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leverage-ot3 · 4 years

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notable moments from The Jailhouse Job

leverage 3.01

I love how they opened up s3 with all of their “codenames”/job titles

- - - - -

Hardison: Cameras are watching yesterday's footage. Locking down... which elevator?

[Elevator Shaft]

Parker: Huh? What? Oh, um, um, yes, I-I'm a go for elevator one.

[Courthouse Hallway]

Hardison: Were you asleep?

[Elevator Shaft]

Parker: It's very peaceful up here. Besides, I sleep better upside down.

(Parker is wearing her rigs, hanging upside down, elevator rises)

I adore her, okay + SHE SLEEPS BETTER UPSIDE DOWN ??? !!!

- - - - -

(Nate walks into the elevator with two men, one armed, the other the one whose gun Sophie stole. Parker jumps on the top of the elevator, opens it, and tasers both men before picking the lock on Nate’s cuffs)

Nate: You know, you could have just taken the keys off the guy's belt.

Parker: Eh, this is faster.

parker LOVES tasering people + it’s faster for her to pick a lock than to look for keys

- - - - -

(Hardison is walking along the sidewalk checking his phone, setting off car alarms)

Guard: What the hell?

(the guards at the door go to check, and Eliot disarms them, knocking one into traffic. Sophie pulls up in a car and just as Nate and Parker exit the building)

eliot’s F A C E when he accidentally makes the guy get hit by a car LMFAO

- - - - -

when it goes from “nate’s apartment” to “leverage hq”

- - - - -

Eliot: Spanish soap opera.

Hardison: Oh, yeah. Check it out, man. Look, it turns out Pepe's twin brother Peppi is actually Guadalupe's baby's daddy.

Eliot: Seriously?

headcanon: hardison and eliot were watching it earlier and eliot says “really” because god spanish soap operas are so dramatic

- - - - -

(Parker comes in with a bag over her shoulder)

Eliot: He doesn’t want to do it.

Parker: Oh, but I love jumping on elevators.

Hardison: I know.

Parker: This is my special elevator rig he got me for Christmas

we LOVE to see that nate (and sophie ?) get their children presents for christmas

- - - - -

Eliot: All right, look, Nate, you took the fall for us, so...

Hardison: After you lied to us. He's a liar.

Eliot: You took the fall for us. You went to jail so we wouldn't have to. We get that, so we're square. But now you got to let us get you out of prison.

Parker: But if we're gonna do that...

Hardison: And not all of us are convinced that we should.

Parker: Then we have to hit you at your next hearing. That prison's escape-proof.

Nate: Guys, no.

hardison is salty but eliot forgives him for the most part

I love it when the ot3 sits together

(also I take note when they’re in the same frame in these posts in case I (or anyone else) wants to reference when they are together for gif and or fanvid purposes)

- - - - -

Nate: I committed a crime, I got caught, and now I am gonna serve my time.

Sophie: Nate, what kind of world would it be if everybody that committed a silly little crime went to prison, huh? Complete madness. (Parker scoffs, Hardison makes an incredulous gesture with his hands)

- - - - -

Hardison: Okay, you know... You know what? Fine, Nate.

[Leverage HQ]

Hardison: We're still out here. We're doing the job. We help people nobody else helps. That's important. You want to stay around and miss out just because you got to figure out your guilty conscience, that's your loss.

Nate: Yeah, Hardison, I wa...

(Hardison severs the connection)

- - - - -

Worth: I am not a warden. I am CEO of National Prison Properties. I built this company, five prisons, from the ground up.

(The Italian laughs and lights a lighter)

Italian: Impressive. (lights a cigarette) You know what they say... That Rome was not built in a single day. But it burned in one. (blows out the lighter)

BADASS

- - - - -

(Billy pushes a cart of books through the room)

Billy (to Nate): Hey.

Nate: Hey.

Billy: Seamus Heaney. That Irish guy you asked for. (hands him a book)

Nate: Oh, excellent. Wow, thanks... Billy, right?

Billy: Uh, yeah.

Nate: Well, thank you. This could not have been easy to find.

Billy: Well, you seemed pretty down. And we got to stand up for each other, right?

Nate: Yeah. You're all right, Billy.

Billy: Yeah. Wish the judge thought so. (pushes cart away)

Nate: Yeah, I appreciate it

- - - - -

(Nate watches as Billy leaves the room, followed by some tough looking inmates)

Nate: I think something's happening.

Bellows: Thanks for your input. You can move on now.

(Nate follows them out of the common area)

prisons are the fucking worst but PRIVATE PRISONS are double that and john rogers agrees and that’s yet another reason why I love him

- - - - -

hardison tried taking up making a model helicopter in his spare time. cute

+ hardison likes to use the word hinky

- - - - -

Nate (puts hand on Billy’s shoulder): I'm sorry.

Billy: For what?

(Nate stabs Billy in the side)

Billy: Oh, sh...

(Billy falls to the floor, holding his side)

Nate: Oh. Uh, Hardison, why don't you gather the team and get me background checks on the... on the warden?

Billy: You stabbed me!

Nate: Oh, come on, just... just a little. It's... it's fine

this is the same as the “lightly stabbed” meme

- - - - -

Worth: The US has the fastest growing prison population in the world. Well, it's like the real-estate boom.

(Hardison plugs a flash drive into Worth’s computer)

Worth: Except, of course, the problem with real estate... You eventually run out of land. You never run out of people to put in prison.

Hardison: Hmm. We haven't had much success with private prisons concept in England. Our investment firm has large real-estate holdings for construction of facilities.

Worth: You see, any yahoo can lay some concrete and throw up some razor wire. The profit comes in proper management.

(Hardison looks at his phone, which is accessing Worth’s computer)

Worth: For example, the big money for us is in prison labor.

Hardison: Sorry?

Worth: Goods and services made by prisoners in America. $2 billion a year. One out of every five office chairs and desks "Made in America", made by convicts. And those jobs are not going to the Chinese. Bottom's up

john rogers was calling this bullshit out in like 2010 and still NOBODY LISTENS

- - - - -

(two guards are standing outside the room Billy and Nate are in)

Billy: Man, is this really the best plan?

Nate: Listen, the infirmary's under lockdown. There's cameras on both sides of the door, extra guards because of the pharmaceuticals. It's the safest place in the prison, really

- - - - -

Eliot (to guard): Abernathy, MD.

eliot still uses this alias that he picked up for The Rashomon Job

- - - - -

Eliot: We can just... well, you know what? It's fine. Just right in here, sir. And please have a seat.

(Nate sits in the chair and Eliot lays it back)

Eliot: It's just in case the guards come in. (buckles restraints on Nate’s wrists) Restraints. Here's an infirmary manual. (turns the light on Nate’s face and picks up a drill)

Nate: That's, uh, for the... for the guards, right?

Eliot: You know what I usually do, Nate, to people that run a con on their own team? Almost get people killed 'cause they're out of control?

Nate: Are we okay, Eliot?

(Eliot puts down the drill and plugs in a flash drive, typing on the keyboard. Images come up on the monitor)

eliot is mostly over it but would he ever give up a chance to fuck with him? nope.

- - - - -

[Judge’s Office]

Sophie: Key card and checkbook.

Parker: Keys and appointment book. Ooh, and this? (holds up keys) Safe deposit box key.

Sophie: Ooh, I love a secret.

(Sophie sits down at desk while Parker gets started on the safe)

COMPETENT WOMEN

- - - - -

Hardison: Yeah. See, Rockford can't drop below 70% occupancy. If they do, they lose their state funding. No state money, they close. And they came very close two years ago.

[Nate’s Cell]

Nate: Hmm. So, private prisons are like the hotel business. They live and die on occupancy, head count. Now, Worth wasn't gonna lose $100 million in profit just 'cause he didn't have enough hard-cases to fill the prison, so he puts a few judges on the arm to send him non-violent offenders, easy prisoners to supervise.

[Leverage HQ]

Parker: Yeah, but why these people?

Eliot: Because they're citizens. 'Cause they're honest, middle-class citizens. These are the people, they don't want to cause any trouble. They can't afford a lawyer, so if some judge sends them away, well, yes, sir. They were taught to trust the courts. They believe in the system

- - - - -

[Leverage HQ]

(Parker wearing a robe standing in front of a green screen, trying to pose. At one point she does a duck face.)

Sophie: You remember what I showed you. Just try some different-different shapes and-and-and that pout that we talked about. Ohh, no, not that one. (to Hardison) I didn't show her that.

Sophie: Kind of... just, you know, just relax. Try one up, one down. Maybe... So...

(Parker continues to pose)

Sophie: Ooh, yeah. Shoot that.

(Hardison snaps photos)

Sophie: Ooh, I like that. That's gonna work.

(Sophie uses the remote to place Parker into a photo of Worth)

Sophie: Okay. Yes.

Hardison: Looks good.

Sophie: I can work with that.

(Parker drops her clothes to the floor)

Hardison: Whoa. Oh! Whoa.

Sophie: Parker!

Hardison: Why am I looking away

this scene is iconic lmfao

also hardison you’re not looking because you’re a goddamn GENTLEMAN and we love you for it

+ she takes off all her clothes and puts on a baret LMFAO

- - - - -

parker and hardison smiling at each other as they map out the prison

THEY CLASP HANDS HAPPILY

- - - - -

Parker: Who's Sophie?

Hardison: You remember, we're not supposed to use her real name with, uh...

Parker: Right, Nate hasn't earned it yet. Forgot. Sophie. Sophie. So-phie. So-o-o-phie. Sophie. S-s-s-sophie. Sophie

we love parker trying to act cool and normal and fumble about it. she’s baby

- - - - -

Eliot: All right, we cut that wire.

Hardison: No. No, look, once a lockdown is called, all these sensors go hot and those door bolts drop into place.

Parker: I got it! The furnace room. There's no sensors because it's too hot. They crawl straight down along the heating pipes until they reach the sewage system. Ha ha!

[Prison Common Area]

Nate: Now, Parker, it's a 150 degrees in there.

[Leverage HQ]

Parker: The average human can withstand that for 27 seconds.

(Hardison and Eliot look away)

Parker: What? Come on

the ot3 is trying your honor

also parker is adorable playing with the model helicopter remote while laying down on the table

- - - - -

Worth: Then fire them. What's the use of being non-union if I can't fire people?

GROSS

- - - - -

Nate: Parker, please tell me you're at Hardison's new van.

[Exterior Prison]

Parker: Yeah, it's really nice.

[Prison Common Area]

Nate: Did you bring it?

[Exterior Prison]

Parker: Wait, are we doing that now?

[Prison Common Area]

Nate: Yeah, we're gonna breaking out right now.

[Exterior Prison]

Parker: Yes! (gets into van)

SHES SO EXCITED + she likes the new van!!!

- - - - -

Nate: A little sloppy.

Eliot: New glasses. (takes them off and looks at them)

OKAY SO DOES HE NEED GLASSES OR NOT ???

also he did the lil flip thing with the security guard nightstick

- - - - -

Computer: Lockdown.

Nate: Okay. (pushes door open and holds up a folded piece of paper) Newspaper folded eight times can support a ton of weight. Come on.

(they head down the hall)

- - - - -

Sophie: Motion sensor. Nate.

Nate: Steam's filling up now.

[Prison Kitchen]

(Nate walks slowly toward exit)

Nate: Motion sensor beat.

[Freezer]

(Nate enters and grabs a plastic bag, draping it around him)

[Leverage HQ]

Sophie: Breathe.

[Prison Mechanical Room]

(Nate pushes out a grate and enters the room, the bag covered in ice)

Nate: And heat sensor cleared. Last stop.

(throws off bag and exits the room)

- - - - -

parker was having so much fun with the model helicopter I love it

- - - - -

Hardison: You, yeah. Ha. See, I like this. I like when we pretend to kiss.

