Tumgik
#get verified on Twitter and others.
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littlerabidfox · 1 year
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As an avid twitter user and a cronically online person in a healthy way, I bring you one of the funniest things that is happening currently over there because we are going DOWN with the clown shoes ON and I am busting a lung and a half and have been laughing for around 40 minutes now.
So, to get y'all in situation, Elongated Muskrat is verifying for free every account over a million followers because not a single famous and actually influential person wants to pay for his shit, which is getting a lot of accounts verified unless they change their name.
Of course, people have been changing their names until the verification wears away, but there is a dude that has had his account be verified more than once, which has made him have to change his name several times... you WILL NOT GUESS who is the person I am talking about...
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It's dril, and who is dril u ask? I may present you now with what is the cherry on top and what makes this situation so fundamentally funny
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This is the dude who is getting re-verified against his wishes because Elon will not turn into a corn cob
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alltheprettyplaces · 11 months
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bruh I can’t even get in the waiting room bc “an error occurred while fetching waiting room information” hello?????????
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stil-lindigo · 4 months
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In Gaza, journalists are passing out from exhaustion and famine. Despite the ICJ ruling, the US and Australia are intentionally defunding UNWRA based on baseless claims by Israel that members of the aid group are Hamas-sympathizers. Netanyahu, of course, has ignored the ICJ ruling. Israel has banned insulin pens from arriving in Gaza, a particularly cruel and inhumane crime to add to their laundry list of offences. Nothing has changed, and things are getting worse.
It is not that hard to not buy things. To not watch things. Perhaps it is inconvenient, and makes you go out of your way, and costs a little more to buy alternatives. But if you were to attend a funeral a day for every child that has died in Gaza so far, it would take you over 27 years. When the worst that will happen to you is that you don't watch a TV show featuring a zionist, you don't buy a specific brand that donates to and supports zionism, how could that possibly compare to the plight of Palestinians who must amputate limbs without anesthesia?
Once again, this is the BDS list of brands to boycott.
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Here is a comprehensive post about more actions you can take in support of Palestine.
Here is a list of verifiable orgs that provide aid on the ground.
credible organisations that are doing work on the ground in Palestine:
Care for Gaza:non-profit charity that distributes money, food and other resources directly to families in Gaza.They maintain a regular presence on Twitter and Instagram. You can donate to them via Paypal here.
PCRF / Palestine Children's Relief Fund: non-profit organisation that distributes essential food and resources to families in Gaza. Most recently, they delivered 30 tons of vital medicine, and 82,000 pounds of flour.
Medical Aid For Palestinians: deploys medical teams to treat Palestinians suffering under Israel's malicious bombardments.
Donate e-sims to Palestine: massive post with tutorials and relevant links, with discount codes included in the post and in the replies.
Direct Aid: humanitarian fund distributing supplies such as blankets and winter jackets directly to Palestinian families.
help people leave palestine (donate what you can)
Help a Family Evacuate Gaza (GoGetFunding)
Save Sanaa and her Family (Gofundme)
Save Amjad Saher and his family (Gofundme)
Help a family of 13 escape Gaza (Gofundme)
Help a Palestinian children's book illustrator save her family of 12 (Gofundme)
Today, tomorrow and until Israel faces justice for their crimes, learn how to prioritise Palestine over your own comfort.
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my-silly-poker · 4 months
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gaza scam warning
Hey gamers, recently there have been a number of scam blogs on tumblr claiming to be Gazan victims. They've been making a number of iterations of the exact same blog and story but with different names and sometimes different PayPal links.
Thus far, the content of these scams are being stolen from 2 real fundraisers. Please lend your aid to these people who need help instead of the disgusting scam farm
Help Haya Orouq's family escape Gaza
Help Rawan AbuMahady's family escape Gaza
These are examples within the past month which have been deleted.
Ma22ya
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Khalilhan
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jovialsuitdonutai
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miniaturepostkingjaiur
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Donation scams on tumblr are extremely common and anyone who has a tumblr account will encounter them at some point. You have likely encountered them before and not realized it. They throw together a brand new blog with a story of needing aid, then use bots to go through follow lists and post notes to send messages to random users. Scambusting blogs like kyra45 do a lot of work to track and call out these scams when they surface.
Scam Spotting Tips
They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before. Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.
They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating
They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.
It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc. Pay attention to and trust the suspicion of details that stand out as odd.
Like many of the above examples, they often use an automatically generated username consisting of random words
Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it entirely - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/profiles or alter the images so that people don't find the source. An image not having a source should also be suspicious, as you should wonder why this person's social media presence is exclusively a 3 day old tumblr blog
When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.
In name of the situation, here are great verified resources to support real people who need help:
Many organizations and gofundmes for Gaza
Verified fundraisers for individuals in Gaza put together by @palestineasdiqa on Instagram and Twitter
Click to donate for free using ad revenue
Participation and political resources for US, UK and Canada
USPCR's toolkit
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nouvellevqgue · 4 months
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FULL OF FAN BEHAVIOR
req: Saw your post for smau requests, maybe a Max Verstappen where people don't realise his girlfriends account is you know her official verified account. Because practically every single post is about Max. Full on fan behaviour, in the sense she was his first fan as his childhood friend, she has been there supporting him since they were kids, and now they're adults and together, but some habits doesn't change.
(bonus if the posts makes people question why she choose Max as her mans.)
summary: everybody knows that this account is full of max. from his first win to now, from his most random things to his glory time, she's always there to post his pictures. they only know her as his friend and nothing more, but who is she actually?
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2016 - 2018
verstappenight
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liked by maxverstappen33, and 1,942 others
verstappenight WOOOO P1🏆🏁 congratulations to you maximus, i'm soo proud of you!
view all 125 comments
maxverstappen33 I won't say anything about the name Maximus, but thank you 😄
danielricciardo Well deserved! 👍🙌
username look how young he is
username I love a supportive fan ^^ Plz post more of this man.
   ⤷ yourusername glad to be on your service, ma'am
username how old is he?
username He's so happy, he turns red.
username I usually don't trust redbull after Sebastian, but he might be my new exception🤷‍♀️
verstappenight
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liked by danielricciardo, and 1,230 others
verstappenight that eyes glint with mischief. #throwbackthursday
view all 65 comments
maxverstappen33 Oh my god, I thought I trusted you by taking this years ago
   ⤷ yourusername never trust anyone
username The half smile😂
username He's been pulling the red string with Red Bull from a long time ago, and look at the hat. I bet it's not a coincidence.
username how is she even managed to get this out? this looks so ancient
   ⤷ username It's not ancient, it's probably old, but not ancient.
danielricciardo He looks like he's planning to steal one of the cars steering wheel
   ⤷ username exactly! 😂😂
username if it's a throwback, how old is this pic then?
   ⤷ username i mean he looks way younger than him on her recent post, so just figure it.
   ⤷ username he always looks younger
verstappenight
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liked by victoriaverstappen, and 963 others
verstappenight how is it feel to have a duplicates?
view all 72 comments
maxverstappen33 Why are you taking the second one?
   ⤷ verstappenight and why are YOU posing to that one?
username Why is he looks younger and younger each time?
   ⤷ verstappenight i don't know, but i definitely recommend him to have a slug treatment for anti aging.
