#last night i downloaded a game for my friend. for her. & then another friend i told her i'll reply before the day ends :< 'take your time' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladythornofrivia · 1 year

Text

Cigarette Girl

Pair: Rindou x Reader

Warning: Mature Content, Adult Language and Adultery and Toxic Dialogue. If you’re under 18, I’m sorry, you can’t read this

Author’s Note: Rindou and Reader are going to meet soon. While I'm writing the story, I'm currently watching The Glory again, but this time I used it as a background noise. XD What K-Dramas do you guys watch? (Note: Report if someone decides to steal the synopsis and my story. And notify me. Thank you) ❤️

Chapter 2: The Last Resort

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

In the café, you called your friend and meet up. Your friend, Mizuki, is attentive enough to give your side of the story. How your mother became twice as sick, how you recently got fired from your shitty job, and how your brother often drinks and comes at the house in the dead of night. Everything is the same, but to you, it felt worse and worse as time goes by.

You want your situation to be heard by someone.

Located at the back of café, you held your quivering sobs that was trying to unleash from your system. You've been trying to pull it together. Crying wasn't an option sometimes, as much as you wanted it to be good as you desire to vent, to confide, and to rely on someone.

Mizuki nodded and took note on every single thing you recalled. It went easy, at first, but talking about personal matters, on the other hand, was brutal. You're unsure if Mizuki is going to blackmail you, too, just like everyone else.

Mizuki grabbed the fresh napkins from the table and gave it to you for you to calm your senses. It's easy to weep, but to weep and confide is another. You don't want to unveil, stripped as if naked.

Shame is already written on your face, you just couldn't do it anymore.

"I hate to see you like this," Mizuki said with a sad pout.

"Sorry, it's been hard for me. I don't know what to do with myself. With me getting fired, I couldn't help my mother. Not even myself. I just want to take a shortcut for once."

"Stealing money isn't a good thing," your friend said, sipping her blueberry milkshake.

Stuffing your runny nose, your back slumped against the chair frame. "I know. I'm just getting desperate at the moment."

"With your pretty face, you can never go wrong," Mizuki replied, this time she's smiling with optimism.

You were taken aback. "What are you saying?”

Mizuki leaned forward as she propped her shoulders. "I'm saying that any man will fall onto your feet."

Your head titled with confusion. "I'm still lost."

Mizuki excited posture slumped with a soft grunt. "There's this app where you can get a lot of money from. It's easy--a good shortcut."

"If it's a game app, it's all but a scam," you shot back, gulping the whole milkshake before ordering another refill and another pack of burger and fries. You barely ate, not at work, not at the house--every option you see is what you get--so limited, so unfair for the most part. You've been burnt out, and your chances of redemption in life is obsolete like a cigarette.

A cigarette girl is what you are.

You've been stumped by everyone's feet. Burnt after being used. Everyone is a lighter, still continue on burning every last inch of you, as you found yourself gone and evaporated, becoming as a filter tip. They throw you as if you’re nothing.

"What is it, then?" you asked.

"It's a website where you get to meet someone and they'll pay you with a high salary."

Your eyes squinted. "What kind of job?'

"My friend swore by this. Because she met someone--at work--she gets access to medical and travel expenses."

"What website?"

"It's a website for meeting--It's a Sugar Daddy and Sugar Baby app. Where you meet rich men to pay your trouble away." Mizuki dipped her head in her hands with shame. "This website is called Inferno Paradise. You can download this on your phone."

Seeing her new phone, you went to check yours--an outdated version of flip phone while hers is a smartphone with a large screen.

I'll go check it on the laptop, you thought to yourself.

Dismay, you said, "I can't do that. Your may friend may be grateful, but I have pride to protect. I don't want to ask anyone, not even men to do that. I just want a stable job to pay off debt."

Your eyes lowered onto a refilled drink and meal. "It's not...the same..."

"Right now, you're at the dead end. Aside the problems had been going on in your life, you're still young. Having fun isn't much of a problem. By doing this, you're helping your mom, as well. I don't mean in a sense of blackmail. I meant that you deserve after all the shit you've been through ever since we graduated from high school. When people found out about you, everyone turned away from you. Your opportunity is here and now. And once your mom recovered, you want to show her that you can move on in life with someone good and kind and loving man. She'll be part of your life still; she wants you to be happy and not suffer through this alone. Think about it, okay? Maybe she’ll play with her grandchildren—you and your future special one will have a nice family with three dogs and a cat.”

"What if I agree to this? What if I refuse? You're not going to help me after this offer, right?"

"I'm going to respect your decision still. If you agree to this, great! We'll find you a perfect outfit and give you a little makeover to set a profile picture on the website. I know your phone is old, and I was about to sell my old one, but," Mizuki got out her old phone out, and passed it to you. "You can have this--free of charge. We can stop by the phone store and transfer everything from your old one, and it comes with a new SIM card and everything. If you refuse to take the offer on a Sugar Daddy and Sugar Baby website, that's fine, too, I'll try to contact one of my cousins about availability for the job he's in right now. Maybe one of my cousin's friends, too, just in case."

"What about my mom? I don't want to get worry while I'm gone finding a job."

"I'll contact someone who can offer her to stay somewhere safe. I'll even send some people to pack her things and your things. There's a nearby place where she can stay. At my grandmother's place. My aunt lives there, too, since no one's looking out for my grandmother, but I'm sure they'll make extra room for her."

"Thank you," you replied, smiling in tearful joy.

"Come on," she said, ordering a take out for the food you hadn't ate; you decided to give it to your mom since she lacked strength. "Let's prepare everything. You won't regret this, I know it."

Your friend paid the bill for the food and took you outside the cafe.

"Let's see, you need a good dress that matched your looks, and you need an upgrade on cosmetics and skincare. Since you have long, black hair and a good complexion, I know what colors to match you with; I can already see it in my head. With much improvement, you'll catch someone's eye. You might be surprised on what they have in store for you.”

You chuckled, already excited with the next step, coaxing Mizuki’s advice.

*~~*~~*

Rindou didn't get enough sleep from the night before. Everything he came cross was tedious. He didn't to deal with traitors who are trying escape from the organization, so kidnapping them was the quickest way to transfer them to Sanzu and Mikey, who are more capable of dealing by the likes of nuisance and shenanigangs.

At their hideout, where Sanzu and Mikey made a final call for the traitors, he couldn't bear to hear their screams anymore. But hearing girls's screams is also added a fuel to the flame. But a pleasure cries can only ease him, even when he doesn't want his life to be all about women; his nightclub and his reputation as a DJ can make his life happier, to provide service is enough.

So why keep company?

Bonten made it easy to change girls like how they change wardrobe with designer suits and luxury like a Hollywood movie star. Everything they've worked for, they can feed and overwrite their problems with everything that comes with wealth.

He needed an eight-hour sleep and good food to eat once he wakes up--a good recovery from a night's hell.

But the night's hell didn't end there.

