your friendly neighbourhood vampire

You don't need data centers to serve Tumblr. Or your gps maps. And for sure not to use a gig jobs app.

You need a server, indeed. That server is basically a computer that needs to be somewhere with a good internet connection. If the site or app has a lot of usage, you may need several of them, rarely more than the lower two figures. That's it.

"the internet we know" doesn't rely on data centers. Data centers, as we know nowadays, basically were invented by Amazon, who started selling them "as a service" maybe 15 years ago. Before that, companies used to, well, have their own servers. Often in their own office buildings. Sometimes in MUCH smaller facilities dedicated to host servers.

But the modern concept of data server? That is needed mostly for data mining and selling processing power as a service, so shitty startups can try to invent the next torment Nexus without needing to hire people who actually know how to work with physical servers nor spending big money on hardware.

But most of the apps and websites you use everyday? Any shitty laptop could very well be used as their server and support a couple of hundred concurrent users without breaking a sweat.

Read "gig jobs using cloud apps" and thought I meant Uber Eats

Unironic Torment Nexus reference in a serious discourse post in 2026

Implication that companies running their own data servers locally is a more energy efficient model than renting cloud VMs

polite greeting (it's me, boy)

introduction (i'm the ps5)

establish credentials (speaking to you inside your brain)

establish purpose (leave the girl, we don't need her)

NO.

DO NOT DO THIS. THIS DOES NOT WORK. IT IS STILL CONSIDERED UNLICENSED DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED CONTENT.

DO NOT DO THIS.

If something has a big fandom, publishers and studios know they can make money off it. This is why we see publishers openly acquiring and selling things that were originally posted as fanfic, like Alchemised, Heated Rivalry, etc. It’s why the horrid wizard woman considers people participating in her fandom to be supporting her political causes.

-hallucinate

-cry over what seems to be small things

-become furiously angry over what seems to be small things

-hit a self destruct button over and over again

-lose all sense of reality

-becoming straight up unable to communicate

-view every situation as life or death

-experience delusions/become vulnerable to irrational worldviews

-perceive hostility where none exists

-become extremely nauseous and/or throw up

-stop engaging in sleeping/eating/basic hygiene

-stop processing sensory input

-process way too much sensory input all at once

-lash out at others/themselves

-and more!

No, no-one was risking bronze age remains for the sake of Dobby. No, Burnham will not be putting men in women's prisons.

when it's on cable, they've timed the commercial breaks in a way that generally isn't as disruptive. someone took the time to "reformat" the movie for tv.

ads on poob always KNOW that they're on poob and want me to interact with them or click them. the number of QR codes or ads-in-separate-ad-framing/window are infuriating and jarring.

cable commercials are just stupid little skits i can mute to go use the bathroom.

ads on poob are less than 2 minutes--not enough time to do anything, but enough time to piss me off.

cable commercials are 2-5 minutes, which is enough time to go do something/bathroom or snack break, or talk to whoever you're watching with.

ads on poob are the same 3-4 commercials over and over and over and over again, often cutting to them immediately with no warning, and poob struggles to like, catch up to the fact that it's having to show a different progress bar, or a different timer.

cable commercials, esp during primetime, generally cycle through like 10-15 minimum, so you can go an ad break or two without seeing the same commercial. and they usually only pop up during quiet moments, at regular intervals, so you can see them coming--and there isn't a weird lag/loading time.

in both cases i am being accosted by advertisements and treated like a consumer to manipulate and exploit. the volume changes on cable and poob, the brightness level is eye-searing in both cases.

but poob doesn't respect that i'm here for the MOVIE. cable, thanks to preexisting, decades-old norms around broadcast television, still kind of does. kind of. it's easier to ignore those commercials than the ones on poob.

When I think back to my youth, and about how the group I hung out with as a teenager felt to me like they mostly kept me around as the butt of the joke, as someone to make fun of, it's easy for me to assume that that formative social interaction a) actually happened the way I remember it, and b) provided an experiential basis for a belief that I'm "secretly toxic waste that everybody wants rid of".

But seeing this post -- and seeing that tens of thousands of people have agreed with the sentiment -- has led me to the realization (which my therapist agrees with) that this is just a common thought pattern among people with social trauma. And if it's a common post-traumatic thought pattern, then I don't have to accept that it's true; it is extremely unlikely that we are all secretly toxic waste and that nobody really wants us around (in fact, it's far more likely that that's not true of any of us). And that gives me grounds* to look twice at that thought pattern and discard it when it comes up.