   ⤷ username username it's him in torro rosso, so that's why he looks more like a teenager.
username it's not even thursday yet, but i had a bad feeling for this week's throwback thursday.
verstappenight
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liked by carlossainz55, and 3,573 others
verstappenight boo! happy halloween #throwbackthursday
view all 269 comments
username what did i say, my feelings are never lying
carlossainz55 Got you! 😆🤣
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 If I got a heart attack next week, it'll be completely your fault
landonorris is halloween on 29 or 30?
   ⤷ username depends on what region you're in, i guess?
   ⤷ landonorris don't guess, answer.
maxverstappen1 And how are you even managed to take this?? Seriously. yourusername
username I can't believe it's actually Carlos who did this
   ⤷ username Yeah, but I think this is so Carlos-like behavior.
username i would do that face too if someone dressed as scream beside me
username Who is running this fanpage?
username why are you liking him so much?
   ⤷ yourusername because he is so nice, cool, and he looks like sid from ice age which is my favorite character.
   ⤷ danielricciardo we got a whole stack of characters here: first we got maximus the horse from tangled, sid from ice age, and then what? jimmy neutron?
username 😂😂😂ajajaja mira su cara!
verstappenight
liked by redbullracing, and 3,782 others
verstappenight found this on twitter and now i can't stop laughing! can't wait to send this to my family group.
view all 90 comments
maxverstappen1 I really can't trust you with my digital footprint 🤦🏻‍♂️
   ⤷ verstappenight i found this on twitter alright, it's not taken by me!
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 Still.
   ⤷ carlossainz55 Ooh, someone's upset...
username who is this person behind this account?
username Why is his reaction is always looking so hilarious
username Max: 😦
username i feel him
username you sure it's not throwback thursday?
MID 2023
verstappenight
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liked by charles_leclerc, and 97,182 others
verstappenight i changed throwback thursday with this questionable sense of max's fashion. hope that's alright.
photo credit via verstauri on twitter.
view all 348 comments
username NOOOOOOOOOOOO
username #bringbackthrowbackthursday
charles_leclerc If you get rid of throwback Thursday, how am I going to tease him?
   ⤷ verstappenight by searching it on pinterest🤷🏻‍♀️
username Is that real or photoshopped?
username Okay, I know throwback thursday is made a long time ago since 2015 but man I really miss it sm... 💔💔
   ⤷ verstappenight same, but some people don't need that old max (except for charles). we need the new one because life goes on -max via my message
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 I don't remember saying it
   ⤷ verstappenight shut up
username oh cmon i know charles want it because he's in love with max
   ⤷ username should i be surprised?
   ⤷ username i mean if there's no throwback thursday, who's going to tease him with his past when she's not there
   ⤷ username Daniel and Lando or Y/n could...
   ⤷ username oh come on, i don't even know who's the person behind this account anyway, for EIGHT YEARS
   ⤷ username As if you've never heard of twitter, just search her username and you'll see her REAL face.
THE TWEET SHE MEANT:
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verstappenight
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liked by schecoperez, and 113,809 others
verstappenight guess which one is the real one
view all 462 comments
schecoperez The first one of course!😂🤣
username since when did checos ass becoming that juicy
   ⤷ username since he listened to daddy yankee's song on repeat
   ⤷ danielricciardo His actual morning routine:
username the first one because what else would he be doing if not eating omelette and seeing checo's ass in the morning
   ⤷ username even checo himself agrees
username I'm glad that she still post here, even though there's no throwback thursday anymore😞😔
   ⤷ username but i guess even though we did not have throwback thursday anymore, we still have this crack post of him😄
TWITTER, 3 DAYS AFTER THE COMMENTS ON VERSTAPPENIGHT'S DADDY POST:
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maxverstappen1 added a photo to their story! 2h
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ON THE OTHER HAND, HER ACTUAL IG:
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1 and 82,147 others
yourusername good moooorniiiiinggggg from my room<3
view all 97 comments
username Thank God it's not private
username damn yall work faster than the fbi
username Anyone come here from twitter?
username Omg I've never realized max pulled this hottie ever since they were born
username THIS IS VERSTAPPENIGHT ADMIN?????
   ⤷ username eight years of waiting is finally getting payed off..
username why are you even choosing max to be your man when there's charles or daniel who's sexier
   ⤷ yourusername sometimes i don't need looks to see to be having someone like max. he's my best friend first, and i'm glad i choose him right the first place.
   ⤷ username Oh that's sweet...
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 I love you too, My biggest fan.
   ⤷ username I LOVE YOU TOO??????💔💔
   ⤷ username oh my god max is having a REAL relationship with a fan account admin
   ⤷ username AWOOP🚨🚔 THEIR MEDIUM LAUNCH????
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, and 278,903 others
yourusername nobody knows that this phone addict is once my best friend. happy birthday maximus! 🥳🤍
view all 486 comments
landonorris happy birthday facebook dad.
maxverstappen1 I once again not going to take the Maximus name. It makes me feel like a horse from Rapunzel.
   ⤷ yourusername wait, you've watch tangled before?
danielricciardo Happy birthday, Big boy.
redbullracing Happy birthday to our number one champion! 🥳🥳
username awww baby maxiee🥺🥺🥺
lewishamilton Happy birthday, mate!
carlossainz55 To be honest, your real account is sometimes still kinda feels like your other one.
   ⤷ yourusername force of habit probably?
   ⤷ carlossainz55 No, it's because you're acting like Max's biggest fan everywhere.
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 That's probably because she is.
   ⤷ yourusername wipe that smug smile off your face while you're typing
username He looks the same weirdly or not
username AHA I FOUND YOU VERSTAPPENIGHT ADMIN
username i love how she just hanging to his arm like they're been a couple since god knows how long
username SHE'S SOO LUCKYYY
username i'm gonna melt
username i feel like it's a hard launch, but she have been doing this for a long time ago
sophiekumpen 🥳🥳🥳
maxverstappen1
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liked by zedd, and 627,834 others
maxverstappen1 How was I going to get her bad side if she's there and looking so beautifully?
👤: yourusername, verstappenight
view all 446 comments
landonorris poetic. remember your other girlfriend's waiting
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 I don't remember having another one?
   ⤷ charles_leclerc How are you even forget about us?
yourusername awww i can't believe you tag the fan account one too!! i love you so much!!!
   ⤷ maxverstappen1 I love you too❤️
username #justiceforcharles #lestappenforever
username SHE'S SOOOO CUTE no wonder max pulled her
victoriaverstappen I didn't know you pulled this cutie
   ⤷ danielricciardo Me too until I found out yesterday at the club
username poetic max is going to be the end of me
username I really had a bad feelings of he becoming poetic and gets all over like this
username Okay, this is max's hard launch. And now I'm waiting for Y/n's
   ⤷ username i thought she already doing it for so many times at verstappenight? 😏🤭
yourusername
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liked by redbullracing, and 579,420 others
yourusername 💌
📸: landonorris
view all 461 comments
username PARENTS CONFIRMED???
username YESS (adopt me pls)
username is verstappenight still going to be there? let's see for the next two days...
username verstappenight nation how do we feel after this? (we can get a new max pic daily)
username i'm gonna thank lando forever for this
username With the bouquet, the dim light, and the black and white + sepia filters. What are they doin that night?
username AWWW ROMANTIC😍😍
danielricciardo They left Charles in the back that night
⤷ landonorris aww poor him. but anyway...
username how are you converting from lestappen to this one so fast?
