#things that make me throw up in my mouth

[juliabohemian]

I’m sure someone will find this offensive but since that image from Love & Thunder keeps circulating I am going to post about it.

FYI: Thor having a RIP Loki tattoo on his back is peak narcissism. It is very typical of narcissists to romanticize the death of a family member. Like everything the narcissist does, their grief is entirely for show. It is a performance designed to gain either pity or admiration, whichever is more useful to them at the moment.

While Loki was alive, Thor did not value him. To the extent that he openly insulted and disrespected his brother in front of his friends and encouraged them to do the same. To the extent that finding out that Loki had survived his suicide attempt inspired rage. To the extent that he made no effort to find out why his brother was acting so strangely in New York. To the extent that he refused to visit Loki while he was in prison. To the extent that he willingly electrocuted Loki for amusement. To the extent that even the last words he spoke to Loki were unkind. None of this is up for debate. Thor is not a hero. He doesn’t get a gold star for tattooing his dead brother’s helmet on his back. His actions are hollow and meaningless.

#things that make me throw up in my mouth #love and thunder was the least commercially successful mcu film #loki deserved better #gagnarok #it's amazing how having a narcissist for a director can turn a film into a meaningless cash grab

[willowser]

every single day i think about the influence touya would have had on shouto as an older brother.

he has to take him everywhere he goes, so they're always jamming to the same hardcore music in touya's shitty car. shouto, obviously, develops a taste for the same bands, same songs. shouto is also in the ride-along to buy cigarettes and beer at midnight, and touya threatens his whole entire life if he tells rei, but shouto would never because he likes going too much.

shouto 100% would attempt to kick the ass of anyone that talked shit to his brother. little string bean, doesn't matter, this little boy is throwing HANDS for touya, and touya very much has the attitude of "no one can fuck with my little brother but me". whenever shouto gets in trouble for doing something he shouldn't be doing, touya is always taking the fall for him, no questions asked. shouto lies for touya like it's second nature.

shouto wants an earring because of touya, and touya probably GIVES the piercing to him, which makes enji blow a gasket. touya learns to play the drums and then shouto wants to, too — though he ends up being better than touya and touya promptly quits after that. touya teaches him to drive. shouto gets drunk for the first time with touya BECAUSE touya wants to be there to take care of him. they hate each other, they get into fist fights all the time, rolling around the house as fuyumi screams at both of them. they're best friends. they understand each other more than anyone else ever could.

#they're partners in crime #they fight CONSTANTLY especially at home #shouto makes a face at touya and flips him off and it's SO TOUYA. like SUCH ATTITUDE #touya will sit next to rei at dinner all 'mom what the fuck is wrong with your shitty kid' and — he's scolded for cussing — but #rei is like. are you serious rn. he's exactly like you #which they both VEHEMENTLY DISAGREE WITH #touya pretends to throw up violently at the accusation and shouto twists his little face up like that's the worst thing he's ever heard #and then later they're both playing a video game together ajfbduskak #like they are such BROTHERS #natsuo is there too but i think he's so inbetween them both that he wants to be his own person #shouto is young enough to be influenced by EVERYTHING touya does #and touya is like 😒😒😒 you're so goddamn annoying 😒😒😒😒 are you coming with me to the store or what 😒😒😒😒 #peeling my skin off i want this so much :) #screaming with my mouth closed :) #i dont even know what to tag this skgbsiakqk #✿ willow writes #✿ thoughts: dabi/touya

[front-facing-pokemon]

#this one's like a fucking mystery. who's that pokémon?? what pokémon is this?? you can't fucking tell unless you open the cut or read below #where i tag what pokémon it is. i think i'm gonna put this one's tags above the actual name of the pokémon just to throw y'all for a loop #because this one? i don't even KNOW what counts as front-facing. i'm ASSUMING it's the top one?? but the prey eyes are just #unbelievable so i included that one under the cut. i don't even know if i can consider that “prey eyes” at this point. what is this thing?? #what's the thing protruding?? a mouth?? it doesn't lend itself to making it look any more like a moon! it just— it just protrudes!! #i really just don't understand. what or why this pokémon is or exists. what type is it? pure psychic? #nnnNNAURP rock/psychic. can't believe i forgot about the rock typing considering the way that guy with the solrock in swsh #raid battles used it. whatever i think i've successfully revealed what pokémon this is by now #lunatone #and yes‚ i know now that zangoose walks on all fours in pmd. THANK YOU!!! FOR TELLING ME. EVERYONE ON TUMBLR #i got it when the first person told me. i looked them up. i saw them. with my eyes. i feel like i've talked about pmd enough in these tags #and in asks that i've answered that you all should know how much of a pmd fan i am by now but i guess it's GOOD TO CONFIRM #perhaps no one really does read these tags. unless they have an opportunity to correct me. lasered in on that #i'm not like mad i'm just like WOW everyone told me. that is SO many people telling me after the first one did and i know SO hard #anyway. i'm gonna go remove these tags from the dusclops post. pphhhheew

