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mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months

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Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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yujification · 4 months

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press your number — hwang yeji

desc: It’s lewd and messy when Yeji finally slides it all the way in. Soft squelching sounds, that of which derived from the silicone stretching her pretty cunt out. You moan, a sharp whine coming from the back of your throat as she sits on your waist, biting your lip gingerly. “Fuck,” You swallow. “Good girl. Just like that.” You give her ass a nice hearty smack. She swats your hand away. You were only being kind, after all.

cw: strap sex, strap sucking, praise, unnie kink, cunnilingus, lowkey manipulative!yeji, gratuitous smut, kind of pwp

wc: 2.4k

note: i got crazy writers block halfway through…. um this is super half-assed…. my bad! + i pulled out the proper punctuation for this one plz dont ask why ….. i was feeling diplomatic

Groupmates doesn’t always equal teammates. In fact, your relationship with Hwang Yeji was more like something akin to a rivalry— always at each other’s throats with knives and blades (and tongues) waiting to slash (or lick).

It hurt. It hurt your heart how much she hated you and hurt your head even more.

“I have needs,” Yeji whispers, licking a stripe up the valley of your breasts, tasting of pure, unsaturated skin and flesh. Of salt. Of innocence. “And… when your unnies have needs, you need to help, yeah? I would’ve helped you. Do you need me to help you? Help you learn?”

It felt wrong, almost. Chanting her name, almost like a prayer, begging and pleading for release while Yeji buried her face between your thighs. You wondered if she cared. If she gave a shit how wrong it was.

It was mostly you doing the dirty work anyway, using Yeji’s thick, jet black 7-inch of silicone and thrusting into her rhythmically, drool loosely hanging off your lips and dribbling into her mouth and hair. You felt like it was a part of you. Like the strap-on was your own, like you could almost feel her tight, virginal cunt clenching around it. Neither of you had ever been with anyone else before. Being an idol meant limited social interactions, let alone time with normal civilians long enough to fuck them. You had to help each other, is what Yeji always said, but as far as you were aware, the others didn’t have late-night meetings like this. Yuna had admitted that she had kissed Chaeryeong before, years ago, but it meant nothing. This wasn’t kissing. This was raw. Felt real. Maybe too real.

“Feels good, unnie,” you whisper, burying the cock deeper, and letting Yeji adjust to it’s size.

Yeji grunts. It’s low and throaty and leaves you dripping. You shouldn’t enjoy this as much as you do, but it wasn’t like she would know anyway. “Is that a question or a statement?”

A statement. You play it off. “It was a question,”

“Sorry. Do you feel… good? Unnie?” There are awkward pauses between your words.

“Y-Yeah. Feels fine.”

Just fine.

You can feel it. You can feel when she comes, and not even in some bullshit spiritual way. You feel it. You don’t remember Yeji being a squirter, but suddenly she is, her juices leaking all over the silicone. You pull out, and almost want to take the strap off and lick everything off of it. You imagine it tastes good. Clean and salty.

You don’t. It’s too many boundaries to cross in one night.

“Another?” you ask, letting the one word speak for itself while your fingers hover over the clasps of the toy.

“Quality over quantity,” Yeji says, a little too blunt for comfort. You want to be offended, but you aren’t.

“Am I getting better?”

“You’re regressing,” But you know she’s lying.

You scoff. “You came in two minutes,” and it’s truer than ever. Maybe even less than that. You’d always had good waist control, and maybe that’s what made you such a good dancer. “I’m obviously not getting worse. That was quicker than last time.”

“Freak. You’re counting?”

“It’s only an estimate.”

Yeji adjusts herself. “Fine. Fuck me again, then.”

“Quality over quantity.”

Touché. Always witty, never afraid.

Any other girl would pout. Beg like a dirty whore and get on their knees. Anyone would kill for a chance to be with someone as high profile as you. Yeji, however, couldn’t care less about how much money you have or how many fangirls you have lined up just waiting to suck your strap clean.

“I want quantity. I said, fuck me again. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

You won’t. You’ll obey, but not as easily as usual. Not as much as Yeji wants.

“Ride me, then. I want you on top, this time.”

Yeji meets your request with a bitchy eye roll. “Fuck, yeah, okay,”

And it’s always that easy.

You settle on your back and Yeji straddles you. She’s wetter than normal. Her folds shine in the light, nearly glistening with heat. They’re swollen too. Puffy and needy.

She lines the silicone up with her entrance and sinks, and the words come out embarrassingly fast, “God, you make unnie feel so fucking good,” and she doesn’t stop them, pushing nearly half of the length into her before stopping, taking a breath.

“You can do it,” you encourage, hands firmly on her waist,

“Stop talking.”

It’s lewd and messy when Yeji finally slides it all the way in. Soft squelching sounds, that of which derived from the silicone stretching her pretty cunt out. You moan, a sharp whine coming from the back of your throat as she sits on your waist, biting your lip gingerly. “Fuck,” You swallow. “Good girl. Just like that.” You give her ass a nice hearty smack. She swats your hand away. You were only being kind, after all.

