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#Custom YouTube Comments
cocrante · 1 month
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Modern au where Kaveh is an art professor who spends his weekends meeting his friends at the bar to play cards or jamming with them in a corner. Recently, Haitham started coming to that bar, sitting in the back pretending to be busy when he's actually there because he has a crush on the blond guy with the guitar.
One evening, while they were playing cards, one of Kaveh's friends —noticing the glances from Haitham— challenges Kaveh to go talk to him if he loses at UNO.
Well, of course, he loses lol otherwise what would I be writing about? ahah but anyway, Kaveh goes to talk to Haitham. "Excuse me, can I sit here?" he asks, genuinely embarrassed, and for a moment, Haitham is breathless. He nods, and Kaveh sits, looking at the book in his hand to start a conversation:—"You're cool when you play" but Haitham preceded him "Cool?" he smiles amusedly. "Yes—" he murmurs uncomfortably. "Do you perform anywhere?" he closes the book, leaving it on the table. "Not really, we just have a channel on YouTube" he says. "It's nothing special, we don't really have time for these things" he blushes. "Pity" he looks into Kaveh's eyes, unexpectedly feeling at ease. "Can I follow you on there?" he asks, receiving an affirmative answer. He leaves the name of the channel on the bar napkin, along with the Instagram page if he wants to follow them there too. "See you, Kaveh" he says, carefully tucking the napkin into his wallet. "Hey!" he calls out before he exits the door. "What's your name?" the man smiles. "Haitham" and with a final farewell, he leaves, leaving Kaveh momentarily stunned but happy.
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bluebelleisabelle · 6 months
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You know how some people hear a word that triggers a phrase or long sentence in their mind? Like "crazy".
Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a rubber room. A rubber room with rats. The rats made me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once...
And so on and so forth.
I've realized I have one. And it's a little more obscure 💀
If I hear anyone say just the word "chicken" -- like, no sentence attached, my brain is immediately forced to think of nothing but
ALL OUR FOOD KEEPS BLOWING UP !!
my humor is dead 💀
youtube
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I miss when Hulu used to have a comments section under every video, there was always something interesting (in a human behavior curiosity kind of way) about scrolling down to see usually an absolutely ridiculous collection of people having a rowdy open forum discussion about something you just watched that you had a completely neutral non-reaction to 
#unfortunately - everything still trends toward homogenization#people especially tech comanies can't just have their own fucign unique thing. they have to look and act like every other service#to ''''compete''' apparently (even though like... wouldn't having unique features be instead a NOVEL draw to your specific product? wouldn't#you want to stand out???)#Like OKCupid completely over-simplfying their site into bare bones sleek nothingness and taking away all the features that made it unique#in any way (high customization - various personality ranking scales and a LOT of various visible data/information) .. because oh yeah#actually we have to be tinder and just quick emoji blurb swipe swipe#Hulu trying to be netflix and taking away anything that made it stand out in any posiive way (comments section.. other things that I forget#since I've been using it since like 2009 or something)#Youtube.... everything youtube does.... god.......#All social media sites are exactly the same now with extremely minor differences and even then still frequently implement samey#features to try and close those differences#etc. etc.#ANYWAY . i think also the hulu comments sections were facebook linked - like..one of the ways you could actually verify yourself to#leave a comment was having a facebook login (AT LEAST in like 2010.. I don't remember if they changed this at some point)#so you could also usually (I think..?? again.. if I'm rmembering correclty) you could get to someone's facebook profile#from the comments section sometime. I used to watch stuff and then scroll down to see what The Masses were saying and sometimes#someone's comment would be so strange I'd like.. go investigate them as a person#see what type of posts they make on their personal facebook which was always way too public with none of their information#privated of course lol
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A gentleman came through the drive-thru today and said my voice sounds like the old lady's voice from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I don't know what to do with that information except accept it and move on.
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punisheddonjuan · 19 days
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So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.
This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.
I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.
There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.
I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.
Adblocking/Privacy/Security:
uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.
Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.
Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.
NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.
Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.
SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.
AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.
User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.
Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.
Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.
Webmail/Google Drive:
Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.
Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.
Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.
Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.
Accessibility:
Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.
Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.
Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.
Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.
Utility:
ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.
History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.
Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.
Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.
Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows the user to drag select multiple hyperlinks and open all of them in new tabs.
Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.
EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.
Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.
Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.
Browsing & Searching:
Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.
Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.
Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.
Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.
Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.
Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.
Website Specific:
PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.
Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.
Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.
Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.
BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.
Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.
XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.
Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips" and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.
BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.
Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.
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corvid777 · 2 hours
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i think working in retail is kind of like being a french fry in a parking lot full of feral seagulls (customers)
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neverendingford · 3 months
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#tag talk#I keep getting customers being like “wow do you perform professionally?” and shit like that about my whistling and like..#no how do I tell you that I'm doing this for my own enjoyment and I don't think I'm better than anybody else I just think you all are worse#like. yeah I'm good at whistling that doesn't make me special or cool it just means everyone else sucks ass at whistling#seriously though. I hear people whistling breathy airy off-tune inconsistent note quality and I just.. ughhhhh stop stop stop stop stop#idk I'm tired of being told I should sell my crafts I should sell my art I should perform professionally I should make myself a spectacle#I'm not a thing to look at I'm not an object to pay for my soul isn't a thing you can buy on Etsy my habits aren't a show to purchase entry#I'm glad people enjoy listening to me whistle. I enjoy listening to me whistle. yeah sure I'm good at it. I just. ughhhh#don't tell me like you're leaving a comment underneath my YouTube video. I'm not content for you to consume.#ughhhh I hate public spectacle and maybe being a side show for every church in my parents' mission network had consequences on me#you know it took me until I was seventeen to finally say no when I was told to take off my shirt to display my scars to someone?#fifteen years of being a freak show. a news update. a creature to be looked at. disrobed and examined. displayed.#and I'm fucking done with it. I'm no one's toy I'm no one's property I'm no one's news letter topic.#I'm my own fucking person and I wish I could actually accept that instead of struggling with it constantly.#idk. maybe I have problems besides “you scored highly on our depression questionnaire so let's teach you coping methods”#maybe next time I have a therapy appointment I'll search my tag talks through jetblackcode and take notes ahead of time#I mean. I am blogging. that's like journaling. maybe I should actually use that to my advantage. go back and use the resources I have.#anyway that being said I've been practicing whistling the orange blossom special (Buddy Greene version) and it's very hard#but I'm getting much better at it.#I really started getting into harder stuff when I started college and would wander the campus whistling homestuck music (thanks Toby Fox)#Rondo Alla Turca is a particular favorite of mine cause it's got some really fun quick sequences#anyway if any of y'all have good recommendations on good chapstick/lipbalm brands that'd be sick because I need to start buying more#and like. find a really good brand that'll last longer on my lips and then just buy a case of it or something.#because I go through lip balm pretty quickly because your lips dry out when you whistle a lot and also I live in the desert so it's dry af
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smellslikebot · 2 years
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how to keep following people when a major social platform implodes
(...and you don't want to join 20 new websites)
First, get an RSS reader*-- here are some free options:
Desktop: Feedbro (browser extension), Fraidycat** (browser extension/web), Thunderbird, Dreamwidth (web)
Android: Feeder
iOS/Mac: NetNewsWire
You'll be able to make a custom feed to follow blogs, webcomics, social media feeds, podcasts, news, and other stuff on the web all in one place. To follow something, find its "feed URL"-- often marked by an icon that looks like this ↓-- and paste it into your reader of choice as a new feed.
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Some feed URLs for social media/other sites:
Tumblr: Use username.tumblr.com/rss or username.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art/rss to follow a blog's "my art" tag (as an example)
Cohost: Use username.cohost.org/rss/public
Mastodon: Use instance.url/@­username.rss
Deviantart: Info here
Spacehey: Info here
Youtube: Go to a channel in a web browser, view page source, and use Ctrl-F/Command-F to find a link that starts with "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id="
Reddit: Info here
Lemmy: At the top of a community's main page, there's a small RSS link next to where you sort posts/comments.
