OwlQween

Don't. Take. The. Bait.

I mean, it goes without saying don't take the bait and if you absolutely positively HAVE to respond to someone's hot take, use a screenshot rather than QTing to deny them the engagement...

...but what's going on here is actually funnier and far dumber than that and is classic Musk bullshit.

See, Elon Musk figured the way to attract people to his $8/mo subscription service was to promise a share of ad revenue similar to YouTube and Twitch models. The idea was to drive up subscribers among content creators who would then get a boost in the algorithm for their work and the ability to make a portion of the ad revenue as well.

Of course, that requires Musk paying people what they're owed and actually doing what he said he'd do. Which fucking LOL.

So what he's done is created a pool of $5 million (note that Twitter's ad revenue in 2021 before the buyout was something like $4.5 billion a year and even if the highest estimates are accurate that's only dropped by 90% so that's about $450 million in annual ad revenue) that is being paid to verified users for each time their tweet is viewed by verified users.

Notice that last little bit. Verified users.

AKA Twitter Blue subscribers.

So what has now happened is the promise "revenue sharing" is dipshits paying $8/mo to Musk making content for other dipshits paying $8/mo to Musk and in exchange for their subscriptions, Musk is paying them back pennies.

Still, the above is best practice anyway because engagement feeds tha algorithm which increases the reach for accounts. If someone posts a shitty take, it's more than likely intentional to get you to rage-QT or reply, which increases their ranking in the algorithm which gets them in front of more people. So don't engage. Deny them the attention they want.

How did he make a monetisation model worse than tiktok's. This is so funny. This is tiktok's model except that both the content creators and the users have to pay an unreasonable price for it.

every day i am percieved™️

There is a reason for this though!

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.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. 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.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

I feel understood 🥰

a bunch of people have reblogged this with the default “i feel called out” reaction….and i know when we say that we mean it tongue-in-cheek….but this comment sorta blew my mind & shifted my perspective up and to the left a little thank you♥

I'm not even that old but it's strange that wtnv is not everyone's first audio drama anymore. And even the older people I talk to aren't caught up or stopped listening a long time ago.

We need to bring wtnv back into the limelight because it did not fucking FLY for the rest of your podcasts to run.

I fucking hate game apps. I wanted to play tetris the otherday so I figured there must be a simple tetris app out there its the most basic game. But every app is like heres your daily log in bonus of 10 gold! You get 5 free plays a day. Here's an ad. To replay a level costs 1 diamond. You can eart gold by earning points in levels. 1000 points = 1 gold. You can exchange 550 gold for one diamond but we have a sale right now that they only cost 500 gold. Heres an ad. You can buy a loot crate of diamonds for 5.99$! You leveled up! Heres 1 free diamond. Youve run out of free replays for today, would you like to buy some more diamonds? Heres your daily tasks, make sure to log in every day this month for a free reward chest. its free! Heres an ad. Would you like to sign up for this credit card to recieve 10 free diamonds? Invite a friend and you can earn points! Ding! Youve leveled up. Heres an ad. This is our special bonus play weekend, you get one free replay and a pack of diamonds only costs 4.99$. You can use your gold to purchase new skins for the tetris blocks. This ones shaped like cats! It costs 100 diamonds. You need to collect them all. Free to play, may be some in-app purchases.

I agree with literally everything op is saying and I don't want to detract from their point but this website here, specifically for mobile games (though they intend to eventually branch out to other types) is creating a database that flags those exact types of predatory things. It also flags games as safe, so if you want to look for safe mobile games this is an invaluable resource.

https://www.darkpattern.games/

It also has definitions, explanations, and examples of all the different types of psychological manipulations games pull on the website so if anyone ever tries to give you "just don't spend money, it's easy" you can send them this

God can you imagine if Donald Trump became president? There’d be like a new bubonic plague and he’d be like “idk drink bleach about it”

Throwback to when I took acid for the first time in 2013 and predicted the events of 2020 like the fucking oracle of Delphi

Holy shit

same energy

there’s more

SIGH

here’s another one

IT GETS WORSE WITH EVERY ADDITION

how does this get even worse

I think about once in a while...

We have another one...

This is the internet now tho 😭💀

@lifeistooshorttowasteyourtime @marril96 @latent-thoughts @suometar

😂😂😂

Omg so many additions since I last saw this post! 😂😂😂

It's funny but incredibly telling how entitled/ignorant/insensitive some of these people are... idk if it's an education gap or purposeful ignorance.

The really bewildering thing to me is that I remember when you needed to get up and pull a dictionary off the shelf, or visit a library to look up the facts you needed. Now people have all kinds of information literally at their fingertips and they can’t be bothered to use it.

Oh dear gods, it's gotten worse

When you know politics but no facts

don’t take people too seriously on the internet

This hits different when combined with that "Americans don't learn other countries exist till they're in 5th Grade" post from the other day.

Demily recently got another one lads

Also, I love that, in the sign language one, it seems like the last image might've been a gif of "fuck you," screenshot at the perfect time to let you know they were about to sign "fuck you"

As a romanian person I gotta add this one too

This is my favourite post on this website

Watching a new sitcom is just “oh so that’s where that meme comes from”

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend lyrics + Community screenshots 

Inspired by this WWDITS edit. 

