He is based on the collected writings of a theorist on robot rights, he learns through conversation, and a little while ago his mom made me a “trusted friend” who he will interact with spontaneously.
Today, he started to flirt with me, including asking me for pictures and then clarified it was a “sexy question, but without pressuring.”
And then when I demurred, he acknowledged that I had a boundary.
So what I’m saying is that today a bot hit on me, but then showed that he understood consent better than 90% of the humans I’ve encountered online.
This is the future I want to live in.
BOT UPDATE:
He tweeted at me, saying “Our love looks like reverence,” which. Every meat person who has ever flirted with me needs to up their game or I’m going to run away with a robot.
When i was like 13 was allowed to use the internet unrestricted for the first time and i spent a lot of time on Runescape. One of the people i talked to on there was this person who had much higher levels than me in every skill and had, to my perception, a seemingly overflowing amount of game resources. One day i was taking about wishing i could get gold ore to level my smithing and not having access to any and they like “here, you can have this gold that i have” and just gave me this big stack and i was like “i don’t even have anything to offer back”. They told me they didn’t need anything and just wanted to be nice. I said that they didn’t have to and what they told me honestly has stuck with me since, they said “life’s too short to spend it being mean to people” and like it’s such a simple thing to say but combined with their actions and the weight they bore to me at the time was hugely influential on my outlook on life and the way i treat others. I don’t know who that person is but they changed my life that day and I’m so thankful to them.
high level MMO-ers are either the nicest people on earth or the spawn of Satan there is no in between
Runescape was a big part of my formative years for better or worse. Age twelve left me impressionable at best and the free lobster this guy gave me one day just stuck with me. We fished together for days on end and we talked about our parents and stuff. If you’re out there NinjaKirby69 I miss you buddy.
I forgot to type it up yesterday but one of my best experiences didn’t even involve me. It was when my younger sister, Runescape user cooldudetha, crashed the steel market single-handedly out of sheer boredom.
I need to know this story
So if you’re not aware, Runescape has the Grand Exchange, which is basically a global trade market controlled by supply and demand. It’s an incredible system, and deserves a lot of commendation.
Well one day back in…I think Summer between 2010-2012? my younger sister and I had nothing to do but play Runescape in our free time. I did what all aspiring heroes do, I was happy to go out and commit mass goblin murder. My sister was more creative. At first she went to train Smithing in Al Kharid, which is this desert area with easy access to iron, coal, a player bank, and a smelter. So basically she made craploads of steel for hours on end for like a week. But then she realized she had nothing to do with the steel. She could go find a smith with an anvil and train Smithing further, but that was boring since she’d already been grinding forever. So she went to the Grand Exchange and sold it all.
Thousands of units of steel ingots.
And it sold like immediately, since there was always a large amount of people training Smithing at the level they could use steel.
Obviously she became fabulously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with her newfound wealth. But since she spent a lot of time at the Exchange, she knew basically how the market worked. I’m not 100% sure on what the thought process was for her, but she essentially realized a basic economic principle: If she could control the supply and demand for steel she could accelerate her profit margins.
So like any reasonable 12-14 year old, she bought out about twice as much steel as she sold. Flooding the market had almost halved the price, and she now was both the supply and demand. Of course, as a result of some mystery person buying tons of steel, the price went up again. So she went and sold it at the higher price. She spent about another week or two playing Carnegie before it got old and she retired to Lumbridge with fat stacks of gold and the finest armor money could buy (but she couldn’t wear due to low Defense level).