There she was, Aoi Tanaka, with hands on her hips, pissed off.

"Where the fuck have you been?" her overpriced shoes tapped furiously onto the floor of his penthouse.

"Fucking work," he said, sluggish. "Why the fuck are you here?"

"Do you know how long we haven't been spending time together?"

Rindou just wanted to plug his ears. He can't stand her talk--her yells--anymore.

"I'm worried sick about you. You're always running off elsewhere, you're always saying you're busy, but what are you so busy about, huh?"

"Gee, Mom, I don't know." His body collapsed on the couch. "If you want to play as my parent, go for it. Besides, I never like having parents. Not that I have one, but I heard they can be a real pain when making a little mistake.”

"Fucking bastard," she screeched, flounced towards him. "All I wanted was for us to hang out together, as a couple."

Then he laughed. "You mean, "I want to buy more shit from you"? Thanks, I'm out of budget. Let me go to sleep."

A cold glass of wine splashed at him.

At once, he stood up and gawked at Aoi with a clenched hand around the glass.

"Bitch!" he said, clenching the hem of her outfit. "Do you know how much this suit cost?"

"I don't give a shit," she said, smirking. “You’re rich. Quit your bitching and let’s go. Stop making stupid excuses and do what I asked you to. And stop trying to ghost me!”

Now she’s pushing it. He’s going to give her hell, just as he promised after he had a discussion with Ran. Fight fire with fire.

He tsked, averting his eyes away for a second. "Fucking slut, always arrogant like you know everything about yourself just because I showered you with shitty gifts with shitty designs. Just because I gave you a small amount of recognition you're so damn proud of."

"If you're planning on breaking up with me," she began, "don't bother. I have ways to expose you if you don't do as I say."

He scoffed at her statement. "Since when we are a couple? The more you talk, the more you sound like a slithering rat."

Her smile faded. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me, cunt," he fired back. "You know nothing about me." He shoved her back and she fell. Unbothered by her cries, he grabbed the pair of designer shoes and bag. As for her bag, he exchanged it with her old, worn out bag--the one she first met him--and tossed all her things inside, except her phone. Expensive gifts he gave her, He took it with him. "Blackmailing me isn't an option. No matter what you say or do, It won't affect me. Besides, I never find you interesting. Your cunt fucking sucks and you do look like a sewer rat. Like the rest of the girls, you guys act like all innocent, then act big time hotshots when I gave you my time, but in the end, you're all nothing but spoiled goods. I suggest you fuck off. Call the cops on me, you will be sorry."

Aoi stood up in frantic motion, breathing heavily.

He scoffed again. "We haven't even started and you're already panting like a bitch. You don't deserve to live in a life of luxury. You don't have what it takes to earn the right of acting like a spoiled brat. You're getting old, you should marry someone who will care for your needs."

"Fuck you, Haitani," she seethed.

His laughter grew louder. "Just because you didn't get your way, doesn't mean you're going to play like a victim. I know tons of girls like you. This is my life, my world, and I do as I wish. You aren't a lady, you're just a little girl playing dress up in a lady's clothes." Swiftly, he snapped his fingers.

"You won't get away this," she said as soon as the bodyguards entered.

“You’re already reciting the old Hollywood line.” He grinned at her threat. "We'll see on what’s going to happen to you.”

He took a phone call, and made a final call on the decision, as for her not knowing what was going on. Not mentioning Sanzu’s name on the phone conversation, Rindou is speaking to Sanzu now, telling him the code to dispose Aoi.

He hung up the phone conversation.

"Try to invade my life again, you're going to wish you've never been born.” He faced his personal bodyguards. “Make sure you grab her old clothes in the room and tell the maids to change her in it. Those designer clothes doesn't look good on her. Her looks are about to expire from all the powerful screaming she gave me.” Then he faced Aoi. “Your wrinkles are starting show, Miss Tanaka. Better have collagen fast. Your line of suitors won’t be there for much long.”

Aoi was dragged away before her fist was close to struck Rindou.

The guards he hired at the club he established, escorted her out. He couldn't stand her rattling screams; he plugged his ears in by tuning with jazz music on a 100 inch television with booming speakers, blocking Aoi’s pleas. Humming, Rindou texted Kokonoi, telling him to remove traces regarding to him and Aoi on the phone he took from her.

Hopefully, he’ll pick a better girl next time. This time, he’ll be safe than sorry.

Once he rested his body over the cushioned bed, after taking off his wet-stained suit and left with his boxers, he dreamt nothing more than a clear, vivid glimpse of his past.

One which he can remember, more than just a clear memory or the subtleties ties to what he became today.

Taglist: @galactict3a @f1yh1gh @colored-tr-panels @glamourkills18 @onyx-blossom@mrssano04

84 notes · View notes

lskamil27 · 10 months

Note

Hey, do you have any rpg maker horror/rpg maker game recommendations?

RPG MAKER GAME RECOMMENDATIONS,,, Oh boy,,!

I have some that I do like a lot, however, there is a chance some people may not be TOO crazy about it since I am someone who likes it a lot when a game has lots of lore & story that I can bite into and think about more when I’m done!!

I think, right now, what I like as of right now ( these are not ranked in any particular order ):

1. Fausts Alptraum - Free to Download, Artbook You Have to Pay For: A game about a girl named Elisabeth who visits her family’s old home after a funeral, being trapped inside and having to get out.

A BIIIGGG favorite of mine, due to having a nice balance of awe and admiration of its art direction, while balancing tension and unease as you explore

2. Angels of Death - Pay to Play: A game about a girl named Rachel who wakes up in a building and is forced to progress through its floor levels to get out, each floor having a leader who seek to hunt her down.

Another favorite of mine, because I love the story and characters! The symbolism and juxtaposition of Rachel and Zac is so fun, along with plot that had me hooked into it! ( I will say, I am not the best at playing high stress games so I had to watch play-throughs to see the endings LMAO )

3. Mad Father - Pay to Play: About a young girl named Aya who lives alone with her mad doctor of a father, and his assistant. Aya is forced to confront the horrors of her father’s crimes to try and save him when she hears his screams on this particular night.

This was a game I had gotten into when I was WAYY younger! It definitely left a lasting impact on me since I am a big fan of medical & body horror now. I don’t know how to say it, but trust me!! It’s a lot of fun!

4. Fear and Hunger - Pay to Play: Between a cast of 4 playable characters, you are tempted by a personal quest that leads to the Dungeons of Fear & Hunger, unaware of the horrors and depravity that lies inside.

This is a big time favorite of mine, HOWEVER - I do not recommend this to everyone, as the triggers and violence in this game can be extreme for some others to go through. I highly recommend reading any available list of triggers for this game before trying it out, because the content is pretty dark. However, I do like it for its art direction, the lore and its characters, that the creator has made for it’s story and sequel!

