nintendo.com – March 2009
Tag: internet
no one is required to publicly list their exact age, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, medical history etc in an age where doxxing someone who isn’t careful with their information is about as easy as making cereal.
share what you’re comfortable with sharing.
some of you are filling out your abouts like it’s the fucking census
The concept of “spyware” has disappeared from the common internet lingo after it became the case that the word could now be used to describe nearly every major website and a huge percentage of the most commonly-used software.
I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.
Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.
This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.
So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.
The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.
People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.
I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.
I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim.
It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having
to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business.This post hits SO hard.
people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”
i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today
this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them
this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?
You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist.
When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective.
No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream.
A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’
You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions.
I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior.
I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are.
I think the idea that there weren’t things done exclusively for clout or whatever on the early interne is frankly ridiculous, of course there was, it’s just that the internet culture then was more decentralized. And yes, I do think that there is still an internet culture, it’s just becoming more part of real life culture. I also think that it’s ridiculous to think that people don’t post things just as a way to express themselves or document something for themselves, or not for clout, on the internet. I refuse to believe that the early internet was all genuine self-expression and that the modern internet is all clout-chasing. That just doesn’t make sense.
Basically as soon as the first social sites, ads, and online stores popped up, it was possible to use the internet for clout. And even then, humans actions are mostly inherently somewhat performative. Even my Google Photos archive, which nobody but me ever sees in its entirety, is somewhat of a performative form of self-expression, because it paints a picture of me and I can control what that image is. I think it might be reductionist to think ALL human actions are performative, but so many of them are and I think it’s unlikely at best that there wasn’t image cultivation even in the earliest internet messaging.
I get it. I also have nostalgia for some of my early internet experiences. I also view things with rose-colored glasses. I am also concerned about the steady corporate onslaught of the modern internet. I also like Tumblr because of its old internet-esque charms. But I don’t think the dichotomy between old and modern internet is as strong as some of you are claiming that it is.
tl;dr: People posted/did things for clout on the old internet too and people post things out of a genuine desire to share something on today’s internet as well.
“tumblr is so embarrassing-”
I was on deviantart and fanfiction.net for the entire first decade of this century
embarrassing content is a normal part of being a teen on the internet
listen, this ain’t new, my buddy, my pal, everyone is embarrassing always
You guys really think your lip sync tik toks are gonna age well in a decade?
This is the shit that humbles you later in life.
ok but legitimately i think the reason why kids aren’t taking internet safety seriously is because the people who are telling us not to put our personal information out seem so out of touch. no one acknowledges the possibility of meeting very real teenaged friends online, they always say that everyone you meet is a 40 year old white man in disguise. because they aren’t acknowledging things we know are true, it becomes a lot easier to dismiss the rest of what they’re saying as well. internet safety lessons absolutely must keep up with the times and acknowledge the internet’s capacity for good if you want kids to take to heart warnings about its capacity for bad.
Some actual safety tips for teenagers:
1. Have proof they’re a teenager first. More than just a picture, have a video call with them.
2. If you want to meet up with them, have your parents or a trusted adult come with you. Even if they are a proven teenager, its still good to have supervision in case any issues happen.
3. If you are talking to an adult, and they start being sexual in any way, you run the fuck away. It doesn’t matter if they’re 40 or 20. An adult inherently has a power dynamic that teenagers do not. And its up to the adult to act responsible about it. There’s exceptions of course, if you’re 16 and dating an 18 year old, that’s not a problem, we’re not talking about that.
4. Being in a server with adults or ran by adults is not inherently bad. Talking to adults is not inherently a problem, and will likely happen in any number of Discord servers. It is only an issue when they are acting sexual and show predatory behavior.
5. Look out for grooming behavior. It can be difficult, because at first it seems like innocuous behavior, like complimenting or giving gifts. Especially if you feel lonely and have low self esteem. And groomers actively target people like that.
If they start trying to isolate you, talk sexual with you, state they depend on you for emotional needs, blame you for their own actions, try to be secretive about the relationship- Then you need to talk to people you trust, block the perpetrator, and call the police on them.
6. If this does happen to you, remember this: It is not your fault. Even if you didn’t listen to a single thing listed here, it is not your fault. It is the fault of the adults who knew better, and didn’t care. It’s not your fault.
To my followers: if any of you guys are underaged, please be very VERY careful on here, and don’t fall for any of the tricks the groomer would use on you, just block them and report them.
Growing up and having to make professional social media accounts after years of being told never to share your personal info on the internet is such an experience. Sorry LinkedIn, you want my REAL name? The name of my high school?? where I’m BASED??? You mean i can’t just put my location as Reykjavik and my birthdate as 4/20/1279???
#people who use their real names on their everyday twitters fucking terrify me#‘i want david tennant to slap my ass’ really cindy?? Cindy Smith of Baltimore MA?? in front of your family and yr boss? and Georgia Tennant?36 notes
And actually the fact that the actions of five major companies could even remotely be considered censorship or a violation of the first amendment highlights a MAJOR problem with the way the internet operates.
Basically, we really need the internet to be decentralized and less… The Way It Is
ifesbob 