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kobblefort · 1 year

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Rushsly: Into the Depths 3

Here is my arena again, and the stats up top are looking good - check it out, no completely miserable kobbles!!!! This episode is going to begin with an absurdly long, totally irrelevant, mildly insane and kind of depressing rant so feel free to just skip to the next image because that's when I will start talking about the game again.

I don't know if you know this, but something happened in 2020. Well, obviously something happened in 2020, but I think what I'm thinking about might not be the thing that immediately comes to mind when you think about 2020, though it is probably a knock-on effect of it. You see, in 2020 a lot of people went Online who were just not supposed to be Online. Don't get me wrong, everyone was already on their way Online, whether willingly or by a kind of zeitgeist coercion - Boomers had finished terraforming Facebook from a clunky but quirky place to find out about parties and join groups for making esoteric image macros with other drug addicts who you would eventually just sort of meet at parties into a place for 30-comment family-shattering arguments to rage over an article your uncle found on TotallyTrueNews.RealWebsite about how public schools are forcing their students to say "I'm gay" over and over instead of the Pledge of Allegiance by 2018 at the absolute latest - but this was a more immediate event. Stuck at home with no other viable avenues for social fulfillment, a lot of people who shouldn't be on Twitter downloaded Twitter, a lot of people who had previously brushed it off started viewing and eventually making TikToks, started spending more than 48 seconds a day looking at Instagram (a rookie mistake, especially before reels) and though I'm not actually too familiar with this site we're on right now, I'm sure at least one 53 year old just showed up here and acted like they belonged while completely failing to accept or assimilate into the culture - not like, a fujoshi 53 year old, that's always kosher, I mean like owns a frozen yogurt store and listens to NPR 53 year old - again these aren't inherently bad, okay, so let's say a specifically not sexy 53 year old. (There is so much more to being sexy than being attractive, I NEED to clarify this, but this paragraph is already far too scatterbrained for me to get into it.) And because of this, something really bad started to happen. The veil was cut through between "the real world" and "the internet," all the way. Sure, you could argue this happened all the way back with the first Amazon sale, or the first time someone got a PayPal Business account, but we're talking about when the merge became complete.

A very long time ago I was a sheltered child, gravitationally anchored to a two-story house in a suburb that was closer to the country than the city, shuffled around schools every two years as part of some poorly-thought-out program for "gifted" kids where we got the same exact curriculum as any other kid in the district with twice as much homework, half as much socialization, and one particular teacher so miserable and cruel that I still find myself hoping she dies in some kind of "stepping on Legos forever" incident some twenty years later. (She seemingly went out of her way to make sure every student in our cohort broke down crying in front of the entire class at least once. I think I might actually be the age she was when she taught us now, and I can not imagine being okay with making a child cry, let alone intentionally trying to make it happen.) I certainly had it better than many in a material sense, the middle class really used to exist before 2008 and I was there in it, but my home life was actually pretty awful in the non-material senses, and in so many neglected hours I was able to take solace in one place. First over dial-up, then through DSL, and finally via glorious cable connection, I was able to leave the real world. On forums, on chatrooms, in game lobbies and Flash cartoons, I was specifically somewhere else.

Digital cameras were expensive and rare. Webcams... existed, I guess, but a 144p image on a CRT screen over AOL Instant Messenger's awkward protocol hardly made for a seamless connection, and I never had one anyway, because what the fuck did I or anyone else care what I looked like in real life? My Furcadia avatar was the real main event, or even better, my Graal Online character - an obscenely obscure game now, but it seemed bigger than the whole world when I was 9 - I was not bound by the name my parents chose for me but instead liberated by the handle I dreamt up for myself. There was no image or shape of me to weigh me down, only my thoughts and the way I managed to translate them. And there was another quality of this place that would inform my later disdain for capitalism, though I didn't know it yet: that everything was free. Though they could never find their way onto the Animal Crossing Forums or Starmen.net, and especially not Hell Is A Forum (thank god) even my parents could figure out Napster and the CD burner on our beige old Gateway desktop, and would boot me off to go play with my Dreamcast or my Genesis ever so often to burn a mix for the car or their workout - though they were trolled by that one Bill Clinton MP3 more times than any of us would like to admit, and I'm sure at least two or three of the many viruses that eventually did that old machine in came from there. Still, this was not a point of controversy, did not upset anyone besides, well, Metallica and the RIAA - it was just how the internet worked. If you could digitize something, turn it into data, break it down into a series of machine-interpretable binary bits and hexadecimal bytes, then it could be shared completely freely; there was no way to stop it from being shared completely freely. Once a thing was on the internet, it belonged to the internet, and this was not some dystopian AI-corpus financial instrument, but a worldwide triumph of human connection, a bastion of culture available to anyone with a machine and a modem. Learning things, finding things, talking to people was all so free and so easy, and connections were so beautifully earnest. Forums built around mutual interests made fast friends out of people who simply wouldn't meet in the real world, would otherwise just feel alone in their hobbies and pastimes and artistic ambitions, let everyone experience the joys of sharing in mutual passions without the aches and costs of travel, the gross fleshy trappings of physical life. You were free to just download Christian ska songs and roleplay as being an evil wolf with angel wings and talk about anime for crying out loud - which was really not normal at all yet for an American in, let's say, 2003.