Parker: "Pretend"?

Hardison: Heeeey

- - - - -

Nate: What about my team?

Italian: They lead dangerous lives. Thieves die all the time.

Nate (steps close to her): Now that you should not have said.

Italian: I don't know. You seem highly motivated. (walks away)

- - - - -

Sophie: Damien Moreau? Are you out of your mind? Nobody touches Moreau!

Hardison: Nate, Moreau finances the Sicilians, the Russian mafia, the Colombian cartels.

Eliot: Yeah, he moves money for the North Koreans, stolen artifacts for Iraq, nuclear materials for Iran.

Hardison: Moreau is The Big Bad. He is the central bank for international crime.

Parker: N-nate, these files are CIA, FBI, Mossad, Japanese Security

poor eliot this season is gonna be Rough™ for him :(

- - - - -

Sophie: She's blackmailing us?

Nate: She's... she's... she's sort of... Yeah. Yeah.

Parker: Sucks to be on the wrong side of that, finally.

- - - - -

Eliot: We can't go straight at a guy like Moreau. They'll vaporize us.

ELIOT was the one that finally gave in and gave up some information on how to go at this. eliot. because he knows moreau. he knows how that man works. so he knows he has to be the one to start the conversation, even though he hates it with every fiber of his being.

#leverage #leverage 3.01 #leverage 3x01 #the jailhouse job #leverage season 3 #season 3 #notable moments #mine

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bolbianddolanhouse · 4 years

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Book 2 FAQ!

Book 1 FAQ Beginning of Book 2

Dang y’all, 14 chapters done for Book 2! It’s been a little bit of a struggle to hash them out on time BUT I deliver. I’ve asked, y’all keyboard smashed in my inbox...let’s get INTO IT!

4 KIDS?!

Yep. And all 4 of them are full of personality! I guess I dreamt them up to convey all of the unspoken parts of the My Hero universe (canon or not).

Are the kid’s names in relation to their abilities?

No unfortunately, they’re names are based on their personalities/the major event that happened around the time they were born (no spoilers about it tho! Gotta read book 3 to know why!). Lili Perla is based off of Pearl from Steven Universe and their character type. Iwata El Roca is a nod to Luchador’s names and a character that passed away in the AU to honor them. Tensei Oro is a play on their family position, Tensei was the first born twin and his uncle was the first born, Oro is spanish for ‘gold’ and it’s a play on being first (ya know, because they give gold medals for 1st place!). Hanaka Rosa is a double trope name, Hanaka (Japanese: hana- flower, ka- power) is a nod to the tough girls with flower names in anime and Rosa (spanish: Rose) is a name used in telenovelas as the woman that causes all the romantic tension. I did the whole Japanese first name, Spanish middle name because thats what I want to do when I do have kids.

Why did Mineta have to be in this AU?

I hear you! The thing is that I DREAMT it like this. He’s the slightly incompetent teacher that gets dunked on by the parents. Good news is that he’s single and isn’t as gross in this part of the AU. He’s this AU’s punching bag if you will.

It was weird when you wrote in hate-crime/dorm incident bc I didn’t think about it that way...Why did you decide to explore it?

That part felt important to me to write. Yes the canon shows like actual crimes of different intensities, but not nessatreily hate-crimes done in schools. As you know, being LGBTQA+ in grade school is a terrifying thing to express if don’t want to stand out. The constant fear of peers judging you, bullies hurting you and teachers that seemingly don’t care about you if you come out is enough to silence anybody. Imagine that but in a hero school?! The hate-crime would be a villainous act and the culprit would have to do desperate measures to make sure nobody rats on them to maintain a clean image/record. Plus on the flip side, any ally that stands up for their oppressed peer is hailed the hero but they wouldn’t have to stand up for them if there were real consequences and punishment for the bullies. So in the AU, I wrote it how I’d want such hate-crimes to be handled. Not only justice but also accommodations for the victim.

The Mcdonalds order cracks me up! What is your Mcdonalds order?

I throughly enjoyed the Mcdonalds order part too. It’s a nod to the proposal in Book 1 when they went to Mcdonalds before the peer over. I wrote it to show that the family goes every now and then. My order is: Triple Cheeseburger, Large fries, Large sweet tea, 2 sausage and egg McMuffins & a cone. And yes, there will be a Mcdonalds order for every child because it drives the plot.

Will there be more interactions with the pro heroes from the canon series?

YES! Though old, theres more interactions planned with them. Of course, it’s all in Book 3 (trying not to spoil anything!).

Is it spoiler if you tell us if your kids (or one of them) becomes a villain?

I’ll tell y’all right now....NONE of my kids becomes a villain. It might look like one or two of them might from the way I wrote them but they’re just latina.

Will one of your kids be the next Ingenium?

Yes but I won’t tell you which one. But I can’t wait to reveal it to y'all!

I see all the call-backs to your self insert character’s past...Is it alluding to the conclusion?

I dreamt it as such and I fixed it in writing as a way to come full circle. Notice that Lili didn’t get any of her mom’s past from her mom? It wasn’t until when she confronted her on the couch in chapter 13. Even then, it wasn’t the full story nor did it fill in all the cracks and time skips after her mom’s time at UA. In Book 3, we explore more of the past. The conclusion is yet to be revealed.

How big is that house?!

It’s a little hard to explain? I want to say its big but parts of the house are disproportionate. It’s a two story house with no attic nor basement, 3 bath room, Master bedroom, 2 large bedrooms, office space, guest room, full kitchen, dining room, large living room, three car garage and a decent size backyard. What I’m trying to say that it’s big enough for that chaotic ass family.

Where’s Aizawa?!

Let the mans rest! He’s alive but he’s busy being a grandpa and taking naps.

Canon villains OwO?

Y’all ate UP the Dabi surrender in Book 1 and his little mention in Book 2. But in this AU (not to spoil anything to anime only and manga dabblers) the League of Villains are still rampant but dispersed. In Book 3 (and part of Book 4) they pop in to drive the plot from a canon storyline. In the series, the rookie Hawks has been seen as a double agent and exposes a corrupt Hero Society. Same concept but in this AU, Hawks has gone missing when he failed to kill Best Jeanist. Here’s where the kids go into play BUT more on that as the plot progresses!

I really want to see art of these OCs! I wanna see how Iida’s genes transferred over to his kids!

I hear y'all! I’ve slid into DM during commission windows and have the means to pay for some line art at least...but with no responses. I’ve got my self insert character done in this post if you wanna check it out plus the artist was super sweet during the whole process. I may commission them again when they got a window of commissions open. But I may do a lineart of the kid’s faces in the near future.

What if....hypothetically....Shinso stayed?

Oh boy, okay so the Shinso stans have BOMBARDED my asks since the last arc of Book 1. So what if Shinso stayed...obviously I wouldn’t have 4 kids, just the one that we were gonna have. We wouldn’t be married and overall just be loveless the more we see our friends get married and start families. The company would still be there but delayed by 5 years or so. Our son would grow up to convince me and Shinso to separate when they get at around High school age. Tenya still wouldn’t have said anything but done the reunited part differently. I would’ve considered cheating but morals would’ve stopped me. Eventually, when our son decides to move out, we’d stay as housemates and basically die alone....aren’t you glad this AU isn’t such a downer?! Luckily things are patched up with my self insert and Shinso, because he comes into play in Book 3!

Eri Nurse! In your AU!

Yup! I’ve actually read some NurseEri! AUs on twitter and Tumblr (btw, some of y’all that like my posts have good taste in fics!) and it manifested in my dreams and created UA Nurse Eri. She shows up a few more times in the AU, so don’t fret if Eri is your fave.

Is it okay if I follow you on a different platform? Do you have another social media that I can follow you on?

You can follow me on Twitter (@oketsusama). It’s my personal twitter that I repost memes and get my news from. So it’s not as poppin as my Tumblr, but at least it’s AU free over there lmao.

What’s you favorite rare pair in the My Hero canon storyline?

Oh! and DON’T hate me, but I stan the Sero x Iida rare pair! There’s crumbs of the pair on twitter and here but the ones that I did read got me in tears. If you haven’t seen this tag on twitter and Tumblr, DO IT! The one on twitter had a lot of angst in it and it got me HOOKED on some of that goofball with their geeky partner energy.

Not a question, but I like your //Palma-sama Speaks in the tags. They’re funny and makes your posts that much more personalized.

I will cry! Thanks for reading that far! I like doing the ‘talking in the tags’ thing to basically point out the callbacks to new readers that stumbled upon that chapter of the AU.

How long is this AU?!

It’s quite long BUT the ending is marvelous, trust.

============================================

Thanks for reading! That’s all the asks for now, keep asking them! I love reading them. Next is the finale of Book 2! Everything will still come out 2-3 days of each other until further notice. Stay safe, drink water!

-Palma-Sama

#bnha #mha #faq 2 #self insert au #not canon #will update regularly #ask me anything #Book 2

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swampgallows · 5 years

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some of the tags on that 4chan post are so right, like... tumblr is extremely fucking sheltered compared to the shit i saw on 4chan at like 14 years old. i have infinite stories, some personal and some general. i had started visiting 4chan in late 2004—long before /r9k/ was even a board, back when /5/ was still a secret board and they had JUST taken /l/ down. that probably isnt even english to most people. basically i started visiting 4chan BEFORE i started playing world of warcraft. that’s how young i (and the site itself) was. i saw one of NCH85’s flash animations on deviantart and was directed to 4chan.

and that was even before 4chan became more “mainstream” after the “don’t mess with football” incident in 2007ish, when gaston and desu whatever became memes and all of a sudden there was some group of people taking “anonymous is legion. we do not forgive. we do not forget” to heart and very, very seriously, which is when all the v for vendetta mask shit started. before that it was just like “pool’s closed” and shit, which is a pretty innocuous but still incredibly offensive meme. the full phrase was “pool’s closed due to AIDS” from some homophobic fearmongering lifetime movie or some shit.

zippocat, cracky-chan, nevada-tan, and “babyfuck it’s awwright” were memes. shitting dick nipples was a meme. pedobear, “4chan party van”, and guilty gear’s bridget were memes. cockmongler and happy n*gro were memes. violent, homicidal, homophobic, transphobic, racist, pedophiliac, ableist, sexist, or just plain disgusting—it was regurgitated hundreds of times a day.

i think the average tumblr user would fucking faint if they saw half the shit i was exposed to on a daily basis as a teenager. AND THEY SHOULD. this isnt meant to be a posturing thing; it’s a testament to how fucking fucked up the place was/is and how white supremacy gaining real actual traction on the chons was pretty much inevitable. but even for “old” 4chan users, to genuinely care about anything on 4chan is also a noob move, and nazis are considered undesirables in that they are not in on the joke; the collective joke being that nobody on 4chan takes anything seriously or cares about anything, or, as the classic meme went, “Internet is serious business.”

overall 4chan’s focus was on desensitization to every degree. it made disenfranchised young dudes with zero power or skills or prospects feel like they were cutting their teeth in one way or another, upholding “lulz” as key currency. their naivete told them they were rational for hating everything, and their cynicism told them they were tough for being able to laugh at everything.

the infamous screenshot illustrating this is as follows:

“SMAP 01/23/05 [January 23, 2005] You COMPLETELY miss the point of /b/. /b/ is not Fark “oh hay guys i found a cute link ha ha.” /b/ is not Slashdot’s pseudo-intellectual discussion. /b/ is not LiveJournal, SuicideGirls, or HotOrNot. /b/ is a place for people to be monsters- the horrible, senseless, uncaring monsters that they really are.

Tsunami owns the Asian continent and we laugh. Psychotic emo takes his sickness out on a cat [zippocat] and we laugh. People mutilate themselves for no appearant [sic] reason [cracky-chan] and we laugh. Suicide, homicide, genocide- we laugh. Racism, sexism, discrimination, xenophobia and baseless hate- we laugh. We are mindless “me-too”ism; we are irrational preference; we are pointless flamewars; we are the true face of the internet.”