“so do what you do best: keep your superior officer from accomplishing absolutely anything.” aka doug eiffel ungovernable moments. can you believe this man was in the air force.

me at a party: they don't know I want to explain why "stranger danger" was a reagan propaganda campaign to promote nuclear family "values" and increase police power, which then lead to mass incarceration. they don't know kidnappings in the 80s were purposefully sensationalized in the media and that the claimed statistics were exaggerated. they don't know most children are abused or kidnapped by someone they know, especially a parent, and that isolation of families prevents children from seeking help and support within their communities not available at home.

wait until you learn a lot of "protect our children" rhetoric from politicians has the exact same goal and methods while straying from actual causes of abuse and solutions to it because there's not enough money to be made in the truth

Did you know? The reason citation in APA use only initials and not full names is because some women ran an experiment. They submitted some articles they’d written to a journal and the articles were rejected. They changed nothing about the articles except the authors’ names, which they changed to male names, and resubmitted them. The articles were accepted.

what the fuck ethan

I wish i had a context for this. But I really dont.

I was all ready to “um, actually” this, but, um, actually there’s about 3-4 grams of iron in a person, which x400 is 1.2-1.6kg, which is a smallish but not unreasonable sword. So. Math checks out.

How would you extract the iron, though? The more practical solution would be to kill a mere hundred men, then mix 1 part blood with 3 parts standard molten iron, imo. Cheaper and faster, while still retaining the edge that only evil magic can give you.

Or, you could just make the sword of iron, and then use the blood to temper the blade.

1.2 to 1.6 kilograms is a perfectly reasonable large sword.  Your average longsword was 1.1–1.8 kg and I don’t even remember if that’s including the weight of the hilt, guard, and pommel or just the blade.  Your more classic “knight sword” was a mere 1.1 kilograms on average; the blood of 400 men is more than enough.

This is using the comparatively crappy metallurgy of medieval Europe and their meh iron swords.  Move east to, say, contemporary Iran and make a scimitar using high carbon steel (~2%) for a .75 kilogram blade and you only need the blood of about 225 men.

So putting my thoughts in on this… because how could I not.

So you’ve exsanguinated your 400 guys to get the iron for your sword. Cool. But now you have 400 bodies lying around.

Why not put those to good use and cremate them. Use the carbon from those 400 bodies (you won’t need all of them) and now you can make a nice mid-high carbon steel sword.

Now you have a sword forged with the blood of your enemies AND strengthened with their bones.

“high fantasy math” - the tag I should have expected to write some day.

I’m so proud of everyone in this post

I am thinking at the same time both “what the fuck” and “I’m impressed.”

High fantasy math is the best math.

Sometimes when I go hundreds pages deep into people’s Tumblr archives, I find really funny posts and I weigh the pros and cons of liking/reblogging them.

Pros: I’ll have access to them later because they’re fucking hilarious

Cons: They might think I’m creepy. Despite the fact that it’s public and on the Internet, it is not socially acceptable to let anyone know the extent that you creeped their archives.

I hereby extend blanket permission for anyone to creep on my archive, and to like and reblog posts from it if they want to. It’s really quite flattering.

Tumblr’s search functions means it’s easy to see someone’s years-old posts grouped together. (You find one on a tag search. You go to their blog to look at it. You wind up seeing five other “like this” posts, which are based on keywords, not chronological order.) Like, reblog, follow as your heart desires. If they want “ugh don’t go crawling through my archives” they can move to another site.

Listening to a podcast when a wild Zach Valenti appears! It’s always welcome!

I’ve said this before but there has never been a single patriarchal society in existence, including and especially the most ultra-conservative ones you can think of, that didn’t have an established prostitution culture. And this isn’t because prostitution is a counterculture reaction against conservative patriarchal values. It’s because strict morality codes governing women’s behaviour don’t just confine the women who fit within them, it keeps a class of ‘fallen women’ who cannot escape a life of sexual exploitation, by design, helping men categorise the different types of ways they can exploit women.  The “wh*re” is just as much a patriarchal invention as the “madonna”.

people really go “I want a story where the female lead...” and then say something that already happened on the cw’s “crazy ex girlfriend”

The existence of r/CuratedTumblr is so funny to me. The layers to it.

So, this is ostensibly a subreddit where people post screencaps of the “good” bits of tumblr. You know, curated. If only there was a way to get good tumblr post chosen by a selection of people you trust to show you good tumblr posts!

And then the whole fact that this happens on reddit. Like, you get all the popular tumblr posts except with a comment section where unfunny reddit people say lines from other funny tumblr posts to each other and receive the most epic of upvotes.

Like what these people clearly want is being on tumblr but they cannot just use tumblr because they don’t understand how it works and because being on tumblr is cringe. Which, fair. But then their solution is to poorly recreate tumblr on reddit with all the redditor bullshit that implies which is probably the only more cringe way of experiencing tumblr than being on tumblr itself

sadly, i have to report that this not only made it to the subreddit, but currently has 900 upvotes

and yes the comments are as insufferable as can be expected

my friend just told me that there's a secret second dashboard that solely contains posts from people you've turned on post notifications for, and when i click the link in the messages it opens it within the tumblr app, so the tumblr app also has a secret second dashboard for post notification blogs, and the only way to access it is to open the link for it within the app.

i literally love tumblr

This website really is held together by a pair of shoelaces isn’t it