A Vaguely Human Being @not-quite-here-yet - Tumblr Blog

It never fails to amuse me when I get “hello influencer” emails wanting me to push questionable products to my followers.

Like worstie, I can barely promote my own published book without wanting to curl up and die.

The fuck makes you think I’ll shill your discount wish shit?

thebibliosphere

Also, it's Tumblr. If I try to tell anyone about your knock-off Wish-quality sex toy there’s going to be a horde of Autistic lesbians doing a power point presentation in the notes about safe sex toy material and correct battery storage.

Which I am 100% down for, but it will not get you any sales.

cookieoppressor

I was trying to figure out if you were someone important on a other platform, because there's no way in hell anyone actually thinks you can be classified as "Influencer" if you have a big Tumblr blog.

And then also think advertising to this mob would be a good idea

thebibliosphere

There are actually lots of people who sell stuff successfully on here, usually drop ship stuff.

They’re just not disclosing it as ads, which they are supposed to do, and instead it's marketed in a very Tumblr-esque way which can be summed up as “omg guys look how CUTE this is” followed by a different account underneath going “omg found it!!” and it links to a drop ship site with the item(s).

And the link usually has an affiliate tracker in it, which you may or may not be able to spot unless you’re familiar with them, which is also something you are legally supposed to disclose.

I used to get a lot of offers from around 2016-2020 to sell “moon lamps” on here, y’know those orb lights that look like a moon? Yeah. I was offered a higher kickback to make it look like I wasnt posting an add because these sellers know Tumblrites don’t like ads.

They wanted it to look as organic and hyped up as possible and then I’d just so happen to be like “omg you guys it's on sale” and post a link. Which is skeevy as shit and also illegal af in the US.

It’s like the insta/tiktok girlies saying “link in bio” to get around saying “here’s a product I make money on if you buy it” because they want to sound like your friend because people are more likely to impulse buy stuff if a “friend” is recommending something.

They’re also trusting that everyone knows “link in bio” means “affiliate link” which is technically not enough of a disclosure but whatever.

This is why I tag all my own book promos with “affiliate links” because depending on which storefront you buy Hunger Pangs from, I may get a kickback from the vender which I do to help mediate the fees I lose from distribution. It’s not much—literal pennies in some cases—but I’m still legally required to state it.

It’s also why when I do post products I use or like, I make a point of letting people know I’m not an affiliate and not sponsored because despite the legal ramifications these people are flirting with by not disclosing their affiliate status, I want to be fully transparent with my followers when it comes to me trying to sell them things.

Y’all keep my lights on by reading my work and through my ko-fi and patreon. I am not about to risk that trust for the sake of some shitty vibrator sales from a sketch-ass drop shipper who wants me to pretend I’m not selling you things.

So, yeah. People do successfully sell stuff on here. A lot of us small indie creators sell our own work all the time.

But there are also drop-ship sellers on here who get enough of a kick-back from affiliate links to make selling cutesy kitsch stuff worth their time on here. They’re just making sure you don’t know you’re being marketed to.

thebibliosphere

Throwback to when I openly talked about this and got blocked by several huge “meme” blogs that were actually drop shippers who didn’t like me lifting up the rock and exposing how they hide their ads in plain sight lol

dasloddl

op disabled reblogs but I think the point still stands

kosmogrl

d0uble-0h-se7en

Is it just me or do a lot of people in our/my generation use the whole... "the world is fucked, everythings terrible, nothing will ever get better, and we'll all burn alive in the climate crisis or die by nuclear bomb" mentality as, well, a cop-out to avoid thinking about their futures?

