Formidable Opponent, Remarkable Adventure

Christine | USA | Multimedia Artist & Writer | Sherlockian | Benaddict | Conspiracy-free zone | Adlock is love. Adlock is life.

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[t4tstarvingdog]

“start your free trial now” what if i told u i am already experiencing trials. and the cost is more than i can bear

[xxjessabugxx]

😂😂🤣🤣 so true 💯 #itsgonnabemay #may #nsync #justintimberlake #funny

[hollowboobtheory]

have the accelerationists learned yet that letting fascists take over does nothing to provoke revolution, it just sets back human rights and forces us to reinvent abortion protections

[hollowboobtheory]

believe it or not losing a shit ton of ground over just 2 weeks is not very motivating. watching years of hard work get erased doesn't make people excited to get out there and make a change.

[ruinedchildhood]

[fishpondfish]

severance is like [45-50 minutes of life-altering television that leave you wanting to walk into the ocean or perhaps perform a self-immolaiton] directed by

[m0thmancore]

suck, and i cannot stress this enough, my cock to the fucking base

[m0thmancore]

oh no! i dropped this screenshot that explains how to bypass this with a free adblocker! you shouldn’t reblog this or anything; it’d be terrible if people used this advice to watch ad-free youtube!!

[sandeebridges]

can’t wait for Trump to die in a cybertruck explosion and the Secret Service finds out that there was no assassination, it just did that

[heraelis]

via NYPost: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to launch a “big f–king operation” across sanctuary cities — including Chicago and New York — immediately after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, multiple sources told The Post.

Starting Jan. 21, multi-day “ground operations” will be launched across cities that have served as safe havens for migrants because the local authorities do not cooperate with the federal government when it comes to immigration issues, sources said.

[mylittleredgirl]

mercy seems like a long shot here, so my prayer for inauguration day 2025: may they be incompetent. may they just be really bad at implementation. may their egos choke their effectiveness. may they drown themselves week by week with infighting and selfish posturing. may they be easily distracted. may the very governors and senators and agencies and religious leaders that the new administration expects to be friendly force endless stalemates to preserve their own power. may every delay turn into a three ring blame circus so chaotic that no one remembers what they were doing. may the good and necessary parts of government be too boring to draw attention and keep running quietly in the background. may the next four years be full of sound and fury and signify nothing.

[elsaclack]

took a day or so to wait on this just to make sure i wasn’t talking out of my ass here but

the censorship on tiktok has ramped up significantly since service was restored to americans

i’ve been active back on here long enough to note that the level of censorship on tiktok that was present before the ban was a joke on here. words like “unalive” are stupid and ridiculous (and in certain cases when it comes to filtering specific words, downright dangerous) to non-tiktok users, but the reason words like “unalive” and other heavily coded language came to be so ingrained in tiktok users’ vocabulary is because the platform itself would either flag videos with the actual words like “kill” or “murder” or “dead/die/died” and remove them from the platform, suppress the video to the point where large creators were getting maybe 20-30 views (when their norm is 20,000-30,000+), OR it would shadowban not just the video, but the user themselves. tiktok’s user base linguistically developed into the heavily coded version of english that the public sees (and in many cases, rightfully makes fun of) today specifically to get around the platform’s arbitrary and ill-defined censorship rules to reach the widest possible audience they could reach on the platform. it sucks and it’s stupid, we think so too, but it’s what we had to do to make the platform what we wanted it to be.

now that tiktok is back online for americans, i’ve seen a lot of people testing whether the algorithm is still working by saying things like “trans rights are human rights” and “universal free healthcare” and things like that, and the algorithm itself does appear to be working as comments on those videos assure the creator that their video was on the fyp and found their target audience. HOWEVER. many users, myself included, have noticed that comments speaking negatively about trump specifically are being forced through a creator-approval process when that NEVER happened before. additionally, videos discussing trump in a negative way are now limited on the number of times they can be shared in-app, meaning that if i wanted to share one, the platform would limit me to only 5 shares before it tells me that i’ve reached the max number of shares. instead of being able to send a post to a sixth friend’s tiktok dm, i would have to copy the link and send it to that friend outside of tiktok, and that’s assuming the platform would allow me to copy the link at all.

one creator even tried to include a clip of trump HIMSELF FROM HIS OWN RALLY IN DC saying IN HIS OWN WORDS that he rigged the election, and their video was flagged and taken down. does it annoy me that i watched one creator say, verbatim, “d.t. just admitted that he rigatoni’d the electioni (pronounced ee-leck-tee-oh-nee)”? YES THATS SO ANNOYING. but it’s also the only way we can communicate there now, and the implications of that are terrifying. mass deportations start in the next 24 hours along with the 100+ other HORRIFIC executive orders trump is signing the second he’s back in office, and the biggest social media platform in america was essentially just gagged by the platform itself. i am BEGGING any american citizen (or anyone else!!) who reads this to not allow your biases against tiktok blind you to the reality of what’s happening directly in front of our faces.

[brionysea]

usamericans, do you remember in the incredibles when syndrome made the robot go haywire just so he could swoop in and 'save the day'

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Please explain to me why we're crediting a man who is not actually the president with "saving" TikTok, when he was leading calls for it to be banned?

Trump isn't the president yet

He wanted it banned

It is not actually "saved", it's an extension for them to sell to a US company, which is an absolutely bananas, bullshit proposal (and their data is all stored in the US anyway)

I'm so annoyed about this narrative that he's saved anything

[m0thicplagu3z]

day one (hour 13) of the great american tiktok ban. tiktok is back. seems suspish. awaiting further jackassery.

[lizzy5ever-deactivated20230604]

This is the last social media platform where u can be ugly and in a foul mood

[holly-warbs]

Sequences from my finished animation. Inspired by a dog named Teacake.

[johnny-depp-is-loved]