At the very least, it isn’t an attempt to be romantic. She hates corny shit, and this isn’t corny. Well, maybe it is— but not in that way. It isn’t cheesy. It isn’t stomach-churningly cute, or soft, or sweet. You’re fucking your leader with a huge piece of silicone and praising her for her good work. God knows she needs it. It might inflate her ego, and she might use this moment against you, but sacrifices have to be made for a good time. And this? This is a good ass time. For you, at least. With her reactions, you’re not certain if it’s reciprocal.

“I feel full,” Yeji notes, breath shaky, slowly quickening her pace, rolling her hips onto the strap as it slides in and out of her. “Think I’m gonna come,” She huffs.

“Already?” You want to laugh, but you don’t. It’s ironic how cruel she is to you, how ruthless and mean and intense your work relationship is, but how easy it is to break her. How quickly you can make her lose it. How you can ruin her and she wouldn’t even mind.

Yeji moans. It’s loud and rough and Ryujin is sleeping just one thin wall away, and if that doesn’t wake her up, you don’t know what will. Nothing will get Yeji to shut up, not even you, but you make an attempt anyway.

“Shush, unnie,” you urge, brows furrowed in frustration as you impulsively and autonomously buck your hips up into her.

It only doubles her reactions.

“You only, fuck, you only make it harder when you do shit like that,” She hums, rocking on you, breath coming out in short gasps.

Finally coming down, Yeji climbs off of you and stands. Her knees shudder under her weight, understandably. Her cunt aches.

“I’m gonna go piss and get dressed. We have practice in thirty. Be ready.”

Another order. She’s good at giving those, evidently.

The next time it happens is a little less planned. Fuck it— not even that. It’s not prepared at all. It started off innocent, at least. If you get arrested for indecent exposure and get kicked out of your agency, you have an excuse. It’s her fault. It’s always her fault. Hwang Yeji is always to blame. She makes you like this, a horrific mess and a trainwreck of an idol.

“I could lose my job,” you say. “My life would be over,” you say. “All your fucking fault,” you say. You say, all while spilling your saliva all over her lips, messily pressing your lips to hers while you brush her wet and wispy red hairs away from where they stick on her cheek. You’re in full hair and makeup and wouldn’t like to ruin it, but maybe it’s a little necessary. Such an irresponsible leader, letting you ruin yourself in the bathroom of a music show. She doesn’t even seem phased with her clit against your skin.

Lucky for you, Yeji’s stylist wasn’t quite finished yet. Her makeup wasn’t finished below her nose and she was still wearing the clothes she came in — well, only half of them, anyway. Her skirt was splattered across the tile and her panties dangled off of one knee as she sat on your now bare thigh, A fistful of orange hair was left tangled in your hands, spilling out of your palms as she rides against your thigh. You always want to praise her. Tell her that she’s a good girl for letting you fuck her so close to showtime, but it almost aggravates you how careless she is. You could get caught. Not just by a groupmate— that wasn’t your concern. Sure, it’d be awkward for someone to catch you in such a… compromised… position, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. They’d keep it a secret, you were sure of it. Worst case scenario was your manager. God forbid he walk in. You were confined to a stall, sure, but it didn’t even matter when you were cursing and whining into Yeji’s slutty mouth, nearly begging her to keep going. Freak. How were you even getting off on this? She wasn’t even doing anything to turn you on, and somehow, some way, you were turned on anyway. Women tend to have that effect on you.

Yeji stopped rather abruptly, words still hesitating to come out. Your fingers duck down and push generously against her clit.

You aren’t trying to embarrass her, of course not. But, it feels a little good to make her shy, shuddering needily against your thigh. “Good fucking god, unnie,” you breathe, licking hotly up her neck, damp with sweat. “So fucking wet, all for me?”

She covers your mouth with the palm of her hand, eyebrows threading together in a twisted furrow while she lazily humps against you.

When she comes, it soaks your thigh, thick wetness dribbling down your leg and dripping onto the floor. “You made such a mess, unnie.”

You aren’t trying to embarrass her.

Of course not.

Yeji hates it when you sleep in her bed. She doesn’t think you’re unhygienic, or anything. You’re fairly certain she would let you sleep in her bed after you fuck her if it weren’t for the fact that you kick. When you’re asleep, you destroy her just as bad as you do when you’re awake. Roughly slamming your heels into her knees, elbowing her in the jaw. The rule is no marks. No bruises, no hickeys, no bites. Even if they’re done deep in slumber. Nothing.

You’re both a little distracted. You feel a teensy bit gross, too. The strap is on Yeji this time, and she isn’t even really doing much— because she never really wants to do much.

Goddamned pillow princess.

(You don’t mind.)