If you didn’t catch the date, this was in 2005. this mindset founded the event horizon for the descent into white supremacy.

“Anonymous [OP] 01/30/05 [January 30th, 2005] Why did you guys suddenly turn on Queen G? One day she’s one of you, the next you’re pouring on the h8. What’s up? What’d she do? Anonymous [1] SHE’S A FURRY Anonymous [2] FUCK FURRIES Anonymous [3] WE HATE EVERYONE Anonymous [4] INCLUDING OURSELVES”

there was a SHITLOAD of funny shit on 4chan, and that was part of the allure and self-aggrandizement as well; if you could stomach all of the shit, you were rewarded with the cream of the crop, top quality memes and lulz. a good chunk of the internet as we know it was defined by 4chan. people were saying epic win/fail in 2004 and then it started appearing on tshirts in 2008. rage comics, reaction images, and one could even argue image macros (the classic terminology for a meme) were started on 4chan. part of the mentality was that the lack of censorship or filter allowed ANY content to thrive, made by anyone and judged by all, and therefore only truly worthwhile content survived (especially on /b/, where you could refresh a thread and it would already be sage’d, or bumped down, by reams of new threads).

but we still weren’t truly aware of what we were laughing at, whether it was considered ironic or not, hence poor pepe the frog being stolen as an alt-right symbol. I remember having to stifle my laughter during a history of racism lesson in my junior year of high school (~2007) because they had slides of resist dot org racist cartoons. they are comics by a white supremacist, chiefly anti-black and featuring racist caricatures, but they had gained new life on 4chan as memes like “bix nood” and others. edits were made reappropriating racist cartoons like “around blacks, never relax” into “around snacks [W.T. Snacks, a 4chan moderator known for swift banning practices], never relax” and “around elves, watch yourselves” with the caricature edited to have long ears.

in our minds, we were laughing at the artist for his racism and moronic ideas, but the fact of the matter was that we were still consuming, and laughing at, racist cartoons. (cue “you are not immune to propaganda”.) much as dave chappelle realized his satire was being consumed straightforwardly by racists and used to reinforce the stereotypes he was making fun of, a lot of people on 4chan took these comics at face value, especially now that their messages had been “updated” in a language they understood.

i appreciate it for the wellspring of content that it was, but 4chan’s current users have forgotten its original cardinal rule of “Internet is serious business” and i feel like it now definitely needs to be terminated, especially now that moot has stepped down.

#slurs tw /#blathering #long post /#racism cw /#violence cw /#ok to rb

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fly-pow-bye · 5 years

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DuckTales 2017 - “Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Bob Snow & Francisco Angones

Storyboard by: Stephanie Gonzaga, Vaughn Tada, Brandon Warren

Directed by: Matthew Humphreys

Don't eat the cake.

The episode begins with Scrooge noticing that something is terribly wrong. He checks through his manor, opening a few doors to see. Webby, Lena, and Violet are dealing with a giant beast, Mrs. Beakley and Dewey are messing with a tempest in a teapot, and, in what is specifically deemed "very wrong" by Scrooge, Della actually bonding with a child that isn't the blue one. Okay, he's actually reacting to how they're both dramatically shouting about being the Legends of LegendQuest, but that doesn't seem too out of character for Della. Maybe for Huey.

After checking the whole mansion he goes back to his room, and he notices his seat is occupied by a familiar face.

Goldie: Morning, Scroogie.

Scrooge wonders why she would be here, and Louie shows up to tell him he invited her in. This episode continues the Louie Inc plotline that we last saw in "The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck!". That plotline left off with Louie having a choice for his company: use Scrooge's hard work, or will it be the choice that Louie would actually pick. That choice ended up being "team up with the untrustworthy frenemy of Scrooge". Louie sees himself as a professional, he can handle this!

Not even after the opening credits roll, we see that Louie couldn't handle it, as he gets locked into a chest. Louie starts crying, saying that Louie Inc was his dream, and he thought he can be as clever as her, even calling her his hero. Goldie sees through this "crocodile waterworks" pretty much immediately, but takes kindly to Louie's training in the art of cons. That, and she needed a kid for her next con: getting into a "septleventh birth anniversary" for rich families. Who’s the birthday boy?

It turns out to be this reboot's version of Doofus Drake's big birthday party. Oh boy. Admittedly, the annoying living fat joke being retooled into an awkward and spoiled rich kid with creepy tendencies isn't exactly a terrible punishment for our eyes. When I imagined the Louie and Goldie adventure back when that was teased, I never expected anything like this, that's for sure.

Going away from that, anyone can guess at least one of those things Scrooge McDuck closed the door on was going to be the B plot, and it's not about that beast or the tempest in a teapot. We learn that during her adventuring days, after Donald and Scrooge would go right to sleep, Della would play a video game called Legends of LegendQuest. Huey decides to join in.

I do like the subtle joke that the "very wrong" epic speech they were doing was during the game's really long loading screen, which takes until this scene to load 100%. I would hate to say I liked it because it was the only subtle joke in this B plot, but I have to say it.

The rest of this B plot takes place inside the game world. This isn't a case of a magical video game that sucks them in, they just happen to have avatars that look exactly like them with some subtle differences. Della is this strong warrior woman with a strong resemblance to Zero from Mega Man X, with what looks like a scouter from the early days of Dragon Ball Z. I am sure this show is beyond referencing that ancient "over 9000" meme.

Her son decided to go with the joy of being an ordinary farmer who farms under a giant force field, protecting his garden from the bugs that manage to get past it. The joke is that Huey is boring, but Della is fun! Huey kind of reminds me of that other red accessory wearing kid from the other show in this episode, and not the good version of her.

We see Doofus's party, filled with more Beagle Boys than one might expect. Sorry to say, they do not appear that much. He has all the party quirks that would fit someone of his obscenely rich and richly obscene personality. Instead of bobbing for apples, he has bobbing for splinters. His birthday cake promises that it's not full of hair. Even Louie starts to talk to himself about the obvious joke that it will lead to, until he and Goldie get distracted by the party bags filled with gold.

Louie tries to take one of those party bags, only for Doofus's parents, or "servants" as Doofus calls them, to slap his hand. These bags are meant for departing guests, and are filled with priceless heirlooms from his late Guhmeemama Frances.

Doofus's parents: Guhmeemama.

Oh yeah, whenever her name is said in this episode and Day of the Only Child, they have to whisper to themselves her name. It gets a good payoff here in many more ways than one.

Louie tries to run off with two of the bags again, this time pretending to leave the party, only for Goldie to stop him this time. Apparently, she does not want Louie to be a bad party guest! Oh, and she wants all the bags. She also will not tell Louie her plan to do so, because he would not learn anything. Oh, and she doesn't know what her plan is. A lot of her dialogue is like that.

But enough about her way of talking, the "servants" announce that the "universe's perfect widdle (sic) angel" is making his grand entrance. A closed clam shows up, surrounded by angels. It's a scene very similar to a certain painting, and I really don't like where this is going.

Thankfully, they don't go with him barely covering himself up with a long blonde wig. Somehow, him just popping up right behind Louie is the second worst thing that could have happened with that. As he speaks about how seeing all of his guests with their loving parents reminds him of the only parental figure he knows, he sniffs that some of these families are filthy liars that only went to his party to get his gift bags!

One of those people turns out to be Percival P. Peppington, a guy that sort of looks like Willy Wonka and has at least enough money to hire Johnny, formerly of the Ottoman Empire, to pose as his kid. I looked Percival up, he's not a character from the comics, and he never appears again after this episode. Exposed, Percival ends up getting sentenced by Doofus to go into a trapdoor into his honey bin.

Percival: Don't you mean "Money Bin"?

Doofus: No. (hits button)

We never see this honey bin, but judging by the sound of bees and Randy's face when he looks down into the trapdoor, one would be wishing Doofus could just wish them into the cornfield instead. Thankfully, Doofus has mercy for the not-so-child actor, as he merely gets ejected via spring.

Seeing this, Louie whispers to Goldie that he can smell lies. He and Goldie will then talk about the plan to expose the two obvious phonies to Doofus, leaving them as the only people worthy enough to grab those money bags. They say this all out loud, because there's no way Doofus would hear them despite Louie's fear about him smelling lies!

It may be possible that Louie is heavily overestimating Doofus's abilities to smelling crooks, considering who those two phonies are and at least one of their plans. There's Glomgold, with a son named Sharkbomb that always seems to stay on his right arm, and Mark Beaks, who now has a son named Boyd. Clearly, one is way more unbelievable than the other. I mean, Mark Beaks having a kid? Maybe I'm underestimating how many fangirls he has. As he shows off his family selfies, all of them with his kid with the same exact face, he says this:

Mark Beaks: Yeah, I love this, uh, what is this, uh, uh, son!

This line outright blurts out that this son is completely fake, but anyone should expect that. Doofus does not smell this lie, as he just mentions that looking at his family selfies reminds him of his family memories.

This leads to Doofus sobbing and kissing his father's stomach, which happened to have a tattoo of his Guhmeemama...

Doofus's parents: Guhmeemama.

...riding on a Doofus centaur. Maybe it is best not to ask.

Glomgold also shows off his own family photos, which are surprisingly more convincing than the tech guru's, and Louie has to think fast. Thankfully, a quick trip to a nearby photo booth and Louie's not-too-convincing smiles clears that up. How it seems like Louie isn't even trying and still manages to win just seems to weaken him to me, but don't tell that to Goldie, who now wants to go on the offensive. Who is the first mark? It's not Beaks, as much as they seemed to be setting up for that joke.

All of the guests get into the pool, not by choice, and Louie tells Glomgold he wants to talk to Sharkbomb alone. Glomgold decides to try his best at ventriloquism while he's underwater to expected effects. He tells Sharkbomb about how Goldie has the hots for his dad. It's cool to see that plot thread from "The Golden Lagoon of White Agony Plains!" get referenced, and that reference also interests Glomgold, who suddenly comes out from the water to ask if it's true.

He tries to cover it up by having his puppet son say "as if", only for Glomgold to take his own puppet son's words as an insult. Considering "Duke Baloney", this whole fight may have a bit more depth than one could see here. I don’t think it is intentional, but that is something.

Eventually, that fight ends with him beheading his own son right in front of Doofus' eyes. Needless to say, Glomgold's attempt to put Sharkbomb's head back on with his spit does not please the manchild of the day. Doofus decides to send Glomgold to the honey bin.

Glomgold: Don't let go, Sharkbomb!

Sharkbomb: Don't tell me what to dooo! (lets go)

Gotta say, Glomgold and Sharkbomb ends up being one of the highlights of the episode. Kind of wish we got to see more of them.

Instead, we get to see Mark Beaks and Boyd, the latter of which suspiciously doesn't want to put his head below water! Also, he seems to have the strength of a million and seventy men. I guess he really shouldn't complain. But I have a feeling he can't go out for a walk without rusting in the rain. I guessed this as soon as I saw him, anyway; it would be fitting for the tech guru.

Speaking of tech, they do cut back and forth between this party plot and the video game plot, and, unlike the last episode, it doesn't do any creative transitions between them. One minute, we're watching Louie plot his schemes. In the next minute, that plot pauses so we can see a close-up of Huey talking about how the fate of the land is in Della's hands...that land being the garden. The joke is that Huey is boring!

Unlike Huey's insistence on staying in his force field bubble and playing FarmVille, Della wants him to explore the world, go to a checkpoint, and use all of that XP he's getting from those bugs to become super-powerful. This is all a metaphor for Huey not wanting to leave his comfort zone even with his mother goading him to do so. How subtle do they make this metaphor?

