Amor vincit omnia

Archive for an undead being.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Remade now, still under construction but I have started following (and blocking) people on the new blog.

[cyborgbutterflies]

I will probably be free to attempt to remake sooner than expected, but at the same time I am still not entirely sure I want to.

For one, new changes to the site (like the public group chats) still seem pretty incompetent and disconnected, implying the new management still isn’t very good.

But also, even though I have a lot of thoughts I think I would enjoy expressing, this does not feel like a particularly good environment for that. We all know people on this site have a reputation for being illiterate and proud of it, on top of taking everything in bad faith for maximum outrage. Do I really want to spend time writing for people like that when I could be writing Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for my friends?

But at the same time, my friends also say they might enjoy having an organized collection of my thoughts and interests like that again, in which case it might be worth doing. Making the people I value happy is what pleases me the most.

I think I might end up leaving the decision up to them.

P.S. As some of you may know, I have blocked a lot of people over the years. The idea of doing it again on a new account is a bit overwhelming, but at the same time it could be a bit fun.

[cyborgbutterflies]

I still remember that time a therapist told me to see if I could join the LGBT group at college and I just could not see why I would. There was no reason to believe the people there would have anything in common with me that I actually cared about.

In fact, I feel like I probably have less in common with people who go to LGBT groups than I do with random strangers on the street. I find spaces that highlight that kind of thing super alienating too.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Am I the only LGBT person who finds the LGBT community at large kind of insufferable?

I honestly think I would prefer to be friends with cis straight people who just didn’t care about superficial things like that and got to know me based on my actual interests and thoughts over LGBT people who treat saying “I’m gay” as a personality trait and want to befriend me primarily due to shared demographics and who have absolutely nothing in common with me besides that.

I think if I remake I’m going to avoid talking too much about those identity categories unless they are actually relevant to something, like I started doing on this blog at some point. This is not because I am ashamed of them (I see no reason to consider them anything but neutral) but because I don’t want to attract those types too frequently. 

They would only get disappointed when I tell them I’m not a bitter communist like all of them seem to be for some reason.

P.S. About 30-40 days left.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Ever since I was a literal baby I always had this wicked urge to question everything, even things society considered to be above scrutiny or criticism. I just wasn’t very good at the whole “obedience to authority” thing despite growing up with hardcore authoritarians.

This doesn’t mean I am negative about everything, but things like appeals to popularity, tradition, or conformity just don’t work on my autistic ass.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Well, I decided I might actually remake in a few months after all.

Partly because I just really feel like complaining about that communist fiend Xi Jinping and his concentration camp-running, organ-harvesting, censorship-loving, oppressive government lately. I also just complain a lot in general.

Whining about bad things is in my nature and I don’t want to change it because I am great and politicians are not.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Making a note now so you all know what to expect if I remake. I have so far considered making rather long-winded posts on various special interests and other things I have thoughts on, such as:

Difficulty in games: In which I intend to talk about the value it can bring to an experience as well as situations in which it can be detrimental. I feel like there are many games in which difficulty is part of what makes the game good and contributes to the game’s atmosphere in a significant way, to the point where playing the game on easy mode would result in a weaker experience. However, there are also games that handle difficulty so poorly that they are actually better to play on easier difficulties. This is going to be partly a remake of an older post I have made on the subject, but does include new information.

Low-empathy thoughts: Because they are actually closer to “Can’t relate” and “Unfortunate” than to “I want everyone to be miserable for no reason”. I feel like people’s model of low empathy almost always includes some form of completely unrestrained and thoughtless sadism that just does not have to be present.

Snake Positivity: As a narcissist, I find myself identifying with snakes somewhat. Everything from the Bible to Harry Potter treats them as evil and sinister, but they really just want to be left alone and do their own thing. Also, animals are my friends.

Infodumping on the setting I’m working on: I have literally over 20 setting ideas written down to be developed at some point. This time, I decided to work on a D&D setting in which the player characters are the latest descendants of a necromancer family and perform a cursed ritual that enables them to become the first vampires in the entire setting before the game even begins. The ridiculously overpowered players get a ton of points to buy customizable vampire powers and will then decide what to do with their new abilities in an open sandbox environment which I have attempted to prepare for any possible goal they might want to set for themselves.

