#this meme has been making the rounds on twitter so i wanted to toss in my hat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

enneamage · 1 year

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The original incel essay post got way out of hand, so this is a shortened version, which is funny because it’s still pretty long. For now I’m rounding it down to the concern I have for The Nerd Youth and the ‘no bitches’ meme circulating among them. I want to say it’s not unusual for a generation settling an internet frontier (new scene, new website, new movement) to do something oddly regressive, because they're New Humans and don't know how things are connected yet. It’s not unusual for them to pick up the nearest seemingly-safe sticks they can find and jab each other with them to get some conversation / social hierarchy going, even if those sticks are really loaded with history and negative consequences.

Internalising incelisms

‘if you haven’t had X sexual/romantic experience by Y date you’re a ruined person’ is a pillar of incel thinking, so making people for being virgins or single is keeping that attitude alive, even if the person throwing the insult isn’t technically an “incel” themselves. Incels are partly a symptom of a much bigger problem culture has with treating the number and availability of sexual partners in your life as a persons overall value, because the manosphere didn’t just make that concept up themselves.

Underneath the rise in ‘bitches’ memes going around it’s clear that this is just people taking shots at an easy target because society puts relationships high on the social success escalator; if someone is dating you, you’re apparently doing something right, and slightly less suffocated by the loneliness problem in the west. In the context of hookups, you’re appealing and socially acceptable to attractive strangers, getting physical fulfillment without putting down vulnerable attachments. Overall, you’re capable of fulfilling someone else and someone else finds you worthy of fulfilling, a successful social exchange. On the flip side, you’re apparently a loser If you don’t have that. It’s got its barbs because it’s based on a simplistic understanding of sex & relationships, even from the people using it, and it really takes root where people tend to be isolated online.

The Valley Of The Bitchless

Why are people just tossing the phrase ‘getting bitches’ out there like it’s nothing again? I know it’s ironic but is it. Is it really. Because it’s looking like people kinda mean it even if its hyperbolic.

More than half the value of this meme comes from the fact that ‘getting bitches’ is meant to be easy for the Cool People but hard for either you or the person you’re insulting. Being alone was turned into a stick to poke people with because it was easy to weaponize people's insecurity about being awkward and unlovable, especially online. People then internalize this insecurity and then throw it back at other people, causing a loop. People attack each other for not conforming to a vision of what a "desirable person" is, and in some circles that vision comes dangerously close to the incel invention of 'Chad and Stacey'.

'Chad and Stacey' are the perfectly beautiful, socially gifted, perfectly 'normal' mythological creatures of incel thought. The idea of "Chad" came from the mind of people who defined themselves by their social exclusion. They obsessively poured over what they felt they didn't have and built an image of 'the perfect person' based on media and everything they felt they lacked. In the online circles I've been watching, there's a building pyramid of value based on how far removed people are from the internet and its cultures (intense niche interests, unusual hobbies, social anxiety, looks), and it's a validation of the existence of Chads & Staceys by everything but name and a few cosmetic changes. It's really not that different when a Twitter user with a picrew icon does it.

“Uncool” people fuck plenty, you’re fine

Here's the secret-- our sex neurotic culture actually isn’t talking about sex for sex's sake, and we haven't been for a long time. We're talking about soothing an anxiety, proving that you're performing your life correctly by using sex as a scorecard. Notice that sex isn't remotely cool when the swingers or the nerds or the band kids pull it off? Some people are calling the shots based on personality and looks, but there's another part where it's not cool because it wasn't achieved by playing the game that sex is meant to keep score of. You weren't tough, you weren't cool, you didn't handle yourself in the right way, you didn't go to the right places or do the right things. It's meant to be a reward for doing the right things, a validation of worth, a story you can brag about, and it has vanishingly little to do with the other person except maybe how good they were to look at. This is a pretty deeply rooted mainstream problem, and if you look for it, you’ll find it in a lot of different places.

I’m going to make a bold statement: I know people who have had sex on a scale that qualifies as modern history. They also fail the ‘cultural coolness’ test with flying colors. Turns out that someone inviting, fun and unpretentious is more personable than the intimidating 2 cool 4 anything archetype, even though certain internet standards are more likely to punish you for being the former than the latter.

fin

I feel like these things are taking root in very-online young people who are getting into their heads about how far removed from society they are because of who/how they are. This is the incel pipeline, it’s a part of what starts to prey on people’s mental health and drives them deeper into isolation, it’s just that these people aren’t in the incel demographic.

This is happening every day in certain online circles, and it's really unsettling to watch how young it goes, even though I do know that some version of it has been around for ages. Peer to peer bullying over attractiveness/lovability isn't new, but seeing a surge of people going after each other for being Bitchess and single in a world that openly considers incels to be a terrorist threat is bizarre. Really gotta emphasize we're drinking the sewer water here.