5. Flesh, Blood & Concrete - Free to Play: Focused on the protagonist, Lera, who’s car breaks down on a snowy and is invited into the apartment building nearby by a young girl named Nika. Exploring the strange building, Lera encounters unsettling visuals and strange feelings of deja vu.

I recently just played this, and I adore it a lot for the story that has been crafted by the creator, with its message - as well as the welcoming, yet unsettling art direction it has, with the various home-y apartments and depictions of meat & flesh.

Now, these aren’t RPG Maker games themselves, but I will recommend them because I think they are fun to play on free time:

Soul Void - Free to Play: Gameboy pixel style, regarding the protagonist who explores a strange world, looking for a way out. Very beautiful art, and beautiful message!

Saint Spell’s Love Guide to the Magical Student’s Spellbook - Free to Play: Pixel Visual Dating Sim, very pretty, very fun routes to play, my friends and I loved playing it during our lunch breaks in uni!!

#ask #SORRY FOR THE LONG ANSWER I TALK A LOT #I love all these games so much and they are downloaded on my pc #i could go on essay length rants of my thoughts on all of these but this would make the post HUGE #anon i hope you check some of them out if you havent tried some of them #but yeah #i am someone who NEEDS a story in the games i play or else i get disinterested eventually #which doesnt mean all games need it tho! this is just a personal preference of mine #i just like to think on stories a lot when i rest in bed? if im making any sense ( i hope )

39 notes · View notes

slunch · 11 months

Text

The beach was crowded when I went yesterday. I don’t think anybody saw me.

I didn’t do much there, though. I just walked up and down until I got tired. I was mostly looking at my phone. My friends were getting into an argument about the different kinds of cereal and which ones were better. There’s a small brand that I like, but they only like the big ones.

On the train, a homeless man went down the aisle asking for money. Nobody saw him either. I was reading about a new game that was coming out next year, and my friends were telling me it looked really good. I didn’t think so myself but tried to understand why they thought so, and I think I succeeded, which I felt pretty good about. I like to think I’ve gotten better at empathy.

When I got back to my apartment, I wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of my evening. I didn’t want to think about work tomorrow, so I watered the plants according to the schedule and stared at my cat, who glared back at me. She ran away when I tried to pet her, but I think by this time next year she’ll be better around me.

I debated it for a while, but eventually downloaded a new dating app while I waited for my dinner to warm up. I was surprised that I got a few likes from some attractive women, but then again I have been taking better care of myself lately. I got an app that tracks my sleep patterns and rings my morning alarm at the optimal time to not disrupt my sleep cycles, and I recently put a little light on my water bottle that will flash and remind me to drink from it while I work.

None of the women on the dating app seemed very interesting. I chatted with them a little bit, but they either barely said anything or said a lot about nothing.

Then I read some of a textbook I’d downloaded onto my tablet. Higher education always intimidated me, and I liked the stability of my job, but I liked to also see what else is out there sometimes. I was currently in the middle of a linear algebra textbook. Tonight I was skimming the section on linear transformations - a way to translate something in one vector space to another vector space. I had forgotten what vector spaces were because it’s been a while since college, but, confident that I’d learned something new, I turned off the light and got into bed.

Before I slept, I looked through some more dating profiles but didn’t see any that interested me. After a while, people started to look the same. Maybe it was the new makeup trend some of my friends were talking about. I tried to find it in our chat archives, but it was too far back and the search wasn’t working. I told them good night and placed my phone under my pillow so it could listen to me breathe and decide when to wake me up.

The next day at work, my team got a new project. We talked about it over video call and then standard messaging for a while afterwards, because it seemed like we were pivoting to something new and there were a lot of little details to discuss. I didn’t mind, because I always like to broaden my skill set. The department’s priorities were shifting this quarter, which must be good.

My coworkers' teeth were all really white on camera when they were talking, which was really interesting because they've told me how much coffee they go through in a month. I use the same brand, and it’s pretty weak but tastes good. I'd have to ask them what whitening treatment they used, since I was a little self conscious about mine. I remembered in college when my friends were studying early AI, they said to count teeth and fingers because those were the hardest to generate accurately.

My manager's smile glinted on the screen.

I had some moments last month where I privately wondered if what we were working on really mattered, but my coworkers were really invested in this new project and I tried to mirror that energy. There might be some way to get promoted working on it, too. Sometimes it just seemed like we were working on things that nobody would use in the real world. But it takes all sorts. I looked at my phone case and wondered how many engineering hours went into it. Maybe we could linearly transform our work into something more concrete, take a feature we made and translate it into something that would write a book. Or at least just tell me what to say to my cat to make her finally like being around me.

I was a little distracted that afternoon because they were coming out with a new version of a laptop I had. I wasn’t sure when the news would drop so I kept checking my feed, but I had some good conversations with my friends about whether it’d be worth the upgrade. It turned out that most of them were planning to pre-order it, so I might do the same. I felt like I’d earned it.

I was having trouble focusing, so I checked out of work half an hour early. That’s one advantage of working remote, my teammates are all spread out between different time zones so nobody notices if I leave. My manager says next year we’re going to arrange a conference and meet each other in person.

After work, I played some video games with the guys. The in-game voice chat wasn’t functioning due to some server outage somewhere, so we just played in silence, which was kind of boring. Someone on the other team called me a bot and we got into a pretty heated argument in the match chat. It’s always the worst when they don’t listen to anything I say and keep tossing the same insults.

I left early and let them play the new DLC my friends all had (despite their protests), since I was still on the fence about buying it for myself. I was a little distracted during the game since a woman I’d connected with on the new dating app was messaging me a bit more. She was pretty and seemed interesting, even though she didn't actually say much. I didn’t mind talking about my job though. With some people, you have to carry the conversation for a while.

Around sunset, I decided to go on another walk. I passed the library, which reminded me again that I should apply for a library card and work on my backlog of books I’d been meaning to read. A bunch of my friends on Goodreads were really into this new series about a guy fighting to save an empire.

There was a restaurant I’d heard was good that had just opened a few blocks over, but I had the new subscription meal box coming tonight and wanted to have the first meal from that when it arrived.

A woman wearing headphones at a bus stop caught my eye, just for a moment as the last of the sun lit her hair gold. She was okay, but I had seen prettier women on the new app. I guess that's where all the attractive people are these days. She looked tired, plus her face was slightly asymmetrical. She had nice headphones though, I recognized them from the video calls with my coworkers. They were the old model of the noise-canceling ones they wore. I made a mental note to check out that model when I got back, since it was probably popular for a reason.

My cat hissed at me when I got back. I might have been petting her wrong. She doesn’t like being in the apartment all day, but it’s not like I can let her out. Plus she has me for companionship, since I get to work remotely. Not like she takes advantage of it. I asked my pet-owning friends how to approach her more, but they didn’t have much advice for body language that I couldn’t find with a web search. Maybe I would switch her food to the nicer brand.

I lay in bed trying to sleep, but had the eye twitches that came from staring at a screen too much. I checked out a new app that one of my friends had mentioned to see if that would relax me a little bit. It used AI to turn your face into a landscape.