Huey: Hey Mom? I think I should step out of my comfort zone.

By outright saying it. As an aside, being one of the adventurous nephews, is Huey really the person that needs this lesson?

Back to the more exciting plot, Boyd sure plays some mean pinball, and Doofus is taking a liking to him. Louie tries to find some dirt on Boyd, looking through Mark Beaks' Waddle profile and looking at all of the pictures with his kid. Ignoring how Boyd has the same face in every picture, the biggest tell that this kid may be a fake is that there's no baby pictures!

Louie: Where are the baby pictures? Beaks would never pass up that sweet clickbait!

Goldie: Click-what, now?

Louie's not wrong, and it's good to see one scam Goldie would never take a part in. However, they need something more obvious. Eventually, Louie gets one, as he gets connected to the Beaks Optimistic Youth Droid's Wi-Fi network.

Even though Goldie isn't tech-savvy, even she can recognize an acronym when she sees it. Not willing to outright tell Doofus about his new best friend being a robot, Louie decides to just ask the B.O.Y.D. what he did two days ago.

To make a long story short, it doesn't work out, as the B.O.Y.D. starts shooting lasers out of his eyes. Wow, I guess I can't avoid reviewing shows with laser-eye-using children.

Eventually, his fake eyes melt, and he ends up falling into the pool. Mark Beaks laments that he's going to need a big bag of rice right before he'll need something to wash off honey, bees, and whatever else is in the honey bin Doofus sent him to. Goldie is impressed, and sends some praise to her not-really nephew about how they should team up on a more permanent basis.

Doofus is really upset that his newest best friend had their eyes melted, apparently at least the second year in a row this has happened. Much like Calvin and Hobbes' "noodle incident" and whatever led to his father getting a tattoo of a centaur Doofus, one's imagination can fill in the blanks far better than even the mighty DuckTales writers could on how that could happen. Only a minute after that aforementioned praise...

Goldie: Llewellyn Duck, I am so disappointed! Ruining poor Doofus' party, trying to take all the extra bags by yourself! Who raised you?

(a minute later)

Goldie: Sorry, Sharpie, I only work for myself! I want you gone, mister!

Oh, Goldie! For reasons only Doofus seems to know, he decides to arrange that last plan with the help of the BOYD. He's able to do this thanks to him grabbing the phone that just happened to slip out of Beak's hands when he sent him to the Honey Bin earlier. Doofus presses the “Kill” button on the stolen phone, and the B.O.Y.D. rises up from the pool water, mostly unharmed. So much for needing the rice.

Doofus essentially does his “psycho rich kid” shtick again, saying that his party wouldn't be complete without him beating a pinata, and he wants to hunt the most dangerous pinata: man. As he controls the BOYD, we're left to wonder if Goldie will just take the money and run, leaving Louie to get beaten by a robotic kid.

Oh, of course Goldie decides to save Louie in the end, putting herself between the rapidly spinning bat and the "Sharpie". Doofus ends up saying this was all a test to see if Goldie could be a loving parent or not. This doesn't completely add up to the cover story, but maybe that was what Doofus actually wanted, as we'll soon see.

Meanwhile, in the video game, Huey finally manages to get out of the "comfort zone" by stepping out of it. This turns the force field off, causing an alien to zap it and kidnap his mom. He initially thinks that he should have just stayed in his comfort zone, but he then realizes he needs to save his Mom. He runs towards the checkpoint, and his level begins to rise. Or, as Della says...

Della: That power level... (scouter explodes)

Oh, dear.

Della: ...it's over 9000!

Well, I guess they were not above it after all! Do not get me wrong: I don't hate this, and at least the line still fits. Huey becomes a Super Saiyan God The Duke and destroys the alien monster with his raw fisticuffs. That's pretty much it for this B plot; it ends with a scene where Della has to wrestle the keyboard away from him because he was getting too "not comfortable". Eh.

In the A plot, we get to see the aftermath of Louie and Goldie's plot: Doofus gives Louie all of the gift bags, and Goldie's good parenthood gets rewarded by becoming the new Goldiemama.

Doofus's parents: Goldiemama.

Don’t worry, that’s not the only payoff, and the other one is so satisfying, one needs to watch the episode because I will not spoil it.

It should be obvious even from this episode that being that Goldiemama is not a pleasant reward to say the least, even without the glass dome Doofus is keeping her in. Louie, knowing this, fights with himself with whether or not he should just take the money and run. Goldie did just betray him a few minutes ago. Maybe it would be a deserved punishment to let that betrayer suffer by being in the Doofus household.

Oh, of course Louie decides against taking the money and running, and goes to the rescue of his Louie Inc partner. This was a turn of events about as expected as Goldie not willing to let Doofus break the living pinata. I mean, it's not like they're just going to shoot someone into the moon...okay, that was a bad example.

Actually, come to think of it, Louie Inc doesn't really come up in this plot. Considering a future episode, he would consider stealing a business opportunity, but he has to find some way to make it technically not stealing.

As standard for my DuckTales reviews, I am not going to entirely spoil the ending of this episode. While it shouldn't be much of a spoiler to know that Louie will not be rich at the end of this episode and Goldie will be rescued, there is a very pleasant scene to see for people who just want to see Doofus' parents get something good for a change, and to see Doofus finally get something he deserved.

I'll also show this: this episode ends with this oddly touching shot of Goldie slipping in one of the on-the-spot pictures of Louie, right next to a picture of dear ol' Scroogie. Awww.

How does it stack up?

At first, I didn't really like this episode, but repeated viewings did lead me to see some of the good of this episode. However, I couldn't shake off that I didn't really like the B plot. It's not the worst, but it's not great, either. The best part is that it's not the mama's boy this time.

Despite the good moments with Glomgold, and I did like the ending of the A plot, this episode didn't do as much for me as most episodes of this show. I'm not going to send it to the Honey Bin, though.

Next, a nightmare!

← What Ever Happened To Donald Duck?! 🦆 A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill! →

#fpb dt 2017 #ducktales #ducktales 2017 #disney #fpb reviews

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the-serendipityblog-blog · 5 years

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Instagram Without Moderation Is Unhealthy

You’re standing outside waiting for your ride to pick you up. They said they’d be there in five minutes. There’s no one you know around. What do you do?

a) Go to a random person and try to become their friend.

b) Pull out the book you’ve been reading.

c) Start scrolling through Instagram

Odds are, you chose C. (And if you didn’t then congratulations, you are in the minority.) In the twenty-first century, we humans have become so dependent on technology, maybe even addicted, and the worst one of them all is social media (in my opinion). At first, these websites and apps―Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.― were created so people could stay in touch with more distant friends and family whom they couldn’t visit as often. Nowadays, it is a tool for stalking, comparing, starting fights, inducing jealousy, causing insecurities, and a lot more. Here are some ways social media, specifically Instagram, do more harm than good. These are all things I know from my own experience, another person’s experience, or through research.

Lowers self-esteem. This one is quite obvious since many people have talked about and experienced this before, but it really is a big deal. This study shows that social media use and depression are highly correlated. You must know about all the Instagram models, who literally get paid just to be pretty. (Okay, that was kind of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.) They are usually making a cute pose by the beach in their $300 bikini, showing off their flawless curves and tan skin as the sunlight hits their face perfectly. A photo like this would earn them around $3,000 to $5,000. Of course, the average female does not look like this. A study done by Clark University states that women who looked at images of slender models “produced lower self-esteem and satisfaction with their weight as compared to women viewing more robust models”. Constantly being bombarded with these supposedly “perfect” images of women will influence us to believe that this is how we are supposed to look. If we do not size 00, weighing 90 pounds, donning clear and glowing skin, and flashing a pearly white smile, then we are doing something wrong. Basically, this creates a false definition of beauty. One must look exactly like the models or celebrities on Instagram, or they are not pretty. If we check Instagram right when we wake up, right before we go to bed, and any other extra time in the day, that’s a couple hundred photos per day. Out of those, if about half of them are pictures of “perfect girls” that’s a lot of negative influence. (Unless you’re like me and only follow meme pages.) It’s basically becoming ingrained into our heads how we are supposed to look. Every picture of a girl with unattainable beauty standards is a message that says, “Look at this beautiful girl. It sucks you don’t look like that. Guess you’re not pretty.” I can say from my personal experience that after scrolling through Instagram for a few hours, I definitely feel a lot more insecure and unhappy with my life. It is very unhealthy to feel forced to conform to these false standards.

Causes jealousy. Another negative thing about Instagram is that it causes jealousy. “I can’t believe she went to the Maldives over spring break” or “Why did she get more likes than me? I’m way prettier than her.” The thing about social media is that you can see what everyone else is doing, what they have, who they hang out with, etc. Without social media, there isn’t much of a way to know these things unless someone actually brags about it. That’s what social media is. It’s just a socially acceptable way to brag about what you have or pretend to have. Just because someone is wearing an expensive outfit doesn’t mean they’re rich. They could just be trying on clothes in the dressing room and taking in a selfie in it with no intention of actually buying it. Just because they are constantly posting pictures of them with other people doesn’t mean they are popular or they have a lot of friends. A lot of it is staged. Yes, there are some genuine people and posts on Instagram, but from my experience, I can say that they are a minority. It sort of reminds me of KUWTK. A reality show that isn’t actually “real”. They act like it’s real, but actually, a lot of it is staged for attention. They don’t show you everything, they only show you what they want you to see. And obviously who wouldn’t want other people to think they are popular, pretty, and rich. Of course, I would like it if people thought of me like that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I am actually like that. When you go on Instagram and see everyone having an amazing time, portraying a perfect life, that doesn’t mean their whole life is perfect. They are just showing random glimpses of when it is. Seeing all these false perceptions of perfect lives makes you feel worse about your own, and jealous of everyone you know. “Everyone’s lives are amazing. My life totally sucks compared to that.” If people posted everything that happened in their life, and not just what they want you to see, it wouldn’t be anything to be jealous of at all. Not everyone will look cute right when they wake up. Not everyone gets to constantly travel over the world. Not everyone gets to wear designer clothes with professionally done makeup. Everyone has insecurities and hardships. Nobody’s life is perfect, no matter how perfect it may seem.

Provides a distraction. I’m very sure you all know about this one without me having to explain it. Instagram is a distraction. So is all social media. The constant notifications of likes, follows, comments, direct messages, and more, the constant thinking about what your next post is going to be, the application just sitting there, constantly bugging you like a scratch that needs to be itched. You know that horrible feeling of regret you feel after scrolling through your feed for hours when you’re supposed to be doing something else. I remember when I was in middle school, being new to Instagram, I would come home from school and spend several hours scrolling through my feed, explore page, and stalking other blogs until I felt groggy and my eyes burned, not even starting my homework until after dinner. Now, I rarely ever check it, and I rarely ever want to check it. Partially because I’ve had it for a long time and it’s not as new and exciting anymore, but also because I made a conscious effort to take a detox from it after realizing this is such a horrible way to spend so many hours of my life. Not only is Instagram a distraction, but it is a bad distraction. Hanging out with friends, for example, is a distraction, but it is a way better distraction than scrolling through confidence-reducing, insecurity-producing, jealousy-causing Instagram. It’s like a lose-lose situation. You’re wasting time and feeling worse about yourself.

Defined by a number. Nowadays, people’s worth is measured by numbers on Instagram. How popular you are depends on the number of followers you have, how pretty you are depends on the number of likes you get on a selfie, how amazing your life is determined by how often you post, and this is absolutely false. I know for a fact that at least two-thirds of my current Instagram followers are totally random people who don’t know me in real life. And only about 10 percent of my followers actually “like” my photos. Does that mean I’m unpopular or ugly? Not necessarily. People are constantly checking their photo right after posting it to see how many likes it received and deleting it if it doesn’t get enough. They try so hard to gain followers by asking random people to follow them for a follow back or promoting their account in the comment section of a popular photo. Have you ever looked at someone’s profile and thought “Wow they don’t have many followers. They must be a loser who doesn’t have any friends,” or do you think “Wow they don’t have many followers. They must not use Instagram very often.”? This shows that this fear of being judged by a number is an irrational thought that isn’t very true at all.