The left, sexuality, and cultural self-deprivation: I have noticed that the left has grown more hostile to things like anime than it once was, to the point where their feelings of shame regarding it leads to missing out on things they would otherwise enjoy such as representation, good stories about abuse survivors, and more. To be honest this might not really be such a bad thing since both the left and the right are really toxic right now.

Dissociating form humanity: Possibly related to my low empathy feelings and autism. I can like humans in a sort of abstract way (things like the moon landing and the eradication of smallpox are still super inspiring to me) but I don’t feel human and don’t want to be human. I feel like I can’t relate to people and like few share my thoughts, interests, and feelings.

Politics in fiction: Why people might complain about its presence, and how to do it right. This one is complicated and I intend to go into more detail if I actually write the post eventually. Basically, you don’t want stories to be like those political cartoons that label everything and tell you what you should think about issues instead of actually letting you think about them. People who don’t already agree with you might feel like they’re being fed propaganda if you do that, and often the issue amounts to bad writing.

My decreasing enjoyment of games: I notice that I don’t enjoy playing on the computer as much as I did when I was a child and now spend most of my time writing instead. Here I intend to go over what changed and hopefully compare experiences with others who have experienced the same decline in pleasure.

Abuse: As usual, there’s a lot to talk about regarding abuse and my own experiences with it. In particular, I feel like a certain corner of the internet has taken to blaming basically all emotional abuse on narcissists but as far as I can tell child abuse is more of a widespread cultural problem that cannot reasonably be pinned on a mentally ill minority. A lot of parents honestly do think that extreme authoritarianism is needed to be good at parenting.

There are more things I might eventually want to post about if I decide to bother with it, but this is what I have thought about so far.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Future Plans

So... I am late to commenting on this since I have been busy with other things (and will probably continue to be for at least a few months) but it finally happened. Tumblr was sold for no more than 3 million dollars.

This is not really a surprise since Verizon had been looking to sell for a while and the site lost so much of its population (while the bots are still around), but the sheer loss to Verizon has become a bit of a joke because of how getting involved with this site at all was such a bad deal for them.

Anyway, as I said in my last post, there is some possibility that I may remake and continue to use the site now that doing so would not support Verizon’s decision, but I am still not entirely sure I want to do that.

Here are my thoughts.

Pros

1- I have met a handful of people who are important to me through this site, including a couple of my closest friends.

What this tells me is that there are worthwhile and interesting people out there, and a site like this, with how it causes similar people to cluster together, might be a particularly good way to find them.

However, I also feel like I don’t really have much of a desire or need to meet more people. My social group seems so good already that I am reluctant to actively change anything about it. Meeting more interesting people just isn’t that important to me, and even when it comes to people I do like I still feel pretty disconnected from them a lot of the time. Like we just work very differently or something.

2- I have a few thoughts I feel may be worth sharing.

If I was to remake, I already have some ideas for early posts which have to do with things like fiction (because I have special interests I like to infodump about), and what my thoughts as a low-empathy person actually are like.

I feel like people have tons of misconceptions about what lacking empathy feels like and what behaviors it involves. These misconceptions usually arise from people armchair-diagnosing literally all abuse as narcissism and blaming all evils on lack of empathy.

People use terms like “narcissism” and “lack of empathy” as synonyms of “Always Chaotic Evil” and I never really understood why.

Sure, I don’t mirror people’s emotions and feel disconnected from humanity, but can someone explain why that would ever motivate me to be pointlessly cruel to everyone around me? Because I don’t really see much of a reason to do that.

Even when there’s people I dislike I prefer to just avoid and block them instead of being awful to them. I don’t see why I should behave differently due to lack of empathy, and I actually see lots of people who feel normal levels of empathy hurting others like this all the time.

So... I don’t really expect that many people to listen, but it might be good to put some experiences from someone who actually is low empathy out there. As it is, the narrative is controlled by armchair psychs from reddit who think anyone who is overly mean must be a narcissst.

3- I might be able to provide my friends with some content they might like.

A few of my friends still use this site for some reason, and I feel that if I started using it again I might at least be able to find pictures or jokes they like every now and then. It’s not much since I can already do that without interacting with tumblr but it’s something I guess.