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TAGLIST @queenofmanydreams @muglermami @4limq @avengers-assemble123456 @cabbyhabs @meowtastick @4mula-1 @miarabanana @amel1ee @dinosushilun1 @auggieblogs @namgification
2K notes · View notes
gootarts · 10 months
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as of 8/3, the most recently updated version of this post is here (it's a reblog of this exact post with more info added)
as a lot of you know, limbus company recently fired its CG illustrator for being a feminist, at 11 pm, via phone call, after a bunch of misogynists walked into the office earlier that day and demanded she be fired. on top of this, as per korean fans, her firing went against labor laws---in korea, you must have your dismissal in writing.
the korean fandom on twitter is, understandably, going scorched earth on project moon due to this. there's a lot currently going on to protest the decision, so i'm posting a list here of what's going on for those who want to limit their time on elon musk's $44 billion midlife crisis impulse purchase website (if you are on twitter, domuk is a good person to follow, as they translate important updates to english). a lot of the links are in korean, but generally they play nicely with machine translators. this should be current as of 8/2.
Statements condemning the decision have been issued by The Gyeonggi Youth Union and IT Union.
A press conference at the Gyeonggido Assembly will occur on 8/3, with lawmakers of the Gyeonggi province (where Project Moon is based) in attendance. This appears driven by the leader of the Gyeonggi Youth Union.
The vice chairman of the IT union--who has a good amount of experience with labor negotiations like these--has expressed strong support for the artist and is working to get media coverage due to the ongoing feminist witch hunts in the gaming industry. Project Moon isn't union to my knowledge, but he's noted that he's taken on nonunion companies such as Netmarble (largest mobile game dev in South Korea) by getting the issue in front of the National Assembly (Korea's congress).
Articles on the incident published in The Daily Labor News, Korean Daily, multiple articles on Hankyoreh (one of which made it to the print edition), and other news outlets.
Segments about the termination on the MBN 7 o' clock news and MBC's morning news
Comments by Youth Union leaders about looking into a loan made to Project Moon via Devsisters Ventures, a venture capital firm. Tax money from Gyeonggi province was invested in Devsisters in 2017, and in 2021, Devsisters gave money to Project Moon. The Gyeonggi Youth Union is asking why hard-earned tax money was indirectly given to a company who violates ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.
Almost nonstop signage truck protests outside Project Moon's physical office during business hours until 8/22 or the company makes a statement. This occurs alongside a coordinated hashtag campaign to get the issue trending on Twitter in Korea. The signage campaign was crowd-funded in about 3 hours.
A full boycott of the Limbus Company app, on both mobile and PC (steam) platforms. Overseas fans are highly encouraged to participate, regardless if whether they're F2P or not. Not opening the app at all is arguably the biggest thing any one person can do to protest the decision, as the app logs the number of accounts that log on daily. For a new gacha such as Limbus, a high number of F2P daily active users, but a small number of paying users is often preferable to having a smaller userbase but more paying users. If the company sees the number of daily users remain stable, they will likely decide to wait out any backlash rather than apologize.
Digging up verified reviews from previous employees regarding the company's poor management practices
Due to the firing, the Leviathan artist has posted about poor working conditions when making the story. As per a bilingual speaker, they were working on a storyboard revision, and thought 'if I ran into the street right now and got hit by a car and died, I wouldn't have to keep working.' They contacted Project Moon because they didn't want their work to be like that, and proposed changes to serialization/reduction in amount of work per picture/to build up a buffer of finished images (they did not have any buffer while working on Leviathan to my knowledge). They were shut out, and had to suck it up and accept the situation.
Hamhampangpang has a 'shrine' section of the restaurant for fans to leave fan-created merch and other items. They also allow the fans to take this merch back if they can prove it's theirs. Fans are now doing just that.
To boost all of the above, a large number of Korean fanartists with thousands of followers have deleted their works and/or converted their accounts from fanart accounts to accounts supporting the protests. Many of them are bilingual, and they're where I got the majority of this information.
[note 1: there's a targeted english-language disinformation campaign by the website that started the hate mob. i have read the artist's tweets with machine translation, and they're talked about in the second hankyoreh article linked above: nowhere does she express any transphobic or similarly awful beliefs. likewise, be wary of any claims that she supported anything whose description makes you raise eyebrows--those claims are likely in reference to megalia, a korean feminist movement. for information on that, i'd recommend the NPR/BBC articles below and this google drive link of english-language scholarly papers on them. for the love of god don't get your information about a feminist movement from guys going on witch hunts for feminists.]
[note 2: i've seen a couple people argue that the firing was for the physical safety of the employees, citing the kyoani incident in japan. as per this korean fan, most fans there strongly do not believe this was the case. we have english-translated transcripts of the meeting between the mob and project moon; the threats the mob was making were to......brand project moon as a feminist company online. yes, really. male korean gamers aren't normal about feminism, and there's been an ongoing witch hunt for feminists in the industry since about 2016, something you see noted in both the labor union statements. both NPR and the BBC this phenomenon to gamergate, and i'd say it's a pretty apt comparison.]
let me know if anything needs correction or if anything should be added.
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porcelana-r0ta · 11 months
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let the mourners come
Title: let the mourners come
Ao3 Link: Only available to Ao3 users
Word Count: 3045
Summary:
It started, as most things do with Danny Fenton, as a joke.
It ended, as most things do with Jazz Fenton, with things better than they were before.
xxXxx
When Danny finally gets a Twitter, it’s during Elon Musk’s shit show takeover. He’s able to secure a good Twitter handle thanks to people leaving en masse and fleeing to Tumblr. He knows about things that happen outside of Amity Park (he is terminally online rather than chronically, after all), but he still doesn’t think anything of using @TheJoker as his handle, even knowing about Gotham City’s clown troubles. It’s just going to be a shitpost account, anyway, one that dances in the chaos of Elon’s electronic graveyard. Nothing will come about him using @TheJoker when he’s merely posting things like, “Just grew a new row of teeth!!! very pointy but can’t go to the dentist anymore bc they might turn me in to the giw.”
So Danny honestly never foresaw The Actual Real Joker breaking out of Arkham Asylum all the way in Gotham City, New Jersey, and deciding to get a Twitter account to terrorize people online as well as offline. And he definitely never foresaw The Joker @’ing him on Twitter, demanding that Danny change his Twitter handle. But, well. Here he was. 
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[Image Description: A screenshot of a Twitter reply chain, starting with the real Joker @'ing Danny's Twitter account, which uses TheJoker as his Twitter handle. The Joker, who has a verified account, demands that Danny "change your handle", and Danny replies with a simple "no" followed by red heart emoji. The Joker Tweets, "Kid you don't know who you're fucking with," to which Danny replies, "Ye I do ur some dude w/ poor fashion sense and lame jokes. Maybe try badjokesbyjeff bc originality is ugly on u" followed by a shrugging emoticon. The Joker responds, "Check your DMs." Danny then responds, "Perf [happy emoji surrounded by hearts] I've sent you a time and place. Can't wait to beat the shit out of another disgrace of a clown." Someone with the username "Gregg rulz ok" responds to Danny's last Tweet, "Bro is absolutely RATIOING the joker but the clown keeps responding [three skull emojis] embarrassing frfr too bad he's gonna die for realsies".
