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Blue

@blue-stupidgang

What up I’m a random activist and I switch my hyper-fixations a lot. Have fun trying to figure out what my newest obsession is! I hang out with my friends at thestupidgang. Be kind but also be fucking loud against white supremacists, neo-nazis, homophobes, islamaphobes, late stage capitalist supporters, terfs, anti-Jewish voices, and everyone else who hurts minorities. (I’m not this angry most of the time I’m mostly just depressed-) Aspec positivity (pictures taken by me, I am the frozen turtle-)

idk what traumatized or mentally ill person needs to hear this but dreams (especially the really disturbing ones you dont want to talk about to anybody) arent some deep peek into your psyche or a sign of your True Desires or whatever theyre quite literally your brain making fruit salad with whatever it can find on the shelf. just putting all that shit in a blender and hitting obliterate. its fine, youre fine, youre not a weirdo for it

A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

during the wga/sag-aftra strike, we may see:

  • film in other countries continuing as usual, but those actors/writers are NOT crossing picket lines! other countries unions often have rules where they can’t strike in solidarity with american unions.
  • new indie movies separate from hollywood studios. indie movies can continue as usual too, and may even use union actors if they follow certain guidelines and/or get permission from the union.
  • awards shows, although they might look different and may be postponed. if there are award shows during the strike, there’s a chance they will just be live conferences announcing winners with no celebrations attached.
  • celebrities will not be promoting their work during this time— that WOULD be crossing the picket line! yes, this includes social media. they can still post on social media, as long as it doesn’t pertain to their work.
  • a lot more reality tv. this happened the last time there was a writers strike, and it will certainly happen again.
  • actors will also not be able to campaign for awards. this awards season is going to be a strange one.
  • propaganda from hollywood. they are already trying to flip the narrative by claiming they can break the unions, but they can’t. the strikers have the power. stand with them for however long this takes!

It’s already happening. Like guys I cannot emphasize this enough the studios are going to make content creators the deal of a lifetime because they have a void to fill and those content creators will then be on the do not work list for the rest of their professional lives.

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I just this morning saw a tumblr post from someone saying they're excited to announce they are in takes with Netflix about remaking some niche anime.

Don't be a scab.

Do not work with any studios right now.

They aren't giving you a chance in the industry. They are tricking you into getting a lifetime blacklist so they can strikebreak.

Do. Not. Scab.

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I want to make this absolutely clear to kids: children didn't used to be stuck inside the house like you are today. There used to be public places you could hang out. It used to be fairly safe to walk around because trucks weren't designed to kill children. You didn't need a car to go anywhere so kids without a license weren't trapped. There weren't 24/7 cable news networks constantly scaring parents with anecdotes even as crime was at all time lows and the biggest danger comes from adults kids know not strangers.

It's easy to ignore old people talking about "the good ol' days" because a lot of the people saying that shit are racist assholes, but the way society treats kids today really is objectively worse than how kids used to be treated. You deserve better, and you should know that better things are possible. We just need to kill the suburbs and for-profit news.

When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, I could go for a bike ride or walk with my sister or friends and we could leave after breakfast and not come back until dinner and our parents weren't worried. We lived on the edge of town, so we could turn left into the woods or turn right and go downtown or go straight and go to a friend's house in the neighborhood. I went to a park or the community pool or went out for ice cream alone from a young age.

I also regularly walked to and from school alone from as young as first grade (so, about age 6). And I'm not saying I walked three miles uphill in snow both ways, but I checked a map and it was over half a mile and crossed at least one street that people drive pretty fast on. And that was normal.

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All the same for the ‘60s.

Why they're smearing Lina Khan

My god, they sure hate Lina Khan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.

She sure must be doing something right, huh?

A quick refresher. In 2017, Khan — then a law student — published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox in the Yale Law Journal. It was a brilliant, blistering analysis showing how the Reagan-era theory of antitrust (which celebrates monopolies as “efficient”) had failed on its own terms, using Amazon as Exhibit A of the ways in which post-Reagan antitrust had left Americans vulnerable to corporate abuse:

The paper sent seismic shocks through both legal and economic circles, and goosed the neo-Brandeisian movement (sneeringly dismissed as “hipster antitrust”). This movement is a rebuke to Reaganomics, with its celebration of monopolies, trickle-down, offshoring, corporate dark money, revolving-door regulatory capture, and companies that are simultaneously too big to fail and too big to jail.

“These talking points got picked up by people commenting on Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling against the FTC in the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC was seeking an injunction against the merger, and Corley turned them down flat. The ruling was objectively very bad. Start with the fact that Corley’s son is a Microsoft employee who stands reap massive gains in his stock options if the merger goes through.“

“This is surreal: a judge ruled that a corporation’s radical, massive merger shouldn’t be subject to full investigation because that corporation itself set an arbitrary deadline to conclude the deal before such an investigation could be concluded.“

Two points that stood out to me about the microsoft/activisiion judgement recently.

Anonymous asked:

I just don’t think Meghan has a leg here. She is a princess, no one wants to hear from her on strikes.