#I could go on for so much longer about this but I needed to not write a book #I left out the gender parts (and by god there are gender parts)#and the rise of loneliness everywhere #I had to stop OTL #Mage rails against the myth of the normie yet again #mageessay

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monsterenergysimp · 4 years

Text

Permanence

corpse husband x fem!reader

summary: you meet corpse on a stream and you’re surprised when he reaches out to you

warnings: cursing, mentions of tattooing

word count: 1.9k

notes: This is proof read but could have missed some stuff. This is my first corpse fic and my first time writing fanfic since I posted that super cringey book on wattpad when I was like 12 or something. I’d appreciate feed back so please reach out to me :)

main blog @itsmysleepover

read part 2 here!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You were cleaning up your station so you can get home and stream. You loved your day job as a tattoo artist but you also really enjoyed streaming. It started as a way to promote yourself as an artist and the shop you worked at but it eventually became a really fun way to destress at the end of the week (or day if you were really itching to stream). “Hey Y/N was that your last client?” your boss, KC, asked as she walked to the front of the shop and put new flash drawings on the walls.

“Yes ma’am!” You said back excitedly. You finished cleaning your station and tossed your black gloves in the trash. “And you can’t trick me into staying and taking walk-ins,” you joked with her. She rolled her eyes and walked back into her office “It was one time,” she said as you slid on your jacket. As you walked out your phone buzzed in your pocket and you checked to see who had texted you. It was a message from Sean asking if you were free to play Among Us with him and some other streamers. You replied that you were on your way home right now and totally down. You were excited to see who was playing this time around since their Among Us streams are super entertaining and have gotten really popular.

On your way back you tweeted and posted to your Instagram story that you’d be streaming soon and set up all your stuff once you made it home. After a few minutes, you had a couple of thousand people watching. You entered the discord chat and Sean spoke up. “Everyone this is Y/N she’s sensitive so be gentle.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you guys and I’m not gentle, I'm ruthless,” You say into your mic and notice the chat calling you a liar. Everyone was in the lobby waiting for the game to start. “You sound way too sweet to be ruthless,” Corpse said. The countdown started and you were imposter with Charlie.

“This should be fun,” you told the stream. Yout tried playing strategically but after such a long shift your brain was mush. You saw Poki in nav and killed her then vented into shields. Not long after the body was reported and you were sure you were going to get voted out or at least sussed.

“Where was the body?” Felix asked. “Nav and I didn’t see anyone near there so whoever is imposter must have vented,” Corpse responded. Felix spoke up again. “I think I saw Y/N walk that way and I haven’t seen her since.”

Shit, shit, shit shit. “I’m in shield right now so-” you said trying to defend yourself but Charlie spoke up. “I was doing tasks with her earlier and I saw her walk into shields so she’s safe but I’m still not sure about Rae.” Everyone discussed a bit more and some people, including Corpse, voted for you but Rae got the majority vote and was ejected. You released your breath and kept playing being extra careful.

“Okay, guys that was super close. Corpse knows and is out to get me,” you said to the chat. You were eventually voted off but one round later victory was written across your screen with your ghost and Charlie’s avatar. “Good game guys,” Corpse said.

“I told you guys I was ruthless!”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You sat at your station doing nothing because a client had canceled a four-hour session. You were listening to music and sketching some stuff but you were bored out of your mind and you didn’t want to leave in case you got a walk-in. The music got quiet as you received a twitter notification saying someone had messaged you. You reached for your phone and saw you had gotten a dm from Corpse.

C: hey :)

You didn’t know what to respond. You were mostly confused as to why he decided to message you out of the blue. Did he want something? But what would he want?

Y: Hii! This is sudden

C: was i bothering you?

shit sorry!

Y: Youre fine I wasn’t doing anything rn

C: how has your day been

i dont usually do stuff like this

Y: Im glad you did im doing better now I was so bored

C: what were you doing that was so terrible

Y: NOTHING! thats the problem :(

C: im sure youll find something to do

You stared at his message. Unsure what to respond.

Y: Im gonna give myself a tattoo

C: what?

NO!

You tossed the needles you used for your tattoo into the sharps box. “Oh my god you didn’t,” KC said. She noticed the wrap on your calve from the tattoo you just gave yourself out of boredom. “It’s not my fault I didn’t have anything else to do!” You said trying to defend yourself. She sighed and just shook her head. “Just go home business is slow today.” It was raining so the shop probably wasn’t going to get a walk-in anyway and you didn’t have any more clients for the day. It was only 2 pm but you drove home and after making lunch for yourself decided to stream. You weren’t expecting too many people so it was bound to be super chill. Your leg felt sore reminding you of the tattoo. You snapped a quick pic of the fresh jack-o-lantern on the side of your calve and messaged it to Corpse.

Y: [image] it came out nice!

C: thats super cool actually

i was concerned why you would just give yourself a tattoo but i found your instagram and youre super talented

Y: Thank you!

For some reason, it felt strange to just have that be the end of your response.

Y: Im about to start streaming if you wanted to watch

[link]

C: ill be watching ;)

What’s that supposed to mean?

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You sat in your apartment watching tv, hand lost in a bag of Doritos, and scrolling through twitter. You had stopped paying attention to the anime playing on the screen since you’ve watched it a hundred times and knew you wouldn’t miss anything. It was Saturday and you usually take those days off. Take the time to do chores or meet up with some friends but today you felt like not doing any of those things. As you continue your endless scroll (not helping the twitter addiction you told yourself you’d try to get a handle on) you got a message from Corpse.