Some additions thanks to @innumerablewounds:
Dreamwidth: https://username.dreamwidth.org/rss (users can opt out of this).
Ao3: Tags have an "RSS Feed" button.
Bluesky: Add /rss to the end of a URL.
Neocities: https://neocities.org/site/username.rss
Sites that won't work all that great:
Twitter: Feedbro and Fraidycat** may be able to use Twitter profile URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, use nitter.net/username/rss (or other Nitter instance) Public Nitter instances are dead/dying, and Twitter is now very hostile to pretty much anything that makes it easy to generate an RSS feed. For popular accounts, try this workaround using Google News...?
Instagram: Feedbro may be able to use Instagram profile and hashtag URLs as feed URLs. Check Feedbro's "scan interval" setting-- you could be rate limited or temporarily IP banned from Instagram if it makes requests too often!
Facebook: Feedbro may be able to use public Facebook group/page URLs as feed URLs, but see the warnings for Instagram.
Threads: Come on.
Also see how to find the RSS feed URL for almost any site. Try using public RSS-Bridge instances or Happyou Final Scraper to generate feeds for sites that don't have them (Pillowfort, Patreon, etc).
*You can set up your subscriptions in one reader and import them into another by exporting an OPML file. **Fraidycat's intended use is following a lot of people across different sites, so it's well-suited for this post and I'd recommend keeping an eye on it-- but I didn't recommend it initially because I had some issues with it, and it hasn't been updated in a while. The last time I used it, it didn't have a setting to change how often it makes requests to websites, causing me to get IP banned from Twitter and Instagram...
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pfollowersus · 1 year
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Want to Get Exposure on Your Videos on YouTube?
If you want to do video marketing for your product selling or grow your business? Then YouTube is the best place to do that because of its largest audience base. And in order to gain instant results or engagement, you can also buy YouTube custom comments from the online reliable firm for your YT videos. So hurry up and grow your video exposure.
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elffees · 2 years
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okay ive just heard of disney dreamlight valley and on one hand, ya know, fuck disney obviously me and my homies hate the mouse. but on the other hand... dreamlight valley ACTUALLY looks cute and wholesome as all heck
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0sbrain · 11 months
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here's a list of mozilla add-ons for all of you tumblrinas out there to have a better internet experience
also, if you like my post, please reblog it. Tumblr hates links but i had to put them so you adhd bitches actually download them <3 i know because i am also adhd bitches
BASIC STUFF:
AdGuard AdBlocker / uBlock Origin : adguard is a basic adblock and with origin you can also block any other element you want. for example i got rid of the shop menu on tumblr
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Privacy Badger : this add on will block trackers. if an element contains a tracker it will give you the option to use it or not
Shinigami Eyes: this will highlight transphobic and trans friendly users and sites using different colors by using a moderated database. perfect to avoid terfs on any social media. i will explain how to use this and other add-ons on android as well under the read more cut
THINGS YOU TUMBLINAS WANT:
Xkit: the best tumblr related add on. with many customizable options, xkit not only enhances your experience from a visual standpoint, but provides some much needed accessibility tools
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bonus: if you are into tf2 and wanna be a cool cat, you can also get the old version to add cool reblog icons
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AO3 enhancer: some basic enhancements including reading time and the ability to block authors and tags
YOUTUBE
Return of the YouTube Dislike : pretty self explanatory
Youtube non-stop: gets rid of the annoying "Video paused. Continue watching?" popup when you have a video in the background
SponsorBlock: gives you options to skip either automatically or manually sponsors, videoclip non music sectors and discloses other type of sponsorships/paid partnerships
Enhancer for YouTube: adds some useful options such as custom play speed, let's you play videos in a window and most important of all, it allows you to make the youtube interface as ugly as your heart desires. I can't show a full image of what it looks like because i've been told its eye strainy and i want this post to be accessible but look at this <3
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PocketTube: allows you to organize your subscriptions into groups
YouTube Comment Search: what it says
FINDING STUFF
WayBack Machine: you probably know about this site and definitely should get the add on. this allows you to save pages and access older versions with the click of a button. while you can search wayback using web archives, please get this one as well as it allows you to easily save pages and contribute to the archive.
Web Archives: it allows you to search through multiple archives and search engines including WayBack Machine, Google, Yandex and more.
Search by Image: allows you to reverse image search using multiple search engines (in my experience yandex tends to yield the best results)
Image Search Options: similar to the last one
this next section is pretty niche but... STEAM AND STEAM TRADING
SteamDB: adds some interesting and useful statistics
Augmented Steam: useful info specially for browsing and buying games
TF2 Trade Helper: an absolute godsend, lets you add items in bundles, keeps track of your keys and metal and your recent trades, displays links to the backpack tf page next to users profiles and more. look it tells me how much moneys i have and adds metal to trades without clicking one by one oh may god
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IN CONCLUSION: oooooh you want to change to firefox so badly, you want to delete chrome and all the chrome clones that are actually just spyware and use firefox
HOW TO USE MOZILLA ADD-ONS ON YOUR PHONE
if you already use firefox on android, you'll know there are certain add-ons compatible with the app, some of them even being made just for the mobile version such as Video Background Play FIx. while most of them are pretty useful, some more specific ones aren't available on this version of the browser, but there's a way of getting some of them to work
you need to download the firefox nightly app, which is basically the same as the regular firefox browser but with the ability of activating developer mode. you can find how to do that here. once you've enabled it, you need to create a collection with all the add ons you want. i wouldn't recommend adding extensions if the creators haven't talked about phone compatibility, but XKit and Shinigami Eyes should work
also, don't tell the government this secret skater move, but you can try using both the regular firefox browser and nightly so you can have youtube videos in a floating box while you browse social media.
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see? i can block this terf while Rick Rolling the people following this tutorial. isn't that tubular?
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riptide-if · 4 months
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Your dad has always said you swim as if your were born to be in the water; the rest of your family has always said that he is the whole reason you turned out like that.
So, it's not really a surprise when you had used all the money you got for your 7th birthday to buy a surfboard. And even less of a surprise when you started joining small surf competitions by the time you were 10, later followed by bigger competitions.
It seems you are the only one surprised when it turns out you're able to compete in the World Surfer's League's Ultimate Tournament Tour*.
Thrown into a mix of fellow surfing prodigies, rookies, and pros, do you really have what it takes to win?
RIPTIDE is a 18+ slice-of-life interactive fiction that includes optional sexual content, alcohol and drug use, coarse language, mentions of death of a parent, and dysfunctional families.
pinterest intros
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customize your character, from gender, (including transgender options) pronouns, personality, physical appearance, clothing style, dynamics, public persona, and more.
decide what your strengths and weaknesses are as a surfer and choose from.
romance one of four romantic options - your best friend's brother, your childhood friend, your ex, or your fellow competitor, along with three polyamorous options and flings.
compete in an international surfing competition and see how you fare against your fellow surfers.
learn how to balance family, romance, and surfing; or don't, and suffer the consequences.
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Arlo Song [male, he/him], your best friend’s twin brother.
Reliable and patient, Arlo is the poster child for the 'boy next door' trope. Arlo, despite living in Hawai'i since he was 13, has never been one for beaches or sports, choosing to spend his day in an art studio rather than on the beach, unlike most of the people he knows, including his twin sister; Aria. He's always kept you at arms length for reasons you aren't quite sure about.
Hilo Kalua Mahoe [nonbinary, they/them], your childhood best friend.
Apathetic and reserved, Hilo has been by your side since before you can remember (though your family has many pictures to prove this). Hilo is your exceptionally talented unofficial-official photographer, has been for years, and is accompanying you on the UTT. Ever since you were kids you’ve been hearing comments that Hilo is prickly or mean, but they’re never like that with you.