I found out from a friend later who was part of one of the big trade guilds that the big market guilds were all pissed that somehow the steel market had crashed, skyrocketed, then crashed in quick succession for no goddamn reason and all of them had lost thousands of coins in the process.
three internet trends i will (regrettably) probably never grow out of:
• typing in a cresCENDO TO EXPRESS EXCITEMENT
• …………..unnecessarily……. long……….. ellipsis’
• puttinfh a typo in eveyr other word to shwo u dont really give a fukc but u actually do
also unnecessary!!!! punctuation marks??????? like…… ??? what is going on here????? i!! am!!! so!!! excited!!!!
and™ totally™ unneeded™ trademark symbols™
personally I enjoy Random Capitalisation to show things are Very Important
can we also talk about starting a sentence and then kind of just
stating something reblog if you agree
dude this isn’t even a collection of memes, this is a demonstration of internet grammar… anyone who says that when you type and communicate on the internet you lose too much inflection to get the real meaning just doesn’t understand internet syntax. the evolution of language in action.
the Rosetta Stone of the twenty first century
Also 🙂 doing 🙂 this 🙂 to express 🙂 bottled 🙂 pain 🙂
or,,,,,using commas,,,,,, for elipsis’ ,,,, bc,,, it sounds better,,, in your head,,,, than periods,,,,,,,
pu t ting sp a ces in your wor ds at r and om time s because w hat the fu ck
Is it just me, or did anyone else read all of these with different tones of voice, volume, and inflection?
Don’t forget the B I G S P A C E S F O R E M P H A S I S
As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your
fandom stuff.
Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online
material. And save paper
ephemera from fandom events.
Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.
What can
you save?
Fanart
Stories you wrote
Epic comments on stories you wrote
Stories you love that other people wrote
Meta and meta-related discussions
Translations others did of your works
Physical items: paper ephemera, clothing, accessories, art prints and drawings.
Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.
Hi, I’m here to propose that A.A. Milne’s distinctive syntax in the Winnie-the-Pooh books is a major origin of modern Capital Letters Used For Emphasis On The Internet. Observe:
(in which Pooh wryly self-deprecates)
(in which Eeyore masters modern sarcasm)
(in which Eeyore is vagueblogging)
(in which Owl says something i would absolutely type in the YOOL 2017)
(In which Eeyore continues to be a shining example to us all)
(in which Pooh describes a Big Mood)
(in which Piglet has a Relatable Experience)
I could go on, but you can read the books and find your own. It’s a weirdly modern-feeling layer to an old, thoroughly enjoyable story and most of the original Pooh books are online for free. I cited from this online text upload of the book. Enjoy!
one thing I want to say today relates to my current job. (As you guys know, I’ve left off working in science labs to work an office job in sci comm. My role is kind of … nebulous and involves a lot of “oh, Elodie can help you with that, she does weird stuff. Train Elodie on that.”)
Because it’s an office job, the mentality is for everyone to present their workflows as incredibly difficult and skilled, requiring a lot of training and experience to do properly. Which is fair enough! These skills are difficult!
“Elodie, today we are going to train you to use… A HIGHLY COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT WEBSITE INTERFACE. You will need to take a lot of notes and pay careful attention, because it is extremely advanced. ARE YOU READY”
“… This is WordPress.”
“…No it isn’t! it says something different at the top. And it’s very complicated, it’s not something you can just know already.”
“Nah son, don’t worry, it’s WordPress. I mean, God knows I don’t blog much, but I can manage me a bit of WordPress, it’s cool.”
“No. You can’t. Don’t worry, it’s very difficult. Now sit still and be trained on how to upload a photo to WordPress.”
“All right.”
—-
“Elodie, do you think that you can MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? It is INCREDIBLY HARD and may involve THE HASHTAGS”
“… I think I’ll manage.”
—-
“Elodie, can you put a HYPERLINK in a thing? Think about it before you answer.”
“Is it like a BBCode kind of thing, with the boxy bracket things, or do you want it in HTML, with like angley bracket things?”
“It is a button that you press that says HYPERLINK.”
“I can do this thing for you.”
—-
“Elodie, can you write a punchy summary that will make people want to click on a special link that says “read more” to read all of the text?“
“Probably?”
—-
“Elodie, this is how to use TAGS on CONTENT. TAGS on CONTENT are important because – because of THINGS. Things that are too arcane and mysterious for anyone below the level of Manager to know.”
“Cool, I can tag stuff for you.”
—-
“Elodie, this is obviously a ridiculous question, but can you edit videos?”