Cons

1- Pleasant people are the exception.

We all know about what kind of reputation this site has, and it is well-deserved. A lot of the people around here are not only proudly ignorant and detached from reality, but also downright nasty in how they treat others and so prone to outrage that they have basically no good will towards anyone other than their personal friend circles (and sometimes not even that).

I am famously block-happy, but I became like this for a reason. Even within communities that like to think of themselves as nice (like rationalist tumblr), I noticed a lot of behavior that I want nothing to do with, such as people telling others to kill themselves.

I would even call many of the individuals on this site abusive in some way. You see, there is this concept called “abuse by proxy” that I wish everyone who has ever reblogged a callout post was familiar with. 

The most effective abusers don’t act alone. They try to paint their victims as evil and deserving of whatever punishment the abuser may want to inflict on them, and in doing this they can manipulate others into carrying out these punishments for them. They present a one-sided narrative with themselves as the victim and their target as some kind of evil creep, which motivates bystanders to take their side and attack the target in a variety of ways, from harassment to doxxing and death threats.

Not all such claims are false, of course, but the risk of being used as a tool to hurt others is higher than you might think, and abusing people is bad regardless. 

That is what I believe, at least. The rest of this site seems to think very differently. They get caught up in outrage and a desire for punishment to the point where any attempt to get them to stop causes them to view you as evil or spineless or something. I have even seen people get labeled as fascists or fascist-sympathizers because of their discomfort with violence and hurting people.

Do I really want to spend my time having to block rationalists again when I could just hang out with my friends and write about things that make me happy?

2- The ban is still in effect

I appreciate that tumblr’s new owner is honest enough about the ban to put the blame on Apple (and likely also new anti-sex worker legislation) instead of making up nonsense about positivity and “female-presenting nipples” but in the end this is still a site where even wholesome content gets censored because bots consider it to be porn.

Not only that, the ban has had a very negative effect on the site as a whole. Many artists have left already, taking at least some of their fans with them. The userbase has declined, and the atmosphere of the site has also changed in a way that also affects blogs that were never about porn.

3- I just have better things to do

I have been writing another fantasy setting for my friends to play in. I am currently at 65,000 words on the setting details and nowhere near done. Writing down my thoughts on various things is also important to me, of course, but not more important than having a good time with the people I value the most.

In Conclusion

I don’t know if I want to come back to this. There are costs and benefits that I have not fully calculated yet and I might want to wait until my schedule stabilizes a bit (sometime early next year) before I make my decision because I don’t want to deal with tumblr that much while I’m this busy.

What I do know is that if I do come back I’ll still want to block nearly all rationalists on the site.

[cyborgbutterflies]

Tumblr: An Ongoing Failure

It has now been 6 months since tumblr’s NSFW ban went into effect. As you may have noticed, I did not post at all during that time.

I have returned not to use the site but to bury it, and to encourage you to do the same.

As you may know already, the NSFW ban was a site-breaking mistake that has led to as much as 30% of the users leaving in less than half a year. That is how long it took for the site to be put up for sale after the ban.

Back in December, I predicted that while the site was unlikely to straight up shut down anytime soon, there would be a significant loss of users and communities. The ban affected not only actual porn blogs, but also users such as NSFW artists, sex workers, and more. Not only that, but a lot of these users had followings that partly left with them.

So it seems everything is going as I thought it would. The site is bleeding users, communities are disappearing, and it may be sold to Pornhub (which probably won’t save it at this point).

In a few years tumblr might be just like Myspace or Livejournal: Technically alive but irrelevant.

And I actually don’t think that is such a bad thing by now.

When big companies make terrible, unpopular decisions, it is up to consumers to stop rewarding them. To show them that they can’t just do whatever they want and still get money.

Big companies will follow whatever plan they think will bring them the most money. If the reaction to one particular decision is not only socially but financially negative for them, other companies might be more likely to reconsider making similar decisions in the future.

When a site (or any other kind of service or company) does things you strongly dislike, you don’t have to keep using it.

You don’t have to buy Apple products if their anti-consumer business practices bother you.

You don’t have to buy games that heavily feature loot boxes if you consider them predatory and harmful to game design.