End ID]
Danny is quick to respond and then makes even quicker work of roasting The Joker. This soon results in The Joker DMing him his IP Address and a creative threat. Still, Danny isn’t about to cow to a clown with no respect for the art of clowning. He replies to the DM: 
Cool, meet me at the Nasty Burger parking lot in Amity Park IL on tuesday at 2am
The response from The Joker is quick:
Fourteen year olds are too confident these days
Danny rolls his eyes and ignores the influx of notifications from Twitter, and instead makes another Tweet.
Imagine beefing with someone over a Twitter handle lol acc so embarrassing for him
He blackens his screen and stretches in bed, letting his spine pop more than what is humanly possible. He runs his tongue over that second row of teeth, his lips curling into a grin. 
xxXxx
Gothamite Twitter is blowing up over The Joker’s social media beef with a faceless shitposting account. Jason, upon finding out about it, has a series of reactions: first, he looks up the shitposter and follows them. Then, he finds the actual chain between the poster and The Joker, and his vision goes vibrant green when he sees that The Joker’s profile picture is of the second Robin, beaten and swollen in an abandoned building in Ethiopia. 
When his vision clears and he can breathe without wanting to kill, he likes the shitposter’s replies, and he calls the Replacement to see if the other Bats know already.
“We know,” Tim says in lieu of a hello when the ringing cuts out. “We’re working on it.”
“What, you think anything’s gonna come of it?” But even as Jason asks, he already knows the answer. The Joker is unhinged and once he’s threatened something, he’ll follow up unless he comes up with a “funnier” option. 
Tim’s breath hitches, and he says, “I’ve hacked their DMs. Joker knows the kid’s IP address and sent it to him. He knows everything from that address alone.”
He pauses in the middle of suiting up, “Kid?”
He hears Tim swallow, “Yes, kid. He’s fifteen. And he gave The Joker a specific time and place to meet up to fight. In his own hometown.”
“Are— are you fucking kidding me?” 
“No. B is already calling Nightwing. We’re taking the Batwing to Illinois.”
“Jesus fuck. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Hood, I—”
“Shut up, I’m already in my gear.” He hangs up without waiting for a response. 
He refreshes the Twitter feed and barks a laugh at the newest Tweet:
Jason Todd votes, and the Red Hood leaves his safe house. 
xxXxx
A commercial flight to Illinois takes around two and a half hours. In the Batwing, they get there in an hour, and don’t even have to worry about the drive from Chicago to a small speck of a town like Amity Park. They spend the quick flight learning everything they can about Daniel James Fenton, the owner of the Twitter account, and they can all sense the growing tension from (and between) Bruce and Jason.
But, well. Jason doesn’t care. Let them be uncomfortable. It doesn’t compare to being ripped back into life and finding out his dad didn’t even get justice for his death. 
When they reach town, it doesn’t take long to find the Fentons’ home. This is in part because Amity Park is a very navigable town, and because of the giant neon sign proclaiming FentonWorks on the side of the building. 
“Is that a blimp?” Dick asks. “Why don’t we have a blimp?” 
“Where would we keep it?” the Demon Brat counters practically. “Goliath takes up all of the Cave’s extra space.” 
Jason rolls his eyes and knows veins would be popping out of Bruce’s forehead if it weren’t for the cowl. 
“Let’s go,” Bruce says instead, and they all make their way to the house. 
Nightwing, predictably, goes for the front door approach. Jason rolls his eyes as he takes one of the second-story windows and finds his way downstairs.
He gets down at the same time that a redheaded girl answers the door and nearly slams it in Dick’s face. Jason has to suppress snickers at the sight. 
“Wait, wait, wait, are you Jazz Fenton? We need to talk to your brother!” 
“...We?” she asks, then tenses and turns around to see the rest of the Bats in the hall behind her. Dick takes the opportunity to step in completely, closing the door behind him. “Wha— what’s going on?”
“Where are your parents, Jazz?” Bruce makes every question sound like a demand. Jason rolls his eyes from behind his mask—way to put the teenager at ease, B.
“Why do you need to know?” Her voice has a defensive edge to it. “What do you want with Danny?” 
“Hey, it’s okay,” Nightwing comforts. “He didn’t do anything too bad, just said some dumb things online. It’s not his fault.” 
This relaxes her, and her shoulders begin un-hunching. “Oh, s-so what’d he do?”
“He foolishly challenged The Joker to a battle in a ‘Nasty Burger’ parking lot tonight.” 
“You could’ve had some more tact, Robin,” Nightwing scolds. But the Demon Spawn just crosses his arms. 
“He did what?” Jazz shrieks. “Like, The Joker from Gotham? That Joker?”
“Are there others?” Red Hood comments dryly. 
Her face goes through several different emotions—disbelief, rage, fear, and then rage again, “DANIEL JAMES FENTON! GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!” 
There’s a thumping noise, and then frantic footsteps down the stairs. 
“Wha? Who died?” asks the figure of a tiny fifteen-year-old, smaller than even Jason had been when he was alone with The Joker. He’s tiny and lanky. Zero muscle definition. Eye bags to rival the Replacement’s. Something ripples in the Pit, deep and distinct, but he can’t name what causes it.
Oh, this kid is so dead. 
“Danny,” says Jazz calmly while Danny blinks uncomprehendingly at the heroes in their hallway. She is solemn when she says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you now.” 
“What did I do?” 
She stares at him, “Why have you scheduled a fight with The Joker?” 
“Oh, that.” He rubs the back of his neck, “Is he taking that seriously?”
“Of course he is, Danny! It’s The Joker! That’s what he does! He can’t differentiate between a joke and reality! He would tear off his own face for the bit!” 
“Oof,” is all Danny can muster. He digs his phone out and starts typing before Jazz yanks it out his hand. 
“You’re fucking TWEETING about this?” Jazz asks incredulously, and Hood’s hackles rise. She even reads the Tweet aloud, “‘Just found out @TheJ0ker is being fr about fighting me. Sad but i can take a clown.’”
“I was gonna add ‘i’ve done it b4,’ but like the letter and the number four. But yeah.” 
“You’re grounded forever.” Danny opens his mouth to protest, but the look Jazz cuts at him is so scathing that he shuts his mouth. Hood is reluctantly impressed—she had what could be cultivated into a fantastic Batglare. She pockets the phone, “You’re never getting this phone back. Taunting The Joker to Amity? Have you any brain cells? What if he brings Joker gas with him, huh? Or any of his goons? What if he starts hurting other people? Have you thought any of this through?” 
Danny’s face goes from tired to chastised, his lips drawing into a frown, especially at the mention of other people. 
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think that he’d take it so seriously.”
“He sent you your IP Address.”
“I thought that was just a random string of numbers?”
