he made it clear that he doesn’t think it’s limited to or even primarily the work of 589-ers. Far from a bitcoin maximalist attempt at sabotage, he said, it appears to be a coordinated effort to promote XRP as an investment.

It’s not difficult to find anecdotal evidence of astroturfing in XRP. To illustrate the point, Golberg performed a network analysis of XRP Trump’s followers using the data visualization software Graphistry. In the graph below, each of the account’s followers is represented by a dot:

The dots’ positions are determined by how connected each one is to XRP Trump’s other followers. The analysis relies on an algorithm called Eigenvector centrality (or Eigencentrality), which determines the influence of a node in a network. The algorithm is used, for example, by Google to rank search results.

The large, light blue circle on the upper right-hand side of the graph is XRP Trump. The colorful clouds emanating from that central node represent different “communities” of followers, who are more closely related to each other, relative to the dataset as a whole.

There’s one section, though, that doesn’t look very much like a “community.” The green, red and pink sections are nebulous, with messy, complex interrelations among nodes. By contrast, the light blue blobs in the upper right-hand corner look less, let’s say, organic. Particularly when viewed close-up:

As it turns out, the 8,200 accounts that make up these blobs all have the exact same mathematical relationship to XRP Trump’s following as a whole: an Eigencentrality score of precisely 0.013143. That score also happens to be the lowest in the whole dataset.

“They are all equally disconnected,” Golberg said.

For over 8,000 of XRP Trump’s roughly 21,000 followers (when the data was collected in September) to have an identical relationship to the broader network – down to the sixth decimal place – would be staggeringly unlikely in an organic, human network, where thousands of complex, individual volitions yield thousands of different degrees of influence. Golberg told CoinDesk that it’s “a huge red flag.”

To get a sense of how strange this distribution of Eigencentrality scores is, here’s a chart of the 10 lowest scores, along with the number of accounts corresponding to each (around 1,200 accounts with identical centrality appear outside of the two big blobs, bringing the total to around 9,400):

Clicking through a few of the blobs’ accounts doesn’t inspire confidence that they are just improbably like-minded people.

Take “xrp to riches” (@to_xrp), who follows XRP Trump, Hodor, Ripple, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Ripple CTO David Schwartz (along with a couple of other XRP influencers). “xrp to riches” doesn’t say much:

Or “patrick morrison” (@XRPaddy), another real human person who follows all of the accounts mentioned above (and a slightly different set of “other XRP influencers”). “patrick” is every bit as chatty as “xrp to riches”:

Then there’s “x5r5p”, who – again – follows all the big Ripple and XRP names mentioned above, plus a smattering of second-tier accounts, and – again – struggles with shyness:

Golberg – who has examined other crypto communities as well as political campaigns – readily acknowledged that astroturfing is widespread in crypto, but said of the XRP community, “I’ve never seen it to this extent.”

To try and corroborate his findings, CoinDesk used SparkToro’s “fake followers audit” tool, which shows that XRP Trump, Schwartz, Hodor and Garlinghouse all have above-average proportions of fake followers, relative to the sizes of their followings:

Those data points in isolation leave important questions unanswered, though. They don’t indicate who is responsible for the fake followers. I have around 150 fake followers (11 percent of the total), according to SparkToro, but I certainly didn’t purchase them or spin them up myself.

And as Kelly argued, astroturfing can indeed be used as a false flag attack. For example, in a recent U.S. Senate election, supporters of the Democratic candidate attempted to discredit his opponent by using thousands of Russian sockpuppet accounts to follow the Republican (who lost). This attack created the impression that the Republican candidate was colluding with a foreign power, recalling alleged collusion between the Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University and a contributor to the self-explanatory Botometer project, told CoinDesk that finding the answer to the astroturfing question depends on exactly what you want to know.

If you’re asking “whether the online conversation about the topic of interest (XRP/Ripple) is manipulated via bots,” he said, “you would want a sample of *tweets* (as opposed to accounts) on the topic,” he said. Fake follower counts, in other words, don’t directly answer that question.

There are certainly a number of pseudonymous, XRP-themed accounts that post and retweet at high rates. Take “grega” (@ceramika74), which has found the time – in its 241 days of existence – to retweet 38,838 XRP-related tweets (161 per day) and like 84,717 (352 per day). It has never composed an original tweet.