[biblionerd07]

I tried watching some of the Ian/Mickey scenes from season 11 and it made me ill. These are IMPOSTERS. That is not Ian and Mickey!! Especially Mickey!!! Look at how they massacred my boy. But one of the most frustrating parts is that if you watch the deleted scenes it shows that someone in that writers’ room DID know how to write Ian and Mickey but the producers or whoever makes that decision were like “nah, no meaningful conversations that show how much they love and respect each other and are working on their relationship. These fans who’ve been watching the characters struggle for a decade want them to continuously argue and beat the shit out of each other and act like they hate each other!”

#John wells if I ever catch you #there were a very few small spots of goodness and I credit ONLY Noel and cam for that #they were doing their level best #some of the things they had coming out of Mickey’s mouth made me want to drive my head through a wall #in what world am I supposed to believe Mickey was getting blow jobs from other guys #and making a joke out of Ian’s bipolar???? #like the one time they remembered they even wrote Ian as bipolar and it was for a shitty line where Mickey throws it in his face #it feels like every season is a whole new show and not connected at all to the others #and then it starts feeling like every EPISODE is a whole new show that’s not connected #why was there like a goofy soundtrack as Mickey’s literal Nazi abusive rapist father moved in next door #Noel was giving us everything and they made a joke out of it #and then they made a joke out of Mickey being conflicted and crying after terry died?????????? #I want to kill them #Ian saying frank was worse than terry????? girl in what world?????? #Mickey was NEVER insecure about bottoming and he was always adamant about how much he loved it but suddenly it’s an issue #from ‘liking what I like don’t make me a bitch’ back when he could barely LOOK at Ian to…this #also Ian used to be very sweet even when he was being stubborn and self-righteous and even violent #but they really lost his sweetness #and I know it wasn’t just cam growing up bc there were glimpses of it in the way he chose to have Ian move and hold onto Mickey #but the writers seemed hell bent on all of the characters being so horrible to each other #in the early seasons they could sometimes be cruel and selfish even to each other but underneath it all they loved each other #and it feels like when they decided to lean solely into goofy comedy that lost that #it’s just sad to see a show that started so good end so badly #I’ve seen people talking about a spinoff with Ian and Mickey and I don’t even fucking want it with these writers #maybe if cam and Noel were producers and got to choose the storylines #they’re the only ones I trust

[tomboyyyaoi]

the anti-merylness on trigun tiktok is fucking putrid can u horrible little freaks leave the "i love this wholesome regular straight ship teehee SIIIKE I LOVE GAY PORN, I HATE WOMEN" edits back in 2012

#guys for fucks sake u can ship something without it being a Le Epic Own on people who ship other things #as a multishipper its really fucking redundant #like fucksake im so tired of all these vashwood supremacist kid fujos thinking theyr making some Statement #like no ur just fucking weird and annoying #its been cropping up on my fyp recently. makin me throw up in my mouth got dam #so much second hand embarrassment #imagine trying to stir up ship discourse in 2023 #trigun

[monster-noises]

I love second hand book shops, I got to them frequently and always leave with Something and have a good time just peakin around

But i gotta say

It's one of the Worst spots for me in terms of imposter syndrome

I feel like everyone's uneasey with my presence as though i'm a stranger who just stumbled into their inner sanctum and they're.. they're gunna let me stay but they're gunna be weirded out the whole time and breath a sigh of relief when the Strange Unwelcome Freak Leaves

It also happens at record shops and sometimes at small antique shops or cons+festivals

Just this immediate foreboding of being Angrily Tolerated in a Space I Don't Belong

