Mint

HW: 215 CW: 154.5 UGW: 105

[abortionado]

I have a very sweet group of 13-14ish year old girls following me so I just wanted to say a few words about safety and grooming really quickly because I’ve been (hopefully needlessly) stressed about this and it’s sometimes more subtle than like. Asking for nudes

• Adults you meet online should not be talking to you about sex. Full stop. This includes smut, their sex life, your sex life, and “educating” you about sex. If an adult is talking to you about sex in ANY context, BLOCK THEM. Once again, THIS INCLUDES FANDOM SHIT. That is still inappropriate.

If you’re curious about sex, which is Totally normal, you can ask a trusted adult or mentor figure you know IN REAL LIFE, and if you don’t have one, there are lots of very straightforward and strictly educational resources at Planned Parenthood’s website and

• As much as I value younger girls as people (this is not a dig at y’all ❤️), it is weird to be an adult and be CLOSE friends with a young teenager. Even if you don’t perceive your interactions as inappropriate, it’s weird.

This is not because you’re not interesting or fun, but because adults really have nothing in common emotionally with eighth graders, and ALL of us know that. Every single one of us. An adult has nothing to gain from confiding in a person in a middle school. If a grown man or woman is telling you their deepest, darkest secrets, messaging you about their problems on a regular basis, or asking you to confide in them, that is a red flag. Block them.

• If an adult is complimenting you on your appearance in any way that you would not compliment an 8-year-old, BLOCK THEM. It’s completely not appropriate for an adult to tell you that you look hot, your makeup is sexy, etc. That’s fucking weird.

• If they talk about how mature you are for your age, BLOCK THEM. You might very well be mature for your age, but you’re not mature enough to change the fact that you’re in a completely different life stage than a grown adult.

(This applies to the 12-14 crowd—not telling you to block your 18 y/o friends if you’re 16 haha)

[simzart]

[autistobrat]

this too shall pass but the fuck was that for

[dragon-in-a-fez]

keep thinking about how I wrote in my dissertation about how every time a new form of public/social space emerges it's immediately popular with kids and teenagers who see it as a chance at freedom and then adults colonise it and kick them out. this happened with malls in the 80s and diners in the 50s and pool halls in the 20s. my dad was doing research on this trend in like 1975. and I was like "yeah so this is going to happen to the internet" and then five years later every government suddenly decided to ban kids from everywhere online. I hate being right especially when I don't even get paid for it

[amphetamine-angel]

As promised

Extra credit because I’m very proud of you, a story in four parts.

YAY!!!! THANK U SM!! UR CAT IS SO ADORABLE THIS MAKES ME VERY HAPPY 🥹🩷

here are some pictures of my cat for funsies!!

[midwestemogirlfriend]

[servuscallidus]

I'm going to *remembers suicide is often not a desire for death itself but rather an attempt to radically change one's life because the current state of being has become unbearable but the person can't think of any way to change it other than death* kill myself

[mournfulroses]

Sylvia Plath, from a letter featured in The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. 1: 1940-1956

[anxeious]

[foxeia]

Hayley Andersen

[inner]

[aerischu]

Some of my fav

th!n$p0 pics!

If you wanna be like them get you lazy a$$ up and start working out.

Eating tr@sh j!nk food and laying in your bed won't get you anywhere closer to your goal you f@tty. 😹

[tentacion3099]

[angelofdykeness]

I FOUND IT THANK GOD this video is so important

[blue-eyes-white-cheddar]

This is real and here is the patent. Nonconsensual data collection is detailed in column #4 on page 17.

[paper-mario-wiki]

i fucking LOVE this dude (FLESH SIMULATOR is the name of his accounts). all of his videos are full of information and tips like this, and he always has loud industrial tone music mixed poorly over him speaking to make it impossible to create a clean AI copy of his voice.

[slimmed0wn]

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

For a thinner September

Affirm.

[urlgray]

₊

[willgrahamscock]

I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.

[part-time-zombie]

Exactly! It's freaking annoying when I want to watch movies but I would have to subscribe to like 24 different services . Just to watch the shows that I like.

[violetyakumo]

Same with Anime, it's too difficult to find decent streaming platforms nowadays. It's like having to Wave goodbye to an era where you can find shows on yt (.) to enjoy.

Anime used to be all over the place, subscription services are kind of a pain to get (.) just to watch shows.

Manga as well, they've all been thrown into the fire (.) to be paywalled.

[the-haiku-bot]

Manga as well, they’ve

all been thrown into the fire

(.) to be paywalled.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[the-cassquatch]

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

[dj-of-the-coven]

Long collection of resources under the cut.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.

[xerxestexastoast]

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

[biothreads]

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

A collection of 1,966 blogs about every topic

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry