No this is actually a fucking insane to thing to say to victims of centuries of colonization, genocide, oppression, and forcible deportation who say "hey maybe consider not glorifying our oppressor through media you create, especially since a lot of things you consider to be cultural of that nation are actually stolen from the peoples they colonized" to then respond with "well I, a progressive westerner, really enjoy media about your oppressor and think you're hysterical at best and racist at worst for trying to take that away from me". Like how is that a normal thing i have to experience every day. Unreal.
I'm seeing warnings about scammers trying to commission artists but the "reference sheet" for their character they want commissioned isn't an image but a .vbs file ("visual basic script"), and will run a script when you open it, probably to yoink your account(s), but I haven't seen this from anyone who's actually clicked it yet. Just be careful and never open a file like that, 'cause people suck.
hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don't work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)
✨ good places to find art reference that are not full of AI trash 🌈
You ask me "why hate russians so much 🥺 they're just a people" and I'm just a teacher who needs to constantly help my children get to shelter in short amount of time, who needs to explain why do explosions happen, who can't even get to the job because our school is working online because school canalisation doesn't work during power outages that happen solely because russians destroyed our power plants, who is nervous and anxious because of attacks. Children should have their happy childhood without thoughts about attacks. We can't just ignore our reality and we can't disable war by simply putting tags russia is a terrorist state into ignored. I never chose the war. russians did chose it back in 2014 when they occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea. They chose war back in 2008 when they occupied Georgia. They chose to start war against Syria, Chechnya. russians continue to choose war because they have nothing else and don't care about their own citizens. Imagine to spend shithole of money just for bombing neighbours in the night because they happen to be sovereign independent country.
If this post reaches your dash after Jan 1st- YOU'RE NOT LATE to the party!!!
It's never too late to practice selective consumerism, and when companies try to pull bullshit it's up to us to say we won't stand for it by not continuing to use their product until they roll back the change. If we don't push back that's seen as consent, and more sites will follow in YouTube's (and Spotify's) footsteps.
And if this post reaches you before Jan 1st- GREAT! Please reblog (or even repost this on other socials- no need to credit!) to help get the word out as quick and as far as possible!
And if you have more questions on the hows and why's they're under the cut:
For those unaware, people started boycotting Youtube and Spotify earlier this year because of internet privacy and data safety concerns after they started implementing the ID age verification, as well to push back at this push towards mass surveillance poorly veiled as "we need to protect the kids!"
However, the first attempt made the mistake of giving a three day deadline - which resulted in poor turnout and high drop off.
We won't make that same mistake again. We'll start the boycott on Jan 1st, but keep pushing out the word even after it's started because it's never too late to join.
No deadline. We're going to keep going until they roll the policy back, checking in at each financial quarter (every 3 months) to see how well they're listening. (Got this idea from the Kelloggs boycott)
I recommend also making your own posts and memes to spread the word. We need to make more noise.
Boycotts work if done effectively. This isn't just about YouTube, or Spotify. This is about precedent. If we don't push back that's seen as consent, and more sites will follow in YouTube/Spotify's footsteps.
Remember that we're boycotting YouTube/Spotify- NOT the creators on those platforms.
Your favorite creator is bound to have another way to support them, and I suggest you find out what that is. (i.e: do they have Patreon/Kofi? Something else? A different platform perhaps?)
This way they're not caught in the crossfire and can't be used as leverage to guilt you into abandoning the boycott. ("Oh a company wouldn't do that-" YES they would!)