Elijah/Elaine Lee Ferguson [gender selectable], your rockstar ex.
Impulsive and (seemingly) confident E, more commonly known as ‘Lee Rex’ on stage and just Lee to their friends, is exactly what one would expect out of a rockstar. Your meeting with Lee was purely by coincidence, during their US tour, a show that a couple of your friends dragged you to— though if you knew that know you probably wouldn’t have agreed to go. Whatever Lee was like as your partner is long gone now; evident by all the photos they’ve posted making out with someone on their Instagram story.
Noemia/Nikita Azevedo [gender selectable], your wildcard competitor.
Charismatic and arrogant, N has already made a name for themselves in the surfing community. After placing in the final five in the last UTT, they’ve been chosen as a wildcard this time around. Really, you don’t know all that much about N, considering you’ve never even met them, but from your limited research (e.g: watching interviews on YouTube) you can tell they’re.. a bit of a flirt. It’s hard to tell if a facade or not; but you don’t really want to find out, either.
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Why Millennials aren’t leaving Tiktok
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I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!
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The news that Gen Z users have abandoned Tiktok in such numbers that the median Tiktoker is a Millennial (or someone even older) prompted commentators to dunk on Tiktok as uncool by dint of having lost its youthful sheen:
https://www.garbageday.email/p/tiktok-millennials-turns
But "why are Gen Z kids leaving Tiktok?" is the wrong question. The right question is, why aren't Millennials leaving Tiktok? After all, we are living through the enshittocene, the great enshittening, in which every platform gets monotonically, irreversibly worse over time, and Tiktok is no exception:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
To understand why older users are stuck to Tiktok, we need to start with why younger users relentlessly seek out new platforms. To some extent, it's just down to youth's appetite for novelty, but that's only part of the story. To really understand why people come to – and leave – platforms, you have to understand switching costs.
"Switching costs" is the economists' term for everything you have to give up when you change products or services. Switching from Ios to Android probably means giving up a bunch of your apps and purchased media. Switching from an airline where you're a high-status frequent flier to another carrier means giving up on free checked bags and early boarding.
In an open market, rivals have lots of ways to lower these switching costs (it's an open secret that you can call an airline and say, "Hi, I'm a 33rd Order Mason on American Airlines, will you make me a Triple Platinum Diamond Sky-Baron if I switch to Delta?"). Of course, big incumbents hate this, and do everything they can to increase their switching costs, finding ways to impose high switching costs that punish disloyal consumers who have the temerity to go elsewhere.
With social media, lock-in comes for free, thanks to the "collective action problem." Getting people to agree on a given course of action is hard, and as you add more people to the picture, the problem gets harder. It's hard enough to get half a dozen people in your group-chat to agree on where to go for dinner or what board-game to play. But once you're reliant on a social media service to stay in touch with friends, relatives around the world, customers, communities (say, rare disease support groups), and coordination (like organizing your kid's little league car-pool), the problem becomes nearly insoluble. Maybe you can convince your overseas relatives to switch to a Signal group, but can you do the same for your small business's customers, or your old high-school pals?
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/
Taken together, switching costs and collective action problems make platforms "sticky," and sticky platforms inevitably enshittify.
Platforms, after all, generate value. They connect end-users with each other (say, little league parents) and they connect end-users to business customers (you and your small business's customers). That value needs to be parceled out among end users, business customers, and the platform's shareholders. A platform can make life better for business customers at its end users' expense by increasing the number of ads (hello, Youtube!), and it can make life better for its shareholders at its business customers' expense by decreasing the share of ad revenue given to publishers or performers (oh, hello again, Youtube!).
From a platform's perspective, the ideal state is one in which end users and business customers get no value from the platform, because it's all being captured by the platform's shareholders. But if Youtube interrupted every 30 seconds of video for ten minutes of ads and paid the video creators nothing, both users and creators would ditch the platform – and advertisers would follow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dab8sKg8Ko8
So platforms seek an equilibrium: "what is the least value we apportion to end-users and business customers without triggering their departure?" Maybe that means giving more value to end-users (for example, keeping Uber fares low by suppressing wages), or to business-customers (crowding more ads into your social media feed).
Every business – including brick-and-mortar, non-digitized ones – wants to find some kind of equilibrium between the value going to its suppliers, its customers and its owners, but digital businesses have an advantage here: digital systems are flexible in ways that analog, hard-goods businesses are not. Digital businesses can alter pricing, payouts and other dynamics from moment to moment – second to second – and make a different offer to every supplier and customer. They have a bunch of knobs, and they can twiddle them at will:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/
Well, not quite at will. Businesses face constraints on their twiddling. If they get too greedy, users or business customers might weigh the cost of staying against the switching costs and decide it's not worth it. But the more expensive – the more painful – a platform can make leaving, the more pain they can inflict on the people who stay.
In other words, there's two ways to keep a customer or supplier's business: you can make a better service so they won't want to leave, or you can make leaving the service so painful that they stay even if you mistreat them.
There's three ways a digital company can make things worse for their customers and users without losing their business.
First, they can eliminate competition (think of Mark Zuckerberg buying Instagram to recapture the users who'd fled Facebook to escape his poor management):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/
Second, they can capture their regulators and avoid punishment for trampling their suppliers' or users' legal rights (think of how Amazon has raised the price of everything we buy, both on- and off Amazon, through its "most favored nation" deals):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos
Third, they can use IP law to prevent competitors from modifying their services to claw back some of that value (think of how Apple used legal threats to block an Android version of Imessage, blocking Apple customers from having private conversations that included non-Apple customers:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
Companies can't just use this tricks at will, of course. Antitrust laws can block companies from making anticompetitve acquisitions or mergers. Regulators can punish companies for cheating their customers, workers and users. Technologists can come up with clever ways of modding or reconfiguring existing services with "interoperable" add-ons that let users bargain for better treatment by refusing to accept worse:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah
Day in, day out, the decision-makers at tech companies test these constraints, twisting the knobs that shift value away from users to shareholders. Their bosses and boards motivate them with "KPIs" that dangle the promise of huge bonuses and promotions for any manager who successfully enshittifies part of the company's products:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Decades of pro-corporate, pro-monopoly policy has loosened those knobs. 40 years of lax antitrust meant that companies had a lot of leeway to buy or merge with rivals – that's changing today, but it's tough sledding:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion
As sectors grew more concentrated, they found it easier to capture their regulators, so that they no longer fear punishment for price-gouging, spying, or wage-theft, so applying the same amount of torque to the "break the law" knob cranks it a lot further:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/
Once you've captured your regulators, you can aim them at your competitors. A monopoly-friendly policy environment has transformed IP law into a bully's charter, allowing powerful companies to strangle would-be competitors who dare to offer their customers tools to shield themselves from enshittification, like scrapers, ad-blockers and alternative clients. Big companies can crank the enshittification knob all the way over and know that smaller rivals knobs won't turn at all:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model
At one point, bosses faced one more constraint on knob-twiddling: their workforce. Many tech workers genuinely cared about their users' welfare, something bosses encouraged as a sneaky trick to get techies to put in long hours without exercising their leverage by quitting rather than destroying their lives to meet arbitrary deadlines. These workers would fearlessly slap their bosses' hands when they reached for the enshittification knob, threatening to quit rather than allowing the products they'd given so much for to be enshittified. Today, after hundreds of thousands of tech layoffs, tech workers are far less like to challenge their bosses' right to twiddle, and far more likely to get fired if they try:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/
All this means that tech bosses don't have to change their approach at all, and yet, their services will grow steadily worse. The boss who twiddles the enshittification knob in exactly the same way as he did a year or a decade ago will find it turning much further, because his customers are locked into his platform, his regulators won't protect them, the same regulators will stop his competitors' attempts at countertwiddling, and his workers fear losing their jobs too much to speak up for their users.