“Oh my god,” Jazz despairs. “Oh my god. Grounded forever. See, I know you're lying to me. I know you're lying because Tucker, the nerdiest tech nerd to have ever been born, is your best friend.”
He rubs the back of his neck, “I tune him out?”
“You’re still lying to me?” Jazz scoffs and turns to Batman, “Do whatever you want with him. I’m not going to defend him from this.” 
“Hey!” complained her brother, but Batman just continued on, “Where are your parents?”
“They’re in Sweden for a science convention,” Jazz answers. “They left this morning.” 
Damn, Jason curses to himself. 
“Jazz, seriously. You’re not gonna let Batman kill me, right?” 
“Do you want to be cremated or buried, Danny?” Jazz asks blasély, and Danny gulps, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. 
“It’s my Twitter handle,” he mutters petulantly, and Jason can’t believe the gall of this kid. Or maybe stupidity. Audacity’s a good one, too. “If he wanted it, he should’ve gotten it first. And he gives clowns a bad name.” 
“Not the clown thing again.” Jazz digs her palms into her eyes, sighs, then turns to the heroes. “He has a whole clown thing ever since Circus Gothica came to town and robbed a bunch of jewelry stores.” 
Danny gestures wildly with his hands, as if demonizing clowns was the real problem and not the egomaniacal mass murderer who wanted to murder him for his Twitter handle, “Clowning is an art form, Jazz, and people like Freakshow and The Joker make a mockery of the very serious societal statements that clowns make!” 
All of the Bats very carefully Did Not look at Nightwing, who has made very similar rants on quiet patrols.
“You are never leaving this house again,” she says serenely. “And I’m unplugging the wifi router.”
“You would punish even yourself?”
“Oh, little brother. I would watch the world burn if it meant knocking sense into your thick skull.” 
“Okay, Christ,” Red Hood finally interrupted the siblings’ melodrama. An unyielding redheaded girl and a mouthy black-haired, blue-eyed boy? They’d fit in a little too well back at the Manor, so Jason needs to cut this shit out before Bruce’s bat-doption instincts start tingling. “Stop. Just… Christ. Stop. Is this how you always interact with each other?”
“Sometimes there’s explosions,” Danny pipes up, a cheeky grin on his face. 
Jazz doesn’t dispute it. 
Fucking hell. God damn it. I can’t. I just can’t. 
Batman doesn’t give anything away, “Robin and Red Robin will be staying here with you until Nightwing, Hood, and I apprehend The Joker. First, we’re going to check the perimeter.” 
“Oooh, I get to give the lab tour!” 
Lab?
“No lab. You’re grounded. You’ll only be in there for cleaning duty now.”
“Wh– hey! No fair!” 
“What’s this lab you two are talking about?” Red Robin asks before Jazz can rip into her brother again. 
She sighs, “Our parents’ lab. I’ll show you, but someone needs to stay with Danny.” 
“You act like I’m gonna run off and start World War III….”
“I wonder why,” she says sarcastically.
Batman nods to Robin, who nods back, and the rest of them follow Jazz out of the living room to a metal reinforced door. She types in a code—Jason catches the numbers 03-14-99. There’s an assenting beep, and she opens the door, flicking on the lights and leading them down into what is apparently a basement lab. 
A stone settles in Red Hood’s stomach, cold and heavy. 
The basement is large, likely the floor size of the entire building. There are several work tables, filled with miscellaneous blueprints and spare parts and weapons and tools. Against the farthest wall is another armored door, but what draws Hood’s—and the entire Batclan’s—attention is the south wall, where a circular hole in the wall was glowing a toxic Pit green. 
The stone shattered in his stomach, splintering into his body. Is it harder or easier to breathe? Jason can’t tell. 
“Wow,” says Nightwing. His voice is cheerful, but Jason can feel the stress beneath it. “Do I even want to know?” 
Wasn’t this supposed to just be typical Joker bullshit?
“Our parents are ectobiologists,” Jazz explains nonchalantly, walking further into the lab. “As in, ghost biologists.” She pauses at one of the work tables, picking up a green and white thermos. Pretty boring, considering the rest of their surroundings. 
“Ghosts.” Red Robin’s voice is carefully neutral. 
“Ghosts,” Jazz reaffirms. “I know. I thought they were crazy at first, too. But I can prove it, if you like.” Then, without waiting for a yes or no, she untwists the thermos, and there’s a bright flash of white, and a whole entire body sprouting out of it. 
“WHOO! I’M FREE!” cries the…being, pale and floating and lanky and entirely too big to have fit into a fucking thermos, of all the fucking things. “....And not in the Realms? Wait.” He stops stretching, descending to rest closer to the ground, but still hovering a few inches from the floor. He’s got green eyes and lifeless (ha) blond hair. He’s wearing a trenchcoat and a green skull necklace. Overall, he looks like the type of thug he’d arrest in the Bowery. 
“Hello, Johnny.” The man’s—ghost’s?—eyes flicker around each person in the room, his gaze becoming more and more confused and panicked as he takes in each Bat, before settling on Jazz Fenton. 
“Why are the fucking Bats here?” 
“The Joker’s coming to Amity,” she says. The ghost’s eyes widen. Jazz tilts her head, “How many ghosts would you say passed away in Gotham, Johnny?” 
As Jason and the Bats tense, this Johnny guy lets out a wicked laugh, “Oh, Doll, you have the best surprises. Why did we break up?” 
“You did try to have my body possessed. That ruins any good relationship.” 
“Man, but Kitty’ll love this. Thanks for letting me out of Soup Time, Doll.” He floats higher, “Any advice?” 
She throws him the phone she’d confiscated from Danny and he catches it easily, “Everything’s on here. Have fun.”
“What exactly are you planning?” Batman scowls. 
Johnny laughs, “Aww, don’t worry, Bats. Peace and love on Planet Earth, or whatever. We’ll make it quick.” Then, as the Bats leap into action as one, Johnny turns invisible, the Batarangs passing harmlessly through where he’d once been floating. 
“Where did he go?” Batman turns his scowl, angrier than ever, to Jazmin Fenton, who stares back unflinchingly. “He’s going to solve the problem.”
“You mean he’s going to kill The Joker.”
She shakes her head, “Oh, no. That’d just be asking for him to come back as a ghost. Could you imagine a Joker with powers like invisibility, intangibility, flight, and more? Johnny can be impulsive, but he’s smart. None of them will kill The Joker.” 
“Then what are they going to do?” Red Robin asks. 
“My parents are ectobiologists,” Jazz repeats from earlier. “But I am more of an anthro-ectopologist. I am concerned with the study of ectoplasmic beings’ societies and cultures. And while it is very ancient, there is protocol in the Infinite Realms—that is, where you go when you die, should you remain after death—to prosecute living criminals who have killed a certain number of Realms citizens. So you don’t have to worry about your moral code, Batman. The Joker will be tried by a much fairer court than Gotham can ever hope to have. No offense.” 
Jason stares at Jazz Fenton, who he’d pegged as the sane sibling. He’s not so sure now, but he can’t say he hates it.
“And how do we know it’s a fair trial?” Nightwing asks. 
She waves her hand, “Oh, as Gotham’s Knights, you’re key witnesses. I’m sure you’ll be summoned to testify. You will see then. And don’t worry about your secret identities—the dead don’t care much for that sort of thing.” 