My heart is warmed by younger people rejoicing in digital nostalgia, but I really wish they could have been there for the whole thing. "Y2K" was so much more than an aesthetic, it was a way of seeing the world, of experiencing the present and envisioning the future. It is truly ironic to have "digital millenium," two of the most hopeful words in the world to me when I was a kid, be the first two words of "DMCA," one of the most soul-crushing. On some level, we must have known it couldn't last forever, but the decay creeped in so slowly that you almost couldn't notice it, not unless you really looked. Paywalls went up, copyright takedowns went out, messageboards went down. Little by little, even the concession of "shareware" became corrupted by the wrong kind of perverts - coin-counting suit-wearing fun-hating puritans that, trite as it is, really did want to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Rent-seekers claim-jumped domain names by the thousands and asked exorbitant fees to let actual creators use them, the definition of "spam" grew looser and looser until it became normal for a total stranger to E-mail you a fucking advertisement, and all the SheezyArt's and VCL's were either crushed underfoot or congealed into the same all-encompassing grey goo of Social Media, a more Accessible internet not to the people who needed it, or even particularly wanted it, but who saw it as a resource to exploit.

But for a long while, the internet was still ultimately the domain of people who wanted to be there. The Facebook boomers barely ever breached containment, and anyone with any sense knew how to keep their paths from crossing. Twitter was still overwhelmingly weird, Facebook still at least had safe pockets that made it worth logging on every couple of days. But 2020 ended this completely. The trends of the last few years reveal it so plainly: a lot of people who genuinely don't belong on the internet are on it and just stuck here now. NFT guys were never even supposed to exist - people like that are supposed to just try to one-up each other at consumer-goods conventions with luxury watches or elaborate decorative rugs. The people crying out "Mister King Elon, Sir, my Blue-Check has improved my Reach, but people still aren't liking my Tweets! What's going on!?" should be harassing each other in country clubs. Televangelists should not even physically be able to access e621 but they do, and after they finish jacking off to femboy foxes with giant cocks in striped socks like everyone else does, they feel compelled to go online and tell a crowd about how "Liberals are putting litterboxes in classrooms because the teachers make kids identify as pansexual nonbinary catboys, we need to start kidnapping endocrinologists," a crowd that should not be following for-profit parishioners on Twitter, they should be in a La-Z-Boy yelling at the TV and buying the world's shittiest kitchen knives off the Home Shopping Network.

And I mean, what do we do, right? Is this just the new cycle? Something cool comes around and we get to have fun with it for a few years until the boomers come shit all over it? How long can we go on like that? I'd say quite a while longer, actually. The truth is that a new cool thing will arise, we will have a place again for the actual weirdos and outcasts who make everything of any sentimental and cultural value to coalesce together, one that the Finance Fuckers and the Status Seekers and the hate-spewing freaks can't figure out how to get on, don't even want to get on. I don't know what it will be or where or how, but this all comes in waves. In nature, the prey population rises, then the predator population does too, then the prey population falls, then the predator population falls. There is summer and there is winter. In the human world we have made things markedly more complex, but we still operate on the fundamental principles of nature, there is still a morning after every night no matter how long. Somewhere, somehow, a new world is coming. It has to be. And somewhere in this world, something is waiting for you.

I think things like the greatest simulation game of all time, Dwarf Fortress speak to what the internet and computers really are, really can be, really should be. I think the greatest simulation game of all time Dwarf Fortress is not just a relic of a more optimistic time but something that keeps the spirit of the old internet alive. Tarn once said that people who actually play the game are simply beta testers, and it is only by sharing our experiences with it to others that you get to actually "play" it. I really like that, I feel as though that concept contains the very "collaborative spirit of giving freely" from the old internet. So how about I get back to beta testing the greatest simulation game of all time Dwarf Fortress for you.

New problems are often just old problems. On the left we see that more food has been left to rot on the floor, because of course it has, at this point I think they just like doing it. On the right we see that, well, I didn't really designate anyone to throw out the forgotten beast corpse or its associated parts, so... that's kind of just stinking up the place. Right at the main stairway, too! Well, down a hole on the surface it goes.

We needed more flux stone for steel production, so I went to dig into the dolomite wall of our church/main tavern floor, but it turned out to be hiding a massive iron vein. Well, there's still enough dolemite to be worth it, and it's not like more iron is bad, it's just not particularly good.

Chief Acl himself, apparently quite a religious man lately, takes the task of throwing the ratfolk necromancer down a very deep hole, cage and all. It's a quick and merciful death, which the other ratfolk will surely come to envy in time as it's now their turn to be chucked down. Well, that plan kind of has a hitch.

Only the first ratfolk is actually successfully thrown down the pit - the next two see the pathetic fate that awaits them and immediately make a break for it. And then...

Ace Steel, the Beast Slayer, catches one, beheads them, and then...

chops the other one in fucking half. Jesus Christ

And in the background, just as a little aside, our bird towers spot three ratfolk thieves trying to break in. It's too bad they haven't been able to send any survivors back to warn them about all the traps. Well, they won't get the chance now, either. These particular ratfolk are just going straight down the garbage pit because, well, I dunno, the "arena" feels like a shit idea after all.

Hey, Nillians are here! I've never seen these folks before. Hope they aren't squeamish like elves, because they got here just in time to see ratfolk thrown down a fucking garbage chute. We'll give them a nice warm welcome, and also I feel like getting some special quarters set up for the Beast Slayer. I don't want her to feel as though her hard work isn't being appreciated. Of course, she's not the only member of the military...