C: wanna talk?

You looked down at the message unsure of how to answer. It was a simple yes or no and the obvious answer was yes. You and Corpse had started talking more regularly. You still didn’t have each other’s phone numbers but it was fine. Your conversations weren’t too big-- just you sending him memes, tiktoks, and telling him how much you liked the songs he would drop. Or him complimenting a tattoo you did. Sometimes he’d message you during streams telling you funny stuff his fans would say in the chat and you’d do the same. You learned a bit about each other but nothing too deep or serious. Like how you two lived a few cities away and you both really liked Donnie Darko. When Sean first invited you to that game out of everyone else there you were most excited to meet Corpse. He’s just so sweet and funny. Of course, you’d love to talk to him but you were also itching to talk to him and the last thing you’d ever want to do was make him uncomfortable.

Y: Yeah id love to talk

Here goes nothing.

Y: Wanna facetime or something?

No pressure or anything it could even be a regular call

I think facetime is just my default lol

You sent those last two messages quickly after you had sent the first. You wished you could know what he was thinking. It was killing you to think you had turned him off from talking to you completely. You put your phone down on the couch and went to wash your hand of Dorito dust. When you got back from the kitchen you turned off the tv and tossed yourself onto the couch.

Still no message.

Why am I so fucking stupid?

Just as you were standing up to stretch from sitting on the couch all day your phone buzzed. You reached for it fast and looked to see that it was him. You became super excited still not even knowing what the message said. It could have told you to never talk to him again for all you knew.

C: sure lets facetime

xxx-xxx-xxxx

You had his phone number. You added him to your small but growing contact list and called. You sat on your couch waiting for a response when he finally picked up the screen was black. It didn’t upset you; you kind of expected it and didn’t care what he had to do to make himself more comfortable during this call.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was raspier than usual.

“Did you just wake up?” You asked and looked at the time. It was about a little past noon and you had only eaten Doritos all day. Shit, you should probably make a decent meal.

“Not that long ago but yeah,” he responded and giggled. That giggle.

“Well, I’ve eaten nothing but Doritos all day while rewatching Ouran High School Host Club, so you’re welcome to join me as I make myself something to eat.”

“Sounds like fun; what are we eating?”

“I don’t know yet,” You said as you stood up and made your way to the kitchen. You opened the pantry and looked. You noticed a can of diced tomatoes and reached for it then checked the expiration date. It was still good. On your counter were some onions and garlic. “How about some tomato soup?”

“Sounds delicious.” you smiled at Corpse and your phone screen not knowing if he was also looking at his screen or not. “You’re really pretty-- you know that?”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to--”

“I’ve already told you what an incredible artist you are so many times I bet you’re tired of hearing it, but you already know what a talented artist you are.”

“That is very kind of you Corpse,” you said to him bashfully as you chopped the onion and opened the can of tomatoes. “But once again you don’t have to reach so far to compliment me.”

“I’m not reaching you are talented and beautiful and--”

“I thought I was pretty.” You could hear him chuckle with a smile on his face. “You’re both,” he said. You could feel your face getting warm from blushing.

“Fuck you you’re making me blush. My face is all hot and stuff.”

He laughed at how flustered you got. “That’s the cutest thing ever.”

You didn’t know how to respond so you just put some olive oil in a pot and tossed in your onions. It became silent but it was a comfortable silence. You turned the stove on and watched the flame for a few seconds. “If it was dark we could pretend we were together and having a bonfire or something,” you said to the phone as you turned the camera to show him the flame (still not 100 percent sure if he was looking at you or not).

“I’ll put it on the list of things to do when you visit me someday.”

#corpse husband #corpse husband x reader #corpse husband imagine #corpse husband imagines #corpse husband x y/n #youtubers #caffeinated ramblings

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dvp95 · 5 years

Text

can’t breathe when you touch my sleeve - chapter 3

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: e (eventually)

warnings: none

tags: alternate universe, slow burn, fluff & humour, tiny bit of inner turmoil wrt sexuality but trust me it’s not that deep, eventual smut, idiots in love

word count: 3,385 for this chapter (12,653 total)

summary: Dan keeps making a fool of himself in interviews, to the point where it’s basically a meme. Now he’s got to sit down for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the YouTuber he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

read from the beginning on ao3 or on tumblr!

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

Dan has been dreading the seemingly-inevitable call from his family, now that filmed interviews are being uploaded and live interviews are starting in the next few days, so he’s almost disappointed when it never comes.

Surely his parents know he’s in London. There’s promotion for his show on a couple different channels they watch, and his dad has always been fairly good at keeping up with entertainment news. Adrian follows him on Instagram, but - and Dan isn’t proud of this - he can’t remember if Adrian still lives in Wokingham or not. He can’t even remember how old Adrian is without doing the math.

