So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????
I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.
Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?
Saw a sharp increase in my follower count after posting this. The legitimacy of it is driving me nuts so I also feel the need to say that you can follow anyone on here regardless of whether you’ve interacted with them or not. People like the above mentioned blog are exceptions. Perhaps they themselves think they aren’t and therefore will act like they aren’t, but they are, trust me.
Just follow anyone you wanna follow. The worst thing that can happen is maybe getting soft-blocked by the other person, but if they do soft-block you, then they were never that worth following in the first place.
If your blog looks like this, you look like a bot:
Just post something. Anything. PLEASE. Even if it's a simple text post saying "I SWEAR I'M NOT A BOT 😅"
You don't want to get mistaken for a bot! Most follow-bots don't do anything but lurk (not sure what the point of them is tbh), but I've heard some will wait a couple weeks & then spam all their followed pages' inboxes with porn. So I block them & report as spam. 🤷♀️
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the problem with tumblr spells is all of you lil sluts are casting and not giving it time to charge so you're all casting cantrips and not 9th level death spells. everyone wants to be the one to take them down no one wants to be the one who assists
This is Cruziohyla craspedopus, and basically it has evolved to look like a leaf and not like a frog when sitting still during the day (they are nocturnal). Apparently bellbottoms break up your outline and make it harder for predators to recognise you as a tasty morsel.
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[Image ID: Newspaper clipping reading: A Lincoln man who swiped a pair of shoes worth $1 or less was fined $25 and costs, which meant thirty days in jail. An eastern banker who stole $100,000 was sent to the penitentiary for six years. If the sentence pronounced on the Lincoln man was just, the eastern banker should have been sent up for 8,333 years and 4 months. If the eastern banker's sentence was just, the Lincoln man's sentence should have been a little less than thirty minutes. /End ID]
the pros of reading ao3 fics in public is that their layout is so clean and simple that people would think you’re reading some academic researches when you’re in fact reading a 50k fic. the cons is that you need to control your face all the fucking time
it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.
I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.
As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:
The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.
Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)
Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)
Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.
The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.
Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?
Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.
If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.
If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.
There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."
Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.
"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.
Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.
"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.
"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.
"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.
"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.
I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.
"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.
A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.
But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.
If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.
Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.
Gluten free food is also for people like me who have wheat allergies and that's why it's so frustrating that so many gluten free options will use oat flour or now even de-glutenized wheat flour and just not say they do because well actually, it's only for people with celiac, so surely it's fine to put the wheat or oats or rye or barley back in, just so long as you make sure to remove the gluten!
Gluten free chips ahoy and oreos? Oat flour. Canyon Bakehouse, the only gluten free bread brand that actually resembles bread? Oat flour. And then if I do find truly wheat free food it's also vegan or low carb/salt/fat/calories/ect. and it's genuinely not even worth eating. I'm already on the verge of starvation constantly because even gluten free food isn't safe for me to eat half the time, them removing all the nutrients just means that people like me get to eat health food garbage, if we can eat at all. Even gluten free food isn't always safe, and so if you thought people with celiac were limited in their options people with wheat allergies are just straight up fucked.
It's REALLY fucking important for food makers to actually label what the fuck they put in their food because sometimes people have weird allergies that they need accommodated, and it really sucks to be treated like I'm taking part in a fad diet when I'm just trying to EAT at all and half the time the food labeled as being for me isn't even safe for me to eat.
The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:
“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit.
“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”
I wish we could see the tailor’s diary entry because I’m willing to bet it was one of the best days of his life. If I was that tailor and my fresh new 12yo apprentice, who was only told to mind the house, made something like that in their (probably very limited) free time, I would not only hang the outfit on the door, I would rub it in every one of my colleague’s noses. “Doust thine apprentice even lift a needle when you’re not watching? MY apprentice just started and yet his ideas are so advanced! Already some posh lady has asked me to lend him to her to outfit her dog! He is bringing in business, all on his own! And you can’t have him! Face it, I have made the finest choice of apprentice!”
Meanwhile the kid is probably trying to squeeze into that hole with the cat.
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read this thread. this is by far the most concise explanation of a lot of different issues that i’ve seen in fandom spaces in a while. cosigning both the linked thread and the thread about aus/uk/can law that’s linked in-thread.