You don’t have to use sites that clumsily throw porn-searching bots at you and hide a significant percentage of your completely safe posts, which can only be appealed by running them through a second bot.

Companies only get away with doing things like that because people keep paying them in some way. 

Just complaining and logging out for a single day may not even register to them if everyone just goes back to using the site normally immediately after. The permanent exodus that began soon after the ban was first announced seems like what really had lasting consequences in the areas that matter to profit-maximizing dudes in suits.

I know that some people feel bound to this site, or like they are doing something defiant by continuing to use it even as the owners screw them over. You are free to do what you want but I think this kind of thinking is likely to lead to bad decisions. 

If you don’t enjoy what is (for a lot of people at least) meant to be recreational but continue doing it out of habit when you could be doing things that actually make you happy, you are only sabotaging yourself.

Personally, I have no loyalty to this site. I stopped using it as easily as I’d stop using a shattered glass. I am posting now, on the 6th-month anniversary, to let you know that you can and probably should do this too, at least until the site changes hands.

Consumers who coordinate to drop services like this can make a difference, if enough people participate.

P.S. I have been doing fine in the meantime. My health has collapsed to the point where I need to have one of my organs removed and fibromyalgia is basically confirmed but at least I’m a permanent resident of Canada now and have been having fun with my harem. We now have both ongoing D&D campaigns and a Minecraft server (though I’m often too tired to play there due to fibro).

I don’t intend to post more on this blog after this but may answer some questions for the next week or so and, >if< the site does end up changing hands and reversing its disastrous changes, I might also remake even if the site is doomed to die.

[valtsv]

“tall/small couples are problematic because there’s a power imbalance” is NOT one of the cold takes i expected to see at the end of 2018, and YET,

[valtsv]

*breaking up with my s.o.* it’s not you, it’s just you’re 6'4" and tumblr told me that means our relationship is unhealthy,

[tallgreenlady]

This is apparently the discourse in question?

[ruffboi-mags]

oh. my. god.

[higglety]

this just in: short people can’t date

[recursivelyassembling]

#actully on second thought im glad this hellsite is dying #pull the plug tumblr#do it #put us all out of our misery #set us free

fucking cosigned

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

“Any relationship with a short person is problematic because of a power imbalance”

I guess I’d better tell my girlfriend she’s Problematic for loving me

Also oh my god

Reading the above post made me Genuinely Envy The Dead

Because they never had to live to read how Steven Universe ships are “Problematic” because Something Something Bullshit or that short people shouldn’t date the tall because That’s Abuse Apparently

[gabriel-strange]

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/8yae3p/together_with_tiamatmama/

[cyborgbutterflies]

It's actually a very positive and heartwarming story beneath all the abuse, murder, suicide, genocide, and whatever you call that thing where one of the main characters is stuck in a time loop where she gets repeatedly murdered.

[xtelos]

fgo a week ago: i guess the real spirit of christmas was the friends we made

fgo now: everyones dead, shits fucked and humanity is on the verge of extinction

[gabriel-strange]

(x)

[thirdmagic]

also i’ve been thinking about this whole scene since yesterday…. i’m still thinking about it…… like… there’s a Lot going on here, and the whole topic is making me wonder if nasu actually looked at the one of two scrolls solomon was traditionally said to have written (he probably didn’t actually write it but that’s not the point) (that one also happens to be one of my favorites so that makes me happy) or if it’s just a coincidence because these themes are right up his alley anyway, and also at first i was like ‘roman are you okay’ before i realized that something’s off and now i’m starting to wonder if ‘are you okay’ is the question i should be asking about the spoiler boy trying to destroy us all???????? which is also a very nasu thing to happen actually?????? but for now i’ll just quietly add this to the list of stuff i need to come back to once the spoilers actually happen

[cyborgbutterflies]

I felt kind of like this when I was like 4 years old and discovered aging killed people. It was not good for my mental health at the time and even now I feel that aging is sort of like a terrible, universal curse that should be destroyed.

[yutalovs-bye-deactivated2020011]

bc I’m curious and people always get hate anons for the dumbest stuff rb this and tag the pettiest thing you’ve ever gotten anon hate for

[hatsuzuki-deactivated20211122]