That's the contagion that produced the enshittocene: the forces that constrained companies (competition, regulation, self-help and labor – all melted away, allowing every company's MBA-poisoned knob-twiddling leaders to shamelessly caress their knobs with every hour that God sends:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel
Which is why people want to leave platforms. When a platform loses its users, those users have weighed the switching costs against the pain of staying and decided that it's better to bear those costs than to stay.
So why have Tiktok's younger users found the costs too high to bear, and why have their elders remained stuck to the platform?
For that, we have to look at the unique characteristics of young people – characteristics that transcend the lazy cliche that kids are easily bored, fickle novelty-seekers who hop from one service to another with unquenchable restlessness.
Whether or not kids are novelty-seekers, they are, fundamentally, a disfavored minority. They want to do things that the platforms don't want them to do – like converse without being overheard by authority figures, including their parents and their schools (also: cops and future employers, though kids may not be thinking about them as much).
In other words, kids pay intrinsically lower switching costs than adults, because a platform will always do less for them than it will for grownups. This is a characteristic kids share with other supposedly technophilic, novelty-seeking "early adopters," from sex-workers to terrorists, from sexual minorities to trolls, from political dissidents to fascists. For those groups, the cost of mastering a new technology and assembling a community around it is always more likely to be worth bearing than it would be for people who are well-served by existing tools:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#sex-tech
Pornographers didn't jump on home video because of its superiority as a medium for capturing flesh-tones. Home video was a good porn medium because it was easier to discreetly get into the hands of porn consumers, who could, in turn, discreetly view it. The audience for porn in the privacy of your living room is larger than the audience for porn that you can only watch if you're willing to be seen marching into a dirty movie theater.
Every new technology is popularized by a mix of disfavored groups and neophiles, who normalize and refine it – and yes, infuse it with their countercultural coolth – until it becomes easy enough to use to become mainstream. As more normies drift into the new system, the switching costs associated with leaving the old system declines. It gets easier and easier to find the people and services you want in the new realm, and harder and harder to find them in the old one.
This is why tech platforms have historically experienced sudden collapse: the platform that gets more valuable and harder to leave as it accumulates users gets less valuable and easier to leave as users depart:
https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html
If you're a Gen Z kid on Tiktok, you experience the same enshittification as your Millennial elders. But you also experience an additional cost to staying: as late-arriving adult authority figures become more fluent in the platform, they are more able to observe your use of it, and punish you for conduct that you used to get away with.
And if you're a Millennial who isn't leaving Tiktok, it's not just that you experience the same enshittification as those departing Gen Z kids – you also face higher switching costs if you go. The older you get, the more complex your social connections grow. A Gen Z kid in middle school doesn't have to worry about losing touch with their high-school buddies if they switch platforms (they haven't gone to high school yet – and they see their middle school friends in person all the time, giving them a side-channel to share information about who's leaving Tiktok and where they're headed to next). Middle-schoolers don't have to worry about coordinating little league car-pools or losing access to a rare disease support group.
In other words: younger people leave old platforms earlier because they have more to gain by leaving; and older people leave old platforms later because they have more to lose by leaving.
This is why Facebook is filled with Boomers. Yes, their kids bolted for the exits to avoid having their parents (or grandparents) wading into their sexual, social and professional lives. But the reason the Boomers were late joining younger users' Facebook exodus – or the reason they never joined it – is that they stand to lose more by going. Facebook deliberately cultivated this dynamic, for example, by creating a photo hosting service designed to entice users into uploading their family photos while disguising how hard it would be to take those photos with them if they left:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
The irony here is that tech has intrinsically low switching costs. All other things being equal, a new platform can always build a bridge to ease the passage of users from the old one. There's no (technical) reason that moving to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or any other platform should mean cutting ties with the people who stayed behind.
A combination of voluntary interoperability (where old platforms offer APIs to allow new services to connect with them), mandatory interop (where governments force tech companies to offer APIs) and adversarial interop (where new companies hack together their own API with reverse-engineering, scraping, bots, and other guerrilla tactics) would hypothetically allow users to hop between networks as easily as you change phone carriers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go
Tech platforms tend to offer APIs when they're getting started (to ease the inward passage of new users) then shut them down after they attain dominance (locking the door behind those users). The EU is tinkering with mandatory APIs through the Digital Markets Act (though bafflingly, they're starting with encrypted messaging rather than social media). Restoring adversarial interoperability will require extensive legal reform, which is getting started through Right to Repair laws:
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/13/oregon-passes-right-to-repair-law-apple-lobbied-to-kill/
The people who are stranded on social media platforms shouldn't be mistaken for uncool, aging technophobes. They're not stubborn, they're stranded. Like the elders who can't afford to leave a dying town after the factory shuts down and the young people move away, these people are locked in. They need help evacuating – a place to go and a path to get there.
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Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/#evacuate-the-platformsr
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spamgyu · 5 months
Text
BACKBURNER // PART 3
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DESCRIPTION: She had grown tired of being on his back burner, the person that he had kept warm until he gotten the girl he has had his eyes set on for years... And with a little help from her friend, maybe... just maybe she'll finally be the first choice. PAIRING: Seungcheol x Reader | Mingyu x Reader GENRE: Angst & Fluff PART 2 | SERIES MASTERLIST | MASTERLIST
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She wasn't in deep slumber, but she wasn't awake either.
Y/n had allowed the soft sounds of the waves crashing on the shore and indistinct conversations around her lull her into a light sleep – only to be awoken by the sudden lack of warmth that kissed her skin and droplets of water hitting her bare stomach.
Squinting her eyes open, she was greeted by a drenched Mingyu standing above her – a smile on his face. "Hey Stink, wanna get lunch?" He sat on her towel, feeling his soaked swim trunks cool her thigh.
It has been a while since she had eaten and the thought a bowl ahi poke did sound nice. "Sure." She sat up, stretching her hands above her head.
Y/n took a glance around her and noticed that the group she had originally had been lounging around with were gone; some cooling off in the water and others playing a game of volleyball.
Except Seungcheol and Sunhee, who had his head on her lap while she had her nose deep in the book she had brought down from their hotel room.
Sickening.
"You have fun out there?" She asked rhetorically as he shook his head to get the remaining water out of his ears.
"Come out there with me later, yeah?" Mingyu reached up to fix his hair, slicking it back away from his face.
It was going to take a while for her to get used to this new tone of voice he used around her. She wasn't used to the deep octave he used, mixed with some sweetness in his tone – something she had heard only when he was around the women he was dating.
It sent her chills down her spine, thinking how cringy it was for him to use all his tricks he had done to make all those other girls fall at his feet with her.
"Maybe." Y/n leaned over to move a strand that he had missed.
She too used a tone that he hadn't heard of.
Not directed to him at least.
Their customer service voices.
"You guys are cute when you aren't fighting." Sunhee's voice caught their attention.
...And Seungcheol's, who let out a puff of air as a laugh.
Up until now, Mingyu and y/n had thought he was asleep – his sunglasses hiding his eyes.
"Give it until tomorrow, they'll be fighting again." Seungcheol sat up, pushing his sunglasses up to rest on his head.
Y/n chose to ignore his comment, standing up from where she had been sitting – reaching for her shorts and pulling it up to cover her bottom half. "Can you guys watch our stuff? We'll bring back poke in exchange."
"No."
"Don't listen to him." Sunhee waved him off. "Have fun!"
"Thanks, Sunhee." Mingyu smiled, reaching down to hold y/n hand – allowing her to guide him towards the main road.
"He's irked." He leaned down to mumble in her ears
The walk to the market was a short one, the two not bothering to let go of each other's hands as she once again allowed him to talk her ear off – babbling about tomorrow's trip to the North Shore.
He went on and on about how excited he was to try the shrimp truck he had seen many youtubers rave about; spending hours on end watching vlogs to prep him for the trip.