So maybe they haven’t been keeping up with Netflix shit, maybe Adrian isn’t home to tell their parents that he’s in town, but surely, surely some well-meaning friend of the family will say something? That’s always been the case when he comes to town.

After almost a whole week, though, Dan cracks. He calls his mum. It goes to voicemail.

That makes him panic a little, but she texts him an, at work … call you when I’m home x. So, questionable ellipses usage aside, Dan is comfortably reassured that his entire family isn’t dead.

Dan busies himself with catching up on the Heatwave cast interviews he hasn’t watched yet. Patrick doesn’t like to watch them and Jaime couldn’t give a shit one way or the other, but Dan is unable to allow a video of him to exist without knowing exactly what it contains. That’s a control thing, mostly, but he also doesn’t want to be blindsided by a new Daniel Interview Meme that he doesn’t understand.

He types his own name into the YouTube search bar and feels his heartrate pick up when he sees a thumbnail from BBC Radio One.

Thinking about Phil makes his heart race like he’s a teenager with a crush, and he presses play just so he can listen to Phil talk. He can barely remember what he said in the interview, so completely caught up in Phil’s eyes and grin as he’d been.

The interview itself is good. Nothing special, in terms of the actual things they talk about, but Dan can feel the difference in the way he speaks to Phil versus the way he’s spoken to anyone else - comfort. He had been so immediately comfortable with their back-and-forth, only awkward because he’d been trying so hard not to think about what Phil looked like under his nice clothes.

Dan wonders if anyone else can see the difference or if he only notices because he’s so attuned to his own body language, has the advantage of knowing the whole context.

He scrolls idly through the comments and feels heat rise to his face.

Yeah. People noticed.

Lots of comments are just about Dan or the show or the lack of Patrick or Jaime, but there’s more than a few that are about Dan and Phil’s apparent chemistry. Phil, being an out gay man with no partner and a fanbase, probably has to deal with these types of comments all the time, but it’s new for Dan.

Dan shakes his head to try and clear it. He doesn’t want to get stuck in YouTube comments and feel impotent irritation every time someone replies, ‘uh, Daniel Howell is straight’, like they know him. Like he’s ever said that.

He’s been photographed with women, because he’s casually dated them over the past decade, but he’s never said he’s straight. And it never works out with them anyway.

Dating girls is fine - they’re all softness and little sighs and hands that look so extremely small wrapped in his own - but he doesn’t think he can ever be with one for a significant amount of time. That thought is one he usually keeps locked in his mental box, but. He doesn’t shy away from it this time.

Even if he could admit it to himself proper, it’s easier for Dan to just not talk about it publicly. He hasn’t dated anyone seriously enough for it to be an issue in ten years. Nobody needs to know that every time he’s inside a woman he remembers why it never progresses past that.

It’s fine. It’s always fine. It’s just, if he’s completely honest with himself, 'fine’ isn’t what he wants to settle for.

“Moot point anyway,” Dan mumbles to himself, clicking over to Phil’s channel for a distraction. “Not like you’re gonna do anything about it, you big fucking coward.”

Phil has uploaded the video he told Dan about when Dan was busy trying not to stare at his mouth. It’s such a welcome distraction that Dan almost doesn’t clock the title and thumbnail for the buffoonery they are.

IS MY DOG PSYCHIC?

The title doesn’t change when Dan blinks. Neither does the image of Thor, edited to be wearing round glasses in front of a crystal ball.

“What,” Dan says, clicking on the video before any of it really sinks in.

“Hi guys,” says Phil. He already looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “I know you read the title and you’re like, what, but I promise it is not clickbait! As I’m sure many of you know, my grandma had 'the gift’, and sometimes I think she passed it on to me. The question is, did I pass it on to my son?”

Phil pulls an over-exaggerated thoughtful expression and then breaks, giggling and shaking his head at himself.

“I know it’s stupid, but, I also figured it might be funny? I dunno, you tell me.”

It’s exactly as silly as Dan expects it to be. Phil sits on his floor with Thor while the dog 'reads’ his tarot cards. Dan can see why this video gave Phil a hard time in editing. There are a lot of close ups of Thor and the cards, filmed more like a comedy skit than a vlog.

He finds himself laughing along and getting way too invested in what the tarot cards mean, and he knows first hand how much work Phil put into this, so Dan clicks the share button before he can overthink it.

tbh watching amazingthorgi do anything could make a believer out of me, he tweets alongside the link.

Most of America is asleep still, but that doesn’t stop hundreds of people replying. Dan’s really got nothing better to do while he waits for his mum to call, so he settles in to respond to some of them. He makes a couple bad jokes, commiserates with some of them over not being able to have a dog yet, and ignores any mention of Phil.

Maybe that’s childish of him. He is sharing Phil’s work, after all. He sighs and replies to an innocuous question about how he knows Phil. met during this and then he let me meet his dog so now he’s not getting rid of me, Dan says with a link to the BBC Radio One interview.

His phone chirps with a Twitter notification and he taps it warily, still scrolling through replies on his laptop.

@AmazingPhil @danielhowell You saw his face now you’re a believer? He’ll tell your fortune anytime! It’s accompanied with dog and sparkle and crystal ball and, inexplicably, sock emojis.