I played around with it for a while, trying different angles, and they all produced different types of generated landscapes. The AI was really good, but there were just constant ads. It was okay though. I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring those.

#fiction #short fiction #mine #i remember writing this one winter weekend i just felt super depressed #touched it up a bit tonight and here we are

9 notes · View notes

coolcattime · 1 year

Note

3, 20, 22, 24!

Quick warning, this is probably gonna turn into a ramble about my hyperfixations! Question 22 is under the read more section and will contain spoilers for Telltale's The Walking Dead. Question 24 will also be under the read more, because I want to post some pictures with and and also this post is getting a little long 😅

3. 1-3 games you’ve played in the past 12 months that you really enjoyed

First! Your Turn to Die: Death Game By Majority. January 2022, my best friend came to my room and told me that we were going to play this together, a game at the time I had heard of but didn't really think was my thing, and I'm so glad they did because my god do I love this game so much. It's a horror adventure game where you play as Sara Chidouin who, alongside her best friend Joe and 9 strangers, finds herself in a death game where they will all be voting for who will die. I highly, highly reccomend this game if you find the concept interesting at all, especially because it's free. There's a Steam release coming soon (which I think is coming along with the last part of the game), but right now you can download and play for free or even play it in browser.

Second! The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles! I finally branched out from just the original Ace Attorney trilogy and I'm enjoying it! I'm currently on the 5th case of the 1st game and genuinely I missed playing Ace Attorney. Ryunosuke very quickly became another favourite messy... I would say lawyer but he isn't a lawyer for the first three cases so he became that slowly. But jokes aside, I love all the characters and also it was really fun to (by coincidence) read the Sherlock Holmes The Adventure of the Speckled Band a few days after playing the case inspired by it and retroactively realising they joke about the solution of the book in the game.

And third! The Dark Pictures: The Devil in Me! I love The Dark Pictures games and this one has my favourite type of character in it: mean lebsian! So clearly it's a 10/10 best game!

20. A boss you think is really cool

I don't play a lot of games with boss fights but I really like the Mr. Freeze boss fight from Batman: Arkham City! I think the concept of a boss literally adapting to what you do so it won't work on them anymore is awesome, even if it wouldn't work outside of the more stealth focused boss like this one. I don't actually remember if I've ever played this boss fight (gonna be honestly, I cannot remember the sequence of events in Arkham City, other than the Catwoman sections), but I have a distinct memory of watching my dad play this fight. He tried to do the same thing twice, and when it didn't work was genuinely shocked because he didn't think the game meant it. And honestly that memory stuck in my head.

22. A game ending that’s really stuck with you

So I thought about this for a little while, because there's a couple of different game endings that I think about a lot but there's only one ending that legitimately made me nervous to replay a play with my bff and that is Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 2. It made me turn Jane from a character that was kind of okay to one of, if not my most hated character from a video game; and god was I really scared to play season two with my friend for fear of them really loving Jane (note: they did not, they also do not like Jane).

To give a little context: I played Episode 5 when it went live, like 11pm at night, achievements still not unlockable. And I was excited. By the time of the finale of the episode, I had already cried once (damn beautiful Lee dream sequence) and was not ready for the baby to be dead. I was not ready for the fight between Kenny and Jane and like, gonna be fully honestly, the first time I played I shot Kenny. I shot my 4th favourite character from the series and cried and had a tearful goodbye. And then the baby started crying.

I think this is the biggest betrayal I'd ever felt in a video game. Like to this day, I really can't gel with the idea of leaving a baby in a car in a snowstorm in a zombie apocolaypse to prove a point. I think it's genuinely very messed up and could never really fathom the idea of staying with Jane after that.

I played through the Alone with AJ ending, though I liked both the Kenny endings a lot more and ended up getting an ending with him when I did my replay for achievements.

Being fully honest, I think this ending stuck with me not just because it made me just so angry with a fictional character but because it seems to come so out of nowhere for it to be Jane. Like I fully expected an ending fight with Kenny and Luke, but then it just isn't.

24. A game with a cool art style

Firstly! Darkest Dungeon! The first one, though I do also think the second one looks really cool, I just personally prefer 2d artstyles. I think this game is beautiful and frankly just looks how a game about gothic and cosmic horror should.

And second! Your Turn to Die (again). I think it has a kind of rough start art wise (like there is some very ugly pixel art in the first half an hour), but once it gets going, it kind of feels like playing a manga. Like there's some screens I would love to show, but they are definitely spoilers and, as much as I really want to make a full post just rambling about this game, I don't really wanna spoil the game when I don't have to. ((Also all my saves for this game are on my friend's laptop and I'm not playing a couple hours for one screenshot))

#ask #licantropa #sorry this got a bit long #i just have some hyperfixations i really need to express #also god those images were more trouble than they were worth

3 notes · View notes

nebulousneuroticism · 2 years

Text

I wasn’t very conscious this morning. I didn’t turn my camera on for my morning meeting, and I crawled back into bed afterward. I dozed for a couple hours, until a second meeting forced me awake.

After that, I went to the eye doctor. It went well. It was extremely quick and easy: I was in there for no more than fifteen minutes. My prescription did get a little worse, which isn’t too surprising given how long it had been; but the doctor told me my retinas look healthy, and that helps assuage the lurking fear I’ve been having. I absconded afterward without shopping for new glasses. I’m afraid to do it on my own since I have no fashion sense, but there’s not really anyone to do it with because I’m a hermit. Guess I’ll just add that to the to-do list.

The rest of the day passed pretty quietly. I made a low-effort mac & cheese dinner at home. In the evening, I thought about my side project, and downloaded Scrivener, hoping having some real writing software would help reduce the barrier to work on it, but I didn’t end up doing anything.

One of my high school friends contacted me today. She’s the one who I occasionally play board games with, and whose wedding I attended last year. Apparently, she’s pregnant! Good news for her, I guess, and not totally unexpected. Still, it’s a strange feeling for me--I know people my age and even younger are having children, but having someone I know do it makes it feel more real. It triggers my existential terror, of course, and also makes me feel a little inadequate: me, with no committed relationships, no achievements to speak of, not even any passion for my work. My life seems very empty by comparison.

Anyway. Trying not to dwell on that, and just to be happy for her.

I’m pretty tired tonight. Tomorrow promises to be annoying because I have to run yet another interview, and then muster my energy for a board game night with my D&D group. All I want to do is sleep. Why am I such a slug?

1 note · View note

returntosaturn271995 · 6 months

Text

Tuesday, October 24th: The Crying Game

I truly am Pavolv's dumbest dog.

Within five minutes of sitting down to therapy, I start crying like the walls are emitting pepper spray. It's both a relief and embarrassing as I slowly collect tissues from my therapist into an ever-growing ball of Kleenex and mucus.

I hope there's never a murder in that building because, after a year and a half, it's basically coated in my DNA.

