theshriekingsisterhood

[theshriekingsisterhood]

how to become commander of friend group

how to establish political control of friendgroup

friend group organisational structure google

#the way this is literally Nandor the Relentless #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #Nandor #Nandor the Relentless

[theshriekingsisterhood]

The way I SPRINTED to my computer to make this the second Risky showed me this textpost

#what we do in the shadows #wwdits #nandor the relentless #Nandor #Autistic Nandor the Relentless #Autismposting #deadass i didnt even have time to rip HD screenshots I needed to get this baby OUT #a more Nandor ass post has never before been made #Obviously Nandor doesn't know wtf Autism is bc hes a nearly 800 year old vampire #In my mind tho Colin Robinson called him Autistic once and Nandor just assumed it was a complimentary adjective akin to Awesome or Majestic #'Guillermo which of these capes makes me look more Autistic?' #'Guillermo is that not the most Autistic painting of a horse you have ever seen?' #Colin Robinson wasn't saying it as an insult also just to clarify #Just as like #a neutral descriptor #which obviously applies to Nandor #Risky I love you and your brain it is huge and wrinkly

[theshriekingsisterhood]

I’m just thinking about how many times I’ve heard my dad on a long call with an obvious scammer and I’ll start begging him to get off the phone because I always think he’s a very easy mark and he’ll just keep going and then after a while he’ll say something like “I died 20 years ago” and hang up.

#this is my dad except I don't even try to stop him #he gets the scammers so mad THEY hang up on HIM #literally just by acting obtuse

[theshriekingsisterhood]

Post corrections/clarifications are my favorite genre of humor: a compilation

#made me laugh until my stomach hurt #i didn't check or tag for triggers srry

[theshriekingsisterhood]

vampires bite your neck because it's sexy but also so you don't see their faces when they're biting you and start laughing hysterically

#what we do in the shadows #vampires

[theshriekingsisterhood]

Me n who

#calls to action

[theshriekingsisterhood]

re: Somerton

Not for nothing, but I think we should remember that James Somerton's fans and subscribers are normal people, just like you. They are people who received his output in good faith, and extended to him a normal amount of grace and benefit of the doubt, which he took advantage of.

I don't think it's helpful to respond to the exposé on Somerton with sentiments along the lines of "wow, how could anyone ever think THIS GUY'S videos were any good, ha ha ha, how did he ever get subscribers?" because 1) you have the substantial benefit of hindsight and a disengaged outsider perspective, and 2) it's a rhetoric that creates a divide between you (refined, savvy, smart, sophisticated) and Somerton's audience (gullible, unrefined, easily taken advantage of, terrible taste), which is a false divide, with a false sense of security.

Somerton's success happened because he stole good writing. He found interesting, insightful, in-depth work done by other people, applied the one skill he actually has which is marketing, and re-packaged it as his own. He targeted a market which is starving for the exact kind of writing he was stealing, and pushed his audience to disengage from sources that conflicted with him.

Hbomberguy makes this point in his exposé video: good queer writing is hard to find and incredibly easy to lose. The writers Somerton stole from were often poor or precarious, writing freelance work for small circles under shitty conditions, without the means or the reach or the privileges necessary to find bigger markets. And, as Hbomb demonstrated, when people did discover Somerton's plagiarism, he used his substantial audience to hound them away and dissuade anyone else from trying to hold him accountable.

He stole queer writing by marginalized people, about experiences and perspectives that people are desperate to hear more about, and even if his delivery and aesthetics were naff, his words resonated with people because the original writers who actually wrote them poured their goddamn hearts and souls into it.

Somerton also maintained a consistent narrative of persecution and marginalization about himself. He took the plain truth, which is that queer people and perspectives are discriminated against, and worked that into a story about himself as a lone, brave truth-teller, daring to voice an authentic queer perspective, constantly beset by bigots and adversaries who sought to tear him down. As @aranock, who works with some of the people he targeted, writes in this post, Somerton weaponized whatever casual bias and bigotry he could find in his audience to reinforce his me vs them narrative (usually misogyny and various forms of transphobia), which is what grifters do. They find a vulnerable thread in a community and pull on it. And while you may not have the particular vulnerability that he exploited, you do have vulnerabilities, and they can be exploited too.

People felt compelled to support him, even if his work was sometimes shoddy, because he presented himself as a vulnerable, marginalized person in need of help, he pulled on that vulnerable thread.

Again, he has a degree in marketing, and just like propaganda, nobody is immune to marketing.