Dralas Containedbanded, a fine crossbowbold in his own right, has fallen asleep right in the middle of the main tavern as a party rages around him - another member of his squad, Almda Smileurn, snoozes away in the lower one. I take it they're enjoying their leave to the fullest, as they should. It'll be right back to training soon enough.

The trading post is absolutely run at this point - we seem to be popular, despite the fact we really haven't been exporting much. And oh god they're doing that thing with the wagon don't do it don't do it don't crunch it don't smush it. Okay. I'm better now. I traded with the Nillians for their instruments; we're almost completely self-sufficient now, so nothing else they have is particularly interesting.

In political news, we're a Realm now! Which means Acl's lodgings are no longer good enough, and has also inspired Alsrta Moltenend to enact a ban on the export of iron anvils. Which... yeah, sure, whatever. They're not exactly our money-makers. In fact, I don't think we've ever sold one. So yeah, sure, who cares.

Ace Steel now has a grand bedroom to share with her husband Zolr Fatvenoms (cute name) that includes satinspar furniture (her favorite rock) and pig iron walls (her favorite metal - she's worth slowing down the steel production for...) right next to the tavern. It's also around this time that I discover the population cap was set to 50; I figured we just weren't getting a lot of migrants because we weren't creating or exporting a lot of wealth, but...

That's pretty obviously not true. So I crank it back up to 200 and set about digging out some more apartments. We've been eating through vertical space pretty quickly, but as far as horizontally, there's still tons of room, and while it's obviously more efficient to just stack them instead of spreading them out, I don't particularly want bedrooms any closer to the caverns than they are, so instead I make the aesthetically questionable decision to just smush them all onto elevation -5 with the other 3-tile bedrooms.

In between all their stairwells, we create a grand mausoleum for Acl, who is apparently no longer content with just a platinum sarcophagus in a crystal glass chamber up where the proles get buried. I'd say royalty really changed him, but it kind of didn't.

There he is, putting together some random pauper's bedroom.

We got another live one! This one's a bit more worrying than the last - I can't imagine it having fire powers will bode particularly well for us.

A floor below, the hatches are locked, and both squads are set to patrol the point where it could feasibly break through. We only got a glimpse of it before it disappeared into the fog of war, but it seemed to be climbing along the walls if not outright flying, so once again the whole "don't open up the caverns on the ground level" thing turned out to be meaningless.

God she's so badass. I shouldn't even be scared. But I am, precisely because she's so badass. Losing such a great kobble would be a death blow to the fortress' morale, much less my own. The beast appears every now and then on the map, swimming around just at the edge of our revealed look into the caverns. Just now I got up from the computer, walked over to the fridge, uncovered a pan of spaghetti I've been saving since last night, and ate two handfuls with my bare hands. I just sort of tilted my head back and lowered them into my mouth. I don't know why I'm like this, my fork is clean (I only own one) but I didn't want to eat a forkful of spaghetti, I wanted to eat a handful of spaghetti. And I did, and I liked it. I don't know. Maybe that early image-generation AI was on to something. Eat spaghetti with your hands some time, just give it a try. Why not? What are you afraid of? Anyway, as we wait with bated breath...

i just wanted to sneak the horse soap into this picture because i think it's funny, it has nothing to do with anything. The year changes. 254, the start of our fifth year in Rushsly. It's certainly cause for celebration, even if this isn't the time. For now, with the beast still far enough away to remain hidden but close enough to remain a potential threat, the best we can do is let the soldiers off patrol for a little bit to calm their nerves - weapons and armor still at the ready, of course - and try to have a few more normal days. Sure, they could be our last, but really any day could, and at least we know what's coming. And in real life I'm tired but want to try a bit of Shadows of Doubt before bed so I'm going to have to cut it here. It seems like as the complexity of the fort increases, so does the length of these posts, but yet the in-game time spent only decreases. Maybe by the time we're at 100 kobbles I'll only even get through a season or two per session. Oh and sorry about that rant back at the beginning. If you actually read it then wow lol, thanks. If you didn't, don't worry, you didn't miss anything. I just don't have anywhere else to do long-form thought organizing like that right now. This may be a Dwarf Fortress Let's Play tumblr but it is also my blog. Probably not going to go on a tangent that long again any time soon but I'll warn you and tell you where to skip again if I do. I deeply appreciate your patronage take it easy thanks

#dwarf fortress #kobblefort

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jgmartin · 10 months

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MONSTERCALL

The Dark Web.

The name itself is a meme. It’s become the boomer boogeyman, the back alley of the internet where you go to get your kidneys harvested and sold off to a billionaire’s all-you-can-torture buffet. It’s the skeezy part of town. The no man’s land of the digital world, chock-full of society’s most vile scum.

It’s also pretty boring.

See, the dark web isn’t that much different than the surface web. Sure, it has a cooler name and better privacy, but most people use it for the same shit. Social media? Check. Shopping? Check. Pirating movies? Duh. Did you know Facebook exists on the dark web? You do now.

My parents are terrified of the dark web. They speak about it in hushed breaths, sort of like Ron Weasley talks about Lord Voldemort. It’s as though they think uttering its name too loudly will invoke the wrath of some serial hacker, just waiting in the wings to delete their bank accounts.