The silicone comes out of your mouth with a sharp pop, saliva pooling on the corner of your lip. You can’t even get mad at Yeji, because she’s unbelievably nice when you take her down your throat. She knows it isn’t the most comfortable.

“You’re so cute,” she whispers, scratching at your chin softly like you’re an animal. Something about it is a little domestic, really. You’re like her pet, in a way. Always ready to obey her even if it means discomfort or displeasure. Who are you kidding? Fucking your leader could never bring you any sort of displeasure.

Is she even getting off on this?

“What’s the point? Of this? Of all this sucking? You can’t feel it. I can’t really feel it.”

“Preparation. Tolerance building. You’ll never be able to handle something bigger if you don’t get used to this first.” Yeji claims, hands smoothly tousling your hair.

A brow of yours shoots up. “I’m the one who fucks you, usually, though.”

“Not always. Can you just take it like a good girl and be quiet? Open wide, please? For unnie?”

The conversation ends with an eye roll, your mouth open, and Yeji’s hand on your jaw while she slides it past your tongue. It’s wet and warm in your mouth. And still, a little gross feeling. Who were you to object?

“You’re something else,” Yeji whispers. “So obedient. I used to wonder why you never reject, but I understand now. You have a crush on me, don’t you?”

You gag a little. Not from the dick halfway down your throat. More from the downright ridiculous words coming out of Yeji’s mouth.

“Don’t be crazy, unnie,” you whisper as you pull back, a string of saliva between your top lip and the silicone.

She scoffs.

“Okay,” and she pats your thigh and lifts you onto the bed.

“Unnie, I can’t take all of that. Not down there.”

Yeji cocks her head. “Sure you can.”

“I can’t.”

“Do you…?”

Yeah. You do. You’re not sure what it is that you do, but you do.

“Okay,” Yeji unclips the strap from her waist and lays it gently in the drawer it came from. A little too gently. Like she gives a fuck about it, or you, or this.

Her tongue feels good on you. All over you, in fact. While it drags down your body, from your collarbones to your stomach, tender strokes of the muscle, flexing around the softness of your skin and down to your sweet cunt. Her tongue glides between your folds, lapping up your juices like a crazed animal that had been without water for months. She hadn’t done this before— but you felt a tightness in your stomach that wasn’t unfamiliar, but wasn’t something you were used to.

Her mouth alternates between sucking at your clit and fucking her tongue into your hole, sending you onto a frenzy of flexing your abs and thighs, back arching against the bed as you writhe. A cold hand settles on your waist and the other situates on your thigh, holding your leg over Yeji’s shoulder. It’s new. Fresh, and soaking, and so, so good.

“You taste so good,” Yeji mumbles into your pussy, mouth burrowed between your legs. She’s better at this than you thought, and it almost makes you wonder if she makes other girls’ thighs shake like this. If other girls experience her tongue on them like this. Whether you’re the only one doesn’t bother you— you’re just curious. You don’t question it.

And when you come, everything feels like levitating. Some sort of telekinetic force lifting everything from the floor. It’s ridiculous, maybe. Oh, well. Looking up at you as your stomach and chest rise and fall like a tidal wave, Yeji smiles, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

She’s something else.

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erlichbachman · 2 years

Photo

T.J. MILLER as Erlich Bachman

Silicon Valley, HBO - season 1, episode 8: ‘Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency’

#andd the final one of season 1 #again had to get the jerking gif in there #also the group hug one is v sweet #SVhbo #silicon valley hbo #silicon valley #Erlich Bachman #Megan Makes

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warningsine · 3 months

Text

Living online means never quite understanding what’s happening to you at a given moment. Why these search results? Why this product recommendation? There is a feeling—often warranted, sometimes conspiracy-minded—that we are constantly manipulated by platforms and websites.

So-called dark patterns, deceptive bits of web design that can trick people into certain choices online, make it harder to unsubscribe from a scammy or unwanted newsletter; they nudge us into purchases. Algorithms optimized for engagement shape what we see on social media and can goad us into participation by showing us things that are likely to provoke strong emotional responses. But although we know that all of this is happening in aggregate, it’s hard to know specifically how large technology companies exert their influence over our lives.

This week, Wired published a story by the former FTC attorney Megan Gray that illustrates the dynamic in a nutshell. The op-ed argued that Google alters user searches to include more lucrative keywords. For example, Google is said to surreptitiously replace a query for “children’s clothing” with “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear” on the back end in order to direct users to lucrative shopping links on the results page. It’s an alarming allegation, and Ned Adriance, a spokesperson for Google, told me that it’s “flat-out false.” Gray, who is also a former vice president of the Google Search competitor DuckDuckGo, had seemingly misinterpreted a chart that was briefly presented during the company’s ongoing U.S. et al v. Google trial, in which the company is defending itself against charges that it violated federal antitrust law. (That chart, according to Adriance, represents a “phrase match” feature that the company uses for its ads product; “Google does not delete queries and replace them with ones that monetize better as the opinion piece suggests, and the organic results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems,” he said.)