Creates pressure. I’ve already partially covered this topic in the previous four topics because they are all forms of pressure. When a person has an active personal Instagram account, they tend to feel obligated to post constantly and update their followers with their lives. Now, with Instagram stories, users can give hourly updates on what they’re doing, similar to Snapchat. While experiencing a fun event or going to an aesthetic or picturesque place, they feel pressured to take a good picture to post. I am so guilty of this. Every time I go anywhere that has potential to make a nice Instagram photo I suddenly feel stressed out because I feel as if I have a 100-point homework assignment to take an Instagram worthy photo in five minutes and if I am not able to, I feel really disappointed like I wasted my opportunity. I have been making a conscious effort lately to relax a little more when it comes to Instagram photos and not stress out so much about visiting a place without taking a photo. Sometimes it’s healthy to just live in the moment instead of worrying about documenting it.

Those were a few of the many reasons why excessive Instagramming is unhealthy. Don’t get me wrong―Instagram is a great tool and it’s totally okay use it regularly, but in excess, it can be harmful. Moderating how much time we spend on this app, and how much we let it and the people on it affect us can help Instagram be just an app and not a source of stress and unhappiness.

#instagram

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norgad-vcd · 3 years

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Revised Text

What goes on, online?

Anything and everything. It’s a beautiful and vibrant mess of human interaction. Everything from trivial and thoughtless acts to the most sincere and genuine deeds. It’s grounds for the vicious and the virtuous alike. The internet is what you make of it; a tool as good or bad as it’s wielders.

It’d take a thousand lifetimes to see it all.

How about a quick glimpse instead?

Hiya, I’m Tom! I’ve spent enough of my life online that I can confer some of my findings to you. This book is a smörgåsbord of experiences, phenomena, and memories I’ve been witness to and participant in during my time here. While not a full picture, it should help you navigate the ballpark of possibilities out there. My experiences are just one sample from billions; perhaps after this you’ll seek to venture out further into that world-wide web, or - at the very least - understand a little better those who do.

Friendships don’t care about how you nourish them, just that you do.

Catching up online is great for keeping friends close. It might be raining, someone might be away from home, or even sick and stuck at the hospital; the reason doesn’t matter. It might not be perfect - and sure, we could all get a little more sunlight - but for what it’s worth it’s good for the soul and sometimes the best thing on hand.

How do I put this?

It’s not all the same thing though, there’s different tools for different jobs. There’s a difference between how I talk to people in an idle chat and talking to someone in a formal meeting; different modes of communication for different settings and people. It’s the same thing with online modes of communication. Sending a message on Discord to one of my friends, I’d take a casual, grammarless, and very loose style of typing. Contrast that with an email to my grandmother; that’s much more structured and considered, like a half mimicry of a handwritten letter to be delivered by post. People still sign off emails with their names at the end, as if emails don’t also just tell you who they’re from in the ‘sender’ info.

Occasionally I’ll need to message someone I only vaguely know. In these circumstances it can feel a bit standoffish and unfamiliar. I’ll type out sanitised and unambiguous sentences; without tone of voice - or a history of talking to the person online before - it’s hard to judge sarcasm, emotion, and everything else conveyed nonverbally in a conversation. Erring on the side of caution seems to be the best bet, until we both get to know each other’s style of writing a bit better.

Over the first 2020 lockdown, me and most of my real-life friends started a minecraft server together and played through it for the duration of our stint stuck at home. It was like a little clubhouse, each time we logged in and saw things change slightly since last time. We left each other notes and set up gifts and pranks for when people left and returned. It was a great way to keep in touch when we were otherwise very isolated from social contact.

On a lot of platforms there’s a little indicator that tells you if someone’s online, offline, or possibly busy. This is really useful to see if someone might be free to talk or hang out. It’s also really good at betraying to someone the fact that I still have not gone to sleep, despite the fact that I said I was going to sleep about four hours ago.

To be fair, they said they were going to sleep about four hours ago as well.

[JOSH TEXT]

A big benefit to text chat is that if I’m preoccupied and all my friends are talking about something, I’m not left behind and out of the loop. I can always re-read what everyone wrote once I have time, pick up all the new inside jokes and keep up to date with people’s lives. The same can’t be said for voice chat; if I miss a hangout there I’ve missed it for good. This can get a bit weird if people are using both at the same time though; the text portion of the chat devolves into a complete mess of contextless strings of text and images out of nowhere. With a keen eye and a bit of detective work I can often piece together the general gist of the missed conversation, but other times it remains a mystery forever.

Whenever someone sends me a meme, I’m elated. I get to look at a funny picture, but I also get to send that same funny picture to someone else. Who knows how many hands the image passed through before it reached me, and how many more hands it will pass through before it reaches its final viewer. Maybe it’ll never reach a final resting place, instead getting recycled and remixed into memes anew until the end of time.

[ANOTHER GUEST SPEAKER TEXT]

Who are you, on the internet?

Online, your real-life identity isn’t attached to you by default. Of course there’s places where the expectation is indeed a connection to real identities - like Facebook for example - but this is not a requirement. I’m not known as ‘Tom’ online, people know me by my username.

It’s not a fake me, or a way to lie to people, it’s just an alternate expression of myself. We act differently to different people in so many social situations, - from time with family, to at work, and to hanging out with friends - the internet allows even more possible ways to express parts of ourselves. For me, it’s liberating to exist in a state that’s disconnected from the tangle of my real life self, and to keep the tangle of my internet presence away from real life as well.

On the internet, nobody knows who you are.

Unless you divulge them to others, your identity, physical appearance, background, nationality, gender, race and so on are completely unknown; this is the great equalizer. Free from biases based on your physical self, you can be perceived as purely another person.

A clean slate can tempt some however to act recklessly. If an identity and history can be shed so easily, some people feel emboldened to act without the threat of consequences; verbally beat someone up, and then wash their hands of the whole incident.

It’s important to remember that people online are still people; while their faces might be obscured, they still have thoughts and feelings. In general, talking to people online has about the same potential as real-life to be great, awful, or somewhere inbetween; it’s mostly luck of the draw who you’ll run into.

I don’t know the names or faces of some of my closest friends.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about them; I just care more about who they are as an individual. I still know their personalities, their sense of humor, what they like and don’t, and everything else you’d know about a friend. We still have inside jokes, favourite group pastimes, and all the rest.

Who are you talking to?

When I was younger and my parents would ask who I’m talking to on the computer, I wouldn’t know how to respond.

Do I tell them “I don’t know” and spark images in their heads of catfishers and criminals?

Do I tell them my friend’s username and get told “that’s not a real name”?

Most of the time I’d just try to give a vague non-answer and hope the conversation goes elsewhere. Keep my little world safe.

[SYDNEY TEXT]

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Because everyone lives in different time-zones, it can often be difficult to pre-plan hangouts. Oftentimes me and my friends have planned to have a movie night at a specific time, and then once that time rolls around, one or two people are still offline, probably asleep. Oftentimes whoever was missing will come online several hours later and be sorry and upset that they held everyone up and wasted everyone’s time. Of course, we had all just postponed the movie night and just hung out and chatted instead.

Oftentimes we have to accept that it’s near impossible to have everyone hang out at the same time; it’d require half of us to be up at god awful times or to wake up at 4am for something. Instead of trying to plan big ‘everyone’ events every once in a blue moon, we try to have frequent but smaller hangouts. It might mean that we don’t get to see everyone at the same time, but it’s still workable. If we were to hold out till everyone was free at the same time, we’d never end up hanging out at all.

She should have been back by now.

A while ago, someone in one of my friend groups noted that someone hadn’t been online for two weeks. Dread set in. We all knew that our friend was very prone to getting ill, and we didn’t want to say it but we were worried she might have died. Since we don’t know each other in ‘real life’ it was entirely possible that someone could drop dead one day and we’d never get any confirmation; just left wondering what happened. We asked around in common friend circles, and nobody had heard from her, coming up on about three weeks at that point. We had to do something.

Multiple friend circles of people from all around the world, scrambling to find any scrap of information about our lost friend. One person had ‘maybe’ an address that they sent something to once, but it might have been an old house. We found about three different possible legal names, and had no way to be sure which was right. We ended up sending a letter addressed to the name we thought was most likely to be right, or to “the family of”. Someone tried ringing her house, but the people on the other end of the line didn’t know who we were, and we didn’t know who they were; we got hung up on because they thought we were stalkers. It was all desperate fumbling in the dark, but we were worried sick.

There were only ever two possible outcomes; if she came back we would find out she was alright, if she didn’t we would be left eternally hoping she would. Nobody wants to be the one to say “Hey guys, I think our friend might be dead, we should give up.” Time soon gave us our answer; she was alright. She had been stuck in hospital for a while and didn’t have access to a phone to let us know what had happened. We were all so relieved and had a laugh over how everyone overreacted, but it really did scare me. I’ve learned to really value the time I get to spend with my online friends; next time might not be so lucky, and if something were to happen it’s hard to ever get closure on it.

There’s never been a better time to pick up a new hobby.

One thing the internet’s really helped with is connecting like-minded individuals. Before the internet, if you had a niche hobby, you were probably the only person you know in your town with that hobby. Kinda lame, yeah? Nowadays, you can reach across the globe and connect with everyone who’s into the same stuff as you! Mainstream topics can have gargantuan communities, but what I find even more interesting is the weird obscure hobbies and groups, the kind that would never survive without the internet.

People online dedicate huge amounts of their free time to making resources and guides to almost everything. Need more bespoke help? You’d be hard pressed not to find someone who’s keen to chat more about their favourite pastime, if it means welcoming a new person into the fold. Guides and resources, instructional videos; it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get into carpentry, cooking or, (mine)crafting; you’ll find support along the way.

Some things really should have stayed niche.

Conspiracy theorists. Hate groups. Radical extremists. The internet’s power to connect people can also amplify voices that really didn’t need amplifying. What once were lone people with fringe beliefs - isolated and ‘alone’ - are now monstrous communities with the power to warp people’s sense of normality. There’s a critical mass where people don’t need to interact with people with outside views, they’ve got plenty of people to talk to in your own bubble. They don’t need to ‘go outside’.

We’re all susceptible to this; it’s only human. However, it’s important to stay vigilant. While you shouldn’t keep people around that make you miserable, you shouldn’t block out the first sign of dissent. Maintain a healthy variety in the people you talk to, and the content you consume.

[ANDREW TEXT]

In the rules discussion channel of a board game group I’m in, I swear sometimes it’s like I’m stuck in a time loop. I watch a random person ask a common question about the game, and then someone else will get the rules clarified for them. A few hours will pass, the conversation drifting elsewhere as people drop in and out. Suddenly, I spot it; the same question from before, but from a different person. Like clockwork, another nameless devout will rise up and deliver the answer. And again. And again. It’s like a two-line stage show where the audience is also the cast, over and over and over.

Since profile pictures and usernames are self-selected, every time I talk to someone new I get a weird little keyhole view of what who I’m talking to might be like.

This person has a picture of a cat as their profile image. Is it their cat, or did they just think the cat looked nice? Their username is ‘Millie’, is that their real life name; maybe? Or what if it’s the cat’s name? Are they pretending to be their cat? Are they a cat?

[RAZEK TEXT]

I do a wee bit of online gaming, and in a lot of these games the people you get paired with are completely random. I know nothing about this motley crew I’ve been thrown into, and yet we’re all expected to conform into a cohesive team and work together to win. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the luck of the draw has it that I’m paired with a bunch of inept clowns, and sometimes I’m paired with intelligent and skilled players who I mesh with really well. On the odd occasion, I might even strike up a good conversation with my team, build up some rapport. Start cracking jokes and bantering.

