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lady-raziel · 23 days

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long reaction to the update

ok. so they put out an update video! since i've been commentating for the last three days i might as well subject you all to more of my thoughts today.

main takeaway: this was a good apology video. i mean it. short and to the point, no overproduction, heartfelt and honest (and not a ukelele to be seen. thank god.) they took ownership of the situation, apologized, and restated how much they value their relationship with the fandom.

their solution is to make the watcher tv platform into kind of an iteration of patreon where content is available for early access before it is released onto youtube later. this is clearly a better option than paywalling everything for everyone. i'm not sure what the relative breakdown of costs turns out to be when you compare how much they were making on patreon after the platform took their cut VS how much it costs in overhead to run and maintain their own platform (how much it costs annually to contract via Vimeo, essentially). but i'm sure that's part of the calculation.

all things considered, that does seem like the best option out of all the alternatives. it allows them to not completely abandon any of the pans they have simmering over the fire for the time being. i don't think i ever thought they were going to just say "oops, forget about the streaming thing! let's pretend that never happened!" because at this point they've invested quite a lot of time and money into it, and i don't disagree that keeping it in some iteration may help them make up some of the funds they're lacking.

i would say, it's fine to keep the streamer. this is one of the ok outcomes, all things considered-- but if they're going to do it, they've GOT to do it smart from this point forward. listen to both the fans and the consultants intimately. both are going to have valid points, and both are going to be right. listening to too much of either side will sink this thing because each has motives and expertise that the other doesn't. if the fans say $6 is too much, listen to them-- but have conversations with business consultants about how much you realistically need to charge to make things work.

also, i'd use this whole situation as a learning experience. watcher is a young company, and it's literally inevitable that mistakes will happen. what's different is that the watcher crew haven't really been in a position before where they've been on the receiving end of the internet-angry-justice-hammer to this extent. it's one thing to watch it happen to others, but it's a position of extreme privilege (and a bit of hubris) to think "but that won't happen to me, because i'm built different." naw, man-- two things in life are inevitable: death and fuckups. the callout posts get us all in the end.

what's really important is that they use this as a wakeup call that even the most loyal fandoms will only follow you so far to the cliff's edge, and you don't want to push that. you have to strike a balance between the passion projects that you think are worthy and the stuff that maybe doesn't excite you as much anymore but the people want to see. a little fanservice keeps the lights on, as unfair as that might seem. i'm gonna make 50 markiplier choccy milk memes just so i can make one niche political joke once and a while for 6 likes. it is what it is.

i'd also use this as a chance to take a very careful look at company structure and finances. it's not fun to do and nobody likes it. trust me-- this is hard whether you're a single adult trying to pay the bills or the freaking US government (speaking from experience on both-- i have to read the president's budget for work frequently). but you all have to ask hard questions about the ratio of creative staff you take on VS staff for administrative and other business roles, as well as the costs and benefits of everything you spend money on. how many staff members are essential to location shoots? can this video be shot with 2 cameras instead of 3 and thus you don't need another cameraperson? you might even have to come to the decision that instead of pitching a new show it makes more sense to use those funds to hire your essential non-creative roles or contract firms or freelancers.

paying staff a fair wage with benefits speaks highly of what watcher wants their values to be. it's hard to find such a position in a creative role and still actually get to work on things you care about. but it would be much worse if watcher didn't make realistic decisions about finances and it lead to the death of the company and everyone losing their jobs. the whole watcher company can work, in my opinion, but not without some sacrifices. they're going to have to run it more like a business and less like a youtube-channel-turned-business in the future if they want to survive.

last thing i'll add is that while i do think this was a good apology video, i still think they hurt themselves by not putting out some sort of statement on Friday or Saturday just to say that they were formulating a response. As i've said in other posts, it's ok and in fact beneficial to not make a kneejerk reaction, but it's also very important to communicate that you SEE what's happening. you SEE what people are saying and THAT'S why you need more time to respond. saying nothing and leaving the angry public to wonder if you dropped your phone off the Hoover Dam or just don't care? that's a fumble. it's a common mistake companies make in a crisis, but that doesn't mean it doesn't erode trust fast.

this could have been handled better in many ways. we see that, and i'm glad watcher says they see that too. crucial going forward is taking all this and patching the errors that caused all this to fall apart and learning from the experience.

tbh at this point what i'm most sad about is that the watcher crew have probably been too stressed out and upset to appreciate some of the absolute bangers people have been laying down to clown on them. i think if it wasn't about them they might be touched by the collective attitude and creative spirit. /j

#watcher #watcher tv #after this post i have got to actually not spend time writing long reactions about this anymore because i too #have fires caused by my own fuckups to put out #alas

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flowerandblood · 2 months

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Glass Cuts Deepest Epilogue

[ professor! • Aemond x student! • female ]

[ warnings: sex content, smut, angst, trauma, mention of sexual harassment and panic attacks, the power of fluff ]

[ description: Aemond and Wright have a year of their relationship behind them, full of joy, but also difficult situations for them, related to demons from his past. Despite this, they find their own ways to live normally and happily. Aemond, jealous that Cregan is now her professor, decides to find out if the girl who changed his life still loves him. Sexual tension, childhood traumas and sweet fluff. ]

This oneshot is the events that take place one year after Glass Cuts Deepest Series. This is a special chapter written to celebrate my one year on this platform, which falls on March 22.

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

My other works: Masterlist

_____

When a year had passed since he and Wright had officially announced that they were together, he was relieved to find that his panic attacks had almost disappeared, and if they did occur, they no longer involved vomiting and convulsions, causing only discomfort and a feeling of tightness in his stomach.

Wright was perfectly capable of recognising its symptoms, spotting instantly when he froze or turned pale, not touching him at the time, just asking quietly if he needed a moment alone or if he would like her to embrace him.

More and more often he wanted to simply cuddle up to her, so he would then ask her to let him, but not to touch him herself. He would then draw her close and sink his face into her neck, taking in her wonderful scent, listening to her breathing until he calmed down.

"− I'm sorry −" He mumbled then, ashamed that, as usual, he thought he had got it over with, that it was so good after all. He fought then against the grim thoughts that he would never be normal, that she had to live with someone who didn't cope, who was constantly afraid.

"− don't apologise −" She whispered softly, resting her cheek on his head, playing with the fingers of her hand, waiting patiently for him to be able to function normally again.

"− I'm glad that now when you feel unwell, you don't feel discomfort when I'm close − it's very important to me −" She said warmly, kissing his hair, and he felt his muscles relax slowly − the fact that she never made sudden movements, never tried to embrace him against his will, made him feel safe.

She respected the fact that he knew for himself what was good for him and what he needed, and she never forced him into anything − on the contrary, she always carefully studied his barriers.

Once when she showed him a picture of a nightgown, finding it lovely and pretty, white, lacy and strapless, of slippery, shiny material − he turned pale and shook his head quickly, looking away, seeing her enter his room then, what she was wearing was all too similar in his mind, a cold sweat on his back.

"− oh, I'm sorry − I won't show you this kind of things anymore − I just − I'd like to buy myself some nice pyjamas − the kind you'd like −" She muttered, looking up at him, turning on the couch − he sighed quietly, rubbing her bare legs that rested on his thighs.

"− I like it when you wear my Tshirts − nothing turns me on more −" He hummed, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, seeing her blush as she lay dressed in his black shirt covering her thighs − he knew she had nothing but panties underneath, just the way he liked it.

"− oh −" She mumbled quietly, embarrassed, pretending to scroll something further on her phone.

Since he had left the university and focused on his own studio, he felt that the immense frustration that had been with him all those years, of having to deal with strange women, having to constantly explain his decisions and apologise for the way he was, had left him.

In his new workshop, more spacious and brighter than the one he had worked in before, he felt free, and the only girl who was allowed inside was Wright.

Sometimes he couldn't help himself and would ask her how Cregan was doing in his job, seeing that she was progressing more and more each month, jealous that now someone else was her professor − she was spending a lot of time in class which was hard for him to come to terms with after they had spent so much time in each other's company up to that point.

"He is a really good teacher. He has a lot of patience and explains complicated things so that they seem simple, or he shows us something by doing it himself and we can watch." She said lightly, standing beside him, helping him cut out templates for his new commission, which he was working on with some of his former students he had hired. He hit the side of her cheek with the tip of his tongue, impatient for some reason.

"That's good." He replied dispassionately, feeling her cast him a quick glance upon hearing the tone of his voice, leaning lower to bend forward and look at his face.

"Are you jealous, Professor?" She hummed softly and he pressed his lips together, recognising that he hadn't given a shit, that he'd wanted to do this for a long time.

She squealed quietly as he grabbed her by the arm and turned her around facing the backlit table − his hands slid her panties down in a swift, sure movement, leaving her in a state of shock, his hand on the nape of her neck forced her to bend over. The material of her dress lifted slightly, revealing her naked buttocks − he noticed out of the corner of his eye her puffy entrance, glistening from her wetness.

She was his Eve, and although neither of them had ever completely undressed, and he wasn't sure he would ever be able to do so or endure such a sight without the memories overwhelming him, the sight of her partial nudity no longer frightened him, for her body was his temple, pure, warm and safe.

"− I've been thinking about this ever since I met you − you don't even know how many times I've stood over you barely restraining myself from fucking you good on a table like this −" He breathed out, quickly unzipping his trousers, lowering them a tad once with his boxers, not waiting a moment, forcing the swollen head of his cock between her swollen, weeping folds.

"− wider − that's it − fuck − are you okay? −" He muttered, casting her an uncertain look after he thrust deeper into her, sliding all the way in, her tight walls resisting him as he hadn't prepared her for this as well as usual.

"− y-yes − keep going − just − take it slow −" She mumbled softly, and he hummed under his breath, leaning down, placing his hands on either side of her on the backlit top of his table on which he usually cut glass, his lips pressed against her long, perfumed neck as his hips began to rock slowly inside her, barely sliding out of her without any rush, letting her walls get used to his size.

"− so warm − fuck, baby −" He gasped out, hearing her first shy moans, feeling his cock slide into her with increasing ease, slick with her moisture, her muscles began to throb around him, squeezing him − he looked down, watching as he opened her wide with deep, sure thrusts of his hips.

