*insert clever page name here*

They’re so vague and undefined and like. I know I have some stuff on my blog SOMEWHERE that’s probably flagged as explicit. Not to mention that my writing blog has written smut in it, so does that count??? I know they SAY it’s fine, but that’s only for now. How long until that changes?

So yeah. I haven’t been posting much lately anyway. But as of now I’m just. So very done with Tumblr’s bullshittery.

I’ve pushed everything in my queue out front so this will stay on top. I love you all so dearly, my tumblr family, so if you want to keep in touch, you can shoot me an email at [email protected], add me on skype as rcooper450, or add me on discord as ArCoo#0561. I’d love to hear from you.

Otherwise, thank you each and every one of you who have made my time here so much fun. Thank you for teaching me, for being patient with me, for listening, making me laugh, making me cry, and making me realize the world is simultaneously so much larger and so much smaller than we could possibly imagine.

I love you all.

GUESS WHAT FOR????

“Yes good”

“AND EAT THE BAD ONES”

“Wait no”

“EAT THEM”

You better watch out

You better watch out

If you haven’t already heard about this, the FTC is planning to remove ALL channels deemed “family friendly” by the end of 2019

What this means is that content creators’ videos will be demonetized (no ads will run on videos, thus no income)

In addition to that, the comments will be disabled, leading to NO interaction between the audience and the creator.

Content creators will either be moved to the YouTube Kids app or will not be supported by the main YouTube overall.

This includes:

Game Theory

Most if not all doll-customization channels

Food channels

Education channels

Art channels

Heck, even gaming channels might get hit by this!

There’s already a petition for this, so please please please go sign it if you don’t want YouTube to be even more messed up

http://chng.it/q6MwLg5HnM

YouTube isn't doing shit. At least, not directly.

They've given their content creators the option to flag their content as "for children" if it meets the FTC's guidelines on what "content for children or that is child-attractive" looks like. This, according to the FTC, includes, but is not limited to, content that

-is about video games

-is about toys

-is about "families"

-is about cartoons

-is about food

-contains bright colors

-is titled using, or uses, the words "yeah" or "fun" or "cool" (among many others)

Any video that fits these guidelines or the others described by the FTC is legally required to be marked as "for children" by the FTC so that the process described above can occur (disabled comments, no data collection, cannot be located by standard search, demonetization, etc.). But the thing is, that's not being done by YouTube. In fact, YouTube has flatly denied that they will do anything themselves beyond reshuffle the settings on marked videos, and have also refused to provide any sort of clear guidelines of their own on what types of content need to be flagged. They've literally suggested content creators consult with a lawyer if they need help.

Because here's the thing. While YouTube isn't going to do anything for the creators, the FTC will be browsing unmarked videos to see if any of them should be marked as "for children." For every video they find improperly left unmarked, that content creator could face a fine of up to $42,000. And that's not in general, that's per video.

So basically: content isn't going to get demonitized by YouTube. Content creators are going to be forced to make the decision to either flag their videos and/or channel in such a way that will demonetize them, or potentially face fines the average person can't really afford. YouTube, after their $170m settlement with the FTC, is essentially taking as many steps back as they can and saying "We're just going to do whatever the tags tell us to, or whatever the FTC tells us to. And if it's wrong, it's the content creator's problem, not ours!" without providing any clear instructions, guidelines, or advice for their creators.

Don't give them more credit than they're due.

These regulations have existed for a long time and they have been ignored by google and YouTube for years. The fine they received was due to them ignoring the regulations on what kinds of data they're allowed to collect from minors. They deserved that.

But at this point, they seem to think that's the end of their responsibility.

The reasons why this is such a big problem are 1) the FTC's guidelines are unnecessarily vague (though I'm guessing it's mostly an attempt by adults to thoroughly guess what sorts of things kids like), and 2) YouTube is flatly refusing to do anything to support their content creators.

The second point is the main reason, I think, why everything is falling apart. All of this could be easily fixed by, for example, age-gating main YouTube and requiring an account (or making it so, like on ao3, you need to agreed that you are of age to view such content) to view any of those videos. Or something. Anything more than the nothing YouTube is currently doing. (Hence: don't give them more credit than they're due.)

Basically: this is almost entirely on YouTube's shoulders. They designed a system that took advantage of and violated rules concerning content for minors, and now they don't want to do literally anything to help fix the problem except pay a fine (and what do they care? they've made billions on this data so far) and add a toggle they're not helping their users to decide whether or not to use.

Like, are these regulations on content for children necessary? Absolutely. Are they kind of horribly vague as they stand now? Also definitely. Are the threatened punishments likely too harsh to match the "crime" being committed by the majority of people who just aren't sure which side of the spectrum they fall on and aren't sure what to do? Yes. Could the regulations be improved at all, possibly made more specific and targeted? Oh, most definitely. But does that mean the current rules can or should be ignored? Not at all.