"Issues" covered:

The insane guilt I feel about "wasting" years of my 20s feeling depressed

Worries that my productivity is only temporary, and I truly am just human garbage

That I'm only as good as my last accomplishment

That I only have so long to fix my personality

The fact that I see my personality as something to be "fixed"

The fact that I still think I'm kind of right ^

Is it so wrong to want to love myself but also try to make myself more lovable at the same time? (Like I'm doing it for myself...so that one day someone can actually love me. I'm doing these things to feel more confident...because confidence is attractive.)

Thinking 28 means I've "run out of time"

Worrying is a form of avoidance

Learning to see who I am outside of what I've done that day, that month, that year

Remembering I still have made a fuck ton of progress

It's okay to notice depressive thoughts. That's not a slide.

Remembering there are aspects of my life that are successful

One of them being my job and waking up at 6 am for it

Another having good relationships with friends and family (no major interpersonal drama)

Massive fear of failure

Continuing to cut back on alcohol, (I retain my right to CBD, this is still California).

Issues not covered:

My low-key non-belief in romantic love

The not-unrelated recent emergence of my biological clock

How I dress better on the days I see her to look like I have my shit more together. Would a depressed person wear $150 wide-leg trousers from Aritzia? (ignore small iced coffee stain).

How just today I downloaded an app called "WaterLlama" for $9 because I can't be trusted with my own hydration or apparently my own money. (I am now peeing what feels like constantly).

How because her practice is in a normal office building, I regularly traipse by people after all the tearing up has given me "ham-sandwich-face". I then feel the urge to explain to them that actually I just paid to cry in therapy for $160 which is healthy. I'm not just some emotionally unstable girl who hates her job in this building. (Well, not this building anyway. And not at this job currently).

My on-going battle with Etsy's customer service department to escape fraudulent charges that were made yesterday.

I'm supposed to focus less on my daily goals being a metric of my self-worth...

But whatever I still did good things:

Cardio: Shin splint is back because I ran on it too soon, I hit my fitness goal by walking 4 miles to the beach. Great walk, beautiful view, 10/10 dog watching.

Work: Up at 6 am, powered through like a champ, and did 2 things I've been putting off which I consider high performance.

Cooking: Ate apples and overnight oats I made Saturday night, baked a chicken pot pie from Trader Joes.

Reading: I finished "Really, Good, Actually" and will be collecting its quotes to share here when I feel like it. Very quotable book.

Meditation: How what we love is what we dedicate our time to. I clearly like to meditate, read, cook, and cry in front of trained professionals. Oh and spending time with friends making fun of reality TV.

Yoga: I may not have it in me today for yoga. But I will attempt a relaxation one and tell myself I'm happy with any length of time.

Organization: The pile of shoes in my closet will be my master no longer. But again...going to let myself eat first.

Today's fragrance: Ameline by Phlur.

Current mood: Drained (but in a therapeutic way).

Now I'm going to fuck off, smoke a little weed, and enjoy some carbs.

That's how you win the crying game.

0 notes

monday4econlive · 1 year

Text

How Genshin Impact Took My Rationality Away

August 2, 2021: I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the pandemic freed up a lot of time on my hands. My whole first year of college was on Zoom University, and it has been going great! I have so much time to do nothing all day and even made zero new friends! …I truly need a new hobby. Perhaps I should pick up this game my friend recommended to me.

August 3, 2021: I haven’t slept. I downloaded Genshin Impact last night and have been playing ever since. I witnessed the sunrise — both in-game and in real life. My current mindset: play Genshin ≻ eat ≻ sleep. I'm pretty sure I can last without sleeping for at least another day, right?

August 26, 2021: I’m truly lost in the sauce now. Tartaglia has got to be my favorite Genshin character, closely followed by Zhongli. I recently joined the subreddit dedicated to Genshin leaks (aka spoilers for what is coming in future game patches) to see if either character would be on the next patch. Turns out it’s Raiden Shogun! Meanwhile, the current patch featured Ayaka and Yoimiya. My current preference is Tartaglia ≻ Zhongli ≻ Raiden Shogun ≻ Ayaka ∼ Yoimiya. I’m not really interested in the current patch’s characters, and Tartaglia and Zhongli don't seem to be rerunning any time soon. I’m also definitely more than okay with Raiden Shogun being my first 5-star character. Looks like it’s time to grind out primogems (in-game currency) before her release!

August 31, 2021: My hands are shaking. I won the 50/50 and got Raiden Shogun! It took me 74 pulls to get her, and I have only 6 pulls left. Wait a minute… the leaks subreddit is suddenly talking about a possible Tartaglia rerun in the next patch. There’s no way, right???

October 3, 2021: Primogems are quite the scarce resource in Genshin Impact considering how it’s the only way players can get new limited 5-star characters and weapons in the game. This really is a case of low supply and high demand. I’ve been playing this game every single day since I started a few months ago. The leaks turned out to be right. The Genshin livestream confirmed that Tartaglia is rerunning in the next patch. I’ve spent the last few weeks obtaining all the primogems I could get just to ensure that I could successfully pull for him. I now have a clear idea of how to spend my primogems: Tartaglia ≻ Zhongli ≻ any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon.

October 12, 2021: The server maintenance just finished. Time to log in and pull for Tartaglia—and only him.

Well, that was unexpected! I ended up getting him quite early and only used 46 pulls. I still have quite a bit of pulls left… But I must resist the weapon banner! I cannot pull for Polar Star (Tartaglia’s signature weapon). I know my priorities: Zhongli ≻ any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon (including Polar Star).

I don’t know what’s gotten into me… For some reason, my brain is suddenly thinking: Polar Star ≻ Zhongli ≻ any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon (including Polar Star). "Tartaglia deserves it," says my brain. My hand moves the cursor to the weapon banner, and I end up pulling. 30 pulls in, I suddenly see this:

It’s Polar Star, right?! It's not. I didn’t get Tartaglia’s weapon and just wasted 30 pulls.

My rationality seemed to have left, but it’s back now. I’ve learnt my lesson. For sure now, Zhongli ≻ any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon (including Polar Star). Time to close the weapon banner screen before I lose any more pulls to this scam of a banner!

My rationality has suddenly left me once again. I am now irrational; my preferences are definitely not transitive. Sunk cost fallacy has convinced me that: Polar Star ≻ Zhongli ≻ any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon (including Polar Star). At a moment of weakness, I give in and quickly pull on the weapon banner before my rationality returns to tell me otherwise. 66 pulls in, and…

I GOT POLAR STAR!!! After this experience, I swear I will never lose my rationality again! I will never pull on the weapon banner again! Zhongli ≻ any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon.

March 16, 2023: I’ve been an active player on Genshin Impact for 586 days now. I got Zhongli, but did I touch the weapon banner again? I must admit that my word is as trustworthy as any American politician’s: completely worthless.