"Do you talk this much when you're with your girls?" She was genuinely curious, in shock with how he seemed to never run out of subjects to talk about. It was as if he was on a mission to reach a word certain count by the end of the day.
"No, just you." He shook his head, bringing his arm around her shoulders; pulling her closer to his body.
Weirdly enough, she preferred this more than holding his hand – it was more comfortable this way.
・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.
"So when did this happen?" Jeonghan motioned to the space between the two, catching y/n's attention from across the table.
After a long day of spending their time at the beach, they had decided their first night all together called for a group dinner at the hotel's restaurant – all at the expense of the best man's card.
Seungcheol.
Sunhee nearly choked on the cocktail she was sipping on, quickly shaking her head. "Oh we're not– no." She laughed.
They could have fooled anyone... just as well as Y/n and Mingyu had been.
They had spent the dinner picking off each other's plates – even showing up in coordinating outfits that Sunhee had sworn was not planned. Y/n had to fight the her brain from making a face when Sunhee had profusely declined the groups teasing when they first took their seats.
"Oh." Jeonghan blinked. "I just figured–"
"We're not." Seungcheol shutting him down, instantly silencing Jeonghan who then turned his body to the direction of y/n and Mingyu.
She had been thankful for the various conversations taking place around the table, allowing her to pretend that she hadn't been listening in to the short interaction happening a few feet from her.
"What about you two?" Jeonghan nodded at them, stopping Mingyu mid-setence while he conversed with Minghao about tomorrow's plans.
"What about us?" He asked, confused with the question being asked.
"When did this happen?" Jeonghan repeated.
"Valentines day." Mingyu replied without a second thought, almost as if he had the story ready for anyone who would ask.
He was quick at his feet, able to muster up a lie with a heartbeat.
She made a mental note to thank him later.
"I think I just realized that I always had feelings for her and I wanted to see if what I was thinking was real, or just– I don't know. Minghao convinced me to go over to her place and just let it all out." He continued, shrugging off the story as if it was the most casual thing that left his lips.
If she wasn't a part of the lie, she would have bought it.
Like Jeonghan, Y/n looked over to Minghao who had nodded in confirmation as he swirled the wine in his hand.
They were great liars.
"Didn't know you had a soft spot, Mingyu." Soonyoung whistled.
"Me neither." Y/n whispered only for the two of them to hear, earning a poke on her side from him – causing a small laugh to escape from her lips.
"Oh my god, they're actually in love." Chan gagged, catching the small interaction that had just unfolded before him.
"You guys should see what I have to put up with at home." Minghao grumbled into his wine glass before taking a long sip.
The teasing? The bickering over which show to watch? The hour long debate over a movies plot? The impromptu karaoke sessions in their living room? Yeah, Minghao did have to put up through a lot.
"I guess the next to walk down the aisle will be Y/n and Mingyu." Jeonghan joked.
"Mingyu? Yeah right." Seungcheol chuckled.
Thankfully the rest of the group had managed to drop the topic and redirected the conversation back to Jeonghan – catching up on all the events that has been happening in his life.
Y/n took the opportunity to excuse herself to the restroom as the energy died down, looking down at her feet as she made her way to the back of the restaurant – she had one too many Mai Tai's and did not want to accidentally trip over air.
"Y/n!"
Turning her head to the voice at the end of the hall, she was once again cornered by Seungcheol – with no place to run.
"Can we talk?" He stopped within a foot of her, his voice much softer than the snarky voice he had been using every time he would make a snide comment earlier in the day. "Please?"
Y/n stared at him, unable to come up with an excuse to avoid him.
"Five minutes." She swallowed.
Seungcheol nodded, motioning him to follow her through the doors that lead to the beach – wanting to converse in a much quieter atmosphere.
Once they were at an enough distance from the restaurant, away from the eyeline of the others, Seungcheol came to a stop turning to the girl.
"You guys may be fooling everyone but you're not fooling me." He spoke slowly.
They were caught.
"Did you just bring me out here to pick a fight?" She hugged her arms around her, feeling the cool breeze hit her bare arms.
"Y/n, drop the act. Do you really think that I'd believe you're dating, of all the people in the world, Mingyu? You guys are best friends, yeah I get that- but please, I know you guys don't love each other–"
"Not like how you and Sunhee love each other right?" Y/n snapped back.
Seungcheol licked his lips, shaking his head.
If he wasn't letting up, neither was she.
"You guys have always been at each other's throat, you really think I believe that one day you guys just decided to stop?"
"He knows me better than anyone, Cheol. He knows what makes me happy, what makes me tick. He has wiped every tear that you have caused. He picked me up whenever you left me stranded. He has always been there, more importantly when you weren't."
She wasn't lying.
Behind all the small fights and teasing, the two had always leaned in each other for emotional support.
Just as Mingyu had done for her, she has also always been the one person he called when he was having a tough time – remembering the time that she brought food over to his dorm for a week straight because he had refused to eat after his first girlfriend had broken up with him.
They had their moments, but at the end of the day, she genuinely did love Mingyu.
They have been together through all the season of their lives and she couldn't imagine going through any heartbreak or failed job interviews without having him by her side.
They were each other's person.
"So yeah, sue me if I realized I may have been in love with my best friend too." Y/n continued. "Mingyu has always been there and it's nice being taken care of someone who actually knows me."
"I know you." He defended. "Your favorite color is green, you hate that you're in the medical field because but you chose to go through with it because you didn't want to disappoint your parents, you hate the sound of utensils rubbing together. I know you, Y/n."
"Those are shallow facts." Y/n countered. "Minghao knows those things about me too."
"I know that you had never once thought of Mingyu the way you thought of me." He continued, taking a step closer to her. "What you and I had– have, that's never going to measure up to what you think you're trying to pull off with Mingyu."
"So what? Is this your way of saying you chose me all along?"
"There's no need to choose, y/n." He raised his voice, growing frustrated with her question. "I care about you, and you should know that!"
"How? Huh? You have some crazy way of showing you care." She exhasperated.
"Just because I don't show it the way your little golden boy shows it, doesn't mean I don't care. It doesn't mean I don't want you."
"So do it then, pick."
"I'm not picking." He shook his head. "Just please, just drop the act and–"
"Is everything alright out here?" Mingyu's voice boomed from the steps of the restaurant, jogging over to where they stood.
"Yeah, we just finished talking." Seungcheol brushed past Mingyu, his shoulder hitting him as he bounded back to the well lit building – a stark contrast to the darkness that enveloped them.
She could hear her ears begin to ring as she let out deep breath she didn't realize she was holding in.
"You okay?" Mingyu asked in genuine concern, scanning her face to see if there were any tears that fell from her eyes. He noticed that she was gone for far too long, instantly putting two and two together once he realized Seungcheol was missing from the table. Mingyu had quickly excused himself from the group, not wanting whatever Seungcheol had in mind to ruin not only y/n's night but everyone elses.
Y/n nodded, taking a step closer to him – silently asking for his arms to wrap around her. Both for consolation and to shield from the wind.
"I don't want to go back in there."
"Then we won't." He replied, resting his chin on her head.
"He knows we're just pretending." Her cheek pressed against his chest, her voice in pure defeat.
"Should we take some acting classes?"
Looking up to meet his eyes, she couldn't help but let a small laugh escape her lips. "Should we call it off?"
"I mean, everyone else already bought it." He shrugged. "Why don't we just pretend until the end of the trip. We wouldn't want a break up and a wedding all in one trip."
"Jeonghan would kill us for stealing the attention from him if we announced a break up." Y/n agreed. "Just, chill out on the fake sexual tension okay? It gives me the creeps."
"Whatever you want, stink."
The two stood in silence, Mingyu patiently waiting for Y/n to calm down from the high emotions. She had always hated confrontations, avoiding it as much as possible.
And when it can't be helped, she needed to take a few minutes as a breather to ground herself back to reality – after she had finally processed what had finally happened.