Ridiculous, right? I told them they were paranoid. To prove them wrong, I even downloaded the Tor browser and uninstalled Chrome. There’s nothing to fear on the dark web, I said, so long as you’ve got half a brain’s worth of sense in you.

Now, I’m not so sure.

Now, I wish I could take it all back.

I stumbled across the website after a night of drinking. I’d been out with Jared, my best friend since childhood, reminiscing about the good old days of driving Mrs. Crabtree up the wall. When I got home, I felt a bit nostalgic so I went digging for old pictures on Facebook. Like most drunk missions, one thing led to another, and I landed on an old thread listing the most exciting websites on the darkweb.

Spooky, right?

Well, most were fairly vanilla. Some free textbooks here, a bit of hacked video games there. I scrolled down through the responses until I found one buried beneath the others. It had just a single upvote.

I stared at the link for a few seconds, then cracked a fresh beer and said fuck it.

The website was plain, mostly white text on a black background. Across the top was a banner emblazoned with the words CALL YOUR MONSTERS. I cracked a grin. It was kind of cute, in an edgelord, emo kid sort of way.

After clicking through a few menu links, I landed on the ORDER A MONSTER page. It said that, for $99, they would deliver a personalized monster to a doorstep of my choice. Free shipping, too. The flavor text read:

Perfect for getting even with terrible bosses, backstabbing friends, and childhood enemies!

I laughed. The idea was absolute gold. They even had a Monster Call Guarantee of same-day shipping. How they managed to pull that off, I had no idea. Maybe they had a network of paid actors, patiently waiting to dress up in Halloween costumes and say a few canned lines on somebody’s doorstep? Or maybe it was like Build-a-Bear, where you got to design your own stuffed version of ghouls like Dracula and the Wolfman?

Who knows.

Whatever it was, I decided I was far too drunk to give a shit about how they made it happen. All I knew was a hundred bucks was a damn steal. I smashed the order button and it brought me to a follow-up page titled DESIGN YOUR MONSTER.

I practically licked my lips. This was the juicy bit! The website gave me a drop-down list of selectable options based on modifiable body parts. The mouth, for instance, had FANGS, BROKEN TEETH, NO MOUTH, MULTIPLE MOUTHS, and TOO MANY TEETH.

I thought the idea of too many teeth sounded ridiculous enough to be awesome, so I picked that and went down the list and selected the rest of the monster’s attributes, including its body type, its subspecies, and finally its ‘power’.

The next page said LEAVE A MESSAGE. I mulled it over for a few minutes before deciding to keep it simple. I typed 'boo' into the text field.

Once I was finished, I clicked COMPLETE and it brought me to a new screen that made me jump. It was a webcam video of me, staring shocked at my laptop. The stream was live. At the top of the page, a red text banner proclaimed PERFORM THE BLOOD SACRIFICE.

Uh, what? I cocked an eyebrow. As if in answer to my confusion, a list of instructions faded into view on the bottom of the screen.

1. UTTER THE NAME OF YOUR RECIPIENT

2. PIERCE YOUR SKIN

3. CONSUME YOUR BLOOD

I burst out laughing. This was too wild! Not only were they gonna deliver a ‘monster’ to somebody’s doorstep, but they were gonna include a goofy ritual video too.

Alright, I decided, I’m game. I went downstairs and grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer and headed back up to my room. Holding my hand up with a coy grin, I pricked my thumb with the tip of the blade.

“Jared Mayhew!” I announced dramatically, stuffing my bleeding thumb into my mouth and sucking it clean. Once I’d finished, I held it up, drunk and proud, as evidence of my dark ritual complete. Seconds passed and nothing happened. Then, the screen went black and a new page appeared.

ORDER COMPLETE! DELIVERY IN PROGRESS.

I sipped my beer, wondering how Jared would react to my spooky surprise landing on his doorstep tomorrow. I really hoped they included the blood sacrifice bit. Jared and his wife, Alyssa, both hated blood, so they’d never let me live it down— and that was exactly what I wanted.

A couple of seconds later, a new screen popped up.

DELIVERY COMPLETE. STANDBY FOR RESULTS.

Already? That didn’t make any sense. How did they manage to create my order and ship it across the country, all in the span of five minutes?

A depressing realization swept over me. My drunk ass had been duped. There was no way they’d be able to ship something that quickly, so the only explanation was

A) it was a scam, or

B) it was just some lame video-mail jump-scare.

Fuck.

Now the $99 made more sense. There was no way a tiny start-up could offer same-day delivery and a compelling product for so little money. It was a pipedream logistically. Who the fuck did they think they were? Amazon?

Defeated, I decided that was enough dark web shopping for one night. Time to pack it in. I closed my laptop, brushed my teeth, and hopped into bed.

My phone vibrated.

I stared at it, wondering who would be messaging me at this hour. Jared, maybe? He was just as drunk as I was and probably high as a kite by now too. I chuckled, picking up my phone. The screen indicated one new email— from MONSTERCALL. That was odd. I’d never given them my email.

ORDER DELIVERED!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW RESULTS.

View results? I heaved a sigh. This was either a virus or some guarantee that Jared got a corny ‘spooky’ email. Still drunk, still making poor decisions, I clicked the link and it opened a video feed.

Of Jared’s house.

I sat up, my tiredness vanishing in a tidal wave of what the fuck. The video was dimly lit, and the way it bobbed up and down looked like it was being recorded off of somebody’s cell phone. Jared’s small, two-bedroom home was there in all of its suburban glory. Something about the video felt off, though. Wrong.