Gray told me, “I stand by my larger point—the Google Search team and Google ad team worked together to secretly boost commercial queries, which triggered more ads and thus revenue. Google isn’t contesting this, as far as I know.” In a statement, Chelsea Russo, another Google spokesperson, reiterated that the company’s products do not work this way and cited testimony from Google VP Jerry Dischler that “the organic team does not take data from the ads team in order to affect its ranking and affect its result.” Wired did not respond to a request for comment. Last night, the publication removed the story from its website, noting that it does not meet Wired’s editorial standards.

It’s hard to know what to make of these competing statements. Gray’s specific facts may be wrong, but the broader concerns about Google’s business—that it makes monetization decisions that could lead the product to feel less useful or enjoyable—form the heart of the government’s case against the company. None of this is easy to untangle in plain English—in fact, that’s the whole point of the trial. For most of us, evidence about Big Tech’s products tends to be anecdotal or fuzzy—more vibes-based than factual. Google may not be altering billions of queries in the manner that the Wired story suggests, but the company is constantly tweaking and ranking what we see, while injecting ads and proprietary widgets into our feed, thereby altering our experience. And so we end up saying that Google Search is less useful now or that shopping on Amazon has gotten worse. These tools are so embedded in our lives that we feel acutely that something is off, even if we can’t put our finger on the technical problem.

That’s changing. In the past month, thanks to a series of antitrust actions on behalf of the federal government, hard evidence of the ways that Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are wielding their influence is trickling out. Google’s trial is under way, and while the tech giant is trying to keep testimony locked down, the past four weeks have helped illustrate—via internal company documents and slide decks like the one cited by Wired—how Google has used its war chest to broker deals and dominate the search market. Perhaps the specifics of Gray’s essay were off, but we have learned, for instance, how company executives considered adjusting Google’s products to lead to more “monetizable queries.” And just last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging anticompetitive practices. (Amazon has called the suit “misguided.”)

Filings related to that suit have delivered a staggering revelation concerning a secretive Amazon algorithm code-named Project Nessie. The particulars of Nessie were heavily redacted in the public complaint, but this week The Wall Street Journal revealed details of the program. According to the unredacted complaint, a copy of which I have also viewed, Nessie—which is no longer in use—monitored industry prices of specific goods to determine whether competitors were algorithmically matching Amazon’s prices. In the event that competitors were, Nessie would exploit this by systematically raising prices on goods across Amazon, encouraging its competitors to follow suit. Amazon, via the algorithm, knew that it would be able to charge more on its own site, because it didn’t have to worry about being undercut elsewhere, thereby making the broader online shopping experience worse for everyone. An Amazon spokesperson told the Journal that the FTC is mischaracterizing the tool, and suggested that Nessie was a way to monitor competitor pricing and keep price-matching algorithms from dropping prices to unsustainable levels (the company did not respond to my request for comment).

In the FTC’s telling, Project Nessie demonstrates the sheer scope of Amazon’s power in online markets. The project arguably amounted to a form of unilateral price fixing, where Amazon essentially goaded its competitors into acting like cartel members without even knowing they’d done so—all while raising prices on consumers. It’s an astonishing form of influence, powered by behind-the-scenes technology.

The government will need to prove whether this type of algorithmic influence is illegal. But even putting legality aside, Project Nessie is a sterling example of the way that Big Tech has supercharged capitalistic tendencies and manipulated markets in unnatural and opaque ways. It demonstrates the muscle that a company can throw around when it has consolidated its position in a given sector. The complaint alleges that Amazon’s reach and logistics capabilities force third-party sellers to offer products on Amazon and for lower prices than other retailers. Once it captured a significant share of the retail market, Amazon was allegedly able to use algorithmic tools such as Nessie to drive prices up for specific products, boosting revenues and manipulating competitors.

Reading about Project Nessie, I was surprised to feel a sense of relief. In recent years, customer-satisfaction ratings have dipped among Amazon shoppers who have cited delivery disruptions, an explosion of third-party sellers, and poor-quality products as reasons for frustration. In my own life and among friends and relatives, there has been a growing feeling that shopping on the platform has become a slog, with fewer deals and far more junk to sift through. Again, these feelings tend to occupy vibe territory: Amazon’s bigness seems stifling or grating in ways that aren’t always easy to explain. But Nessie offers a partial explanation for this frustration, as do revelations about Google’s various product adjustments. We have the sense that we’re being manipulated because, well, we are. It’s a bit like feeling vaguely sick, going to the doctor, and receiving a blood-test result confirming that, yes, the malaise you experienced is actually an iron deficiency. It is the catharsis of, at long last, receiving a diagnosis.