Dan laughs, the sound of it almost surprising him. It’s impossible not to feel some kind of way when Phil is the way he is, so cheerful and dorky and fun.

He likes the tweet, but responds by messaging Phil - do you have me on notif or are you just always online - because he doesn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire that is Twitter stans. He can already imagine the argument threads about his sexuality that he usually tries so hard to avoid.

The thought of strangers picking apart something he’s not even comfortable with himself is abhorrent, makes him itch, and he puts on some older AmazingPhil videos to calm himself back down.

That depends

on?

Which one is lamer lmao

Phil’s voice filling the lonely hotel room and his words taking up space on Dan’s screen where something anxiety-inducing might have otherwise been is almost enough to make Dan as comfortable as Phil’s physical presence does.

Almost. It’s unreal how much Dan wants to reach through both of his screens to pull Phil closer.

Dan hides his smile in his hand, even though nobody is around to see it, and replies, tbh those are equally lame so you might as well go with the truth

I was on Twitter anyway. I really shouldn’t be, I’m supposed to be responding to emails. Phil keeps typing, then stops, then repeats that process a few times before he finally adds, I should go do that, but you can call or facetime me if you want to keep talking or whatever? It’s easier not to type/text while I’m doing emails lol

And, in a third message, a string of numbers. Phil’s phone number.

Well, that sounds better than using Phil’s videos as background noise. Dan shuts his laptop and gets out of bed to fuss with his hair.

“You’re such an idiot,” he tells his judgemental reflection. It, thankfully, does not respond.

Once he’s gotten his hair into some semblance of order - it’s mostly still straight from yesterday, but it got all sleep-mussed and a bit wavy in the front overnight - Dan tosses on a shirt and video calls the number Phil gave him.

Phil picks up with a big grin and sleepy eyes, and Dan almost hangs up on him to stop the heart palpitations in their tracks. “Hi!”

“Hey, you just wake up?” Dan asks, getting comfortable in the hotel room armchair. It feels weird to lie back down in bed while they’re chatting. Phil is at his desk, phone propped up so he can use both hands to type. His glasses are a little crooked and his shirt is too big on him, exposing his collarbones whenever he leans forward. Unfortunately, he looks like serious wank material right now.

“Yeah, had my first coffee already, though,” says Phil. “You would not like me before my coffee.”

“Barely like you now, mate,” Dan says to try and hide his blush at the idea of seeing Phil first thing in the morning. Phil just laughs. It’s tinny through Dan’s phone speaker, but it still makes Dan feel warm.

“You’re awfully chatty for someone who doesn’t like me,” says Phil.

“I’m only bored, don’t flatter yourself,” says Dan. “My mum’s supposed to call me in a few hours, so I’m just kind of waiting around til then.”

“Oh, yeah, you haven’t had the chance to go home yet, have you?” Phil’s tongue pokes out between his teeth as he concentrates on whatever he’s reading. “My mum would be going out of her gourd. When was the last time you went home?”

Dan doesn’t really like the way that Phil keeps calling it 'home.’ Wokingham hasn’t been home in a very long time.

He doesn’t want to get into that, though, so he just shrugs. “Uh, Christmas?”

“Dan,” Phil says, looking appalled. “It’s August.”

“I don’t live here,” says Dan. “And I’m busy. My family gets it.”

Phil hums, a little disapproving still. Dan has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t say anything scathing, reminding himself that some people actually like their parents.

It’s not that Dan doesn’t love them, because he does, it’s just. Complicated.

“Do you get to see your family often?” Dan asks, desperate to get the attention off of how shit a son he is.

“Not as often as I’d like,” says Phil. He sounds so genuinely sad about it, like he really would like nothing more than to go visit his parents every weekend. “My brother lives in town, so I see him a lot.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, he’s -” Phil cuts himself off, then, and gives Dan an apologetic sort of look through his screen. “You don’t want to hear about my family.”

“I do,” Dan says, and he’s surprised by how much he means it. He shifts in the armchair. It isn’t that comfortable. “Dude, I already know every song on your iTunes, what’s so weird about telling me stuff about your family? They clearly mean a lot to you.”

He has no idea how to interpret the expression on Phil’s face, but whatever it is shifts into a smile as he turns back to his computer. “Okay, his name’s Martyn, he’s older than me, we work together -”

This time, Dan cuts him off. “You do? I haven’t seen him on your channel.”

“He’s not really interested in being on camera. We actually run IRL Merch together, although honestly it’s mostly Martyn.”

Phil explains the business to Dan, who feels himself getting more and more awed by the amount of stuff Phil does on any given day. It isn’t just sitting in front of his camera and then in front of his computer for a handful of hours.

Granted, Dan never thought that being a YouTuber was easy, or everyone would do it, but Phil seems to add things onto his plate that he doesn’t really need to do.

Dan listens for a little while, changing positions in the armchair a few times before he gives up and flops back onto the bed.