Did YouTube get off really fucking easy with a $170m fine considering how much they've made by flagrantly disregarding this law? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Does YouTube need to step their ass into gear to make their site into a place that adheres to those rules while also giving their content creators the freedom to, well, create?

You bet your ass they do.

By all means make YouTube a safer place for kids – it's been a kind of open, unacknowledged thing for a while that the internet at large isn't at all a safe place for kids to be given free reign anymore, and YouTube is no exception.

But for christ's sake, then build an infrastructure to support their safety instead of just doing...nothing. Nothing to support the people that have made your site successful and allowing them to be punished for your lack of both design and forethought.

If you haven’t already heard about this, the FTC is planning to remove ALL channels deemed “family friendly” by the end of 2019

What this means is that content creators’ videos will be demonetized (no ads will run on videos, thus no income)

In addition to that, the comments will be disabled, leading to NO interaction between the audience and the creator.

Content creators will either be moved to the YouTube Kids app or will not be supported by the main YouTube overall.

This includes:

Game Theory

Most if not all doll-customization channels

Food channels

Education channels

Art channels

Heck, even gaming channels might get hit by this!

There’s already a petition for this, so please please please go sign it if you don’t want YouTube to be even more messed up

http://chng.it/q6MwLg5HnM

Option one: mark as "for kids" even though it's really not and face reprisals from YouTube for improperly marking children's content.

Option two: don't mark as "for kids" and face a fine of up to 42,000 dollars from the FTC for having an unmarked video that COPPA says is marketed towards kids (because it's about a video game, nothing else matters) despite the adult themes. Because COPPA and the FTC don't care if the video has adult themes or content, if it's about a video game or a cartoon or comics or anything else they've listed, it could be considered something a kid would want to click on, and "should" be marked.

If you haven’t already heard about this, the FTC is planning to remove ALL channels deemed “family friendly” by the end of 2019

What this means is that content creators’ videos will be demonetized (no ads will run on videos, thus no income)

In addition to that, the comments will be disabled, leading to NO interaction between the audience and the creator.

Content creators will either be moved to the YouTube Kids app or will not be supported by the main YouTube overall.

This includes:

Game Theory

Most if not all doll-customization channels

Food channels

Education channels

Art channels

Heck, even gaming channels might get hit by this!

There’s already a petition for this, so please please please go sign it if you don’t want YouTube to be even more messed up

http://chng.it/q6MwLg5HnM

YouTube isn't doing shit. At least, not directly.

They've given their content creators the option to flag their content as "for children" if it meets the FTC's guidelines on what "content for children or that is child-attractive" looks like. This, according to the FTC, includes, but is not limited to, content that

-is about video games

-is about toys

-is about "families"

-is about cartoons

-is about food

-contains bright colors

-is titled using, or uses, the words "yeah" or "fun" or "cool" (among many others)

Any video that fits these guidelines or the others described by the FTC is legally required to be marked as "for children" by the FTC so that the process described above can occur (disabled comments, no data collection, cannot be located by standard search, demonetization, etc.). But the thing is, that's not being done by YouTube. In fact, YouTube has flatly denied that they will do anything themselves beyond reshuffle the settings on marked videos, and have also refused to provide any sort of clear guidelines of their own on what types of content need to be flagged. They've literally suggested content creators consult with a lawyer if they need help.

Because here's the thing. While YouTube isn't going to do anything for the creators, the FTC will be browsing unmarked videos to see if any of them should be marked as "for children." For every video they find improperly left unmarked, that content creator could face a fine of up to $42,000. And that's not in general, that's per video.

So basically: content isn't going to get demonitized by YouTube. Content creators are going to be forced to make the decision to either flag their videos and/or channel in such a way that will demonetize them, or potentially face fines the average person can't really afford. YouTube, after their $170m settlement with the FTC, is essentially taking as many steps back as they can and saying "We're just going to do whatever the tags tell us to, or whatever the FTC tells us to. And if it's wrong, it's the content creator's problem, not ours!" without providing any clear instructions, guidelines, or advice for their creators.

Don't give them more credit than they're due.

2,000/10=200

Y'all a nickel is 5cents. There are 100cents in a dollar. So... (striketheoughs indicate canceling of units due to units being in numerator and denominator)

1 dollar * (100 cents / 1 dollar) * (1 nickel / 5 cents) = 20 nickels per 1 dollar

((1 * 100 * 1) / (1 * 5))

or a conversion factor of (20 nickels / 1 dollar) OR (1 dollar / 20 nickels); either works because it's equivalent to (1/1)

So if we have 2000 nickels, that gives us

2000 nickels * (1 dollar / 20 nickels) = 100 dollars.

((2000 * 1) / (20))

If you don't know how to do the math that relies on this foreknowledge, please at least take the time to work it out. Most (here read: all) conversions like this can literally be solved by multiplying fractions, which is something you learn in middle school (if not elementary school depending on how your math curriculum was structured). It's called Dimensional Analysis, and at the very latest you should've learned it in high school chemistry.