#monster noises #it's Incalculably stupid because 1) it's a store. anyone can go in there. #and 2) in all those locations... I do beling there!!!!!!!! not even in the sense of point 1 where it's a retail location but like!!!! #Book shops Record shops Antique malls Cons... are all like super 100% right up my alley nerd shit these Should be like '''''my people''''''' #which is i think a strong contributing factor to this pervasive feeling like #there's an underlying current of not just being in there to Shop but that i want the other people there to Like Me? I guess? #in our limited interaction? #i want them to see that i'm One Of Them and it makes me nervous #because whenever i am trying to be a Part of something i Immediately feel like some kind of isolated hollow fraud #like i'm worried that i not only Look like a poser #but that i Am #secretly #a Poser #so secretly that I don't even relaiE i'm a poser #it probably doesn't help that i also always have The most off-kilter interactions with the staff in these scenerios #it's never anything truly embarassing #but it's always like i try to be as nice as possible but their reaction is never what i expect #and it throws me off #it's a hard thing to pin down in words but like.. it feels like they are more than anything just Waiting for me to leave #if not from the get-go then from the moment i open my mouth to answer a question #and like idk !!! i'm trying so hard to be open and friendly and not just use canned response but also not be Too weird or too loud #and be engaged in conversation but it never works! #it's like i ooze some deeply unpleasant vibe and it turns everyone off me immediately when i enter their space #i'll see other customers having lovely conversations with staff and stuff and then when it's me it's like Cold #truly it does nothing for my self esteem #not everyone has yo or is going to like me but i really don't think it's too big an ask to not be scrutinized by store staff Constantly ;<;

[todayisafridaynight]

ok besides Ichiban who has the most beautiful smile in Yakuza?

do any of these bitches even smile. are any of you ever actually happy and not constantly experiencing horrors or

#snap chats #my first thought was ichi's papa tho but arakawa just makes me happy to think bout so. s'where ichi got it from tbh 😭 #ogasawa canonically says aoki has a great smile but i think he's insane cause when aoki smiles he looks like there's a frog in his mouth #mine has a really nice smile though. very lovely thing to see before he throws himself off a building :'))))))))))) #uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh OH Y3 KIRYU #I LOVE HIS SMILES SO MUCH #i love ps3 era kiryu in general.... theres just something about him thats so shaped...... #AND SHINADA !!!!! SHINADA HAS SUCH A LOVELY SMILE !!!!! hes got ichi's energy tho tbf......... kings of smiling and lifting up others.... #anyway i have work to do SO. ill see you all tomorrow

[wellenklavier]

#ok guys. Embarrassing. i had to switch personal trainers a few times and guy it is now is definitely the one i get along the best with but i #my brain is unfortunately blurring my professional distance lines and its making things DIFFICULT! i literally pay this guy to be supportiv #or whatever but we're pretty close in age and he's cool and he's invited me to work out with him and his friend when theyre there #and he calls me .. various names.. which all start with al. such as alcatraz. or al p*cino. and its gotten to the point where i want to do #well in my programming not just bc i want to improve but bc i want .... him to think im ... cool ............ KMS! KMS!! #HES NOT HOT!! HES NOT but i fuck with average guys we know this. i fuck wit just some guy. NOOOOOO AUUGH #anyway . Throws up in my mouth

[oatbugs]

whenever i think/talk abt a "you" it's at least 5 different people usually

#ive been thinking about how you separated the star of david into triangles and taught me about the equilibrium about as above so below #are we in equilibrium? ive been thinking about the star of david and the rest in peace beneath it #fuck the fascists and fuck how they took you and fuck how theyll take everyone. am i good at analysis? #it turns out weve all been lying a lot. it turns out the person weve all lied the most to was ourselves. #ive been thinking about your 5 journals and a whole week of crying just to realise our sin. you felt like a nucleus inside a fuzz of #electrons and i felt like the fuzz of electrons. we caught a ribbon and followed it past the point of discomfort #this is how you breathe so that you dont die and this is how you breathe so that you do. on your own terms. #i am going to be a good architect. i am going to be a good engineer. i am going to be a good neuroscientist. i am going to be good. #i reserve the label for being a let-go-of-labels person. i am going to be the one who lets go of identifiers #and make it my identity. how do you achieve constant bliss? separate the nucleus and the fuzz. #suffering from the impact of the self and the self-image، you told me about the bliss of separation. #okay. let them hate the cloud. youre inside of it all. i am nothing. this is not a label for the self. mereology is a lovely thing. #baby you are ripping through all these spiderwebs just to live. this is part of the normal developmental process. i am surrounded by people #who throw sums of millions out of their mouths like any other lovely word. i cant stand the thought of your loss #except only in theory. ive been thinking about the bird with the broken wing in florence and how we stood around it until #two friends picked it up and took it home in hopes of nursing him back to flight. ive been thinking about how we are designed to care #for each other. tomorrow you will have your dreams crushed. the day after you will keep going. we are sharing #in the wonders of being perceiving beings. isnt that enough? why do you need to perceive the monstrosity of your own soul? is it #because i love you? is it because you love yourself? you love yourself enough to allow yourself to feel the terrible corners of you. #you can finally stand on your own. you can only stumble forward until you walk for the first time.