d0uble-0h-se7en

Girl you are not dying tragically young as a victim of societal collapse. Start taking your education seriously, make a long-term plan for how you want to achieve your personal, financial, and career goals with realistic expectations, and research different types of retirement funds 💀 "late-stage capitalism" is not going to kidnap you in the night and take away all your power over the scary things in life to turn you into a passive victim of circumstance any time soon

d0uble-0h-se7en

"But this time its different!" Its really not. The Cuban missile crisis almost had the world blow up, and it didn't. The cold war that set the stage for it existed in a constant state of the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Our world map today looks completely different from how it looked a thousand years ago. Nations and empires have risen and collapsed. Wars have been waged over petty bullshit that changed names and borders. Empires that were once thought invincible and perpetual crumbled to dust within a peasant's lifetime as they tilled their fields and worried about crop failure. The invention of flight, motion pictures, and the automobile chased the coattails of WWI and the great depression. Children played mischief games and elders complained about kids these days being too soft and sensitive during the fall of the Roman empire.

Our generational struggles are not uniquely terrible compared to any other generation's. Your life will not come to a dramatic and cinematic end to all of humanity and the world as we know it any time soon. The world will change and evolve as it always has throughout all of history and all of its constant perpetual bullshit, and you will continue to live on regardless of the outcome. Yes, even if you're queer. Yes, even if you're trans. Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. Yes, even if you're racialized. Set up your 401k and find ways to guard against becoming senile not if, but when you grow old.

bisexualhunterbiden

Something that annoys me is the constant whining about "more queer spaces, more queer communities" but then they're immediately like "yeah! And we need ones that don't cost money or require a purchase!"

Girl that's exactly why they close down after a year. You NEED money to keep these places open. There's no magic Gay Money Pot with endless cash to keep these places open. It requires YOU to put your money where your values are!!

partywithponies

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

navigatorsnorth

Phenomenal spare wheel cover I walked past the other day

tramontane-fire

Reblog if you are Bad Queer Representation.

viejospellejos

Típico de belgas malinois

ceruinus

Good video showcasing exactly why these dogs are not suited to 99 percent of households.

They've gotten very popular recently and I suspect theyre also being dumped in shelters at a high rate

ultramarineblues

I can confirm they are.

Which is one of the reasons I reblogged this, I vaguely hope it might make someone somewhere reconsider their choices

prokopetz

The reason you can't be the next J R R Tolkien isn't because you don't have the talent, but because you're not the right kind of unwell. Tolkien wasn't bent for fantasy worldbuilding; he was bent for constructed languages, and got into fantasy worldbuilding in order to provide a material context in which to ground the notional evolution of the languages he invented. If you want to be the next Tolkien, you can't start with the worldbuilding; you've gotta find something extremely specific to fixate on, and develop it in such depth that inventing a world to contain it is genuinely the most logical next step.

prokopetz

#the best route is clearly to get really into a specific kink scenario and invent a world to justify it (via @salix03)

That's not even a joke. Developing a kink scenario so elaborate and so excruciatingly particular that it can only properly be contemplated in the frame of a world created specifically to contain it is genuinely closer to Tolkien's actual creative process than 99% of the stuff that plays at being heir to his legacy.

probablyasocialecologist

“Musk talks about Mars as a lifeboat for humanity, which is among the very stupidest things that someone could say,” says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the book More Everything Forever, which outlines the messianic, sci-fi fantasies of the tech oligarchs. “There are so many reasons why it’s such a bad idea, and this is not about, ‘Oh, we’ll never have the technology to live on Mars.’ That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth. Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.”

What You’ve Suspected Is True: Billionaires Are Not Like Us

wire-smith

I really like sci-fi stories where people have to go off and terraform a planet, or figure out how to rebuild civilization after some disaster, or ideally both. "The last ark-ship leaving Earth right before it becomes uninhabitable" sort of deal. But lately I've been coming around to this same idea, that it will always be more practical to try to save Earth than to try to start over elsewhere.