“So if this is a ‘fair’ trial or whatever, The Joker’s going to be locked up forever?” Jason asks. “I mean, that’s the only option for shit like him.” 
Batman sends him a look, but he ignores it. 
“Well, there are several different punishments that could be deemed appropriate, but he’ll never be able to set foot in the mortal world again, yes.” 
Jason Todd grins, “Oh, I’m glad your brother’s stupid, kid.” 
She sighs, long-suffering, “Well, that makes one of us. Still, there’s more important things we should discuss now that you’re here.”
“More important than The Joker trying to kill your brother over a Twitter handle?” Red Robin asks doubtfully. 
Jazz smiles, sharp and dangerous, and asks, ”Have you ever heard of the Anti-Ecto Acts?” 
xxXxx
Several months later when Danny is finally un-grounded, he Tweets his last three Tweets before Twitter can become the foolishly named X: 
Imagine bullying the Joker so hard that it not only lands the Joker in ghost prison BUT it also leads to major law reform in the US lmao someone make the domino effect meme about this pls
Y’allre replying to me with thanks like i did anything other than be an internet troll. My sister literally manipulated local, federal, and interdimensional law so you should be thanking her. 
i just a babie 🥺🥺🥺
xxXxx
Thanks for reading! This is the whole fic, so pls do not ask for tags! Thank you :)
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garbageday · 7 months
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This post from a verified X account recently received 17 million “views,” about 14,000 retweets and around 500 replies. But the replies aren’t what you’d normally see on Twitter pre-Elon Musk’s takeover. Instead, they’re almost exclusively from other verified accounts, who aren’t even attempting to actually reply to the post. Even weirder, some of the accounts replying underneath this post appear to be trying to start a completely different reply thread.
It's bizarre new trend on X that I’ve noticed becoming more popular recently. And I’m going to call it a Verified Meme Dump. And it’s sort of a perfect example of how paid verification and user monetization has broken a platform that was primarily powered by conversations.
On Twitter, back when it was Twitter, the incentive to be funny or interesting or informative was retweets and likes, which if you gained enough of you might get a media job, or a book deal, or get laid. On X, Musk’s pay-to-play model of virality has turned the site into an environment of pure capitalism where conversation simply gets in the way. And after scrolling through enough of these Verified Meme Dumps, I slowly realized what they actually reminded me of. These replies are just galleries of refried edgy memes with no coherent theme, posted by scammers and weirdos, surrounded by ads for brands I’ve never heard of and products that probably don’t exist, with poorly-aggregated headlines sitting next to them on the sidebar. It’s 9gag. Elon Musk paid $44 billion to make 9gag. And his big plan to improve it, according to Fortune this week, is to start charging new users $1 a year to use it.
[Read more at Garbage Day]
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scootatwoni · 2 months
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Miku expo 2024 is off to a truly awful start but I haven't seen any posts on here detailing the mess. So here we go, here's what's happened so far.
I will be linking some posts and threads from Twitter and will update this post as need be.
5/1 edits and additions are in blue
**PLEASE DO NOT comment or send me DMs complaining about the setlist**
**Rather than tweet complaints at the Miku Expo twitter account, it may be best to email CFM and/or Crunchyroll directly.**
🎵 First up, ticket presales.
This year the expo was sponsored by Crunchyroll and ticket presales were only supposed to be available to those that had a Crunchyroll subscription. Those that qualified were emailed a code for presale. However, when that code was inevitably leaked to the public, it turned out anyone could buy presales because it wasn't set up in any way to verify your subscription.
Additionally, VIP tickets are supposed to give the holder early access to the venue and merch tables, but I'm hearing that this is not being honored despite it being advertised on some of the venue pages. (see replies to this tweet)
VIP for San Jose did not grant early access to merch
The VIP package does not include a glow stick (scroll down to "about MIKU EXPO VIP PACKAGE" here), which causes some more difficulties for those that were not able to buy a glow stick online.
🎵 Merch
Higher prices and lower stock than usual. This is especially frustrating for the glow sticks.
The only glow sticks that are allowed inside these venues are ones made for the event or ones from past vocaloid concerts. This is because other glow sticks are too bright and will reflect on the hologram screen. But what with the stocks being so low, many people can't even get these glow sticks.
Merch at the venues is also not looking promising. People are reporting there have only been a quantity of 95 glow sticks per venue.
The Official Miku instagram announced on 5/1 a merch restock. At this point there are only 7 shows left (the next of which is on 5/2). It is unlikely any of the merch will arrive on time.
🎵 so about that screen
The biggest news to come out about Miku expo 2024 is that they arent using the hologram screen. The Vancouver and Portland concerts have used an LED screen.
This was neither advertised nor communicated from CFM or Crunchyroll to the public.
This also makes the prohibiting of outside glow sticks redundant, as they won't interfere with an LED screen.
An LED screen is much cheaper to use than the transparent screen used for the holograms. And a lot of folks are pointing out the discrepancies between this and the higher ticket and merch prices.
The LED screen is also a lot more noticeable and out of place, it hasn't been blended well on the stage so far. Views from further back and the sides are not looking great.
The Miku Expo team have stated that the Vancouver show was filmed officially. Seeing as the LED screen was also used in Portland, we can reasonably assume the LED has nothing to do with the filming.
Fans are speculating that the reason the Miku Expo team have prohibited photos and videos at this year's expo is to hide the fact that an LED screen is being used for multiple concerts.
There's also speculation that the hologram screen is in CA in preparation for Coachella, where Miku is meant to preform on the 13th and 20th of April. Please note that this is just speculation, we have no way atm to confirm this. UPDATE: The LED was used at Coachella
Additionally, I personally would recommend not getting your hopes up about the hologram screen replacing the LED one for any concerts after Coachella. Seeing as neither Crunchyroll or CFM have communicated or addressed any of the complaints yet, we may just be stuck with the LED for the whole tour.
A spokesperson for CFM addressed the concerns via this article from Business Insider. The LED will be used for the entirety of the NA and Europe tour.
The LED screen broke during the phoenix show. Apparently the vibration from the bass was so strong it shook the connection lose. It was fixed at the end of On The Rocks.
🎵 the doujin goods incident at Vancouver
Please refer to this thread for the full info, but here is a summary:
The Miku Expo team refused to let a fan distribute free doujin goods despite this fan getting prior permission from CFM to do so. An individual also took this fan's miku cutout, though I believe it was returned later.
🎵 there is still a live band
I figured I'd clear this up since I've seen some mild miscommunication on it. There is a live band, just not the usual band they have for Miku concerts. This is not at all an issue, and in fact I've heard nothing but good things about the live band. I figured I'd bring it up for information's sake.
Honestly, kudos to them killing it on stage in the midst of the mess.
🎵 Miscellaneous
-Someone Allegedly pissed on the floor of the Vancouver show. I have. no words. What the FUCK dude. If anyone can find the original tweet(s) claiming this, please link them to me. I'm not rooting through vocatwt to find the piss tweets.
-There was a car crash outside of the san jose concert, in front of a full line of miku expo attendees. The driver's plate fell off. Fans got a hold of it and took pictures with it, some using the hashtag #trafficjam as a reference to the NILFRUITS song of the same name. Someone even kept the plate.