“Phil,” he says, holding his phone high above his head and making a face at the angle. It’s fine, really, Phil has barely been glancing at him this whole time. Now that Dan has some kind of idea about the number of people Phil works with, he gets the hours of emails thing. “Do you ever take a break? Hang out with your friends?”

“What friends?” Phil jokes, but Dan senses there’s some truth behind it.

“Okay, first of all,” says Dan, “big mood.”

Phil’s laugh seems like it’s surprised out of him, and his eyes flick to his phone again. They linger on Dan for a long moment before turning away again. Although, to be fair, that may be lag from shitty hotel wifi. “Is it?”

“Yeah, man, like I’ve got any fucking friends. Second of all, you need to take some breaks or you’re going to burn the fuck out.”

“Trust me, I know,” says Phil.

“I know Thor already reminds you to take breaks,” says Dan. “But he can’t force you to. I can.”

“You’re gonna force me to take breaks?” Phil hums, his eyebrows raising. “How exactly are you going to manage that when you’re back in Atlanta?”

“I can be very annoying with nothing but an internet connection,” Dan promises. “You wanna see?”

“No, no, I believe you, and I need to get this done, please don’t.”

They both laugh, quiet, and Dan curls up on his side to just watch Phil work for a little while. Phil runs his fingers through his hair every so often and mouths along to whatever he types. Dan has no idea how one person can simultaneously be the hottest and the most adorable thing ever.

“I have a brother too,” Dan offers.

“Do you?” Phil asks, more surprised than Dan expects him to be. “That’s not on your Wikipedia.”

“He doesn’t like the attention,” says Dan. It’s a half-truth. Most of what he says about his family are half-truths. “But you’re not, like, a stan account or the media or whatever.”

“Technically, I am both,” Phil jokes. “I’ll keep it to myself, though, don’t worry.”

Dan isn’t worried. He trusts Phil not to go blabbing about him on the radio, even with something as small as Adrian’s existence.

It feels a little strange to trust someone so immediately, and part of Dan wants to pull back, put some distance between them, because the combination of trust and a deepening crush can only spell disaster. He’s not going to do that. He’s only got Phil nearby for another two weeks.

After they’ve finished their media circus in London, then Edinburgh, then Dublin, Dan is off to France with Patrick and Jaime. They’re only hitting a handful of international media press, but that’s more than they were asked to do last year. It’s exciting to be expanding this way, to have something to point to and say, 'I did that before I was 30’.

And when they’re done with the press tour, Dan… goes home. Back to Atlanta, where his apartment is being sublet during his summer travelling.

They don’t even know yet if Heatwave will get a fourth season. It’s a bit of an industry joke that Netflix shows rarely make it past the third. Dan doesn’t even want to consider how Atlanta will feel without a steady filming job down the street.

Probably not much like home. Nowhere feels all that much like home, if Dan’s honest.

“Hey, you still with me?”

Dan blinks away the doom and gloom of his uncertain future and refocuses on the conversation he’s supposed to be a part of. Phil is looking at him now, the sort of undivided attention that makes Dan’s cheeks burn.

“Yeah, sorry,” says Dan. “I’m still here. Have you made a dent in those emails?”

Not the most graceful change of subject, but Phil allows it with a small snort. “No, for I am Sisyphus, doomed to answer a dozen emails only for another dozen to arrive.”

“Maybe if you didn’t have, like, three jobs, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Dan points out. “I get maybe two important emails a day. It’s great.”

“Maybe,” says Phil. He’s still just looking at Dan, his chin resting on an open palm.

“What?” Dan asks, feeling a smile tug at his lips.

Phil smiles back, brighter. “Nothing.”

There’s a warmth in his face, visible even through the mediocre FaceTime quality, that makes Dan’s stomach twist all up in knots. He doesn’t know how to handle that at all. “My mum’s calling I gotta go bye,” he says in one breath, hanging up before Phil can even react.

While he waits for his heart to stop pounding, Dan stares at the hotel ceiling and wonders what the fuck is wrong with him.

–

Dan’s mum does call, eventually. He’s been fucking around on Guild Wars and cursing the wifi for god only knows how long, refusing to check his phone so he doesn’t have to be faced with another message - or the lack of one - from Phil. Dan finishes the raid and then calls his mum back.

“Daniel, hi,” she says, sounding frazzled in the way she always seems to.

“Hey, mum.” It feels weird, now that he’s got her on the phone, but he pushes past that discomfort. “I was just calling to let you know that I’m in London.”

The sound of a door slamming comes through before his mum says, “Well, yes, dear. I know that.”

She doesn’t sound upset with him. More than anything, she sounds confused. Like she doesn’t know why he’s even telling her this. Like it hasn’t even occurred to her to nag her son for a visit. Dan has to swallow past a lump in his throat, not sure why he wishes she was angry.

“Oh,” he says. Allows a long moment of quiet to pass, just in case she wants to explain herself. She doesn’t. “Well. Okay. Do you - are you busy weekend after next? I could come see you before we leave for the continent.”

“That’s quite short notice, dear,” his mum says, and Dan experiences a dizzying rush of relief and distress before she continues. “But I’m sure I can make some time for dinner.”