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

And this is really true of any futuristic apocalypse scenario. If you can terraform Mars to have a thick oxygen atmosphere, why not just do that to Earth? Even if you smash an ice comet into Earth and destroy basically everything, Earth will still be more habitable than Mars! It'll still have roughly the right atmospheric pressure, and magnetic field, and heat balance, and it'll still have whatever life the comet didn't kill... Same with a starshade to cool Venus. Same with excavating asteroids into city-stations. Same with abandoning Sol System entirely and heading to another star. If an ark-ship arrived in a new star system and found Earth-but-choked-by-climate-change, the crew would be ecstatic. They would never have thought to get that lucky. So why bother with the trip? Just stay and fix the damn Earth.

invisible-goats

saw an ad outside a local restaurant that said "have a star-crossed dinner this valentine's day"

do...do people not know being star-crossed is bad?

"come here and have a dinner that's cursed by fate"

3liza

everone in the replies going "no it isnt" and "ive never heard it used that way before" take a look around at what and who you are surrounding yourself with. ignorance is contagious, never just assume you know the actual literal meaning of anything, look it up

isuggestreleasingwolves

people mostly know this phrase through Romeo and Juliet, and apparently assumed the star-crossed part referred to them being destined or something. because they somehow didn't catch the part where the whole relationship was a terrible idea with terrible consequences for the people involved.

polutropos-puppyboy

i have for a while been using stepping on somebody's toes as a metaphor for misgendering. and i genuinely think that it's kind of a good one.

polutropos-puppyboy

if you keep stepping on somebody's toes for a long time at minimum they're probably going to start really hating you and at maximum you might cause them lasting damage.

if you do it on purpose you're a dick. if it's on accident but you keep doing it that person is still going to be mad at you because you don't care enough to try not to step on their toes

polutropos-puppyboy

if you give a grovelling begging apology after accidentally stepping on somebody's toes one time you're going to make the whole thing awkward, but not giving a quick "sorry" before moving on is still kind of rude.

what-even-is-thiss

The reason your snacks are unsatisfying is that you need both carb and protein.

Carb starts your engine, protein keeps it going.

No carb, engine don’t start. No protein, engine dies out fast.

what-even-is-thiss

Easy carb add on:

Cookie

Fruit (canned or fresh)

Chips

Piece of bread

Popcorn

Crackers

Easy protein add on:

Nuts

Spoonful of nut butter

Cheese

Roasted chickpea snacks

Glass of milk (dairy or non dairy)

Small canned sausages or similar

what-even-is-thiss

Sugar in there.

what-even-is-thiss

I am pleased by people messaging me telling me that after adding a carb or protein to their snacks or meals they feel more satisfied all day. Yes, my plan is working. People are getting through their days with less hangry.

humiliationvictim

Minecraft caves are so dark bro…

tak-cajaz

Rootbound by tak_cajaz

bloodymary • flowershop au • 17/25 • 179.9k •

Ryland looked down at his clipboard, where he had written a reasonable script, supplied earlier that day by Adrian. Unfortunately, the moment his eyes landed on the words, his brain supplied only terrible ways to say them. He chose the worst one. “I need flowers with prominent reproductive structures.” The man went completely still. Ryland could feel his soul attempting to leave his body. “For a plant anatomy lab,” he added quickly. “For my students. Middle school students. Not–” He cut himself off, because there was simply no end to that sentence that would improve his situation. Instead, he just weakly smiled, and added “Science.” -:-:- Ryland Grace is brilliant with biology, awkward with adults, and far too invested in giving his students the lessons they deserve. Simon Fleischer is a guarded florist who trusts plants more than people and has no interest in being needed by anyone again. But when a forgotten school lab brings Ryland into Root & Thorn, their lives begin to tangle in quiet, unexpected ways – through flowers, roots, and the terrifying possibility of being cared for properly.

(additional tags below the cut!)

tak-cajaz

Chapter 17 out now!

its-not-a-pen

good news citizens! while i was at the beach, i successfully indoctrinated another gullible child into using LIBBY. my best friend LIBBY. the library app on your PHONE that gives you FREE EBOOKS AND AUDIOBOOKS with the tap of a finger! are you sick of incurring late fees? giving your hard earned money to jeff bezos? Libby has it for you.

kalwriting

also yall check out the queer liberation library (@queerliblib on tumblr if i'm not mistaken) because i've been using their digital library card and it's been great

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