Revenge of the Jewfro

Google set out about a decade ago to push their (relatively unpopular) chromebooks by supplying them below-cost to schools for students, explicitly marketing them as being easy to restrict to certain activities, and in the offing, kids have now grown up in walled gardens, on glorified tablets that are designed to monetize and restrict every movement to maximize profit for one of the biggest companies in the world.

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

and Jon asks for Tim and Sasha, which okay, fine, Tim's an explosion waiting to happen and Sasha's good cannon fodder if nothing else. but Jon likes and respects them both so they're not really going to create the atmosphere of anxiety and fury that Elias very much wants his new Archivist to be suffering from the get go. so whomst to choose?

Martin has got used to life in the library and just isn't pumping out that good good CV related terror any more because he's pretty confident now that he can actually do the job. but put him down in a whole new position and he's going to be right back where he started! terrified of being caught and going ridiculously above and beyond to try to make a good impression. and that exact anxiety and going above and beyond is going to INFURIATE Jon. plus Jon only has a bachelor's degree and Martin's CV says he has a Master's, and in a field that's actually relevant, which means that Jon's going to feel like he's starting from an incredibly inferior position relative to Martin and is going to be wildly anxious and angry about that. and when Martin reveals himself to be totally incompentent... even worse! (even better from Elias's point of view)

I like to think about Elias having a huge spreadsheet of everyone in the Institute in which he scores them on how badly they'll infuriate and terrify Jon, and Martin comes out the clear winner.

and like at first it really seems to be working! Jon hates Martin! except... after the worms, why does he keep on going out to lunch with Martin despite believing him to be murderously plotting his downfall?? why would finding out that Martin lied on his CV make Jon trust Martin MORE instead of less??? WHY THE HELL IS HE FALLING IN LOVE WITH MARTIN????? this wasn't supposed to happen! Elias made a spreadsheet and everything!!!

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Look at me.

Look me directly in the eyes while I say this.

You can just make things.

You can simply create something and put it into the world.

That's allowed.

People have been doing it for centuries.

They sell blank VHS tapes. They sell blank DVDs. Blank CDs. You can buy flash drives by the bucketful if you really want to. If you create a movie, an album, a game, a documentary, or a four-hour video essay about the mating habits of fictional space goblins, you are entirely permitted to put that thing on physical media and sell it.

That is not piracy.

Piracy is taking something that belongs to someone else and reproducing or distributing it without permission.

If I buy a DVD of a movie, I own that copy of the movie. I do not own the movie itself. I didn't acquire the rights to duplicate it, press a thousand copies, and start selling them out of my garage like I've become the regional distributor for Warner Bros.

The copyright, distribution rights, and intellectual property still belong to whoever created it or whoever legally acquired those rights.

If I start burning copies of Iron Lung and selling them myself without Markiplier's permission, that's piracy.

If Markiplier, who made and owns the rights to Iron Lung, burns copies and sells them himself, that's just distribution.

He's the rights holder.

He's distributing his own work.

If you made it, if it came from your own mind, your own work, your own time, your own resources, then congratulations. You own the thing. You don't need a corporation to bless it with legitimacy.

The corporation is not what makes it real.

The fact that it exists is what makes it real.

I think we've accidentally spent so many years living inside a world dominated by mass-produced media that some people have developed the strange assumption that all media emerges from a factory somewhere. As if films naturally occur in shrink-wrapped plastic cases and descend from the heavens aboard a pallet truck.

But independent artists have been burning discs, dubbing tapes, printing books, pressing records, and mailing things directly to people for longer than many of us have been alive.

That's not a bootleg.

That's just a product.

It's not "bootleg."

It's just... leg.

The normal kind.