Dan exhales. Dinner. He can do dinner.

“That sounds good,” he says. Another half-truth. “I’ll text you?”

“Yes, yes,” his mum says, already sounding distracted. “Text me and we’ll make a proper plan. Work hard til then, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too. Bye.”

The call ends almost as abruptly as his call with Phil, but Dan is okay with that.

im going to see my fam before i leave england jsyk, Dan texts to Phil. Phil sends him celebratory emojis in response. And maybe dinner with his family will be horrible, maybe it will be great, most likely it will be slightly uncomfortable, but at least he isn’t disappointing Phil on top of everyone else he’s let down.

#phanfiction #phanfic #phan #dnp fic #can't breathe when you touch my sleeve #words words words

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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Goldilocks R.I.P. (Part 3)

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/goldilocks-r-i-p-part-3/

Goldilocks R.I.P. (Part 3)

Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

The first law of Bubble Finance is that stock market crashes trigger recessions, not vice versa. That stands your grandfather’s macroeconomics on its ahead, yet the causal chain from which it arises is straight forward.

To wit, in a world of Peak Debt ($230 trillion globally), central bank money pumping mainly inflates financial bubbles. Such bubbles eventually reach blow-off extremes and then burst, thereby sending stock (option) obsessed corporate C-suites into paroxysms of restructuring and downsizing designed to appease the trading gods of Wall Street.

The main street sacrificial lambs thus tossed overboard—-workers, inventories, plants, stores, warehouses, other “redundant” fixed assets and CapEx outlays—are what we are pleased to call recessions nowadays.

Needless to say, you can’t see these bouts of C-suite mayhem coming if your dashboard is still cluttered with your grandfather’s macro-monitors. That is, the junk data from the BLS and Commerce Department.

By the same token, you will most surely espy Goldilocks prancing through these incoming data reports because at this late stage of the business cycle they are really nothing more than a read-out on capitalism’s inherent impulse to trudge forward until it is monkey-hammered by the central bank and its imploding bubbles.

That is to say, the next recession is embedded in the stock charts because they are the Bubble tracker in plain sight. And here is the leading indicator at the present moment—-the utterly lunatic trading metrics for Amazon (AMZN).

As the current bubble metastized after the immediate post-recession rebound in the stock market, the momo crowd piled into AMZN because the “price action” was just plain awesome. Between the March 2009 bottom and January 2017, the stock soared from $65 to $750 per share or by nearly 1100%. And it did so without any regard for AMZN’s profitless prosperity—perhaps signified by its 170X PE multiple at the end of 2016.

The again, when it comes to miracle stocks and the Great Disrupters, profits are–apparently–a matter of will, not performance. If Jeff Bezos wanted profits, the true believers insist, he would will them. Simple.

Still, since the beginning of 2017, even the willpower meme has begun to get way in front of its skis. During the past 14 months, Amazon’s market cap exploded by $400 billion—-rising from $360 billion in January 2017 to $760 billion at present. At the same time, its LTM operating free cash flow plunged from a meager $9.5 billion ( on $136 billion of sales) to just $6.5 billion during the year ending in December.

Since the rules of arithmetic apparently have not yet been “disrupted”, AMZN’s implied multiple on operating free cash flow has erupted from an already frisky 39X to a completely absurd 120X.

Needless to say, a 24-year old company with virtually no cumulative profits and free cash flow to show for itself should not trade at anything remotely close to a triple digit multiple—-and that’s to say nothing of one that’s essentially in the books, schmatta, gadgets and food sourcing, moving, storage and moving business.

AMAZON 14-MONTH CHANGE

Oh, yes, AMZN is allegedly a tech company owing to its cloud business (AWS). But that’s exactly the skunk in the woodpile.

When you set aside AWS’ sales and operating income during 2017, Amazon’s e-Commerce business generated $160 billion of sales, but posted operating income of negative $200 million.

That’s right. The monster of the retail midway posted no profit whatsoever last year!

And it’s getting worse. During 2016 the e-Commerce business posted $1.1 billion of operating income on $124 billion of sales; and the year before that (2015) operating income was $2.6 billion on e-Commerce sales of $99 billion.

Stated differently, incremental annual sales of $61 billion over the past three years resulted in a $2.8 billion reduction in operating profit.

It should be enough to say, you can’t make this stuff up and be done with it. But the nattering nincompoops who keep showing up on bubblevision with a “buy” recommendation always have another rationalization for the sheer insanity of it.

For instance, awhile back Jeff Bezos proclaimed that “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes.”

At a loss, we would add.

Still, an Amazon bull showed up on bubblevision yesterday all breathless about a study that showed the following:

…. the first season of the popular drama “The Man in the High Castle,” an alternate history depicting Germany as the victor of World War Two, had 8 million US. viewers as of early 2017, according to the documents. The program cost $72 million in production and marketing and attracted 1.15 million new subscribers worldwide based on Amazon’s accounting, the documents showed.

Amazon calculated that the show drew new Prime members at an average cost of $63 per subscriber. That is far less than the $99 that subscribers pay in the United States for an annual Prime membership…

You don’t say, would be one possible rejoinder.