I told myself to relax. This was just some prank or gag. The company probably put out a call for a fraction of the money to any locals, and somebody pulled the contract. No doubt they were going to walk up the front steps, knock on his door, and then say boo and run off or some shit. It wasn’t a big deal.

So why was my heart racing?

The video neared the house, the footsteps going slowly. In the silence of the night, I heard the person behind the camera breathing. They sounded frightened. Scared. Why?

Lights went on inside the house, painting the windows in a dull, yellow glow. I squinted, seeing dark shapes darting behind the curtains.

Thoroughly confused, I decided to message Jared and ask if he got my surprise.

TERRANCE: suuup dude, you get my special delivery?? haha

JARED: HE,P

JARED: SKMWTHING

JARED: INSIDE THE HOUSE

Dark splotches splattered against the glass. A moment later, a woman’s scream rang out, and the window shattered. Two hands reached out from behind billowing curtains, gripping the side of the windowsill. Then two more gripped the top. A figure emerged, lurching out of the opening and into the yard.

It looked familiar.

Jesus Christ, it looked familiar.

It stood eight feet tall, with large bat wings flared out behind it, and four crooked, muscular arms clenching in and out of fists. The person behind the camera stumbled backward, muttering something incoherent. The creature swiveled its head toward them.

The video feed shifted. Images of the sidewalk flew up and down as the cameraman ran full-tilt from Jared’s house, heaving panicked gasps. I caught muffled fragments of prayers. Then a shriek sounded, followed by the flap of powerful wings.

The video crashed, tumbling in a blur of pixels. A man’s voice shouted for help, and then something heavy crunched, and his voice died with a wheeze. Another shriek filled the night, and a shadow appeared, gazing down toward the discarded cell phone. It had four arms, a pair of wings, and a mouth filled with rows and rows of teeth.

Too many teeth.

I lurched forward, swallowing the vomit in my throat. In one of the creature’s arms was a thirty-something man, struggling wordlessly against the monster’s might. His chest looked like it’d been caved in. The creature leaned towards him, pressed its teeth against his face, and slowly bit down. The man's legs kicked and jolted as the beast’s teeth began rotating like a blender, tearing his flesh from his skull.

It dropped him there, convulsing and dying, then beat its great wings and took off into the sky. Moments later I heard confused shouts. Footsteps pounded against the pavement. More hollers. People called for the police, other neighbors told children to get back inside.

I put my phone down, horrified. It had to have been a joke. There simply was no way that had actually happened. It couldn’t have. It was too gruesome— too violent. That was digital effects all the way. It had to be. Apps were great at that these days.

Weren’t they?

______________________

The next day I got a call from Jared’s parents. His mother tried to talk, but she couldn’t get past the tears, so she put his father, Roger, on the line. He explained that something terrible happened last night.

My breath caught in my chest.

I told myself to relax, that there was nothing to worry about. Monsters didn't exist. I knew that. “What happened?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

"Terrance," Roger said quietly. "This isn't easy to talk about, and god knows it's going to be harder to hear, but last night somebody broke into Jared’s home. Police think it was around two in the morning."

My jaw hung limp, my hand trembling as I held the phone to my ear. A terrible coincidence. That's all it was. A terrible, horrible coincidence.

"I don't know how to say this," he continued, "so I'm just going to come right out with it." Roger took a deep, shuddering breath, the kind I’d never heard a man like him take in all his life. When he spoke again his voice was as fragile as glass. "The intruder that broke in mutilated them. Jared and Alyssa."

"Mutilated?" I said in a small voice. The sound of Roger’s voice on the phone felt distant suddenly, like the world was falling away from me at a hundred miles an hour. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. These things just didn’t happen to people.

"Yes,” Roger said. “God, Terrance. I hate to give you this news, I do. But you’ve always been Jared’s closest friend, and I didn’t want you hearing about it in the newspaper. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

He paused. “The police,” he began, pushing the words out. “They said the psychopath ate pieces of them. They say that the monster chewed their faces clean off their skulls.”

I held the phone to my chest as I vomited all over my bedroom floor. I hurled again. Then once more.

“Terrance?” Roger’s voice said from the receiver. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” I said, wiping puke from my mouth. “I mean, Jesus, no Roger. I’m so sorry. Holy shit.” My hand slipped through my hair and I gripped it painfully, praying that maybe if I just pulled hard enough, the pain would wake me from this nightmare.

“It’s—”

“The funeral preparations,” I said, guilt pooling inside of me. “I’ll handle them. I’ll handle everything. You and Charlene need to take this time to grieve for your son. It’s the—”

“There won’t be a funeral,” Roger said, voice trembling.

“What? Why not?”

A sound reached my ears, a sound I’d never heard in my life. I listened as Roger broke down sobbing. This man, this construction foreman who’d never so much as wiped a tear from his eye in the twenty years I’d known him, was crying his eyes out.

“Jared and Alyssa… they’re alive,” he said. “Hooked up to tubes in the hospital. The sick fuck left them, my baby and his wife, mangled on their living room floor. Can you believe that?” He wheezed, and I heard Jared’s mother weeping in the background. “The monster didn’t even have the humanity to put them out of their misery.”