Few XRP accounts are as prolific as “grega,” but it is an extreme example of a pattern: nameless, faceless, often short-lived XRP monomaniacs who do not gripe about politics or make fun of celebrities or do anything at all but signal-boost bullish messages about XRP. In many cases the signal-boosting is clearly manual; not every sockpuppet is necessarily a bot.

(To be clear, many accounts – including high-volume, XRP-focused, pseudonymous ones like Hodor, KingBlue and XRP Trump – clearly represent a real person’s primary social media presence.)

Mike Kearney, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, told CoinDesk that a search for $XRP did turn up “evidence of automated/coordinated activity,” including “an usually active base of users posting exclusively from the web browser.” It’s “more common to see automated/bot/inauthentic accounts post via non-cell-phone sources,” he explained.

In addition, “these exclusively web-client-posting accounts also just so happen to have created their accounts within the last few months at an unusually high rate,” Kearney said.

Capitulation

Whatever the extent, nature, intent or provenance of XRP Twitter’s alleged astroturfing, many in the XRP community are enraged by Golberg’s allegations.

He said they frequently report him to Twitter and LinkedIn (the latter suspended his profile as a result), as well as threatening to hack him. This is above and beyond the normal trolling XRP Army targets can expect (based on my own experience and that of others I spoke to).

Golberg does not always eschew trolling himself, it should be said. He called Schwartz “full of [poop emoji][poop emoji] and a coward.” Middle fingers, kissy faces and taunts worthy of the XRP Army are go-tos, in DMs as well as public tweets. Hayden and XRP Trump have called him a “psychopath.” He said such claims are “character assassination” meant to discredit his findings.

In one case, however, an XRP investor (who confirmed as much to CoinDesk) took things a step further and publicly called for Golberg to be killed.

The intended target needn’t have worried too much. Nassar deleted his account and apologized to Golberg from a different one in a private message.

Still, incidents such as this one have made Golberg less civil in his engagements with the XRP community, he told CoinDesk.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Nassar said: “I was losing all my savings” the day he sent the “who can kill him” tweet. Few in the XRP community directly address this subject, but the financial pain is no less real for going mostly unmentioned.

Also largely unacknowledged is the role XRP bullishness might have played in tempting new entrants to invest too much. Influencers on XRP Twitter frequently criticize outlandish price predictions (especially ones presented as near-certainties), but during the heady days of early 2018 it was sometimes a different story:

Given the fall in prices, you might expect cracks to show in some XRP community members’ enthusiasm.

One person I spoke to quit XRP Twitter as I was working on this article, though they didn’t cite the price. When I first began reporting this story, BoiDontFollowMe told me that perceived aggression by XRP community members was “generally […] justified.”

A couple of weeks later, however, the same person messaged me from a different account, saying they’d deleted their old one.

“My thinking has evolved,” they said. Referring to the de facto leaders of the XRP army, they added, “it’s clear they’re aggressive, but if anybody disagrees or tries to call them out, they” – that is, the ones doing the calling out – “[are] sheep, or weak, or a rape victim blamer or any other horrible names.”

The account-formerly-known-as-BoiDontFollowMe called this behavior “childish and embarrassing,” particularly as it was coming from “some of the largest and most influential individuals in the community.”

Some members of the community will likely never throw in the towel, but for many, it may prove difficult to keep the faith in the face of monetary losses and – depending on who you ask – negativity.

Compared to its peak at the beginning of the year, XRP’s price is down by more than 90 percent. Of course, plenty of other cryptocurrencies have fallen further. And, it should be noted, many investors are still in the green at current prices, having bought long before XRP’s price went parabolic in 2017.

Even so, “2018 has been a very tough year for people,” Kelly told me. “If you bought in January and you held, you have lost money. Fact of life.”

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Original art by CryptoPop (@cryptopop)

Images by David Floyd for CoinDesk

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cryptoquicknews-blog · 5 years

Photo

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/9RiOzp

The FUD Stompers: Like It or Not, XRP Army Is Winning Crypto’s Hashtag War

This post was originally published here