My rationality is gone with the wind when it comes to this game. I truly believe that any new 5-star character ≻ any new 5-star weapon. However, I somehow just keep making exceptions and end up pulling on the weapon banner. My most recent pull was on the weapon banner for goodness sake!

I wish I could say I was a rational Genshin player and stop pulling for all of these weapons, but it seems like an impossible task for me. All of those pulls that could have gotten me multiple new characters were spent on making my current characters look cooler with their signature weapons instead. Primogems are as limited as ever, yet I still do stuff like this. Perhaps, I'll become a rational player one day...

Cindy Lee ~ ID#65585808 ~ Mon. 4pm

1 note · View note

microclee · 1 year

Text

How Genshin Impact Took My Rationality Away

October 12, 2021: The server maintenance just finished. Time to log in and pull for Tartaglia—and only him.

It’s Polar Star, right?! Nope. I didn’t get Tartaglia’s weapon and just wasted 30 pulls.

Cindy Lee ~ ID#65585808

1 note · View note

ericleo108 · 2 years

Audio

07/15/2022 Click here for Spotify or Apple Music. This is my 16th official release. Written within the last 18 months “Love The Mission” and almost shelved “Love the Mission” is a rap song where I talk about hiphop like I’m talking to my girl. Most rappers talk about hoes but I wanted to tell the story of longing for one woman, which has been a theme throughout my “108 The Album” release.

The beat is from Tantubeats.com. The track was professionally recorded, mixed, and mastered by Sam Peters at La Luna Recordings in Kalamazoo Michigan. You can stream or download the track wherever music is sold. Thank you for your support. Be sure to follow because new music is released every first and third Friday of every month.

They’re always saying to me, Eric What would you say to her? I guess it would go something like this :18

(I’m so, I’m so, I’m so fly I use logic and philosophize Read-- Postulate and fathom Think -- Meditate and imagine) x2

I’ve always had dreams of being a scholar Help the world through research, be the father Of science in hip-hop, give a reason to bother Change the way the game is followed Most of hip-hop is all about vice Hos, cash, cars, ice I don’t want all that I want a home and a cat A good girl to marry Whip cream and a cherry Fall in love with her mind Have dates at night Take what I find And Make her all mine Treat her good Read her like a book Make her the hook And thank her when she cooks Approach my girl like women studies Make her attached like bees to hunny I want real love, not another fake friend Only if her mind right will I call her a ten

Hell no I ain’t trippen I’m focused on the goal and love the mission While the world tumble’n stuck in gridlock I talk to my girl like I talk to hip-hop She said give me that look and strategy I said gi’me that love and personality I want your approach and mentality Now Let’s make love and a family

I don’t need to be famous Just wanna be up on your playlist Sell albums, get the payment Set the tone and make a statement Give back to the people Care like Mac Lethal Nurture and need her Make women leaders Instead of tearing down and abusing women It’s fundamental to love them and listen If you care for her, she’ll care for you It’s not really hard to stay and be true Don’t believe in god but to her I’m pius She’s my religion I need her bias The care that’s brought in Messages Is a direct result of Estrogen Other rappers do drugs I spread love I’m look’n at hip-hop like what the I need a good girl who got good brains Takes Beyonces advice, is cool and upgrades

#rap #rapper #hiphop #usa #michigan #music #love

0 notes

rareslikespastelpink · 2 years

Text

So, I had this 'friend'. We ain't friends no more that's why it's in quotation marks. She was my very first roommate. In hind sight I should have seen how insecure she was. But anyways this was when I first got out and I had been at my first job for about a year. I was insecure myself at the time and so naive like goddamn. But I mean it was understandable considering how I grew up.

Anyways she was always getting men, but settled for bomb ass men. But I didn't see it that way. So I asked her how to get a boyfriend. She basically told me men don't like childish women and to stop taking pics with filters.

There's this app with cute filters called snow app. I just re-downloaded it awhile ago. She was basically saying me taking pics with filters is what made me unattractive to men. Which I know wasn't true and she was the last person to ask this question too.

I went out to eat at TGI Fridays' with her and another co-worker once. We played some kind of game where you had to tell the truth about somethings. I can't remember what it was called.

So the co-worker asks her if she'd ever have sex with me. And omg eeeewwww! That bitch was not my type. Ugh, just no. She said no, because I didn't have any personality. Like bitch excuse me? Just because I was super reserved and stayed to myself alot. That was only because I tend to be super introverted alot of times. It depends on my comfort level with people.

She also tried to get me laid one time when there was a male co-worker over. I was like wtf is she doing? That's how her first time was. Well bitch I didn't feel comfortable.

So when I told her one week after it she said that about my personality it hurt my feelings. She basically justified why she said it with some bs, about how she tells people how funny I am. Like fuck out of here, it was wrong of you to say that. I wish I had a back bone back then. The me now would have beat her ass.

Also she had a girl over and I was going to go to my momsters' house to spend the night. My hair was looking crazy because at the time I didn't know how to take care of it. She basically forced me to let her braid my hair, because: 'I don't want your mom to think I'm not taking care of you.' Like bitch I'm 23 years old, if you don't shut the fuck up.

Anyways the girl kept pinching me to get me to 'come out of my shell'. Saying dumb shit like that's the way to get someone to be comfortable around you. No it's not and if anyone ever does this to me ever again, I'm punching their lights out. With introverts you gotta be patient, you don't try to force them to do anything. This goes with anyone really to be honest.

Oh and also this 'friend' proceeded to say everything my friend and I did was middle school stuff. Like we would go out to eat, watch movies and walk around. She said it was childish basically. Well gee bitch, I'm sorry that we don't drink alcohol 24/7 just to have fun. Fuck out of here.

When I tried to go natural she was very much against it and even called my hair 'n*gger' hair. Like bitch your black as well, wtf is wrong with you? Like one day I washed my hair and it shrunk up into an afro. Her wife at the time and her took me to the next door neighbors' house to try to make my hair 'presentable'.

I even had a male friend at the time who basically told me he didn't like my hair. Pissed me off. She proceeds to tell me people were saying stuff about my hair and that if my hair wasn't done that I didn't take pride in myself. Yeah eff you.

But when I finally decided to say fuck it and actually go natural. Guess who went natural? That bitch did. Her texture is loosely curled, I know she wouldn't have gone natural if she had my hair texture. Ugh dumb bitch.

I could say more on this, but I was just thinking about it and decided to get this out of my head for good. I want to leave the past in the past. I got more, so more will be posted later. Morale of the story kids, never put up with nasty toxic people like this. They ain't shit. I delt with her crap for almost 3 years. That was hard on me.

All the times I was super poor due to her being bad at managing money. More on that later. Anyways bye bye.

0 notes

wphunter929 · 2 years

Text

The Vamps All Night Mp3

The Vamps All Night Mp3 Version

The Vamps All Night Mp3 Free

NEW AUDIO: Sigala ft The Vamps – We Don’t Care | Mp3 Download. Instagram: @sigalamusic & @thevamps.