My mouth hung limp. What was there to say to that? What words could alleviate that sort of pain? “I…”

“You need to be careful,” Roger said, and his voice evened out a little. “You’ve gotta be careful, Terrance, alright? You might not be my son, but you were over enough that I practically raised you. Pretty soon you might be all I’ve got left. The cops… Well, they told me they haven’t caught the bastard that did this. He’s still out there. So keep your doors and windows locked, you hear? And don’t let anybody inside you don’t know.”

“Wait—” I said. “They don’t have anything? No leads at all?”

“They’ve got something,” Roger said. “It’s… not much. A crumpled up note they found on Jared’s doorstep.”

“A note?” My heart thrummed.

"Yeah. But it was just one word. Practically useless."

A lump formed in my throat. “What did it say?”

“...Boo.”

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liskantope · 2 years

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In internet / social media commenting culture there's the sort of assumption that's so subtly and almost ubiquitously present that I can only really put a finger on it in its absence. This almost-universally expected element for comments and statuses in an online context could be labeled wit I suppose, which is vague but I can't quite think of any other single word or brief phrase that captures it. The expectation is present both in social media statuses and in comments under statuses or in many types of online forums.

The expectation is that whatever you're writing, whatever point you're making, is either very heavily serious/sentimental (e.g. announcing the death of someone close to you or deploring a tragedy in the news) or a commentary, either as part of the discourse or a relating of someone happening in one's own life, which must have a sharp (and preferably somewhat original and non-cliche-sounding) point to it. There has to be some subtle degree of humor behind the point being made, at least if it isn't a purely argumentative response to someone else's view. There is typically some very minor inference left for the audience as to whatever broader point (political, personal, or whatever) the commenter/status-writer is gesturing towards. Things are never spelled out 100% bluntly and baldly somehow.

And the reason I'm having trouble describing what I mean in the above two paragraphs is that I believe this is ingrained in our social media and discourse culture as such a low-key undercurrent that I don't consciously notice it the vast majority of the time -- again, it's more that I notice its absence at once on the rare occasion when it's absent. Recently it's been on my mind because I've been perusing a small online space where it's conspicuously absent by (of all random things) gradually going through the archive of old For Better or For Worse comics on the website GoComics: occasionally there are commenters who post under these comics and there's somehow a complete lack of attempt to be incisive or make a new point or do anything but straight-up explain the joke a lot of the time (here and here are typical examples). I'm oversimplifying over thousands of examples obviously but there overall seems to be a complete lack of "wittiness culture" in that space, and I honestly can't think of any other online space I frequent where this is the norm -- the closest I can come to it is the way boomer-age people often seem to act on Facebook (but the regular commenters under the FBoFW comics come across as quite young). I notice something similar on the Peanuts archives at GoComics, except that there are more commenters such that every day there's exactly one featured comment available which on average is of only marginally higher intellectual quality.

I feel like I'm still not quite getting at what I mean very well, but maybe someone else knows what I'm talking about and can describe it better than I can?

#internet culture #social media #for better or for worse #generational differences

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nickgerlich · 8 months

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On Track For Sales

Once upon a time, when marketers had only mass communication advertising outlets, it meant that money was spent shotgun-style. Messages appeared in print or broadcast with little or no regard for whom might encounter them, if only because it just wasn’t possible to eliminate unlikely customers from those who were strong candidates. Thus, you wound up with men seeing ads for the latest women’s fashions, women having to endure beer ads clearly written with men in mind, and so forth.

There was a lot of wasted money back then.

But things are very different now, and thanks to digital marketing, it is possible to advertise with laser-like precision. While some people may view it as an invasion of privacy, others, notably Gen-Z, are in love with it. In fact, Gen-Zers are three times more likely than Baby Boomers to allow tracking in return for targeted advertising. They are also less likely to clear cookies or use ad blockers, and more likely to use a VPN.

I’m one of those Boomers in favor of it, too, because I see it for what it’s worth: Relevancy. I would much rather see ads that match my established interests. Yes, sometimes it can become a little too much, like earlier this week when I fell into a rabbit hole Facebook discussion on trail running shoes. Suddenly my feed was filled with ads for Hokas, Altras, Topos, and more. But that’s a lot better than seeing ads for things I will never buy.

I am increasingly convinced that we can also help curate the ads we see, if only by virtue of allowing tracking, actively engaging in conversation, and searching for products. It won’t take long to see the results, sometimes even the same day like with those shoes.

While some would prefer their online experience to be completely ad-free, that is a dream for another day. Advertising is what pays the bills and keeps our socials and search engines free. If the ads match our interests and proven buying habits, we are a lot more likely to engage with the ad, as well as make a purchase.

Compare that to the old way of advertising. If you still read a newspaper (I gave them up about eight years ago), you flip through the pages fairly quickly, scanning for news items of interest. And as far as radio and TV go, we change channels or hit mute on the things we couldn’t care less about. Once again, advertising dollars swirling down the drain.

Go ahead and track me, ye social media sites, search engines, and Amazon. It’s all good, man. Hit me with your best shot. I’ll wear out the current shoes soon enough, and I’ll be back for more, just like with my camera and cycling gear. Sure beats having to endure the alternative.