This is the true power of the surge in anti-monopoly litigation. (According to experts in the field, September was “the most extraordinary month they have ever seen in antitrust.”) Whether or not any of these lawsuits results in corporate breakups or lasting change, they are, effectively, an MRI of our sprawling digital economy—a forensic look at what these larger-than-life technology companies are really doing, and how they are exerting their influence and causing damage. It is confirmation that what so many of us have felt—that the platforms dictating our online experiences are behaving unnaturally and manipulatively—is not merely a paranoid delusion, but the effect of an asymmetrical relationship between the giants of scale and us, the users.

In recent years, it’s been harder to love the internet, a miracle of connectivity that feels ever more bloated, stagnant, commercialized, and junkified. We are just now starting to understand the specifics of this transformation—the true influence of Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives. It turns out that the slow rot we might feel isn’t just in our heads, after all.

#technology #internet

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mightyflamethrower · 9 months

Text

In the last 20 years, the Left has boasted that it has gained control of most of America institutions of power and influence—the corporate boardroom, media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the administrative state, academia, foundations, social media, entertainment, professional sports, and Hollywood.

With such support, between 2009-17, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bicoastal rich and subsidized poor—obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.

The Obamas entered the presidency spouting the usual leftwing boilerplate (“spread the wealth,” “just downright mean country,” “get in their face,” “first time I’ve been proud of my country”) as upper-middle-class, former community activists, hurt that their genius and talents had not yet been sufficiently monetized.

After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, they reverted to form and governed by dividing the country. And then the two left the White House as soon-to-be mansion living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.

To push through the accompanying unpopular agendas of an open border, mandatory wind and solar energy, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of the state, Obama had begun demonizing his opponents and the country in general: America was an unexceptional place. Cops were racist. “Clingers” of the Midwest were hopelessly ignorant and prejudiced. Only fundamental socialist transformation could salvage a historically oppressive, immoral, and racist nation.

The people finally rebelled at such preposterousness. Obama lost his party some 1,400 local and state offices during his tenure, along with both houses of Congress. His presidency was characterized by his own polarizing mediocrity. His one legacy was Obamacare, the veritable destruction of the entire system of a once workable health insurance, of the hallowed doctor-patient relationship, and of former easy access to competent specialists.

Yet Obama’s unfufilled ambitions set the stage for the Biden administration—staffed heavily with Obama veterans—to complete the revolutionary transformation of the Democratic Party and country.

It was ironic that while Obama was acknowledged as young and charismatic, nonetheless a cognitively challenged, past plagiarist, fabulist, and utterly corrupt Joe Biden was far more effective in ramming through a socialist woke agenda and altering the very way Americans vote and conduct their legal system.

Stranger still, Biden accomplished this subversion of traditional America while debilitated and often mentally inert—along with being mired in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that may ultimately confirm that he easily was the most corrupt president to hold office in U.S. history.

How was all this possible?

Covid had allowed the unwell Biden to run a surrogate campaign from his basement as he outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.

Senility proved a godsend for Biden. His cognitive disabilities masked his newfound radicalism and long-accustomed incompetence. Unlike his past failed campaigns, the lockdowns allowed Biden to be rarely seen or heard—and thus as much liked in the abstract as he had previously been disliked in the concrete.

His handlers, the Obamas, and the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren radical Democrats, saw Biden’s half-century pretense as a gladhander—good ole Joe Biden from Scranton—as the perfect delivery system to funnel their own otherwise-unpopular leftwing agendas. In sum, via the listless Biden, they sought to change the very way America used to work.

And what a revolution Biden’s puppeteers have unleashed in less than three years.

They launched a base attack on the American legal system. Supreme Court judges are libeled, their houses swarmed, and their lives threatened with impunity. The Left promised to pack the court or to ignore any decision it resents. The media runs hit pieces on any conservative justice deemed too influential. The prior Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer whipped up a mob outside the court’s doors, and threatened two justices by name. As Schumer presciently put it, they would soon “reap the whirlwind” of what they supposedly had sowed and thus would have no idea what was about to “hit” them.

Under the pretense of Covid fears, balloting went from 70 percent participation on election day in most states to a mere 30 percent. Yet the rates of properly rejected illegal or improper ballots often dived by a magnitude of ten.

Assaults now followed on hallowed processes, laws, customs, and institutions—the Senate filibuster, the 50-state union, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, Election Day, and voter IDs.

Under Biden, the revolution had institutionalized first-term impeachment, the trial of an ex-president while a private citizen, and the indictment of a chief political rival and ex-president on trumped up charges by local and federal prosecutors—all to destroy a political rival and alter the 2024 election cycle.

Biden destroyed the southern border—literally. Eight million entered illegally—no background checks, no green cards, no proof of vaccinations. America will be dealing with the consequences for decades. Mexico was delighted, receiving some $60 million in annual remittances, while the cartels were empowered to ship enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans a year.

“Modern monetary theory,” the Leftist absurdity that printing money ensures prosperity, followed. It has nearly bankrupted the country, unleashed wild inflation, and resulted in the highest interest rates in a quarter-century. Middle-class wages fell further behind as a doddering Biden praised his disastrous “Bidenomics.”