UPDATE: The plate was returned to the authorities
-Fans cheering for Elmo at San Jose.
-Someone is looking into a class action lawsuit. This has sparked some discourse. Many want some kind of justice irt to the poor organization of Miku Expo thus far, but others are fearful that taking any kind of legal actions will put the future of NA vocaloid concerts in jeopardy.
-Someone brought a ball pit to the atlanta show
-Master Chief in the miku expo pit. Jesus was there too.
-Garfield
-A man suspected back in 2016 of having CP and investigated by the police, attends the Atlanta show. Do not exchange personal info with this man. If you already have, please cut ties immediately. Please report any suspicious activity to the authorities. Here is his entry on the US sex offender registry.
🎼Concluding notes
It's been 6 years since Miku expo has come overseas. The 2020 tour was cancelled due to covid and Miku expo 2024 is it's 10th anniversary. This was supposed to be a big deal, a huge comeback tour for NA!!
However, due to absolute abysmal planning on Crunchyroll and CFM's parts, Miku expo has been a massive disappointment for many fans so far.
I know I'm nervous for when I go in May, but I want to try and end this on a more positive note.
Vocaloid has, first and foremost, always been about the music and the community. It's undeniable that we as fans have been mistreated by CFM and Crunchyroll here This is not the concert tour we deserve, but I'm sure we can still find things to enjoy.
Hearing vocaloid songs live has always been a dream of mine, and for the first time in my life I'll be surrounded in person by folks who love vocaloid as much as I do. I couldn't even fathom being in this situation back in the early days of vocaloid, being a little kid listening to Melt and World is Mine for the very first time.
I'm absolutely still angry about how the expo has been handled, but I still want to enjoy what I can, being with folks who share that same passion.
There are plenty of fans on twitter detailing the fun time they had at the shows so far. If you do end up going, you can absolutely still have fun too!! And please please please do not spread your negativity to the producers on the set list for Miku expo and Coachella. These artists worked so hard and they are not responsible for the bad decisions made this year.
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ladyshinga · 4 months
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I keep being told to "adapt" to this new AI world.
Okay.
Well first of all, I've been training myself more and more how to spot fake images. I've been reading every article with a more critical eye to see if it's full of ChatGPT's nonsense. I've been ignoring half the comments on stuff just assuming it's now mostly bots trying to make people angry enough to comment.
When it comes to the news and social issues, I've started to focus on and look for specific journalists and essayists whose work I trust. I've been working on getting better at double-checking and verifying things.
I have been working on the biggest part, and this one is a hurdle: PEOPLE. People whose names and faces I actually know. TALKING to people. Being USED to talking to people. Actual conversations with give and take that a chat bot can't emulate even if their creators insist they can.
All of this combined is helping me survive an AI-poisoned internet, because here's what's been on my mind:
What if the internet was this poisoned in 2020?
Would we have protested after George Floyd?
A HUGE number of people followed updates about it via places like Twitter and Tiktok. Twitter is now a bot-hell filled with nazis and owned by a petulant anti-facts weirdo, and Tiktok is embracing AI so hard that it gave up music so that its users can create deepfakes of each other.
Would information have traveled as well as it did? Now?
The answer is no. Half the people would have called the video of Floyd's death a deepfake, AI versions of it would be everywhere to sew doubt about the original, bots would be pushing hard for people to do nothing about it, half the articles written about it would be useless ChatGPT garbage, and the protests themselves… might just NOT have happened. Or at least, they'd be smaller - AND more dangerous when it comes to showing your face in a photo or video - because NOW what can people DO with that photo and video? The things I mentioned earlier will help going forward. Discernment. Studying how the images look, how the fake audio sounds, how the articles often talk in circles and litter in contradictory misinformation. and PEOPLE.
PEOPLE is the biggest one here, because if another 2020-level event happens where we want to be protesting on the streets by the thousands, our ONLY recourse right now is to actually connect with people. Carefully of course, it's still a protest, don't use Discord or something, they'll turn your chats over to cops.
But what USED to theoretically be "simple" when it came to leftist organizing ("well my tweet about it went viral, I helped!") is just going to require more WORK now, and actual personal communication and connection and community. I know if you're reading this and you're American, you barely know what that feels like and I get it. We're deprived of it very much on purpose, but the internet is becoming more and more hostile to humanity itself. When it comes to connecting to other humans… we now have to REALLY connect to other humans
I'm sorry. This all sucks. But adapting usually does.
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ghost-in-the-corner · 2 years
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One thing I absolutely adore about Batfamily social media AUs is that we all collectively agreed that Jason is not verified on Twitter. Like nah bro, there's no way that's Jason Todd, he died 5 years ago.
But now that you can buy the checkmark, Jason would be the first in line to get one. He would've been fine to pay the full $20 a month, anything to be on par with his siblings.
And right after he gets the checkmark, Tim reports the account for 'impersonating his late brother' and that it's 'incredibly disrespectful to the memory of the real Jason Todd'. It's immediately suspended. Naturally Jason's pissed and tries again, but then Dick reports the new account.
It becomes a cycle of Jason paying for the Verified checkmark (with Bruce's credit card, naturally) and one of the other Batsiblings reporting his account. He even tried marking it as satire (which is somehow okay in Elon's new system? idk) but Steph reports that one as harassment. Blocking their accounts - both civies and vigilantes - was even less helpful.
In the end, Jason has lost more than $80 and he still doesn't have the checkmark.
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mariacallous · 7 months
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Why disinformation experts say the Israel-Hamas war is a nightmare to investigate
The Israel-Hamas conflict has been a minefield of confusing counter-arguments and controversies—and an information environment that experts investigating mis- and disinformation say is among the worst they’ve ever experienced.
In the time since Hamas launched its terror attack against Israel last month—and Israel has responded with a weekslong counterattack—social media has been full of comments, pictures, and video from both sides of the conflict putting forward their case. But alongside real images of the battles going on in the region, plenty of disinformation has been sown by bad actors.
“What is new this time, especially with Twitter, is the clutter of information that the platform has created, or has given a space for people to create, with the way verification is handled,” says Pooja Chaudhuri, a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat, which has been working to verify or debunk claims from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the conflict, from confirming that Israel Defense Forces struck the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza to debunking the idea that the IDF has blown up some of Gaza’s most sacred sites.
Bellingcat has found plenty of claims and counterclaims to investigate, but convincing people of the truth has proven more difficult than in previous situations because of the firmly entrenched views on either side, says Chaudhuri’s colleague Eliot Higgins, the site’s founder.
“People are thinking in terms of, ‘Whose side are you on?’ rather than ‘What’s real,’” Higgins says. “And if you’re saying something that doesn’t agree with my side, then it has to mean you’re on the other side. That makes it very difficult to be involved in the discourse around this stuff, because it’s so divided.”
For Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), there have only been two moments prior to this that have proved as difficult for his organization to monitor and track: One was the disinformation-fueled 2020 U.S. presidential election, and the other was the hotly contested space around the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can’t remember a comparable time. You’ve got this completely chaotic information ecosystem,” Ahmed says, adding that in the weeks since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack social media has become the opposite of a “useful or healthy environment to be in”—in stark contrast to what it used to be, which was a source of reputable, timely information about global events as they happened.