Meghan was a working actress for decades. She was a working royal for 18 months. She benefits massively from her show reaching syndication. She stands to lose depending on how Netflix negotiated residuals for Suits with it being out of cable reruns now.

Meghan knows what it’s like to scrimp and scrap for years. She was a working actress doing bit parts her whole 20s!

The fact is that honestly if she didn’t marry Harry, Suits might have been her biggest hit and again residuals would have a huge impact on her. She completely has a leg to stand on joining this fight. Just like she had one speaking up for BLM.

In fact, A-Listers NEED to be using their spotlight to highlight the strike and the working actors who make up the bulk of Hollywood who don’t make millions per movie. It’s important that people like Meryl Streep or Jennifer Lawrence or Matt Damon or Margot Robbie join the strike. A-list talent walking off set and refusing to take part in press and promo is part of what gives the Union huge bargaining power even if those elite actors are not necessarily hurting financially. But also, a lot of A-Listers also have huge stakes in the fight because it’s also about control of their image and their long term financial profit, too.

Meghan is a producer now with a new production company. If she wants top talent on her productions she needs to be ten toes down in solidarity, too.

Meghan was/is SAG. The Union protected her as a working actress, she can use the outrageous spotlight on her to stand in solidarity and to support working actors.

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A lot of people don't seem to know that a bunch of older stars end up in poverty. Fame is fleeting. The glamorous role often doesn't pay as well as you think.

Tales of Angela Landsbury insisting ageing stars get roles on Murder She Wrote so they could retain their medical insurance.

Every worker needs unions. Bit-part workers need A-lister solidarity. Being an A-lister doesn't last forever.

ALT

don’t forget during the WGA strike that animation is not covered under the WGA deals and as a result animation has gotten the shortest possible end of the stick in under-staffing, under-paying, and generally turning the field into gig employment.

please sign the petition here for Disney to recognize animation production workers as a union and reblog this post!

what black mirror episode are we in now

I s2g if I hear anyone bitching when shit stops coming out bc of these strikes I'm gonna start stabbing. This is insane and I hope they keep striking until the studios are so desperate they're ready to give them everything they ask.

Honestly, I might bitch when stuff doesn't come out. Because if the studios would pay fairly and not force the creatives, whose work I enjoy and want more of, to stop work to gain a baseline level of respect for creating something people want to buy this wouldn't be happening. Bitch about the strikes all you as long as you're clear it's the studios that are preventing anything coming out.

So yeah, I might complain about how the AMPTP hasn't rolled over and let them have their way. It's not the actors who are to blame for the strike, just as it's not the studios responsible for the work you love.

History cares about the artists not their patrons. Who paid for Leonardo's paints? Who cares? They didn't produce the Mona Lisa.

Ok yeah that bitching is totally valid and I'll be doing it too.

your favorite youtubers and content creators are about to be offered some tantalizing tv/streaming deals so we're all about to find out who the real working class allys are

someone's gonna get cancelled doing this and they're gonna cry crocodile tears over how difficult it is to make a living as a content creator and i'm telling you right now we are NOT going to buy it, got it? scabs deserve no sympathy

It is hard making a living being a quote unquote "content creator" still not an excuse to be a scab

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This.

Trying to make a living from YouTube is like constantly running along the edge of a knife in clogs, it is incredibly stressful, it is mentally destructive and you do a truly obscene amount of work for genuinely very little compensation relative to the hours put in.

A big one-time payout from a streaming deal from some desperate studio jackoff could be life-changing, but it does not come for fucking free. The money they are offering you is money they have ripped directly from the hands and mouths of other creatives.

If you saw someone rip food out of someone else's hands and then offer it to you, you wouldn't fucking take it, would you? If you have a shred of decency you'll tell the guy to give the fucking food back and go get fucked. And if you were the one getting food ripped out of your hands, you'd reasonably expect the people around you to have that same solidarity with you and not accept it.

The industry will try to abstract this as much as possible - they're doing it in the press right now, "oh it's just a bunch of rich, selfish Hollywood elites making a play for more money!" is EXPLICITLY an attempt to get you to see the union members as something other than your fellow workers - and they'll try to pull shit like "oh the strike has nothing to do with you, you're not a member of the union and you won't see the benefits so why should you sacrifice this opportunity for them" and so on.

They're trying to make the issue more distant and abstract, to alienate you from your fellow human beings. And in response we must make it closer and more concrete.

The money they offer to a scab is taken from the hands of a union member. They are offering you a union member's student loan payments, their rent, their food budget, their kids' college funds.

Do not take it. It is not and can never be worth it.

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i genuinely dont care if the creation of all media comes to a screeching halt btw i will very gladly live with no new movies no new tv shows no new anything for years if that's what it takes for the people who create them to be treated like human beings. i hope every other facet of the entertainment industry goes on strike too and i hope all the ones that havent unionised yet will. i want media creation to become completely impossible and i want the people who could make it possible again to hold out until they get every single thing they want. btw