Biden warred on fossil fuels, cancelling federal leases and pipelines, jawboning lending agencies to defund fracking, demonizing state-of-the-art, clean-burning cars, and putting vast areas of oil- and gas-rich federals lands off-limits to drilling.

When gas prices predictably doubled under Biden and the 2022 midterms approached, he tried temporarily to lease out a few new fields, to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and to beg the Saudis, and our enemies, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the Russians, to pump more oil and gas that Biden himself would not. All this was a pathetic ruse to temporarily lower gas prices before the mid-term elections.

Biden abandoned Afghanistan, leaving the largest trove of military equipment behind in U.S. military history, along with thousands of loyal Afghans and pro-American contractors.

Biden insulted the parents of the 13 Marines blown up in this worst U.S. military debacle since Pearl Harbor. He lied to the parents of the dead that he too lost a son in the Iraq war, and when among them later impatiently checked his watch as he seemed bored with the commemoration of the fallen—and made no effort to hide his sense that the ceremony was tedious to him.

Vladimir Putin summed up the Afghan debacle—and Biden’s nonchalant remark that he wouldn’t react strongly to a “minor” invasion of Ukraine if it were minor—as a green light to invade Ukraine.

When Biden did awaken, his first reaction was an offer to fly the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country as soon as possible. What has followed proved the greatest European killing ground since the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge, albeit one that has now fossilized into a Verdun-like quagmire that is draining American military supply stocks and killing a half-million Ukrainians and Russians.

Suddenly, there are three genders, not two. Women’s sports have been wrecked by biological men competing as women, destroying a half-century of female athletic achievement. Young girls in locker rooms, co-eds in sororities, and women in prison must dress and shower with biological men transitioning to women by assertion.

There is no longer a commitment to free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union is a woke, intolerant group trying to ban free expression under the pretense of fighting “hate” speech and “disinformation.”

The Left has revived McCarthyite loyal oaths straight out of the 1950s, forcing professors, job applicants, and students applying for college to pledge their commitment to “diversity” as a requisite for hiring, admittance, or promotion. Diversity is our era’s version of the Jacobins’ “Cult of Reason.”

Race relations hit a 50-year nadir. Joe Biden has a long history of racist insults and putdowns. And now as apparent penance, he has reinvented himself as a reverse racial provocateur, spouting nonsense about white supremacy, exploiting shootings or hyping racial tensions to ensure that an increasingly disgusted black electorate does not leave the new Democratic Party.

The military has adopted wokeism, oblivious that it has eroded meritocracy in the ranks and slashed military recruitment. It is underfunded, wracked by internal suspicion, loss of morale and ginned up racial and gender animosity. Its supply stocks are drained. Arms productions is snail-like, and generalship is seen as a revolving door to corporate defense contractor board riches.

Big-city Democratic district attorneys subverted the criminal justice system, destroyed law enforcement deterrence, and unleashed a record crime wave. Did they wish to create anarchy as protest against the normal, or were they Jokerist nihilists who delighted in sowing ruin for ruin’s sake?

Radical racial activists, with Democrat endorsement, demand polarizing racial reparations. The louder the demands, the quieter they remain about smash-and-grab looting, carjacking, and the swarming of malls by disproportionally black teens—even as black-on-black urban murders reach record proportions.

In response, Biden tried to exploit the growing tensions by spouting lies that “white supremacy” and “white privilege” fuel such racial unrest—even as his ill-gotten gains, past record of racist demagoguery and resulting lucre and mansions appear the epitome of his own so-called white privilege.

This litany of disasters could be vastly expanded, but more interesting is the why of it all?

What we are witnessing seems to be utter nihilism. The border is not porous but nonexistent. Mass looting and carjackings are not poorly punished, but simply exempt from all and any consequences. Our downtowns are reduced to a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” where the strong dictate to the weak and the latter adjust as they must. The streets of our major cities in just a few years have become precivilizational—there are more human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco than were in the gutters of Medieval London.

The FBI and DOJ are not simply wayward and weaponized, but corrupt and renegade. Apparently the perquisite now for an FBI director is the ability either to lie while under oath or better to mask such lying by claiming amnesia or ignorance.

Immigration is akin to the vast unchecked influxes of the late Roman Empire across the Danube and Rhine that helped to finish off a millennium-old civilization that had lost all confidence in its culture and thus had no need for borders.

In other words, the revolution is not so much political as anarchist. Nothing escapes it—not ceiling fans, not natural gas cooktops, not parents at school board meetings, not Christian bakeries, not champion female swimmers, not dutiful policemen, not hard-working oil drillers, not privates and corporals in the armed forces, not teens applying on their merits to college, not anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The operating principle is either to allow or to engineer things to become so atrocious in everyday American life—the inability to afford food and fuel, the inability to walk safely in daylight in our major cities, the inability to afford to drive as one pleases, the inability to obtain or pay back a high interest loan—that the government can absorb the private sector and begin regimenting the masses along elite dictates. The more the people tire of the leftist agenda, the more its architects furiously seek to implement it, hoping that their institutional and cultural control can do what ballots cannot.