Dr “It All Ads Up” Gerlich

Audio Blog

#marketing #tracking #online #advertising #GenZ

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noxianwilled · 11 months

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so, to continue. if katarina retaliates there will be a feud of sorts. katarina might have her fanbase, but so does her mother. after an internet argument the latter can be seen live on facebook ('cause she's a boomer) doing Q&A's all dolled up; french manicure, wearing an offwhite silk shirt, bvlgari on her wrist, hair straightened within an inch of its life, botox'd up in places, freshly whitened teeth bc her insecurities were further amplified by fame. answering the fan's questions on her feud with katarina from the wine cellar or smth bc the sound's better there. the chat is an echo chamber of mostly middle-aged women who hype her up, console her, or talk about their own rebellious children and how this generation is "spoiled," "superficial," "ungrateful" and such. you KNOW she can and will play the victim card if katarina blocks her. she's probably a socialite-turned-manager who manages cassiopeia's influencer career. great business sense, still not a good mother. i wonder if she was katarina's manager to start? / @matrilinear, but of course it's me 😝

— @matrilinear

OH ADA I LOVE ALL THIS SO MUCH

makes sense to me that the family as a whole would be very famous, katarina being raised under the pressure of living up to her parents' success. as a child/teen, she likely would've followed their rules despite the rebellious impulses, most of the time, at least — specially if soreana was her manager initially, i can definitely picture it becoming a really controlling relationship where she'd want to have some say in everything katarina did or said (and, of course, that only makes katarina more rebellious when she does start to rebel)

their audiences are certainly very different, but i just adore the idea of soreana all dolled up to livestream on fb ksdjnfkjadn i don't think kat herself is as open to discuss anything personal with fans, but she certainly is prone to tweeting jabs directed at her mother (that soreana will hear of, even if through cass or her own fans pointing out katarina's entitlement and disrespect).

in a parallel to canon, i think kat was raised very strictly to be shaped in what her parents wanted her to be (more so both of them than marcus alone, in modern, perhaps?). the impossible standards, strict routine, as well as little room for kindness and rest are all things i'd picture as remaining the same, and worsening as her fame grew and so did the scrutiny she was placed under. the fights were likely common (an varied in seriousness; though i imagine some got bad), though moderate initially because kat would hold back. eventually, though, a particularly nasty clash came and she outright ran away afterwards (and i'm interested to hear how you think sore would've handled that particular crisis, specially considering marcus probably made the public aspect worse by cutting off katarina completely).

but yeah, after she does break away from her family, she's not very interested in keeping up the appearances, and even subtle criticism might be enough for her to start feuding with them online. if she does block soreana, and her mom tries to make herself the victim, you can be sure she's not deescalating things (whoever her current manager is, bless them for putting up with her). if anything, she'll make it worse and start sharing stories to highlight how soreana wasn't a good mother - and make sure she remains blocked

at worse, who knows, if she's really really feeling angry and vengeful, she might reach out to draven to be like hey want an exclusive interview where i'll talk candidly about how fucked up my family was but tbh i don't think she likes to expose herself as much as that would demand, she likes to keep her private life private, it'd take a lot for her to be that pissed off

#» out of character — ⌜main sup irl.⌟#» character study — ⌜fear is as powerful a weapon as any dagger.⌟#OH I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUN CONSIDERING THEM IN THIS VERSE #i love all this ada ksdnfksdnf

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jaythelay · 1 year

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Ay, Millienials and Gen Z, whatever generation is out there now, you want them to be better? Start by listening to kids.

You want a better future? An actual one? They're it. They're the last line of humanity to live in this era.

Listen. To. Kids. Just because they're too inexperienced to formulate their words distinctly and appropriately, doesn't mean they aren't utterly terrified and utterly utterly utterly alone.

Boomers showed us EXACTLY what to avoid when the village raises a child. You want to know why the republican MAGA train took off? Because we've never known a sense of community. Most of us can count the number of friends in their entire life on one hand. Disenfranchised youths get pulled into this bullshit because they fell through the widening cracks.

Right now, kids are being forced into slavery just to keep minimum wage down. For a fact this was done to inspire another boomer/GenZ divide, given the fact min wage is unlivable but meant to be. 3.85 vs 7.25, you know who's getting hired to keep wages low. In an era of Unprecedented Wealth Gaps and Record Profits.

Right now, kids are being forced to give birth and die due to rapists being empowered by republicans. They can't explore themselves sexually growing up, let alone ask Very Necessary Birds and Bees shit their dipshit parents never taught them, you want to know why most men can't find the fucking clit? No friends, terrified of sex, no social skills, no one to ask for help without ridicule.

Right now, kids are being seperated from their parents for not conforming to a christian white format of living. Bounty hunters are after their moms. If not republicans.

Right now, Kids can't trust teachers, police, doctors, no one. They're not safe at school, they're not safe outside, they're not safe inside. And having a gun doesn't in anyway reduce the chances of them being shot, it has CONSISTENTLY been shown to only raise child gun related deaths.

Right now, more than our generation, kids are Fucking Terrified. Rightfully, and that's fucking Mortifying. These kids don't get to fear the shadows in the hallways at night, they have to actually be scared someone is in that hallway. That a police officer raided the wrong fucking house again. That a white supremecist saw a facebook post by their parents.

Right now: KIDS ARE ALONE, COMPLETELY ALONE.

Republicans WANT to stir up a culture of pedophilic fears,

fears they made actually happen themselves,

They WANT adults to abandon children in a world of cruelty. They WANT you to be scared to even be around a child. They NEED that disconnect, that severance between generations, it's another culture war as always.

So, please. Patience. Listen. Fucking Be There for them. Because Boomers weren't for us, emotionally, physically, fiscally, they pulled that ladder so fucking hard on us before we were even adults.