[toothmarqed]

fallen prey to saying stupid shit on the internet without thinking and coming off as incredibly rude and insensitive. i feel sick to my stomach. never commenting on anything else ever again. deserve to be squashed under someone’s shoe and ground into powder. in all seriousness this has shocked me so much that i am quitting every platform but tumblr for however long it takes for me to get some sense knocked into my dumb fucking skull

#actually considering deleting the clock app rn #what i said was so so bad and it could’ve been avoided if i’d fucking READ WHAT I WROTE and thought abt it FOR ONE GODDAMN MINUTE #i genuinely feel like i’m going to throw up being seen (fairly. justifiably) as mean is like the worst thing #and i don’t deserve to be wining abt this bc i’m the one who hurt someone but good god #PLEASE make sure that when you say something online you would SAY IT TO THEIR FACE #ive gotten to used to this brusque rude dark humor on the internet that i don’t relaizw using that humor INDISCRIMINATELY WITH STRANGERS is #Not okay #they made a video on it but the video got taken down so i deleted the comment. which might have been more selfish. i don’t know what’s best #-to do in that situation? i’m going to change my fucking username and pfp atp and go off the app entirely because i’m so fucking adhd ames #**ashamed don’t know why is autocorrected to that #ok just deleted the app ‘and all of its data’ so idk if that means my videos (edits) too but atp whatever #maybe it’s impulsive but at least this way i will not know what’s going on ! and never hurt anyone again hopefully. i really hope he saw my #-comments before his response was deleted because i want them to know it was not intentional and i am truly so so sorry #i don’t know how i’m going to function for the rest of the day. i’m going to think about this when i go to sleep for the rest of my life #i feel sick #i’m evil #and being evil isn’t fun silly times it literally makes me want to throw up from how bad i am #too much ranting in the tags and i deserve to be fucking shot in the mouth #but i need somewhere to put this that no one will see this but that is also public so that someone might see and know how sorry i am #feel like fucking bojack horseman #unironically how am i supposed to go on living. how can i live knowing i’m so bad. if i don’t kill myself im being selfish because i’m mak- #-omg everyone deal with my presence and live with a bad person. #i think i’m going too social media entirely except for tumblr maybe bc i can’t or don’t rly talk to anyone on here #i need someone to like give me a good meaning but not in a cathartic way in a way that it genuinely hurts so bad and makes me feel the full #suffering i deserve

[gorefetishizer]

Okay so the pain IS never ending

#i cant get up im trying to convince myself that i dont wanna see anyone ever again but im thinking of skipping classes and it makes me. i do #dont know #i feel like i need to warn everyone about myself um trying to make it obvious. that i am not normal but i dont mean #its not inoffensive why does nobody see that i am actually. i dont know. im i dont know what i dont i dont get it #im going to throw up i cant see your face i cant let you see my face i have sort of said it but i have to wanr you and i #failed at that too i was supposed to do it i was going to warn you i am not normal about this i am not normal about anything #im nervous and obsessive i know you dont want that but if i think of you being close too much ill throw up #i am filled filled filled to the brim with fantasies from washing your hair to things i cant say to you and im sorry that. i cant help it #i am weird i have said it i tried i try always to wanr but it doesnt come out of my mouth properly and everyone just thinks i mean i cant #make eye contact and wear animal ears and ar most like horror movies but no thats not what im saying #i feel like ill dream about killing you soon this always happens and it would be fine or better if i could get it out of my head and didnt #get stuck on it so long that it turns into butterflyes and me having to go to my room #i should stop beliving i could do this but i like ppl i like ppl a lot i like having friends and weird non platonic non romantic feelings #just just just i wish i wasnt like this i cant get it out of my head every single secomd that we spent together im just just just just i #i cant say it #vent