Another would be: Doesn’t that same $99 membership offer unlimited free shipping, unlimited viewing of thousands of other Prime video content items for which AMZN is now spending $5 billion per year and numerous other freebies?

For example, approximately how many Pampers orders would it take for the free shipping of mostly packaged air to eat up the $36 balance?

And that’s assuming there is no viewer churn after a season or two of the Obergruppenfuhrer’s demented antics.

Even the undoubted prowess and growth capacity of its AWS cloud service doesn’t come close to squaring the circle. In the year just ended, for example, its net income was about $3.4 billion at AMZN’s 20% tax rate.

The problem with valuation, of course, is that stripped of all its techno gee wiz, AWS is just a giant, capital intensive server farm—–for which AMZN provides no segment data on assets, CapEx or free cash flow.

We would bet, therefore, that the good part of AWS is the 45% growth rate of sales and its 25% operating margins, not its massing up of balance sheet bulk or return on invested capital. For instance, Amazon’s finances its server farms heavily with capital leases, which on a total company basis have soared from $2 billion to $13 billion during the last four years, and no small chunk of that undoubtedly went to AWS.

Needless to say, the cloud business’ current super-hot growth rates mainly represent a one-time share capture from traditional standalone computer capacities. Accordingly, there is no reason to assign a crazy valuation multiple to a highly competitive business based on heavy-duty capital asset throw-weight, which will eventually bend to the single digit growth arc of the GDP.

So give it a 50X PE multiple and be done with it. That implies AWS is worth $160 billion, and the e-Commerce business is worth $500 billion.

Like we said, a market which is valuing a zero profit business that churns $160 billion per year of GDP anchored goods tells you all you need to know. That is, the true recession indicator of the Bubble Finance world is reaching its blow-off top.

Nor is AMZN any kind of one-off outlier. How could it be when it alone has a three-quarter trillion market cap, and is host to the biggest round-up of momentum chasing punters and robo-machines in recorded history?

But as even Bloomberg pointed out recently, the FAANG+ stocks are now outdoing even the NASDAQ 100 blow-off of late 1999/early 2000.

The rally in the FANG block of tech shares and its megacap brethren just surpassed a dubious milestone.

An index of 10 tech growth shares pushed its advance to 23 percent so far this year, giving the group an annualized return since early 2016 of 67 percent. That frenzied pace tops the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 66 percent return in the final two years of the dot-com bubble.

So crazed has the “tech” sector been since the turn of the year that it’s even got the go to numbers factory of the perma-bull camp, Bespoke Investment Group, wondering out loud:

Lately, it seems, these stocks can do no wrong,” George Pearkes, a macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group, wrote in a note. It makes “us wonder if this is a mini-1999 all over again,” he said.

Ya think?

Well it might feel like early 2000 all over again. The 10 stocks in the Bloomberg index—- Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google,Apple, Twitter, Alibaba, Baidu, Nvidia and Tesla—-currently weigh in with a combined market cap of $4.0 trillion compared to only $2.1 trillion back in January 2016.

But here’s the thing. Two years ago this group of 10 high flyers had posted $90.4 billion of net income for the LTM period ending in December 2015, and were thus valued at 23X.

In the interim, their collective income has risen by 7% to $96.3 billion, meaning the PE multiple now stands at 41X.

And there you have it—-massive, nearly parabolic PE expansion in what will soon be the longest business cycle expansion in recorded history. That’s the real flashing red indicator that tells you the third bubble crash of this century is nigh, and the recession to follow is already baked into the cake.

Needless to say, there is nothing terribly profound about the observation that when valuation multiples go parabolic, the end is near. Even the usual Bloomberg market cheerleaders were forced to admit that some pretty heavy duty investors have come to the same conclusion:

It’s not the first time that Wall Street voiced warnings on FANG stocks. In November 2016, Jeff Gundlach, chief investment officer at DoubleLine Capital LP, urged investors to avoid the group. Eight months later, Howard Marks, the co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Group LLC, listed addiction to FAANG-fomented gains among a handful of investor vulnerabilities that could spell doom for the bull market.

That hasn’t stopped investors from flocking to these high flyers. In fact, their gains have been accelerating. The NYSE FANG index has risen 76 percent in the past year, picking up pace from 41 percent in the previous 12 months.

And their valuations are rivaling those that tech stocks fetched during the heyday of the dot-com era. At 64 times earnings, the companies in the NYSE FANG+ Index are valued at a multiple that’s almost three times the broader gauge’s. That compared with 27 times in March 2000.

You can call it Silicon mountain, and already this year the inflow to tech funds and ETFs annualizes to $47.5 billion and is way off the charts. Indeed, its very much like the ones in northern Scotland where the lemmings make their periodic stampede off the cliffs to the dark, cold churning seas below.

Then again, it’s not just the tech high flyers, either. In the case of the S&P 500 ex-financials, the net debt to EBITDA multiple now stands at a 50 year high for the median company.

As we said: R.I. P., Goldilocks!

#Wealth

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