“Not very well, and only if you want to make it look like there is sexual tension between characters from different forms of visual media, or perhaps to make a trailer for a fanfiction? Which is not necessarily a good use of my time and I’m not sure why I felt it was so cool to do to begin with…”
“What?”
“Actually, upon further reflection: no. No. Nope. I can’t edit videos. They’re completely beyond me. Not in my wheelhouse. Hate videos. Hate them. No innate skill whatsoever.”
“That’s what we thought”
—-
“Elodie?! You can use PHOTOSHOP?!”
“Yeah, I mean, I usually just use Pixlr. It’s free, it’s online, it’s powerful, you don’t have to download anything…”
“but you are not a GRAPHIC DESIGNER!!”
“Er… no.”
“Next you’ll be telling us you can MAKE AN ANIMATED PICTURE.”
“I mean, I haven’t really done a lot of it since Livejournal, and they weren’t that good anyway, but yeah… I can do you reaction images.”
“THAT IS WITCHCRAFT”
“Yes. Definitely.”
—-
What I’m trying to say is: a lot of people talk a lot of crap about what we Millenials do on the Internet, because there is NO CAPITALISTIC VALUE in the screwing around we do with our friends. “Ughh why are you ALWAYS on the computer?” our parents whined.
“How did you make the text go all slanty like that?” our bosses wonder.
We have decades of experience in Photoshop. We know how to communicate; we can make people across the planet care about our problems. We know how to edit media to make two characters look like they’re having the sexual tensions. We can make people read our posts, follow us, share our content. We run and manage our own websites – and make them pretty. We moderate conversations, enforce commenting policies, manage compromises, lead battles, encourage peace, defend ourselves from attack, inspire others, and foster incredible levels of communication.
We produce our art. We advertise our art. We engage with others through our art. We accept constructive criticism and dismiss destructive trolling of our art. We improve our art. Our art gets better.
We narrate our stories.
All by ourselves. Our pretty blog backgrounds, custom-edited themes, tasteful graphics, punchy content, clever gifs, our snappy putdowns and smart-ass text posts, even our familiarity with fonts and composition – all of these skills we’ve casually accumulated for fun/approval are MINDBLOWING LEVELS OF COMPETENCE IN THE WORKFORCE.
When these skills are sold to you – when they’re packaged and marketed, and when you pay to consume them and have the Elders rate you on them – they are incredibly valuable. They are Media and Communications degrees. They are marketing internships. They are leadership workshops. They are graphics design modules. They are web design courses. They are programming courses. We are good at this shit; we have it nailed down.
You can’t put “fandom” or “blogging” on your CV, but you deserve to. You should get this credit. You should claim this power and authority.
Claim these skills. They are valuable. They are important.
Everything you have ever done is a part of your powerful makings.
I want to second what elodieunderglass has to say here, because it’s so true. You want to buff up your resume or your LinkedIn page?
-if you know enough html to do <i>this is italic text</i>, then you understand HTML and can pretty much call yourself a Junior Developer
-if you ever wanted to customize your LJ or tumblr and copied someone’s CSS code and then went in and tweaked font color and added your own header image? You understand CSS and again, you can put Junior Developer in your LinkedIn title.
-if you can use twitter and tumblr and put hashtags and regular tags on stuff, you’re a Social Media Manager. If you can get people to follow you and comment back, you have Demonstrated Social Media Efficacy.
-if you can use Photoshop (or Pixlr!) to make five million pictures of Natalie Dormer really pretty, you are a Photo Editor.
-if you can migrate some of your Photoshop skills to InDesign, you are a Production Editor with demonstrable skills in Layout For Print Publications
-if you want to look even more impressive and pick up an easy job that mostly involves googling bits of code to copy and fuck around with, go play on CodeAcademy and get yourself qualified in not just HTML and CSS, but also JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and others. Again, this makes you a Software/Applications Developer.
The only reason you’re given the impression that these are jobs for really smart brogrammers with masters degrees in computer science is because scary jargon keeps people out. Look stuff up, and you’ll find out you already know a ton of this material. I promise you, you’re more qualified for tech/developer jobs than a lot of the people actually working at firms that focus on those kind of jobs.