She tended to allow her emotions take full control whenever she was forced to confront a problem; in this case Seungcheol. It wasn't until moments after when she is able fully grasp what had truly happened.
Almost as if she had an out of body experience, watching the scene unfold from afar.
"Do we fight a lot?" She asked, taking a step back from him.
"Just an enough amount of times, why do you ask?" He chuckled.
"That's why he's not buying it. Because we fight a lot."
Mingyu licked his lips, thinking of all the times that they would openly bicker and argue in front of their group. It wasn't in any intentions to hurt each other, it was all out of pure fun. It was just who they were.
"I mean, what if I tease you because I like you." He reasoned.
"What are we, teenagers?"
He shrugged. "Don't let him get in your head. If he doesn't buy it then he doesn't. Let's just enjoy the trip."
She nodded. "One more."
"What?"
"What's my favorite color?"
"What?" He tilted his head in confusion.
"Answer it."
"Well, for clothes; black and white. For little trinkets, green. For other things, pink. For men, red." He listed, a smug smile appearing on his face when he said red.
Laughing, she gave him a playful shove. "Let's go."
・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.
"Shit." Mingyu quickly sat up in his bed, looking over to the other side of the room where she was buried deep under the covers on her own bed. "Y/n wake up!"
"Mm..." She grumbled, pulling a pillow over her head.
"We woke up late, everyone's headed up to the North Shore already." Mingyu scrambled around the room, gathering all his belongings needed for the one hour trip up to the northern point of the island.
"Fuck!" Y/n shot up, grabbing her phone to check the time.
7:42 am.
They had all agreed on leaving the hotel by 6am, a few of the boys wanting to catch the morning surf before the waves died down. They had been so tired from the day before and had forgotten to set an alarm before bed.
The group chat had been actively making jokes just an hour ago about how the two most likely have forgotten because they were far too busy doing..... other things the night before, deciding to head up without them.
"I'll text them that we're leaving soon." Y/n typed away as Mingyu slipped into the bathroom to change and wash up.
She was sitting on the bed waiting for her turn when a knock on the door pulled her out of her trance. She wasn't a morning person and it took her some time to finally wake her body up.
To her surprise, Seungcheol was behind the door. "I woke up late too." He grumbled.
"Morning." Mingyu nodded, walking out of the bathroom "Stink, bathroom's all yours."
"I'll wait for you guys in the lobby." He turned his heel.
Just what she needed. An hour ride with Mingyu and Seungcheol.
Fun.
The were in the car in no time, neither one of them uttering a single word to another as Mingyu cruised along highway.
There wasn't much to talk about, and she was more than happy to take in the views of the lush greenery that surrounded them – pulling her film camera out every once and a while to capture the beauty.
"Can we listen to more calmer music, the bass on this thing is making me car sick." Y/n groaned, reaching over to grab Mingyu's phone out of the cupholder – unlocking the device with ease.
He had been using the same passcode for nearly ten years and had yet to change it. Claiming that he'd just forget it.
"Here." Seungcheol's hand stretched out from the backseat, his palm opened with a single candy resting. "It's ginger candy. Helps with motion sickness. Figured you– we would need it."
Y/n hesitantly grabbed it from his hand. "Thanks."
Popping the hard candy in to her mouth, she went back to scrolling through Mingyu's endless playlists – unable to find the right one to match the current mood.
A particular one had caught her eye, letting out a laugh. "Is this– oh my god." She flashed the screen to him, earning a laugh from him as well. "Why do you have my getting ready playlist saved?"
"It has good songs!" He defended. "I listen to it when I work out."
This sent her into more fits of laughter, clutching her stomach as she imagined him bench pressing while the City Girls blared loudly through his headphones. "You're so dumb."
"Maneater keeps my reps on pace."
"Stop– oh my god stop my stomach hurts. Don't talk." She wiped the moisture from her eyes, using another free hand to hit his shoulder.
"If you're not going to pick a playlist, can I have the AUX?" Seungcheol wasn't entertained.
In fact, he didn't find a single part of the interaction funny.
Y/n sat back up, clearing her throat once she had finally calmed down – passing the wire that was once connected to Mingyu's phone over to him.
Within seconds the voice of her favorite artist played loudly in the car.
Supercut by Lorde.
This was also her playlist.
The one she had shared to him months before.
She knew he was staring at her.
She could feel his eyes.
As the beat began to pick up, she felt Mingyu's hand rest on her knee – his fingers drumming along to the song.
"In your car, the radio up. We keep tryin' to talk about us. I'm someone, you may be my love." He nodded, looking over at her – waiting for her to join in.
He also knew this was her favorite song – the two having their fair share of blaring this loudly in his car back home, singing at the top of their lungs as they sped through the road.
"I'll be your quiet afternoon crush. Be your violent overnight rush. Make you crazy over my touch." A small smile crept on her lips as she followed his movements, swaying their bodies to the side.
Moments like this was when she appreciated how well he was able to pick up on her body language and silent thoughts – easily distracting her from any thoughts that could cause her to feel uneasy.
"I should have stayed back." Seungcheol shook his head as he watched the two make fools of themselves – his fingers hovering over the skip button.
He didn't skip it. He allowed for the queue'd music to play on, opting to look down at his phone as they went on singing every single word of the song.
"I'm hungry." Y/n sighed, as the next song played.
"They're gonna meet us at the Sunrise Shack, can you hold off for a thirty-five more minutes?" Mingyu asked, glancing at the navigation.
"I packed some spam musubi's from last night." Seungcheol offered, digging into his backpack to pull out a small tightly wrapped rice and ham combo.
Shaking her head. "I don't like–"
"Y/n doesn't like cold warm food." Mingyu replied at the same time.
"What he said."
Maybe he really didn't know her.
And maybe, they weren't acting.
・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.
Y/n watched from her towel as the boys caught one wave after another, laughing whenever one of them lost their footing – sending them tumbling in to the water.
She was beginning to grow bored of sitting in the same spot, but considering the only other option was to walk around the stores a few miles down with Sunhee and Eunji, Jeonghan's fiance, she decided to stay back. She was in no mood to pretend to be close to the girl.
Not after last night.
In the moment of silence, the girl began to replay her and Seungcheol's conversation in her head.
She couldn't believe she was stupid enough to allow Mingyu to talk her into pretending to date him.
Even stupider to believe it would even work.
He was right. He did know her.
He knew when she was lying.
He knew that she wouldn't have dared considered seeing Mingyu in the same romantic light she had seen him.
But that was as far as it went.
He only knew her the same way the rest of their friends did.
Y/n began to think that maybe, if she would have waited it out longer instead of making him choose – things would have been different.
She would have gotten what she wanted.
"You okay?" Jeonghan's voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
Digging his board down into the sand, he took a seat next to her – looking out into the distance where the rest of the guys were slowly paddling back in.
"Yeah, just thinking." Y/n pulled her lips into a tight smile.
"You made the right choice, you know." He spoke.
"What?" She turned to face him.
"Picking Mingyu." He continued. "He's always had some weird soft spot for you. And I know I don't know much about what you and Seungcheol went through– but– You deserve someone who's willing to drop anything to make sure you're happy. You're Mingyu's Sunhee"
She felt guilty.
Aside from Minghao, Jeonghan was someone who she had grown close to within the group. She found many nights confiding all her secrets to him during their late study sessions at the library.
He was easy to open up to and it broke her heart when he had decided to take a job offer across the country – losing that one person she was able to make a genuine connection with.
She wanted to tell him that it was all a lie, that they were pretending just so she could get a rise out of Seungcheol in hopes that he would realize what he was missing.
But she couldn't.
She was embarrassed.
"Snorkle time!" Mingyu cheered with Seokmin, placing their boards right next Jeonghan's.
"Hi." Mingyu smiled down at her, leaning down to place a kiss on her cheek; just missing her lips by a few centimeters.
Taking both of them by surprise, their eyes wide once he had straightened out – luckily for them, no one had seemed to catch on to this.