We play a game all night Pre-Chorus: Try to keep my composure Should be easier and now I’m sober And you keep getting closer But I’m feeling alright Chorus: Ohh well, I’m kinda drunk But it’s kinda fun, even if we know it’s wrong But we don’t, we don’t care We don’t care, we don’t, we don’t care Oh only for the night.

RELATED:NEW VIDEO: Jake Scott – Yours (Lyrics Video)

Listen, Download, Share & Leave a comment below.

https://justvideolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Sigala-ft-The-Vamps-We-Dont-Care.mp3

Middle of the night the vamps lyrics mp3 - mp4. The Vamps Matoma All Night mp3 تشغيل. Middle Of The Night 1 Hour mp3. The Vamps - Risk It All 32.- The Vamps - Smile 33.- The Vamps - Sad Song 34.- The Vamps - Wild Heart 35.- The Vamps - Last Night 36.- The Vamps - Cheap Wine Ft Kris Kross Amsterdam 37.- The Vamps - Fall 38.- The Vamps - What Your Father Says 39.- The Vamps - Middle Of The Night Martin Jensen 40.- The Vamps - Shout About It 41.- The Vamps. The Vamps - Risk It All 32.- The Vamps - Smile 33.- The Vamps - Sad Song 34.- The Vamps - Wild Heart 35.- The Vamps - Last Night 36.- The Vamps - Cheap Wine Ft Kris Kross Amsterdam 37.- The Vamps - Fall 38.- The Vamps - What Your Father Says 39.- The Vamps - Middle Of The Night Martin Jensen 40.- The Vamps - Shout About It 41.- The Vamps. VAMPS received the 'Billboard Japan Ranking International 2009' award on January 31st which was followed by the release of the DVD Vamps Live 2009 U.S.A. They released a single Devil Side, the first single off of their new album and then their sixth single Angel Trip was released on June 9th.

Sing along the lyrics:

(Verse:) Too late give her the sign I caught you eye, we can’t rewind It’s too late, you hit the switch She can’t resist, we play a game all night

(Pre-Chorus:) Try to keep my composure Would be easy if i was sober But you keep getting closer And I’m feeling alright

(Chorus:) Ohh well, I’m kinda drunk But it’s kinda fun, even if we know it’s wrong But we don’t, we don’t care We don’t care, we don’t, we don’t care Oh only for the night Only for the ride, even if it don’t feel right But we don’t, we don’t care We don’t care, we don’t, we don’t care

(Post-Chorus: Instrumental break) (Even if it) We don’t, we don’t (Even if it, we don’t) We don’t care (Even if it) We don’t, we don’t (Even if it, we don’t) We don’t

(Verse:) Ok, another weekend We’re back to friends, It only ends in one way You make a move, I don’t refuse We play a game all night

(Pre-Chorus:) Try to keep my composure Should be easier and now I’m sober And you keep getting closer But I’m feeling alright

(Post-Chorus: Instrumental break) (Even if it) We don’t, we don’t (Even if it, we don’t) We don’t care (Even if it) We don’t, we don’t (Even if it, we don’t) We don’t care

How to write tibetan. (Bridge:) Maybe you think I’m selfish, coz I can’t let you go But baby i just can’t help it, No, no, and no Baby we’ve both been selfish, coz we can’t be alone Baby we just can’t help it, help it

(Post-Chorus: Instrumental break) (Even if it) We don’t, we don’t (Even if it, we don’t) We don’t care (Even if it) We don’t, we don’t (Even if it, we don’t) We don’t care

(Lyrics from genius.com) Women gymnast malfunction wardrobe hot.

Genre

Pop

Comment by Haliegh Rehrer

i love them sooo much

Comment by Lexi

love this song♡ <3 <3

Comment by Sebastian N

Going to school in 2017 with this song full blasted was something else❤️ here i am 20 and still loving it

Comment by Awsome Jeffy

The good times middle school bike rides at 2 am

Comment by Unknown_simpxx

Comment by sxfiq

ily<3

Comment by Angelica Tonelli

I used to listen to this in middle school nostalgia

Comment by Sereen Qureshi

@user-862754518 ikr like whats the point? Me after staying up until 2: ugh why am I so tired??!? 😖🤔😂😂😴😴

Comment by Michelle Dunn

I love this song

Comment by 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒃𝒊 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏

I completely forgot about this song until it just came on autoplay. Nostalgia sure hits hard

Comment by Scarlet Hibbert

braaaad

Comment by Tamara Speede

cause i FEElllFelele like iam always dreamingg

Comment by Scarlet Hibbert

this song is so catchy it gets stuck in my head this one of my favorite songs of this band

Comment by kdcmk

Remember the good times in 2005!

Comment by call me ur babe

Dreamin

Comment by zulfanniar03

The Vamps All Night Mp3 Version

mantap kaleeeeee

Comment by 💕Satans Teddy Bear💕

@user-984204381 noooo 😭 rip to ir eyes

The Vamps All Night Mp3 Free

Comment by Joseph Hanan

Comment by kushal kumar

love boss

Comment by User 984204381

I walked into my best friemds parents shagging to this song good memories

Comment by Fxlq.7 7

love it

Comment by Jun Reeyo

Nice

Comment by AgusHM74

versi full donk

Comment by (XLO) *CRAZY*

i like sound

Comment by Wayan Agus

tai

Comment by Alfie Roberts

Sick

Comment by Alfie Roberts

All night

Comment by Sofiaaaaaaaaaa

Cuz i feeeeeeeel like im always dreaming

Comment by Tyoisme

bang gift alok :)

0 notes

youryanderedaddy · 3 years

Note

I had a dream just now that might make a good story. So, I had a virus on my laptop which allowed a hacker to see everything I did on my computer and use my webcam. The hacker ends up falling in love with me after stalking me for a few months and pays for someone on the dark web to kidnap me. It works, and then I wake up tied up in the hacker's arm as he caresses and kisses me. That's pretty much it, good night! 🌙

Yo this is my kink 😳

Also I couldn't not write this for Saeran, ok.

Title: Stranger danger

Tw: nsfw - ish, female reader, masturbation, cyber stalking, hacking, mentions of dark web, very irresponsible online behavior, obsessive behavior, implied kidnapping

You knew that this was a stupid idea. Lurking on the dark web with almost no protection other than the Tor browser and some free anti-virus program wasn't your best decision, but fuck it if it wasn't entertaining. You had always been drawn to the darker, scarier part of the human mind and this side of the internet proved quite interesting. Your friends always warned you about the dangers that came with looking up shady online searches and sites but everything had been quite peaceful so far. There weren't hackers or murderers on the dark web, the worst you had seen were people selling drugs and weapons for unreasonable prices, along with some questionable fetish porn and the typical popping ads.