YouTube as a system is set up to push for more, constantly more. More content, more videos, more output, more more more more, and part of Somerton and Illuminaughty's success was their ability to push out large amounts of content to the hungry algorithm, even if it was of inferior quality. The algorithm rewarded their volume of output with more eyeballs and attention, and therefore more opportunities to find people who were vulnerable to their grift.

It is a system which quite literally rewards the exact kind of plagiarism that they do, because watch-time and engagement are easily measurable metrics for a corporation, and academic rigor is not. There is pressure to deliver, and a lot of rewards to gain from cutting corners to do it.

Somerton and Illuminaughty and Internet Historian are extreme and very obvious cases, so blatant that you can make a four hour video essay exposing what they've done, but the vast majority of this kind of plagiarism isn't going to be obvious - sometimes it might not even be obvious to the people who are doing it. Casual plagiarism is endemic to the modern internet, and most people don't get educated on what the exact boundaries are between proper sourcing and quoting vs plagiarizing. We had an entire course module at my university aimed at teaching students the exact differences and definitions, and people still made good faith mistakes in their essays and papers that they had to learn to correct during their education.

All of this to say: it is extremely easy in hindsight to call Somerton's work shitty and shoddy, his aesthetics flat and uninspired, and to imagine that as a sophisticated person with good taste and critical faculties, you would never be taken in by this kind of grifter. It is extremely easy to distance yourself from the people he preyed on, and imagine that you will never have to worry about your fave doing your dirty like that.

But part of the point of Hbomberguy's video is that plagiarism is extremely easy to get away with, and often difficult for the average person to spot and call out, and with the rise of AI tools blurring the lines even further, it is not going to get any easier.

So I think we should resist the temptation to think of Somerton's audience as people with bad taste and poor faculties. We should resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the perfectly normal people he preyed on. Many times in your life, a modestly clever man with a marketing degree has fooled you too.

On a personal note, by the same token, I am resisting the temptation to assume that I am too good to be vulnerable to the systemic pressures that produced Somerton and Illuminaughty. No, I've never made a video by word-for-word reciting someone else's work, but I know for a fact that I could do a better job of double-checking my work and citing my sources. I feel the exact same pressure to get a video out as fast as possible, I have the exact same rewards dangled in front of me by YouTube as a platform, and I can't pretend it doesn't affect my work. To me, Hbomb's video felt like a wake-up call to do better.

#james somerton

[theshriekingsisterhood]

[theshriekingsisterhood]

I calls em like I sees em

spiff @theshriekingsisterhood you were so correct when you said rung would be good at domming but he wouldnt like it bc its just work to him

#transformers #the useless one #rung

[theshriekingsisterhood]

we should have known - he's a total utilitarian

#wwdits spoilers #nodding nodding #guillermo de la cruz #trolley problem

[theshriekingsisterhood]

WWDITS Hybrid Animals Spoilers

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Guillermo de la Cruz Lower Back Tattoo Idea, 👀

#wwdits #guillermo de la cruz #nandor the relentless #nandermo #what we do in the shadows #dw Nandor has a matching 'Property of Guillermo' over his asscheeks #and across his balls #wwdits spoilers #wwdits s5 spoilers #Wwdits Hybrid Animals Spoilers

[theshriekingsisterhood]

Guillermo's telekinesis has gotten better.

Season 5 Episode 6, "Urgent Care"

#guillermo de la cruz #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #wwdits spoilers #wwdits s5e6 #baby #baby boy #proud of u memo

[theshriekingsisterhood]

What We Create in the Shadows Volume 3 includes an exclusive interview with Harvey Guillén!

He chats about Behind the Shadows, Guillermo's wardrobe in the past, present, and future, and why Guillermo might be binge-watching My So-Called Life during season 5.

Get your copy in print or PDF here: https://www.blurb.com/b/11639601-what-we-create-in-the-shadows-vol-3

All proceeds go to PFLAG.

[theshriekingsisterhood]

you construct intricate rituals etc

+ this scene had not right being so Charged

#wwdits #nandermo #what yhe fuck

[theshriekingsisterhood]

Okay but like,

given Nandor In Space and Especially Nandor Returning From Space Naked and furthermore Explicitly Taking Inspiration from Barbarella ,

If we get a scene like THIS

With NANDOR????

Y'all I'm not even gonna lie I don't think my young cock is ever going to be able to recover,

#wwdits #what we do in the shadows #nandor the relentless #Nandor #season 5 speculation #wwdits season 5 speculation and press releases #shadows fx #Barbarella #Youtube

[theshriekingsisterhood]

[theshriekingsisterhood]

I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.