"− please, Professor − please −" She mewled and he sighed loudly; she knew how it affected him, she knew how much it aroused him − he involuntarily picked up his pace, his thighs began to slam against her buttocks with loud splats, all around them just their panting and the sticky clicks of her leaking wetness.

"− you have no shame − begging for your Professor's cock − is this how you got good grades at university? huh? − you like it when they fuck you well? −" He sneered, clamping his hands over her bare buttocks, letting go of control completely, allowing his subconscious to take over him and his movements, his pushes faster and more aggressive, rubbing her where she needed it. She leaned back on her palms against the table top, responding to his thrusts by rocking her hips, her hot, wet muscles sucking him inside with her moans of delight.

"− n-no − I work so hard −" She muttered frightened, as if some part of her really believed he could think that about her − he chuckled under his breath, running his hand through her hair, pounding into her so fast and deep that he was no longer sliding out of her with loud slaps of skin against skin.

"− I can see how hard you're working − how much it costs you to fit it in −" He scoffed, and she whimpered at his words, responding more and more eagerly to his thrusts, his knee spreading her thighs wider, forcing her to bend over again with her loud gasp of exertion.

"− I-I'm sorry − I promise I'll be good already, I promise, I promise, I promise −" She mewled, moaning low as he felt her muscles begin to throb in orgasm, her body arching backwards. He embraced her around the waist, his other hand gripping her cheeks, his lips pressed against hers in an aggressive, greedy, hot kiss as, after a few sloppy, messy thrusts, he came deep inside her with a heavy sigh of delight.

"− I know − my sweet little girl, am I right? −" He gasped, panting loudly along with her, embracing her tightly from behind, nuzzling his cheek against hers, her hands clasped around his arms, stroking them steadily, his half-hard manhood still twitching deep inside her.

"− yes −" She mumbled, burying her face in his cheek, as she always did after their rapprochement, needing his closeness and the tenderness he never denied her.

"− you don't think of him that way, do you? −" He asked quietly, ashamed of his insecurity, of his own fear and imaginings, of the fact that someone else, someone better could easily take his place at her side when he needed her so much, loved her so much.

"− oh, no, silly − I never felt anything like that before you − I think I was in love with you long before I realised it −" She said warmly, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, a sweet, girlish smile full of tenderness on her lips that melted his heart, his confirmation that all was well.

"− yes − yes, me too −" He murmured, leaning lower, placing warm, wet kisses on her face. He began to wonder intensely if the ring he had chosen for her, which lay tucked deep in one of his drawers where he kept his designs was still there, and if he would be a complete idiot to propose to her now.

After a moment he decided that yes, he would be a complete idiot and sighed quietly, smiling involuntarily under his breath, sliding out of her gently. He helped her put her panties back on over her buttocks, then zipped up his trousers, looking at her out of the corner of his eye − she turned to face him, all red from exertion, her eyes big, her breathing still slightly accelerated.

"Take me today to the church where you first saw the stained glass windows. You told me that story once, I think you mentioned that your father took you there." He said softly and she blinked, curious, cocking her head, leaning her palms against the edge of the table.

"Alright, why not, Professor. Where did you suddenly get this idea?" She asked cheerfully, excitedly, and he snorted under his breath.

"You'll see."

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berlynn-wohl · 4 months

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okay so I was watching a video about videos and decided to write about writing (specifically, fanfic)

Typically I don't share my thoughts on fandom as a subculture and how it's changed because I don't have the stomach for the kind of things that can happen when one posts their opinions on social media. But I'm gonna give it a go today because I watched this:

You don't have to watch it, I'll tell you the thing that got me: it was about how on YouTube, people are likely to be fans of specific channels, and if you subscribe to one, you could probably, if asked, discuss what you like about that channel/creator with others. But the way TikTok's feed works (turning you into a passive consumer of an endless stream of short videos), it's more difficult to differentiate who the creators are, even when you subscribe to them. You're more likely to just say, "I'm a fan of TikTok" (...or "I'm addicted to TikTok"). This is evidenced by the fact that at a recent VidCon, TikTokers who had millions of views and hundreds of thousands of subscribers faced empty lines at the meet-and-greets, because their content was just part of a blur of content their subscribers passively put their eyeballs on every day.

And I had a thought: Has AO3 done this for fanfic? Of course AO3's content cannot be passively consumed; you have to enter search terms and use filters to find what you're looking for. But once you have entered such a search, you could well be faced with thousands of results, which you begin consuming by opening tab after tab after tab. If you were not in fandom before 2012, I cannot stress how ludicrous this amount of fanfiction is. Before AO3, unless you were in a MASSIVE fandom (like HP or LOTR), you eagerly awaited the arrival of new fics because there just weren't that many -- and even if you were in a massive fandom, if you shipped one of the less popular pairings (or preferred Gen), you still could not necessarily count on even one new fic a day that was to your tastes.

And in those days when fics were fewer and farther between, and when fandoms were more siloed, you got to know fanfic authors. You recognized their styles. When someone posted a new fic, you were excited because you knew what you could expect based on what you already enjoyed about that author's talents and inclinations. In a small fandom I was in long ago, where only about ten people wrote fic, we once sat around and brainstormed which popular music act's vibe corresponded with which each author's style! (I was The Clash.)

Compare that to now, where many readers in fandom have the opportunity to just click-read-click-read-click-read, not just as a reward at the end of a long day, but on the bus or anywhere. I don't think it's a coincidence that fics get fewer comments than they used to, and there's far less discussion of individual authors. There's no incentive to linger on something even if you enjoyed it, when the next fic is waiting in another tab.

Now perhaps it's better that the structure of fanfic culture has changed such that we have less potential for BNF drama. But it also means that whenever I see newcomers to a fandom asking for recs, most of the responses are "Have you read [the fic with the most kudos and comments on AO3]?" It's not just that this response is a bit superfluous, as the newcomer has probably already sorted the AO3 results by kudos/comments -- to me it also indicates that folks get so much fanfic from The Fanfic Website and so little community from The De Facto Fandom Platforms that it becomes difficult to remember individual fics, what you enjoyed about them, or how an individual author's style might make them a better match for a certain reader. (Yes, I am aware that AO3 has histories/bookmarks for people to refer back to, but when one accumulates 1000 bookmarks and then someone asks for a rec, most likely the bookmark holder is only going to remember, off the top of their head, That One Crazy Outlier Fic That The Entire Fandom Lost Their Shit About Seven Years Ago.)

I dunno, this is all I got in the way of thoughts. I'm not saying I want to go back to the way things were 10 or 20 years ago, but I sure do wish I could a-la-carte it a little, you know?

#fandom

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theabigailthorn · 1 year

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Surely with how popular you are you would have had a few cancelling attempts, but you're drama free. How? I thought you'd be target number 1 with TERFs.

So the thing is, people on the internet have and do try to wreck my life! But it's true that I get less of it than a lot of other women, and I often ask myself (and them) this same question. I think it comes down to a few factors. In no particular order:

I'm white and thin

I don't post selfies very often

The Philosophy Tube Jutsu: I never use my platform to say anything bad about individuals, so I don't make enemies

I'm British

I don't put my pronouns or the word 'trans' in my bio. I mention it if it it's relevant but to a casual troll looking for someone to go after there are more obvious targets

My brand: in terms of online content, my brand is 'Educational and Compassionate.' I try to be even-handed and listen to all sides and never be angry, and people are maybe a bit reluctant to get mad at someone who does that? In terms of acting, my brand right now is 'I'm Trying Hard and I'm On My Way Up!' which I guess people like?

I have a posh accent

I don't make online content about video games

I'm pretty enough that men like looking at me but not so hot it makes them angry

I transitioned in private before I came out publicly. I knew that when I did I'd get a lot of backlash, so I pre-emptively muted LOADS of words in my comments section and wove a kind of digital safety net

I'm so busy that I often miss whatever the discourse du jour is and don't get involved. As a wise woman once said, 'Do Not Tweet.'

I deliberately dress and present myself as 'classy' in public-facing stuff

Most of my content is scripted, so by default it attracts people who like to sit down and listen

Philosophy Tube is literally all about critical thinking and not taking things at face value. So if a typical Philosophy Tube Subscriber sees a post that says 'I saw Abigail Thorn kicking a puppy down the street!' they're more likely to stop and think, 'What's the evidence for this?' This means that when there are hate campaigns and lies spread about me (and there are, from time to time) my core audience sees through it and sticks around

I have very good mods! Big shout out to all the lovely people on r/philosophytube and all the people who moderate my livestream chats!

I have a social media manager who can look out for hate and pre-emptively guard against it

I don't hitch my brand to other people. I sometimes do little collabs or appear at events with other creators but for the most part I fly solo. That means if another creator blows up or posts something awful I minimise my chances of cancellation-by-association. I'm friends with lots of creators but for the most part I keep it behind the scenes (Learned this one the hard way!)

I'm not a sex worker. Those people get hate like you wouldn't believe - the sex workers I know are the toughest folks I've ever met!

I'm not very fun to bully! I do get death threats and hate campaigns and people make fake porn of me and libel me and all that stuff - literally every day - I just never talk about it publicly so trolls don't get the satisfaction of seeing me get upset. I just mute and block and move on silently. When I have to talk to a lawyer or the police about someone causing a problem, I handle it behind the scenes

Platform size. When TERFs in British media go after someone they tend to pick on people smaller than them, cause they're bullies.

I built my platform slowly, so I've had time to adjust and get used to how it impacts my life

People have tried to cancel me in the past and it's blown up in their faces, e.g. the Trump Transition Tweet Incident and the B*ck A*gel Affair.

To be absolutely clear, a LOT of this is luck and privilege. I'm not trying to blame the victims of online harassment: yes, some of these factors are things I choose to do but not everyone is able to make those choices. It's also the unwinnable game of respectability politics: yes I might get less hate because of the way I dress or whatever, but fundamentally that won't protect me if I get arrested and sent to a men's prison. These things aren't a substitute for a more just distribution of power. There's also this final possible factor:

It just hasn't happened yet.

#The Jutsu #Do Not Tweet #And Still the Brand Endures

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stevetown · 2 years

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A Tumblr Quick Start Guide

A year ago, I realized that every time I logged onto Twitter, I felt my blood pressure rise. It's a platform that runs on anger and outrage, and I wanted someplace better to spend my screen time. In my almost-year on Tumblr, I now realize I log on here and get one or two good laughs every time I check my dashboard.