"Can we slow down on the itinerary, I'm exhausted." Minghao whined, dragging his board behind him – dropping down on to the sand.
"I second that." Jeonghan sighed, laying down. "I want to nap."
"No none of that." Mingyu shook his head, grabbing either one of their arms to pull them up. "Come on let's go go go go!"
"Please tell your him to shut up." Minghao groaned, plopping back down once Mingyu had let go.
"Bug, chill." She laughed as she watch Minghao curl into a ball – groaning about how his body will be feeling sore until next month.
"Boooooo!" He gave her a thumbs down. "Boooooo!"
・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.
"You almost kissed me earlier."
"My bad." He yawned, keeping his eyes on the road.
After a long day of water activities and going around the shops of the North Shore, they were finally making their way back to the hotel. Y/n couldn't be more glad at the thought of being able to wash the salt water and sand off her skin and laying down on the soft mattress.
She was also grateful that Seungcheol didn't need to ride back with them – hopping into the Jeonghan's rental after they had finished off eating at the local shave ice stand.
"I was shocked too, I was too hyper at the time." Mingyu continued, fiddling with the nobs of the A/C unit when he noticed her shiver from the corner of his eyes. "Better?"
Y/n nodded. "No kissing okay? It's weird."
"You're a bad kisser, huh?" He teased.
"I don't know. Ask Seungcheol."
"Gross." He stuck his tongue out.
"Besides, pretty sure you have rabies."
Playing along with her joke, Mingyu rolling up his sleeve to flash her his bicep. "I got my shots up to date."
"Stupid." She snorted, going back to scrolling on her instagram – liking all the posts her friends have uploaded from today's activities.
Y/n felt warmth bubbling in her heart as she saw each and every carousel containing some sort of group pictures. She had missed this – when their group was complete, with no care in the world.
It brought her back to the time when they were all blissfully unaware of the real world; making the most of their college experience.
Before jobs, feelings, and schedules complicated their lives.
"Wanna hear something funny?" She asked, keeping her eyes trained on her screen.
She was looking at Sunhee's post – holding a bowl of shave ice nearly the size of her head with Seungcheol smiling widely in the back.
"Don't I ever?" Mingyu replied sarcastically.
"Jeonghan said I was your Sunhee."
Mingyu remained silent.
"Isn't that hilarious?" She turned her head to face his profile. "You would never put someone through what Seungcheol put me through because of me, right?"
"I'm afraid of commitment but I'm not an asshole, y/n." He glanced at her.
"I'm not Sunhee then... right?"
"I mean, in a way–"
"What do you mean in a way? We're nowhere near like them."
Their dynamic was a stark contrast to Seungcheol and Sunhee's.
Sure, they were very close – knowing each other better than they know themselves. But they knew boundaries.
They knew when to draw the line when it came to friendship, refusing to tread into dangerous waters because that's all they were.
Friends.
Two people, of the opposite gender, can be friends.
"Look, you're my best friend. We have our moments, but yeah- if you being my Sunhee means I'd do anything for you, then maybe?"
"You wouldn't do anything for me."
"Yeah I would." He defended.
"Mingyu, let's be real here." Y/n pressed.
The thing was, she didn't want to be Sunhee. She would never want to be the reason why her best friend's significant other felt insecure – the reason why they would come second best.
She would never wish her position on anyone.
Especially not someone who Mingyu loved.
"I am!" He chuckled. "Maybe I won't cancel on my date last minute for you for a little headache, but if it came down to making sure you're okay, yeah– I'll do anything for you."
He was being serious.
His tone matching his words.
"But I'm not Sunhee." She pressed.
She had her mind set on not wanting to be Sunhee.
She was y/n. She knew Jeonghan was simply making an analogy earlier, but the girl didn't want to be her. Not to Seungcheol, and defenitely not to Mingyu.
"No, you're right. You're y/n. My best friend" He sent her a warm smile, reaching over to give her knee a squeeze. "We're, as you would say, for lifers."
What the girl in the passenger seat didn't know was that she was his Sunhee.
She was the girl that he had fallen in love with.
The girl that he searched for in every other person he tried to date.
If she was his Sunhee then he was her Seungcheol.
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taglist:
@thepoopdokyeomtouched/ @scuzmunkie / @yunjin0 / @morkswatermelonnnn / @anthropologymajorkpopmultistan / @ohmygodwhyareallusernamestaken / @naturelvrgfstealer / @bettybotterboughtabitofbutter / @musingsofananxiouspotato / @f4iryjjosh / @gatorgirl007 / @girlwithimaginarybiaslist / @daisawa / @ttragiquee / @luchiet / @loveforred /@vannabanana1995 / @uniq-tastic / @porridgesblog / @haolistic / @bbl32 / @calumsfringe / @alsktudy / @chansbaybygirl / @alwaysalmostthere / @listxn / @soupbinlily
(tag list closed)
there are some who asked to be tagged but tumblr is being weird and not allowing me to so i am so so sorry!
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genericpuff · 2 months
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All the cool kids use ComicFury 😘
Hey y'all! If you love independent comic sites and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, please consider supporting ComicFury, the owner Kyo has been running it for nearly twenty years and it's one of the only comic hosting platforms left that's entirely independent and reminiscent of the 'old school' days that I know y'all feel nostalgic over.
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(kyo's sense of humor is truly unmatched lmao)
Here are some of the other great features it offers:
Message board forums! It's a gift from the mid-2000's era gods!
Entirely free-to-use HTML and CSS editing! You can use the provided templates, or go wild and customize the site entirely to your liking! There's also a built-in site editor for people like me who want more control over their site design but don't have the patience to learn HTML/CSS ;0
In-depth site analytics that allow you to track and moderate comments, monitor your comic's performance per week, and let you see how many visitors you get. You can also set up Google Analytics on your site if you want that extra touch of data, without any bullshit from the platform. Shit, the site doesn't come with ads, but you can run ads on your site. The site owners don't ask questions, they don't take a cut. Pair your site with ComicAd and you'll be as cool as a crocodile alligator !
RSS feeds! They're like Youtube subscriptions for millennials and Gen X'ers!
NSFW comics are allowed, let the "female presenting nipples" run free! (just tag and content rate them properly!)
Tagging. Tagging. Remember that? The basic feature that every comic site has except for the alleged "#1 webcomic site"? The independent comic site that still looks the same as it did 10 years ago has that. Which you'd assume isn't that big a deal, but isn't it weird that Webtoons doesn't?
Blog posts. 'Nuff said.
AI-made comics are strictly prohibited. This also means you don't have to worry about the site owners sneaking in AI comics or installing AI scrapers (cough cough)
Did I mention that the hosting includes actual hosting? Meaning for only the cost of the domain you can change your URL to whatever site name you want. No extra cost for hosting because it's just a URL redirect. No stupid "pro plan" or "gold tier" subscription necessary, every feature of the site is free to use for all. If this were a sponsored Pornhub ad, this is the part where I'd say "no credit card, no bullshit".
Don't believe me? Alright, look at my creator backend (feat stats on my old ass 2014 comic, I ain't got anything to hide LOL)
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TRANSCRIPTS! CHAPTER ORGANIZATION! MASS PAGE UPLOADING! MULTIPLE CREATOR SUPPORT! FULL HTML AND CSS SUPPORT! SIMPLIFIED EDITORS! ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT GIVE YOU WEEKLY BREAKDOWNS! THE POWER OF CHOICE!!