There’s a strong but ephemeral connection..

Sooner or later, the game ends. We say our goodbyes, and the game throws us back to the wind; like two ships passing in the night. There’s a slim chance we’ll ever both be in the same game again, but it doesn’t matter that much. We still had a good time, made a brief but positive impact on someone else’s day; and hey, there’s always the chance one of us sends the other a friend request before we leave.

Having a large presence online - that is, having other people follow or be ‘fans’ of you - is a mixed bag. For me it’s been really good in allowing me to get my art out there and get clients, but it’s also weird. It feels a bit like I’m up on a stage sometimes, everyone’s watching me. I’ve lost the feeling of being ‘just another guy in the crowd’. What if someone reads something I posted the wrong way? Do I keep being aloof and carefree, or will that hurt my image. Should I care?

[CHAI TEXT]

People with large presences can feel familiar, friendly, like you’re already friends. I’ve caught myself falling into this in the past. The brain’s great at filling in the details you want to be real. I realised that I had it written in my head that this person was super cool and the best and that it’d be really cool if we hung out; all extrapolation. While it’s entirely possible that they were everything I had imagined them to be, until it’s tested it’s all just imagination and fantasy. If I’ve never talked to them, how could I even know?

[DAVID TEXT]

What happens when the digital and the physical self have to intersect?

The two identities are from the same person, but they’re not the same.

One time, my parents sent me a text along the lines of “Your sister showed us your art; looking really cool Tom!”.

How.

I’d never sent my family any of my online profiles. I check my Twitter; sure enough in front of my eyes the screen tells me my sister has followed my twitter account. Abject horror. How much did they look at? What did they think? Should I start looking for a flat?

It’s not that I had anything to hide, it’s just that it felt… misaligned. Like two worlds coming together that shouldn’t. I’m sure for them it was just “Wow, look at our son go!”, but for me in the moment it was a sudden wave of confusion and dread.

One time, I was lucky enough to have a few of my internet friends visit in real life. I was showing them around my house, when I ran into my mum. It hit me. Who do I even introduce these people as? We all know each other by our online names and had been using them in conversation minutes earlier, but that would make no sense to my poor mum. And so, awkwardly, one by one my friends rattled off a set of names entirely alien to me. We all barely managed to keep straight faces as each of us discovered “Wait, this person’s called WHAT?”.

We all promptly forgot each other’s names within about two minutes.

Thanks to the internet, I met my partner.

Almost four years later we’re still going strong, twelve thousand kilometers apart. It helps a lot that a lot of our common interests can be done online, chiefly gaming and movies. But even the other stuff, we can still do together in some aspects. We always say good morning and goodnight to each other on the phone, and fill each other in on what we’ve been up to that day. If we go somewhere and see something cool, we can still share pictures and videos. If I make a really nice dinner, I can send them the recipe and they can have a taste (though that last one might depend on their cooking skills).

Of course, it’s not identical to an in-person relationship. We have to put a lot more effort into reaching out to each other and making time to hang out and talk; it won’t happen by accident. We’re both really looking forward to being able to move together, but until then, being together apart isn’t all that bad.

[WESLEY TEXT]

Listen a moment, before you go.

I am only one person. My field of view is limited, as is my experience. Take my advice with a grain of salt, I can’t prepare you for everything. There’s so much more waiting out there for you to uncover, some good, some bad; be sensible.

[CREDITS ‘N’ SHIT]

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jm-ph-2-3 · 4 years

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The "Hustle Paradox" Part 1: Are we really working hard? or are we hard working?

An essay by Morgan Adriano

Disclaimer: This is just my current perspective on the "hustle culture" and it's influence on us both positive and negative. Please take this with a grain of salt. I do not consider myself as part of the "woke" people because this is just a piece about my current reflections, observations and perspective about the topic. I am not part of the so called minimalists, essentialists, nihilist, communists, stoicist, vegetarianist, crossfitits (oops) Or any -ist out there. I'm just speaking from what I recently accrued from the different perspectives (albeit meager in number) and experiences. This is not a piece in which to condemn, criticise and judge those who are in it and support the idea that we should never work hard. But rather this piece was made with the intention to take another view and challenge the message in which we have been oversaturated within culture and mass media and to promote a better mindset. So learn what you can and apply what you must and throw what is unnecessary in the trash can. This may resonate with you and/or offend you at the same time. So................ just take a chill pill bro. Its just an opinion. -Now you maybe thinking: "Why the title. I don't understand it. Working hard is good? right?" and so I thought. Well the title was made to look nice, coherent and "proper". But it really translates to: are we working hard for our own or our goal's sake or are we just portraying an image that make us seem like we are hard working?

Join me, as you the reader, and I both immerse ourselves in my sub-par writing skills filled with grammatical errors and sickening amount of pop-culture references and into my deep dark revealing thoughts on "HUSTLE"

*Initiate X-files theme. Which I haven’t really watched and just heard it in different memes so... ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoRXhS7vlU

We are constantly bombarded with messages (From celebrities, leaders, entrepreneurs, sports icons (Shout out to the Last Dance Documentary because that was sick), public figures etc.), podcasts, motivational youtube videos, music, movies, books and etc. on why must working hard constantly 24/7/365 (Inspired by the surfaces' song. LOL). We should wake up at 4am, sleep less because sleep is for the weak, no breaks because your opponent's winning when you take a break, slave yourself to your work, work in more and hang out less. We are so absorbed to the idea that we post stories about how hardworking we are by taking pictures of your work station or the book we just read or tweet that we working in the weekends #NoVacay #WorkHard #Hustle #GrindLife . And to be completely candid with you, I was that person that I am currently describing. So heavily invested with the idea of working hard than anybody else, sacrificing my sleep, nutrition, health and my well-being for that idea. Would flex the things I’m currently doing/working on or flex so hard about how hard I’m training that it eventually ripped my shorts in the gym (Yes, this actually happened and No, nobody was their to see it. But you know what Barney said: “Whatever you do in this life, it’s not legendary unless your friends are there to see it.” So I gotta post that *curse word* to git meh sum layks and let dem now that it happened). This is true from high school through college and through my first year working. Take it from a guy (Here comes the bragging and his big fat obnoxious ego) who was able to get into provincial level competition in football and almost got into the country's amateur league (Having a jersey counts!!!>_<), studied in one of the prestigious schools in the country and graduated with latin honours. (And you may say to yourself: Wow what a pretentious arse.... HAHAHAHA.......... Aaaand you're right.) But if you stripped down everything, I just wanted to show everybody that I am a "hardworker". I want them notice how hard I studied, worked, trained not for something but just for the sake for it. It was actually overcompensating for something. And I may say this cliche statement that: "No BrO, I dO iT FoR tHe lOvE Of ThE PrOCeSs nOt The AwArdS, ThE rEcoGnITioN anD thE mOnEy" (Imagine the spongebob meme please to make it more funny). I learned this the hard way and I'm still learning, to be honest. This "lie" that you (I) tell yourself (myself) can only help you go so far to the point you reach what I call the "wall" (I would like to reference the scene from Run Fat Boy Run where Simon Pegg's Character: Dennis hits this runner’s wall)(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pttqFUviWs). -But this wall that I am describing is a different kind of wall. This may manifest by symptoms of pseudo burnout (I say pseudo because you are not really tired of what your doing something you love but you're tired of presenting your self as such frame/image). And yes this has been proven in the literature in a paper recently published this year (2020) by Dr. Nadir and colleagues from the Greendale Community College (Yes, this is obviously a joke: if you don’t get the reference. #sixseasonsandamovie and No, there is no published paper on said topic but I found one blog/rant and paper that “almost” discussed the topic hahaha!)

Blog/rant: https://dwighttowers.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/rant-burnout-and-pseudo-burnout/

Paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6587911/

This wall can force you to either: Quit or Reframe.

1. Let's say you took the first one: You quit. You say: "Nah man this thing is not for me. I will go and show that I'm "hard working" at something else. You blame the field, you blame the system, you blame society. BECAUSE WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY (youtube.com/watch?v=UkhC0caZRNU)

2. Or you reframe: You reset your mind, allow yourself to become vulnerable, let your ego be destroyed, crushed, tortured, mutilated and be stripped down to its bare nakedness.(Sorry for the imagery: The ego is really a big pain in the butt. You can learn more thru the book: Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday which I highly recommend even though I haven't read HAHAHA! But it's in my "next reading list" so don't worry). You just let everything be stripped down to it's bare chassis and look what are the components that make you (What's the engine?, the tires?, the brakes? the interior?). What are you showing to the outside word? What are the driving motives? What kind of person are you? Who are you? (Please let me reference the most funniest scene in flim: Rush Hour 3 The You? Me? Him?) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAVnOz7i-JA) Scary introspective stuff right? hahaha! -But kidding aside, it really helps that you. Yes you! recognise it as early as now. Don't wait for anybody to calling it out for you (which rarely happens if they are with agreeable people or just really don't care about you) or worse, waiting for that wall to hit you right in the face. Don't be like me (WOW such "inspiration” ) "BEFORE". It all boils down what YOU really want in life and WHO you are living for. The praise of others? or just you? (Sheesh this sounds too guru-y) -With all this talk about how this "hustle" culture, you may think that I just hate the process or I am not committed to it or I am just ungrateful privileged brat who should keep his thoughts and ideas to himself and keep my head down and put skin in the game. So my rebuttal to that is: Okay boomer... LOL Kidding aside, I did think about that but you must understand that I WAS part of the culture of hustle. I craved to be in a library or a coffee shop with my laptop and study or researched away with a good cup of iced americano with a shot of mocha and breve milk (Look at this entitled brat and his expensive coffee). I would run on 3-4 hours of sleep from staying up late "studying" (Actually have 3 youtube breaks- related to my field and 4-8 youtube breaks about cars, music reviews, overanalysing movies and productivity tips) (How Ironic). I would spend hours and hours doing “hard work”. But the question is was it effective? Was it helping me inch closer to my goals? We have long fetishised the idea of becoming busy just because other people are doing it or to show ourselves in a particular way. -You see what I am aiming here is the issue of the heart. What are the underlying motives of why you are doing these things. And this can be encapsulated simply by the most used cliche that I think most of you have heard in mainstream media , especially from Eric Thomas' motivational clips (Usually listened to this before work or a competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XIGu3Kxg2I): HWAT IS YO WAAAI? (Obviously read: Start With Why by Simon Sinek. Great book!). -To quote scripture from the gospel of Matthew 6:21 = "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.". This is such a crucial part of knowing yourself. I can't stress this enough for myself. Where it comes from, determines when it runs out. Whatever you put your priority in or in other words; where you put your heart in, thats what controls your joy. So whats controlling your joy? -And to conclude: I myself, am not saying that working hard is inherently bad. Working hard allows us to get out of the ashes of debt, failure and pain. Working hard helped birth new inventions, innovations, great people, leaders, visionaries that inspire us to do the same. And this piece does not serve as a jail pass card to be lackadaisical slumps. And eventually you may have the audacity to blame me why you didn't get where you want or what you want in life. So please don't hahaha.