[wkrp]

My desire to interact with and befriend my mutuals vs my constant anxiety and inability to interact normally with another human person

#emmett eeps #like fr i would love to Not be so afraid of talking to people #but alas i am indeed afraid #and even if i wasnt afraid i am still incapable of having conversations anyway #like i only know how to interact with people im already really close to so... that doesnt help me with the whole making friends thing #like id love to just be like hello [insert mutual here] i desire you carnally but thats probably coming on a bit too strong #like im not comfortable saying that to a person ive never spoken too before but its also the only way i know how to show #that i think someones cool ya know??? #screaming crying throwing up foaming at the mouth etc #also unrelated but im just now realizing how often i start all my thoughts with 'like' huh that's something

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[talk of real-life and in-narrative anti-foster/adopted child sentiments, violent ableism, and child abuse/neglect/homicide cw, as well as mentions of racism.]

i think probably the biggest reason ivan's narrative makes me so goddamn angry is that not only was it hateful toward foster/adopted kids and disabled ND kids; it tries to take the intersection of those two, which gets children neglected, violently abused, and Straight Up Fucking Murdered at sky-high rates even compared to NT foster/adopted kids, and spin it as privilege. a novelty adoption by an explicitly abusive parent, no less.

and to make it even worse, they repeatedly and explicitly try to use his body type to go 'well i mean technically he's a kid but he LOOKS like an adult because he's Big and Threatening, so we're just gonna ignore that and judge him by adult standards.' which, for one thing, hi that is an extremely racist idea to perpetuate, even when you try to trojan horse it by applying it to white kid characters. fuck outta here with that. but it's also vile because 'big scary brutish violent neurodivergent boy who can't be meaningfully controlled through anything but more violence' is--surprise!--a piece of rhetoric that results in violence toward neurodivergent kids, autistic ones in particular. guess the fuck what ivan is coded as. 🙃

like. i cannot overstate that kids like ivan are at enormously high risk for severe abuse and outright murder. they do not get privilege handed to them on a silver platter, and they certainly don't get to lord it over the '''real''' children in the family. and it's fucking sinister that the authors try to make you sympathize and side with the '''real''' child in this scenario, who is constantly spouting off exactly the ideas that get foster/adopted kids killed, by making him the Good Nice One and ivan the Evil Mean One, and contriving a situation where there's on any level a power imbalance in ivan's favor.

fuck these books, man. how are these writers' arms even long enough to punch down that far.

#lorien legacies #ivanick shu-ra #adamus sutekh #cws in post #LL tag #LL crit tag #like we get it you were jealous of your stepbrother growing up. #how about you don't take it out on one of the actual most vulnerable demographics on the earth #amazed they had the restraint to not find an excuse to make him a POC lmao #this kind of shit is just. why i have been so increasingly soured on adam over the years #even his Kind Benevolent Heroic Qualities are a vehicle for so many absolutely horrific and frighteningly violent rhetoric and ideas #and when the narrative /does/ do anything like acknowledge his more negative qualities it either just gets brushed off #or it's an excuse to strawman things like him going 'hey so uh we are fucked and the entity's made of nothingburgers. it's not gonna help' #by throwing in him being a callous piece of shit about the loric genocide so six and marina can call him on it #it really really sucks because adam has been a favorite of mine for over a decade and he got me through some rough shit #but i've increasingly come to realize over time that his role in the narrative is so poisonous it leaves an awful taste in my mouth #and not in a way i feel like rehabilitating #this does not begin to scratch the surface #just. yeah. #anyway. fuck these writers lmao #dyn: so glad you're awake #fuck off adam

[jvzebel-x]

"only other Hawaiians ever make me feel not Hawaiian enough--"

"Hawaiians from the islands are racist--"