Your favorite thing to do while online was chatting. Two weeks ago you had stumbled upon an unusual forum called "Scream buddies" where upon entering you were automatically connected to another random profile. The whole theme of the forum was discussing horror and mondo movies, shockumentaries and overall creepy stuff, your forte. The person you met on there shared a similar fascination with all things dark and gory which soon made talking to them the only thing you were looking forward upon opening the site.

You didn't know much about the guy behind the profile yet, except that he was a young man. His icon showed an eye so green it emited with the neon pigment and his username was just as mysterious - BlueRose7. You enjoyed chatting with him about your hobby but the thing you liked the most was undressing him little by little, metaphorically so, by getting pieces of information about his life. It started small - his favorite food, favorite book, favorite game, but the moment you tried digging deeper and asked whether he had siblings or not, the man simply disappeared for the next few days. You quickly realized just what type of topics you needed to avoid to keep your new friend from leaving. Family, childhood memories and work matters were out of the picture.

The stranger wasn't fair, not really. He didn't show you vulnerability and kept his secrecy while demanding to know everything there was to know about you. For the longest time you didn't want to answer just to stay on a equal footing, just to show him how frustrating it was, but there was something about the man that drew you in. He was magnetic, clever and witty, if a bit pessimistic and dark at times. You couldn't help telling him everything he wanted to hear - what your job was, whether you were single or not, all that jazz. In your defense, BlueRose7 actually listened to your stories, took your problems seriously and provided solutions, which despite being too extreme and overprotective at times (upon hearing that your bestfriend talked behind your back he offered to "take care" of her), were comforting. It was nice to have someone caring around even if you met him on a sketchy website.

Meanwhile your personal life wasn't going too great. You had to balance between attending college, working long shifts as a waitress and meeting your friends from time to time which was draining. On top of all there was a weird virus on your computer which resulted in the camera turning on and off and the most random times of the day - while you were studying, watching TV, or in some cases, fully naked and ready to take a bath. You didn't think much of it though, with all the illegal movies and games you downloaded along with the dark web lurking it was more than expected for your laptop to behave weirdly. You didn't even mention it to your friend from the IT major because you knew that he'd force you to delete Tor and put an end to your internet adventures.

One time you were particularly bored after several long lectures and you were laying in bed, the camera turned on once again. It was a hot afternoon and you were wearing boyshorts and a loose T- shirt with nothing underneath it, you were home alone so there was no need. The bright red spot was twinking like a recorder, the light reflecting in your eyes, when a silly little idea came to your mind. You slid your hand under your blouse and lifted the fabric up, exposing your breasts to the laptop, your nipples hardening due to the sudden coldness, becoming pink and stiff in seconds. You played with for a few minutes, pinching and pulling the buds gently, moaning softly into the pleasant sensation. Soon you could feel yourself getting wet, and slowly, teasingly, removed your shorts and panties. You smiled at the camera, biting your lip provocatively, imagining you were a camgirl performing for her desperate little fanboys and fangirls. The thought alone was enough to make you spread your legs wide and slip two fingers into your throbbing cunt, using the wetness to push deeper. You used your other hand to stroke your clit and whimpered wantonly, your face red, your neck sweaty and your heart pumping fast from the adrenaline. You were quickly reaching your orgasm and your mind wondered to the boy you were talking to in the forum. You wondered how he looked like, how his body was built, whether he was a sweet sensual lover or a rough mean one. Fucked up as it was, you pictured the man as one of your most loyal viewers, watching all of your streams with a fist around his thick vock and an excited grin on his face. He would comment things like "you look so beautiful like this" or perhaps even "pretty little slut" after tipping you enough to last you a week. Soon all the mental stimulation sent you over the edge and you came with a loud cry full of pleasure. Well, this felt good.

After your "performance" was over the camera was magically turned off, which may have caused some concerns if you weren't too busy feeling embarrassed and dirty about the unhinged fantasy you had just had, and with a person you knew nothing about. You managed to calm down though - it wasn't nothing more than a fun pastime, a naughty thought that would never become the reality. You would never actually meet BlueRose7, right? There was nothing to worry about, so you just went on with your day.

You had some dinner afterwards and decided to have an early night as you already felt full and tired. You put on your favoruite pajamas and laid in bed, staring at the ceiling until you fell into deep dreamless sleep.

You woke up due to a weird noise. You could hear someone's heavy breathing right next to your ear, someone's grabby hands were wrapped tightly against your body, trapping you between the wall and their hard chest. You had only a few seconds to scream before the intruder's palm covered your mouth.

"Shhh." The man whispered softly and stroked your hair like you were a doll he was playing with. "Don't scream or I'll be forced to hurt you, flower. I have a gun." His voice sounded deep and rough but this didn't stop you from thrashing and turning on your side until you came face to face with the man. It was dark in the room and you couldn't exactly see all his features but his enchanting green eyes would forever be burned into your memory - they seemed dashing, hypnotizing. You couldn't utter a word.

"It's me, the person you've been talking to all these months. I came to take you home" He spoke out suddenly, the line of his mouth twisting into a smile or a smirk, you couldn't quite tell. You shook your head no, tears threatening to spill all over your cheeks from the fear. It couldn't be him, the man would never do that to you. Or would he? With what little information you knew, you couldn't really tell. His hold finally loosen, seeing you quiet like that.

"Let me go, please." You begged, pushing at his shoulders weakly since you were still sleepy, groggy and tired. "I don't know you." You said, hoping this would remind the stranger you weren't friends, lovers or anything that gave him the right to be so close to you, to touch you so intimately. Unfortunately, this only seemed to amuse him and he chucked darkly as he pulled your hair away to place a small chaste kiss on your neck.

"But I know you, flower." Your supposed online friend replied shortly after, his eyes full of malice. "And your little show today makes me think you want to know me too." He added in a low tone, licking his lips before smashing them on yours, forcing his tongue deep into your mouth just to hear your whines and protests. Then it hit you. The camera, the virus, the questions. He had watched you, he knew where you worked, where you lived and studied, everything. You had told him after all.

The hacker thought you looked so adorable right now, figuring things out, helpless, confused, regretful and most of all, weak. You were so weak and careless, and he loved you for it. It reminded him of himself before life screwed him over.

You wouldn't be in this position, underneath him, if you had just told someone about your laptop virus and the bad guy you had encountered online. But Saeran couldn't say he wasn't glad your self-preservation instincts were so very broken and dysfunctional. He wouldn't meet you otherwise. "I need you, princess. That's why I'll take you to Paradise." These were the final words you heard before you felt lightheaded and sleepy again, your last memory a pair of green mint eyes.

You really shouldn't have trusted strangers on the internet.

#yandere #male yandere #yandere mystic messenger #yandere saeran #yandere oneshot #yandere saeran choi #yandere unkown #yancore #male yandere x reader #yandere oc #yandere male x reader #yandere oc x reader #yandere smut #yandere x you #yandere hacker

1K notes · View notes

innuendostudios · 3 years

Text

youtube

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

#video essay #alt-right playbook #Youtube

379 notes · View notes