Tumblr has given me a lot lately, but it is a bit different than other platforms. I'd like to give back a little and provide a quick-start guide on how being new to Tumblr worked for me.

Finding Things to Follow

The biggest thing I had to get used to was realizing that on Tumblr, you don't necessarily follow people or celebrities or politicians. You follow your interests. In fact, it's pretty common to follow only strangers that post things you like. That can make your empty dash daunting to fill! Let's fill it with things you love and make you happy.

Make a list, mental or otherwise, of things you're interested in. Be both broad and specific! Board Games. Magic The Gathering. Supernatural. Marvel. Video Games. 8-Bit. Urban planning. Any and all things that you like!

Pick one of your interests and search for that tag. Flip between "Latest" and "Top" and browse around to see what kind of content is in that tag. You'll notice images, art, gif sets, TikToks, videos, essays - all sorts of things!

If you see a lot of things you like, cool! Click the button to Follow that tag if you want to keep up to date on it and find things later (we'll come back to this).

If you see a post you love, check out who posted or reblogged it. Scroll around on their blog. Do they post similar stuff? Are there other things you like here? Are they posting often? If you like what they post, follow the blog! Congrats, you've followed your first blog!

Take some time and check out some other tags and follow the same process - follow tags you like and blogs you might be interested in. It's not possible to over-follow! You can always curate your list later. This isn't Twitter - no one cares if you unfollow someone. Find what makes you happy.

Go back to your main dashboard - how are things looking? Filled with things you're interested in? Excellent. If things don't work for you, don't be afraid to unfollow blogs.

Want to follow more blogs? New episode of Andor drop? Go to the "Your Tags" header and scroll around to find some more juicy content. Check out blogs you like, follow 'em if you like em, rinse and repeat! That's curating your dash!

Your Blog is Your House

Okay, so you have a dashboard of content that you like - but what do you do with it all? Someone once described a Tumblr blog to me like your little house that you can fill with all the things you like. There is no rhyme or reason, and you don't need an excuse to reblog something other than the fact that you liked it!

If you see something you like, reblog it! To me, I reblog things when I say "I like this and I want it to live in my house so other people can see it when they come visit"

Reblogging is like passing a message along to other people. You can just reblog it on its own to amplify it, or you can add your own tags, or if you have a funny reaction gif/thought/video/thousand-word-essay, add to it when you reblog!

Use tags. People actually find posts through tags here. Use them to help people discover that really cool reblog you found! You can also search for tags on specific blogs. This makes them great for categorizing posts on your own blog. For example, I use #2022 Game Journal when I blog about whatever game I'm playing so I can do a year-end review later and find all the posts later.

Like things too. Likes don't amplify posts, but they're nice to let a poster know you appreciated it! I also use likes a bookmark. Sometimes I don't have time to watch that TikTok, so I'll like it as a reminder to come back to it later.

Be Weird. You can have sideblogs to hold more specific content, but don't be afraid to just scoop up anything you like and put it in your house! Reblogging is how content gets passed around.

Random Blog Tips

Wow nice job, your blog's looking great! Before you know it, someone will find it, check out your posts, and maybe give you a follow if they like what you've made or what your reblog! The last thing I'll touch on here are some nitty-gritty tips that can help you think about all the meta stuff about Tumblr:

Tumblr is the most anonymous social media platform. No one has to know who you are. Take advantage of all the privacy options.

You can also hide likes and who you follow from public view - that's no one else's business! Turn off asks too if you want.

Play around with your settings in general - there are lots of customization options and other dash tabs that you can use to find new content. You can also turn on timestamps so you know if a post you see is a "heritage post," as they say. Content is evergreen here and I personally like to see that in action.

You can filter and hide tags that you don't want to see.

Just block people liberally, it's cool.

You can pay to remove ads (nice), but you can also leave the option to see Blazed posts on. Blazed posts are ones that people pay for impressions for - and any post can be Blazed. The kicker is, there's no ad targeting. It can be quite funny or quite annoying depending on what you want.

When viewing the notes on a post, you'll see comments, reblogs, and likes. For the reblogs section, I like to filter by "Comments only" to find what people have added to the post.

Like all social media sites, there are dark corners here. I think Tumblr more than most puts you in control to curate your Dashboard to only see what you want. Block a user, hide a post, and move on.

That should be quite enough to get started! Tumblr can take a little more time to "get" compared to other social media platforms (and get in on the long-running jokes!), but trust me, after a week, you'll notice the difference between checking your Tumblr dashboard and checking your Twitter timeline.

Your blood pressure will thank you.

#tumblr #twitter #twitter refugees #tips #getting started

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chlerc · 11 months

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on the move ; jude bellingham

— summary; being in love with the guy you said yes to no-strings attached has to be the worse thing ever. He made it worst by moving to Madrid, no goodbyes.

pairing — jude bellingham x fwb!f. reader ( third person story )

word count — 1070 with a mix of social media posts.

content — lil angst(?) the girl who wants a forever with the guy who’s always on the move for his career. lil tadbit of asshole & toxic jude i think

NAVIGATION + author’s note: tbh idk where this went near the end, it’s sketchy…

is jude toxic if he’s based off this song…

Liked by judesgf, judeupdates and 29,462 others

ftballwags Jude Bellingham spotted with rumoured girlfriend, @ynusername ( last picture from her story captioned 2+2=22 in black and yellow )

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files4jude damn he got a girl now

luvjb22 she’s literally so gorgeous…

jbellinghamdaily caption @ my account wrongly, that’s me sorry guys

Liked by gioareyna, jobebellingham and 2,581,654 others

judebellingham what a place 🇬🇷

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jobebellingham who the flowers for

judebellingham @jobebellingham a cute photographer / my stalker

gioareyna cutie 😍

judebellingham @gioareyna all you 😘

ftballwags the flowers 🫣

j22de flowers are for me calm down guys

WAKING UP IN THE embrace of Jude had become her favourite thing over the past month. It was the way he had his arms around her waist, legs tangled with each other, the warmth radiating off his bare body and the comfort within him.

Him sleeping over at her apartment wasn’t foreign anymore, not with how the friendship escalated between them. From a friend to the rumoured girlfriend who in truth was actually a friend with benefits. Pictures of them together all over every social media platform but not once had Jude denied it but fueling it.

Her eyes gazed upon him as she adjusted to the golden streaks pouring in through her curtains. He had the kind of face that stopped her in her tracks. He was the kind of handsome that got into her bones, that spoke to her of olden times before he’s said a word. And he was so handsome as he slept, that steady heart, those steady breaths, more than enough to make her feel something she shouldn’t have.

She reaches for her phone and the screen lighting up, notifications flooding her lock screen but one catches her attention. “@fabrizioromano OFFICIAL: Jude Bellingham, Real Madrid player until 2029 for €103m plus 30% add ons!” She could feel the way her heart dropped, the blaring ringing sound in her ears and beads of tears threatening to spill.

“Why are you crying, m’love?” Jude shuffled under the covers, fingers running to swipe the tears off her cheeks as his hand cupped the back of her head. “You’re playing for Madrid next season?” The vulnerability in her voice almost broke him with how soft her sentence came out. “Yeah.” That was all he could get out knowing what was coming next.

“You’re leaving Dortmund? I thought you said you were staying.” Jude takes the moment to sneak a quick glimpse of her before looking away again, unable to maintain eye contact with her. “I did but if a club like Real Madrid offers you a contract would you have said no? It was for my career, not the money. Any amount of money from the team wouldn’t have been able to get me to stay.”

She knew this was coming all along, the talks and posts of Jude transfering to Madrid during the summer transfer yet she still got herself tangled in his mess. “So you’re moving to Madrid?” Her lips quivered at every word she’d said, struggling to compose herself when she should and had to. “Yeah, of course I‘m leavin’. You wouldn’t expect me to travel to and fro Spain, would ya?”

“So you’re leaving me behind too.” She mumbles under her breath, hoping to god Jude hadn’t heard it but he did with the close proximity between them. “There’s no way you’re acting sappy all up on me now. You went into this knowing you’ll never get anything out of it, I'm not staying just because you want me to or you need me.”

He untangles himself from her, throwing on his white sweatshirt that was on the floor. This was the kind of talk he wanted to avoid and he had never expected it to be with her. “I tell you I love you every night and I wake up to find you’re leaving for Madrid? I’m not even mad you’re leaving for Madrid, I’m mad I had to find out through a Twitter notification and not you when you were right in front of me this whole time.”

“Yeah what were you expecting me to say? I’m leaving for Madrid, whatever we have now ends here. No shit that was going to hurt your feelings like it is now but I told you that nothing will ever come out of this. Weren’t all your ‘I love you’ platonic?” There’s a hint of frustration in his speech as he huffed, hands crossed over his chest as he towers over his girl who was now standing. Once his girl, in his heart.

“Platonic? I literally am in love with you, Jude. The bare minimum you could do was to tell me you signed a contract with them, that would have prepared me for all this. I would have celebrated it and let you leave just like that.” She refuses to let him see the tears she’s gonna weep for him, not when he was being heartless but right.

“Love love love, all this bullshit coming from you. Then just continue being in love with me but I’m telling you I’m not staying for you. Wow it’s like you’re making me choose between my career and you! We agreed there’d be no love between us and you agreed, don’t push the blame on me like I’m heartless.” No one could ever experience it and she wished no one would ever experience the sorrow she felt. It’s almost like she’s his plaything, using it and throwing it however he wants.

“So it was something like you leading me on? Not addressing the girlfriend rumours?” And when his eyes were shifty and looking everywhere but her, it was more than a clear sign she needed. “No, not leading you on. I was just tryna be a gentleman but you obviously misunderstood that too. Addressing the rumours only makes it more complicated that it already is now, and you’ll just misunderstand it too.”

“I think you should leave, it does end here like you said. You’re not heartless, I was just stupid and wanted more from you even though you promised nothing. Thanks Jude, for opening my eyes.” She smiles meekly at him, not quite like the same smile he’d always see that reaches her eyes. “Yeah that’s what I’m doing, you’re living in wonderland and dreaming. Wake up, I’m not like how you imagined me to be. Nothing lasts forever, get over it.”

God he had been exactly how she imagined him to be but without this part. He definitely was everything she wanted even now despite everything he had said. Her eyes followed Jude as he left her bedroom, the shuffling of his feet and the slamming of the front door.