We all have responsibilities in life. And it is something we must accept (Especially as I and probably most of you Gen Z'ers or post-millenials reading this essay enter *gulp "adulthood") [It's post-millennial or Gen Z not "millennial". C'mon cuh get yo facts straight]. We have a responsibility to our world, our nation, our society, our community, our friends, our family, ourselves. But also our future selves, family, friends, community, society, nation and world. If that doesn't give you perspective then I don't know what will. It is the matter of mindset. When you have a proper mindset plus the direction then hard work and ambition can be used as a tremendous tool for success. But if you allow your mindset to get out of whack and lose direction then hard work and ambition can consume you which will leave you stuck in a never ending race and feel unfulfilled with what you’re working on

-For a profound ending: Maybe this is why COVID-19 had to happen, (By the way, I am by no means downplaying the affect of this pandemic has in our lives and the lives of others. This is just a personal reflection so don't get triggered and "cancelledt" me) we have become so self-absorbed with things that don't even matter. The misguided things and narratives that we tell ourselves. Which leads us being irresponsible and unaware of the state and condition of our hearts. And hopefully, may this period may give us the opportunity to try again. To give it another go. Another crack at it.

So before embarking on your 4 hour deep focus study/work/train/mastery session (With some "lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to" blasting in the background and a aromatic cup of coffee), ask yourself? Why?........tho....... Thank you again friend, for dedicating this short time of your "busy?" or "working?" day hahaha! to read this essay. I had fun writing (*Cough typing because my handwriting still sucks) this piece. Which is evident with the references hehe. Although there are some points I haven’t explored because this topic is pretty wide and controversial I bet so stay tuned for part 2 of this 2 part essay. I hope this piece resonates with you as it resonates with me and helps you become more aware and more mindful. However, if you disagree with all my sentiments, thats great! More power to you! We have to understand that everybody's circumstance is different. We live very different lives. We have very different backgrounds, ideas and experiences. We live in very different “seasons”! We learn different things in different time periods. This was maybe my time to learn this and maybe not the best time for you. Let us not fight but rather collaborate in this continuous pursuit of clarity and the navigation of this journey we are all partaking in. Please do message me if you want so we can talk and discuss more (not argue! HAHAHA) So that I may learn from you and your views as well. Cheers my friend!

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regrettablewritings · 7 years

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Dios Meme-o! (Rafael Barba Mini-Series, Pt. 3)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Rafael’s poisons of choice (coffee and scotch) could be divided up between day and night respectively. The coffee was for obvious reasons: To keep him awake and alert, to keep him going even when his work day was driving him to the brink of insanity (as it did all too often). The use of the scotch was also typically obvious: To drown out the stresses of the day, its trials hardly ever actually being over in the grand scheme of things. A cool down of sorts to balance out the caffeinated upper.

This evening, however? Rafael wasn’t sure exactly what the scotch was trying to boot off: the stress of the workday, or the revelation that he now appeared to have a small following? He decided the answer to be both as he took another sip of his drink. He wanted to believe that it was more so the former option but there was just something about the latter that made it stand so firmly in his mind.

Probably had something to do with the fact that even after the messages sent to him about his occupation and . . . tum (Rafael fought off the desire to shudder at the word), Carisi and Rollins continued to send him two more posts of a similar vein.

Where were they even specifically even getting all these? Rafael wondered. His eyes landed on his laptop.

Words and pictures travel fast, Rollins’ voice echoed. But just how fast was what Rafael wondered.

Against his better judgement, he committed a dangerous act born of morbid curiosity, enhanced by the slow but certain influx of bourbon into his system: He typed his own name into Google.

The first few results were what he expected: References to his past cases, articles on his most recent feats of interest, a handful of articles on his words at the most recent press conference.

. . . Then there was what came after.

Rafael had heard about Tumblr, but not much if he had to be honest. Sites like Twitter or Facebook or other niche sites tended to be more of what he faced on a regular basis. But a site specifically platformed for blogging surprisingly did not cross his path as often as one might think. It therefore posed within him a sense of worry that the first time he would approach Tumblr would be because his name had become a tag on the site.

He was right to worry.

The deep blue background was offset by an assault on the eyes: text posts here, pictures there, gif sets of his past quotes to cameras before or after a court case, but mostly of him during his speech at the press conference.

His eyes weren’t sure where to look first, where to escape from first but no matter where he went, he’d always end up somewhere just as bizarre.

Some posts were weird –

“God those hands – like fricken’ face-huggers! I want them to smother me!!!” Without thinking, Rafael looked at his hands. He never really noted them as being big, per se. And despite the copious amounts of likes and reblogs featured in the notes section, and that nobody could even see them as they were now in real life, he couldn’t help but want to hide them.

At least three more Tum™ posts in either text or picture form with quadruple the notes and responses. In that moment, he began to strongly consider dieting and nearly opened up a new tab to research for that specific consideration.

“Lookit them veins in his hand. I wanna suck a hickey on them. Just slurp ‘em up like noodles.” . . . What?

Some were surprisingly nice, if not composed in a more bombastic way than what he felt was necessary or was used to –

“Oh, look at his tie!! I love that pattern!!” He had to admit, he himself was quite fond that the pink paisley tie they spoke of.

“Holy crap, you guys, he has green eyes! GREEN FREAKING EYES!!!” A little excited over something he’d considered uninteresting, but Rafael couldn’t stop the faint flutter of pride bubbling within him.

“His hair looks so smooth. He needs to be allowed to grow his hair out, he’d have beautiful long hair!” That made his lips purse. His hair hadn’t been long since high school, and even then it barely reached his shoulders. Frankly, his hair tended to get a little fluffy the longer it grew anyway.

“Handsome, dresses nicely, works hard, is a feminist – guys, I think I’m in love.” Yet another huge jump over something he didn’t consider to be too big of a deal. (But at least this person appeared to have decent standards.)

“Ok but it should be illegal to work a suit like that.” The self-importance fluttered a bit harder, both for the suggestion that he not only looked good, but for the fact that the ensembles he prided himself on were actually appreciated by complete strangers.

“Steal his look”, complete with clothes and accessories very similar to his own but for a fraction of the cost (how economic of them).

– Before dipping right back into weirdness . . .

“D.A. stands for ‘Dat Azz’” proclaimed Foodlemynoodle, who was ever so kind as to include a photo taken by the press of Rafael’s retreating form with a second picture edited to focus specifically on his ass.

“Barba looks like the type of guy who’s a stern lawyer in the streets but a spicy papi in the sheets <3.” There was so much wrong with that suggestion that Rafael didn’t know where to start.

“don’t you just wanna use his tie to tug him down and make out w/him?” The multiple notes responded all agreed. This worried Rafael, as tugging on someone’s tie could be very uncomfortable.

“I’d rather snap those suspenders tbqh,” came the response. Rafael grimaced, the memory of pain from previous accidental snappings becoming vivid for a brief moment.

“i want dat sloppy papi dick™,” announced one user, adding a gif of Spongebob Squarepants fervently licking a picture of Rafael that had been photoshopped into the original image.

It went on like this, growing increasingly more awkward and disconcerting by the scroll. It was only out of curiosity that Rafael kept going. That sick, masochistic curiosity and intrigue that compels someone to watch a train wreck or a distressingly bad YouTube video that gives you secondhand embarrassment. He’d just moved beyond what felt like the twentieth post about his “splendid tummy” when he’d come upon a post that wasn’t quite like the others in terms of text. It wasn’t crude or even necessarily complimentary per se but –

“Get you a man who looks at you the way ADA Barba looks at his coffee ❤ lol jk nobody’ll look like you like that just get ADA Barba.”

Included was the image of him at a coffee shop, receiving a cup of his favorite day drink, a rare smile gracing his features. Well. That was unnerving. Sure, he went to get coffee at an embarrassing and even likely unhealthy rate but for someone to have taken a picture of him at all while doing so was just . . . wrong.

One person called Ballr00mbombshell responded with, “Stale cinnamon roll, too jaded by this world.” This made Rafael’s brows pressed downward. Cinnamon roll? What did cinnamon rolls have to do with anything? As if his subconscious had directed him there, his sights landed on the tag section of the post:

#He was buying a cinnamon roll too!!, #such a cinnamon roll, #he probably needs something sweet if his job is dealing with such awful situations, #eat and drink on my sweet cinnamon roll son.

Okay, he thought as he moved his laptop further down his lap. Maybe I was better off not knowing . . . Wait. Cinnamon rolls. While never one to fully discriminate against foods, cinnamon rolls weren’t a thing Rafael normally got. Wait! He recognized that outfit! It was . . . It was the same damn one from the press conference! A trembling hand reached for his replenished glass of scotch and directed it to his lips, taking as hefty of a gulp as he possibly could without warranting a coughing fit.

Did he have a stalker? Already? Granted, after all his years in his field, he shouldn’t be so surprised by how fast fanaticism can rise and to what lengths. Should he tell Liv? She was so pissed the last time he avoided telling her about a threatening presence in his life . . .

As the burning liquid trickled down his throat, Rafael nearly paused it in its tracks. He realized one more thing: The angle of the photo. It was taken at the back of the shop, by the window judging by the looks of it. From the corner, he could just make out a barrel containing chips.

The girl with the Hello Kitty watercolor phone case!

An agitated grunt rumbled from Rafael’s chest and out of his mouth as the revelation became clear. He knew he wasn’t imagining things! Never before had the soft suggestion of watercolor and the innocent cuteness of a beloved children’s character worked together to produce such malcontent.

As tempting as it was to continue, the minor brush with the idea of being stalked mingled terribly with the alcohol in his disgruntled system. Rafael called it a night and tried to sleep decently.

The heavy presence of rounded stomachs and hand veins in his dreams made this out to be a difficult task.

#the spongebob part is my greatest accomplishment to date #nothing will ever top that #i will make sure that nothing i do will ever top that #that bastard meme fic #rafael barba imagines #rafael barba imagine #law and order svu imagines #svu imagine #svu imagines #law and order svu imagine #law & order svu imagines #regrettablewritings #barba imagine #barba imagines

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unionrising · 7 years

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Who are the trolls?

What we know about the men (and sometimes women) who spend their days trying to provoke a reaction on the internet.

Dissociative anonymity ("my actions can't be attributed to my person"); invisibility ("nobody can tell what I look like, or judge my tone"); asynchronicity ("my actions do not occur in real-time"); solipsistic Introjection ("I can't see these people, I have to guess at who they are and their intent"); dissociative imagination ("this is not the real world, these are not real people"); and minimising authority ("there are no authority figures here, I can act freely").

"There’s the disturbing possibility that people are creating online environments purely to express the type of racist, homophobic, or sexist speech that is no longer acceptable in public society, at work, or even at home.”

Feminist writer Lindy West receives a daily deluge of hate on Twitter and Facebook for her work on everything from body image to rape. The abuse became unbearable when one tormentor created a fake Twitter account for West’s father, who had recently passed away, and tweeted cruel comments about West.

Alt-Right Racists Teach Newbies How To Troll

Andrew Anglin’s blog, The Daily Stormer, is an anti-semitic breeding ground for racist trolls that Anglin claims is the “most visited alt-right website” in the world. “Now is the time to reach out to the masses to exponentially increase our numbers and finish (((them))),” Anglin wrote; the triple parentheses is alt-right code for Jews. ...encouraging his followers to continue being as racist as possible.“So make sure to tone down the hate speech and bigotry, okay guys? We have to appeal to norms,” he wrote in a post. “LOL! Just kidding. Keep on gassing kikes as usual, my friends. Don’t ever change.”

The Unbelievable Harassment Black Women Face Daily on Twitter

“I get attacked on a daily basis," she told AlterNet in an interview. “There’s not a day that goes by when someone isn’t trolling or harassing me. But what I’ve also noticed is that the kind of direct defense that I receive has been relatively minimal, and it usually comes from the same people every time. Some people say to me, 'Oh I see you’re handling it, so I figure that you’ve got it' or 'You’re such a strong woman. You got it. You take it on your shoulders and you’re just so good at it.' And I don’t know if it’s the strong black women trope or something else, but a lot of people feel I don’t need the help and so they don’t. I also think some people are afraid of catching the same kind of heat if they intervene directly.”