So yeah! You have zero reasons to not use and support ComicFury! It being "smaller" than Webtoons shouldn't stop you! Regain your independence, support smaller platforms, and maybe you'll even find that 'tight-knit community' that we all miss from the days of old! They're out there, you just gotta be willing to use them! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ~ ♡
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hazelsmirrorball · 7 months
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BOTTOMS THE PODCAST  | Hazel Callahan
Rockstar! Hazel Callahan x  Host! Reader Summary: Hazel Callahan is a special guest on The Bottoms podcast after Y/n said in a lie detector machine that she was her crush.  Warnings: Not proof read. Sorry for any mistakes, English isn't my main language.  a/n: Wrote this in my costume design class, something happy after that angsty Rockstar girlfriend chapter. I've been binge watching frenemies so that's how I got this idea. Hope you guys like it! I really love reading ur comments, they really make my day <3
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Y/n always had a lot of things to say. All her life people would make fun of her because she never knew when to shut up. Maybe it was the fact that she knew a lot about several things  or the fact that she just enjoyed talking shit. But the girl could talk hours on end about things not knowing when to stop. Thankfully, Y/n had friends that liked to talk as much shit as her. Josie, PJ and Y/n could drag people like they were drinking water. So when they were offered to do a podcast the three of the girls agreed without hesitation. Getting paid to talk shit on the internet for an hour? That was an amazing deal. 
And by the looks of it, everyone around them agreed that talking shit was good since they were having a godly amount of streams daily. The girls had decided to name the podcast “Bottoms” and it took place in a small studio in downtown. The girls wanted the studio to look as cozy as possible. So instead of a serious looking podcast they decided to decorate the room with vibrant colors and random knick knacks, the three girls had a say in how the studio looked so at the end of customizing it they had an unintentional division of their areas. Different colors and decorations that made their area theirs but the only thing the girls had agreed on was having bean bags as chairs, that was the best part. 
Their podcast “Bottoms” was popping off, so the girls had come up with several ideas to not make the podcast repetitive or boring. Costumes, themes, breakdowns and most importantly, special guests. Due to the fact that people actually like them, there were a lot of celebrities that surprisingly wanted to be on the show. So in the last episode when Y/n was attached to a lie detector machine and was asked if famous rock star, Hazel Callahan, was attractive. She had rambled about her crush not thinking that Hazel was going to hear the podcast let alone be the next guest on it. 
There she was, academy award winning rockstar, Hazel Callahan, sitting across from her. Her hair was messily styled as she threw her head back laughing at something PJ had said, her pearly whites showing through. She slammed her ring covered hands as she attempted to stop her laughing fit.  For the first time in Y/n’s life she was speechless. Hazel was beautiful, Y/n knew that. But having her so close by made Y/n malfunction with her beauty. Hazel was sculpted by god and being near her made Y/n feel things she couldn’t say on air. Y/n wasn’t going to survive an hour of talking, she glanced at the timer that was behind the cameras noticing the 00:10  on the screen. Ten minutes and she hadn’t said a single word. Ten minutes of her staring at Hazel while she talked about the tour and her life.  The only thing viewers could possibly see was her staring lovingly at Hazel and if she had to see a compilation on youtube  of her staring at Hazel she was going to lose it. 
“Damn, Y/n. Cat got your tongue? See people…Y/n likes talking shit about how much game she has. But as of right now she barely said hello to Hazel. May I remind you guys that in the   last episode she said that Hazel was her dream girl and that she could take h…” PJ started pulling the microphone towards her as everyone focused her eyes on Y/n, including those damn blue eyes. Y/n could feel her body tense up but she quickly analyzed where PJ was going, so she slammed her hands on the table interrupting, PJ. 
“Miss Callahan, Do you have a girlfriend? The people want to know” Y/n managed to get out. But after hearing herself in her headphones  say those words she felt herself cringe instantly regretting asking that. Miss Callahan? Who the hell did she think she was speaking to? Y/n moved on her bean bag chair noticing how it sucked her up. Y/n closed her eyes not wanting to face even more embarrassment while she heard Josie and PJ attempting to hold in their laughs. 
“I’m single, actually. So I hope that’s good for the people.” Hazel said, pulling her mic towards her with her ring covered hand. Hazel quickly shifted on the bean bag crossing her leg on top of the other one resting her hands. 
“Oh, but there’s a rumor that rock stars get puss. You don’t have groupies all over you after shows. I’ve heard your name countless times, supposedly you're a pussy pleaser in the community. Opinions on that.” PJ added trying to stir up the pot for the episode. Y/n stared at PJ agape not believing the words that were slipping out of her mouth. Hazel let out a loud laugh, surprising the three of them. 
“The question was if I was single, not how much I got laid. But I’m glad you’ve done your research. Not a lot of people mention my supposed pussy pleaser ways in interviews, which makes this one intriguing. So thank you for putting that out there” Hazel said sarcastically while attempting to hold in her laugh. 
“Supposedly?” Y/n let out looking at Hazel slightly. She quickly gripped on her head regretting letting that slip noticing the cocky look on Y/n’s face. 
“Well, I can’t confirm the rumors myself but if you want, we can test that theory.” Hazel replied, sending a wink towards Y/n direction. PJ gasped loudly hitting the table once again. 
“You're good. Like a god, never have I seen Y/n this quiet. What is going on?”  PJ said in between laughs while looking all around the set. 
“I don’t want to be cocky but if we get past this pod, I’ll promise you she’ll be really vocal and loud. But that’s not important right now…How about you? Are you single Miss L/n? I want to know” Y/n looked up, her face completely flushed as Hazel grinned towards knowing the effect her words had on Y/n. 
“What are you  supposed to be?” Y/n said quickly trying to change the subject off her once again. Hazel looks down at her outfit trying to hide her smile while Josie instantly notices her discomfort so she takes the lead clearing her throat. 
“What Y/n is trying to ask is,  what is your costume? For all of you guys that don’t know we are in halloween. We have been doing different themes for each episode to dress up and all that.  By  the looks of it you’ve always dressed up. But if you do not dress up then I like your new style. It makes your eyes pop” So why don’t we go around the room and say what we are dressed up as. The theme this week is crush. It can be a fictional crush, celebrity crush, real crush, whatever crush you want. So I decided on dressing up as my lovely girlfriend, Isabel. My biggest crush in the whole world. Shout out to you, babe.  She did my makeup and styled me this morning. Who’s next? ” Josie said as she pulled her flower dress down as PJ applauded obnoxiously loud making Y/n cringe one again. Hazel reached towards the water in front of her arms slowly grazing Y/n’s leg making her tense up once again. 
“Y/n, why don’t you go? Who are you supposed to be, Anakin Skywalker?” PJ asked in a joking tone while turning towards her. 
“First off all, Fuck you. Second of all I was told that our costume was going to be fictional characters not crushes.” Y/n started while fixing her robes. Josie chuckled, pulling out her phone to check  the email while Pj shook her head. 
“Don’t worry, Y/n. For you it’s the same person that’s why we didn’t tell you anything. We didn’t want you to be a more blushing mess than you already are. So don’t be such a puss and tell the camera who are you dressed up as” PJ continued pointing at the camera while Y/n rolled her eyes.  
“I’m dressed up as Kit Tanthalos from Disney’s Willow” She muttered into the mic while glaring at PJ ignoring Hazel’s eyes. 
“Wait isn’t that, Hazel's character in that show she’s in,” Josie started making Y/n groan throwing her head back clearly embarrassed. 
“You know what I want to know, what the hell is PJ dressed up as. Who’s your crush” Y/n said quickly, making PJ look down at her shirt. 
“I’m dressed as a Milf, obviously. I know Hazel being here has taken your common sense but we need you to be attentive. Now, Hazel. Who’s your celebrity crush?” PJ asked, turning to Hazel. Hazel smiled widely, turning to Y/n, not unlocking their eyes. 
“Well, I decided to dress up as my favorite podcaster. I thought my outfit was pretty obvious.” Hazel said standing up, giving an awkward turn. Y/n could feel her face turn completely red noticing that her outfit mimicked one that was recently posted on her instagram story. 
“You see guys, this is how we make love in this podcast. In the next episode we will probably talk about all the puss Y/n got.” PJ almost screamed into the mic. 
...
Thank You Guys For Reading!
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