She should have known nothing lasts forever, she had walked into it knowing she’d never get anything out of it. She isn’t getting anything out of it and that shouldn’t affect her, that was what she planned to do after hearing his words. Nothing lasts forever, get over it.

Liked by gioareyna, masonmount and 348,937 others

ynusername ibiza, you were amazing 🤍

View all 3,826 comments

gioareyna miss you

ynusername @gioareyna miss you too, catch up soon when i’m back in dortmund 💋

sofiamartinez gorgeous girl love ya

ynusername @sofiamartinez love you 🤍🤍

ftballwags absolutely stunning 😍

julianbrandt Ist diese hübsche dame single? (is this pretty lady single?)

ynusername @julianbrandt haha nein, aber für dich könnte ich 😂 (haha no, but for you i could)

Liked by ynusername, jb22daily and 34,837 others

ftballwags Stories of rumoured girlfriend of Jude Bellingham, looks like there’s no more Jude in the picture. ( last picture from her bf’s story. )

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ynusername 🤍

ftballwags @ynusername 🤞

judesgf NOW I HAVE A CHANCE 💪

jude_updates_22 damn i was rooting for them

bvb.updates bottled it like the title 😓

Liked by judebellingham, jobebellingham and 693,927 others

ynusername Love, Madrid 🎞️

View all 4,837 comments

gioareyna always stunning

ynusername @gioareyna can’t even see my face 🙄 but thank you gio 😘

gioareyna @ynusername still pretty in my eyes

jobebellingham food looks good

ynusername @jobebellingham always saved some for you 😁

judebellingham pretty girl

ftballwags @judebellingham 🤔👀

charlottehartz my girl ( who has a bf ) 💋💋

ynusername @charlottehartz nope, all yourssss

Liked by jobebellingham, gioareyna and 6,065,709 others

judebellingham recently but life was better with you

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gioareyna your fault though 😓

judebellingham @gioareyna like i didn’t know that

jobebellingham fire caption 🔥 took you 7 months to realise

judebellingham @jobebellingham 🤬🤬

bvbdailupdates blud thinks we’re clueless

ftballwags now this is kinda sad

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

Text

Big Tech’s “attention rents”

Tomorrow (Nov 4), I'm keynoting the Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA.

The thing is, any feed or search result is "algorithmic." "Just show me the things posted by people I follow in reverse-chronological order" is an algorithm. "Just show me products that have this SKU" is an algorithm. "Alphabetical sort" is an algorithm. "Random sort" is an algorithm.

Any process that involves more information than you can take in at a glance or digest in a moment needs some kind of sense-making. It needs to be put in some kind of order. There's always gonna be an algorithm.

But that's not what we mean by "the algorithm" (TM). When we talk about "the algorithm," we mean a system for ordering information that uses complex criteria that are not precisely known to us, and than can't be easily divined through an examination of the ordering.

There's an idea that a "good" algorithm is one that does not seek to deceive or harm us. When you search for a specific part number, you want exact matches for that search at the top of the results. It's fine if those results include third-party parts that are compatible with the part you're searching for, so long as they're clearly labeled. There's room for argument about how to order those results – do highly rated third-party parts go above the OEM part? How should the algorithm trade off price and quality?

It's hard to come up with an objective standard to resolve these fine-grained differences, but search technologists have tried. Think of Google: they have a patent on "long clicks." A "long click" is when you search for something and then don't search for it again for quite some time, the implication being that you've found what you were looking for. Google Search ads operate a "pay per click" model, and there's an argument that this aligns Google's ad division's interests with search quality: if the ad division only gets paid when you click a link, they will militate for placing ads that users want to click on.

Platforms are inextricably bound up in this algorithmic information sorting business. Platforms have emerged as the endemic form of internet-based business, which is ironic, because a platform is just an intermediary – a company that connects different groups to each other. The internet's great promise was "disintermediation" – getting rid of intermediaries. We did that, and then we got a whole bunch of new intermediaries.

Usually, those groups can be sorted into two buckets: "business customers" (drivers, merchants, advertisers, publishers, creative workers, etc) and "end users" (riders, shoppers, consumers, audiences, etc). Platforms also sometimes connect end users to each other: think of dating sites, or interest-based forums on Reddit. Either way, a platform's job is to make these connections, and that means platforms are always in the algorithm business.

Whether that's matching a driver and a rider, or an advertiser and a consumer, or a reader and a mix of content from social feeds they're subscribed to and other sources of information on the service, the platform has to make a call as to what you're going to see or do.

These choices are enormously consequential. In the theory of Surveillance Capitalism, these choices take on an almost supernatural quality, where "Big Data" can be used to guess your response to all the different ways of pitching an idea or product to you, in order to select the optimal pitch that bypasses your critical faculties and actually controls your actions, robbing you of "the right to a future tense."

I don't think much of this hypothesis. Every claim to mind control – from Rasputin to MK Ultra to neurolinguistic programming to pick-up artists – has turned out to be bullshit. Besides, you don't need to believe in mind control to explain the ways that algorithms shape our beliefs and actions. When a single company dominates the information landscape – say, when Google controls 90% of your searches – then Google's sorting can deprive you of access to information without you knowing it.

If every "locksmith" listed on Google Maps is a fake referral business, you might conclude that there are no more reputable storefront locksmiths in existence. What's more, this belief is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy: if Google Maps never shows anyone a real locksmith, all the real locksmiths will eventually go bust.

If you never see a social media update from a news source you follow, you might forget that the source exists, or assume they've gone under. If you see a flood of viral videos of smash-and-grab shoplifter gangs and never see a news story about wage theft, you might assume that the former is common and the latter is rare (in reality, shoplifting hasn't risen appreciably, while wage-theft is off the charts).

In the theory of Surveillance Capitalism, the algorithm was invented to make advertisers richer, and then went on to pervert the news (by incentivizing "clickbait") and finally destroyed our politics when its persuasive powers were hijacked by Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica, and QAnon grifters to turn millions of vulnerable people into swivel-eyed loons, racists and conspiratorialists.

As I've written, I think this theory gives the ad-tech sector both too much and too little credit, and draws an artificial line between ad-tech and other platform businesses that obscures the connection between all forms of platform decay, from Uber to HBO to Google Search to Twitter to Apple and beyond:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

As a counter to Surveillance Capitalism, I've proposed a theory of platform decay called enshittification, which identifies how the market power of monopoly platforms, combined with the flexibility of digital tools, combined with regulatory capture, allows platforms to abuse both business-customers and end-users, by depriving them of alternatives, then "twiddling" the knobs that determine the rules of the platform without fearing sanction under privacy, labor or consumer protection law, and finally, blocking digital self-help measures like ad-blockers, alternative clients, scrapers, reverse engineering, jailbreaking, and other tech guerrilla warfare tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

One important distinction between Surveillance Capitalism and enshittification is that enshittification posits that the platform is bad for everyone. Surveillance Capitalism starts from the assumption that surveillance advertising is devastatingly effective (which explains how your racist Facebook uncles got turned into Jan 6 QAnons), and concludes that advertisers must be well-served by the surveillance system.

But advertisers – and other business customers – are very poorly served by platforms. Procter and Gamble reduced its annual surveillance advertising budget from $100m//year to $0/year and saw a 0% reduction in sales. The supposed laser-focused targeting and superhuman message refinement just don't work very well – first, because the tech companies are run by bullshitters whose marketing copy is nonsense, and second because these companies are monopolies who can abuse their customers without losing money.

The point of enshittification is to lock end-users to the platform, then use those locked-in users as bait for business customers, who will also become locked to the platform. Once everyone is holding everyone else hostage, the platform uses the flexibility of digital services to play a variety of algorithmic games to shift value from everyone to the business's shareholders. This flexibility is supercharged by the failure of regulators to enforce privacy, labor and consumer protection standards against the companies, and by these companies' ability to insist that regulators punish end-users, competitors, tinkerers and other third parties to mod, reverse, hack or jailbreak their products and services to block their abuse.

Enshittification needs The Algorithm. When Uber wants to steal from its drivers, it can just do an old-fashioned wage theft, but eventually it will face the music for that kind of scam:

https://apnews.com/article/uber-lyft-new-york-city-wage-theft-9ae3f629cf32d3f2fb6c39b8ffcc6cc6

The best way to steal from drivers is with algorithmic wage discrimination. That's when Uber offers occassional, selective drivers higher rates than it gives to drivers who are fully locked to its platform and take every ride the app offers. The less selective a driver becomes, the lower the premium the app offers goes, but if a driver starts refusing rides, the wage offer climbs again. This isn't the mind-control of Surveillance Capitalism, it's just fraud, shaving fractional pennies off your paycheck in the hopes that you won't notice. The goal is to get drivers to abandon the other side-hustles that allow them to be so choosy about when they drive Uber, and then, once the driver is fully committed, to crank the wage-dial down to the lowest possible setting:

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

This is the same game that Facebook played with publishers on the way to its enshittification: when Facebook began aggressively courting publishers, any short snippet republished from the publisher's website to a Facebook feed was likely to be recommended to large numbers of readers. Facebook offered publishers a vast traffic funnel that drove millions of readers to their sites.

But as publishers became more dependent on that traffic, Facebook's algorithm started downranking short excerpts in favor of medium-length ones, building slowly to fulltext Facebook posts that were fully substitutive for the publisher's own web offerings. Like Uber's wage algorithm, Facebook's recommendation engine played its targets like fish on a line.

When publishers responded to declining reach for short excerpts by stepping back from Facebook, Facebook goosed the traffic for their existing posts, sending fresh floods of readers to the publisher's site. When the publisher returned to Facebook, the algorithm once again set to coaxing the publishers into posting ever-larger fractions of their work to Facebook, until, finally, the publisher was totally locked into Facebook. Facebook then started charging publishers for "boosting" – not just to be included in algorithmic recommendations, but to reach their own subscribers.

Enshittification is modern, high-tech enabled, monopolistic form of rent seeking. Rent-seeking is a subtle and important idea from economics, one that is increasingly relevant to our modern economy. For economists, a "rent" is income you get from owning a "factor of production" – something that someone else needs to make or do something.

Rents are not "profits." Profit is income you get from making or doing something. Rent is income you get from owning something needed to make a profit. People who earn their income from rents are called rentiers. If you make your income from profits, you're a "capitalist."