Don't be scared of children. They're more scared in general than you are of them.

#kids #future generation #GenZ #boomers #millenials #republicans #gop #abortion #socializing #rvw #roe vs wade #generational divide

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cosmicretreat · 1 year

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Remember how Gen X was always annoyed that their Boomer parents kept spamming Facebook with memes about "kids today" and "if you remember x thing you're inherently better than everyone else"? Well, I see it's now Gen X's turn to stink up social media with the exact same kind of Early Bird Special Energy they've complained about for two decades.

#me

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ofcoming4th · 1 year

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Hello,

It was suggested that I might find some community to interact with on a media platform to help with feelings of isolation.

So I looked around

Twitter? Never have, never will.

Facebook? If it wasn't for restaurants using it for free websites I'd never touch this either - too many insane opinions, relatives, and insane opinions of relatives.

TikTok? A mix of mental fentanyl and amphetamines. To be used in tiny doses only. Very tiny.

Instagram? Of course I have an account, how else to follow favorite drag perormers? But the comment sections are often filled with those who need mental help more than I.

Live Journal? Dreamwidth? Do they still exist?

So here I am Tumblr - you win for Least Offensive to My Fragile Psyche. Oh poo.

( Don't ask about Discord, I'm afraid that the fifteen year olds from Germany with better English skills than myself will still be judging me. About history that I lived through. Little shits.)

So, anyone want to talk about cooking? With a "boomer" ? Who does remember the stuff we laugh at now. And refuses to return to the attitudes I also remember.

Be free my children! Love who you wish! Create what makes you happy! Talk to the elderly!

#Tumblr I'm back #at least when I can be bothered #hello all #anyone want to talk?

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stephenjaymorrisblog · 1 year

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Lugubrious Anarchist

Stephen Jay Morris

November 18, 2022

My amygdala, otherwise known as the region of the right brain, is all fucked up. I don’t know whether I’m depressed or just frustrated. I know that Jesus was rejected by his own people. This doesn’t mean that I have a Messianic complex or a slight case of megalomania. I just feel bad.

I have been locked out of yet another anarchist message board. They must think I am a Cyber troll or an agent of the state. I have been locked out of other political message boards, too. From Twitter to FaceBook, I am buried in obscurity. My videos on YouTube have a low viewership. So, what now?

Should I blame myself? Conservatives would say yes, however, my logic says no. The type of Anarchists we have now are bourgeois, Millennial, white kids who started their careers playing video games on the Internet. As with any movement, the youth are the most enthusiastic and vibrant members. This incurs resentment by the preceding, older generation, which is a normal occurrence. Back in the day, we had a generation gap between the old Leftists and the new Left. I know I’ve said this before and I say it again here: The old Left declared, “Your long hair will alienate the working class!” Well, in a way, it did. The working class “Hard Hats” of New York City attacked Hippie, anti-war protesters circa 1970. A decade later, Hard Hats and major league baseball pitchers sported long hair! Truth be told, the old Left was opposed to identity politics. They used to say to us Yippies that homosexuality was not in the interest of the working class. Well, they changed their tune in the 70’s!

Today’s kids may dislike Baby Boomers, but the conservative Millennials have been brain-washed by Boomer Conservatives and routinely use their rhetoric to attack the so-called “Woke.” The stereotype of woke is not only cringe, but outright retarded and stupid! This is the real reason I am sad. The reality is that some Zoomers dislike me as a Boomer. It’s stupidity on their part, however. One day, they’ll realize who the real enemy is.

So, I am theoretically retired. I’ve promised myself to quit the Anarchist movement and do some charity work, or travel around the planet to see the natural beauty that it has to offer. Maybe explore the essence of inner peace and the soul of just being. Meditate by a waterfall and watch beavers gather up branches to build a dam across a river. Yeah, I might just stick my head in the sand or hug a Redwood tree.

All I wanted to do was to show the younger generation how corrupt American corporate culture is and the phoniness of Evangelical Christianity; how they advocate for personal liberty and then, on the other hand, want you to conform to capitalist classicism. I wanted to impress upon the youth that the Anti-Authoritarian left is different than the Authoritarian left, or just better than the Authoritarian right.

Maybe 200 years from now, there will be an Anarchist revolution. I think the only way America will have one is if Fascism does come to the USA, and the state’s suppression will push the youth into armed struggle. We are getting close. The ignorance of the working class is helping to bring forth this Fascist state, whether it be Christian theocracy or white nationalism. When the totalitarian state is established, the white working class will realize that the Fascist state will not improve their lives. In fact, it will make it worse. They will realize that Jesus is not coming back and the only way to survive is to sell Meth. They will realize that the Feminists, Blacks, illegal aliens, socialists, Islam, fake news, and rich Jews are not their enemies, but that it is the white men in corporate boardrooms and pastors behind the pulpit that are doing them in. Alas, they will find out when it’s too late!

As for me. My love of my life, Pamela, and I will live out our lives into our golden years with love, happiness, and freedom and, hopefully, peace. I will make damn sure that nobody hurts us!

I will slowly back away from American politics because it fuckin’ sucks! Good luck suckers!

#anarchist #anarcho primitivism #anarchocapitalism #anarchocommunism #anarchofeminism #green anarchy #anarchopunk #Stephenjaymorris #stephenjaymorris #poets of tumblr #american politics #baby boomers

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