We could variously characterize their efforts as destroying the nation to save it, or burning it down to start over, or fundamentally transforming America into something never envisioned by the Founders.

Will their upheaval succeed? All the levers of the power and money are on the side of the revolutionaries. The people are not. And they are starting to wake to the notion if they do not stop the madness in their midst they very soon won’t have a country.

A perfect metaphor for what the progressives have done to America.

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cryptotheism · 2 years

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Wait, im still SUPER new to all this stuff, what makes shamanism not real?

You know how every few years there's some new "superfood" that white people become obsessed with because we think it's finally gonna make our lives longer and our dicks ahrder and cure the toxins from our bodies? Because even though we have modern information technology, a lot of people still see any country east of Belarus as being this single mystical "East" full of mysterious mystical enlightened knowledge?

It's like that but for religious practices from indigenous America and the global south. White dudes from silicon valley will pay out the ass to get high but not feel "urban" about it, so they pay people who have claimed to study with the Sages of South America so they can get high and throw up in a way that feels spiritually superior to how other people do it.

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bloodynereid · 8 months

Note

would you do a roman roy imagine where he crashes shiv and the reader’s lunch cause he’s feeling jealous of shiv having the reader attention (like in childhood despite the reader being shiv’s age) and he and the reader’s long standing “will they-won’t they” finally ends?

Lunch Confessions

pairing: roman roy x fem! reader

a/n: hii sorry for taking so long to answer this request! hopefully i did it justice. i miss rome sm omg - COME HOME! for anyone who follows me for gen v sry lol i have a ton of other hyperfixations and i'm in the midst of my succession rewatch so...

tw: roman being his usual slimy self (only for a bit tho we love him), tom bashing (only a warning if you actually like him), swearing A LOT, rich people, allusions to sex

description: a lunch meeting with shiv takes an interesting turn...

The rain pattered against the glass of your car as you fixed your hair in the compact mirror. The slick leather seats slid under the fabric of your pants and a smile blossomed on your face. You were finally back in your favorite city, New York, after having to be abroad in Tokyo for a while. Father needed some help with the expansion over there and obviously he had decided to turn to his favorite daughter.

Your family founded and owned one of the most prestigious pharmaceutical companies in the world. It had been passed down from your grandfather to your father and then hopefully to you. Thankfully your other siblings weren’t exactly interested in running the family business, which meant less competition for the throne. You shuddered thinking about the fucking gladiator fight Logan had Shiv, Ken and Roman competing in.

Your youngest brother had started up his own tech firm in Silicon Valley and was doing pretty well for himself… even if he didn’t actually manage his fucking company. Your two sisters were influencers, or rather they liked to call themselves life-style promoters but still.

Tracing shapes on the cool glass, you closed your eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. You were on your way to go see one of your closest friends from boarding school, Shiv motherfucking Roy. Your family had always been pretty close to the Roys, especially since Logan and your father had a whole deal going on about ATN, which even after years of being at the company he still hadn’t given you the exact details about.

Roman and Shiv were the only two of the whole family that you could really stand. Ken was sort of never around - instead he preferred the company of Stewie and various powders, Connor didn’t take anything seriously which constantly struck a nerve and Logan cycled through wives like they were the newest TikTok trend.

“Miss, we’re here.” You turned towards Ben and smiled before looking up at the building where you were having lunch with Shiv.

“Thanks Ben. Go ahead and park the car. It should be a few hours.”

“Of course Miss.” You smiled and waited as he got out of the car, opened up an umbrella before unlocking the car door. Your black boots met concrete as you stepped out into the cool Manhattan air. The heels of your books clicked against the sidewalk as Ben covered you with the umbrella and you made your way into the building.

The host smiled as he saw you walk in and quickly took out a menu before waiting for you to make your way over to the main desk.

“Hello Ms. L/N, how are you doing today?”

“Quite well. I have a reservation with Shiv Roy.”

“Of course, she has just arrived. Right this way.” You nodded and followed him as he made his way towards your usual table in the more private lounge area. You instantly spotted Shiv, her red hair hanging over her face like a curtain and her fingers moving quickly over her phone screen.

“Here we are.” The host said as he pulled out your chair and placed the menu in front of you. “Is there anything we can get for you at the moment?”

Shiv looked up and her face brightened when she realized you had arrived. She quickly locked her phone and looked up at the eager host.

“A bottle of the 1945 and some sparkling mineral water for each of us.” You said, quickly dismissing the host who nodded and left to procure your drinks.

“God hi I missed you.”

“Missed you as well Shivvy.” You smiled back at her and you quickly stood up and exchanged a short hug before settling back into your chairs.