Capitalists and rentiers are in irreconcilable combat with each other. A capitalist wants access to their factors of production at the lowest possible price, whereas rentiers want those prices to be as high as possible. A phone manufacturer wants to be able to make phones as cheaply as possible, while a patent-troll wants to own a patent that the phone manufacturer needs to license in order to make phones. The manufacturer is a capitalism, the troll is a rentier.

The troll might even decide that the best strategy for maximizing their rents is to exclusively license their patents to a single manufacturer and try to eliminate all other phones from the market. This will allow the chosen manufacturer to charge more and also allow the troll to get higher rents. Every capitalist except the chosen manufacturer loses. So do people who want to buy phones. Eventually, even the chosen manufacturer will lose, because the rentier can demand an ever-greater share of their profits in rent.

Digital technology enables all kinds of rent extraction. The more digitized an industry is, the more rent-seeking it becomes. Think of cars, which harvest your data, block third-party repair and parts, and force you to buy everything from acceleration to seat-heaters as a monthly subscription:

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

The cloud is especially prone to rent-seeking, as Yanis Varoufakis writes in his new book, Technofeudalism, where he explains how "cloudalists" have found ways to lock all kinds of productive enterprise into using cloud-based resources from which ever-increasing rents can be extracted:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

The endless malleability of digitization makes for endless variety in rent-seeking, and cataloging all the different forms of digital rent-extraction is a major project in this Age of Enshittification. "Algorithmic Attention Rents: A theory of digital platform market power," a new UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose paper by Tim O'Reilly, Ilan Strauss and Mariana Mazzucato, pins down one of these forms:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2023/nov/algorithmic-attention-rents-theory-digital-platform-market-power

The "attention rents" referenced in the paper's title are bait-and-switch scams in which a platform deliberately enshittifies its recommendations, search results or feeds to show you things that are not the thing you asked to see, expect to see, or want to see. They don't do this out of sadism! The point is to extract rent – from you (wasted time, suboptimal outcomes) and from business customers (extracting rents for "boosting," jumbling good results in among scammy or low-quality results).

The authors cite several examples of these attention rents. Much of the paper is given over to Amazon's so-called "advertising" product, a $31b/year program that charges sellers to have their products placed above the items that Amazon's own search engine predicts you will want to buy:

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

This is a form of gladiatorial combat that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to surrender an ever-larger share of their profits in rent to Amazon for pride of place. Amazon uses a variety of deceptive labels ("Highly Rated – Sponsored") to get you to click on these products, but most of all, they rely two factors. First, Amazon has a long history of surfacing good results in response to queries, which makes buying whatever's at the top of a list a good bet. Second, there's just so many possible results that it takes a lot of work to sift through the probably-adequate stuff at the top of the listings and get to the actually-good stuff down below.

Amazon spent decades subsidizing its sellers' goods – an illegal practice known as "predatory pricing" that enforcers have increasingly turned a blind eye to since the Reagan administration. This has left it with few competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

The lack of competing retail outlets lets Amazon impose other rent-seeking conditions on its sellers. For example, Amazon has a "most favored nation" requirement that forces companies that raise their prices on Amazon to raise their prices everywhere else, which makes everything you buy more expensive, whether that's a Walmart, Target, a mom-and-pop store, or direct from the manufacturer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

But everyone loses in this "two-sided market." Amazon used "junk ads" to juice its ad-revenue: these are ads that are objectively bad matches for your search, like showing you a Seattle Seahawks jersey in response to a search for LA Lakers merch:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-02/amazon-boosted-junk-ads-hid-messages-with-signal-ftc-says

The more of these junk ads Amazon showed, the more revenue it got from sellers – and the more the person selling a Lakers jersey had to pay to show up at the top of your search, and the more they had to charge you to cover those ad expenses, and the more they had to charge for it everywhere else, too.

The authors describe this process as a transformation between "attention rents" (misdirecting your attention) to "pecuniary rents" (making money). That's important: despite decades of rhetoric about the "attention economy," attention isn't money. As I wrote in my enshittification essay:

You can't use attention as a medium of exchange. You can't use it as a store of value. You can't use it as a unit of account. Attention is like cryptocurrency: a worthless token that is only valuable to the extent that you can trick or coerce someone into parting with "fiat" currency in exchange for it. You have to "monetize" it – that is, you have to exchange the fake money for real money.

The authors come up with some clever techniques for quantifying the ways that this scam harms users. For example, they count the number of places that an advertised product rises in search results, relative to where it would show up in an "organic" search. These quantifications are instructive, but they're also a kind of subtweet at the judiciary.

In 2018, SCOTUS's ruling in American Express v Ohio changed antitrust law for two-sided markets by insisting that so long as one side of a two-sided market was better off as the result of anticompetitive actions, there was no antitrust violation:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3346776

For platforms, that means that it's OK to screw over sellers, advertisers, performers and other business customers, so long as the end-users are better off: "Go ahead, cheat the Uber drivers, so long as you split the booty with Uber riders."

But in the absence of competition, regulation or self-help measures, platforms cheat everyone – that's the point of enshittification. The attention rents that Amazon's payola scheme extract from shoppers translate into higher prices, worse goods, and lower profits for platform sellers. In other words, Amazon's conduct is so sleazy that it even threads the infinitesimal needle that the Supremes created in American Express.

Here's another algorithmic pecuniary rent: Amazon figured out which of its major rivals used an automated price-matching algorithm, and then cataloged which products they had in common with those sellers. Then, under a program called Project Nessie, Amazon jacked up the prices of those products, knowing that as soon as they raised the prices on Amazon, the prices would go up everywhere else, so Amazon wouldn't lose customers to cheaper alternatives. That scam made Amazon at least a billion dollars:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-alleges-amazon-used-price-gouging-algorithm-1850986303

This is a great example of how enshittification – rent-seeking on digital platforms – is different from analog rent-seeking. The speed and flexibility with which Amazon and its rivals altered their prices requires digitization. Digitization also let Amazon crank the price-gouging dial to zero whenever they worried that regulators were investigating the program.

So what do we do about it? After years of being made to look like fumblers and clowns by Big Tech, regulators and enforcers – and even lawmakers – have decided to get serious.

The neoliberal narrative of government helplessness and incompetence would have you believe that this will go nowhere. Governments aren't as powerful as giant corporations, and regulators aren't as smart as the supergeniuses of Big Tech. They don't stand a chance.

But that's a counsel of despair and a cheap trick. Weaker US governments have taken on stronger oligarchies and won – think of the defeat of JD Rockefeller and the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. The people who pulled that off weren't wizards. They were just determined public servants, with political will behind them. There is a growing, forceful public will to end the rein of Big Tech, and there are some determined public servants surfing that will.

In this paper, the authors try to give those enforcers ammo to bring to court and to the public. For example, Amazon claims that its algorithm surfaces the products that make the public happy, without the need for competitive pressure to keep it sharp. But as the paper points out, the only successful new rival ecommerce platform – Tiktok – has found an audience for an entirely new category of goods: dupes, "lower-cost products that have the same or better features than higher cost branded products."

The authors also identify "dark patterns" that platforms use to trick users into consuming feeds that have a higher volume of things that the company profits from, and a lower volume of things that users want to see. For example, platforms routinely switch users from a "following" feed – consisting of things posted by people the user asked to hear from – with an algorithmic "For You" feed, filled with the things the company's shareholders wish the users had asked to see.

Calling this a "dark pattern" reveals just how hollow and self-aggrandizing that term is. "Dark pattern" usually means "fraud." If I ask to see posts from people I like, and you show me posts from people who'll pay you for my attention instead, that's not a sophisticated sleight of hand – it's just a scam. It's the social media equivalent of the eBay seller who sends you an iPhone box with a bunch of gravel inside it instead of an iPhone. Tech bros came up with "dark pattern" as a way of flattering themselves by draping themselves in the mantle of dopamine-hacking wizards, rather than unimaginative con-artists who use a computer to rip people off.

These For You algorithmic feeds aren't just a way to increase the load of sponsored posts in a feed – they're also part of the multi-sided ripoff of enshittified platforms. A For You feed allows platforms to trick publishers and performers into thinking that they are "good at the platform," which both convinces to optimize their production for that platform, and also turns them into Judas Goats who conspicuously brag about how great the platform is for people like them, which brings their peers in, too.

In Veena Dubal's essential paper on algorithmic wage discrimination, she describes how Uber drivers whom the algorithm has favored with (temporary) high per-ride rates brag on driver forums about their skill with the app, bringing in other drivers who blame their lower wages on their failure to "use the app right":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080

As I wrote in my enshittification essay:

If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you'll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.

The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he'd carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers – as a convincer in a "Big Store" con, a way to rope in other suckers who'll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.

Platform can't run the giant teddy-bear con unless there's a For You feed. Some platforms – like Tiktok – tempt users into a For You feed by making it as useful as possible, then salting it with doses of enshittification:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/

Other platforms use the (ugh) "dark pattern" of simply flipping your preference from a "following" feed to a "For You" feed. Either way, the platform can't let anyone keep the giant teddy-bear. Once you've tempted, say, sports bros into piling into the platform with the promise of millions of free eyeballs, you need to withdraw the algorithm's favor for their content so you can give it to, say, astrologers. Of course, the more locked-in the users are, the more shit you can pile into that feed without worrying about them going elsewhere, and the more giant teddy-bears you can give away to more business users so you can lock them in and start extracting rent.

For regulators, the possibility of a "good" algorithmic feed presents a serious challenge: when a feed is bad, how can a regulator tell if its low quality is due to the platform's incompetence at blocking spammers or guessing what users want, or whether it's because the platform is extracting rents?

The paper includes a suite of recommendations, including one that I really liked:

Regulators, working with cooperative industry players, would define reportable metrics based on those that are actually used by the platforms themselves to manage search, social media, e-commerce, and other algorithmic relevancy and recommendation engines.

In other words: find out how the companies themselves measure their performance. Find out what KPIs executives have to hit in order to earn their annual bonuses and use those to figure out what the company's performance is – ad load, ratio of organic clicks to ad clicks, average click-through on the first organic result, etc.

They also recommend some hard rules, like reserving a portion of the top of the screen for "organic" search results, and requiring exact matches to show up as the top result.