The CCDH has focused its attention on X (formerly Twitter), in particular, and is currently involved in a lawsuit with the social media company, but Ahmed says the problem runs much deeper.
“It’s fundamental at this point,” he says. “It’s not a failure of any one platform or individual. It’s a failure of legislators and regulators, particularly in the United States, to get to grips with this.” (An X spokesperson has previously disputed the CCDH’s findings to Fast Company, taking issue with the organization’s research methodology. “According to what we know, the CCDH will claim that posts are not ‘actioned’ unless the accounts posting them are suspended,” the spokesperson said. “The majority of actions that X takes are on individual posts, for example by restricting the reach of a post.”)
Ahmed contends that inertia among regulators has allowed antisemitic conspiracy theories to fester online to the extent that many people believe and buy into those concepts. Further, he says it has prevented organizations like the CCDH from properly analyzing the spread of disinformation and those beliefs on social media platforms. “As a result of the chaos created by the American legislative system, we have no transparency legislation. Doing research on these platforms right now is near impossible,” he says.
It doesn’t help when social media companies are throttling access to their application programming interfaces, through which many organizations like the CCDH do research. “We can’t tell if there’s more Islamophobia than antisemitism or vice versa,” he admits. “But my gut tells me this is a moment in which we are seeing a radical increase in mobilization against Jewish people.”
Right at the time when the most insight is needed into how platforms are managing the torrent of dis- and misinformation flooding their apps, there’s the least possible transparency.
The issue isn’t limited to private organizations. Governments are also struggling to get a handle on how disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories are spreading on social media. Some have reached out to the CCDH to try and get clarity.
“In the last few days and weeks, I’ve briefed governments all around the world,” says Ahmed, who declines to name those governments—though Fast Company understands that they may include the U.K. and European Union representatives. Advertisers, too, have been calling on the CCDH to get information about which platforms are safest for them to advertise on.
Deeply divided viewpoints are exacerbated not only by platforms tamping down on their transparency but also by technological advances that make it easier than ever to produce convincing content that can be passed off as authentic. “The use of AI images has been used to show support,” Chaudhuri says. This isn’t necessarily a problem for trained open-source investigators like those working for Bellingcat, but it is for rank-and-file users who can be hoodwinked into believing generative-AI-created content is real.
And even if those AI-generated images don’t sway minds, they can offer another weapon in the armory of those supporting one side or the other—a slur, similar to the use of “fake news” to describe factual claims that don’t chime with your beliefs, that can be deployed to discredit legitimate images or video of events.
“What is most interesting is anything that you don’t agree with, you can just say that it’s AI and try to discredit information that may also be genuine,” Choudhury says, pointing to users who have claimed an image of a dead baby shared by Israel’s account on X was AI—when in fact it was real—as an example of weaponizing claims of AI tampering. “The use of AI in this case,” she says, “has been quite problematic.”
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strangeauthor · 5 months
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unless the source is from someone living in palestine/gaza and has a VERIFIED source do not fucking get your info from twitter. "northen gaza is cleansed" is not only not even close to being true theres no other source on it besides that ONE twitter user.
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fataldrum · 1 year
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Who's Afraid of Bad Attempts at Journalism?
Some of you may have seen a callout post on Medium about Rusty Quill. The author claims to have spoken with a number of people who worked with RQ. The allegations are worth considering, but they should be taken with a heavy grain of salt.
I have trouble taking the callout post seriously for a number of reasons.
The author is head of marketing for Fable & Folly. They initially failed to mention this, but later added this incredibly defensive note: "Editor’s Note: [name] is currently the Marketing Director for Fable & Folly Network, but has worked as an independent creator and journalist for longer." That's a huge conflict of interest.
2. I'm not seeing any evidence that this person is a "journalist." They don't list it on the resume on their website. If they are a journalist, they're not doing it on Medium with (as of this writing) 47 followers.
3. The article title is pure clickbait. It suggests Alex J. Newall is someone to be afraid of and makes vague allegations of RQ showing "aggression," but he's barely mentioned in the article at all. It's an unnecessarily inflammatory title, but that's what they seem to want: to stir drama.
4. The article uses TMA character names as pseudonyms. This was extremely distracting and gave the whole post a weird, cartoonish vibe. As was the decision to use the phrase, "Make your statement, face your fear" to link the post.
5. The article depends entirely on anonymous sources. While anonymous sources are necessary sometimes, the problem is that no one can independently verify what they said. They claim the sources asked to be anonymous because they were afraid RQ would retaliate and ruin their careers, or the fandom would attack them. That may be true. Or it may be because they signed NDAs, which would make it illegal to publicly discuss what happened. An NDA would be a good reason not to come forward, but unfortunately, we can't ask them about it, because they're anonymous.
6. They claim RQ has threatened to sue multiple people--okay, what were the circumstances? It literally never comes back up. Were these NDA violations? Breach of contract? No clue, they don't bother to elaborate.
7. They talk about salaries in different currencies without converting, in the same paragraph. Then they bring up the rates for freelance audio engineers, as if freelancers don't generally get higher rates than in-house staff.
8. The author is finding posts on Twitter and blocking anyone who disagrees with them. I've never interacted with the author, but they found my post and blocked me and others on the thread for daring to criticize the article. That alone speaks volumes about their professionalism. (And also explains why I didn't find any critical comments when I first looked: they're probably all banned).
There are doubtlessly far more issues with the post, but those are just the ones that were immediately apparent.
None of this is to say I think RQ is a well-run company. The dismissive treatment of their server mods alone tells me they have serious problems. But we should all think carefully when we read the allegations in the post, and consider the credibility and motivations of the author.
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bejeweledaus · 6 months
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CELEBRITY CRUSH | Quinn Hughes au!
CHAPTER ONE:
yourusername posted
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liked by _quinnhughes, larray and 1,011,090 others
yourusername; a way to my heart officially is to give me flowers because i love flowers especially during the spring 🌻
view all 789 comments
user12 so does she know that her celebrity crush follows her back or
yeslydimate my sunflower queen
yourinstagram i love being your sunflower queen 🤭
user123 GIRL QUINN LEGIT FOLLOWS YOU!!
user89 a certain 43 player liked your post y/n 👀
user99 and he followed her ;)
user78 nicole from twitter legit matchmaker them, I don’t care what anyone says because she was the only one to guess right 🤣
user88 now clam down because they aren’t even dating…she doesn’t even follow him lmao
user101 can someone tell her that HE follows her and HE liked both her recent posts
user90 trust me, Twitter is letting her know lmao 🤣
user101 as they should
user76 i need her to follow him back ASAP
user86 _quinnhughes we see you liking this…you going to gift her flowers 👀
user56 y/n your man legit follows you..FOLLOW HIM BACK
larray for you 💐
yourinstagram why thank you 🥺
user26 I need to get verified so I can tell her that her celebrity crush follows her because it seems she is only answering her friends comments 😭
user92 oh y/n to be you 🥲
twitter;
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instagram;
*yourinstagram followed _quinnhughes back
*yourinstagram liked _quinnhughes post
twitter;
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