"I've had lynching threats. People send me terrible historical pictures of our ancestors being lynched. So proportionately speaking, if you're not a person of color, you will not get that. Let's say there are 100 insults in the world, there are more of them that apply to us. When a white woman gets terrible harassment about being raped, attacked or killed, that's very serious as well. But there's no way she can get the lynching threats with historical pictures of black people. So there's a whole other section of ugly, hideous things people feel they can say to us."

The truth about trolls and the men they worship

A man who threatens women can generate more concern within the tech industry than female victims of abuse. Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a well-known provocateur, hacker, and anti-Semite, is part of an internet subculture where might makes right, where the only moral code is for the superior to enforce their will on the inferior.

The “alt-right” now had an opportunity to inject racism, misogyny, and xenophobia into mainstream American politics. Provocative but obscure online rhetoric was quickly morphing into something more serious and powerful: the normalization of the politics of hate.

What was once obscure rhetoric and hate speech festering in the backwaters of the internet has since bloomed into a loose-knit extremist movement with the prospect of unprecedented influence in the White House. Here's how it happened.

2014 - Gamergate trolls target female video game developers and journalists, creating a model for the social-media mobs of the alt-right.

April 2015 - The New York Times and the Washington Post each partner with author Peter Schweizer, Breitbart's senior editor-at-large, for reporting based on his controversial investigative book Clinton Cash. During the 2016 election, Breitbart News offers a "free global broadcast" of the film adaptation—written and produced by Bannon.

June 2015 - Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president, electrifying white nationalists with his disparagement of Mexican criminals and "rapists." Trump soon garners endorsements from nearly two dozen neo-Nazi, KKK, and other extremist leaders.

October 2015 - Trump tweets an image of himself as Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the alt-right.

March 2016 - Milo Yiannopoulos and a fellow Breitbart writer publish a lengthy "Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right," denying the movement's leaders are racist and calling them "dangerously bright."

September 2016 - "Racialist" leaders, led by Richard Spencer, hold a press conference characterized as a "coming-out party" for the movement. Yiannopoulos ramps up a tour of college campuses. The Anti-Defamation League lists cartoon character Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol.

November 2016 - Spencer says the alt-right is "the vanguard of Trumpian populism" and will be a "critical force" pushing Trump "in the right direction." Trump names Bannon as his White House chief strategist.

It never would have happened without Trump acting as troll in chief. Already admired by extremists for his ongoing birther crusade against President Barack Obama, Trump riveted their attention when he announced his White House run and vowed to build a border wall to keep out Mexican criminals and "rapists." That soon earned him praise from a who's who of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and militia supporters.

Prior to Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, former head of the alt-right “news” website Breitbart, as his campaign chief (and later White House chief strategist), many people and members of the media wrote off the site and its reporters as trolling the general populace — even though it claimed around 8 million readers at the beginning of the year, a number that would jump to over 18 million thanks to the election. As polls and pundits dismissed Trump’s chances of winning in the lead-up to the election, many people dismissed alt-right trolling, too.

"It's not just that [journalists] are leftists and cucks," anti-Semite Richard Spencer railed at a recent meeting filmed by The Atlantic. "Indeed, one wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem."

"I am not a troll, but I kind of get them," says Spencer. "They are real and in some ways they have advanced the movement more than I have."

Trump's brazen political style thrilled the trolls—and he showed them, by engaging them throughout his campaign, that they could have political currency.

It’s not a failure of human intelligence that many people failed to take “trolling” more seriously. Much in the same way that fake news on Facebook was easy to dismiss until people realized its potential to massively influence many voters’ viewpoints, trolling obfuscates truth and reality, often through satirical means, in order to mask sincere propaganda.

The alt-right has elevated fringe trolling into a virulent form of propaganda that Spencer and others dub "meme magic." Trolls push hateful memes such as the Jewish "Happy Merchant" and the black "dindu nuffin" (a slur meant to echo "I didn't do nothin'") without fear of censure, thanks to the anonymity of Twitter and other platforms. Some journalists have speculated that the spread of this content is in part the work of Russian troll farms, though the extent of foreign involvement is unknown.

San Francisco-based entrepreneur and alt-right blogger Curtis Yarvin laid out a political philosophy known as neoreaction or the "Dark Enlightenment." Combining a technocratic sensibility with reactionary political thought, neoreaction rejects Enlightenment concepts such as democracy and equality and instead advocates something much closer to authoritarianism.

Peter Thiel, who reportedly donated more than $1 million to Trump's campaign and was named to his transition team in November, has circled neoreactionary ideas. "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," he wrote on the Cato Institute's blog in 2009, adding that women and "welfare beneficiaries" have through their voting habits "rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."

Trolling distorts reality in order to trick you into dismissing its message

Meme culture allowed the alt-right’s white supremacy to spread online. “Don’t feed the trolls” failed spectacularly as a tactic during the 2016 election cycle, stunning many people who assumed the alt-right’s tactics were juvenile and easily seen-through.

One of the most significant and pernicious ways that members of the alt-right use trolling is to create a sincerity-proof chamber of distortion surrounding what their actual message is. They do this by pretending that what they’re really doing is satirically spoofing how progressives and members of the media view conservatives.

If you try to play along with the alt-right’s hyperbole by intellectualizing it (for example, by painting it primarily as cultural commentary), dismissing it as trolling, or simply ignoring it altogether, you risk glossing over actual dangerous messages: racist, misogynistic, bigoted, and violent symbolism and language.

Anglin lays out the unifying themes of the alt-right movement — misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, and white nationalism — and explains how meme culture, trolling, and conspiracy theories have linked them under one umbrella term. Further garnishing that hate-filled combination with a large dollop of irony is what allows the alt-right’s troll culture, according to Anglin, to spread its white supremacist message.

Anglin acknowledges in his blog post that the alt-right’s use of ironic hyperbole “can be confusing to the mainstream, given the level of irony involved. The amount of humor and vulgarity confuses people.”

But he’s also very clear that the point of using irony is to mask something utterly straightforward: “The true nature of the movement, however, is serious and idealistic.” In a postmodern, post-ironic culture, he argues, “absolute idealism must be couched in irony in order to be taken seriously.”

What Anglin calls “idealism,” many people consider dangerous white nationalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/09/trolls-men-witch-hunt-internet

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-white-nationalists-hate-racism-power

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/alt-right-timeline-bannon-breitbart-trump

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/23/13659634/alt-right-trolling

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness-weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man

http://www.alternet.org/unbelievable-harassment-black-women-face-daily-twitter

http://www.newstatesman.com/helen-lewis/2013/07/who-are-trolls

http://www.vocativ.com/354901/alt-right-racists-teach-newbies-how-to-troll-following-hillary-clinton-speech/

http://b1nd1.deviantart.com/art/Internet-Jerks-207469542

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2015/02/twitter-ceo-vows-fix-trolling-problem

#milo yiannopoulos #richard spencer #steve bannon #weev #andrew anglin #curtis yarvin #peter thiel #breitbart #stop trump #white supremecists #misogyny #anti-semitism #racism

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ipledgeallegiancetothebrand · 6 years

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In many ways, I grew up online. I initially made a Tumblr because I felt like I didn’t fit in at my high school, and was lucky to quickly find my place, my corner of the Internet where things made sense. I just spent a few minutes going through my first blog, all the way to November 2010, and can’t help but smile. Somewhere between the Green Day gifs and Harry Potter memes, my heart was, fundamentally, in the right place. As strong as the secondhand embarrassment can get, I love having this perfect little archive frozen, just in case I ever want to see my to-do lists from when I was fifteen or to remember August 20, 2011 as the day that an AFI lyric saved my life or to listen to a mashup of Ke$ha and The Beatles that definitely rocked my world a little too hard at the time. In a weird way, I also think I have become the type of person I used to look up to, someone who reads as ambitious and successful (not in a “I sold my soul to corporate America and will languish away in complacent silence for the rest of my privileged days” way but in a “I’m going to make this capitalist framework work for me and pursue interests that align with my values and skills as best as I can” way), and that’s a confidence boost for sure.

Tumblr also introduced me to invaluable resources about queer identities and mental health, and, in a house that increasingly turned to Fox for political commentary, gave me a better understanding of what was actually happening in the world around me. On an even deeper level, as I became more socially anxious and began to fight more frequently with the people around me in real life, I also felt like Tumblr brought out the best in me. When anons told me about their crush or mutual followers asked for song recommendations, I felt empowered, compassionate, and stable, more connected to the basic humanity of the world with just a little bit of distance, finding my own way but not feeling nearly as lonely as I did before.

At the same time that Tumblr helped me gain a sense of personhood in a house and a family and, I felt, a world that wanted to have me flattened into a convenient singular dimension, though it also introduced me to one of the darkest pockets of social media. I want to talk about how eating disorder blogs on Tumblr had and continue to have this fascinating and disturbing habit of referring to anorexia and bulimia (this was before the phrase EDNOS, or “eating disorder not otherwise specified,” became mainstream on this site) by the very human names of Ana and Mia, and what it means to brand an illness.

Bluntly, it’s fucked up, but genius. It’s a rebranding of the distant and impersonal (all those Big Picture societal pressures, starting from media depictions of an idealized and anonymous female body, that people have written about as harmful to body image, specifically in the context of adolescent girls) into the intimate and personal. Judging from a Pop Sugar article about their use on Tumblr, Ana and Mia emerged as early as 2007 as a way of making it easier to talk about eating disorders, but I think their power goes beyond that, into the invisible territory of branding and loyalty.

“Words have meaning, but names have power,” I remember reading once, and the act of naming is a central component to some of the most powerful, enduring origin stories around the globe, including the Judeo-Christian creation myth. Naming -- or refusing to name -- features prominently in other types of literature, from T.S. Eliot’s "The Naming of Cats" in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (a poem that takes a hard turn to the biblical in the stage adaptation) to Rumpelstiltskin, from Odysseus telling Polyphemus that he is “nobody” to the monster that Frankenstein creates and leaves anonymous as a shadow version of Adam. As strange as it seems to consider the personification of anorexia and bulimia as part of this literary and religious tradition of naming, I think they’re part of the same cultural impulse.

Somehow, the two most recognizable forms of disordered eating become all the more powerful for having human names. In real life, Ana and Mia could be classmates, the girls next door, childhood friends, but come to mind as most likely white and most likely pretty; in this Thought Catalog world of fluffy online content, Ana and Mia are user-friendly. They’re perfect candidates for an “open letter” addressed to them by name, but also easy to tag on blogging posts and forums -- much easier than the red-flag “anorexia” or “bulimia” -- and easy to signal, coded and secretive, digital shorthand for a dark version of community through the incredibly lonely process of feeling an eating disorder take over.

As someone who is eating takeout poutine in bed right now, five days into anorexia recovery after scraping the absolute bottom last week, I am curious about why Ana and Mia continue to appeal to a broad range of Internet users and never appealed to me. I think it comes down to the fact that I see Ana and Mia as a way to personify and simplify eating disorders, which so often seem to come from the top down or outside in, but I did not have that experience with anorexia. My eating disorder was an intellectual and anti-capitalist exercise in self-control and self-hatred (this makes me sound like a total jerk and also a nerd, but it’s accurate); I didn’t want to spend money on food, because I hated spending money, so I grew to hate that I felt hunger, this wasteful and useless emotion, and I began restricting. It was very important to me to be self-contained and completely self-directed; I never counted calories, told anyone, or looked at thinspo for motivation. Ana and Mia -- and the often-intoxicating culture of thinspo -- meant nothing to me because I did not care about appeasing an imaginary friend, or even reaching out to other people with eating disorders to keep each other accountable, and I did not care about the visuals of seeing my wrists get smaller or my cheekbones protrude. I became addicted to the feelings of thinness, of lying in bed and not being able to stand, of refusing food with a smile, of knowing that it was my decision.

Ana and Mia are the worst of Tumblr culture. As I look back at my blog

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