I've proposed something similar, applicable across multiple kinds of digital businesses: an end-to-end principle for online services. The end-to-end principle is as old as the internet, and it decrees that the role of an intermediary should be to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly and reliably as possible. When we apply this principle to your ISP, we call it Net Neutrality. For services, E2E would mean that if I subscribed to your feed, the service would have a duty to deliver it to me. If I hoisted your email out of my spam folder, none of your future emails should land there. If I search for your product and there's an exact match, that should be the top result:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

One interesting wrinkle to framing platform degradation as a failure to connect willing senders and receivers is that it places a whole host of conduct within the regulatory remit of the FTC. Section 5 of the FTC Act contains a broad prohibition against "unfair and deceptive" practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

That means that the FTC doesn't need any further authorization from Congress to enforce an end to end rule: they can simply propose and pass that rule, on the grounds that telling someone that you'll show them the feeds that they ask for and then not doing so is "unfair and deceptive."

Some of the other proposals in the paper also fit neatly into Section 5 powers, like a "sticky" feed preference. If I tell a service to show me a feed of the people I follow and they switch it to a For You feed, that's plainly unfair and deceptive.

All of this raises the question of what a post-Big-Tech feed would look like. In "How To Break Up Amazon" for The Sling, Peter Carstensen and Darren Bush sketch out some visions for this:

https://www.thesling.org/how-to-break-up-amazon/

They imagine a "condo" model for Amazon, where the sellers collectively own the Amazon storefront, a model similar to capacity rights on natural gas pipelines, or to patent pools. They see two different ways that search-result order could be determined in such a system:

"specific premium placement could go to those vendors that value the placement the most [with revenue] shared among the owners of the condo"

"leave it to owners themselves to create joint ventures to promote products"

Note that both of these proposals are compatible with an end-to-end rule and the other regulatory proposals in the paper. Indeed, all these policies are easier to enforce against weaker companies that can't afford to maintain the pretense that they are headquartered in some distant regulatory haven, or pay massive salaries to ex-regulators to work the refs on their behalf:

https://www.thesling.org/in-public-discourse-and-congress-revolvers-defend-amazons-monopoly/

The re-emergence of intermediaries on the internet after its initial rush of disintermediation tells us something important about how we relate to one another. Some authors might be up for directly selling books to their audiences, and some drivers might be up for creating their own taxi service, and some merchants might want to run their own storefronts, but there's plenty of people with something they want to offer us who don't have the will or skill to do it all. Not everyone wants to be a sysadmin, a security auditor, a payment processor, a software engineer, a CFO, a tax-preparer and everything else that goes into running a business. Some people just want to sell you a book. Or find a date. Or teach an online class.

Intermediation isn't intrinsically wicked. Intermediaries fall into pits of enshitffication and other forms of rent-seeking when they aren't disciplined by competitors, by regulators, or by their own users' ability to block their bad conduct (with ad-blockers, say, or other self-help measures). We need intermediaries, and intermediaries don't have to turn into rent-seeking feudal warlords. That only happens if we let it happen.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/subprime-attention-rent-crisis/#euthanize-rentiers

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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gentlebeardsbarngrill · 4 months

Text

Daily OFMD - Outside US Renewal Tasks

Updated 01/31/2024

Hey all! I'll keep this updated every day so feel free to reference back here and I'll link to this inside the Recaps. If you have any recommendations to add for various countries please reach out to me!

==Things to remember==

Keep it positive! We are wooing them!

Only address one platform at a time!

Make it personal! Tell them why you want to be on that platform (inclusivity, diversity, other shows that are similar, etc)

“It’s okay to reuse some content with new tags but try to space the posts out a couple hours so they dont stack up on top of each other in hashtag very obviously.” -Jac

==Today's Hashtags==

#AdoptOurCrew

#SaveOFMD

#FinishOurStories

==Platforms to Reach Out to==

Netflix

AmazonPrime

AppleTV

If you reach out on the social medias, you can cater to individual mission statements per platform.

===UK Focuses ==

@lamentus1 has provided us with a lot of great information for UK folks, please check out the following:

The fact that there’s a huge audience for this show that hasn’t even been able to watch the 2nd season yet - to illustrate the fact that there’s a huge untapped market because more than third can’t watch it season 2 yet (we can use the Tumblr poll, and there’s that map as well, both good for illustrating the point).

Focusing on the UK talent in the show inc: Ewen Bremner, Joel Fry, Samson Kayo, Nathan Foad, Kristian Nairn & Con O’Neill. Minnie Driver too. They or shows they have been in may have their own fandoms we can tap into.

It's also apparently a good idea to mention you're British in your tweets if you're reaching out to @netflixuk Thanks! @libbyroseitm

Other helpful information:

Cheat Sheet Below provided by @aproperpirate on Twitter

If you wanna talk about the shows creativity, feel free to reference Ra Vincent's site, he was the Production Designer for OFMD. Great inspiration and pictures to use to show off to the networks.

It's also helpful for Amazon to show them the international reach

== Vote in the QUEERTIES ==

You can vote once a day!

Best TV Comedy

Best TV Performance

== Outside US Social Media For Each Platform ==

Instagram:

Netflix @netflix UK: @netflixuk CA: @netflixCA

PrimeVideo

@primevideo UK: @primevideouk CA: @primevideoca

Apple TV @appletv

Threads:

Netflix @netflix UK: @netflixuk

PrimeVideo

@primevideo UK: @primevideoUK CA: @primevideoCA

Twitter:

Netflix @netflix UK: @NetflixUK DE: @NetflixDE

PrimeVideo

@primevideo UK: @primevideouk CA: @PrimeVideoCA

Apple TV @AppleTV

Facebook:

Netflix @netflix

PrimeVideo @primevideo

Apple TV @appletv

==Daily Helpful Tasks:==

1. Push That Petition

2. Fill out Feedback forms:

Make sure to request Our Flag Means Death on all the platforms, and indicate why you like the show (if that's an option) and keep it positive. Source: @Lcmwriter100 on Twitter

Netflix

AppleTV - looking for an example letter? Check out @saltpepperbeard’s post

AmazonPrime

For Amazon Prime - Courtesy of @yougotofast over on twitter.

Existing Prime subscribers, you can access a Suggestions/Feedback form on the Prime Video app in the Settings > Help & Feedback section. The form is automatically tied to your Prime account, not sure if that makes any difference compared to anonymous feedback.

3. Platform/Article Engagement

HBOMax

A lot of countries don't have HBO max, but if you do and you can already watch Our Flag Means Death on them, please still go ahead and stream Our Flag Means Death, it keeps up engagement and numbers.

Search Our Flag Means Death on Netflix

If you have Netflix, after your search, stream the first title that comes up for a few minutes.

Article Engagement - Source: @candiedsilkmoth on twitter

@itsmfgames Has been kind enough to be keeping up a running list of Articles about the campaigns -- so if you have the time and want to go catch up on some articles, please checkout the guide below and visit this google doc for the list!

I'm probably gonna add a "running article list" somewhere, I'll update when I do.

Other Streaming Service or Purchase options:

Obviously don't feel like you have to purchase anything for the campaign, this is just in case you're looking for sources to watch. Amazon DE (Germany) Apple DE (Germany)

== RADIO! ==

While this suggestion is for NPR there are plenty of local radio stations across your own country, these are some tips. If you have good submission recommendations, please let me know i'll get them added!

Some awesome new suggestions from @AdoptACrew Check out the thread here. Link to the NPR suggestion site: Here

== Stats ==

Some Cool Stats you can use:

4. Daily Link Clicks to keep up engagement

Our Flag Means Death Wikipedia Page

Google Search for Our Flag Means Death

Google UK Search for Our Flag Means Death

Our Flag Means Death IMDB

Current @renewasacrew Daily Links:

Tumblr

Twitter

Instagram

==Media Resources (Pics, Gifs, Vids)==

Gifs, Pics, and Videos to use: show clips to use Src: @havethisonelife

Our lovely @kiwistede made some great custom gifs you can use to tweet and message the platforms with. Check out their tumblr here

UK Resources:

Thank you for these great pictures @LibbyRoseITM!

==Infographics==

Some folks like infographics instead of text so here's some stuff for you! Courtesy of @edandstede on Twitter

==Other ideas for engagement:==

#ofmd #renew as a crew #renew ofmd #ofmd renewal #save ofmd #adopt our crew #our flag means death fan art #save our flag means death

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alatushours · 1 month

Text

☆ CRYSTALFLIES, feat. xiao — he didn’t ask for much, just to spend precious time with you.

contents. gender neutral reader, fluff, rewritten + reposted from wp. inspired by xiao’s 2021 birthday letter. ♡ word count. 648

notes. welcome to the day 2 of the loving xiao hours event! or if you stumbled upon this on accident, welcome too <3 this is a rewrite of the xiao oneshot i wrote + posted on my wattpad (link in about on pinned) back in 2021! omg the old version was so cringey and xiao was super ooc so i hope this is better, i hope you enjoy <3

spring had sprung in liyue, and you were enjoying the lovely weather. golden leaves fluttered along a gust of wind as you sat next to the statue of the seven at qingyun peak, looking down at the natural scenery below.

swinging your legs over the edge of the floating platform, you gazed towards the mountains beyond, lost in your own thoughts.

it had been a few days since you had seen the guardian yaksha, and somehow you found yourself missing him. you were pretty sure he only tolerated your presence whenever you were around him, but over the past few months you had found yourself taking a liking to him. he was aloof but silently caring, protective, and certainly quite handsome too.

his voice echoed in your head, the way he always said he didn't care a bit for mortals, but you had a sneaking suspicion that he enjoyed your company.

as you whispered to yourself, a sudden gust of wind blew past, and xiao appeared before you. his arms were crossed, a look of slight concern in your eyes. "you called my name?"

"oh!" you hadn't realized that you had said his name in your ramblings. "sorry, i was just thinking out loud about some things and i suppose i must have said your name on accident… sorry for disturbing you, i know you're busy."

embarrassed, you started to pick up your things, getting ready to head back to liyue harbor. "i was just about to leave anyway, haha…"

"wait, y/n," xiao called after you. "don't leave, you didn't bother me at all. in fact…" you turned back around, curious, and found the adeptus standing in front of you with his hand outstretched. a small velvet pouch lay open in his palm, full of beautiful sparkling crystalflies.