If someone has never taken a class that includes copyright law, they may not know this stuff, so I don’t necessarily blame random people for not knowing what copyright is, but like… maybe just maybe it’s something that should be taught????
Just another reminder, because this always drives me crazy, but even if monetizing your fic was 100% unambiguously legal and protected, AO3 would still not let you do it because AO3 was founded and is supported by people like me who want a fandom community that is completely divested from making money off of fic.
Yes, this. Lots of fanworks on AO3 are unambiguously legal. Fics based on Shakespeare plays and fairy tales and Greek mythology and The Great Gatsby and your original character from your D&D game are not violations of copyright, because no copyright applies to those things.
AO3 still doesn’t let you monetize those things on the site, because we don’t want the site to be commercial! Because that’s not what it’s for!
It’s not there for you (generic you) to make money off the efforts of the people who build and maintain the site for free! We aren’t getting paid for the work we do to give you a nice site to use, just like you aren’t getting paid for the work you do to create whatever art you share there. Because fandom is supposed to be a community where we share with each other, and therefore we all benefit.
The deal is, we give you a free, stable, safe platform to host your works. In exchange, you get a site that isn’t covered in ads and tip jars and links to gofundme and “read the next chapter at my patreon”. You get one goddamn place on the internet that isn’t trying to make money off you. And we will defend that space and keep it non-commercial.
If you want to make money off your fics, you can instead post them somewhere like royal Road. “Oh, but Royal Road’s culture is so much more negative and stressful and lacks the supportive norms of AO3!” Yeah, because people are trying to make money there. Half the userbase is treating it as a storefront and hustling is the natural social consequence of that. AO3’s culture can only exist because it’s not commercial.
When you choose to monetize your fic, you’re giving a foothold to LLM AI.
Because all those AI copyright infringement lawsuits? What they hinge on is that AI costs money. So you can, for example, write a Steven Universe fic, and that’s fine. But someone feeding the entire script of Steven Universe into an LLM? That’s infringement. Because they’re now making money off of it.
When enough people say “that should be legal actually,” it’s not big companies who suffer. It’s small ones. And you are providing a toehold for something you do not want to unleash.
Are there exceptions to this? Yes. The old Star Trek novels are probably the most obvious, and if @dduane would like to, I cordially invite her to this post to talk about the weird intersection of fanfiction, Star Trek novels, and Gene Roddenberry (I know extremely broad strokes, but it’s not my fandom). But that market is extremely narrow, and it involves a lot of permissions and lawyers and creative leashes. It may not even really be a thing anymore.
And finally: if you’re thinking “but, but, zines! People used to charge for zines!” Yes and no. First of all, back in those days our legal protections were even thinner. But second of all–they weren’t selling the content. They were selling the paper, staples, ink, postage, and so on. Let’s say a single zine cost me $6.70 per copy to make, and $1.30 to mail. Under that system, I could charge you no more than $8. You’re gonna notice that is exactly what my cost came out to.
Fanfiction is not now, nor has it ever been, about making money. Full stop.
Tbh, this also reeks of "monetize all your hobbies, commit to The Hustle" bullcrap. Stuff doesn't have to cost money or make money to be worth doing. Fuck capitalism. Let people enjoy things.
At this point I've seen like three unconnected pieces of American media set in a superficially idyllic small town with a big fuckoff lake that functions as a liminal boundary between the Known and the Unknown and in which a major character attempts suicide by drowning, and now I'm wondering if the Liminal Death Lake is just a thing American small towns have.
Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”
Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”
Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”
Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”
State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”
The vast majority of conservatives think of themselves as underdogs being repressed by the government/the elite, and they value personal freedom (specifically their personal freedom, they don’t care about other people). The will almost always agree with leftist points if you can find a way to blame the problem on their vague enemies (useful, since rich people are the root of most problems), and tie it back to their ability to say fuck everyone else. NEVER appeal to science, theory, logic, or human goodness. Make it seem as if you are a paranoid lunatic who trusts no one. They love it.
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Now you see, I’ve watched enough cartoons to know that this square of the carpet is on a separate animation cell from the background & therefore something funky will happen if I step on it. You won’t catch me making a rookie mistake like that no sir!