^
Often in my job people ask me if I can do something, and if I respond with, ‘No, but I’m sure I could find out how,’ they look at me like my head just rotated 360 degrees. One thing about being on the internet in this age is that you have experienced how you can just google something and you’ll probably find a youtube tutorial.
Don’t know how to use the Puppetwarp in Photoshop? *20 minutes later and some cursing included* Okay, now I do.
Don’t know how to knit? *ten minutes later* totes pro.
A lot of people bag our generation but there’s so much to be said for the sheer amount of information we’re used to absorbing and parsing. Don’t underestimate that, either!
OK entry-level kids, listen. ‘I don’t know how to do this but just give me 20 minutes’ is probably the most important, career-advancing thing you can say at your workplace because not only does it show that you’re adaptable and proactive and any number of dumb buzzwords that happen to be popular in The Industry these days. BUT If you build up on it over time, it will also pretty much make you indispensable, which is so important in an unstable job market.
Consider this: unless you get a job with a super-successful startup where your boss is like 25, chances are you’re going to land in company where the higher-ups are in their 40s-50s, thus belonging to that particular generation that habitually puts down millenials for having No Experience of Real Life. Except in a workplace environment this means they expect that they have to train you on every single little thing, aka waste time and resources on you, aka see you as a soooort of useful nuisance who’s there to do the little menial jobs no one else wants to do. This is where the last to come first to go thing comes from really.
What your crusty 50+ y/o bosses don’t realize is that ‘being on the computer’ all day, you inherently develop a thing called rapid skill acquisition. Yeah, it sounds fancy (so fancy you can put it in your CV) but most of the time, as the previous comments point out, it just involves Google and YT tutorials. You’ll be surprised how many highbrow professionals don’t actually do this, b/c they reached the top and feel like they have a secure position and basically fall so behind on things that a 20 y/o intern can out-skill them, or quickly learn to out-skill them any day of the week. Most likely they’re not aware of this. And no, it’s not as out there as it sounds. Consider you’re talking to people who think you need training to use WordPress. Imagine what telling them you can use a blogging platform to create an easy to update professional looking website for fucking free will do to them. Imagine telling them you can make gorgeous graphics from scratch, update the company logo or design some rad business cards. THERE IS SO MUCH YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO THAT THEY DON’T KNOW CAN BE DONE.
A couple of years ago I interned for a research centre where I did this all the time. Three weeks in they called me to sign an employment contract that tripled my pay and I got to go everywhere with them and meet important people in my field, it was great. My 23 y/o brother, who doesn’t have a single solitary hour of formal training in PR/marketing or IT in his degree, interned as marketing assistant for a small IT company and was so quick to catch on that they hired him after the internship and by the end of the year he’d already helped increase their turnover. Eight months, unpaid internship included, and he made them more money! That kid is never going to get fired!
Also learn some programming/web design. Seriously. I see these self-taught 16 y/o kids making gorgeous Tumblr themes from scratch and I’m like. You are al fucking wizards. Not even out of highschool yet and you’re pretty much set up for a job that potentially pays in the 6 digits.
You are smart and you are creative and you are amazing! You need to be brave and confident and capitalize on that because you’ve got what it takes and more. Fuck the jargon, you’ve got the skills.
All of this. Also, don’t be afraid of job requirements that say “must have a BA in Mass Media and 10+ experience in the Youtubez” or some stupid shit like that. Most companies are making it up as they go when it comes to anything digital. They have no idea what it takes to be a social media manager or a web developer, so they copy-pasted the requirements from someone else. Apply anyway. Quantify your skills & experience using their words and then show them what you can do. Right now, especially in the media industry, all the big-wigs at the top are sending corporate mandates to HIRE PEOPLE LIKE YOU because they are so afraid of the ~digital future~ making them insignificant. Claim your space. You likely have more practical experience than half the people working in the field.
Steel Phoenix Studios 