"i, uh, had nothing to do today," he started quietly as you stared at the crystals in wonder. "so, i decided to find a crystalfly for you… to put in your hair. i thought that… it would look nice."

you smiled, taking the pouch from his hands as he continued. "before long i had caught more than i expected… i hope you do not mind." he turned away, about to leave, but you grabbed his wrist.

"xiao, these are beautiful. thank you so much!" your smile was like the sun, and he looked away, blushing.

"there's no need to thank me, i was just repaying your kindness." his voice wavered, but he continued, "i do not care much for birthdays or other mortal celebrations, and i do not wish to be around large crowds of people. just spending time with you is enough."

your mind wrapped around on particular word in his sentence. "wait, birthday? don't tell me… is it your birthday today, xiao?"

the yaksha coughed into his fist and turned away, face flushed, before nodding.

you squealed. "why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"i suppose there was never really a reason too…"

you took his hands, feeling even more excited than you were before. "well, you should have! i'm really glad you came to me today, xiao. i know you probably find me tiresome, but i really enjoy your company. i want to help you with whatever you might struggle with. so don't be afraid to come to me if you need anything, 'kay?"

xiao sighed, but it wasn't one of exasperation. "i don't require your assistance, but i appreciate your concern. however… if you want to visit the inn more often, i wouldn't be against it."

you laugh, "i guess i'll hold you to that offer then!"

as the sun began to dip into the horizon, you invited xiao to sit with you, asking him to weave the crystalflies into your hair. "i don't really need to go to the harbor until tomorrow morning," you tell him, "so why don't we just spend some time together?"

end notes. i hope you can tell the improvement LMAO but anyways xiao was the first character that i received a birthday letter from (i started on april 9 2021) so he has always held a special place in my heart, if you can’t already tell <3 please look forward to april 13th, when i’ll be posting the next one!

#໒꒰՞ ܸ. .ܸ՞꒱ა mari writes !#✶ xiao hours : an event!#day two: 2021 letter <3 #xiao x reader #xiao fluff #xiao genshin impact

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spdrvyn · 1 month

Note

I loved your post about Miguel x autistic reader and I really want more pleease

overwhelmingly peaceful

summary: you found your place in spider society, but that didn't take away from the fact that it can get intensely noisy. you don't hesitate to turn to where you know for sure you'll be safe.

tags: fluff. suggestive joke/s. autistic reader. reader is gender neutral. hobie's here too i guess. author doesn't know how to write british slang.

notes: i'm really glad that you guys enjoyed the autistic reader drabbles i posted so i'm more than happy to write this request! projecting even more in this one, thank you for letting me self-indulge <3

The mere existence of The Spider Society was always enough to astound you. You thought that people didn't Miguel enough credit for basically building the place from the ground up, not to mention how many times he's had to travel to different universes to recruit all different kinds of Spider-People.

Of course, you were more than honored to be one of those people. There was a very good chance that you just got lucky to be on his team, Miguel caught you in that one moment where your abilities were at their peak and your light was really shining through. Luck or skill, you didn't care. This was the result of it, you were content with that.

Unfortunately, the society has its downsides. Considering the sheer amount of spiders that pass through, the hustle and bustle is too hard to ignore. You can't exactly carry around headphones every time you're there because where would you leave them just in case you'd be tasked to another mission? So you just tried to avoid the noisiest places, even then, it's hard to get any semblance of quiet.

"Oh my god," you mumbled to yourself, as you silently glared at the cafeteria table next to you. Charisma was just a natural trait to any spider, with that came very boisterous laughter from other people too. Surely, they were nice people, but in front of your salad? Really?

"You good, mate?" Hobie intervened, he leaned his head to the side to get a better look at your face, a small grin came onto his features. "Lads beside you 've always been that noisy. Can get them to shut their traps if you want."

An inaudible sigh left your lips as you shook your head, combing the hair out of your face. You gazed down at your untouched food for a moment, you liked hanging out with Hobie. He understood you and he was funny, but you weren't quite sure if you could handle being in an environment like this right now.

"No, no- it's fine." He raised a brow at your lie. "Okay, it's not. But you don't have to do that for me," you picked up your small take-out box of salad and juice, "The canteen is just too much right now for me, sorry."

Hobie shrugged, picking up a fry and expertly throwing into his mouth. "No problem, always got my drummer to bother. You going to hang with your boyfriend now, eh?" His smile turned more cheeky and you stared at him meanly to take away from the fact that your cheeks warmed at his comment.

You huffed and stomped away, "Oi, you didn't deny that!"

Miguel's office (a.k.a man cave) was dark and decrepit. For some odd reason, also liked a smell of any kind. You designated each area of the headquarters with a scent, but his area lacked any of the sort which you enjoyed. Not to mention, silent.

It wasn't like he really allowed any loud noise anyway, he had a strange list of items that were prohibited from entering his corner. Bells, blenders, on occasion, phones but that was from one time Gwen forgot to shut her alarm off and she got a small lecture on being considerate because the acoustics caused every sound that passed through to reverberate and increase in volume.

That means it would only make sense for Miguel to also hear your footsteps from a mile away, his platform already lowered for you to hop on and he's hunched over his desk. Sparks fly (not just from the sight of him, I swear) from the spot that he worked on and if you're not mistaken, there's a band wrapped around his head which meant he was wearing goggles.

You set your lunch tray down on the one empty spot on his desk before approaching slowly, you bend down to rest your hand on his shoulder and to lean your head against his. "What are you working on now, beautiful?"

Miguel put down the small soldering tool and took off his goggles, putting the freshly made panel closer to his eyes. "People submitted suggestions to make the wrist devices less bulkier," he blindly wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you onto his thigh as he pressed a kiss to your cheek. "Why are you here?"

"I'm an assassin, I've come to take your life." You spoke lowly, ominously. When Miguel doesn't turn to face you, you pout. "The noise in the cafeteria is overwhelming," you shift and properly situate yourself on his lap.

"I was just about to head out for lunch," Miguel sighed, before placing the panel in a small container.

"So... back to the cafeteria? People are sure to go speechless from catching a look at you," you joke, but there's a somber fry in your voice that he doesn't ignore. His warm breath tickled your neck as he pressed brief pecks down the column of your throat, the low hum he let out vibrating against your skin. "Are you that hungry, hermoso?"

"What I meant was," he paused, brushing more hair out of your face, properly tucking it behind your ear. "I was going to head up to my place for lunch. Where there's no people?"

You breathe a small 'ohhh' and Miguel chuckled, "That checks out, actually." You nodded. "Obviously there's no people, would've been weird to have anyone there two nights ago when we–"

"Okay, that's enough." Miguel cut you off, nearly smiling from ear to ear. "Get your lunch, mi sol."

"My hero."

#spiderman: across the spiderverse #across the spiderverse #spiderverse #atsv #spiderman #miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x y/n #spiderman 2099 #spiderman 2099 x reader #spiderman 2099 x you #spiderman 2099 x y/n

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reasonsforhope · 3 months

Text

Upcoming Blog Thing

So I'm currently in the process of making a sideblog-for-a-sideblog for Reasons for Hope.

The idea is to use it to post mostly links/info on direct action (how to's, petitions, official government calls for comment on proposed policies, protests, info about cool things other activists are doing, etc. etc.) that doesn't fit on a good news blog. Plus informational/awareness posts, and my own activism and thoughts and takes about things that sometimes really, really do not belong on a good news blog. Or that half belong on a good news blog and half really don't, and the like.

The idea is also to create an official "format" for submissions so that people can send in posts without me having to take the time/spoons to make new posts out of ppl's asks and dms (this takes sooo much time sometimes). Then, if successful, do a similar thing for submissions on Reasons for Hope, bc I do want to make posts about lots of things ppl send me, but it would be way too much to do myself all the time.

I'd still be verifying everything and applying editorial standards, in both cases. I actually already wrote up most of an editorial standards policy for the new sideblog, too. It would include verifying and listing the sources and dates for everything, at a minimum.

I've been thinking about going ahead and doing this for quite a while now, but I finally decided I needed to go for it because uh. I just found out about something absolutely, completely fucked up that happened to my grandparents (and a lot of other people). And while I am planning to get involved in organizing about it in real life around the relevant issues (or at least flyer the shit out of relevant neighborhoods), I really need to be able to use what platform I have to talk about this - along with other issues - so I have somewhere to channel my rage and grief into activism

(You will hear more about what happened when the sideblog goes up, if you want to see know. For now, let's just say that it's been a really intense 48 hours.)

Also you know I actually have a small-to-moderate platform here and that's a hell of a lot more ability to reach people than I tend to have in person, esp with ~life~ and ~working~ and my disability shit

So yeah, heads up you have that to look forward to (if you want to engage). And there will be unique tags to filter for people who want to see the links to actions and organizing info without seeing the info about fucked up stuff.

Because I am firmly of the opinion that people can and should be able to engage with that kind of content only where and when they feel up for it, if they want, and especially if they're really struggling with spiraling over the state of things.

Anyway, let me know in the notes if there's anything you would particularly like to see from the upcoming sideblog. (I make no promises but would value information on this!) And if you have any thoughts on what I should call it because I haven't been able to figure out something satisfying yet.

#not news #me #direct action #activism

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creation-help · 2 months

Text

Actually, I think I wanna say something about the increasing censorship and removal of porn from the internet. I don't think it should be controversial of me to say, but I'll put it under the cut still just in case. But considering what this blog is like, I think it's an on theme thing to talk about.

I'm gonna get straight to it but you're completely justified in being upset that sex workers and erotic artists are being basically banished from online spaces. Some may say oh, if you want porn just go to porn sites like pornhub or whatever, but really I understand why not everyone wants to. Aside from concerns about illegally uploaded content, plagiarism and the rise of Ai, it's just not up to everyone's taste. What I mean is, that. Well, hold onto your socks for this one.

I watch porn. Gasp! I know. Anyway. From my time cruising different porn sites, any animated or otherwise artistic content is often mass produced, kinda shitty lifeless 3D blender stuff that has very little soul. No disrespect to any people who actually worked on those, but I bring this up bc personally I understand enjoying the kind of porn and erotica that genuine passionate artists make! Like, it'll immediately be more enjoyable to look at something that clearly has alot of effort, passion and genuine artistic skill put into it, rather than something made for brainless horny consumption. That is, again, increasingly often generated by machine learning algorithms, and used with art scraped from actual genuine artists who are trying to make a living off of it.

