Daily Blog

“Oh, my god, you look beautiful.”

THESE GLASSES HAVE SPECIAL LENSES WHICH TURN LIGHTS INTO HEARTS

The hearts are way clearer than you’d expect and they don’t mess with your vision too much to walk in them

although they did send this ask to multiple people, someone in the comments suggested it was senator mike folmer (resigned in 2019)

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/09/after-former-pa-sen-folmers-arrest-experts-discuss-social-medias-role-in-child-porn-investigations.html

the email address that senator mike folmer used to sign up for tumblr was [email protected]

did you know you can look users up by email if you go to your following page? i didn’t lol but if you enter his address

you get a snarky message from tumblr staff about your choice to follow the account they closed for child pornography run by a US senator, which was hoser44… of course, all the posts are gone

however, if you enter hoser44.tumblr.com into the wayback machine, there are results

verdict:

If you are considering meeting up with someone online use this trick identify who really are who they claim to be:

1. Ask them to Skype 2. If they refuse or can’t for some reason ask for a current selfie 3. If they also refuse or can’t do not meet up with them 4. If they provide one ask them to send another with them holding 3 fingers up 5. If they refuse read step 3 6. If they provide a selfie where they show 3 fingers they are probably for real

(If you’re still unconvinced try again with them drawing something in their hand)

“My [fill in trusted adult here] wants to come too. [pronoun] said we can do our own thing and [pronoun] will just sort of grab [pronoun] own table, but I wanted to let you know. Hey, if you have an adult coming too they could sit together!”

If hearing this freaks the other person out and they decline, TERMINATE ALL CONTACT. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to block. I’m 26 years old and if you tell me you’re coming with a friend or parent for your own safety, I will automatically say “hey, cool. Y’know, if you’re nervous we can just do Starbucks or something, I’m okay meeting in a busy place. That way your [adult/friend] can hang out, too, and they don’t have to pay for [admission, a movie ticket, whatever].” Your safety and comfort is important to me, and is important to any good person you meet online who wants to meet up IRL. In the early 2000s when I first started seeing online safety PSAs, this was a widely-spread tip. Use it.

And for the record, you can use this over the age of 18, too. I still won’t meet people from online except in public places. You never know–that person holding up three fingers and drawing a Pokemon on their palm could be some pervert’s child, niece, nephew, family friend’s kid who was encouraged to take some silly pictures. Always voice-verify and always meet in public, with another person if possible. 

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start “rewarding” the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Puppy riding a chicken. Nothing unusual here

it’s when he’s discussing one of the many cases of people who were publicly shamed he mentions through the book. the person in question is a woman who took a picture flipping off a monument to veterans and who then became the target of a massive harrassment campaign that got her fired as a result. 

because the picture lives on on google, the woman is in constant fear of losing any future job she might get, or of meeting new people in general. so jon puts her in touch with a company that’s dedicated to cleaning up people’s reputations online. what they do is basically to create a vast amount of online content about that person, so that the news of whatever they did that haunts them is pushed back to page 2 of google results, which, of course, very few people actually look.

the thing is that, in order to create this content, they need information about her, and so they start asking her the most inane things she might be into - like cats, disney or pop music. and then jon hits you, the reader, with this:

“The sad thing was that [name] had incurred the Internet’s wrath because she was imprudent and playful and foolhardy and outspoken. And now here she was, working with Farukh to reduce herself to safe banalities - to cats and ice cream and Top 40 chart music. We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.” (emphasis mine)

and this just… really hit a key point about this culture that i feel is rarely ever discussed. contrapoints briefly touched on it on her video about cancelling, when she talks about the contradiction between fans wanting creators to be “authentic” while also dragging them to hell for the slightest misstep, but she doesn’t really go in depth about it.

one video that does go in depth about it is pschyirl’s video on jenna marbles, “Why The End of Jenna Marbles Is The End of Authenticity”. it’s a great video that i highly recommend, and it basically points out how our current way of engaging with media disincourages creators to be remotely authentic, because authenticity requires being a human being, and part of being a human being is making mistakes.

and just… to me that just hits so deeply, and i think it goes way beyond social media platforms like youtube. there’s this contradictory demand that public figures “use their platforms” to raise awareness for important causes, while also holding the ones that frequently do to impossible standarts (jameela jamil immediately comes to mind). the safest way to be a public figure in 2020 is to be as silent as possible.

and this is often thought of as just a left problem, and don’t get me wrong, the “cancellation” aspect does tend to be left-wing leaning, but massive online mobs come from the right as well. and they also benefit from the essentialist discourse the left constantly clings to. in an essentialist world where creators are harshly judged as people by the media they make, it’s a lot easier, for example, to turn “cuties’s way of dealing with the sexualitization of children is not perfect and merrits critique” into “the director of cuties IS a literal pedophile”. the accusations are spearheaded by right wing people who are working on bad faith, but the essentialized version reaches the entire internet, and no one bothers to question it, and suddenly a female director who made a movie partially based on her own experiences growing up has to delete all her social media because of the harrassment she’s getting.