ALTERNATIVELY:

1 nickel = 5 cents

100 cents = 1 dollar

2000 nickels * (5 cents / 1 nickel) = 10,000 cents

They’re so vague and undefined and like. I know I have some stuff on my blog SOMEWHERE that’s probably flagged as explicit. Not to mention that my writing blog has written smut in it, so does that count??? I know they SAY it’s fine, but that’s only for now. How long until that changes?

So yeah. I haven’t been posting much lately anyway. But as of now I’m just. So very done with Tumblr’s bullshittery.

I’ve pushed everything in my queue out front so this will stay on top. I love you all so dearly, my tumblr family, so if you want to keep in touch, you can shoot me an email at [email protected], add me on skype as rcooper450, or add me on discord as ArCoo#0561. I’d love to hear from you.

Otherwise, thank you each and every one of you who have made my time here so much fun. Thank you for teaching me, for being patient with me, for listening, making me laugh, making me cry, and making me realize the world is simultaneously so much larger and so much smaller than we could possibly imagine.

I love you all.

GUESS WHAT FOR????

Because see nowadays, ships are largely about validity. They need to have canon evidence, and often times said “evidence” is used as proof the ship is good representation and also used as an argument against other ships, (i.e. Kirishima is gay coded so it’s homophobic to ship him with women) and as such “crack ships” barely exist, or when they do exist people are confused. “Why would you ship that? It has no endgame? It’ll never be canon? Isn’t the whole point of a ship for the healthy gay relationship to become canon so we can have representation? Isn’t that why Klance should be canon but Sheith can’t be, because clearly Sheith is homophobic pedo incest garbage, but Klance would be wholesome?” is a bit of an attitude you tend to see lately. This idea that anything you ship represents what you desire to see in the canon, and what you desire irl, and says something about your moral values as a person.

And now I can’t help but thinking back to oh, about 2014 or so, when Free! was airing. It was RinHaru vs MakoHaru. Bullshit was happening everywhere. (It has been happening earlier, but 2014 was when I really remember the dumb, “Makoto is abusive” arguments popping up, among other things.) And then, you had this small faction of creators who weren’t on those ships, or if they were, they also multishipped one small, weird “crack pairing”: SouMako. They had never talked. You could assume they had talked or interacted, but I think it wasn’t until like the watergun fight special that they actually talked? They were like, two satellites orbiting two characters who had interacted a lot, but they themselves had never actually shown any acknowledgement of each other’s existence. 

Either way, people made some hotass fanart of them, and some fic, and personally while I didn’t ship it hard, I certainly enjoyed it. I wasn’t opposed to it at all.

But I bit that down because my friends were like “lmao why do they even ship it? They’ve never talked! There’s like no canon for it! They’re so delusional!” as though SouMako shippers somehow thought the two of them were gonna just magically propose to each other in the finale episode or something.

So I never really told those friends I liked it or found it hot, and even joined them in making fun of it, because it was 5 years ago and I was a lot more timid. It’s water under the bridge now. But now, seeing how fandom has continued, I can’t help but feel that was the hatching of a small egg that turned out to be housing a basilisk, in some ways. When we began to view shippers of “crack” as stupid or delusional, we began in some ways to strip shipping of it’s nonsense fun. Shipping became more and more some sort of desire and push to have your OTP canon, because it was better than the other OTP.

And now “crack” barely exists at all in a lot of places, because why would you ship something with no chance? That’s the attitude and feeling I get from a lot of people. And I think the moment we began to slowly lose that sense of wacky, stupid fun, that sense of “because I want to see two huge boys touch tiddies, that’s why” we lost a little bit of the more lighthearted shipping sphere.

Shipping is supposed to be fun.

Happy Hanukkah, everyone, from these two jerks! I’m posting this a little early this year. Line art by the amazing Ro Stein & Ted Brandt, and colour art by @deecunniffe. 

I want to point out what a technical achievement this story is on the art side. There’s a real joy to creating a whole story in eight panels, but this? This is some magic. We introduce four new characters. In panel 5, SIX PEOPLE are talking. SIX. In the world of comics, that’s almost un-doable. 

Yet Ro and Ted arranged everything so the conversations flow and are sensibly grouped, all the “acting” is fantastic, and then Dee laid on top these beautiful, almost fairytale colours – look at the subtle work, the blush in Henry’s cheeks, Frank’s five o-clock shadow, the shine of the wine bottle’s glass surface, the light texturing in the backgrounds… and of course the snow! This is some first-class illustration work on an incredibly hard script. (I fear Ro and Ted always get me at my worst – my very formalist script for them in the 24 Panels anthology was no cakewalk either. (The problem is, they’re just so damn good at it… check out their work on the Image comic Crowded!)

As always, if you like what we do in Hells Kitchen Movie Club, consider donating a little to a veteran’s charity. 

(I also have a thriller novel I’m crowdfunding, please check it out, we are more than halfway there. The book is all written…)

this is the birthday party she just threw for her kids