Porn art is art. Erotic art is art. We are allowed to care about it, enjoy it and definitely protect it's existence.

And btw this isn't some big judgment statement about the purity of artistic porn as compared to "That other NASTY stuff", but moreso just an acknowledgement and defence of the fact that porn art can be beautiful, meaningful and something genuinely worth engaging with. And it deserves to have it's own platform with the appropriate guidelines (so before any poor pissers come on this post, I'm obviously of the opinion that it needs to be properly filterable, behind protective measures and or tagged. Fucking duh.)

All art is valuable. Even art made to satisfy sexual fantasies or appeal to primal urges. And it truly is saddening to see nsfw artists being robbed of platforms or placed under increasingly suffocating restrictions that take away their earnings, if not even their livelihood (like in the case of many sex workers. Speak of which, I'm mostly addressing nsfw artists but you can imagine how badly this is hitting sex workers as well. That's also something you should be upset about.)

#Mod talks #sex positive #anti censorship #Too nervous to tag anything else tbh let's hope this finds its audience

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olderthannetfic · 9 months

Note

Is it just me being old now but have you noticed a difference in people’s behaviour online pre and post covid? I feel like people now are Way more intense about online spaces and fandom politics than before? Maybe because their opportunities and ability to develop some perspective was stunted or whatever?

Maybe also that more younger people are involved due to prolonged internet use during covid & subsequently what I’m seeing is that these r teenagers who don’t know how to act yet? (I feel like people are way ruder generally too, like look at that booktok kraken scandal with those really lewd dms and comments on real life people’s social medias)

Maybe this is a reflection on my own age and perspective but I feel like there is a marked difference?

I think the sudden tipping point that divides everything into Before and After is actually one of perception.

COVID made everyone nuts. There are studies showing the global mental health crisis that resulted. But there are also all kinds of stressors that predate that, and a lot of the enshitification of the internet has to do with things like platforms getting better at algorithms to force together groups of people who hate each other. Twitter is particularly egregious about shortform, no nuance content combined with extreme virality and zero boundaries, and Twitter has been on the rise in recent years. Tiktok is a hot mess.

People were certainly more reactive at the height of lockdowns, and I'm willing to buy that the internet sucks more now than it did a while ago, but I don't think there's one dramatic jump...

Other than the one that happens when bullshit finally crosses one's own path in a way one cannot unsee.

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keyboardandquill · 2 years

Text

On creating a wiki for your worldbuilding

Do you have a lot of lore to keep track of? Whether you're an author, a Game Master, or simply someone who really really likes worldbuilding, this post is for you.

Here's a quick overview of what I'll be talking about:

Platforms people use to create personal wikis

Formats and organization systems you may find useful when creating your own wiki

A brief look at the actual content you might put in your wiki (I'm planning a more in-depth post on that later with more images and demos)

And because this is gonna be a long'un, I'm putting a read-more here! I'll also make downloadable epub and PDF versions of this post available for free on my Ko-Fi at some point in the future.

(I'm also planning to reblog with a list of links later on, but I want this initial post shows up in search)

Also now that you're here, I'm going to say this isn't, like, super comprehensive or anything. I'm just talking about stuff I know a little about or have experience with. Please feel free to reblog with additions and/or corrections as needed!

What is a wiki?

According to Wikipedia, "a wiki is a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser."

In this case, you'll likely be the sole person making updates to your wiki. The web browser part is optional these days as well, as you'll soon see.

Platforms for creating wikis

Websites for creating worldbuilding wikis

WorldAnvil

This one is actually designed for people who want to create big worldbuilding wikis.

Pros: Worldbuilding prompts! Those are great. It's got a pretty comprehensive set of article types too.

Cons: Kind of expensive to upgrade for features like making your wiki private, and it does NOT work well with adblock turned on, so if you don't want to pay for a membership you'll get inundated with ads. I'm not a huge fan of the interface in general and a lot of it isn't intuitive, but I like what they're doing so I support them anyway.

---

Tiddlywiki/Tiddlyhost.com.

In addition to having a cat as its icon and also a silly name, each 'article' you create with this is called a 'tiddler' which makes me think of Chuck Tingle. I haven't used it much myself yet, but I did make an account and it seems pretty neat.

---

Miraheze

A community-hosted wiki platform that runs on MediaWiki (which is what Wikipedia runs off of).

Pros: It's not Fandom.com.

Cons: You have to request a wiki and can't just make it yourself, as far as I can tell. I haven't actually looked into this one as much.

---

Neocities

An option for if you want to go super oldschool and create a website using only basic html and hyperlinks (without the handy shortcuts of bbcode or Markdown). Monthly cost is $5 usd if you want to have more space and your own domain.

Pros: 100% control over your content.

Cons: Doesn't support PHP databases for wiki software, and can be fairly labour-intensive to update if you break a link or something.

---

Fandom.com

Unfortunately, this one is the top result you'll get when you look up how to make your own wiki. I'm only including it here to tell you to stay as far away from it as possible!!

Its staff are known to ban wiki creators from their own wikis and a bunch of other nonsense that I'm not getting into here.

Programs and apps/web apps for creating worldbuilding wikis

Obsidian.md

My personal favourite. I'm planning to make a whole post about how I use it in the near future as part of this article series.

It's a markdown-based application that you can get on just about any platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, etc) which is great. Obsidian is really easy to pick up and use and also has great themes and community plugins!

Best thing is, it's FREE and you only have to pay if you use their publishing service, which... I don't, so.

---

Notion

I've heard this one is pretty good too. Idk if it costs anything. It's another "second brain" style app (might be markdown also?) and I think it might do more than Obsidian, but I haven't checked it out much myself.

---

Microsoft Word/Google Docs etc.

...Or just about any word processor that lets you create internal hyperlinks. Word may work best due to the collapsible headings so it doesn't get too unwieldy, but *shrug* whatever floats your boat.

---

Excel/Google Sheets etc.

Or, again, any spreadsheet creator that lets you create internal hyperlinks.

I'd recommend having some basic spreadsheet knowledge before doing this. It could get complicated. Before I started using Obsidian, I was using Sheets to keep track of my glossary, notes about characters, and plot ideas.

Types of formatting & organization systems

There are as many organization systems as there are people who want to organize their stuff. Everybody needs something a little different! I find the ones that work best for me are systems that have a lot of customization options.

Here are a couple I know of.

Johnny Decimal

This system is absurdly simple in its concept and yet so versatile. From their website (it's just johnnydecimal dot com but I'll link it in a reblog later):

Take everything you need to organise and sort it in to, at most, ten large buckets.

Make sure the buckets are unambiguously different.

Put a label on each bucket.

Their website has a better explanation than I can give in this post, but I'll sum up the appeal of this system as quoted from their site: "There's only one place anything can ever be."

Usefully, part of this method is creating a directory for the rest of the system.

So if you're like me and tend to shove things wherever only to lose track of it later, this is a great system—especially when used in conjunction with the Zettelkasten Method (see below).

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Zettelkasten Method

Originally devised as an extensive paper-based knowledge management system, Zettelkasten is meant to easily add new entries to a knowledge base while giving each one a unique ID for easy 'linking.'

The creator of this method said 'it is not important where you place the note, as long as you can link to it.'

As with the Johnny Decimal system, I can't explain it super succinctly (nor can the website, if I'm being honest), so I'll include a link in a future reblog for a video that gave me an excellent run-down of the basics.

Setting up your own system

An organization system is only useful if you can actually, y'know, use it.

It can be fun to set up a super-detailed organization system with predetermined categories for everything, but is it easy for you to use? How will you navigate it?

Making decisions

There will be a lot of decisions to make as you set up your system. The only set-in-stone rule I follow is... don't set anything in stone. It's okay if you decide something that doesn't work later on.

Figuring out your categories

My advice: go fairly broad. You can always sub-categorize. I'm going to go over my own wikis for Athenaeum and Rocket Boosters in detail in a later post, but here are the starting top-level categories I'd recommend for worldbuilders:

A meta category for notes about your database, templates, and any relevant research you've done.

Characters, including main characters, minor characters, and important figures

Worldbuilding

In the last category, which is the main reason for the existence of my wiki, I might have:

Culture

History

Locations

Organizations

Lore (if relevant)

Technology

Transportation

I'll go over the nuances of these 'main' subcategories in that future post I mentioned. In other words, the stuff that actually goes in those categories!

Determining the importance and relevance of worldbuilding elements

You'll need to figure out whether a topic is complex enough to deserve its own entry, or if it should be a sub-heading under another entry. It's okay if you decide on both! I have short subheadings under some entries that amount to "see [link to main entry on that topic]."

I've also decided to expand subheadings into their own topics, and I've removed topics as their own entry and shoved them under subheadings. I do this a lot, in fact! So it's okay if you don't know.

Templates

Will you be creating several of one type of entry?

Individual character profiles

Towns and cities

Factions

(to name a few)

It might be handy to figure out the basic types of information you'll need about each of those things and create a template for them.

A character template might have spaces for the basics, such as name, role, age, and so on.

Some characters will have a lot more information, and some might have even less than what your template dictates! And that's fine.

A word of warning about using system-creation as procrastination

Creating a wiki can be a daunting task. You might decide it's not for you, and that's okay. But you might also decide to go headlong into the process and work on every minute detail, and that is also okay, but.

But.

Beware of using your wiki as an excuse to procrastinate your actual writing/session preparation. Yes, use it to keep track of all the lore you've injected into your manuscript/campaign/whatever, just make sure it stays in its place as a companion to your main project rather than becoming your main project.

How formal should your entries be?

Honestly this one's entirely up to you. I have a mix. Some entries are written like Wikipedia entries with a thorough explanation of the topic with proper punctuation and formatting, while others are simply bullet-point lists of thoughts and ideas that I can return to at a later date.

What methods do you use to keep track of your lore and worldbuilding? Let me know in a reblog or comment!

And please make sure to check the notes. I'll be reblogging with links, and then reblogging that reblog to make sure they're, y'know, actually visible in the notes.

#wiki #worldbuilding #writing advice #writeblr #writeblr community #resource #worldbuilding wiki #obsidian #zettelkasten #resource by keyboardandquill

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