“So how was Tokyo?”

“Busy. How’s Tom?”

“Well… he’s Tom.”

You scrunch your nose up and Shiv chuckles slightly at your expression before she takes a sip of the wine you had ordered, which was currently being poured into your glass. You fall into easy conversation, taking turns to explain all the new company gossip as you order your food and start to dig into the Michelin star meal.

“Your dad is truly insane. I mean Pierce really?”

“I know, thank you!” You laugh when you hear a familiar voice in the distance, one that belonged to one of Shiv’s many brothers.

“You invited Roman?” You asked as you cut up another piece of food in frustration. Ok so maybe going to Tokyo wasn’t all because of your father… it might have also been because Roman was so fucking happy with Tabitha. Not that you didn’t like Tabitha but you and Roman had a thing. An unspoken thing sure but still a thing.

“Fuck! I mentioned I was going to have lunch with you today and I didn’t fucking realize-”

“Shiv, it’s fine. Trust me.” You sent a reassuring smile as you patted her hand in sympathy. This honestly happened pretty often. Roman had a habit of interrupting any kind of event you had scheduled with Shiv, it had been that way since you were kids. You didn’t really get why but you were usually fine with it but right now…

“Ah if it isn’t my favorite women. Y/N, darling, you look fucking exhausted.” Roman said as he got one of the waiters to pull up a chair to your table and promptly sat down in one of his weird contortionist shapes.

“Fuck you Roman, you look like you have the plague.”

“You are so sweet to me, isn’t she Shiv?”

“I don’t understand why the fuck you decided to interrupt our lunch, Roman.” Shiv spit out, she accentuated his name with so much venom that it even made you widen your eyes.

“Aww don’t be like that dearest sister. I already know you want to fuck her so why don’t we all just have one big orgie.” Your face twisted in disgust and you thrust your foot out to hit Roman’s knee.

“Ow! Fuck.” Roman exclaimed, making a triumphant smile on your face.

“You’re fucking disgusting, Roman. Shit!” Shiv looked down at her phone and sent you a sympathetic glance. “Sorry to leave you with the fucking scum of the earth but I have to go.”

“Oh god don’t worry, go ahead. It’s my turn to take care of lunch anyways.”

“Thanks Y/N, we should reschedule without this creep interrupting us.” You stood up and gave Shiv a hug as she left the restaurant before looking over to Roman who had a happy smile all over his face.

“What’s making you all fucking smiley over there?”

“Oh nothing, don’t you just love a good female bonding moment?” Roman asked sarcastically as he stole your wine glass and took a sip.

“Ugh Roman, really? Why did you have to interrupt our lunch again?” You asked as you snatched your wine glass back and took a big gulp, you were going to need it if you wanted to survive this fucking conversation.

“Well you obviously needed saving from Shiv, duh.”

“Rome… look I love you but I don’t ever need saving from Shiv.”

“Aww you love me?” Roman said with an exaggerated sweet tone lacing his voice.

“You focused on entirely the wrong part of that sentence. Now really why did you crash?”

“I… fuck I broke up with Tabs and… I wanted to see you okay?” Your eyes widened and your jaw dropped as your heart started to quicken.

“You- really?”

“Yup, completely cut her the fuck off.”

“What? Why? I thought you liked her.”

“Eh.”

“What exactly does this have to do with my question?”

“You’re fucking blind aren’t you?”

“Excuse me? You’re the one who’s being all fucking cloak-and-dagger?”

“Do you need me to spell it out to you? I fucking missed you!” He said as he looked up to you with his hands nervously twisted the cloth napkin.

“Geez Roman, I didn’t realize you were capable of basic human emotions.”

“Fuck you.” Roman made a move to get up from his position.

“Woah Rome, I didn’t mean it like that. I- I missed you as well.”

“You have such a big crush on me, don’t you?” Roman asked with a mocking twist of his lips, the only thing that gave away his happiness were his eyes, which sparkled in the light of the chandeliers.

“Hmmm what if I do?” You said as a smirk rose up on your face.

“Y/N… now you’re playing a dangerous game.” Roman said as he leaned closer to you and dragged his fingertips down the side of your face.

“Oh I’m the one playing a dangerous game. Darling, we’ve been playing this game for as long as I can remember.”

“Fuck call me that again.”

“Only if you promise to be a good boy and stop crashing Shiv and I’s lunches.” You said as you pushed your chair back and smoothed out the creases in your pants. Roman’s face had changed from mocking to surprised as fuck.

“Well are you coming?” You asked as you started walking to the door of the restaurant, quickly swiping your card through the reader.

“Fuck yes.”

hehe hope u enjoyed. will def try to write for succession more in the future

#roman roy x reader #roman roy x you #roman roy #succession #fanfic #roman roy fanfic #succession x reader #succession fanfic #kendall roy #shiv roy #tom wambsgans

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