"Hawaiians from the mainland have REAL aloha spirit everyone up here is just Hawaiian, no matter how much blood you got--"

okay but you understand that every single portion of what you just said is rooted in colonialism&the attempted murder of our people+culture, right. like you GET why kānaka from the islands have to be so protective of things as they are on the frontlines watching both our culture&our land get chunked for the proft of those who have no right to any of it, right. like you KNOW that hawaiian homelands requires a 50% blood quota to even get on the list&a 25% quota from anyone you leave that land to post mortem, &that the list is STILL decades long because the vast majority of the homeless kānaka back home MEET that requirement, right-- that the homeless demographic in the islands has the largest percentage of us left in one grouping in the world&it isn't surprising the families who maintained a higher blood percentage are also too poor to leave the islands even while dying on the streets, right. like you are CAPABLE of conceptualizing what all of that would do when confronted with someone from the diaspora who "doesn't understand why the aloha spirit is dead in the islands". right. like you can SEE&HEAR how it sounds when you say the nonhawaiian people&legacy of the colonizers that tried to obliterate your ancestors are the only ones who make you feel hawaiian now that they as a group have successfully taken up the primary position on what makes a good hawaiian. right. like you KNOW why there's even a push to properly exemplify kānaka maoli after literally hundreds of years of our people having to save us from cultural obliteration, &that the push to be a "real hawaiian" definitely didn't start with us, the people who you are trying to reconnect to&identify with. right.

like, i get feeling like the expectations are too high-- there isn't any right way to be kānaka, &there are most definitely kānaka who are shitty about that-- but coming back with, "BUT THE HAOLES VALIDATE MY HAWAIIAN-NESS" is just fucking WILD, like i don't know how to explain to you the haoles thinking they have a right to validate fucking anything in relation to us&our struggle&our people is just...

blood doesn't matter, but obviously not in the way you seem to think, lmao.

#OOF these conversations never get any easier. #my heart BLEEDS for the family that deny themselves like this but im constantly having to accept that im not the right person to help lmao. #i absolutely know what its like to not be hawaiian enough lmao. from both other hawaiians AND haoles. #my thing is that while it may be more insulting to have blood be shitty what exactly do you think you as a person are saying #when you take more issue w that than w haoles thinking they have a right to gauge your relation to blood&culture? #why is THEIR ignorance something to be handwaved but from US&OUR expectations its a deadly sin #that justifies throwing us all under the bus&turning your back on the ppl you claim to be apart of? #of COURSE the haoles think your '''aloha spirit' is the real kine its the kine that accepts THEM w no expectations LMAO. #of COURSE the haoles think youre a '''good''' hawaiian-- are you NOT EMBARASSED about that? #like how can you possibly be so fucking deaf to the words coming out of your mouth i dont fucking understand. #arguing w US is more productive than learning from your kin&hearing what we have to say??? okay. #... for context someone i know was arguing that glofiying the murder of cooke contributes to savage stereotypes #associate w us&ultimately makes things more decisive by encouraging the idea that we're violent to any foreigners #&'''well i felt foreign the first time i went to see the islands bc thats how ppl made me feel&it wasnt fun for me''' #okay but why didnt you grow up where you were supposed to-- on those islands. #okay but why do you feel separated at all from a culture&ppl that are being forced more&more into the diaspora. #okay but why did you need to reconnect to us at all bc it wasnt any KANAKA who decided to fracture us all like this. #maybe instead of focusing on your own personal bad feelings you could put in a modicum of effort into understanding your kin #instead of rushing back to the open&loving haole arms who accept you as a REAL hawaiian bc us mean kanaks are being racist. :'(

[brothersonahotelbed]

i wish marvel was only known for eddie brock and venom. not thor or captain shitpants or whateve.r. venom 1 and 2 were so fucking delicious

#marvel's been my hyperfixation since i was 12 but ever since the last year or two it's just been so disappointing #and marvel treats their characters like shit. like SHIT. so many missed opportunities so many things that needed to be said but weren't #marvel phase 4 or whatever just makes me wanna throw up in my mouth #i've only seen maybe 3 movies in phase 4 and the only one that was worth watching was spiderman no way home #everything else was shit. SHIT I TELL YOU #falcon and the winter soldier wasn't bad . lots of bucky content and sam wilson becoming the new captain america was refreshing ig #wandavision was good too but at the end of the day. these shows were not very memorable to me #dont get me started on loki . i hate marvel so much for what the y put him through in that show and i physically cannot watch any movie #wuth loki in it bc the more i analyze the more i see that marvel's villains do not have any depth whatsoever. the use the same tropes :( #which is sad bc loki had such potential and i love him to death #i still love loki but im done with marvel for a while. the fake scenarios & versions of these characters that i've made up in my head are #better than aynthing marvel can come up with anyway <3 #loquitur

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

#chrissy speaks #long post #-gestures broadly-