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The Void Sings To Me

@melodyofthevoid / melodyofthevoid.tumblr.com

She/Her They/Them   Current Hyperfixation: My Oc blorbos  My AO3: MelodyOfTheVoid    Icon by @lillylunala

June 15 is the anniversary of both the Night Vale and Gravity Falls pilots, as well as Vanessa Doofenshmirtz’s birthday and “give it up for day 15” day

happy birthday to the only things ever

And love händel reunion day and Linda and Lawrence’s anniversary

Hey.

So like, the Reddit strike going on right now, yeah? I've been seeing a lot of people comment on how they appreciate the protest and then go on to say that this has the notable downside of them constantly looking up questions and not being able to easily find the answers because all of the easily-findable answers are exclusively on Reddit. I am not sure if most of the people making this observation are within the line of thought of "man, maybe this protest isn't such a good idea after all" or "man, it really sucks that we've let the internet get so consolidated," and I'm really hoping its the latter.

Like, all of this? This right here? Reddit making a shitty, anti-consumer grab for money and control over how people are allowed to access the information on their servers, and the website going dark in protest causing tons of people to not be able to access important information? This is exactly what people mean when they say that it's bad that the internet has shrunk down so much and is mostly comprised of, like, 10 websites. It's a fucking problem that one company making one bad decision and causing their website to crash and burn can jeopardize so much of humanity's cumulative information.

This two-day glimpse into the internet without Reddit is the warning shot. Imagine what will happen if Reddit actually goes down for good for one reason or another one day. Imagine what will happen if/when Discord or Fandom bites the dust, or gets rendered practically-unusable without paying an ever-increasing premium because they're owned by blood-sucking corporate leeches.

Another big thing is Twitter clamping down really hard on your ability to DM people if you don't have Twitter Blue. If this goes through, it'll put a ton of artists and sex workers who rely on Twitter DMs for their business operation into a shitty situation. Now, obviously, it's not gonna be the end of the world for them, but once again, it feels like a warning shot to me. Twitter is a sinking ship, and unless something changes and it starts to course-correct, I worry that it'll go under and all of the creators who rely on it will suddenly be in an extremely precarious situation.

These are the sorts of things that we, as the users of the internet, need to seriously think about as time goes on, and if we don't find an adequate answer sooner, we're going to pay for it later. I still hold that the best solution is to start making and using more individual, niche websites. Things like Twitter, Reddit, Discord, etc. have their place, of course, but I seriously think a lot was lost through the death of things like individual forums and the existence of many different wiki-hosting sites.

We need a concerted effort, not just on the side of larger creators, but on the users themselves, to stop exclusively using these larger websites and support the creation and growth of smaller, more niche websites, and prevent a catastrophe before it actually happens. I simply hope that people with larger platforms than my own pick up on all this and start talking about it and swaying people to act sooner rather than later. I know it's possible to correct the problem of the mysteriously tiny internet before a modern Library of Alexandria moment happens, I just don't know if that correction will actually happen in time.

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“Progress Shark” outside the Australian Museum, ahead of Sydney Mardi Gras/World Pride Festival 2023.

More flags should be inflatable sharks

Ok this is making me go insane because. that’s a photoshop. it absolutely is, someone’s edited a progress pride flag onto the shark.

you can see spots where the red is misaligned with the top of the body and even extends slightly beyond it. the lines of the flag don’t conform to the shape of the shark’s body at all. you can see the gills through it as if it’s at like 70% opacity.

but like. the progress pride shark is real and it looks like this:

yknow. cause it’s a flag wrapped around a model shark.

why was this edited????? it’s a real thing but for some reason someone edited a digital flag over it instead of just using a real photo of the real thing??? why????

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@i-draws-dinosaurs the original photo(shop) was the mockup the city of Sydney made before the actual event where they wrapped the shark in the flag.

ah okay that would explain it, I was so baffled at the idea that someone had seen the shark and decided to go home and photoshop their own version of a thing that already exists but it being a mockup makes way more sense.

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cat laziness is so contagious. you'll see your cat flopped on its back in your bed a completely comfy cozy baby and you'll be like. you're right. you make a compelling argument.

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Bad: Spending hundreds of pages carefully explaining your meticulously planned worldbuilding.

Also bad: Doing no worldbuilding at all.

Good: Putting in the work of doing the worldbuilding, then refusing to explain or justify any of it, simply mentioning pertinent details briefly and in passing, allowing the reader to glimpse the outline of something vast gliding beneath their narrative point of view's tiny boat.

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@sixsticks replied:

But what if I want to waste thousands of pages world building

That's what the obligatory tie-in tabletop RPG is for.